Emillio Mesa with Tom Reiss

By Emillio Mesa

Editor’s Note: Yesterday, the 2013 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced, and Tom Reiss was awarded the prize for Biography for his book The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, “a compelling story of a forgotten swashbuckling hero of mixed race whose bold exploits were captured by his son, Alexander Dumas, in famous 19th century novels.” We interviewed Reiss last September about his book; that interview is re-published below.

He has won the respect of many for his landmark actions as a man of mixed race, who led a nation through a crumbling economy. No, not President Obama, this is the story of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie (Alex Dumas). Tom Reiss’s new biography The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (Crown) chronicles how the son of a black slave and a disgraced French aristocrat rose to challenge Napoleon and became the inspiration for his son, also named Alexandre Dumas, to write The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. Alex skyrocketed through the military ranks from private to general, thanks to his focus while under attack, equestrian ability, and swordsmanship. Despite all racial injustices of the period, he became one of the most legendary cavalry generals in Europe. To this day, he remains the highest-ranking black military figure in a Western army, until Gen. Colin Powell 200 years later.

At Andaz 5th Avenue Hotel, overlooking The New York Public Library, while drinking a soy-cappuccino, Tom Reiss discussed his latest book and why a 48 year old Upper East Side husband and father of two spent 7 years writing this book.

Interesting timing for this book with President Obama’s upcoming election. Was that your aim?
(Laughs) No. I started researching the life of Alexandre Dumas seven years ago, long before President Obama came into the picture. If you want the real roots of my interest, I think it started with my mother, Luce, who was born in Paris in the late 1930s and then arrested for being Jewish when the Nazis occupied the city.  She was saved by a pair of courageous neighbors and the blind eye of a policeman, who allowed them to take her off of a bus that was bound for a concentration camp.  In an orphanage after the war, at age nine, my mom was given a book, the 1938 Hachette edition of Le Comte de Monte Cristo. She brought it with her when she came to the United States, and this old green edition still sits on a shelf in my parents’ library, along with the other Dumas novels that my mom’s adoptive father, my beloved Great Uncle Lolek, gave her in her new home in Washington Heights.  These Dumas books always had a special connection to my family, spoke to me of a kind of hope in the bleakest hour.  When I learned that the novels had been inspired by the most incredible race-crossing minority man, who’d risen above incredible prejudice to do incredible things, I felt even more connected to Dumas.  I always wanted to investigate this incredible life behind the stories.

Your books are about history but also individuals who went on bizarre journeys to find their identity – bizarre collisions with history – why?
It’s because I’m a rootless cosmopolitan, a classic Jewish character. Before the founding of Israel in 1948, Jews were struggling to find their identity in history–they were like people adrift in the oceans of other histories and cultures–and I loved to explore that through my closest relatives.  I began by interviewing them, about their life during incredible, dangerous times, and it made me realize how much history shapes individual lives. In some sense we really have no idea what the past was really like. History as it’s taught in school isn’t complete-everything is boiled down into clichés. The big historical events color the experience, it’s a footnote, but it really doesn’t describe the experiences of the people that lived during that time. History is just as complicated as the moment we’re living in. So it’s about rescuing the real people who lived in it, from being part of an oppressively bland construct “history” that’s essentially a steam roller that just runs over millions of lives-it’s almost an insult. Also, I was a strange little kid who liked to ride the bus and sit next to an old person, so that they could tell me their story. History is a lot about timing. There are periods where everything is up for grabs.

What makes a Jewish-American writer from Washington Heights obsessed with a free black slave during the French Revolution?
I’m obsessed with race relations and racism. I’m interested in people that were in high-risk situations and how they dealt with it.  What is it that allows someone to survive, triumph, or causes them to sink into despair? Also, his story is universal, an individual who had to deal with his creativity and personal life, against an oppressive ideology and how he came out on the other side.

Why does Alex Dumas fascinate you?
I’m drawn to people who have a strong ideology. Alex, more than any of the people I dealt with before, lived out his ideology very actively. He’s from a time and a place where to be a man, you wanted to put your ideology in your body. He trained to be what we call today an “action hero”. In those times the movies were real life. He lived out, what we today, vicariously live through movies. I like periods where social-clubs about a higher ideal were formed, where they lunged to remake the world into a better place. Don’t get me wrong, I like our own period, our beautiful-hedonistic-materialistic culture but I also crave something more in life. The reason that I write these types of books and characters is because they give me that something more, that we’re missing right now.

I recently went to a book party and a European writer said to me “It’s very interesting how Americans prefer personal stories, compared to Europeans who prefer literature.” Do you think Americans will care about the story of Alex Dumas?
Because of my books I’ve traveled the world. That comment is based on the notion that Americans are arrogant and don’t care. If you scratch below the surface, the problem with Americans is that we care too much. Just like Alexandre Dumas, we’re all still trying to find ourselves.

