Interview with David Pesci

Interview with David Pesci, author: Amistad

So what's a white guy like you doing writing about Africans?
I didn't really think about that when I sat down to write this. It's a great story. An American story. I was awed by it and thought that it should be as well known as Nathan Hale or Nat Turner or so many of the other important pieces of history that we all hear growing up. The race thing is very American, too. I don't think you can write a modern American novel without discussing it . If you talk abut some of the problems in this country then you have to talk about race. No one likes to, it's like a big scabby wound. But you have to. I think I remember reading Sartre on bigotry, and racism being an insidious form of bigotry, and he said bigotry is like a molecule, and once it inserts itself into the fabric of our society it is reflected in some way virtually everywhere. Now that's a crude paraphrasing, but the metaphor is accurate. It wasn't like I got halfway through the book and thought, "Hey I can't write this! I'm Mr. Caucasian!" Maybe if we started thinking about ourselves as Americans and not putting some hyphenated modifier before that like whiteAmericans, AfricanAmericans, ItalianAmericans, IrishAmericans, or whatever, then we can start making some headway. And this story has so much of black and white working together in it. Roger Baldwin and Lewis Tappan, the white men who work to defend the Africans, are as much major characters as Singbe and Grabeau. The thing that really made me write this book was that it was a great, inspiring story. Singbe is a wonderful role model of faith, perseverance, and the will to be free. He is someone who was free and was abducted and decided he would not be a slave. He did what every African brought against their will to Connecticut or Brazil or Cuba or New Hampshire or South Carolina anywhere else wanted to do. Get home. And he made it. That's an important story and one I think everyone should know.
What's the connection between your novel and Stephen Spielberg's film "Amistad"?
His movie is not an adaptation of my book. I finished my novel, Amistad, in the summer of 1995 and set out to look for an agent. After several months I found one who would represent me. We shopped the book around for several months. Late in the process, we found out that Stephen Spielberg had hooked up with Debbie Allen who owned the rights to a nonfiction book called Black Mutiny. At that time there was a movie producer, Raul DaSilva, who was very interested in buying the rights to Amistad, but once word was out that Spielberg was hellbent on doing a movie of his own , everything else fell through. My agent offered DreamWorks my book for their film but they were all set. I think they did a great job for the most part. The finished film was very powerful.
How long did it take to write Amistad?
I started it in the spring of `94. I was looking up something in an encyclopedia and came across a three line citation for something called "Amistad." The word "Connecticut" caught my eye and so I read it. I thought it was interesting because I am from Connecticut and minored in history at the University of Connecticut and yet never heard of the Amistad Incident. Being a somewhat obsessivecompulsive type of person, I put down what I was doing and began researching Amistad. The more I read, the more fascinating it became. It's one of those stories that had so many "truth is stranger than fiction" types of things in it. I had already started another novel, a pure fiction murdermystery that I thought would be my first novel. But Amistad had me so intrigued that I thought I'd do a little digging first. I ended up spending that spring and the whole summer doing research Amistad, mostly at the University of Connecticut Library. Then I decided to write and see how things went. About a year later I had what I thought was a pretty good, accurate novel.
Do you call this historical fiction? Fictionalized history?
It's historical fiction fictional dialogue, description, and narrative elements wrapped in the true facts of history. I stayed pretty true to the facts as they happened, about 90 percent true I'd say. I didn't want to write a nonfiction book because there are two really good one's out there: Mary Cable's Black Odyssey and Howard Jones' Mutiny on the Amistad, Jones' book being the best single nonfiction work on the Amistad incident that I could find. It's meticulous in its detail and very well researched, but ity's also very academic in its approach and presentation. That's not the kind of book I wanted to write. I'm not a historian and I didn't want to play that game with the extensive citations and bibliographies. I did that enough in college and frankly, I don't want to write anything like that ever again. I really wanted to write a story that someone today from high school on up could read and enjoy without losing the vital elements of what happened. I was also interested in the people involved in the incident. None of the documents or research I read talked about the mindset of these people as events unfolded. I tried to figure out what it was that drove the main characters involved to succeed against such extreme odds. Singbe Pieh especially, who succeeded at doing, what every person brought to this country against their will wanted to do: Get Back Home. And for me, it came down to this guy's incredible strength of will, his refusal to be a slave, and his unrelenting desire to get back to his wife and kids. Those were things I could identify with and I'm sure what many people could relate to as well.
How many of the characters in the book really existed?
Nearly all of them. There are a few composite characters early on to facilitate certain parts of the story. Shaw is fictional. I felt I needed a character like that, the original slave dealer on the middle passage. The mulatto sailor, Paolo, is fictional but he was there to show the tension and racism between the mulattoes and the Africans. And Beliwa, the translator is fictional. The Africans communicated with their prisoners through hand motions and some sort of adhoc sign language. That was too cumbersome to try and construct narrative around that and make it convincing. So I brought in Beliwa to lay some ground rules. He is plausible because Freetown, in Sierra Leone, was a British port, so it was totally possible for one of the Africans to have some English phrases in their vocabulary. I think that's most of the fudging, and those are incidental characters.
