ANTHONY ARNOVE FOR VIA
Anthony Arnove is a writer, editor, and literary agent. In 2002, he co-founded the publishing house Haymarket Books and Roam Agency, where he represents authors like Howard Zinn, Arundhati Roy, and Noam Chomsky. He produced the Academy Award-nominated documentary "Dirty Wars," and wrote, directed, and produced "The People Speak" with Zinn. Arnove is the editor of various books, including "The Essential Chomsky," "Terrorism and War," and "Howard Zinn Speaks." He published his first book, "Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal" in 2006.
The following interview is between Anthony Arnove (AA) and one of the 2022 Head Editors of VIA, Amanda VanNierop (AV).
AV: The theme of our magazine this year is “We Need to Talk…” which we felt was an appropriate way of hinting at the pandemic without necessarily talking about the pandemic. Creatively, we felt it inspired an air of urgency in writing. Critically, this theme feels a bit more literal. What do you think of when you hear the phrase, “We need to talk”?
AA: Well… Where my mind goes most immediately are the issues that the pandemic has surfaced—issues that we should have been talking about before the pandemic but certainly now. People have changed the conversation on race in this country profoundly. From where I stand, working in the publishing world, seeing the interest in anti-racist books, the history of racism and anti-racist movements, the growth of people seeking to educate themselves on serious issues… it’s all really inspiring. And that wouldn’t have happened if people weren’t in the streets in the summer of 2020. It wouldn’t have happened if teachers and nurses weren’t speaking out about what was happening in their workplaces. It wouldn’t have happened if essential workers weren’t saying “You’ve called us ‘essential workers,’ but hand clapping isn’t meeting our needs.” So, I think there’s a number of conversations about race, about class, about history that we need to have, but I’m encouraged that we are starting to have [those conversations].
AV: I agree, we should be talking about social justice issues of race, of labor rights… Is there anything else you think we should be talking about?
AA: I’ve always had an interest in questions of empire. Having worked for many years with Howard Zinn (author of A People’s History of the United States)... he kept coming back to understanding what it means that the United States is an empire and has been an empire for so long, and uses this rhetoric of American exceptionalism to justify so many things abroad and domestically. There’s a relationship between the strength of the military-industrial complex and the aggressive posture of the US government in the world with a lack of emphasis on other priorities, whether it’s schooling, education, social infrastructure, or the kinds of basic guarantees you would expect in a decent social democracy that we lack in the United States. For example, in the pandemic, you’ve obviously had life expectancy decrease significantly in the United States. It has decreased so much more than in comparable countries because of the particular policies that were pursued in this country. We’re going backwards. And yet, you see a huge expansion of military spending happening simultaneously while there’s all of these unmet social needs—needs that could be easily met if we were to tax people like Elon Musk…
AV: Who just spent $43 billion on Twitter…
AA: Yes, and Jeff Bezos, and any number of other people who have actually become much richer and wealthier and more powerful during the pandemic even as other people suffer so profoundly.
AV: Even in a more broader, political sense, I’ve heard a lot of professors speaking about how it feels like there’s sort of an “end of an era,” especially with the January 6th insurrection. You talk of “empire,” do you get that sense that we’re at the end of something, politically?
AA: That’s a really good question. I feel like we’re definitely in an era where it feels like the wheels are coming off. There’s a certain unpredictability and volatility to politics—that was expressed on January 6th. In that sense, I think some of the political guideposts or reference points are shifting and changing in ways that make it difficult to make predictions about the future. On the other hand, as someone who is very interested in history and looking at continuity in a country that has short-term memory and even amnesia about history, I often tend to still see the echoes and the rhyming of our history more so than the novelty. I find that line of thinking valuable is that then you can understand what people have done to confront those moments in history. You can find certain resources of hope in those people who have spoken up, organized, and resisted in those moments and done things where, in their own time, they might not have thought would have the impact they eventually had. If you just look at the contemporary landscape, it’s easy and understandable to feel dispirited or disparaging, or even hopeless. I don’t feel that way when I look at this moment from a historical perspective.
