Rebecca's Interview with Clyde Lynwood Sawyer, Jr.

Co-Author of
An Uncertain Currency

Lynwood :
Once again, I was happy to receive your e-Zine. There's always one gem of insight in particular that captures my fancy: This week it was the one regarding how children's books provide familiarity in the on-rush of the novelty of growing up. I also enjoyed your interview with Nowick Gray, especially his comments about the travail of dead tree publishing. I've visited his Alternate Culture Magazine several times and like him grew up in Baltimore and learned BASIC on a PDP-11: he didn't mention a model of computer, but I have a feeling it was one of those Control Data workhorses.

Rebecca :
I'm glad you're enjoying our ezine, it's fun putting it together. Tell me a little about your co-author, Frances Witlin.

Lynwood :
Frances was sui generis: life could barely encapsulate her, much less a few sentences. And talk about a bundle of contradictions. She was politically active from an early age, an atheist and a Trotskyite socialist (she could easily spend weeks explaining to you the shades of difference of these various affiliations whether you cared about them or not). Her supposed lack of religious beliefs notwithstanding, I never knew anyone over the age of four who took more delight in Christmas. Every year she designed her own Christmas cards, decorated the apartment from ceiling to baseboard. In the days leading up to the holiday, her living room resembled teatime at the United Nations as she hosted all the waifs and strays she'd collected over the preceding year: mothers from Hong Kong, Moroccan ESL teachers, sisters from India, and always, dancers from multiple continents. In the 1950s, she was an active proponent of Women's Rights and Reproductive Choice, a Freedom Rider, and later corresponded with Bertrand Russell about the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She worked in the story department of Columbia Pictures(East) for many years, and wrote the studio treatments of Dr. Zhivago (from pages smuggled out of the USSR) and Bridge over the River Kwai. When she was fifty, she taught herself Akkadian (a semitic language written in cuneiform). All the while she raised three daughters, two who now live in Australia, and one, Shekinah Mountainwater, is a leading figure in the Goddess Movement. Frances also helped raise her grandson, Frey Faust, an internationally renown modern dancer and teacher, who now lives in France.

Rebecca :
How did you to decide to write a book together?

Lynwood :
We had collaborated on several film scripts, and just finished a romantic thriller about a woman in love with a man about to be assassinated and the farfetched way she tries to save his life. The final script so unnerved our agent at the time that she dropped us, and a few weeks later, dropped out of agenting entirely! We were looking around for another project. I suggested several, including one urged by a dear British friend of mine, Kitty Davey. She wanted me to flesh out a film treatment that Meher Baba had written in the 1930s, a multilayered story that follows three souls through the course of five incarnations. Frances and I toyed with it, but it was such an intricate enterprise, she wanted to work on something simpler. I remembered a mystery novel I had lying around in a drawer in North Carolina. My parents mailed it to me. Frances read it, really liked it, and An Uncertain Currency became our final completed project.

Rebecca :
Which of you spoke the vernacular Italian & how come?

Lynwood :
Frances. She had been learning Spanish and it was a natural carryover. I provided some of the more flamboyant idioms, which I had learned from an eccentric (to put it mildly) American opera singer who had been living in Italy. One of the standard suggestions made by some of the editors who read the novel early on was to lose the Italian (as well as the flashbacks). The first time I met Cynthia and Melanie from Avocet Press, I offered to do just this. But they replied in unison: "No! We like the Italian."

Rebecca :
I thoroughly enjoyed the clashing between cultures - what gave you the idea to partner an aging itinerant Italian Seer with a modern-day Southern cast of characters?

Lynwood :
The whole project began with this unshakable image I had in 1975, of Mario trapped in his threadbare hotel room, the weary embodiment of European elegance and cultivation, speaking to this efficient, almost Teutonic modern policeman. Of course I wondered, "How did Mario get there? What will happen to him?" So I wrote the novel to find out.

Rebecca :
Have you actually seen a textile mill in action? Where?

Lynwood :
Much of the contemporary information was from a former Sunday School teacher, Carl Warren, a textile thread salesman. During my childhood, I spent my summers in my mother's hometown, Kannapolis, North Carolina, and my father's, Danville, Virginia. Cannon Mills is based in Kannapolis, and many of its aspects turn up in Floraville. Both my paternal grandparents worked for the Danville Knitting Mill [a much smaller outfit than Dan River Mills].

My grandmother spent thirty years in the box department, my grandfather was head of maintenance. He could build anything in the world out of wood and once crafted a little cart for my brothers and me. It was painted red, yellow and blue, and for some reason he stenciled "Buffalo Bill Wagon" on the backrest. Whenever we came down to the mill, he would ride us up and down in the freight elevators and pull us through the looms to introduce us to the workers. Now, when I think what would happen if management or safety inspectors saw a child wandering through the shop floor, I shudder!

Also, in the late 1970s my first wife, Lisa Goldring, worked for Collins & Aikman and J.P. Stevens. One of her friends, Marcia Lyben got her computer science degree, and the only job she could find was running the new computer department of a family-owned textile mill in eastern North Carolina (my, how times have changed!). She would give tours and save for me anecdotes of her experiences with the millworkers, some of whom were championship doffers. [Doffing contests, alas, were one subtheme we were unable to work in]. Also, early in my misspent youth, to gain the life experience I thought writers should have, I worked in labor pools, sweeping up mills and unloading boxcars on loading docks in Davidson, North Carolina. In retrospect, I think I would learn Java or C++ instead!

Rebecca :
Well, you had a bushel of such reasonable red herrings that right up to the expose I'd guessed whodunit only to find out it was someone else entirely! How do writers manage to keep the secret & build the suspense?