What's your favorite part?
God, I guess I should say all of it, though if I had my druthers I'd probably rewrite the whole book again. The very last chapter was fun to write, though I think I rewrote that one five or six times, more than any other chapter. I really wanted to leave the reader with a certain feeling. I liked putting together the chapter where the linguist from Yale, Josiah Gibbs, finds the Mende sailor, Joseph Covey. That was pretty cool, the way that whole event unfolded with this little old Yale professor walking down along the docks of the Bowery in New York City, counting to ten in Mende. I also loved writing the first three chapters. I knew it was a big challenge to get the reader into it and to portray the realities on a slave ship without running through the same old stereotypes. The hardest part was definitely the court trials. A lot of trials are tedious. This one had an opening statement from the prosecutor that went on for four hours. No one wants to read that. Hell, I didn't want to read it. And the way they spoke in those days was much different. They spoke in sentences that went on and on, three or four lines to a single sentence, and with a lot more formality to it. That makes for pretty dull dialogue when you're reading a novel. It was a challenge to capture the essence of the way they spoke without boring the eyes off the reader.
Did you watch "Roots" as a child?
Kunta Kinte, yeah. It's one of my most vivid memories from early adolescence. I remember lying on the floor of our family room with my parents and brother and sisters and just being glued to the TV for the whole thing. It was really an event, and it impressed me on a variety of levels.
What else have you written?
I've written a second novel, Miss Prudence As I Knew Her, which is also based on a true story, that of Prudence Crandall, an incredibly courageous and heroic school teacher. It's set in the early 1830s. We haven't been able to find a publisher for that but CBS has bought an option for a movie of the week, so who knows? I juist finished a new novel called The Satori Effect. It's about hackers and the Internet and a pretty nasty virus. And I've written about 100 articles for newspapers and magazines, and scads of marketing and PR copy. Until the summer of `96 I wrote a biweekly newspaper column for The Bristol Press, a daily paper here in Connecticut. I started that in `92. It ran the gamut from political commentary, mostly satirical, to discourses on my favorite exit ramp. It was syndicated to the Media News Group until The Press was bought out by another ownership group. At that point, the editor I was working with left and I stopped doing work for them.
When do you write?
When I wrote Amistad, I was an editor in a marketing and communications department at UConn so I was writing at work all day then going home to do my own stuff at night. I also maintained a freelance writing business on the side that took up a lot of time. I wrote Amistad when I wasn't working on anything else on nights and weekends. Actually, I was living a pretty monastic lifestyle while I wrote Amistad. The spring and summer I did my research for the book, I had just broken up with a longtime girlfriend, so Singbe, Grabeau, Baldwin, and the other characters in the novel filled the void somewhat. I spent all my free time researching them and then sitting down at the computer and writing. After the novel came out, I was working in public relations at UConn as their national media rep. The book ultimately did well enough for me to buy a couple of years freedom to write. So that's what I've been doing, working on a new book, The Satori Effect. I spend about eight to ten hours a day five to six days a week writing and doing research. If we can't find a buyer for this one, I guess I'll go get another day job.
What kind of lasting impact do you think all this heightened awareness about the Amistad Incident will have?
I think there will be continued interest in the times and the people involved. Mystic Seaport has built a replica of the Amistad as a floating classroom on slavery. Spielberg's film will be a permant document about this incidet. I'm told nearly everyday about another school using my book and others to teach students about this incident. And I think it all comes down to the people involved. They were so extraordinary. Singbe Pieh, Grabeau, Lewis and Arthur Tappan, John Quincy Adams, Roger Baldwin, Josiah Gibbs, and the others. I have such respect for them, and for the woman, Margru, who changed her name to Sara Kinson and came back to the U.S. She ended up going to college in Ohio! A black woman in the 1850s going to college in the U.S. was virtually unheard of. There's so much we can learn from this incident and this time period that can be traced to where we are today.
Describe your writing process.
Whoever said that writing is an obsession, I agree with that. I am an obsessive writer. I write on a computer and I'm a horrible typist. I have never learned to type correctly, so my method is somewhere between hunt and peck and a bad rendition of "Chopsticks." I work about eight hours a day, though ten to 15 hour days are not unknown around here. Most nights I can't sleep unless I spend some time writing beforehand. When it's going really well I can hear the voices of characters in my head, the smells and sounds all around them. Sometimes it's not good English but I get it out anyway and then go back later and fix it. Nothing comes out perfect the first time for most writers. You have to go back and rewrite again and again. It's hard work, but the piece gets better every time you go through it again. I think I rewrote Amistad four times and certain parts several more times than that. I'd do it again if I could, but there comes a point when you just have to let it go. The Satori Effect, I've rewritten five times and it's more than 450 pages long. Chances are about 99 percent that any publisher who picks it up will want me to rewrite it again, too.
