WWW.PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM 37Author Profile
Mexico City bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times when a
research assistant told him about a war diary written by an
American that was sitting in an archive in San Salvador, El
Salvador. The diary belonged to Sanderson, who dropped out of
college and spent his life traveling the world—Africa, Asia,
Europe—in search of adventure and material to write the next
great American novel.
Sanderson’s relentless quest for big experiences brought him
to El Salvador in 1979, where he joined up with guerillas who
opposed the U.S.-backed military junta and became a fighter
(code name: Lucas). He died in battle in 1982 at age 39. His
diary and other papers, which were found stashed in his back-
pack, became part of the revolution archive at the Museo de la
Palabra y la Imagen in San Salvador.
“Joe’s story was begging to be written,” Tobar says. Initially,
though, he didn’t know how to approach his subject. It would
take years, and multiple stalled nonfiction
book proposals, for him to find the answer. In
the meantime, he gathered the material he’d
later weave into his novel.
Tobar spoke with former rebels who’d
fought alongside Sanderson. “I heard stories
of Joe winning a shooting contest,” he says,
noting that Sanderson was known to be a great
marksman, “and of Joe teaching rebels how to
swim.” And Tobar tracked down Sanderson’s
brother, Steve Sanderson, in the States, who
gave him access to letters Sanderson wrote to
their mother. Steve also shared his brother’s
fiction, which Tobar—who is currently a
writing professor at the University of
California, Irvine—admits isn’t good.
“I’m a generous grader,” Tobar says, “so I’d
probably give him a B−.”
Despite the grade, Tobar, who briefly put aside newspaper
work in the 1990s to get his MFA in creative writing from the
University of California, Irvine, identified with Sanderson’s
dream to write fiction. “I would definitely choose fiction writing
over nonfiction if I had to,” he says.
It was the success of Deep Down Dark that motivated Tobar to
write Sanderson’s story as a novel. According to Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, Tobar’s books have been translated into 15 lan-
guages and have sold approximately 250,000 copies in North
America across all formats, with Deep Down Dark accounting for
about half of those sales. But after Deep Down Dark, he hit a
crossroads. “I realized if I wrote another book of nonfiction I
would never write another novel again,” Tobar says. “There was
a voice in my head saying, ‘Nonfiction is all I’m going to be
known for.’ ” So he revisited Sanderson’s story and began to see
him as “a man who was trying to live his life like a character in
a novel that he never succeeded in writing.”
Tobar got swept up in the idea and wrote the book the real
Joe Sanderson couldn’t.
“It’s a novel, but it sits next to Into the Wild and other great
nonfiction books,” says Tobar’s editor Sean McDonald of The
Last Great Road Bum. “The way it pulls together the strands of
Héctor’s writing career is thrilling.”
The son of Guatemalan immigrants, Tobar was born in L.A.
in 1963. He spoke Spanish growing up and is firmly entwined
with his roots. He’s been married for 26 years and has three kids
and what he describes as a “poorly behaved but loyal” dog. He’s
friendly and open but says he’s a loner.
“It’s taken me time to overcome a lot of the insecurities that
led me to become a writer,” Tobar says. “I was an only child. I
was always seeking my father’s approval. I always wanted to be
an A student. And so becoming a writer was a way to show the
world how special I am.”
Jay Mandel, Tobar’s agent at William Morris Endeavor, calls
him “a Swiss Army knife of a writer.” He adds that Tobar is
“both deeply American and deeply Central
American,” and that this offers him a unique
perspective as a storyteller.
Tobar’s powers are on full display in his
latest, which uses the treasure trove of letters
and diaries Sanderson left behind to create a
story of love, war, and art that spans cultures.
Tobar admits he got some weird looks when
he started telling people that his latest pro-
tagonist is a white guy. “Some people were
disappointed that a Latino writer would
choose to write a novel from the perspective
of a white male,” he says. But he relishes
defying expectations. “It’s important to think
about working across, and imagining across,
ethnic lines. If we as writers of color only
think of ourselves as writing inside this
channel of, say, Latino history, then we... well,
I am depriving myself of a deeper understanding of the full truth
of the country in which I live.”
Tobar’s next projects include a survey of Latino life in the
Trump age and a trilogy of novels about L.A.
As the conversation winds down and his dog lets out an
impatient bark, Tobar tells the story of the time his immigrant
father built a fence around the house where Tobar and his
family currently live. His father blew out his car engine hauling
wood and had bloody hands every day as he hammered away.
“But he stubbornly worked at this fence and finished it,” Tobar
says. “And it’s beautiful. How he worked on that... That’s the
way I write.”
Tobar nods as he reflects on the 11 years—research and all—it
took to complete The Last Great Road Bum. “I put everything
into that book,” he says. “I fought for every sentence. I left it all
on the page.” ■Elaine Szewczyk’s writing has appeared in McSweeney’s and other publica-
tions. She’s the author of the novel I’m with Stupid.