Confessions are always so fascinating—especially if the narrator has (like Sara) a certain self-awareness and an ability to see, retrospectively, the errors that she made which, in turn, helped form the trajectory of her life. One of my favorite philosophical aphorisms comes from Kierkegaard : “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” That statement underscores all literary confessions—or, at least, the ones I write.
The female characters bond as they trudge through one maddening and disappointing experience after another, and this bonding comes from telling each other stories of their lives. In what ways, would you say, is this particular style of bonding uniquely feminine? How are you able to write from the feminine perspective so well?
I’m always asked that question! Perhaps the answer is that I never think “as a woman”—rather as my narrator. And I see the world completely from her perspective. Perhaps a good novelist is like a good actor—someone who can slip into a role (without having to dress up!) and create an entirely convincing worldview that is so divorced from his own sensibility. Then again, all my narrators have many aspects of their creator in their complex personalities.
Sara explains: “Once you grasp the flawed nature of everything—you can move forward without disappointment.” Is this a philosophy you subscribe to? That “there is a thing called tragedy, and it shadows us all”?
Tragedy is one of the larger prices we pay for being alive. No one ever sidesteps tragedy. It is always there, shadowing us. We don’t like admitting this, but it is a key component of human existence: the fact that life has the potential for things both wondrous and horrific.
The destructive power of the House Un-American Activities Committee comes into play during the post-WWII segments in this novel. The HUAC destroys lives, displaces people, and scatters artists across the globe. What was your inspiration for writing about one of the more shameful abuses of power this country has seen?
McCarthyism is a dirty stain on the American body politic—and one which we sidestep at our peril, as within its vindictive machinations are all the darker aspects of our collective psyche: our willingness to point fingers, to be in thrall to the messianic ravings of an evil opportunist, to swallow all the usual tired patriotic bromides, to distrust intellectualism, to embrace conspiracy theories. Arthur Miller got it right in The Crucible when he saw the origins of these witch-hunt tendencies dating back to our theocratic, puritanical roots—and that there has always been an ongoing struggle between progressive thought and righteous doctrine throughout our history.
Your novels reflect a very distinct and insightful look into American life. How has your experience living outside of the country informed your writing about the experience of living within the country?
Intriguingly American history was my area of specialty at college—and I briefly toyed with the idea of getting a doctorate in history. But the need to be out in the larger world sent me in a different direction. Given that, all my novels are deeply American—even if my Americanness has been shaded by a childhood in Manhattan (which the rest of the country doesn’t totally consider American!), and by thirty years in such disparate places as Dublin, London, Paris, and Berlin. But all my years abroad (and now I live part of the year in Maine) have intriguingly deepened my sense of what it is to be an American—and has given me an intriguing perspective of being the insider/outsider.
Legacy is an important theme in The Pursuit of Happiness. The legacy of one’s parents’ failures, the legacy of a heart broken by betrayal, the legacy of the death of a loved one. Kate Malone, at the end of the novel, has an almost prophetic vision of her son growing up. Kate wants to explain it all to her son, but knows she can’t, but will try. “Trying is the way we get through the day.” How close is Kate’s philosophy to your own? What legacy, as a father, do you want to leave to your children?
Besides curiosity—which I think an essential component of an interesting life—I would hope to pass on the idea that (as I tell my two children frequently) life is so much about persevering. You can get easily overwhelmed or defeated by life’s shortcomings or the way others let us down . . . and, more tellingly, the way we lets ourselves down. If there is an abiding theme in The Pursuit of Happiness it is the idea that you come into the world already shaped by other people’s past histories. How you then grapple with everything life throws in your path—and how your own sense of ethics dictates so much about your dealings with life’s larger questions—determines so much. “Character is destiny” is a statement (from the German poet Novalis) that so underlines my world view—both as a writer and simply a sentient person, trying to make the best of his time here.
ATRIA PAPERBACK
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2001 by Douglas Kennedy
Originally published in Great Britain in 2001 by Hutchinson
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First Atria Paperback edition October 2010
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kennedy, Douglas, date.
The pursuit of happiness : a novel / by Douglas Kennedy. —1st Atria paperback ed.
p. cm.
1. Journalists—Fiction. 2. Manhattan (New York, N.Y.)—History—20th century—Fiction. 3. Anti-communist movements—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 4. United States—Politics and government—1945–1953—Fiction. 5. United States—Social life and customs—1945–1970—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6061.E5956P87 2010
823’.914—dc22 2010030965
ISBN 978-1-4391-9912-1
ISBN 978-1-4391-9914-5 (eBook)
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Acknowledgments
Readers Club Guide
another one for Max and Amelia
In my enormous city it is—night,
as from my sleeping house I go—out,
and people think perhaps I’m a daughter or a wife
but in my mind is one thought only: night.