AV: As a student I definitely feel hopeless [laughing]. Being in an academic setting, and learning about political systems and political philosophy and then looking at where we are now… It’s very difficult to feel any sort of hope.
AA: I totally hear that, but then I look at what happened at Amazon [forming a union]. No one thought they would win. They were going up against one of the most powerful entities on the planet—a powerful corporation with lawyers, armies, consultants, strategists, Jeff Bezos, and all of these people on the other side are stacked against them. They didn’t actually have the support of the mainstream labor movement, and this was not coming from the Democratic party… This was something that came from below, from some of the most marginalized and oppressed workers in the U.S. labor force and they pulled off a significant victory. One that I think signals to all these other people who find themselves in similar circumstances that “Actually, if you organize you can make a difference.” So, it depends on what you’re looking at [laughter]. It always depends on what you’re looking at. I’m sympathetic to people who feel despair, particularly young people who feel despair. But we have a certain responsibility to find not false hope, not platitudes about “This will all work itself out”... it won’t, we know from history it won’t. However, for those of us who do want to see a different future, maybe the past can help us see different possibilities for the present.
AV: Speaking then about literature… I feel like the intersection between political science and English is very obvious. In my own personal academic experience, I see it every day. How do you view this relationship between politics and literature, especially in the last five years?
AA: I mean, literature has always been thoroughly political. And literature, being so political, means it contains all of the contradictions of any particular political moment—it can be a force of reaction, it can be used for reinforcing the dominant ideas of a society, it can fuel facism and xenophobia and sexism and racism as we’ve seen throughout the history of any literature. Or, it can lead people to different understandings of any number of political questions in history. I’ve always been fascinated in how literature can be part of a culture of solidarity, a culture of resistance, a culture that lifts up voices that may have been marginalized or silenced elsewhere. You certainly see that in the current period where there’s been a massive explosion of people reading all kinds of literature on anti-racism, whether it’s going back to the novels of Toni Morrison or reading slave narratives or reading W. E. B. Dubois and Black Reconstruction for the first time to reading contemporary writers of fiction and nonfiction. I think there’s just a huge change that I see in publishing of the audience for those ideas and those books, and I think that’s why you see the backlash against critical race theory. That’s why you see the panic in states around the country…
AV: Banned books!
AA: We’re here with Arundhati Roy and her book [The God of Small Things] was just on a list of 48 books banned in a Florida county. You have librarians and teachers fired… So why do they feel so threatened by literature? Well, obviously they understand the power and the political impact of these books. They’re seeking to silence them for that reason, so all the more reason that we spend time to understand the intersection of politics and literature.
AV: You founded Roam Agency in 2002 as a place to represent “progressive authors who have made a unique contribution to understanding and changing the world.” Do you feel that this mission statement has changed in the last twenty years?
AA: No, I mean I forgot that that’s how I worded it all those years ago [laughter]. But no, that’s been my aspiration, and I feel very fortunate that I’ve been able to work with authors who have embraced that vision. I’m also fortunate that in that same year I was able to work with other, like-minded folks to start a publishing house in Chicago called Haymarket Books. I’m very pleased to say that both have grown in ways I never would have expected, and I’ve had the opportunity to work with authors I never would have expected who are committed to those values. Most recently for example, at Haymarket Publishing [we’re working on] the autobiography of Angela Davis, which is just one of those great privileges in my life. As a literary agent, I continue to work with writers such as Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and [Zinn’s] estate, and so many other authors who are the ones I most admire. I consider myself incredibly fortunate.
AV: Do you approach nonfiction and fiction differently, then? Because you’ve worked with both and with writers of both.
AA: Primarily my forte has been nonfiction and that’s certainly where my focus is as an editor. I’ve been fortunate to work with fiction… However, I would say that all of the fiction writers I work with are also writers of nonfiction. Filmmakers, people who work in theater… people for whom fiction is not their exclusive mode of expression. And I think people for whom fiction is their only mode of writing—and there are many I respect and would love to work with—I wouldn’t be as good as an editor or representative of their work. As much as I love the fiction writers who I’ve had the privilege of editing (people like Earl Lovelace, John Sayles, Arundhati…) it is the fact that we can also work together on nonfiction projects that anchors the conversation in a certain way.
