Tomdispatch Interview: Engelhardt, The Imperial Press and Me

[Note to Tomdispatch readers: The person who runs Tomdispatch is not usually the focus of this site, but I decided to make an exception and run this two-part Nick Turse interview with me. It's my way of announcing some Tomdispatch news: All the interviews I've done so far for the site are to be collected into a paperback that Nation Books will release late this October. It will be entitled Mission Unaccomplished, Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters and I'll urge it on you at the proper moment. This interview with me will end the book. In the meantime, for any of you who might care to read my earlier writings, check out my history of American triumphalism, The End of Victory Culture (from which I regularly crib passages for Tomgrams). Studs Terkel called it "as powerful as a Joe Louis jab to the solar plexus." Or, for that vacation moment this summer, pick up my novel, The Last Days of Publishing, which focuses on the other world I've inhabited -- as a book editor. Herbert Gold wrote of it in the Los Angeles Times, "A satisfyingly virulent, comical, absurd, deeply grieving true portrait of how things work today in the sleek factories of conglomerate book producers... a skillful novel of manners -- of very bad manners." Tom]

Reading the Imperial Press Back to Front

A Tomdispatch Interview with Tom Engelhardt (Part 1)

Nick Turse stands at the door, a frizz of curly black hair, a fringe of beard, in a dark T-shirt and green cargo pants. Slung over his shoulder is a green backpack (a water bottle sticking out of a side pouch) so stuffed that he might well have been on a week's maneuvers. When I mention its size, he says, "Genuine military surplus," smiles, and lets it drop to the floor with a thunk. Immediately, he begins rummaging inside it and soon pulls out a tiny box sporting drawings of futuristic robot warriors and covered with Japanese characters (but also with a tiny "Made in China" in English). "Knowing your tastes," he says, handing it to me. He found it at a toy store in Tokyo on his way back from Vietnam.

Young as he is, he's been in the government archives for years and is one of our foremost experts on American war crimes in Vietnam. In fact, the combination of historic crimes and toys first brought us together at a diner a block from my apartment, perhaps three years ago. I had written a book, in part on Vietnam, in part on how an American "victory culture" had once expressed itself in the world of children's play. He read it and was looking for a little advice on his work. Soon after, he began sending out to friends his own homespun version of Tomdispatch and put me on his e-list.

Overwhelmed by such send-outs, I ignored his for a while, but he had such an eye for the place where toys, entertainment, and the military-industrial complex merged that I finally found myself paying attention, and one day called, asking if he would write a Tomgram on the subject. The rest, as they say, is Tomdispatch history. Now, in a busy life that includes writing two books and working a couple of jobs, he spends his spare time as the site's associate editor and research director -- I may not have much money to offer but titles are plentiful -- and has become one of its more popular writers.

As we walk into the dining room, reviewing our past history, he says wryly, "You found me in the cabbage patch." For a brief moment, at the dining room table, we're both absorbed in preparations. Cellophane wrappers come off tapes that are clicked into tape recorders. Then we seat ourselves and, for the first time since I began these interviews, I swivel my two machines so they face me.

Outside, on this late spring Sunday, the sky has darkened and rain is beginning to fall. Nick says into his tape -- he's the pro here, having interviewed many vets from the Vietnam era -- "May 21, 2006, Turse Interview with Tom Engelhardt…" And when I give him a quizzical look, he adds, "I don't know how many tapes I've gone through and then thought: Who was I interviewing? Who is this guy?" Who is this guy turns out to be the theme of the afternoon.

Click here to read more of this dispatch.

posted by Annamarie at 7:59 PM