interview with K.J. Fraser and Queenie D, October 2009
Queenie D: Why did you decide to write about the world immediately following 9-11?
KJF: My novel was really a creative response to the Iraq War and the 2004 election rather than 9-11, although you could say the Iraq War and the 2004 election were consequences of 9-11. The past eight years, I think, will be viewed as a pivotal time in American history, and so these years are ripe fodder for writers. First we had the 2000 controversial presidential election, then the disaster of 9-11 (the worst attack since Pearl Harbor, perhaps even worse as it was basically an attack on civilians), and then the Iraq War, which in my opinion and that of many others was completely unnecessary. This war will have wide-ranging consequences, including the American and Iraqi deaths, the injuries (which will require very expensive care for remainder of the lives of those injured), the huge (charged, not paid for) costs, the corrosive effect of torture, the ripple effect on our allies, and the spawning of more terror.
As I write about these events now, I can feel myself becoming as angry as I felt with these events at the time. I don’t recall any other external events in my lifetime that have stirred up my passion to this extent, and I think that’s what propelled me to write my novel. I had written some other unpublished fiction in response to a divorce, the cancer death of a good friend’s husband, and the search for a home, but it was my cumulative anger over the historical events mentioned above that focused and pushed me to finish a work to publication.
Queenie D: How did you go about figuring out how to write from George W’s perspective? Did you worry about offending him or anyone else? Technical question-did you have to get permission to do this?
KJF: Ever since we first heard about George W. Bush, we were informed of his religious beliefs and his midlife spiritual awakening, which helped him to quit alcohol. When I heard about the possibility of the Iraq War and reviewed the information about it, I decided that it was a very bad idea, so I wrote a letter to President Bush reminding him of his Christian beliefs and that this planned war did not seem like the sort of thing a Christian would do. Unlike many others who didn’t vote for him, I believed (and still believe) that his religious statements were sincere, and that was my initial starting point for writing the story. The Iraq War certainly didn’t go the way that he and his advisors thought it would go, and I thought he might have regrets about it. I imagined after he left office and had time to reflect, his doubts would appear to him in the form of spirits of deceased American soldiers, a la Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I imagined other nightmares and day mares descending upon him. From my psychiatric work I know that change is hard, not straight forward, and none of us really know what goes on in another person’s mind. But we certainly had a lot of information about George W. Bush available to us between 2000-2008, and I used this information for my novel.
I can’t say that I worried about offending George W. Bush. Whenever I started to consider that, I would think of the ways that he offended others, and me. In my opinion, starting an unnecessary war is one of the worst things a president can do. I was a child and teenager during the Vietnam War era, but I remember watching the news, and as I got older I had friends who fought there. As a psychiatrist I worked in a VA hospital in Dallas and saw the effects of that war 30 years after it happened. I couldn’t believe that someone could start something like that again with seemingly little thought to the very obvious consequences. I think I was relatively compassionate with George in my novel. Some readers thought I wasn’t tough enough on him, and one felt I took an American Kwan Yin perspective (having compassion for all sentient beings). Some thought I took a similar position to that of Oliver Stone in his movie “W,” which also had a surprisingly compassionate view of George W. Bush.
I did worry a bit about offending others, both on political and religious angles. However, I needed to write what I needed to write and luckily we all have First Amendment rights in this country. People can choose what to read, and if they read something they don’t like, they can respond to it. And they can write their own books! I have actually thought that there may be someone out there right now upset about the current president and writing a book with Barack as a chief character.
On the last question, I was told that as long as I indicated that this work was fiction and a work of the imagination, I was fine. When I recall what was written and said about George W. Bush over the last nine years, I think my work is relatively mild.
Queenie D: The book is obviously very religious. Would you call it Christian fiction? Why did you include such heavy religious undertones?
KJF: As I mentioned above, the kernel of my story started with my conviction that George W. Bush is a religious man and that his stated beliefs werhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gife/are sincere. Also, America is a very religious country, especially compared to other western democracies, and as this is my “great American novel” it had to include a lot of religion. Finally, religion and spirituality have been a big force in my life since my divorce in 1992, so the topic interests me.
I wouldn’t call this Christian fiction although it might be of interest to Christian readers, perhaps more liberal Christians. Jesus inspired one of my characters, Bill, a young Jewish veteran who exposes some Abu Ghraib torturers and saves his fellow veterans from suicide.
One of my other main characters is Lucy, who comes from a fundamentalist Christian church in Killeen, Texas. I think her character was inspired from all the information about fundamentalism we heard about since the 2000 election. I was outraged by the notion that some people are saved and the rest of us aren’t and, according to Rapture believers, that the saved people will go to heaven and everyone else will be left behind in the hell that Earth becomes. Of course, this is not just a belief of Born Again Christians. Some conservative Jews, Muslims and others believe the same for people of their faith. I read one of the Left Behind books by Le Haye and Jenkins and was appalled to find the message of the Rapture intertwined in compelling and bestselling fiction. I then read a very interesting book, The Rapture Exposed by Lutheran minister Barbara Rossing, who went point by point through her thoughts on how the ideas of the Rapture have nothing to do with Christianity. I heard an interview in which she said that the fiction of the Left Behind series had a powerful effect on readers and she hoped that writers would counteract this storyline with fiction of their own. I have tried to do this with my book.
My book is published by O-Books, which does publish mostly books of a spiritual and religious nature.
Queenie D: Which character is closest to your heart – Lucy, Judith or George? Why?
I would say that both Lucy and Judith are close to my heart, Lucy more for my past and Judith for my future. I was never a fundamentalist Christian but we all start out in life with certain beliefs, and then experiences and people can change our beliefs, sometimes quite profoundly. Lucy is on a journey, both real and spiritual, and I feel as though I’m on one too. Once, as part of a cultural awareness activity in psychiatry residency, we were asked to imagine what type of person we would least like to be and what type of person we would most like to be. I’d grown up in Tennessee, so my least desirable person was an ignorant southern redneck. And one of my most favorable was an African American female entertainer, someone like Judith before the accident. Back then I had imagined I would be more of a singer, dancer and pianist, a cross between Aretha Franklin and a young Tina Turner. Humor and comedy entered the picture in Judith’s character. I have more of a sense of humor as a middle-aged adult, and it seems that comedy is a more pervasive force in our culture now. For example, many people get their news though comedy shows like Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart; the latter is called “the most trusted man in America.”
But I can’t really leave out George W. Bush. In a way you can say that he made me a novelist (as this is my first novel and first book). I couldn’t have written this book without him. Also, like him, I have been inarticulate at times, and like everyone, I have made mistakes. I, like most Americans, want to think the best of our presidents, and in my opinion, the only way he could redeem himself is to acknowledge what he did wrong and then make amends. This is an idea from Alcoholics Anonymous, a spiritual program to help people quit drinking, though its principles can be used to help in other situations where change is required. And change is required of all of us at times, me included.
KJF: Do you plan to continue writing? Can you share anything with us about your current or future writing projects?
Yes, I will continue writing. I want to return to a novel I started in 2001, the one about finding a home. It was inspired by one of my great-grandmothers and goes back and forth between 1901 and 2001, exploring the very different lives of women in those two eras and how a home is found. I’ve also started writing a non-fiction book tentatively titled Creative Responses to Distress and Despair: Inspiration and Practical Suggestions for Your Work. This book is a direct outcome of my novel, as it was a creative response to my own despair and I realized that this concept might be helpful to others. Many of my patients do creative work and I think it’s one way, along with medications and psychotherapy, to help pull people out of depression.
Thank you very much for the interview. If readers would like to find out more about my novel, please check out my website at www.jrmstory.com.
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