One friend called it the \u201cyuck factor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another asked how I could possibly contemplate writing a\u00a0second<\/em>\u00a0book on Jonestown.<\/p>\n My mother said resolutely, \u201cYou just can\u2019t understand it.\u201d<\/p>\n When I tried to persuade her that one could\u00a0try<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 that that\u2019s what I\u2019d been doing with my novel for the last three years \u2013 she couldn\u2019t grasp that understanding is possible.<\/p>\n After reviewing the 1981 NPR \u201cFather Cares\u201d<\/a> program, based on the radio play by James Reston Jr., author of\u00a0Our Father Who Art in Hell<\/i><\/a>\u00a0and reporter Noah Adams, I revisit the fact that the public face of Jonestown belongs to Jim Jones, and the face portrayed is always that of a madman.<\/p>\n My novel,\u00a0Paradise Undone<\/em>, is not about Jim Jones.<\/p>\n The \u201cgreat man\u201d theory of history tires and bores me. My task as a writer is to unveil the faces of the women and men beside the endlessly repeated name and outsized ego of the leader. \u00a0 I wrote the book to expose their lives and voices, to give some \u201cairtime\u201d to a few of the other 917 people who died on November 18 th, 1978, though nearly thirty years later, it remains Jim-Jones-the-Madman as litany, as explanation, as the whole story.<\/p>\n As I write this essay,\u00a0Paradise Undone<\/em>\u00a0is being read exclusively by a number of editors at a handful of small publishers in New York. So far, approximately 24 big East Coast presses have turned it down for various reasons, some of them having to do with subject matter, some with style, some with lack of ability to \u201csell\u201d the novel or even the idea of the novel to colleagues, and thus to the public.<\/p>\n When I listen to those voices on the tapes, it is not Jim Jones I want to know more about. Frankly, I would prefer to hear less of him. \u00a0 I want to know about the older black woman who says so earnestly, \u201cYou\u2019re the only father I have. You\u2019re the only family I have. I gave up my brother for you.\u201d<\/p>\n On the highly selective NPR program, Jones turns the moment into a self-serving gem: sing your song, he tells the woman. So she sings \u201cI Never Heard a Man Speak Like This Man Before.\u201d Everyone sings along, but Jones voice is loudest. I\u2019d rather hear her tell her story instead.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy did you leave your brother to follow Jim Jones?\u201d I would ask her. \u201cTell me how you came to Peoples Temple.\u201d<\/p>\n In the FBI documents, I have located some of these old women\u2019s stories and incorporated them into my novel. But their voices have receded from public memory, like so many of those standing in the shadows cast by Jones and other leaders.<\/p>\n My friend George tried to prepare me for the rejections. \u201cIt\u2019s not your writing that they\u2019ll be reacting to,\u201d he told me very kindly. \u201cThey\u2019ll be imagining all those bloated bodies on TV and saying to themselves, \u2018Yuck! Who wants to read about that?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Whether or not my continued applications to editors prove George right, I plan to keep writing. The next book is percolating.<\/p>\n (Annie Dawid also wrote Four Protagonists, One Author<\/a> for this edition of <\/em>the jonestown report. She may be reached at\u00a0annie@anniedawid.com<\/a>. Her website is at anniedawid.com\/<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One friend called it the \u201cyuck factor.\u201d Another asked how I could possibly contemplate writing a\u00a0second\u00a0book on Jonestown. My mother said resolutely, \u201cYou just can\u2019t understand it.\u201d When I tried to persuade her that one could\u00a0try\u00a0\u2013 that that\u2019s what I\u2019d been doing with my novel for the last three years \u2013 she couldn\u2019t grasp that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":33247,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-33129","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/33129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33129"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/33129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133790,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/33129\/revisions\/133790"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/33247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}