This time last year

Monday 13 November 2023

This time last year, I was drafting Book Two for my Living with Katyn manuscript.  At that point in time, I decided to call my manuscript chapters “Books,” being influenced by The Iliad and other classical texts which had similar divisions.  During this critical moment, I recognized and accepted the insight about my writing project that I was shaping my memoir as a journey—an odyssey—and embraced completely the literary motifs associated with the epic, self-discovery, and others.  My writing process for this Book was taking longer than I had expected.  Book Two was to be no more than twenty pages.  Having read an early draft of Book One which narrated my interrogation by the Russian Security Services (FSB) in Saint Petersburg, “King Arthur” suggested that the manuscript needed some kind of introduction explaining why I was in Saint Petersburg, and, by extension, why I was writing this manuscript.  As written at the time, the action chronicled in Book One abruptly placed the reader in that Saint Petersburg scene, catching the reader off-guard.  I needed to rethink how I was writing the manuscript. 

Back and forth, King Arthur and I debated the pros and cons of starting Living with Katyn with a traditional Introduction, starting from the very beginning when I started working at West Point, where I found the inspiration to write about the Katyn Massacre, where I deepened my Polish heritage from the Kościuszko monument there, and where I befriended King Arthur with whom I co-lead a summer study-abroad course to Poland and Russia, teaching eight Army cadets about the Katyn Massacre.  My friend Steve always insisted I follow this format. 

Nonetheless, my intuition told me I would lose the dramatic, bewildering, and dangerous opening sequence of Book One’s FSB inquisition.  I wanted the reader to caught off-guard, like I was when those two Russian agents knocked on my Saint Petersburg hotel room door, demanding I come with them to discuss my purpose of being in their country.  I needed the reader to be disoriented.  I needed the reader to feel how I felt.  I needed the reader to demand answers, but outside forces—intimidating, mysterious, and electrifying—denied the reader immediate gratification.  I needed the reader to continue reading. I would explain, give the reader the answers… later.  

King Arthur worried that placing a traditional Introduction right after Book One might undermine the trajectory of the narrative.  He realized that Living with Katyn was to be a memoir, rather than a historical, document driven academic book; therefore, he needed to re-imagine his manuscript editing duties, embracing the work as not only a work of non-fiction but a book essentially about me.  We agreed that if Book Two were going to be an “Introduction” that “introduced” the rest of the book, it needed to be written carefully.  Next, we agreed that this proposed Introduction shouldn’t be long; otherwise, it would slow down the narrative.  By focusing on the “why I am writing this book.” I assured King Arthur that this new Book Two would be no more than twenty pages.

I started writing Book Two in September 2022; however, by the end of the second week of November, I had over sixty pages.  Even at sixty pages, I felt I had much more to say.  Moreover, I thought I couldn’t cut and paste those forty pages elsewhere in the manuscript because those sections would interfere with the chronology of the other existing Books.  Because writing Living with Katyn took me sixteen years to complete, that writing process became an experience in and of itself.  Most of those sixteen years were really long agonizing periods of writer’s block.  My writer’s block was as much of my story about Katyn as the Katyn Massacre was.  I needed to show and account for why I suffered terrible draughts of inactivity.  While writing Book Two, I realized what I truly wanted to say about Katyn and more importantly how I wanted to say it.  Only by granting myself permission to write not only twenty pages, sixty pages—or, incredibly, one hundred and forty pages—did I then understand what I really was writing about was myself, not strictly about the Katyn Massacre. 

This time last year I unloaded the burdensome weight of anxiety, uncertainty, and self-doubt about how I was then to finish writing Living with Katyn, I also lessened the guilt, heartbreak, and loss brought on by Steve’s passing in Fall 2020.  I sensed he would have wanted me to finish, finally, the manuscript.  I think of him daily.  While writing Book Two, I reminisced about my intellectual debates with Steve; I replayed in my mind the things Steve had said about my Katyn book project.  His voice in my mind grew louder to the point that I began transcribing his words.  His words in my mind grew so powerfully loud that they began appearing in the draft of Book Two.  Steve was becoming an important figure, a substantial character, in Book TwoHe ultimately became King Solomon, the Scrivener in Living with Katyn.     

This time last year and for the first time I also taught Ukrainian war poetry.  I devoted two class lessons to study the Ukrainian poetry.  Days before teaching it, I watched a recent episode of PBS Frontline’s Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes.  The documentary transfixed me, particularly the first ten minutes.  During those ten minutes, a grieving sister who lost her family made the war real for the students.  Her emotion silenced the room.  Goya’s Disasters of War, Gut’s In My Hands, and other course texts on war didn’t move them the same way this Ukrainian woman in the documentary did.  This Ukrainian woman’s anguish was unrelenting.  My students heard, felt, and saw this woman’s despair; all their senses were attuned to this woman’s suffering. 

My Fall 2022 war class students taught me important lessons.  This time last year I learned that if I wanted my Living with Katyn readers to feel any emotion about the Katyn Massacre and any connection to my experiences, I needed to engage them systematically.  I needed to provoke as many emotions as possible.  I couldn’t incorporate audio or video into my prose; however, I needed to discover a way of verbally expressing those sonic and visual stimulants.   I needed to find a way of recreating the ambience of my experiences so that my readers could empathize and understand. 

This time last year I aspired to finish the manuscript.  And right now, I achieved that goal.  I realize only now how important this time last year was.  Writing Book Two, I granted myself permission to be utterly honest with my future readers of Living with Katyn concerning how painful, emotional, but also thrilling the writing process was.  Without writing Book Two, I likely would have continued delaying finishing the manuscript.  Book Two was a reckoning; its writing forced me to confront my writer’s block, not only coming to terms with it but acknowledging it as a revelation about my Katyn-related experiences.  Book Two confirmed for me that Living with Katyn was a memoir, an intellectual and existential discovery, which explored why I was afraid to complete Living with Katyn. 

 The Katyn Massacre means so many things to me.  Like my previous book on Herman Melville, I have sacrificed parts of myself to Living with Katyn, not knowing at the time what those self- offerings were or how much they would cost.  Only when I finished drafting Book Two—finally—in January 2023 did I consciously grasp what Living with Katyn was meant to be.  Initially, when I informed King Arthur that the working draft of Book Two was over one hundred thirty pages, he rightfully was skeptical.  “I’m glad you finished it, but you’ll need to cut some things,” he cautioned.  He was right; there were some sections that needed the editorial scissors; however, while editing, King Arthur saw why it needed to be longest Book in the manuscript.  Book Two explains why it took me sixteen years to finish.  When you eventually read its published version, I hope, too, that, this time next year, you will see why Book Two is vital to Living with Katyn.