What Are You Working On?
Writers on their works in progress

Joshua Davis

journalist

Wired contributing editor Joshua Davis (website) has spent the past few years of his life competing in the world's most outlandish competitions. He began with the US Armwrestling Nationals where he lost every single match but ended up fourth (out of four) in the lightweight division. That earned him a spot on Team USA and sent him to Poland for the World Armwrestling Championships. The Underdog, his book about becoming an internationally ranked armwrestler (as well as a sumo wrestler, matador, and backward runner), is now available from Random House. See the book's own website. 20th Century Fox is adapting the book into a film starring Jon Heder (Napolean Dynamite).

His April 2005 Wired story "La Vida Robot" is also being adapted into a movie by Warner Brothers (Josh is an executive producer) and will be anthologzied in the forthcomingBest American Technology Writing.

In 2003, he covered the Iraq war for Wired from U.S. Central Commmand in Qatar, Forward Command in Kuwait and the Iraqi desert south of Baghdad.

photo: Ed Kashi

Your bio, which says you tried being an arm wrestler, sumo wrestler, and so on, suggests the term "participatory journalism" and reminds me of George Plimpton, whose books about trying various professional sports were best-sellers. Are you familiar with Plimpton's work?

I often think that I'm continuing down the path he laid. Where he did all the big league sports, I've been involved in overlooked and marginalized ones. I think there are very different lessons to be learned when you are dealing with people who do a sport as a hobby. I'd argue that their intensity for their game is more intense than the pro athlete because it's an object of desire -- something they would like to do all the time but can't. So it becomes infused with this great passion.

Most of the sports mentioned in your bio are pretty macho -- arm wrestling, bull fighting. So is covering a war. Did your experiences teach you something about maleness and being macho?

Yeah, arm wrestling in particular. I've always been a skinny guy who wears glasses. But now, all of a sudden, I was a member of the US arm wrestling team and hanging out with seriously muscled guys. They didn't know what to think of me. But I am pretty single minded - I bulked up, lifted weights, and trained at an arm wrestling training gym in Houston. I put a lot into it and felt like I could hold my head up in the end. Hey, half the battle is the swagger, right? Well, with my team USA jacket and the support of the other team members, I got a little of that swagger down.

But how did that play when you went to cover the war? I'm guessing that, in Iraq, more than "half the battle was the swagger."

There actually wasn't a lot of swagger in me during the war - I was generally very scared. In Kuwait, I was terrified of being bombed and in Iraq, it was just very intense and stressful. I wasn't bravely marching around - I tried to keep my head low. That seemed like the smartest thing to do.

At one point though I got into a fix. I hitched a ride with a convoy of supply trucks returning from Baghdad to Kuwait. Unfortunately, they were short-staffed, and I was placed in the last vehicle with an M-16 and a radio. My job was to maintain communication with the lead vehicles. If there was a problem, I was to radio it in -- "And if there's shooting, you'd better shoot back," the grizzled sergeant told me. I refused to take the gun, replying that I was a noncombatant. "We'll see about that," he said. Our empty convoy did not come under fire (though we were shot at the day before), but every time we pulled over to fix a broken-down truck, I had to consider what I would do if it did.

Are you seeking out other similarly hard-driving activities, or are you going to try something else for a while?

I'm competing in the Air Guitar regionals on May 11 here in SF. But I've never heard of anyone getting hurt doing that. My big new frontier is making movies. I'm executive producing these two studio films and have also been asked to direct a Bollywood musical in southern India. But the film biz has always been a wild and unpredictable world so I keep myself busy writing magazine articles and books and trying to do fun things.

You recently wrote a story for Wired about the Cistercian monastery in Wisconsin that supports itself by refilling and selling printer catridges. Speaking of being macho, I guess their whole level of silence and isolation can be pretty physically and mentally challenging too -- in a way, a religious version of being macho.

I've always been attracted to the spiritual life and the idea of struggling to get closer to meaning. Asceticism is probably the most competitive form of it. There's the one-up-manship: I'll go for two days without food -- Oh, yeah? I'll go for three. Giving more and more up for God becomes a competition.

For me, spiritual Olympics were always about meditation. I grew up in San Francisco and started meditating when I was 10. I pushed myself very hard though my early 20s to keep to a regular schedule and never miss a day. It built up a lot of guilt - if I missed a day, I made a notation in my journal and felt bad about it. My meditation teacher told me that missing one day is the equivalent of erasing seven days of meditation. At this point, I've missed enough days to wipe out any progress I made in the decade I meditated consistently.

What are you working on now?

I'm writing a book review for the LA Times. I tell you, I find it really nerve-wracking to write a review. It's my first -- so far I've only been on the receiving end of a review. I accepted the assignment because it was something I'd never done before and it seemed like I should try all genres of writing at least once. But, for me anyway, it's not comfortable to pass judgement on other writer's work. I'm spending more time on this than I have on a lot of other things this week. I really want it to be fair, in both the positives and negatives. All of which may make me a shitty reviewer. I don't think I'm cut out for it.

What Are You Working On? Writers on their works in progress

Joshua Davis

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What Are You Working On?
Writers on their works in progress