Here's the second half of our conversation with Sam Anderson, critic at large at the New York Times Magazine.

Last episode, we heard about how Sam became interested in magazine writing and criticism, and how he tends to approach texts and subjects. In this episode, we hear about Sam’s gradual shift from doctoral work at NYU to writing from time to time for Slate and then full time at New York Magazine, where he wrote mostly about sports before becoming book critic. We also get back to the question of whether Sam is a generalist. That topic allows us to address some of Sam’s favorite subjects: the people he’s written about and is endlessly fascinated by: we move from Dostoesky to Michelangelo, Samuel Beckett to Mark McGuire, the baseball player.

We touch on all these folks because there’s something about each of them—their work, their stories—that preoccupies Sam. But what is it? We ask that. We consider some of the themes around which Sam’s writing tends to orbit. I ask whether he feels he has some real writerly mission, some main idea to get across, main insight to relate.