Kirn’s 2001 novel Up in the Air was made into the critically-acclaimed 2009 film starring George Clooney. His memoir Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever chronicles his own adventure going from rural Minnesota to the Ivy League. Lately, he co-hosts the podcast America This Week and is the co-founder of County Highway, a new print magazine about America in the form of a nineteenth-century newspaper.
In late June, I flew to Montana and drove out to meet Kirn at his home in Livingston, on the Yellowstone River, where he’s lived for 33 years. Livingston’s last industry, a local sawmill, fully shuttered a few years ago, and the town now sustains itself on summer tourists to Yellowstone National Park.
Downtown Livingston could be confused for a Hollywood backdrop, which suits its resident part-time Writers Guild of America screenwriter. He tells me he’s on strike for “the duration” and can’t talk to the producer of the new film he’s writing. He’s also working on a new book that’s a travelog of his road trip across the Mountain West during the pandemic.
Between meals in Livingston’s hipper cafes and a long drive out into the mountains in his pickup truck, I ask Kirn how it was that the big American story got so far off script.