ON WRITING (PART ONE)

NY Times Op Ed Columnist recently wrote a piece on the Israel and the Middle East. He interviewed Israeli author Amos Oz:

Here is Amos Oz on writing a novel: “It is like reconstructing the whole of Paris from Lego bricks. It’s about three-quarters-of-a-million small decisions. It’s not about who will live and who will die and who will go to bed with whom. Those are the easy ones. It’s about choosing adjectives and adverbs and punctuation. These are molecular decisions that you have to take and nobody will appreciate, for the same reason that nobody ever pays attention to a single note in a symphony in a concert hall, except when the note is false. So you have to work very hard in order for your readers not to note a single false note. That is the business of three-quarters-of-a-million decisions.”

Having now written two novels, both of which are in the editing process,  (not to mention the “I would love an agent and publisher” process") a few dozen aphorisms came to mind when I read what Oz said: “Been there, done that”; how about “it ain’t bragging if you can do it”; and finally “he can walk the walk and talk the talk.”

I cannot draw. I am not musically inclined. For most of my adult life, creativity came from either a well cooked meal, or a unique sentence or two tucked into an otherwise boring motion or brief on appeal. And of course, the perfect zinger on cross, or the penultimate part of a closing argument, before the perfunctory ending imploring the jury to acquit my client.

As a prosecutor I was assigned to prosecute a drug trafficking case (as shocking as that  may seen in Miami circa 1980’s). The defense however, was unique:  that the two kilos of white powder the defendants were negotiating to buy was –they thought- Cascaria- a white powdery substance used in the Santeria religion. 

The defense listed a Santeria priest as a witness, and I am surely one of the only lawyers to have ever cross examined one (although I remember a well publicized lawsuit in New York City over  a Santeria church shut down because they were sacrificing animals.)

         The priest testified that the white cocaine powder in evidence looked exactly like Cascaria, which was a powdery substance  used to cleanse away evil spirits.  He testified he had been hired by the defendants and had told them to meet the individual who would sell them the Cascaria they needed for his services. Instead, the defendants somehow mistakenly wandered into a drug deal (which wasn't really that difficult in some parts of Miami in those days.)

         It was my first really good cross examination as a prosecutor. In many cases, prosecutors are often reduced to presenting their own witnesses and simply asking “what happened next?” No offense to my colleagues who are prosecutors, but clearly we defense attorneys have the more interesting roles in trial. Cross is always more fun than direct.

I took the priest through a careful explanation of Cascaria:

“You need this powder for your religion?”

 “Yes.”

“You use this powder by sprinkling it?”

“Yes”

(No surprise that every day when I arrived to court, there was a small sprinkling of white powder near my chair. This was in the days well before 9/11 and the subsequent anthrax scare. I just ignored it. There are legions of stories of the City Of Miami Bomb Squad blowing up suspicious boxes left at the courthouse that were later determined to have a dead chicken inside-another Santeria ritual designed to help some defendant in court that day. I always wanted to see one of those explosions. I kept imagining the curses as a jumble of feathers floated down to earth.)

“In this case you were hired to clean the new house the defendants bought of any bad spirits?”

 “Yes.”

Then a thought came to me. It wasn’t planned. I had sort of had an inkling of where I was going with the cross, and luckily, the next few questions  came to me. I am not a proponent of this type of cross examination. The best lawyers who seem to think on their feet have actually labored over every word and line-like Amos Oz labors over every word and apostrophe and comma.

“The Cascaria would help clear the house of bad luck?”

 “Yes”

I walked over to the evidence- two kilos of cocaine and held them up to the jury dramatically:

“Sir. This is four and half pounds of cocaine. How much bad luck can someone have?”

I remember the line. I remember how satisfying it was. I remember the look on the defense attorneys faces, as they saw their defense crumble. I must admit, I do not remember the answer. But it didn’t matter. The jury returned with guilty verdicts and I had won my first big trafficking trial.

 I wanted this post to be about the joys and agonies of writing. About my putative career as a new novelist. About how I was struck by Amos Oz’s words and how I thought to myself “exactly!”. That is exactly how hard it is to write.

So you will have to tune back in for “On Writing-Part Two.”

Who was it who said about an entertainer and the audience: “Always leave them wanting more?”

PLR