Anything else with the writing process?
Yes, I listen to music while I write. It's a habit I picked up in college or high school when I was pretending to do homework. I have one of those fivedisc CD players. I load it up and go to work. When I wrote Amistad there were three CDs that didn't ever come out of the machine: Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, Laurie Anderson's Strange Angels and Black Sheets of Rain by Bob Mould. I still can't pick up the book without hearing something from one of those discs. Lyle Lovett's Pontiac was in there a lot, too, as was Chris Isaak's second album, the one with "You Owe Me Some Kind Of Love" and "Blue Hotel" on it. Lately it's been a lot of Springsteen, who I hold above all others, Lyle Lovett, Kelly Willis, Steve Earle, Rosanne Cash, Social Distortion, Bob Mould, X, Chris Isaak, The Clash, Matraca Berg, James McMurtry, Nil Lara, Jewel, Dave Matthews, Strange Angels and Anthrax's The Sound of White Noise. That's all stuff that I love, that I depend on. It's not a mood setting thing as much as I think I've drawn more energy and inspiration from music and good songs than books.
How much does persistence count in the writing business?
Somewhere between 99.9 percent and 100 percent, especially in the business part of writing. There are a very, very few people with the pure talent, luck and connections to just plop something down on paper and have it be a meal ticket from day one. A lot of people think writing is some romantic lifestyle, but it's a lot of hard work. It takes persistence and a thick skin. One of my best friends tells me all the time, "The harder you work, the luckier you get," and I think there's something to that. Eventually you either click with someone or wear them down or whatever and a door opens.
Who do you read?
There are a few authors I depend on. Don DeLillo, Jim Harrison, Jack Kerouac, Elmore Leonard, Stephen Hunter, Emily Dickinson, Margaret Atwood, P.J. O'Rourke, John McPhee, Milan Kundera, Tracy Kidder, and e.e. cummings. I can't get enough of those folks, especially DeLillo. There are some great books I've read over the last couple of years, too. I loved the way Smilla's Sense of Snow was written and Blood Meridian is an incredible piece of work. And there are a few books I just keep coming back to, that are just so brilliant or strike a chord inside me. Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, The Razor's Edge by Summerset Maugham, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, End Zone by DeLillo and Legends of the Fall by Harrison. I've read all of those at least three times. I'm a big magazine junkie, too. I also contend that Bruce Springsteen is an incredible story teller lyrically. He can fit more emotion and imagry into a few lines than any poet or novelist I've ever read.
You dedicated Amistad to your parents. Why?
I didn't grow up in a family with a lot of money but there was always a lot of love. I have a great family and they've always been there for me. In fact, I think they get more of a kick out of this "author" thing than I do. And Amistad certainly legitimized my existence in a way. It wasn't too long ago that they were telling me, "You can still go to law school" My grandmothers love it, too. I wish my grandfathers, especially mother's father, were still alive to see this. I was really close to him. When I was in my last year of college he got cancer. He had worked since he was 14 and retired at 69. Two years later he got cancer and died. He wanted to be a cartoonist when he was a kid. The week he retired he bought a pad and started drawing again. It was a beautiful thing. All that time and work and lifeliving and he still hadn't forgotten his dreams, he didn't let the realities of life suck them out of him. He'd just set them aside and now was ready to take them up again. When he was sick I graduated from college, and I went right from the ceremony to the hospital to show him my diploma. He was very proud. He told me I am going to be working my whole life, so make sure that I do what I want to do. He wasn't bitter, just very matteroffact "Grandpa," I said, "I want to be a writer." He told me, "Well, be a good one." He died in 1985. I miss him. I think of him every day.
Is there a path a new writer should follow? What would you tell someone just starting out?
I only have my own experience to go on. I would say that it's a lot like running, that you can't go out and run a marathon your first day on the road. It's important to just write every day. Don't worry what comes out at your fingertips, just sit down and do it. Make it a thing that is uninterruptable and yours. Know what makes a good story. When you read your work back to yourself be hypercritical. Is this good stuff, something that you would pay to read or share with someone else? Or is it, like, "Hey, I wrote this! It must be good because I wanted to write something!" It has to be the good stuff or you have to do it over. Don't ever get married to a word or a sentence or a paragraph or even a chapter, If it isn't right, if it isn't good, if it doesn't fit, get rid of it. If it's wrong, it's going to screw up everything else around it. And if you're going to show your writing to someone, make sure it's not someone who'll tell you it's great or good simply because they don't want to hurt your feelings. You need good, heartless critics, because it can be a heartless business.