Was researching the book like an Indiana Jones adventure?
It was like digging for human-buried treasure. At one point I had a safe blown up in order to recover an importance piece of the puzzle. He was written out of history, the Nazis melted the only statue of him, and he was literally white-washed, they painted a blond guy over his image. I had to retrace his steps from France, Egypt, to the Caribbean. It was fun having to resurrect this man and reconstruct his life…like rescuing an individual from the past and giving him the chance to speak in his own voice, because great measures were taken in order to make him disappear.

If The Black Count were being made into a movie, who would you cast?
Fifteen years ago it would’ve been Denzel Washington. I think it should be a young actor, maybe an unknown-someone with a presence of power. Morgan Freeman would be a great narrator.

If Alexandre Dumas were alive today, what would he say about the upcoming election?
What happened? You need to learn how to believe in yourselves again and find your enthusiasm. Embrace the true ideals from which your country was founded and help to create inspiration. To be an American is to be somebody from the new world, a new person of beliefs and ideas-someone who’s excited by life and never lets oppression have the upper hand.

Photo by Andrew Schwartz

After four years as editor in chief of The Onion, comedian Joe Randazzo is leaving the paper, and America’s self-proclaimed “finest news source” is relocating its offices from New York to Chicago. City & State editor Morgan Pehme talks with Randazzo about his tenure at the helm of the popular satiric publication and asks him if there’s anything funny about Andrew Cuomo.

City & State: What’s so funny about politics?

Joe Randazzo: You have a high concentration of egotistical people who oftentimes put their worst qualities forward to get noticed and to be recognized, and this lack of compassion, humanism and altruism often leads to success in politics. These are the worst qualities of humankind that people who are being put forth to represent all of humankind are embodying, so that inherently is a tragically hilarious juxtaposition.

CS: How seriously does The Onion take itself?

JR: I think it’s understood that there’s this bedrock responsibility to speak truth to power, to call out bullsh-t when The Onion sees it or hears it, and to always try to fall on the right side of issues, to never be against the victim—and not to try to maintain objectivity but to keep any target open, so Democrats are just as open to ridicule as Republicans. But in order to get to the good jokes that make The Onion successful, all the writers have to do is make each other laugh. I think a responsibility to the broader social conversation is genetically encoded in The Onion as an institution and that rubs off on the writers, but on a daily basis Onion writers aren’t thinking about their responsibility or taking themselves very seriously. It just needs to be funny jokes.

CS: At The Onion, are you a journalist first or a comedian?

JR: I come from a little bit of a journalism background. I majored in journalism at Emerson and I worked for NPR, but I’m definitely a comedian first.

CS: Earlier this year, Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana mistakenly thought a story in The Onion about a planned “AbortionPlex” was genuine. On other occasions The New York Times and Fox News have reported on your articles as fact. How blurry is the line between real news and fake news in the current media environment?

JR: That one was really wonderful, because the whole point of the AbortionPlex story itself was to try to give as much credence to what we imagined every right-wing nut job’s worst nightmare of Planned Parenthood could be and to explore that and give it The Onion treatment, which is to present it in a very dry, authoritative way. That’s our formula; that’s the lens through which we observe the world—that’s where 90% of our comedy comes from—so when we do it really well, sometimes people who aren’t familiar with us take it seriously. I think it does to a degree speak to—especially during the Bush Administration and the rise of FOX News, not that Rupert Murdoch is an evil person, per se—this sort of reinventing news as entertainment that that has really taken hold in American culture.

I think in [Rep. Fleming’s] case, he’s a pandering guy who’s not that intelligent, who thought that something obscenely ridiculous like the AbortionPlex could ever possibly be real. But actually, one of the things that lent it some credence was that somebody went and created an actual Yelp site for the AbortionPlex—we didn’t solicit this, they just did this of their own accord, organically—and hundreds of people who were in on the joke started giving it thumbs up or thumbs down and writing reviews like “It was great! My husband and I are going to go there every year for our anniversary” and stuff like that, which sort of gave texture to this world we created that we never could have done on our own. I think that story, paired with that kind of real-world response to it, painted this picture that for some people made it much easier to believe that it was real, even though the story itself was ridiculous. I mean, it’s a $7 billion AbortionPlex or something like that, where they’re killing, like, 1500 babies a minute. There’s waterslides, and you can have a martini while you wait. It’s like there’s no way that would ever be real, even from Planned Parenthood. It’s delightful when people take that stuff seriously.

CS: Does constantly mocking hypocrisy and ineptitude in government make you hopelessly cynical about the state of our country?

JR: I think a lot of comedians are cynical. I’m generalizing, but comedians tend to be fairly sensitive people who have to kind of harden their souls to the fact that they’re going to get hurt, and that everybody’s going to get hurt, and that people are imperfect and that, you know, ultimately we’re all going to die. I think that’s actually the background of every comedian’s mind. So, I think there’s a side to that sensitivity that hopes for good, that wants to be optimistic, that wants to be idealistic, but that’s a vulnerable place to be, and rather than going out and trying to collect names for Children’s International, comedians write nasty jokes about Rush Limbaugh. Personally, I wouldn’t say that I’m cynical, but I’m not an activist.

