Ask writer Michael Pearson what he values most in a nonfiction piece of writing and he will answer "I value reporting a great deal. I also value storytelling and careful writing and attention to detail." In Mark Singer's writing, he finds these traits.

Pearson's uses his own son, Owen, as a character in the Singer profile to subtly exemplify his point about attention to detail. While he feared using his son as a ploy, he did sense in advance that Owen's presence provided him with narrative possibilities that otherwise would not exist, and it worked.

Owen was "his architecture. Through him the story could arrange itself in a certain kind of way ... by allowing a part of Singer's personality to come out. The point was that Mark Singer is very attentive to the present moment. You have to learn how to create narratives out of the things you find in the world. He (Singer) was very attentive to everything that was going on, responding to all of my questions, but he was also always aware of Owen's presence." Joking, I suggested that perhaps the best suggestion for the nonfiction writer is to always bring a child or dog. "Exactly. Steinbeck knew what he was doing. He made his own character." (In Steinbeck's "Travels With Charley" he used a dog as a character).

Later, in a more serious and more open moment, Pearson confessed to having to overcome his own shyness as a beginning immersion writer. For his first book, "Imagined Places," he brought photographers who were often more outgoing than he. "They would talk to people in a way that I wouldn't. And a camera gathers people. It was hard to step outside of myself and pry into other peoples' lives."

He talked quite openly and poignantly about having great fears as a new writer. He has found learning to pry into others lives one of the most difficult parts of the genre of nonfiction but, on the other hand, feels that it has helped him to be more prying and inquisitive about his own. He has learned to turn his eyes inwards and to trust that this process of exploration of himself and others will allow him to find what is interesting in the ordinary. "I'm spending all this money to do a story ... living on one income, sleeping in my rental car outside an airport. You have to have faith that there will be something that's interesting. That there will be a story. If you pay attention, there's always something there."

He got great pleasure out of doing the piece on Mark Singer, which was an assignment given to him by the editor of Creative Nonfiction. Singer, along with fellow New Yorker writer John McPhee, (the subject of another Pearson profile that appeared in Creative Nonfiction Issues No. 1 and 6), inspire him.

Although less shy than when he began writing, he worries about negotiating the large, impersonal and public world of publishing. While finding joy in the art and craft of writing, he is always aware of the eyes of material success and failure looking over his shoulder. This is the reality of the writer who someday wishes to give up his day job. He is hoping that his new book, "Dreaming of Columbus: A Boyhood in the Bronx ," will be popular enough to allow him to take a trip to Bermuda. His last book on John McPhee has sold a few thousand copies but will only get him to Bermuda "if he rows there."

He worries that people associate creative nonfiction only with memoir, a genre which he finds pretentious. "The essay fits here, travel writing fits here, reportage, biography, history. The memoir is just a part." He thinks good writing, even in memoir, always finds the universal in the specific. He admires someone willing to "go back" to do their reporting and not rely entirely on reflection about the past. The present is important. In his interview with Singer, he uses Singer's autograph, "To Owen, a patient fellow," hoping to point out that "you have to have a certain generosity of spirit in order to write good nonfiction. You have to be interested in the world of people and the world around you."

Karen Rosica