Koning Cool: An Interview with Author Hans Koning - Page 2

In short, Hans Koning is anything but predictable and this may be but one of the keys to his great success as a writer and a journalist. And speaking of unpredictable on the day of our interview, we get a glimpse into classic Koning, quick, witty and fierce a radical as ever and always, carrying with him a sincere empathy and ferocity that seem at once contradictory and yet, coming from Koning, complimentary. At last, we have a rebel with a cause. Here is Hans Koning:

Hans, your first book, The Affair took two years to find a good home, where it finally found a good home and considerable success with Knopf. I know you and I have discussed this, but why do you think foreign or European writers have such a hard time getting published in America? Is there just a different sentiment? OR do you think that publishing has fundamentally changed?

A: Knopf was not a good home for Alfred hated The Affair; he was chagrined at is success and when I heard this, I decided to leave him (proud but stupid) Then he wouldn’t let me go and we had to appeal with the Guild. About "foreign writers": well, the US is parochial, and of course publishing has changed drastically, the marketing director vetoes the editors. Literature is largely a dirty word. But Europe is hardly better, France is (still) different, translating is still a risk taken. (5 of my novels were published in France

Hans, I know you were for a time, Stoakley Carmichael’s pistol-carrying bodyguard. Where you the only white member of the Black Panthers? What drew you to that group specifically? Where you politically aligned and if so, in what way... what were you politics at the time... it sounds like you were a bit of a radical to say the least. Tell me about that. .

A: I wasn't a "member" of the Panthers, no such thing. I, and other “honkies” (as sixties slang had it), were simply, on their side; justice, anti- Vietwar, and so on… Of course I was, and am, a radical (and paid for it; this didn’t make you popular with publishers and critics).

I know you have written a great deal for The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly. What is the nature of the articles you write for them?

A: Mostly, reports from other places on the globe, the kind of reporting which The New Yorker did so well with its "Letters from --" A different approach than found in the NY Times. I (we) saw farther, weren’t believers in "The US is the most moral country" as was basic then *(and will be again under Bush.)

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Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is a published writer in both the United States and Europe. She is widely known for her music commentary, particularly her writings about Bob Dylan about whom she runs a highly-trafficked site. …

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