AV: As an editor, you work closely not just with other writers but also their works. What advice would you give student editors for how to approach working with someone else’s writing?
AA: I firmly believe in being author-centered in whatever one does in the world, whether that’s publishing or editing. Authors are the heart of any book publishing project, and have to be the heart of any editorial work one does. You’ll get nowhere trying to impose your voice, ideas, or vision on an author; it’s really about trying to understand their voice and to help cultivate and encourage them in achieving their vision. That requires a great deal of deference to the writer, but also an understanding of how to communicate to the writer ways in which readers could benefit from other approaches. Being the person who can translate some of the concerns or questions that might present themselves to readers who aren’t necessarily as schooled in a particular history. I’m always, in my editing, trying to reach the widest possible audience. And I think there are ways one can do that without compromising or watering down one’s politics or vision. Frankly, I’m an old-school editor in that I tend to think less is more and that economy and clarity matter. I know some authors for whom “Why say something in three words when you can say it in a hundred and thirty words?” and I’m more of the school of looking for that precision in language [laughter].
AV: Does that guide the way that you write personally, then?
AA: Oh, absolutely. I, perhaps to a fault, try to prefer economy in my writing, and I’m drawn to writing styles that are probably associated more with certain kinds of American short story writing. I value that a lot in my own writing, and I also do not have talent or skill to pursue more ornate approaches to writing [laughter]. And I truly admire people who do have those talents. I grew up in the Midwestern, and I think I have a certain Western sensibility that informs how I write and how I edit.
AV: What themes do you hope to see come out of literature in the next decade?
AA: I think there’s just a flourishing of literature that’s exploring so many of the aspects of which stories have been marginalized in the dominant culture. There’s so much valuable writing happening that is telling some of those stories. I personally am particularly committed to a politics of solidarity, so I’m always interested in those stories that find elements of transcendence and universality in the particular. I think, understandably, there’s this critique of universality and transcendence that assumes that a particular identity is in and of itself universal—and that has tended to be a white male identity, a Western identity… A certain narrow particularity which asserts itself as universal. Whereas I think there are other writers, such as Arundhati Roy or James Baldwin who pursue a different kind of particularity and historical specificity in which nonetheless an approach of profound solidarity leads to finding ways in which that story can connect with people of wildly different experiences. To my mind, the best literature is trying to find that conversation.
The following interview is between Anthony Arnove (AA) and one of the 2022 Head Editors of VIA, Amanda VanNierop (AV).
AV: The theme of our magazine this year is “We Need to Talk…” which we felt was an appropriate way of hinting at the pandemic without necessarily talking about the pandemic. Creatively, we felt it inspired an air of urgency in writing. Critically, this theme feels a bit more literal. What do you think of when you hear the phrase, “We need to talk”?
AA: Well… Where my mind goes most immediately are the issues that the pandemic has surfaced—issues that we should have been talking about before the pandemic but certainly now. People have changed the conversation on race in this country profoundly. From where I stand, working in the publishing world, seeing the interest in anti-racist books, the history of racism and anti-racist movements, the growth of people seeking to educate themselves on serious issues… it’s all really inspiring. And that wouldn’t have happened if people weren’t in the streets in the summer of 2020. It wouldn’t have happened if teachers and nurses weren’t speaking out about what was happening in their workplaces. It wouldn’t have happened if essential workers weren’t saying “You’ve called us ‘essential workers,’ but hand clapping isn’t meeting our needs.” So, I think there’s a number of conversations about race, about class, about history that we need to have, but I’m encouraged that we are starting to have [those conversations].
AV: I agree, we should be talking about social justice issues of race, of labor rights… Is there anything else you think we should be talking about?
