In-Depth Interview

Lawrence Wright on Going Clear: Reporting on Scientology, America’s most insular — and misunderstood — religion

In case you missed the New York Times profile and book review, the Washington Post’s book review, the Atlanticdebacle or the Rock Center segment, Austin-based Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lawrence Wright’s new book, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief was released last week.

The book’s publication comes almost two years after Wright’s article, “The Apostate: Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology,” appeared in the New Yorker. The article, which won the National Magazine Award for Reporting, examines the film director’s decision to leave the church after a 34 year membership. It received an unprecedented amount of attention, due in part to Haggis’s notoriety and Wright’s ability to penetrate the seemingly impenetrable Church of Scientology.

In Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief, Wright continues his examination of the church: its history, its practices and its ability to attract some of the most powerful people in Hollywood.

Ahead of Wright’s Austin appearances on KLRU’s Overheard with Evan Smith and his book signing event at BookPeople, CultureMap chatted with the journalist about his new book, the Church of Scientology and why he writes about religion.

CultureMap: Last week, the New York Times published a profile about you in which you said, “I’m fascinated by it and by what drives people to Scientology, especially given its image.” You’re obviously not alone, based on the amount of attention Going Clear has received. What do you think is so compelling about Scientology?

Lawrence Wright: Well, it’s fascinating. When I did the New Yorker story, I knew I was interested but I didn’t know [if the public would be]. Monday it came out and by Wednesday it had been downloaded two million times. It’s an unsatisfied curiosity — a little threatening.

Most people believe that Scientology is a wacky cult and no sane person would be associated with it. Then you have Paul Haggis, a creative, smart, successful member of the church for 34 years and it’s unsettling. That’s why I was drawn to Paul as a central character. I wanted people to understand what drew people in.

CM: You’ve written about the Amish, al-Qaeda and Scientology, among others. As a writer, what drives you to seek out such insular groups?

LW: I think most of us believe we lead rational lives. Yet, religion is by its nature so irrational. It seems at war with how life is run, how we order our existence. Some of the profound differences between cultures are just religious differences. They’re not racial. They’re beliefs. That fascinates me.

Scientology seems particularly unusual. It aroused my interest. To be honest, I’ve never dived into such an obscure world with a different language. As you delve into higher levels, there is a hostility towards the outside world.

CM: In 1993, the Internal Revenue Service declared the Church of Scientology a religious group and therefore tax-exempt. Do you classify Scientology as a religion?

LW: It doesn’t matter what I think. There is only one entity that matters and it’s the IRS. Everything else is common theory. I am uncomfortable with how they obtained [the exemption]. They set forth so many lawsuits and part of the deal was that the lawsuits would be dropped. That concerns me. In any case, the question of whether if it’s a religion or a cult, the language is misleading.

Yes, it has cultic aspects. [It has] a charismatic leader and people draw away from society. But that [can be] true of mainstream religions. It also has characteristics of religion because people believe in it. I try not to spend a lot of time classifying it.

CM: Going Clear has received a lot of attention because the child abuse you claim the Church of Scientology perpetuates. Was that the most surprising thing you uncovered?

LW: I knew about the physical abuse inside the church. I wasn’t surprised by that. But [what] really surprised me and disturbed me is how children were recruited into the clergy. And they sacrifice everything. They sign billion-year contracts at an age [when] they can’t make these decisions. And they’re pushed into really hard labor.

Haggis said it’s like the child slaves he sees in Haiti during his charity trips. I’m puzzled by how that continues to happen. The church says it obeys all child labor laws, but I think they’re exploited. [The children] believe in what the church is offering them. But, I don’t agree that they’re old enough to make those decisions for themselves.

If they decide as adults to walk away, they have no education, they’re impoverished cause they were paid next to nothing. And if they leave, they’ll be forced to disconnect or their family will disconnect from them. Then, they’ll be given a bill usually for hundreds of thousands of dollars. All of that is very disturbing behavior on the part of the church.

CM: As a journalist, how do you reconcile that the First Amendment, which gives the press protection under the Constitution, is the same amendment that guarantees the protection to religion and, therefore, protects the Church of Scientology?

LW: I’m preoccupied by that very thing. The First Amendment is a great thing. I would hate to be a reporter in a country that was unable to have the freedom of press and speech that we have. Yet, it covers freedom of religion as well. In Britain, my publisher backed down [from publishing Going Clear because of the U.K.’s strident anti-libel laws].

I’ve been asked by the PEN American Center to go to Britain and talk to members of Parliament because this is exactly the damage those laws do. In terms of flows of information, it stops it. My publisher [in the United States] is not afraid of these threats and we’ve gotten lots of them. I am fortunate to be in this country, with these protections and a publisher that is willing to stand up.

