Don Winslow is back, Don Winslow is leaving. “City in Ruins”, published by HarperCollins, is the last chapter of a trilogy that has bewitched millions of readers, but it is also the beginning of a farewell. The American writer, with a thirty-year career and twenty-five bestsellers behind him, has chosen to abandon literature, partly to invest more time in political activism on the eve of the US presidential elections. His interview with Huffpost.
Why is “City in Ruins” the right novel to end your career with and why has the time come to say enough to writing?
It took me almost thirty years to write the trilogy of which this is the final volume. When I was finishing the book, I felt like I had my life’s work ahead of me, the right ending. Furthermore, I felt that what was happening in my country – the threat to democracy by a traitor and would-be dictator – required more attention than I could devote to continuing to write novels. I don’t want to write the epitaph on American democracy.
How much will you miss writing literature?
At the moment, it’s difficult to say because so little time has passed. It’s strange to get up in the morning and not think about producing ten pages or wondering what the next chapter I’ll write will be. After all, I’ve been in the saddle a long time, and these are hard routines to break down. But I will always write, I just won’t publish novels anymore.
Wasn’t it possible to fight politically through books?
It wasn’t, due to the time factor. It would take at least two years to write a good novel. Another year would be required by the publication process. By then, the war I want to fight would already be over. Again, I don’t want to compose an elegy on American democracy.
“Sometimes you have to become what you hate to protect what you love,” he writes in his latest book. Is life often compromised?
Is life perhaps made of something else? To me it always seems like a compromise between the ideal and the feasible, between perfection and the possible. Too often we find ourselves sacrificing the latter for the benefit of the former, especially in the political field. The phrase you quote exemplifies a dilemma as old as humanity itself, both in fiction and in reality. We find ourselves having to sacrifice some values in favor of others, becoming murderers to defend ourselves from murderers, committing barbaric things to counter barbarism. In short, we end up becoming similar to the enemy we try to fight.
What is the price a politically active writer has to pay?
You’ll probably lose some readers (but gain some new ones), get a lot of hate mail, a lot of “shut up and write” comments, and some threats. But who cares? The price doesn’t matter. And, actually, most of the responses I got were extremely positive.
This is the year of the US presidential elections. When Joe Biden was elected in the last election you declared: “Now we have adults and professionals in charge, who don’t just think about themselves.” Are you confident in a second term? Is Biden still the right man?
I’m optimistic, but we must view Donald Trump as a serious threat. It will be a close race. Yes, Biden is the man. And please, can we remind ourselves that he won last time? Can we remember that he defeated that piece of shit?
What will you do if Trump wins?
I will continue to fight, nothing else.
According to the latest estimates from the American Library Association (ALA), last year censored books in the USA increased by 65% compared to 2022. There is talk of 4,240 censored books in 2023, a figure which far exceeds the sum of those banned in the previous two years: 2,571 in 2022 and 1,651 in 2021. Is this a phenomenon that worries you?
Yes, it worries me. Isn’t this how fascism begins? Trying to control people’s information and ideas? My mother was a librarian, without libraries I wouldn’t have had access to books as a child, and I certainly wouldn’t be a writer today. So I take it personally. By the way, I have a foolproof solution for people who object to a particular book: don’t read it. It always works.
We live in a historical moment in which writing is evolving, due to innovations such as Artificial Intelligence. Do machines risk replacing humans even in the field of literature?
No, because machines have no soul. And great art needs great souls.
After the usual round of presentations in large US cities, Don Winslow arrives in Europe and Italy (after almost a decade of physical absence). Below are the dates of the meetings: 10 May in Turin at 7.30 pm at the Book Fair, 11 May in Mestre at 6.30 pm at the Candiani Cultural Center (Mestre Book Festival), 12 May in Brescia at 5.30 pm at the San Barnaba Auditorium ( Librixia), on May 13th in Milan at 10.30 am at the IULM University.