AA: I’ve always had an interest in questions of empire. Having worked for many years with Howard Zinn (author of A People’s History of the United States)... he kept coming back to understanding what it means that the United States is an empire and has been an empire for so long, and uses this rhetoric of American exceptionalism to justify so many things abroad and domestically. There’s a relationship between the strength of the military-industrial complex and the aggressive posture of the US government in the world with a lack of emphasis on other priorities, whether it’s schooling, education, social infrastructure, or the kinds of basic guarantees you would expect in a decent social democracy that we lack in the United States. For example, in the pandemic, you’ve obviously had life expectancy decrease significantly in the United States. It has decreased so much more than in comparable countries because of the particular policies that were pursued in this country. We’re going backwards. And yet, you see a huge expansion of military spending happening simultaneously while there’s all of these unmet social needs—needs that could be easily met if we were to tax people like Elon Musk…
AV: Who just spent $43 billion on Twitter…
AA: Yes, and Jeff Bezos, and any number of other people who have actually become much richer and wealthier and more powerful during the pandemic even as other people suffer so profoundly.
AV: Even in a more broader, political sense, I’ve heard a lot of professors speaking about how it feels like there’s sort of an “end of an era,” especially with the January 6th insurrection. You talk of “empire,” do you get that sense that we’re at the end of something, politically?
AA: That’s a really good question. I feel like we’re definitely in an era where it feels like the wheels are coming off. There’s a certain unpredictability and volatility to politics—that was expressed on January 6th. In that sense, I think some of the political guideposts or reference points are shifting and changing in ways that make it difficult to make predictions about the future. On the other hand, as someone who is very interested in history and looking at continuity in a country that has short-term memory and even amnesia about history, I often tend to still see the echoes and the rhyming of our history more so than the novelty. I find that line of thinking valuable is that then you can understand what people have done to confront those moments in history. You can find certain resources of hope in those people who have spoken up, organized, and resisted in those moments and done things where, in their own time, they might not have thought would have the impact they eventually had. If you just look at the contemporary landscape, it’s easy and understandable to feel dispirited or disparaging, or even hopeless. I don’t feel that way when I look at this moment from a historical perspective.
AV: As a student I definitely feel hopeless [laughing]. Being in an academic setting, and learning about political systems and political philosophy and then looking at where we are now… It’s very difficult to feel any sort of hope.
AA: I totally hear that, but then I look at what happened at Amazon [forming a union]. No one thought they would win. They were going up against one of the most powerful entities on the planet—a powerful corporation with lawyers, armies, consultants, strategists, Jeff Bezos, and all of these people on the other side are stacked against them. They didn’t actually have the support of the mainstream labor movement, and this was not coming from the Democratic party… This was something that came from below, from some of the most marginalized and oppressed workers in the U.S. labor force and they pulled off a significant victory. One that I think signals to all these other people who find themselves in similar circumstances that “Actually, if you organize you can make a difference.” So, it depends on what you’re looking at [laughter]. It always depends on what you’re looking at. I’m sympathetic to people who feel despair, particularly young people who feel despair. But we have a certain responsibility to find not false hope, not platitudes about “This will all work itself out”... it won’t, we know from history it won’t. However, for those of us who do want to see a different future, maybe the past can help us see different possibilities for the present.
AV: Speaking then about literature… I feel like the intersection between political science and English is very obvious. In my own personal academic experience, I see it every day. How do you view this relationship between politics and literature, especially in the last five years?
AA: I mean, literature has always been thoroughly political. And literature, being so political, means it contains all of the contradictions of any particular political moment—it can be a force of reaction, it can be used for reinforcing the dominant ideas of a society, it can fuel facism and xenophobia and sexism and racism as we’ve seen throughout the history of any literature. Or, it can lead people to different understandings of any number of political questions in history. I’ve always been fascinated in how literature can be part of a culture of solidarity, a culture of resistance, a culture that lifts up voices that may have been marginalized or silenced elsewhere. You certainly see that in the current period where there’s been a massive explosion of people reading all kinds of literature on anti-racism, whether it’s going back to the novels of Toni Morrison or reading slave narratives or reading W. E. B. Dubois and Black Reconstruction for the first time to reading contemporary writers of fiction and nonfiction. I think there’s just a huge change that I see in publishing of the audience for those ideas and those books, and I think that’s why you see the backlash against critical race theory. That’s why you see the panic in states around the country…
AV: Banned books!
