Macromere Press

Macromere: What’s most striking to us about “Leo”, the tenth episode in He Who Shall Remain Shameless, is that the title subject seems to take a back seat to the increasing tension between David and the Meritocrat. It seems really that the Meritocrat is a stronger presence than Leo Ryan in this story.

David: That’s true to an extent. The story is still entitled “Leo”, though, not “Meritocrat”, so I’d like to give credit where credit’s due.

M: By all means….

D: Leo Ryan was of course the impetus for this episode, which didn’t come about until after several of the other stories had been written. I’d been interested in Mr. Ryan for years mainly because of his tragic connection to the events that occurred at Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978.

M: The Jonestown Massacre.

D: Correct. My interest in the massacre itself came first, and then I found out about Leo Ryan. I was haunted by the fact that a U.S. Congressman, the kind of person I’d always thought of as untouchable, invincible in this kind of situation, could be gunned down so violently and remorselessly. It was as if titles and status and positions and political power no longer mattered. Like: “Oh, you’re U.S. Representative? Big deal!” The Congressional Seal of Protection is referred to in the story, and I do believe Congressman Ryan had faith till the very end that this seal would save him.

M: A 2006 documentary—Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple—factors greatly into “Leo”.

D: I watched that documentary before I had any idea of writing “Leo”. After watching I knew I wanted to do something with it. The film unnerved me quite a bit, especially the footage leading immediately up to the shootings on the Port Kaituma air strip. Watching I thought, I know what’s going to happen, but they don’t. And with Leo Ryan I thought, I am watching a dead man, or a man who’s about to die. He’s alive now, in a sense. That also shook me up.

M: The documentary as an outlet for voyeurism….

D: I did have the feeling I shouldn’t be watching this, and that feeling led to the idea of this being a film that had been reviewed and marketed and distributed and sold. And I thought, Can we really criticize this footage? Can these scenes be considered scenes in the fictional sense? What if these scenes could be improved for maximum audience satisfaction and reach?

M: David shows a bit of his own Meritocrat side here, it seems.

D: The way David sees it is that in death Representative Leo Ryan became one of us, an average public citizen, just another victim of Jim Jones and his cult of personality. But there’s tension there as well, seeing as Leo Ryan is one of the better known—if not the best known—of Jim Jones’s victims. That Mr. Ryan remains the only Congressperson murdered in the line of duty cannot be ignored, and the idea that one of these mighty politicians actually put himself out there and descended to our level is something that David wants everyone to know and remember. So much about the Jonestown tragedy has focused on Jim Jones himself or the so-called Killer Kool-Aid. Leo Ryan was known, but in David’s mind he is, like countless other ghosts, at serious risk of fading.

M: We’d like to go back to our initial point: the Meritocrat seems to be more of a character, or a presence, than Leo Ryan. Could this story really be about the Meritocrat? 

D: That story is still to come, but yes, I agree that the Meritocrat is very much a strong character in “Leo”. My intention in writing He Who Shall Remain Shameless was not to hit the reader over the head with the Meritocrat at every turn but rather keep this entity waiting at all times, hovering about, looking for a chance to strike or otherwise meddle in David’s missions. In some stories such as “David” and “Andrew”, the Meritocrat is very much there, seen and heard as well as felt, but in others, such as “Chris” and “Aegeus” and “Alice”, he’s not much of a physical presence at all, and the reader must anticipate the ultimate confrontation, which is what “Leo” sets up in the end.

M: About that ultimate confrontation….

D: We’ll get there, but while researching and writing “Leo” I knew I had to start curving the overall narrative arc more sharply—to move us more quickly in the direction of that big showdown. That’s perhaps the strongest presence of all in “Leo”—the awareness that the major question driving the novel—Will David defeat the Meritocrat, or will the Meritocrat defeat David?—is going to be answered within the next few episodes.