Who is Joel Finnigan?

 When we started writing Becoming Finnigan way back in the late 20^th Century Joel Finnigan was simply the central character in the story of one man’s quest to live the life he was meant to live. We had no great political, philosophical or artistic statement to make. We just hoped to spin a good yarn.

 

Sam Goldwyn once told the producers of his movies “If you want to send a message, use Western Union.” That’s a bit of advice we’ve clung to over the years. 

But as Becoming Finnigan wound its way through the writing, rewriting and editing process and finally became a real live book, the identity of Joel Finnigan – and Susanna Winslow and Althea Burnside – began emerging from hiding places we didn’t know existed.

At first glance, Joel is a guy working his way through the various stages of his life – his boyhood fears of the Great Depression, the hell of World War II and the social revolutions that followed the war – and trying his damndest to make them mean something. He was a participant and chronicler of what Henry Luce labeled The American Century.

He lived through all of this in hopes of regaining his first and only real love.  

Gradually it began to dawn on us that Joel stood for something else that we did not quite grasp, even as we were opening the box of author’s copies from High Tide Publications and were finally able to hold Becoming Finnigan in our hands.

 Joel was always drawn to the moral strong side of the great issues and events of our time: not “moral” in the sense of following a certain code and keeping his clothes on but the morality of trying to illuminate his times and in so doing, elevate them.

Joel Finnigan symbolizes, to us anyway, the courageous faith and optimism that enabled America to help western civilization hold fast against the forces of darkness and then turn his country against its own dark forces that were holding it back. It’s significant that Joel’s story ends on September 10, 2001, just before real and imagined fears threatened to draw another shroud of darkness over the country to which he had given so much.

It’s a shame, really that Joel Finnigan left the stage on 9/10. It would have been great fun watching him do to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck what he did to Hootie Harlan.