In 1968, I was a young reporter who had been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize the year before, my first year on the job. I was restless, like all young reporters, so I was in Hal Bruno's office at Newsweek magazine applying for a job. At the time, Newsweek had correspondents all over the world. Bruno was the chief of correspondents.
As I recall, he said, "Why don't you go to work for a major metro daily, in Chicago or Philadelphia, for a couple years, and then come to work for us."
I could picture myself in a trench coat, a foreign correspondent. But for some reason, my stomach fell, like dropping in an elevator too fast. I said, "I'm on my way to Europe, and I want to write a novel."
Hal Bruno said, "I wish I could do that. I've always done what I had to do. Call me when you get back."
So I went to Europe and wrote a novel and never called back.
It hasn't been easy since. Lots of weird part-time jobs. Some travel. Life as a single parent. Graduate school. Teaching. Sometimes I wish I had made the other choice. Sometimes. But not all the time.
I've read novels by journalists that didn't do what I wanted to do. They seemed expository, the language was dead on the page. They got published and made money, but that wasn't what I cared about. I wanted literary value.
As a reporter, I always felt constrained by journalism. You had to pretend that the world was a much simpler place than it is. To me, the world is a complex three dimensional object, and to write a news story or even a feature you had to cut a slice out of it, like a pizza, and pretend that was the whole thing.
You can't go back. Every gesture, every moment in time, is immutable. You just have to follow your instincts and make the best of it. And live with our decisions. As my friend Tim says, it isn't getting what you want that's the problem in life, it's wanting what you get.
© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle
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