Aaron Tracy

You don't think I'm serious about a free Vietnam?

I should stop talking so much.

One city, a divided country, and the war that tore America apart.

Listen to Saigon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I have to think one reason Dahl resisted domestic life for so long, and then has so much trouble with it when he finally commits, stems from his previous life as a spy.

I mean, there's a reason James Bond doesn't settle down, right?

Leaving espionage and war behind, reentering the normal world, it's nearly impossible.

To distract himself from his difficult domestic life, Dahl goes back to his real love, his writing.

Maybe now he can finally focus.

He churns out short story after short story, but still hasn't quite found his voice.

I talk about this issue with my creative writing students at Yale all the time, more than almost anything else, more than the ability to write witty dialogue or construct a sound plot or an interesting scene.

The way to get hired as a writer is to show you have a distinct, compelling voice.

Think about any of your favorite writers.

Quentin Tarantino, Joan Didion, Aaron Sorkin, or Toni Morrison.

They all have incredibly distinct voices.

You wouldn't confuse even a single page of any of those writers' works with someone else's.

At this moment in his career, Dahl thinks his voice is that of a sophisticated New Yorker, someone whose stories are at home in the New Yorker magazine.

This is the world he's living in with Patricia Neal, the one where playwright Clifford Odets lives upstairs, and they go to dinner parties with Lillian Hellman and Leonard Bernstein.

But this just isn't Dahl's natural voice.

He hasn't found it yet.