Biographer Scott Berg
November 14, 2008

RADIO 2CBA FOCAL POINT COMMENTARY BROADCAST ON FRIDAY MARCH 10TH, 2000 ON RADIO 2CBA FM.

The academic year has started. School and university class rooms hum with lectures. But how many students will have truly memorable educational experiences?

A. Scott Berg has been in Australia this week for the Adelaide Writers’ Festival. He is one of America’s best biographers and last year won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography on aviation and environmental pioneer Charles Lindbergh. I caught up with him at a lecture yesterday at the United States Consulate General in Sydney.

He began his lecture by explaining how he got started in writing. He much preferred television as a child. He joked that he was asked to write a school essay on his favourite American author and he had difficulty thinking of any American author – or indeed any author at all.

He wrote about his mother’s favourite writer: F Scott Fitzgerald. Indeed she was so taken by him that she named her son after him.

Suddenly Scott Berg had a life-changing experience. He became addicted to his namesake – and indeed to the whole world of books. A Scott Berg followed F Scott Fitzgerald to Princeton University and the rest, as they as say, is history.

But Mr Berg is not only a brilliant writer – he is also a brilliant speaker.

I had accepted the invitation to the lecture to hear about Lindbergh. I thought I knew little about Mr Berg.

But as soon as he started to speak, I realized that I had heard a BBC radio

BROADCAST by him exactly 20 years ago. In a conversation with him afterwards, my recollection was confirmed.

Two decades ago, the young aspiring writer Scott Berg had spoken at the Edinburgh Writer’s Festival on his first biography, that of Maxwell Perkins the literary editor. Maxwell Perkins is one of the great figures of American literature. He discovered writers such as F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.

I love books but only non-fiction ones. My world is very different from that of Mr Berg’s. But hearing Mr Berg speak two decades ago, I was so captivated by his communications style that I listened to the radio programme for the hour. Indeed, the programme created so much interest at the time, that it was repeated a few weeks later.

As I say, I have no interest in American novelists. But I was glued to the radio for both

BROADCASTs. I may have little interest in American fiction but I have always since remembered Maxwell Perkins.

This brings me back to the students have who just started their academic year. It may well be, that just as A Scott Berg was introduced to the world of literature by F Scott Fitzgerald, that some students may also have a light suddenly go on in their heads when they approach a new area of study.

But for many others it may require a skilled communicator. I am only aware of Maxwell Perkins because of the communications skills of Mr Berg. If only more teachers had those sorts of communications skills!