Interview with John Donohue (June 2003)
Author of Sensei (2003)
June 17, 2003
John Donohue, the author of Sensei, the new thriller from St. Martin's Press, writes about what he knows. He holds black belts in both karatedo and kendo and over the span of 25 years has studied various Asian disciplines, such karate, kendo, judo, aikido, iaido, and taiji. A nationally recognized authority on the topic and an author with both fiction and non-fiction works to his credit, he is an Associate Editor of the respected Journal of Asian Martial Arts, and has been a featured speaker at national and international conventions, as well as on television and radio.
Q. You've written several non-fiction books relating to the martial arts and Japanese culture. What made you decide to write a thriller?
A. I started with the basic urge to reach a wider audience and tell them about something that I find utterly fascinating--the unusual world of the martial arts.
Many people know something about theses arts, but it's mostly from movies and cartoons. I've specialized in the more academic study of martial arts. As part of my academic research, I had the luxury of reading an awful lot of works on the martial arts. And they were of mixed quality--some quite good, but some quite terrible. And I've also had the benefit of actually training in these arts. This gave me the conviction that maybe I had something unique to contribute to the literature, which is a bit spotty. So I decided to try to improve the situation by writing about my understanding and interpretation of the martial arts.
Much of my non-fiction writing has been devoted to the attempt to try to provide what I think are clear and accurate facts and ideas regarding the martial arts for readers. Because it's obvious that Westerners find the subject absolutely fascinating. But an unfortunate fact of scholarly writing is that you're speaking to a relatively small audience. Not many people out there are reading anthropology and even fewer are reading about the anthropology of the martial arts. I'm fairly well known in a very small circle of people who are concerned with the scholarship surrounding martial arts, but it's a VERY small circle. So fiction seemed a good way to try to reach more people and share some of what I've learned about this fascinating topic.
Plus, I've been an avid reader of mysteries and adventure novels since I was a kid. The appreciation of fiction has been a big part of my life. And, of course, as someone who wrote fairly well, I harbored this ambition to take a crack at writing fiction. It's sort of the James Fennimore Cooper syndrome (although I hope the critics are kinder).
It all came together when I was writing a chapter for one of my previous works, Warrior Dreams: The Martial Arts and the American Imagination. The book examines the idea that Westerners find the martial arts compelling because they seem to hint at the ability to develop exotic and magical powers, and also because the skills developed seem to augment traits of individualism, moral action, and independence that we value. And when I examined the patterns of stories concerning private eyes and cops and cowboys and martial artists, what struck me was how very similar they all were (after all, Kurosawa's Seven Samurai was easily translated into the Magnificent Seven and worked just as well as a Western as it did as an Eastern). They're stories of outsiders, loners, who are plunged into dangerous situations. They have to struggle against some evil force (usually embodied by a villain), take a moral stand, do so at great personal risk, and fight to protect others.
Once I had analyzed this, I realized I had a basic mythic pattern (anthropologists are big for the analysis of myths) that could be used to tell a story and engage peoples' imaginations. I was sure that Sensei would find an audience of people interested in the martial arts, but I suspected that it would resonate with other readers as well.
And so, I wrote the book.
Q. How did you first get started in the martial arts?
A. I was always a bookish kid and not particularly athletic. So you tend to gravitate to the world of ideas. Yet at the same time, you wish you could be like other kids--better at throwing and running, etc. It's related to the usual issues of status and identity and power that all young people face. When I was a teenager, this was the heyday of Bruce Lee and the TV show Kung-Fu. And the presentation of these incredible physical skills that were simultaneously intertwined with sophisticated philosophies proved immensely attractive to me. It ignited an interest in things Asian, so when I entered college I gravitated toward studying the history and philosophy of the Far East. And I began studying karate. That led to an ongoing love affair with the martial arts that has lasted ever since. Since 1974, I've studied karate and judo, aikido, iaido, kendo, and taiji. I've got black belt ranks in karate and kendo. I did my doctoral dissertation in anthropology and used the Japanese martial arts as its topic.
Q. Now that Jackie Chan is getting up there in age, could you take him?
A. Absolutely--as long as I were armed with a sledgehammer and he was tied to a chair.
Seriously, having trained in these arts for a long time makes you realize just how far you still have to go in terms of skill development.
One thing doing the martial arts teaches you is a sense of humility--you try to appreciate the skills in others while focusing mostly on what you have to do to better yourself. Prominent athletes like Jackie Chan and others are gifted with a whole range of skills I'll never have. I try to use my training to focus on personal growth and not to compare myself with others. Besides, I'm not getting any younger either. (My 16 year old son just got his black belt in kendo and trains with me--he routinely knocks me all over the place).
Q. Your "day job" is as a professor of anthropology and college administrator. What has the reaction of your academic colleagues been to you publishing a successful mystery novel?
A. When you tell people your new book is out, they're not really impressed--we're all writing these densely-reasoned tomes that nobody reads--but when they find out it's a novel, their eyes get a little wide. They find it interesting that I write fiction--the creative impulse is not something people associate with college administrators. I've had the nice experience of a number of my colleagues reading Sensei and actually liking it. And some of them even appreciate the sarcastic eye I cast on academia.
Q. Your character, Connor Burke, has a background similar to your own. How much of you is there in him.
A. Well, they say write about what you know. So I've used some significant chunks of personal material to build Connor. One of the things I wanted to do was write a thriller where things are obviously out of the ordinary, but you could have a main character who was a bit more believable--not a jet-setting adventurer with no apparent means of supporting himself, no funny sidekick or special car, no lycra spandex costume.
