Sophomore Writing

The (public) start of a new project

The rhythms of a writer working on books are odd and overlapping. A deal is made, but it feels like it hasn’t as the agent and editor negotiate the contract after the hand is shook. A writer, at least a nonfiction one, sells a book then writes it. You wait around for money though you’ve technically started working months ago. If you rely on books for income, as I do, you start thinking of the next project before the last one has wrapped (to the extent any book ever is). It’s a mercenary mechanism, maybe, but essential.

Last year was eventful for my writing, most significantly with Sprinting’s launch. Around the book’s release, I was also grappling with what I’d work on next. Sprinting’s story arrived fortuitously. I had been thinking about its themes for years and then happened upon the narrative. Perhaps this method isn’t as tidy or PR-friendly as a story a writer had been thinking about, writing about for their entire careers, but when I came upon it, I knew more or less immediately the 1919 Tour was the right frame for a book. After some research, I thought I might be able to do it justice.

You can try to force these coincidences, but it rarely works.

This is, I suppose, a bit of an odd way to introduce my second book. I started thinking about J.T. Canales only after some serious thought about what I might write about next. I don’t have any negative feelings toward this sort of forced inspiration, but it’s admittedly less romantic than stumbling upon a story you never knew you had to tell, then immediately knew you had to after coming upon its existence. Still, my story sense tingled as I looked at the reading guide of Canales’s investigation transcripts.

Over time, I started getting an idea for those intellectual currents that might exist within it (the privatization of land, how far within contemporary liberal systems the prosecution of law enforcement agencies can go). Then there were the practical considerations: what primary documents are available, what’s been said already, even if only in academic circles, what unexplored avenues are there, journalistically or otherwise? To each, I found answers that pushed me onward.

There’s been a lot more thinking and digging since then. And more writing and even more digging that will continue for some years into the future. I’m so glad to be working on These Bones Can Speak, the story of Texas representative J.T. Canales, who led an investigation into the Texas Rangers after a campaign of violence carried out by the Rangers against Mexicans and Mexican Americans.

These Bones Can Speak is a long way from being done, even longer from being published. But I’ll do my best to keep you in the loop, particularly as journalistic threads which need telling come to light. Bear with me as I negotiate with FOIA officers.

Until then,
Adin

Climb and Punishment

Following a Rapha Prestige ride

Toward the end of last summer, a friend got in touch with what they thought would be a fun assignment. Some folks were putting together a Rapha Prestige ride to take place in Wassaic, NY. The sponsor, Rapha, regularly look toward that old form of cycling for inspiration. My friend thought my experience might help me come up with a good story for them. Plus, the ride would be unsupported and take place on a “testing” route. All the better.

Cycling’s two functions make it a slippery thing. Some people ride to convey themselves from point a to b: a quick, convenient alternative to walking or taking the subway. Research has shown bike riders (and walkers) are the happiest commuters after all, but their riding is still an act of practicality. Others ride for the act itself, in competition with others and in training for that eventual competition. Between the two, amateurs train for weekend triathlons and professionals take Sunday rides with their family. The mailman doesn’t toss a football full of letters to your doorstep; he doesn’t have much of a shot joining the NFL. But he might ride a bike to work every day.

Maybe it’s this fragility, this relative indistinction between amateur and professional—riding for joy or convenience and sport—that forces cyclists and those who run races to dabble in self-punishment. If someone signs up for a race, there can be little to distinguish that competitor from someone riding next to them enjoying a Sunday breeze. Both might (probably, even) wear moisture-wicking Lycra jerseys and ride on bikes that cost thousands of dollars: cycling’s aesthetics are as fungible as its cyclists’ drives. It’s only the grimace on one’s face that separates the two.

It’s always been the case. In earlier decades, professional cyclists worked off-season jobs. Bikes’ construction then was more consistent; companies only had so much technology to go around. Professionals and amateurs rode together in some events. A Tour de France fan could walk to a brasserie at the end of a stage and see who had trench foot but still talked about the next day’s ride. That was the professional. Or maybe he was only a particularly determined amateur? The fan would have to check his jersey to see whether any corporate branding rode on his back. Practices changed: the salaries and calendars, at least, and amateurs no longer compete against Tour de France professionals, but there’s still that desire—necessity—for distinction.

I think of this slipperiness, the ways in which it’s breached, as I watch one cyclist slowly pass the support van in the final miles of Rapha’s Mount Riga Prestige ride. His lips are the blue white of a frothy ocean, that color I associate with the moments immediately before or after vomiting. Brendan, one of two mechanics aiding the cyclists on the 110 miles through western Connecticut and eastern New York, has just gotten off the phone with the race administrators at the finish line when the cyclist stops next to us on the dirt road.

“Water?” Brendan asks. No.
“Hydration mix?” No.
“A snack?”