I think that our country, if we continue on this path which is consumed with the endless obsession with consumption—that’s physically unsustainable, spiritually unsustainable, and culturally unsustainable. Politics is just a reflection of that, trying to keep order out of all these different types and groups of people, who are all basically just trying to get by in a material world—I think Madonna said that at some point. So I don’t actual think I’m cynical, but I’m not holding out a lot of hope for, like, big change. For one thing, we’ll probably have to wipe out, like, three quarters of the population maybe before anything good can happen, and that’s okay, I’m comfortable with that. I’m just enjoying my life while I can before the big purge comes.

CS: As a comedic journalist, when scandals like the ones that brought down Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer hit the papers, do you just think to yourself, Thank you!?

JR: Something like Eliot Spitzer or Anthony Weiner is a little more in the purview, from The Onion point of view, of late-night talk shows, like one-liners and zingers. The Onion tends not to really comment on those types of little blips, and when we do it tends to be more of a comment on the media’s take on something. We try to write stories that can be evergreen, that you can read in 10 years and they would still make some sense. We try to look at it with more than a 24-hour news cycle mentality. When Anthony Weiners come up I think we actually say, “Sh-t!” because we have to either figure out a joke that nobody else has done, or we won’t be able to cover it at all.

CS: The Onion hasn’t really run a satiric article featuring Andrew Cuomo since his days as HUD Secretary. Is there just nothing funny about Cuomo to write about?

JR: I don’t think there is. He’s boring, right? That’s his whole thing?

CS: In 2009 The Onion was awarded a Peabody, and last year you actively campaigned for a Pulitzer. Does The Onion really deserve journalism’s highest award or was that just a shameless publicity stunt?

JR: I think that we would all actually really like to win a Pulitzer—and now that I’m leaving in two days, I think I can say that The Onion absolutely does deserve a Pulitzer. In terms of commentary I don’t think there’s anyone who has consistently done a better job with sort of more integrity that The Onion has. The Onion also does lots of stupid, horrible jokes that have no business being published, but I think there isn’t any other organization that has for 20 years observed the American condition as consistently as The Onion has. It’s been amazing to be able to work for them for six years. The Pulitzer campaign was definitely tongue-in-cheek. It was meant to be sort of a comment on awarding prizes for journalism, which is kind of a weird thing. In many ways, even though you are talking about things that are supposed to be good for the community, it can get wrapped up in just as much vanity as the Academy Awards can. So we thought it would be funny, instead of pretending we don’t care about prizes like many news outlets do, just shamelessly going for one and saying we will actually just buy one from you, if you allow us to do it.

To read the full article at City & State click here.

Quiara Alegría Hudes.

Apparently, a spoonful of water helps the medicine go down for the members of the Pulitzer committee.

I’m referring to yesterday’s surprise announcement to award the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama to Quiara Alegría Hudes for Water by the Spoonful. The drama follows a young Iraq War veteran after returning home to Philadelphia. I’ve not had the chance yet to see or read this work, which bowed at the Hartford Stage Company this past October, but I can say that, sight unseen, it’s likely more deserving than one of the other previously announced finalists for the award.

I’m referring to Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities, a back-patting soap about families unleashing Big Secrets against one another and having Big Moments. The show is a hit, thanks to a talented, starry cast both last year Off-Broadway and again in its current Broadway run. It’s catnip for actors, but I found the show, which had some marvelous small touches, a bit of a showboat and self-congratulatory overall.

A third announced finalist, Stephen Karam’s Sons of the Prophet, would also have been worthy of the prize. It’s a smart, irreverent look at universalities like love, loss, suffering and solitude that always managed to avoid platitudes.

Heretofore, the only work of Hudes I had seen was In the Heights, for which she wrote the book and was also listed as a Pulitzer finalist three years ago. Hudes first made a splash with Pulitzer voters prior to that, however, thanks to her play Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue. Fugue is the first of a three-part trilogy following the life of a young Marine. Spoonful is the second installment, and the upcoming The Happiest Songs Play Last, debuting at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre next spring, is the third chapter. I now have my work cut out for me to catch up to this intriguing talent.

Slightly more intriguing to me was the decision by the Pulitzer committee to award no work of fiction as the best of the last year. Now that’s a slap in the face to finalists like Karen Russell’s Swamplandia, Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, and The Pale King, from the late David Foster Wallace. Plus I can think of several more superlative works from 2011 just off the top of my head: Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding, Eleanor Henderson’s Ten Thousand Saints, and Jean Thompson’s The Year We Left Home, and Justin Torres’ We the Animals. I’m not sure what criteria the given committee (which changes from year to year) feels merits earning a prize or not, but in my mind, just about any of these works would have been a worthy contender.

Alas, that’s the way the awards ball bounces in the critical world. Here’s hoping all of these works still find the audiences they richly deserve.