Stephen L. Kanne
Stephen L. Kanne
[www.StephenLKanne.com]
For those of you who haven’t read any of my writing, welcome. I’m a retired attorney who had a couple of stories to tell. And, really, story-telling is what writing fiction is all about, isn’t it?
We’ve all had seminal experiences in our lives. For me there have been only two—and they don’t have anything to do with my initiation into manhood at 17 or being accepted by Harvard a year later. No, nothing like that. My two seminal experiences were:
• volunteering for the draft after college and serving as an Army enlisted man/military journalist for two years
• experiencing racism in all its ugliness in my eighth grade year
When I experienced that racist incident way back in grammar school I vowed to write about it. But I soon forgot that vow. Why? Because I was too busy. After Harvard, the Army and law school I started practicing law with a vengeance, making sure I could provide for my family. I did that for over 30 years. And then, to my surprise, in 1994 I discovered that I could retire—which I did. Shortly after doing that I remembered my vow: to write about that racist incident of my youth.
Now please put yourself in my shoes. Here you are some retired stiff who has practiced law for more than three decades and pretty much done nothing else. Could you tell a story? Could you write engagingly? I sure as hell didn’t know if I could. All I knew for sure was that I could draft a contract. But to you, the reader, reading a contract would be about as interesting as watching paint dry. Would my storytelling be about as interesting as watching paint dry? I had to find out.
I thought about all that for about seven years after I retired before I finally decided to take the plunge. So what if I failed. At least I’d taken a shot at it.
But I didn’t want to start off by telling that racism story—knowing that I’d only have one chance to tell it. Telling that racism story was far more important than telling a story about the Army. And so I decided to tell my Army story first. In a way, I wanted to test the waters to see if I could write. In 2001 I began The Furax Connection, a story based on my Army experience.
Now don’t get me wrong: The Furax Connection is NOT AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL. It’s not even close to that. Its protagonist, Billy Rosen, is Superman incarnate. Billy is so off the chart special and extraordinary that, frankly, I’ve never met anyone like him. People love him. Wherever he goes, he cultivates goodwill and makes friends and followers. He’s someone you’ve never met. He’s exaggeration personified. He’s fun to read about, but unreal.
One thing I should add: In telling my Army story I describe for you an aspect of my Army experience that I want you and everyone else to know about--that the Army is chock full of some of the very finest persons I’ve ever met and you’ll ever meet, and most are not officers but rather noncoms.
The upshot: People who read Furax absolutely loved it. In fact, I got a volume of emails asking me when I was going to write its sequel (because it contemplates a sequel). Also, while I was writing Furax I decided to enter the 2006 Stanford Fiction Contest. That led me to writing a 2,500-word short story, My Auntie’s Wedding, which to my complete surprise was one of three winning stories out of a field of about 70-80 entries. Well, I was fortified: I realized I could write engagingly. I was ready to tell the story of that racist incident of my youth.
So now I have a question: how do you tell the story of a racist incident? Sure, it could be a short story. But I didn’t want that. I wanted a book. But there wasn’t enough there for a book. Well, what would you do? I thought about this and finally decided to incorporate other stories into that racist incident. I’d have to tie them together in some fashion so that at book’s end I’d be able to tell the racist story. And that’s exactly what I did.
My book on that racist incident, The Lynching Waltz, is really a series of six episodes, an extended journey of discovery by retired Federal Judge James (“Junior”) Lincoln Washburn, Jr. and his 12-year-old grandson, Jamie. And their stops along the way: visits to various places where racism is rampant—sometimes subtly and other times right out there in the open in all its ugliness.
When after six years I completed Lynching I was pleased (maybe “astounded” is a better word) to receive an invitation to launch it at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. I had never been there and just going to the Press Club would be a major happening in my life.
Following the Press Club launch, I had a wonderful book signing at The Book Stall on Chestnut Court in Winnetka, IL, close to where that racist incident of my youth occurred.
Sales of The Lynching Waltz continue to grow but, more importantly, I got to tell the story of that racist incident of my youth—something very important to me. As I say at the end of My Auntie’s Wedding, “Contentment comes to the maker of a promise kept.” Well, if nothing else, at least I kept that vow I made years before to tell the story of that racist incident—and that has brought me a fair amount of contentment.
[Stanford Magazine has put My Auntie’s Wedding online. There’s a link to it on my website, www.StephenLKanne.com.]
