Writing is an act of resistance for local novelist
Staff writer
One of the first things Thane Schwartz says about himself is that he doesn’t have long to live.
As he speaks, there is a sandy twang in his voice that is hard to place. He pronounces “thing” like “thang,” and stresses the “T” in “comforted.”
Everything comes out in low tones, as if he’s telling secrets around a fire. He smells medicinal.
The 64-year-old Schwartz has a heart condition. He’s not sure how he got it — possibly by drinking contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, a Marine Corps base in North Carolina, where toxic chemicals were present in the supply for over 30 years.
“I was living on the base from 1965 to 1967,” Schwartz said. “My sister has some stuff going on. My mom’s got a little bit of a thing going on.”
Schwartz hopes he can live 20 more years, but he’s not sure. The condition forced him to retire from his longtime job as a special education teacher in 2020.
It’s what he’s done since then that’s made him a recognized face.
Since 2021, Schwartz has self-published eight books, eclectic works with titles such as “Paper Wolves: The Gaza Files” and “Borehead’s Drift: Rivers, Rapids, and Ripples.”
The novels are wacky and ambitious in their scope.
In “Paper Wolves,” Schwartz spins a tale about a Coloradan priest who discovers a secret Israeli weapons project. In the latter book, he writes for 161 pages from the perspective of a pine borer beetle.
His career as a novelist has helped him find meaning in the face of his disease.
“I kind of made a deal with God a while back that if I bought a bunch of ISBN identification numbers, I’d be able to write enough books to keep me alive for a while,” he says. “I bought 10 of them. I’m at No. 9 now, so I bought 10 more.”
Born in Quantico, Virginia, Schwartz moved roughly every two years as his Marine colonel father was deployed and re-deployed.
His three different high schools were in Virginia, South Carolina, and South Korea.
Motion, Schwartz says, defined him as a person.
“You either acclimate pretty good, or you get really screwed up,” he says. “In my case, I went screwy. My sister went great; I went screwy. But we got it back on the right track.”
Despite having written since a young age and excelling in creative writing classes, Schwartz never took writing seriously as a career.
After graduating from the University of South Carolina, he considered becoming a pastor. But he didn’t like getting up on Sunday mornings and soon scrapped the idea.
Schwartz claims he worked as an actor and male model in Tampa. Considering his chiseled face, straight teeth, and slim profile, it’s easy to believe.
He supplemented the job with whatever other work he could find. Filling in one day as a special needs teacher, he finally felt as if he’d found his calling.
“I just fell in love with them, and went in that direction for the next 30 years,” he said.
Schwartz devoted himself to learning more about the field, earning a special-ed degree from Tabor College and an elementary education degree from Newman University.
His years teaching have influenced his books.
The protagonist of his latest work, “Marion, the Media, and the Morons: Project 2025 Assault on Democracy,” is an American Indian child with Down syndrome living in 1850s Kansas.
“All of my books lately have some kind of a special-needs child or adult character,” Schwartz says.
The child’s story is interwoven with commentary regarding Project 2025, the ultra-conservative wish list that looks to reshape government and implement right-wing societal changes.
The book also includes a retelling of the 2023 raid on the Marion County Record office.
“A lot of my writing is moral messages entwined within a theme, and right now, it kind of follows political lines,” Schwartz said.
He expresses concern about Project 2025 and believes the raid is an example of the initiative taking shape at the local level.
In writing about such issues, he hopes to point out their dangers and hypocrisies.
“Everybody’s scared shitless to do anything about it,” he said. “But at the same time, you’ve gotta keep it light. You don’t want them kicking down your front door.”
His next book will be a sequel to this one as Schwartz continues down the road of political satire.
“It’s a rebuttal to the movement that I see is happening,” he said. “I weave in some people that are in existence today and that could be in existence in the future.”
He worries about the country’s future and even brings up civil war, although he doesn’t see how one could take place.
“People have to go to work,” he says.
Schwartz’s willingness to publish political commentary involving local figures has made him a kind of renegade.
“My girlfriend’s freaking out,” he says. “But when the doctor tells you have so-and-so amount of time left, you either get extremely scared, extremely brave, or extremely stupid, or a couple of the two.”
Asked where he’s religious, Schwartz says: “Not really, no.”
Then, in the next breath: “I love the Father, if that’s what you mean.”
His books all begin with an epigraph from scripture. His inspirations include the books of the Bible, C.S. Lewis, and various speakers on the Eternal Word Television Network.
“I’m not even Catholic, but I do watch that quite a bit,” he said.
When talking politics, Schwartz frequently delves into theology.
“I believe that God puts people in positions of power,” he said. “For instance, the current president. If you read the Book of Job, you could probably understand why he is in that position of power. ”
Perhaps this is all part of life as a full-time author. Schwartz writes from 9 to 5 each day, drinking copious amounts of coffee and listening to classical music or CNN.
“I’ve got a lot of time to think, which is probably not good,” he says.
Writing is essential to his being. Schwartz rarely takes more than a week between finishing a book and starting a new one.
It is, quite literally, what he lives for.
“Hopefully, I’ve got a lot longer to go, a lot more books to write,” he says. “I wake up every day feeling pretty crappy. But if I can get behind the desk and get into one of these characters and get into my book, then I don’t feel so bad.”