Steven Pressfield is the award-winning author of more than twenty books, including “Gates of Fire,” “The War of Art” and the novel, “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” which was adapted into the film of the same name by director Robert Redford.
Having first encountered Mr. Pressfield in the early aughts through his novel “Gates of Fire,” I reached out to him in an attempt to have him speak at the NYPD Academy. Although this never came to pass, we have stayed in touch as professional acquaintances, and I’m honored he agreed to this interview.
Mr. Pressfield, you were in the Marine Corps as a young man. Did that training affect your mindset as a writer?
100%. The secret in any creative field is to just keep going. If you can keep showing up every day, you will succeed on your own terms in the end. That’s basically what the Marine Corps drills into your skull at Parris Island. No matter how bad it gets, just keep going.
Due to its themes of courage, loyalty and leadership, your novel “Gates of Fire,” which recounts the Battle of Thermopylae, has been taught at West Point, Annapolis and Quantico. How do you see these same themes and lessons applying to police work?
I actually have a short book called “The Warrior Ethos” that applies equally well. Police work, as opposed to vigilante violence, is about a code of honor. Physical force must be applied within a framework of self-restraint. The police are serving the public, not beating them into submission. That’s the difference between police protection and a police state.
The way the ancient Greeks fought, in a phalanx, straight up, shield against shield, was highly regimented. It wasn’t a slugfest where anything goes. You played by the rules. The gods were watching, as were your father, uncle, brother and son, also right there in the same phalanx with you. It was force applied but within the boundaries of law and honor.
In “The War of Art” you lay out a plan of battle for artists, entrepreneurs and anyone attempting to learn or improve a skill. You identify their common enemy as Resistance. Please talk a little about the concept of Resistance.
You’re a writer, Joe. You know that the instant you sit down at the keyboard, an invisible negative force radiates up at you from the blank page. That’s Resistance with a capital R, as I define it. Nobody teaches you about this in school. Resistance’s sole job is to stop us from doing our work, from following our dream, from becoming the artist and person we were born to be.
I don’t care how talented you are. If you can’t find a way to defeat your own internal demons of self-sabotage, procrastination, fear, self-doubt, tendency to distraction, perfectionism, in other words Resistance, you will never get anywhere. It’s like golf. The mental game. I call it the war of art because it’s the war inside our heads, and we ourselves are our own worst enemy.
I have heard Ryan Holiday, the popularizer of Stoic philosophy, reference your work, and you his. Similar to what my training officers used to say, Mr. Holiday speaks of Ego as the enemy. As a Marine, what advice might you have to members of law enforcement in regards to Resistance and Ego in these times of diminishing respect for authority?
Again, I have no experience in law enforcement, but Ego, self-importance, fear of failure, the need to win, seems to me the enemy of true police service. A clash on the street, it’s not about the officer sent to restore order. It’s about the wider context. What is the fight about? How can we de-escalate it? What is justice in this particular case? And is that always the desired end, or are there times when empathy, understanding and plain street-smarts need to be applied to bring about a solution?
Many in the law enforcement community enjoy the game of golf. Your golf novel “The Legend of Bagger Vance” was inspired by the Bhagavad Gita, part of an epic Hindu poem that addresses themes of loyalty and courage in a time of war. Talk a bit about how you saw similarities between the game itself, the course of play and the field of battle.
Golf, as anyone who takes it up comes to understand very quickly, is a mental game. Everybody chokes. Everybody loses their cool. Everybody melts down. Golf teaches you to steer a middle course between fiery competitiveness and a relaxed, it’s-just-a-game frame of mind. That sweet spot is elusive, but it’s great if and when you can find it.
I’m not a cop, but I imagine police work is a lot like that. You can’t simply overpower the game. You have to respect it. Not even Tiger wins every time.
One last question. What’s in the pipeline?
I have a recurring character in my books, Telamon of Arcadia, a mercenary of the ancient world whom I would define as the ancient-world equivalent of Clint Eastwood’s man with no name. A couple of years ago, I wrote a book called A Man at Arms. Telamon was the star of that one. I have a follow-up coming next June called The Arcadian, and I’m working on a follow-up to that follow-up right now.
To give you a nutshell idea of this character’s point of view, here are two quotes from him:
“It is one thing to study war, and another to live the warrior’s life.”
“This life is the only one that exists. Learn its rules and obey them. That is true philosophy.”