Lynwood :
Interesting question. I honestly don't know! I hope I figure it out in time to write a sequel. Much embellishment comes from being raised in a storytelling culture, where getting to your destination isn't nearly as important as having an engaging trip with lots of colorful digressions. Also, though a bit of a cliché, it's true that your characters will tell you the story if you're willing to listen to them. [We won't go into the more troubling aspects of paying attention to the voices in your head!]

Rebecca :
I like the untidy relationships you portray, so much like life. I especially relished your final chapter - how tempted were you to neaten it all up?

Lynwood :
Fortunately or unfortunately, our characters have minds of their own. They are going to do whatever they like and authors be damned. I somewhat wished Claudia had, oops! I was about to give away too much. Anyway, Claudia didn't.

Rebecca :
How long did it take you both to complete An Uncertain Currency?

Lynwood :
The short answer(s): 25 years or 4 years or 10 years. The long answer: The novel was conceived in 1975 and written and re-written into a presentable shape by 1977. In 1980, a British publisher wanted to make certain changes and publish it. I was very foolish and insecure (which manifested itself as arrogance), and said, "I don't make changes! The manuscript stands as it was written!" The British publisher said in essence, "We don't have any problem with that. We'll publish something else."

A decade later, Frances and I commenced the rewrite. We worked between 4-6 hours a day, 4-6 days a week from 1990 until 1994. Once when she broke her hip, I would bring my laptop up to Beth Israel Hospital, and we would work on it in her room. She unfortunately passed away in September 1996 at the age of 79, the same day that Hurricane Fran made landfall in North Carolina and did a billion dollars worth of damage--Frances would feel honored.

In 1995 I commissioned Michael Simpson from Charlotte, North Carolina to edit the manuscript for length, and in 1996 began submitting the trimmed version to publishers and agents. In late 1997, Avocet Press posted a brief request for manuscripts in the Mystery Writers of America newsletter. The sentence that caught my eye was their wish for mysteries with "unusual protagonists." I submitted the manuscript, and in 1998 Avocet notified me that they liked it, but that it would be a while before they could proceed (and that it was still too long, even in its slimmed down version!). The book finally came out in January 2000.

Rebecca :
When Mario finally gets to perform at the high School Auditorium I was on the edge of my seat - had you ever been to one of those events?

Lynwood :
Ahh, ahh. There are some things that writers, like psychics, must never divulge!

Rebecca :
An Uncertain Currency is filled with a fine balance of joy & sorrow, suspicion & humor - most everybody I met I could have known - tell me about keeping that balance & the work it took to keep your book from being a slog. Don't get me wrong, I wanted it to go on for a whole lot longer!

Lynwood :
That's very kind. Thank you. Actually, ex post facto, you do get your wish that the book go on a bit longer; another 300 pages longer to be exact! Perhaps some day they'll release the authors' cut! Anyway, 75 publishers and 50 agents seemed to think that it was a slog!

Thomas Wolfe (the 1930s one) has always been my literary hero (next to Farid Al-Din Attar, Rumi and Hafiz), and fortunately, he does seem to be enjoying a bit of a resurgence. Luckily, my roommate, Norman Rosten, the late Poet Laureate of Brooklyn, served as referee and sounding board, because Frances and I spent four years arguing over every word (including "an" and "the"). So by the time we got a passage we finally agreed on, the prose, one hopes, was fairly sleek. We were also doubly blessed by a remarkable set of editors, Michael Simpson and the editorial panel at Avocet Press, whose cuts were as seamless as the stones on an Inca parapet. Again, if you're lucky, the characters will tell you the story and balance themselves out.

Rebecca :
Did you, from the start, envision the insights of la Lucia to be so revealing & funny? It is a technique worthy of Shakespeare!

Lynwood :
The theme of the story from the beginning has been: What do you do if you are gifted with an incredible muse, and your muse deserts you? Like all muses, la Lucia is capricious, willful, jealous, and, of course, in consummation, beyond compare. Since she is a character in her own right, her insights arise from her own unique idiosyncrasies. Though la Lucia has often spurned Mario or turned her back on him, she's never betrayed him. Yet.

Rebecca :
Could there be another Mario Castigliani adventure? Perhaps now on a dig? Do you have any projects in the works?

Lynwood :
Interesting that you mention a sequel. Frances and I had been discussing one, set in Australia. Ever since Picnic At Hanging Rock, I've loved Australian books and films and have wanted to visit there--one time I even managed a rock-and-roll production company called Wombat Productions. And I had contemplated completing a trilogy in Italy. The initial image is gradually formulating for this one. Let's see where it leads us. In terms of current projects, a romantic epic screenplay, A Passion For Peace (A Story of Longing) has been optioned by Carascope Productions, and they're looking for A-list attachments. My writing partner, Frank Hickey, and I are in rewrites for another film in pre-production - ONLINE SPY: www.spythemovie.com.

Alas, at this point I don't have any signings or appearances. I will let you know when I do.

Rebecca, since I understand I get to make closing remarks, let me say that this turned out to be far more fun than I anticipated! I had been dragging my feet, but then when I sat down to reply, the answers flowed out in one sitting. One more thought that came to me: We (especially we Americans) probably should take ourselves less seriously and enjoy ourselves more. I think your E-zine is making great strides in that direction. What especially strikes me is how readily apparent it is that you really enjoy putting out each issue. Every page seems to be permeated by a sense of fun. Long may it continue, all the best.

Rebecca :
My Dear Lynwood, both your An Uncertain Currency & Interview have filled my life with rare humor, insight & authenticity. I am so glad you made contact & opened up a whole new world to me. Your weekly comments in response to our eZine encourage & refresh our efforts. Thank you.

Do check out my review of An Uncertain Currency.

Rebecca
(Published October 22, 2000)