MAYBORN | Summer 2008 | Caution! Writers at Work | Kevin Fedarko | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | More | Discuss

Over the last five years as Bob and I have grown closer, my career has slid inexorably downhill, a trend I attribute almost entirely to his influence. Each year I make less money, I turn down more assignments, and I blurt out more inappropriate remarks—often at Bob’s instigation—that antagonize the dwindling number of editors still willing to work with me.

A few years ago, for example, I got upset when an editor at Outside expressed interest in publishing a particular photograph to accompany a story I had written about the Siachen War in the Himalayas. I feared the photograph might provide the Indian Army with some clues about the exact location of a Pakistani military base I had visited—a concern shared by the art director and the photographer. The editor went ahead and published it anyhow. Several months later when the military base in the picture was hit by an Indian artillery shell that killed three men and a string of high-altitude pack ponies, a number of my friends pointed out–correctly–that there was probably no connection between the photo and the explosion, and they advised me not to say or do anything that might upset the magazine. “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face,” they urged. “You cannot afford to piss off Outside.”

Only Bob argued that by even the loosest definition of journalistic ethics and integrity, I couldn’t afford not to piss off Outside. He declared that I should stop writing for the magazine as long as the editor in question remained on staff. And he announced that in the spirit of solidarity, he would stop writing for Outside too—thereby ensuring that both our incomes took a substantial hit until the offending editor was let go.

Another magazine sent me off to do a feature story on Mount Everest and ended up gutting the manuscript, botching up the language and cutting the length by two-thirds. When I later re-stitched the discarded material and sold that piece to a competing publication, the editors of the first magazine announced their intention to sue me for $30,000—several thousand more than I had made the previous year (thanks, in part, to the boycott Bob had initiated). The moment Bob learned of this, he offered to start a second boycott, and to get other freelancers to participate. Fearing this whole boycott business was starting to get out of hand, I decided instead to apologize and beg forgiveness. When Bob heard about this, he hauled off and punched me in the solar plexus so hard that I thought I heard a piece of cartilage pop.

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The force of that blow underscored Bob’s outrage at a writer who would compromise on principles for the sake of trying to make things easier on himself (the principles in this case being a writer’s absolute ownership of the ideas inside his head, and his inalienable right to publish those ideas wherever the f*** he sees fit). But Bob’s fury didn’t end there. What incensed him even more was that by caving in to this kind of intimidation and bullying, I had done a disservice to my craft. His point wasn’t simply that cowardice is inimical to good writing—although that notion carried a sufficiently damning indictment on its own, given what I’d done. The true focus of his rage, I think, had to do with the vital connection between creativity and subversiveness.

I’m not sure Bob and I ever discussed this, but the insight I carried away from our confrontation was that the flame that burns at the center of your work, the heat around which you cup your hands, is sustained by defiance. And without the flare of defiance—the irrational urge to stand up to commercialism, to stupidity, to incompetence, to mediocrity, to raw power; or the blunt, unapologetic inclination to demonstrate that in a free society, defiance for its own sake sometimes carries value and meaning—without such impulses, a writer has nothing worthwhile to say.

This notion, which I still find electrifying, is articulated perhaps most pungently by a pair of talismans that hang close to my writing desk at home. Both were given to me by Bob. Together they offer a summary of what I understand to be a significant part of the philosophical code he embraces as a writer.

The first object is a small enameled pin that hangs from a chord. The face of the pin bears the image of a skull with two crossed pencils, superimposed over a typewriter. It is emblazoned with the words “WRITE HARD, DIE FREE.” The other object is a piece of paper that bears a quote from the reporter and novelist John Hersey. It reads: “There is one sacred rule of journalism. The writer must not invent. The legend on the license must read: None of this was made up.”

If, like me, you’re the sort of person who appreciates credos that can help you calibrate your moral compass, this isn’t a bad place to start. “Write hard, die free, and don’t make stuff up.”

Most students of nonfiction would harbor nothing but reverence and gratitude for a mentor capable of producing such a succinct aphorism. So why, I sometimes wonder, have I allowed my relationship with Bob to become stained by the sin of betrayal?

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As I’ve explained, I spent years wishing I had someone who could advise me on what I should and should not do as I bumbled forward in my career. Now that my wish has been granted, I find it odd (and also a bit embarrassing) to report that I almost always respond to Bob’s advice by flagrantly ignoring it—a tendency made even more bizarre by the fact that I have usually taken the trouble to solicit the very council I’m tossing into the trash.

“Esquire called yesterday and asked if I’d be willing to do a story on the Horn of Africa,” I’d inform him. “Should I take the assignment?”

“If you go to the Horn, you may be kidnapped by Somali gunmen and you’ll probably wind up dead,” he’d reply. “Don’t accept.”

Thanks for the advice, I’d say. And off I’d go.

Since Bob teaches graduate writing seminars at both Bennington and Florida State, and thus is continually surrounded, like some sort of Ottoman Grand Vizier, by earnest supplicants beseeching his council, it took a while for my insurgency to register on his radar. But eventually he caught on and objected, stridently.

“Outside wants me to go to Pakistan but is only willing to publish 4,000 words. What should I do?
”
“Why the hell should I tell you what to do when you’re just going to ignore what I say and do the opposite?!”

“No I won’t.”

“Oh yes you will!”

“Will not.”

“That’s it, where’s my shotgun?”

The pattern of these exchanges often leaves me dismayed by the distance dividing the serene discourse I’d first imagined, in my original mentor fantasies, from the crabby bicker-fests into which so many of my evenings with Bob devolve. And in fairness to myself, I’d like to point out that these disputes often arise out of Bob’s refusal to appreciate the difference between me mindlessly blowing off his advice, and me deliberately electing to contradict it. That may sound like splitting hairs, but when I started thinking about this matter I realized that the distinction illuminates a key aspect of the mentor-protégé relationship.

It turns out that much of Bob’s advice when it comes to the question of whether or not to go to places like Kashmir, Iraq, Pakistan or the Horn of Africa is driven by a concern that I might get killed, and by the knowledge that there are easier ways to make a buck. The irony, of course, is that Bob’s own commitment to the craft of literary nonfiction journalism renders these arguments ludicrous. By the standards he himself has set in places ranging from Haiti to Kosovo to the Himalayas, not doing something because it’s dangerous or impractical or, worst of all, just too hard, is simply bullshit.

What’s more, if someone were to advise Bob to follow the same course of action he often urges me to consider, he’d tell them to go to hell. Which is why when he complains about my impudence, I refuse to feel bad. When you fertilize your field with the manure of independent thinking, when you cultivate a commitment to excellence by systematically weeding out prudence, diplomacy and the desire for financial gain, one of the fruits you should expect to reap is disobedience.
If I’m an obstreperous punk, the fault for planting the seeds of my insubordination rests entirely with Bob