So I grounded Connor in some of the things that have been important in my life--my family and academia and growing up on suburban Long Island. And the martial arts.
But there are differences. In these sorts of stories, the main character is an outsider, someone who's not very well connected with people. So Connor is an adjunct teacher (not a full-time employee) and he's got an extended family, but he's the odd man out. And he's studying under this tremendously demanding and distant teacher. Connor Burke is alone in many ways.
I'm not like that--I've got a loving family that keeps me connected to things. I met my wife when I was 17 and we'll be married 24 years this July. I can't imagine life without her or my children.
I'm an academic with an odd, obscure specialty that is not terribly mainstream. And I've worked as an adjunct teacher much like Connor. But I adapted (martial arts can teach you to be flexible) and managed to build a relatively successful career as an academic administrator. Which was good, because it provided me with the freedom and confidence to write fiction. Of course, a full-time job also provides all the more mundane benefits and distractions that Connor lacks, so I'm not training relentlessly like he is.
I've had any number of first-class martial arts teachers (some quite scary), but nothing like Yamashita.
And there's the martial skill issue...Connor Burke is like me, but on steroids. We share a similar appreciation of the martial arts and what training can mean to people on a personal level. We understand the phenomenon in similar ways. But he's someone with a lot more skill. And more time to spend on training.
Of course, we're both a little bit sarcastic and look at things with an outsider's perspective. For me, that's part of being an anthropologist and the basic wise-guy disposition I've got. Connor has it as well--part and parcel of growing up in the Irish-American tradition, where you're always striving for acceptance and just missing the boat, as well as being something created by life choices. For both of us, it just comes with the territory.
Q. Do you read reviews of your books?
A. Oh, sure. It's always interesting to see what other people think. Especially when you know all the permutations the plot has taken during rewrites and someone says "if only you had done this?" and you remember editing that sort of thing out for various reasons.
Besides, the books don't develop in isolation. My wife reads and critiques the chapters as they're developed. I fight her on things, but she's usually right. Same thing with my editor. So by the time the book gets printed and reviews start coming, you've already experienced some critical (though loving) readings.
For a first-time author, reviews are an important way to get the word out about the book. So I appreciate that people take the time to write about my work and, as a result, I take what they say seriously. And I've been fortunate so far in that most people have said nice things about the book?
Q. What advice would you give aspiring writers?
A. Read as much as you can - you get to see how other writers have solved the problem of setting ideas down on paper.
Write even when you don't feel like it - some days I like to write and some days I don't, but I try not to let mood dictate my activities. I comfort myself with the idea that it doesn't have to be Shakespeare the first time around, but that sometimes just the act of forcing myself to set words down can get me going and engross me in the process of writing. And the results are sometimes surprising.
Write because you love it - chances are not many of us are getting rich this way
Don't give up your day job - if nothing else, the experience of other people provides you with a good source of material. And a steady paycheck helps.
Try as hard as you can to find a good agent and a good editor - they've been tremendous assets to me. In fact, I found the process of getting an agent more daunting that the act of writing the book. But it was well worth the effort.
Q. What are your thoughts about Hollywood adapting your work?
A. Equal parts excitement and terror.
Excitement in that it would seem to suggest that what I've written has the potential to engage a mass audience in a different media. And that someone in a visual medium got excited enough about the pictures I was drawing with words to think about translating it into a movie. It suggests that I was at least a little bit successful as a writer because I got someone to SEE what was in my head.
There's also a bit of terror involved with the prospect of a Hollywood adaptation. You labor so long to do something special and get your ideas down on paper and then, when you sign the rights over, you know they can pretty much do what they want with the story. But I'm hopeful. The producer who's optioned it has a very good reputation and has made some high quality films. Besides, maybe he'll need a good technical advisor on the set to make sure they get things right?.
But finally, the potential of someone making a movie out of Sensei has been really fun because my wife and I have endless discussions about who we would cast in various roles. Maybe we should have a contest on the website: Who would you cast as Connor? As Micky? And see what big-name stars win.
Q. What excites or distresses you about the mystery genre today?
A. The excitement about the genre has been the development of different types of mysteries with different characters - samurai mysteries by Dale Furutani, Civil War mysteries by Owen Parry, for instance--that transcend the traditional gumshoe stuff (but I love Robert B. Parker and James Lee Burke) and work on a number of levels in terms of characters and unique settings.
In terms of distress, it seems to me that there are two things to worry about: the fact that many finely-wrought mysteries are more than just genre pieces but you worry they get pigeon-holed as "just" mysteries; and the second thing is that, having been recently initiated into the Darwinist world of fiction publishing, you have the suspicion that much good writing and many fine authors will never really get their due because of the simple economics of publishing and marketing.
Q. What's the last book you read?
A. James Bradley's Flags of Our Fathers.
Q. What's next for you?
A. Well, more Burke books, certainly. I'm putting the finishing touches on the second in the series (tentatively titled Deshi - there's an excerpt on my webpage), have outlined the third, and have plans for at least four more.
I'm also putting together an edited volume on the martial arts for the Overlook Press, called the Overlook Martial Arts Reader, second edition. It'll have selections from studies on martial arts philosophy and history, classic texts from martial arts masters and contemporary practitioners, as well as selected fiction.
Posted by David J. Montgomery in Interviews | Permalink
