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Interview with E. M. Swift

E. M. Swift is the co-author of Ekaterina's book "My Sergei". I've always felt - although I was familiar with his articles and, of course, with his work on the book, I hardly know anything about him. Therefore, I asked Ed for an interview to change that. Of course, in the back of my mind, I thought it would be very interesting to hear more about the development of the book. And to my delight and pleasure he was very accommodating and helpful. He answered my endless questions and I just would like to thank him for his time and help. The interview was held in the first week of November 1996.

Question: First of all, what's your middle name? And then, would you please talk a little bit about your background?

E. M. Swift: The M. stands for McKelvy, my mother's maiden name. I'm 44, studied creative writing at Princeton, and started at SI [Sports Illustrated] by selling them a piece on the 1970-71 Princeton hockey team that went 1-22, for which I played goalie. "Practice makes imperfect" was the title, it ran in the 1978 swimsuit issue (Cheryl Tiegs in Brazil in a wet fishnet suit, first nipples in SI history), and it's still one of my favorite stories.

Question: How do you look like?

E. M. Swift: Sort of a cross between Kevin Costner and Harrison Ford. At least that's what I keep telling my wife.

Question: And where do you live with your family?

E. M. Swift: We live in Carlisle, Massachusetts, about a half hour west of Boston.

Question: Where were you born?

E. M. Swift: Chicago, Illinois

Question: Tell me, what do they (your family) think that their husband, father, son, etc. is a famous sports writer and that his book is really selling well and getting great reviews...?

E. M. Swift: Everyone is terribly excited about the reception the book has gotten, and that it's going to be on the NY Times bestseller list. My family remembers only too well what a grinch I was while writing it. The time pressure was ridiculous. I was writing 12-14 hours a day, and was pretty unbearable to be around the rest of the time. That's the only thing I regret about the book, because as pleased as we were with the result, I believe I could have done a little better job with a couple of the early chapters given a little more time. As for the family's reaction to me being a famous sportswriter, no one around here seems to think of me as such, which makes it pretty hard for me to get a swelled head. It's only games, after all. My 12-year-old keeps wondering what I'll be when I grow up.

Question: What's the name of your wife and children? How old are they? And would you say you have a "normal" life - although you're a well-known writer?

E. M. Swift: My wife's name is Sally, and the boys are Nate, 12, and Teddy, 4--about Daria's age. I have a very normal life, except that I work at home and travel a fair amount.

Question: Your idols?

E. M. Swift: I have many people I admire; but I can't think of anyone I idolize.

Question: When was the first time that G&G caught your attention? And what was it that made you interested in them?

E. M. Swift: I was at the 1986 world championships in Geneva, and remember them clearly from that. I wrote at the time that she had supplanted Katarina Witt as the most enchanting person in figure skating. I have a hockey background, so this was all new to me. I didn't know anything about pairs skating, but they were a helluva introduction.

Question: You've obviously followed their career over the years, so what was your reaction when you heard about - well - Sergei's death? When the news reached your ears did you think of Sergei/G&G as athlete/s first or as person/s?

E. M. Swift: I remember my wife and I were about to go on a trip to South Africa when I heard about Sergei's death. That's why I didn't do the original story in SI on his funeral. I had done a couple of stories on G&G over the years, so I knew him as a person, and that's, of course, how I reacted to his death. One thing about writing about sports for a living: you think of all these great athletes as human beings, with human strengths, weaknesses and problems. That's how I would have responded even if I'd never met him.

Question: Well, I've always wondered how you got to be chosen to help Ekaterina in writing "My Sergei". Did she ask you or was it the other way round? And how exactly did your work look like? I mean, you interviewed, accompanied her for some time - right? And then?

