Terese Svoboda
Author of Black Glasses Like Clark Kent
(Published by Graywolf )
Read the review here.
How is Black Glasses Like Clark Kent relevant today?
Today military doctors are being told to under-diagnose PTSD while as many as one in nine soldiers have tried to get help. In my book I recount how, sixty years after my uncle’s service, he killed himself. If his suicide is any indication, vets may need help on and off for the rest of their lives. Recent studies confirm that elderly vets are particularly prone to the nightmares of PTSD.
How was MacArthur involved?
MacArthur was in charge of the reconstruction while my uncle guarded the 8th Army stockade. In order to stabilize the reconstruction of Japan, MacArthur instituted a very strict censorship program, even censoring any mention of censorship. This prevented journalists from reporting directly about events during the occupation, and even some military officials from knowing what was going on under them. This censorship policy made it impossible to determine who was ultimately responsible for the executions at the 8th Army stockade.
How was your uncle like Superman?
He was tall, handsome, with a beautiful physique who claimed to have been the first Westerner to earn a black belt in Japan--and he wore black-rimmed glasses like Clark Kent. Maybe Iraq became his kryptonite. Certainly suicide was the last thing I could have imagined him doing.
Why a memoir instead of a novel?
I began the book as fiction, thinking that no resemblance to anyone living or dead would eliminate any familial strife. However, digging into the history, I kept uncovering alarming facts that contradicted the received history as set out in Embracing Defeat, John Dower’s book that won the Pulitzer. For example, the secrecy that prevented me from finding out what happened to my uncle was also employed to suppress even the number of men killed during the occupation of Japan. From Allied sources, we know that the British suffered losses similar to American forces in Iraq between 2003 and 2005. If we had known the number killed in a so-called “peaceful,” occupation, maybe we would not have gone into Iraq. These facts could be easily dismissed if I’d presented them as fiction. Larger issues were at stake than my family’s approval.
When did you start reading and what did you like to read as a kid?
My grandmother gave me 10 cents for every book I read in the summer and I quickly discovered that poetry books were the thinnest.
When you were growing up did you have books in your home?
My mother and father participated in the Great Books Program, which meant that every month the priest, several doctors and the principal would have some fluffy dessert and argue about Sartre or Hegel. Pretty heady for small town Nebraska!
When did you think about becoming a writer? Was there someone who got you interested in writing?
My mother’s brother was a professor English at the University of Omaha and had published a book of poetry so I knew it could be done. I didn’t think of myself as a writer until after college when I didn’t have the money for art supplies.
How do you write? Do you have a daily routine? What’s good about it? What do you hate about it?
I like to write for four hours every morning. This has not been possible recently as I have been commuting this semester from NYC to NC to teach at Davidson College—and tour eight cities for readings! I love to write—no hate. The key to a good writing practice has changed over the years. It used to be: No Alcohol. Now it’s No Email.
Any particular story to tell concerning the writing of this book?
At a family wedding about ten years ago, my uncle asked me to write the story of his time as an MP in postwar Japan. I said to put it on tape. Years passed, as any busy author hopes they might. Then in 2004, my dad called me to say that my uncle had fallen into a terrible depression and that getting him to talk about his service might help him. Abu Ghraib was tearing up the airwaves just then. It turned out that he had been making tapes and he sent them to me one at a time all summer. I called to say how great they were—and they were, lively, funny and full of detail. Fall arrived and I became very busy—new job, school and so forth. He sent me another tape but I didn’t have time to listen to it nor to call him back. He committed suicide. Listening to his last tape after the funeral, I discovered why the book had to be written.
What’s some good advice that you’ve received concerning writing? What’s some advice that you could offer young writers?
If you have a choice whether to write or not, don’t. That means you’re not driven enough to take the heat. It’s a lot easier to do anything else.
How did you find the publisher for this book?
I entered a contest. I’ve often won contests. However, I often enter over and over again. This time I was lucky and won the first time.
What are you working on at the moment?
A novel based on the U.S. government trucking 20,000 tons of contaminated waste from the Black Hills to a dump next to my family’s farm in Nebraska. They protected the Ogallala Aquifer under the farm—one of the largest bodies of underground water in the world—with a sheet of plastic. The novel is set in South Dakota in 1942, in Nebraska in 1990, and far in the future. It sounds didactic but it’s not turning out that way—there’s a lot of sex involved. I used some of the material in an opera called WET that premiered at Disney Hall’s Red Cat Theater in 2005.
What are you reading?
Many books about water, and about the Clovis people who lived in that part of the world before the Native Americans. Lots of books written by African women.