The rest of the piece is available on the Wassaic Commons’ website.

Portraits of the Race

What do photos tell us about the Tour de France?

In the past couple months, I’ve written a few Twitter threads (1, 2, 3) on how the contemporary Tour de France–team-centric, professional, and focused on small differences in time and speed–has diverged from the Tour of the yore, a race that privileged the individual, emphasized endurance, and contained within it the sometimes odd-to-modern-eyes core of amateurs and professionals.

These larger differences shape and are shaped by the machines, stage structures, cyclist accommodations, salaries, and negotiations between administrators and towns, to only name a few of the factors that went into the shaping of this race.

Today, I’d instead like to look at pictures. Specifically, the portraits taken of cyclists before they began the Tour.

Francis Pélissier, 1919

If l’Auto had printed it in color, Francis would have stood out against the forested backdrop in his horizon blues. Did he ride into town that morning, offered a single day’s leave by his commanding officer? He was then a poilu in the 19e Escadron du train, transferred in January, garrisoned not so far away. Of course the unit’s role in the war wasn’t over, so his registration might've necessitated a longer journey. Supplying other units would continue for years as the occupation went on, as soldiers and those who returned or never left rebuilt what they could. Those roads and villages and barracks and fortifications would take hard labor and materials that couldn’t be gathered from the wreckage, materials Francis’s unit helped transport.

His brother, Henri, wore the same.

Henri Pélissier, 1919

Though they were separated for much of the war, they now belonged to the same unit. Best to have them apart as the fighting went on; you never knew when an entire unit could be wiped out. Now that was over, the government could make things a bit more convenient for those who would have to remain in uniform for another month, year, perhaps longer. Any time was too long for the brothers who had races to attend to, lives to continue.

The photographs were taken with a large format camera. You can tell thanks to the tonal range, the depth of the portraits–Henri’s, in particular–which comes close to lifelike. I don’t know if l’Auto had a dedicated office camera, or whether they took the portraits with the same one used on the race route: an early 4x5 Speed Graphic or the like.

They’re distinct. Henri’s appears to be taken with a longer focal length lens, his pose is direct and confident, the photograph’s contrast brings his features into sharp relief. It suits him, which is perhaps what the photographer had in mind. Henri was brash, confrontational. Francis was guarded, a bit more strategic. With a muted tonal range, he appears ephemeral, as if disappearing into the backdrop. There’s no mistaking Henri is the subject of the portrait.

Cyclists from l’équipe Groupama, 2021

Reduce the saturation, cut away the graphics, paste on street clothes and there’s still no mistaking this year’s cyclists from those in 1919. I don’t mean to make the tired argument about how romantic things were, though I’m willing to accept that might be the takeaway.

The cyclists are part of a team now, with designated roles. A Tour cyclist isn’t just a Tour cyclist, but instead a member of a larger unit. It’s how they race; it only makes sense that’s how they’re described.

The photographs are clear. One sees the jerseys down to the sponsors. What’s their identity? A cyclist. A professional one. Henri and Francis were soldiers, at least for a time. Eugène and Firmin were mechanics. The racing season began and they put on the grey and blue of La Sportive, at least in 1919, but would in time return to those other identities. Viewers knew they held onto them as they passed through their towns.

The cyclists’ pose is uniform, even if they have specialties: rouleur, climber, sprinter, puncher. Below the cyclists, not shown here, is an even longer list of those who support them, equal members of a team that desires the pinnacle of athleticism.

There are continuities, too. The contemporary cyclists’ pose recognizes a role Henri Pélissier found for himself in those early years fo the race, when others were more deferential to the “Father of the Tour,” Henri Desgrange. Pélissier claimed to “run on dynamite”: cocaine, chloroform, strychnine, etc. Him and Francis were some of the few who didn’t turn to booze, at least not regularly, at the end of a long stage. I’m not saying anything about the Groupama cyclists; I’m just saying there’s are recent Tour controversies you’re already aware of.

It’s disappointing there are few photographs of the 1919 race itself: a couple from the end of the last stage, as the cyclists rode into Parc des Princes, one or two as they left cities along the way, these portraits. Others were either lost when l’Auto’s archives went missing at the start of World War II or no one wanted to show the cyclists racing through the Western Front’s destruction.

I’m grateful these few photos at least exist.

Necessary Hawking:

You can pre-order Sprinting wherever you purchase your books.

If you’re worried about getting your copy before this year’s Tour begins, you can enter this Goodreads giveaway for a chance at winning a digital copy of the book, ending May 31st.

Once this year’s Tour begins, I’ll be chatting with Phil Klay for the book’s launch at Powerhouse Arena on July 1st. It’s virtual, so you can tune in from wherever.

