Read moreQ: Your novel shows many influences, from Orwell’s 1984 to Stephenson’s Snow Crash to The Matrix films. What fiction inspired your writing?John Twelve Hawks: During one period of my life, I lived with friends in a large run-down house next to a large university. I was sleeping on the floor in what had once been the maid’s room. My expenses were about $100 a month. Every morning I would go to the university library, “steal” a novel from the shelves, and read the entire book. The next day, I would replace the novel and take another one. I basically worked my way through the entire British and American canon of literature, although I encountered the books as an autodidactic and not as a student in a lecture hall.
I’ve read 1984 twice, but a much larger influence was Orwell’s Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters. I’ve read this four-volume set countless times, and it profoundly shaped the way I look at the world. Miyamoto Musahi’s Book of Five Rings is an inspiring book – short in length, but filled with wisdom. I’ve never read Snow Crash.
I have never owned a television. In my Amazon Short essay, “How We Live Now,” I suggest that television is the prime instrument in creating a “culture of fear” in our society. When The Traveler was published, it was amusing to hear how I’d had been influenced by TV shows and movies – such as “Alias” or “Highlander” – that I’ve never seen.
I watched the first “Matrix,” but my friends told me to avoid the next two in the series. The Fourth Realm Trilogy and the “Matrix” are completely different fictional creations. The “Matrix” suggests that our world is unreal and that we are fragments of consciousness in an environment manipulated by a computer. Everything in the Fourth Realm is based on reality. The alternative realms are not presented as cyber fantasies, but as real worlds. No one will ever fly in my novels.
As far as cinematic influences go, I’ve seen almost all of Kurosawa’s films. “Yojimbo,” “Rashomon,” and “Seven Samurai” are wonderful movies.
Q: The Traveler can be seen as many things – a response to the erosion of personal freedoms, a response to the double-talk we receive from the government, a science fiction/fantasy thriller that simply entertains. How would you categorize your own work?
John Twelve Hawks: One of the things that bothers me about contemporary publishing is the way that books are categorized – and, sometimes, “ghettoized” – by the marketplace. I was fortunate to have a publisher that tried to avoid this. Placing books in categories keeps many writers from achieving a much-deserved larger audience.
I was never consciously combining different genres when I wrote The Traveler. I could only write a story that reflected my own personal preoccupations – it wasn’t inspired by other books or films. The spiritual vision of the book, martial arts, political concerns and a feeling of dread all correspond to my actual experiences in life. I would guess that, if the book seems to have many different elements, it’s only a reflection that my somewhat unusual life has led me to see the world differently than other people. I’d guess that a brilliant writer like Philip K. Dick didn’t walk around with “Sci-Fi” tattooed on his arm; he was only writing about the world as he saw it.
john twelve hawks
Read moreHere’s what we know (or what we’re told) about Twelve Hawks:
“He” is probably a man, although his agent, Joe Regal, says Twelve Hawks uses a synthesizer to disguise or filter his voice. “When he calls, I know it’s him,” Regal says, “because nothing comes up, not ‘out of area’ – nothing.”
He’s older than 30 and could be in his 40s or 50s. Clues: In a brief question-and-answer piece e-mailed to USA TODAY by Doubleday, his publisher, Twelve Hawks precedes the answer to a question about religion with: “When I was in my twenties ” And when an editor asked him whether his book’s “realm of hell” could be compared to current conditions in Iraq, Twelve Hawks said it’s more like Beirut in the ’70s, a remark that could mean he was then old enough to read newspaper accounts of war-torn Lebanon. But then again, he could have gotten the information from old news clippings or a library.
He lives in New York, Los Angeles and London, according to Regal, though the literary agent has never met him face-to-face.
He is a first-time author, not an established author who is writing under a pseudonym, his agent says.
He doesn’t own a TV, he likes wine, and he drives a 15-year-old car, says Jason Kaufman, his editor at Doubleday, who says he has picked up those details in their numerous conversations.
“This is not something that Twelve Hawks dreamed up because it would make headlines,” Kaufman says. “Twelve Hawks is someone who lives his life and values his privacy in the exact same way as the characters he writes about. … It’s not a game to him.”
Though Twelve Hawks won’t talk to the media, his publisher supplied USA TODAY with an e-mailed quote from him about why he lives the way he does: “The Vast Machine is the very powerful — and very real — computerized information system that monitors all aspects of our lives. I live off the Grid by choice.”
But is it really possible to live that way in 2005?
“It is possible,” says Lisa Pankau, a white-collar-crime investigator in Chandler, Okla. She adds quickly, however, that it would be “very difficult” and would take “a very devoted person.”
Pankau guesses Twelve Hawks could have credit cards with an offshore bank — if he even uses credit cards. She says he could have a passport from one of the Third World countries that sells citizenship, and he could have his agent send his money to a dummy corporation or an offshore account that is listed under an assumed name.
She guesses he could have registered a car under a pseudonym. As for a driver’s license, you can buy a book from Amazon.com on how to create that and other forms of identification on your home computer.
Most important, she says, Twelve Hawks, in all probability, would have needed his secret life in place before the 9/11 attacks tightened worldwide ID requirements.
His agent, Joe Regal, won’t discuss financial arrangements. “But I’m not sending wire transfers to a bank in Dubai”
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 