Getting Into Trouble as a Writer
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. ~ Winston Churchill
Throughout history, writers have been notorious for getting themselves into trouble for their ideas. Socrates was forced to kill himself by drinking poison for the crime of "impiety." My namesake, Giordano Bruno, was burned at the stake for having the temerity to state, among other things, that the earth revolved around the sun. The British Crown convicted the great English-American firebrand, Tom Paine, of "seditious libel" in absentia for advocating in popular pamphlets a progressive tax and social welfare programs to alleviate poverty. Hannah Arendt, author of "The Banality of Evil," managed to escape Nazi Germany by the skin of her teeth and resettle in the United States. The Soviet Union expelled Alexander Solzhenitsyn from the country in 1974 for exposing the vast gulag forced labor camp system. Today, PEN International monitors the cases of some 900 writers who suffer persecution in countries across the globe.
I dealt with dissident writers in various countries in the course of my more than two decades as a Foreign Service officer. I helped resettle several dissident Cuban writers in the U.S. My favorite Vietnamese dissident was the writer Duong Thu Huong. At our first get-together over lunch in Hanoi, I asked this spirited woman how she planned to deal with communist officials who were harassing her. With a twinkle in her eye, she said without hesitating, "I spit in their face!"
Artyom Borovik was a groundbreaking Russian investigative journalist who was critical of Vladimir Putin. I'd occasionally meet him to discuss his reporting on Moscow's role in Afghanistan. His "Top Secret" TV program exposed the corruption of Russia's political and economic elite, earning him many enemies. Borovik quoted Putin in an article in 2000 as saying, “There are three ways to influence people: blackmail, vodka, and the threat to kill.” Days later, he died in a still-unsolved Moscow plane accident - one of what was to be many Putin critics who have turned up dead. He was 39.
I had the privilege of being acquainted with a number of very courageous writers over the years who stood up to tyranny and authoritarianism and paid a heavy price in terms of denied employment, harassment, imprisonment and loss of their life. Such people deserve our unmitigated admiration and respect, not to mention support.
And then there are those of us who merely get into mischief.
Whether as a diplomat or as a writer, I don't feel fully successful in my work unless denounced by oppressive regimes and their propaganda organs. The Cuban publication, El Heraldo Cubano, denounced me as a "yankee ex-intelligence officer" who helped "carry out subversive actions against the Cuban government" after my novel, Havana Queen, was published three years ago. In it, I spun a tale centering on the cataclysmic collapse of the Castro regime. "Mr. Bruno decided to fictionalize his experiences in a kind of thriller, under the suggestive title of Havana Queen," El Heraldo continued, "where he distorts the internal situation and invents others, with views that were approved by the Department of State, revealing the espionage work of American intelligence.”
Havana Queen clearly gave Cuban officialdom agita. After all, digital copies were circulating throughout the island. Several Cubans even emailed me asking if I could send them hard copies (I politely declined). Meanwhile, I got into an escalating pissing match with Castro's propaganda machine, egging them on, daring them to denounce me in the communist party rag, Granma.
"Unintentionally, James Bruno confirmed in Havana Queen that which Cuba has denounced repeatedly, that the United States uses its diplomatic mission in Havana as a headquarters for human and technological spying, while it selects, trains and finances counterrevolutionary elements to carry out subversive acts against the Cuban government," ranted a known Cuban intelligence officer in his quasi-official blog. Ominously, he added, "If someday Bruno goes missing, remember Martí: 'If I go missing, look for me... in Cuba.'" I covered up my whereabouts in social media after that.
Well, what can I say? First, thanks to El Heraldo Cubano for adding to my authorial notoriety. We writers crave attention and, the more controversial, the better. History has shown that official condemnations have done wonders for authors' book sales. Boris Pasternak comes to mind. While by no means in his league, I can use all the denunciations I can get.
And then there was the time three years ago when I was called out of the blue by a federal law enforcement officer asking if I could help in tracking down a murderer who had been on the lam for almost four decades. William Bradford Bishop, Jr. was a Foreign Service officer who in 1976 bludgeoned to death his mother, wife and three young sons and then made a clean getaway. The FBI placed Bishop on their Ten Most Wanted list two years ago. Asked how I could help, the Bishop task force requested that I blog about Bishop. I had previously published a bestselling thriller, CHASM, whose protagonist was modeled on Bishop. They wanted me to reach out to him and persuade him to turn himself in. I not only said yes, but I also traveled to Europe, where he is thought to have hidden himself, to try and find him. I visited seven countries looking for Bishop. You can read my many accounts of this fruitless search in this blog.
My family deemed me even more nuts than they'd always assumed. In response to my daughter's fear Bishop would attack me, I said, "Why, I can take on any 80-year old any day of the week."
Needless to say, Bishop is still out there somewhere. My brazen efforts have come to nought. But what if we'd met up...?
I walk a thin line at times vis-à-vis Uncle Sam on what I can and cannot say in my writings. You see, as a result of a Faustian pact I made with the federal government in return for a top secret security clearance back when I was young and naive, I gave away my soul for eternity. I must submit for official censorship virtually all that I write and wish to publish till my dying day. You can see the blacked-out redactions in my blog posts as well as The Foreign Circus for your entertainment pleasure. Uncle Sam has a unique way of messing up a recalcitrant writer's life if s/he doesn't follow these rules. Read of my Kafkaesque adventures with the green-eyeshaders in Why I am Censored.
Finally, there are the negative book reviews all serious writers inevitably incur. They constitute a sort of ego-deflating authorial notoriety. Here are some of my favorites:
On Permanent Interests --
“Probably the most ponderous 100 pages of text I've read in a long time.”
“Hate to burst everyone's bubble but unless you're looking for absolutely brainless entertainment, you might want to move on.”
On Tribe --
“While there are moments of good writing and wry observation, this book is a dud and so is the author.”
On Havana Queen --
“The biggest problem is the characters, none of whom have vaguely plausible motivations for anything they do, and much of what they do is idiotic.”
On The Foreign Circus --
“To James Bruno, everyone who doesn't see things his way is an idiot. He's a classic Washington has-been who sees everyone else as a moron. These narcissistic tendencies go very well with his evil twin's misogyny.”
James Bruno is a "Male, Pale, and Yale misogynistic, self-centered, and angry FS officer."
(I confess to the first two failings; but substitute "Columbia" for "Yale" on that last one, even though it doesn't rhyme. Misogynistic, I am not, but I could perhaps be a tad self-centered as well as angry on occasion.)
We authors can also be thin skinned. Sulphuric reviews deflate our egos and get our imaginations all worked up in very unconstructive ways. I mean none of these individuals knows me. How would they know I am a "has-been" much less an angry, self-centered, male, pale and Yale misogynist? A thug might act on such verbal attacks with physical force. Writers, on the other hand, marshal their arsenal of mental weapons and deploy them on paper and pixels.
So, Sir Winston, yes, I have made my share of enemies and am proud of it. I feel we have something in common.