AA: We’re here with Arundhati Roy and her book [The God of Small Things] was just on a list of 48 books banned in a Florida county. You have librarians and teachers fired… So why do they feel so threatened by literature? Well, obviously they understand the power and the political impact of these books. They’re seeking to silence them for that reason, so all the more reason that we spend time to understand the intersection of politics and literature.
AV: You founded Roam Agency in 2002 as a place to represent “progressive authors who have made a unique contribution to understanding and changing the world.” Do you feel that this mission statement has changed in the last twenty years?
AA: No, I mean I forgot that that’s how I worded it all those years ago [laughter]. But no, that’s been my aspiration, and I feel very fortunate that I’ve been able to work with authors who have embraced that vision. I’m also fortunate that in that same year I was able to work with other, like-minded folks to start a publishing house in Chicago called Haymarket Books. I’m very pleased to say that both have grown in ways I never would have expected, and I’ve had the opportunity to work with authors I never would have expected who are committed to those values. Most recently for example, at Haymarket Publishing [we’re working on] the autobiography of Angela Davis, which is just one of those great privileges in my life. As a literary agent, I continue to work with writers such as Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and [Zinn’s] estate, and so many other authors who are the ones I most admire. I consider myself incredibly fortunate.
AV: Do you approach nonfiction and fiction differently, then? Because you’ve worked with both and with writers of both.
AA: Primarily my forte has been nonfiction and that’s certainly where my focus is as an editor. I’ve been fortunate to work with fiction… However, I would say that all of the fiction writers I work with are also writers of nonfiction. Filmmakers, people who work in theater… people for whom fiction is not their exclusive mode of expression. And I think people for whom fiction is their only mode of writing—and there are many I respect and would love to work with—I wouldn’t be as good as an editor or representative of their work. As much as I love the fiction writers who I’ve had the privilege of editing (people like Earl Lovelace, John Sayles, Arundhati…) it is the fact that we can also work together on nonfiction projects that anchors the conversation in a certain way.
AV: As an editor, you work closely not just with other writers but also their works. What advice would you give student editors for how to approach working with someone else’s writing?
AA: I firmly believe in being author-centered in whatever one does in the world, whether that’s publishing or editing. Authors are the heart of any book publishing project, and have to be the heart of any editorial work one does. You’ll get nowhere trying to impose your voice, ideas, or vision on an author; it’s really about trying to understand their voice and to help cultivate and encourage them in achieving their vision. That requires a great deal of deference to the writer, but also an understanding of how to communicate to the writer ways in which readers could benefit from other approaches. Being the person who can translate some of the concerns or questions that might present themselves to readers who aren’t necessarily as schooled in a particular history. I’m always, in my editing, trying to reach the widest possible audience. And I think there are ways one can do that without compromising or watering down one’s politics or vision. Frankly, I’m an old-school editor in that I tend to think less is more and that economy and clarity matter. I know some authors for whom “Why say something in three words when you can say it in a hundred and thirty words?” and I’m more of the school of looking for that precision in language [laughter].
AV: Does that guide the way that you write personally, then?
AA: Oh, absolutely. I, perhaps to a fault, try to prefer economy in my writing, and I’m drawn to writing styles that are probably associated more with certain kinds of American short story writing. I value that a lot in my own writing, and I also do not have talent or skill to pursue more ornate approaches to writing [laughter]. And I truly admire people who do have those talents. I grew up in the Midwestern, and I think I have a certain Western sensibility that informs how I write and how I edit.
AV: What themes do you hope to see come out of literature in the next decade?
AA: I think there’s just a flourishing of literature that’s exploring so many of the aspects of which stories have been marginalized in the dominant culture. There’s so much valuable writing happening that is telling some of those stories. I personally am particularly committed to a politics of solidarity, so I’m always interested in those stories that find elements of transcendence and universality in the particular. I think, understandably, there’s this critique of universality and transcendence that assumes that a particular identity is in and of itself universal—and that has tended to be a white male identity, a Western identity… A certain narrow particularity which asserts itself as universal. Whereas I think there are other writers, such as Arundhati Roy or James Baldwin who pursue a different kind of particularity and historical specificity in which nonetheless an approach of profound solidarity leads to finding ways in which that story can connect with people of wildly different experiences. To my mind, the best literature is trying to find that conversation.