And Finally, a Cover

Launching Sprinting Through No Man's Land (for pre-order, at least)

Hi All,

I realize over the past year or more I’ve mused about various elements related to the writing then editing and production of Sprinting Through No Man’s Land, my book about the 1919 Tour de France.

All the while I didn’t have anything meaty to show you. An otherwise blank page with some sales copy has been sitting on various booksellers’ websites, but the book lacked even a cover and copy tends to only show the most commercial elements of a story, written by those who know the book well, but also those who mostly hope it just sells.

Along with the start of this year, we’ve launched the book, available for preorder on your local bookstore, Bookshop, Amazon, etc. and on Goodreads now. I realize I’m the least reliable person to tell you anything else about this book, so I’ll let a few others speak to the book and its writing. I also tweeted a short thread sharing the same news as well as a bit about the book’s inception.

Jason Fagone, the bestselling author of The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies, called Sprinting “Vivid and inspiring. A century ago, in a brutal race like no other, cyclists faced war-torn roads and their own demons, and Dobkin spins through their tale in a sweet gear, showing the power of sport and the resilience of the heart.”

Jen Percy, author of Demon Camp: The Strange and Terrible Saga of a Soldier’s Return from War described it as “A moving and deeply researched book documenting the Tour de France’s rebirth after the Great War. Dobkin’s prose is lyric and at turns intricate and sweeping. He brilliantly captures Europe’s collective longing to rebuild through a competition whose epic terms and improbable cast of characters speak to the hope and uncertainty that defined a generation devastated by violence. More than a chronicle of sport, this is an incredible story of how the mind and body reckon with the scars of war.”

Phil Klay, National Book Award winner and author of Missionaries said “Astonishing. With beautiful prose, compelling narrative, and meticulous research, Adin Dobkin does far more than just record the history of a race—he conjures an entire world reeling in the aftermath of World War I.”

Elliot Ackerman, National Book Award finalist and coauthor of 2034 said the book is “Beautifully written, compellingly told, Adin Dobkin weaves together a masterful narrative of war, returning to the resiliency of the human spirit.”

This book has been most of my life for the past few years. Its bones shares some of the questions, proddings that first drew me to writing: how culture intersects with the immediate and long-term aftermath of a war. It’s also, unsurprisingly, a lot more than that and hopefully reflects the sort of writing I’ll have a greater opportunity to take on in the future (proposal #2 is in-progress right now). 

If you follow any other writers, I’m sure you’ve heard them say how important pre-sales are to the book’s eventual success. They show the publisher people are interested in actually reading the thing. That first chunk of sales allows the book to climb charts when it launches. If you have the means to do so, ordering the book would mean a lot to me. But, if you need more convincing, which I entirely understand, we’ll have plenty more in the months leading up to its launch (podcasts, interviews, excerpts, etc.) that you’ll be able to take a look at. 

And if you’re in the biz, give me a holler about galleys, etc.

That’s it for the moment.

A.

Slow Winter Weeks

Since finishing work with my editor, a near-constant back-and-forth between myself and the production team at Little A has started, only slowing this last week and a half with the holidays. A few notes, from one person or another:

• Can the interlude datelines be unbolded?

• The serif reads too purple, maybe one closer to Garamond (or just Garamond)?

• The fleurons read too purple, maybe an interpunct or ellipses?

• Does this font speak to pre-war or post-war?

• Do these accents do the same?

• What about the photo crop? The color saturation?

I tried reading Gass’s The Tunnel and did read the note he attached to the manuscript. A mistake, maybe. Fewer working gears with Sprinting, but I like books as objects (as well as what’s inside), so can’t help but think about how the parts add up to the whole. I recognize much of this doesn’t translate to the reader’s time with a book.

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At the same time, I’ve started work on the next nonfiction project. It won’t be public until next year, if ever. It follows a few students who attend an art school in the 1940s. Whether great art is created from retreating from the world, or constantly learning about it, attending to its issues.

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I’m halfway through teaching a creative writing research class at Catapult. Last week’s readings, on the accumulation of research and on synthesizing information, included Nan Shepard’s The Living Mountain, Wil S. Hylton’s NYT Magazine story on Laura Hillenbrand, and a few Svetlana Alexievich essays and lectures. Difficult questions about confronting a mass of sources (unless Robert Caro) and a drought of them.

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I read John Williams’s Stoner for the first time recently. One of the few late pandemic books I’ve enjoyed. And I’m about halfway through Ruth Scurr’s John Aubrey, My Own Life and surprised just how much I’m enjoying it. I knew I was interested in the form, but the delivery is just as enjoyable.

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No essays or stories in the works, but the formal launch of the book will happen soon after the new year (along with the cover, the blurbs, all those other machinations). I hope you’ll tune in for those.

An old bird nest in Ghent, NY from below (Portra 800 on Mamiya RB67)

A.