E. M. Swift: Choreographer Sandra Bezic was actually the main reason I did My Sergei. She was choreographing the tribute in Hartford for Sergei, and IMG was going to sell a program at the event to raise money. They needed someone to write an appreciation of Sergei for the program, and Sandra called me to ask if I'd do it. We'd known each other since 1988, when she was choreographing for Boitano. I said I'd be honored to, and asked what I should have in the appreciation. Sandra said I should talk to Katia. She gave me Katia's number, and we set up a time when we would meet in Simsbury. At that time I also asked if I could do a story for SI on how she was coping. Since IMG was interested in promoting the Tribute, they agreed to give me an exclusive with Katia for SI in addition to my writing the appreciation for the program. I went down twice: First so she could tell me about her life with Sergei, for the program; next so she could tell me about what the last three months had been like for her, for the SI piece. There were lots of tears--it was the first time she'd spoken publicly about Sergei's death and the aftermath. And both stories were well received by Katia and her various handlers. The upshot was she felt comfortable enough with me after those two sessions to agree to do the book in English, with me as the writer. Previously, she'd planned to do it in Russian with an American woman. But when she met the woman, Katia didn't like her. So I was offered the job, and leapt. We did the book in two months. We were together only about 14 days of that time, usually in her condo, working 2-3 hours in the morning, then 3-4 hours in the evening, which often included dinner. She'd skate in between. Twice we drove to Boston, where I used a tape recorder, and once to New York. Katia doesn't like to drive, so she'd hold the tape recorder while I drove. Other than that, I took notes longhand with a Russian/English dictionary on hand when we needed it. No translator was needed, and her English improved markedly from the beginning to the end. I wrote the book in 22 days, while she toured with Stars on Ice, and called her occasionally when I discovered a discrepancy or a hole in the narrative.

Question: Any examples for a "discrepancy or a hole in the narrative"?

E. M. Swift: There were many, but the best one I remember was that when I got to the first anniversary of their first New Year's Eve kiss, I realized Katia and I hadn't talked about the following New Years at all. I didn't even know where they'd spent it. I called her and said I thought we should acknowledge the anniversary of that first New Years, as surely she had at the time. Even though there was nothing particularly memorable about their second New Years together, it gave her an opportunity to look back on the first year that they'd been in love, to sum it up and try to put it in perspective. It ended up being one of Katia's favorite paragraphs of the book.

Question: Earlier of our interview you talked about "the time pressure was ridiculous". Would you please go into detail with that?

E. M. Swift: I agreed to do the book around the time of the Tribute to Sergei in Hartford--Feb. 27 [1996]. It was due April 30. I finished interviewing Katia Easter weekend, around April 6 or 7, and actually wrote the book in 22 days. It's about 62,000 words, so you can do the math. Considering that the first week or so was spent trying to get the voice down correctly, it was just a lot more time at the computer each day--12-14 hours--than I am used to spending. And I will never agree to that kind of a deadline again.

Question: What surprised you most while working with Ekaterina?

E. M. Swift: Her sense of humor. She's a natural mime, and her facial expressions and body language can be hysterical. That, of course, is very difficult to capture in print, but there are several scenes in the book that do provide comic relief--her descriptions of her driving prowess, for example, or the time she and Sergei were stopped by the policewomen near Denver. We laughed a lot when we were working on the book, which I had not expected. And she is very, very bright, with a wonderful memory and descriptive sense. She was, unequivocably, a joy to work with--candid, prompt, funny, and appreciative. I told her many times, since this was my first collaborative effort, that she had spoiled me forever.

Question: You've said that during your work together there were many tears. I envisage that it was sometimes really hard for Ekaterina telling you all the things because of all the memories and so on. Was it difficult for you to be faced with all those emotions? I personally always feel completely helpless when I see one of my friends crying...

E. M. Swift: It isn't easy, but this is what I do. Frankly, I would get more emotional while writing certain scenes than when I was interviewing Katia. I also don't want you to get the idea that tears were all that commonplace. A couple of times--that was all--at the predictable moments. The one time she got emotional when I wasn't expecting it was when we were talking in general terms about the book, and she said that she now had no private life; that by telling her innermost secrets and memories of Sergei, she had abandoned her private life forever. I hope that isn't true. You can do her a service by reminding her fans of this simple fact: Katia is a very private person by nature. Admire her on the ice, treasure her candor in the telling of My Sergei, but respect her privacy when she's not performing in public.

Question: I assume that lots of the things that were said in the interviews aren't in the book. How did you select? And were you given a free hand?

E. M. Swift: I selected the material that would best tell her story as concisely and entertainly as possible. It's how I always select material. This, however, was a love story, so I kept trying to return to that theme. I had a free hand, which is to Katia's credit. She trusted me, though there were a few things--not many--she did not want in the book because they would offend someone dear to her or to Sergei. Still, I think you'll agree she was remarkably forthright and candid.

