W. Hodding Carter

I helped prepare this interview with Hodding Carter. I expected it to be a fairly straightforward selling of the blog that Carter is writing for Gourmet's website on the subject of Extreme Frugality. Carter is a writer and adventurer. The feats he has accomplished include retracing the expedition of Lewis and Clark, sailing from Greenland to North America in a replica of an ancient ship⎯a six-year odyssey⎯and training for the Olympics as a swimmer at age 45. The interview turned out to be refreshingly candid and personal. That a man so manifestly quixotic finds himself preoccupied with the means of his and his family's sustenance is affecting. That the audacity of his undertakings is balanced by an obvious humility even more so.