CM: The Church of Scientology has a history of using intimidation to combat negative press. Were you at all worried about that when you started writing Going Clear that they would go after you?

LW: I try not to think about that. You’ll scare yourself away from a good story. And this was a really good story. That’s what I was put here to do: Tell stories.

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Lawrence Wright's KLRU taping is Friday, January 25. He will appear at BookPeople on Monday, January 28.

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Between the Covers

Texas author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores family secrets in Oleander Girl

Photo by Murthy Divakaruni

Novelist Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is a professor at the University of Houston.

In Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's new novel, Oleander Girl, a young Indian woman's engagement ceremony is shattered when the grandfather who raised her falls mortally ill. With this tragedy, family secrets and lies are suddenly revealed, and she soon discovers that she is not the person she always believed herself to be. Only in the United States can she find the truth about her identity.

Before embarking on a multi-city reading tour, Divakaruni, the award-winning novelist and University of Houston professor, answered some burning questions for CultureMap. Divakaruni will be speaking and holding a book signing at Book People on April 17.

CultureMap: You dedicated Oleander Girl to your grandfather, with the note that his life inspired the story. Can you talk about that?

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni: I wanted to write about family secrets. I wanted to write about the clashes between the old and new in India. As I was writing, I realized something like this happened in my own family, with my own grandfather.

I had pushed it into my subconscious, because it wasn't something I was happy about. My grandfather was a wonderful man, as far as I was concerned. He was very nice to me always. But as I grew up, I found out he had been quite harsh to his own children. He had disinherited a couple of my uncles.

I realized that the grandfather in this book was based on my own grandfather, to some extent. I hadn't realized that until I was well into the book, and so then I thought: I want to dedicate this to him.

CM: In a previous interview with CultureMap, you described how your novel One Amazing Thing was inspired by your family's experience fleeing Houston during Hurricane Rita. Do you often use your own life experiences as inspiration but then transform those experiences into something new in a novel?

CBD: Yes, I think you're right. There will be something in my life, like with One Amazing Thing — and, in this book, my grandfather — but once I start writing, that goes away and I enter the world of imagination. That space is so much larger, and anything can happen.

If I stay close to my life, then I'm constricted by my life. If I can use whatever was in my life as a bridge to enter the world of imagination, then a book can take off and do whatever it needs to do.

CM: Something unusual about Oleander Girl is that about half of the book is told in first person with Korobi as the narrator, but then the other half is told in third person. What were you trying to achieve by mixing narrators?

CBD: I've always been interested in perspective and points of view. What's so interesting in a story is that the same event appears so different to different people.

A lot of these characters in Oleander Girl just don't see life the same way, and that causes a lot of conflict. But I felt this was really Korobi's story. She is the one discovering things more than anyone else. On one level it's a coming-of-age novel, so I wanted to show her point of view most closely.

CM: In many ways, Korobi's story follows Joseph Campbell's hero's journey model.

CBD: Yes, I love Campbell. I've read him over and over. It's really the hero's journey. She gets a call to adventure. It turns her life upside down. She has to make a decision. She had to leave the familiar world.

CM: Which brings us to the question of setting. Korobi leaves the familiar world of India to venture into the strange, alien world of New York City about a year after 9/11. Why was it important to set the novel in that time?

CBD: I wanted to look, not at the immediate effects [of 9/11], but the other effects that have continued to accrue. How have people's lives changed after the immediate shock of the event?

That's a major theme in Oleander Girl. How do we live together in a world of difference? How do we live together when things like religion and ideology are driving us apart? And I wanted to show that going on both in India and the U.S. In India that's the year of the Gujarat riots, the terrible Hindu/Muslim riots that caused a lot of devastation all over the country.

CM: Did you find that there was any element in the novel that was a departure from some of your previous work?

CBD: One of the things that really interested me in this book is how the action splits. Korobi goes to the U.S., and her fiancé stays in India. Now the action has split, so the challenge then is how is the action going to come back together.

CM: There are points in the novel when Korobi calls home to talk to Rajat, her fiancé, and they still seem to have a strong connection, but it's like they are in two different worlds and talking around each other.

CBD: That's a phenomenon I've experienced. When you're in India and when someone you love a lot is somewhere else, maybe in the United States, it's like you're in different worlds. What's important to you is so far away from them.

I know this because my mother and I would have conversations, and of course I was concerned about her life. But I couldn't really feel what was going on in her life, and she couldn't feel what was going on in mine, even though we loved each other. That was what I was trying to convey.

I hope to show how difficult it is for people who are living in different parts of the world, how difficult it is to communicate. The psychic distance is still a big deal. Even in this time of the internet, miscommunications happen. Distances are created. The human psyche is just a strange animal.

Novelist Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is a professor at the University of Houston.

Photo by Murthy Divakaruni

Novelist Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is a professor at the University of Houston.

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