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Terry Gross
Transcript:
J.R. MOEHRINGER: Well, he robbed banks at a time when people hated banks. That's not so hard for us to understand nowadays. And he did it really well. When police called him the Babe Ruth of bank robbers, I think they got it right. He studied the art of robbing banks, and he studied other bank robbers the way Mozart studied other composers. And I think that's the reason he was so fascinating not just to the common man, who was feeling jobbed by banks and Wall Street, but he was fascinating to artists and writers.
There's a beautiful riff about Willie Sutton in Saul Bellow's great novel "Herzog," and so I think he's always been fascinating to people for a variety of reasons, whether it be his roguish nature, his savoir faire, his dedication to his craft, but also, importantly, he was nonviolent. He never fired a shot in all of his bank robberies, however many there were.
Full Show:
http://www.npr.org/2012/09/26/161807...ing-robin-hood
Transcript:
J.R. MOEHRINGER: Well, he robbed banks at a time when people hated banks. That's not so hard for us to understand nowadays. And he did it really well. When police called him the Babe Ruth of bank robbers, I think they got it right. He studied the art of robbing banks, and he studied other bank robbers the way Mozart studied other composers. And I think that's the reason he was so fascinating not just to the common man, who was feeling jobbed by banks and Wall Street, but he was fascinating to artists and writers.
There's a beautiful riff about Willie Sutton in Saul Bellow's great novel "Herzog," and so I think he's always been fascinating to people for a variety of reasons, whether it be his roguish nature, his savoir faire, his dedication to his craft, but also, importantly, he was nonviolent. He never fired a shot in all of his bank robberies, however many there were.
Full Show:
http://www.npr.org/2012/09/26/161807...ing-robin-hood
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