—ELAINE FEINSTEIN, Insomnia
ONE
ABOUT AN HOUR after I met Tony Hobbs, he saved my life. I know that sounds just a little melodramatic, but it’s the truth. Or, at least, as true as anything a journalist will tell you.
I was in Somalia—a country I had never visited until I got a call in Cairo and suddenly found myself dispatched there. It was a Friday afternoon—the Muslim Holy Day. Like most foreign correspondents in the Egyptian capital, I was using the official day of rest to do just that. I was sunning myself beside the pool of the Gezira Club—the former haunt of British officers during the reign of King Farouk, but now the domain of the Cairene beau monde and assorted foreigners who’d been posted to the Egyptian capital. Even though the sun is a co
nstant commodity in Egypt, it is something that most correspondents based there rarely get to see. Especially if, like me, they are bargain basement one-person operations, covering the entire Middle East and all of eastern Africa. Which is why I got that call on that Friday afternoon.
“Is this Sally Goodchild?” asked an American voice I hadn’t heard before.
“That’s right,” I said, sitting upright and holding the cell phone tightly to my ear in an attempt to block out a quartet of babbling Egyptian matrons sitting beside me. “Who’s this?”
“Dick Leonard from the paper.”
I stood up, grabbing a pad and a pen from my bag. Then I walked to a quiet corner of the veranda. “The paper” was my employer. Also known as the Boston Post. And if they were calling me on my cell phone, something was definitely up.
“I’m new on the foreign desk,” Leonard said, “and deputizing today for Charlie Geiken. I’m sure you’ve heard about the flood in Somalia?”
Rule one of journalism: never admit you’ve been even five minutes out of contact with the world at large. So all I said was, “How many dead?”
“No definitive body count so far, according to CNN. And from all reports, it’s making the ’97 deluge look like a drizzle.”
“Where exactly in Somalia?”
“The Juba River Valley. At least four villages have been submerged. The editor wants somebody there. Can you leave straightaway?”
So that’s how I found myself on a flight to Mogadishu, just four hours after receiving the call from Boston. Getting there meant dealing with the eccentricities of Ethiopian Airlines, and changing planes in Addis Ababa, before landing in Mogadishu just after midnight. I stepped out into the humid African night, and tried to find a cab into town. Eventually, a taxi showed up, but the driver drove like a kamikaze pilot, and also took a back road into the city center—a road that was unpaved and also largely deserted. When I asked him why he had chosen to take us off the beaten track, he just laughed. So I pulled out my cell phone and dialed some numbers, and told the desk clerk at the Central Hotel in Mogadishu that he should call the police immediately and inform them that I was being kidnapped by a taxi driver, car license number . . . (and, yes, I did note the cab’s license plate before getting into it). Immediately the driver turned all apologetic, veering back to the main road, imploring me not to get him into trouble, and saying, “Really, it was just a shortcut.”
“In the middle of the night, when there’s no traffic? You really expect me to believe that?”
“Will the police be waiting for me at the hotel?”
“If you get me there, I’ll call them off.”
He veered back to the main road, and I made it intact to the Central Hotel in Mogadishu—the cab driver still apologizing as I left his car. After four hours’ sleep, I managed to make contact with the International Red Cross in Somalia, and talked my way onto one of their helicopters that was heading to the flood zone.
It was just after nine in the morning when the chopper took off from a military airfield outside the city. There were no seats inside. I sat with three other Red Cross staffers on its cold steel floor. The helicopter was elderly and deafening. As it left the ground, it lurched dangerously to the starboard side—and we were all thrown against the thick webbed belts, bolted to the cabin walls, into which we had fastened ourselves before takeoff. Once the pilot regained control and we evened out, the guy seated on the floor opposite me smiled broadly and said, “Well, that was a good start.”
Though it was difficult to hear anything over the din of the rotor blades, I did discern that the fellow had an English accent. Then I looked at him more closely and figured that this was no aid worker. It wasn’t just the sangfroid when it looked like we might just crash. It wasn’t just his blue denim shirt, his blue denim jeans, and his stylish horn-rimmed sunglasses. Nor was it his tanned face—which, coupled with his still-blond hair, lent him a certain weatherbeaten appeal if you liked that perpetually insomniac look. No—what really convinced me that he wasn’t Red Cross was the jaded, slightly flirtatious smile he gave me after our near-death experience. At that moment, I knew that he was a journalist.