Question: How did you chose your questions? Or, did you ask her questions at all or did you just let her talk?

E. M. Swift: We tried to work our way through their lives chronologically. So each meeting, we would cover a certain period. For example, one day we might have talked about the Calgary Olympics. Obviously we strayed back and forth in time on occasion, but in general we were both pretty good at focusing at one thing at a time. I just asked the same type of questions I do anytime I'm doing a story. Curiosity is the best asset any writer can have.

Question: So what are the same type of questions you usally ask? Just tell me a little bit about your work as writer/journalist. For example, where do you get your inspiration? What do you do if you have to finish an article on time, but you just don't have any idea what to write or you are just not satisfied with your work?

E. M. Swift: Su-jan, to answer this question properly would take hours. I don't get writer's block, so I can't fathom not knowing what to write when it comes time to write. It's my job. I'm fairly good at it, so it's not something I spend a lot of time analyzing. My advice to young writers is to get to know your subject as thoroughly as possible, then organize your thoughts and set them down in words as concisely and entertainingly as possible. So when you want to know what questions I ask, the answer is I ask whatever questions will help me get to know my subject better, to know both information about their past and also what makes them tick. Then, in the space allotted, I try to pass that information along in a way that's interesting--to me and the reader.

Question: Is there anything in the book that you would have liked to have done differently?

E. M. Swift: Not a thing except to have had another couple of weeks to polish it.

Question: You met Daria - is there any incident/fact that sticks in your mind for a long time in connection with the child? Did she talk with you in English?

E. M. Swift: Daria seems to be a very happy, well adjusted child. Katia's parents have given her a sense of stability that she might otherwise have lacked, and Katia's mother, Elena Levovna, is a saint. Actually, despite some early descriptions of him in My Sergei, her father is a sweetheart, too. They speak Russian at home, but Daria goes to school in Simsbury and can speak English. She'll be fine.

Question: When you wrote the book how did the process look like? After breakfast you told your wife: "I'm going to transcribe/re-write Ekaterina's interviews..." and what was next? You had to bring some order in your notes, didn't you? It would kind of surprise me if Ekaterina told you everything chronologically...

E. M. Swift: Bringing order to my notes was probably the second most difficult part of writing the book. Because try as we did to go through her life chronologically, one thing would remind her of another thing sometimes, and when it did it was always important. For example, her feelings about Marina were very complex and frequently changing, and Marina came up throughout our discussions. I tried to assemble them in one or two places in the book, and deciding where those places should be was important and difficult.

Question: What's your favourite part of the book?

E. M. Swift: Probably the prologue and epilogue, though I love parts of every chapter. I only mention those two because they were the most important chapters in terms of finding Katia's voice--which was the hardest thing about writing the book. Hardest and most important. The tone was set in the prologue, which was re-written many times. It had to be a balancing act between sounding like Katia--a Russian woman speaking her second language--and reading smoothly and interestingly for her English audience. As an example: the line about how she's writing this book now "before his lovely echo fades", was taken, not from our conversations, but from the A.E. Housman poem, "To an Athlete, Dying Young." I thought it very apt. Actually, given the choice, that's what I'd have entitled the book: "Before His Echo Fades" by Ekaterina Gordeeva. That would have been beautiful. So you mix that with her own original use of the English language: "Time is a doctor" or "it's like I've been abandoned in a wild forest..." and you have something pretty distinctive and special.

TO AN ATHLETE DYING YOUNG (A. E. Housman)

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honors out,
Runners whom reknown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before the echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

Question: Yes, "Before His Echo Fades" is apt indeed. Did you do that with other passages too? Meaning, using other material - than your conversations?

E. M. Swift: Not all that often, but yes, occasionally. I've written a lot about Russian athletes over the years, and that background was useful, say, when discussing the breakup of the Soviet Union sports schools. Ultimately, my job was to tell her story as a love story, not as a documentary. So I had some poetic license.

Question: Is there anything else you would like to say? Any funny anecdotes of you and Ekaterina, Daria?

E. M. Swift: I've gone on long enough, I think.

Question: Oh, no. On the contrary, I think many of us would have loved to hear more, Ed. Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate this a lot. Thanks.