Ask the Author: Joel Whitney
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Joel Whitney
I heard a story at a dinner party. The story was this: Three prominent American writers allegedly kicked a prominent American editor out of a car on a dark road in Puerto Rico. Why? Because the editor, a leftist-rebel sort, wouldn't join in on the CIA's Cold War patronage by agreeing to publish safe writers from Latin America. What's a safe writer? In Latin America you were safe to the North Americans if you either denounced Fidel Castro or denounced communism. Non-communist left, the official sources liked to call these safe writers. The rebel editor was forced to make his way back to his hotel in the dark. I heard this story on a Sunday. On the day I was planning to get in touch with this editor to verify the story, the editor this allegedly happened to, Barney Rosset, died. The immediate problem was that between that Sunday dinner party and Rosset's death a few days later, I'd pitched the vignette as an opening to a feature article on the cultural Cold War and literary magazines. And it was accepted. But no one who survived Rosset could zero in on the details, or even the year he was kicked out of this literary carpool. I abandoned the vignette but went to an archive and had my first archival eureka moment. This is a nerd's way of discovering hidden treasure amidst yellowing pages of letters. The eureka moment came when I found letters in which two of the writers in that car with Rosset were confessing that they had indeed collaborated with the CIA's Congress for Cultural Freedom in much the same spirit they would have been doing in the vignette. The confession became the story; the story grew into this book...
Joel Whitney
"Anyone who tells you there’s only one way to write is wrong," said Mahsuda Snaith in a recent Observer interview. I agree. I've noticed a few things that work for me, though, and may work for others. I like to read history, because it's filled with showdowns and shootouts, collaborations, conflicts, struggles and conspiracies, events which may only be remembered as a blurred vision or may be altogether forgotten or distorted. I like to read poetry to hear how to make each sound count. I take walks, so my reading gains a pulse. We must believe our editors, but if there's something we can't stand to lose, we should fight for it. We ought not to dumb it down, but while clarity makes us feel naked and naked writing is intimate, all armor eventually rusts, and masks crumble. If it's true we must kill our darlings, we must also use their bodies to fertilize new work. We ought not to chicken out of our commitments, whether aesthetic or social or other. Sometimes a big idea needs a bigger commitment in form or time or both. I like to write letters; I think that letters (especially letters of praise) are the most intimate kind of writing.
Joel Whitney
I read, I play music, I go for a walk. Repeat. And I try to figure out what the dead spot or the blind spot was in the last section I wrote that might be hindering me. I also try to make conscious what I'm afraid of saying. In the case of Finks, I didn't want to condemn any of the Cold War, mostly dead writers whose careers I was examining through the lens of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the battle against the Soviets, and the CIA. While I may have pointed to some flaws in the program, as it were, I tried as often as I could to follow john a. powell's rule. I think he wrote or said something to the effect of, "Be soft on the person and hard on the institution." The point is that sometimes your writer's block is telling you something and you have to listen for what it is. And sometimes you need a little space from something new or something too intense. Sometimes it's good to let it breathe for a day or two.
Joel Whitney
Aside from an assortment of interviews and essays around Finks, I'm exchanging chapters of a novel that is a coming-of-age story set in Costa Rica. I could say more about it. But for now maybe I'd better just say that it uses a bit of the research I did for Finks, but it's (I hope) a little funnier.
Joel Whitney
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