Just as I saw that he was looking me over, appraising me, and also probably working out that I too wasn’t relief worker material. Of course, I was wondering how I was being perceived. I have one of those Emily Dickinson–style New England faces—angular, a little gaunt, with a permanently fair complexion that resists extended contact with the sun. A man who once wanted to marry me—and turn me into exactly the sort of soccer mom I was determined never to become—told me I was “beautiful in an interesting sort of way.” After I stopped laughing, this struck me as something out of the “plucky” school of backhanded compliments. He also told me that he admired the way I looked after myself. At least he didn’t say I was “wearing well.” Still, it is true that my “interesting” face hasn’t much in the way of wrinkles or age lines, and my light brown hair (cut sensibly short) isn’t yet streaked with gray. So though I may be crowding middle age, I can pass myself off as just over the thirty-year-old frontier.
All these banal thoughts were abruptly interrupted when the helicopter suddenly rolled to the left as the pilot went full throttle and we shot off at speed to a higher altitude. Accompanying this abrupt, convulsive ascent—the G-force of which threw us all against our webbed straps—was the distinctive sound of anti-aircraft fire. Immediately, the Brit was digging into his backpack, pulling out a pair of field glasses. Despite the protestations of one of the Red Cross workers, he unbuckled his straps and maneuvered himself around to peer out one of the porthole windows.
“Looks like someone’s trying to kill us,” he shouted over the din of the engine. But his voice was calm, if not redolent of amusement.
“Who’s ‘someone’?” I shouted back.
“Usual militia bastards,” he said, his eyes still fastened to the field glasses. “The same charmers who caused such havoc during the last flood.”
“But why are they shooting at a Red Cross chopper?” I asked.
“Because they can,” he said. “They shoot at anything foreign and moving. It’s sport to them.”
He turned to the trio of Red Cross medicos strapped in next to me.
“I presume your chap in the cockpit knows what he’s doing,” he asked. None of them answered him—because they were all white with shock. That’s when he flashed me a deeply mischievous smile, making me think: the guy’s actually enjoying all this.
I smiled back. That was a point of pride with me—to never show fear under fire. I knew from experience that, in such situations, all you could do was take a very deep breath, remain focused, and hope you got through it. And so I picked a spot on the floor of the cabin and stared at it, all the while silently telling myself: It will be fine. It will be just . . .
And then the chopper did another roll and the Brit was tossed away from the window, but managed to latch on to his nearby straps and avoid being hurled across the cabin.
“You okay?” I asked.
Another of his smiles. “I am now,” he said.
A further three stomach-churning rolls to the right, followed by one more rapid acceleration, and we seemed to leave the danger zone. Ten nervous minutes followed, then we banked low. I craned my neck, looked out the window, and sucked in my breath. There before me was a submerged landscape—Noah’s flood. The water had consumed everything. Houses and livestock floated by. Then I spied the first dead body—facedown in the water, followed by four more bodies, two of which were so small that, even from the air, I was certain they were children.
Everyone in the chopper was now peering out the window, taking in the extent of the calamity. The chopper banked again, pulling away from the nucleus and coming in fast over higher ground. Up in the distance, I could see a cluster of jeeps and military vehicles. Closer inspection showed that we were trying to land amid the chaos of a Somalian Army encampment, with several dozen soldiers milling around the clapped-out
military equipment spread across the field. In the near distance, we could see three white jeeps flying the Red Cross flag. There were around fourteen aid workers standing by the jeeps, frantically waving to us. There was a problem, however. A cluster of Somalian soldiers was positioned within a hundred yards of the Red Cross team—and they were simultaneously making beckoning gestures toward us with their arms.
“This should be amusing,” the Brit said.
“Not if it’s like last time,” one of the Red Cross team said.
“What happened last time?” I asked.
“They tried to loot us,” he said.
“That happened a lot back in ’97 too,” the Brit said.
“You were here in ’97?” I asked him.
“Oh yes,” he said, flashing me another smile. “A delightful spot, Somalia. Especially under water.”
We overflew the soldiers and the Red Cross jeeps. But the aid workers on the ground seemed to know the game we were playing, as they jumped into the jeeps, reversed direction, and started racing toward the empty terrain where we were coming down. I glanced over at the Brit. He had his binoculars pressed against the window, that sardonic smile of his growing broader by the nanosecond.
“Looks like there’s going to be a little race to meet us,” he said.
I peered out my window and saw a dozen Somalian soldiers running in our general direction.
“See what you mean,” I shouted back to him as we landed with a bump.
With terra firma beneath us, the Red Cross man next to me was on his feet, yanking up the lever that kept the cabin door in its place. The others headed toward the cargo bay at the rear of the cabin, undoing the webbing that held in the crates of medical supplies and dried food.
“Need a hand?” the Brit asked one of the Red Cross guys.
“We’ll be fine,” he said. “But you better get moving before the army shows up.”
The Douglas Kennedy Collection #1 Page 64
