Oliver Broudy's "The Saint": A Single Is Born
In early February, a young New York-based magazine writer named Oliver Broudy sent me a two-year-old, 28,000-word manuscript that eventually became The Saint--a wild narrative ride across two continents by a reporter in search of answers to some deep existential questions.
As thrilled as I was to snag it for Kindle Singles, it made me wonder: how was it possible that an experienced, successful journalist--Broudy was a National Magazine Award finalist--had such an epic, extraordinary piece just laying around the apartment, unpublished and unread?
Broudy tells me that it began with a tip in early 2009 about James Otis, a collector of Gandhi memorabilia who had come to New York to put a few items up for auction. Broudy tried to interest The New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town” in a short, quick version of the story, but got turned down.
"Otis was going back to India afterwards, and I just felt a moral imperative to go with him and follow the tale,” Broudy explained. The result: a compelling disquisition on disillusionment, disappointment and the choices we make, couched in the twists and turns of Otis’s life.
"I came back and just wrote it--the whole story--without an assignment,” Broudy recalls. “And when I realized I’d written 28,000 words, I knew no magazine in America would print it.”
Broudy then tried to re-fashion his reporting into a book proposal. Some publishers passed, and others pushed him to expand his vision to multiple characters. No one wanted The Saint as written.
“At that point,” Broudy said, “I’d sort of resigned myself to the possibility that it would never see the light of day.”
Fortunately, Broudy was wrong.
We’ve published almost 40 Kindle Singles in the last two months--all of them aspiring to shine light on stories worth telling, and on topics of importance. But none has given me greater personal pleasure than to give The Saint a means to find its proper audience, at last, among lovers of sweeping narratives told with eloquence and grace.
--David Blum
Jason on 03/28/2011 at 09:57 AM
I couldn't agree more. "The Saint" is the best Kindle Single I've read so far, an inspiring, funny, thought-provoking essay that stands as a testament to the profile-in-action form of creative nonfiction and that doubles as intimate peek into Broudy's own working out of his existential woes. I hope my review does it at least some rough justice.