A Craft Essay by Bev Boisseau Stohl
Writing About Another (Who’s a Public Figure!) Without Malicious Intent

Working and traveling with my boss was easy—easy, that is, compared to writing about him. Noam Chomsky, a man I call simply Noam, is a public figure, a world-renowned professor of linguistics, a lecturer and author, a critic of US foreign policy, an activist, and a teller of truth. He is also a private person. Therein lies the rub.

In 1993 I took what was to be a simpler job working as Noam Chomsky’s assistant and office manager. I planned to stay only a few years, just until I finished a master’s degree and then left to work as a psychotherapist. When I burned out of psych studies after only two years, I decided to stay put for a while and focus on my writing. In 2012, having found personal meaning in my job supporting Noam’s work, and traveling with him to Italy, I developed a blog. There I published stories about our individual and shared journeys, and our unpredictable correspondence, scheduled visitors, and uninvited guests. 

We enjoyed twenty-four years working together before Noam accepted a faculty position in Arizona in late 2017. During my own retirement that followed, I had time to work on expanding my blog into a memoir, Chomsky and Me (O/R Books, 2023). But at first, with no new work adventures to blog about, I enrolled in a memoir writing class at Boston’s Grub Street. The usual book creation struggles ensued – what is the arc, which scenes fit my themes (what were my themes?), how to craft the book – and for me, which blog posts would make the best book chapters. I spent two years writing and editing, workshopping, and re-editing, excited to see the book taking shape. 

In 2019, I hit a roadblock, which lead to writer’s block. I had hoped to have my book in the hands of a publisher by then but instead discovered the most difficult challenge of writing a book about the well-known man I had come to know off the unintended pedestal his followers had placed him on. Input from a new set of beta readers and two paid editors questioned which details of my stories could safely be shared with the public, and which were too private or personal. 

I would obviously not share information about Noam’s health and family issues, but the line between personal and private was sometimes blurry. With each new round of manuscript edits, even while always considering how Noam might feel about my sharing each anecdote, I frequently asked myself: What is the dividing line between what I can reveal, and what should be excluded? 

In letters and emails, Noam freely wrote to friends, colleagues, and other long-time correspondents about his rare breaks from work to sail on the pond or motor across Cape Cod Bay with family and friends. Later, he wrote about the illness and death of Carol, his first wife of sixty years. I drove often to Noam’s home during the last year of her life to pick up materials, drop off mail, letters, and groceries, plan office and travel schedules, change a battery in a beeping smoke alarm. After radiation treatments, Noam and his family struggled to witness the diminishing of Carol’s usually vibrant, athletic self as she declined. One late morning I let myself quietly into his house. Holding a small Winnie the Pooh balloon on a stick, I tiptoed toward the dining room where Noam was, coincidentally, reading to Carol from The House at Pooh Corner, a book they had read to their children years before, a welcome comfort to them now. Without a glance, Noam touched my arm and continued reading, likely thinking I was his wife’s caregiver. When I whispered hello, he looked up and saw me holding the balloon, and soon we were both in tears. I later found it difficult to write about this moment, for several reasons. 

I had already shared a few key chapters with Noam, and he’d expressed faith in my discretion, encouraging me to keep writing. But still, was this revealing scene mine to divulge? My confusion and conflicted thinking over this personal/private dilemma persisted for months, stalling my writing process. Luckily, MIT’s Employee Assistance Program offered me a legal consultation—with a lawyer who was familiar with Noam’s work. I emailed him the scenes I questioned and a day later, he called to say that my writing seemed to come from a place of kindness and compassion, without malicious intent. This phrase became my mantra, allowing me the freedom to put aside my worries about others’ possible negative reactions, and just write.

It wasn’t long before another challenge surfaced. Would finding humor, and even silliness in our MIT work environment detract from the serious, critical nature of Noam’s body of work in academics, human rights, and social justice? Roxy, my chocolate cocker spaniel, caused a few scenes in our suite at the dog-friendly Stata Center. In one chapter, for example, I wrote about her escaping from her nearby bed to claw at a metal trashcan under Noam’s desk in the middle of a filmed interview on the complex Israel-Palestine situation. Making heavy cuts to reduce my page count, I second-guessed this anecdote, and others about Roxy’s MIT escapades, yet recalled Noam’s humor whenever I apologized for my dog’s intrusion: “We need the comic relief here!” 

Humor had become an integral part of our relationship, as shown in this excerpt. 

“Huzzah!” Noam wrote when I said I was ready to return to work [after suffering a concussion driving home from work one stormy winter eve]. 

I replied, “One more thing. We have the gold letters J-O-Y hanging on our living room wall. I nailed them up two years ago at Christmas and never took them down; I figured the world needs more joy. This morning, Laura hit the J with her head and knocked it off while opening a window, leaving O-Y. OY to the world. Probably more appropriate. 

Noam replied, “Oy. I hope Laura doesn’t have a concussion. Maybe she was jealous of yours and wanted an injury to match.” 

Another:

“Did I tell you how my nephew David once fixed my home printer?” he asked.

I offered my most obvious answer. “He plugged it in?” 

Noam: “Nope, easier.”

Me: “Pressed the power button?” 

Noam: “Nope, even easier than that.”

Me: “He touched the printer?” (That had to be it.) 

Noam: “You’re not even trying.”

Me: “OK, Uncle! I give up.”

Noam: “He walked into the room and looked at it, and it started printing.” He grinned, and I shook my head, fishing for a comeback, not to be outdone.

“I’m going to do something even more amazing the next time your printer isn’t working,” I said, taking his bags from him so he could remove his coat.

“What will you do? Just think about it?” he said, hanging his coat on the rack.

That was my plan—he had outsmarted me.

I can confirm, as many writers have reported, what is at the center of our writing is often revealed after publication. When I read my book after publication, I saw that Noam had been intentional in sharing his humor with me, and to many correspondents—his way of softening the hard truths of the world.

Also central to my desire to tell our story was revealing the Noam Chomsky most of the world didn’t know, the person beyond the icon. If Noam Chomsky had a sense of humor—if he searched rock crevices for monsters while walking to the pond with children, if he planted sticks in the sand with them, replacing them with larger branches while they slept (insisting the sticks had grown overnight)—then followers who read and even idolized him could give themselves permission to spend more time enjoying themselves and their families, rather than burning out. This was another balancing act for me—showing him as a sometimes-vulnerable human being without downplaying his massive accomplishments and fierce dedication to truth and democracy. 

Noam has never been interested in being the center of attention, but his work was another matter. So, asking him to read some of my writing was tricky, especially since I didn’t want to highlight any negative emails or uncomfortable interactions that invariably came his way as a public figure. 

I showed him an early draft of a piece called “Staple Gun Control” about a (disturbed) man who showed up unexpectedly on a day when Noam was working from home. The man saw that I was nervous, and wielded a heavy-duty staple gun over my head, whispering, “If I wanted to hurt you, Bev, I would hit you with this.” Noam remembered the incident, and hearing my story worried him, but only on my behalf. Then he sat back and added, “You have stories to tell, and you write well. Keep at it.” 

I later showed him another story, which ended up as my first book chapter, about a Sufi who visited our office in 2012; this occurred during the time I was questioning my decision to stay with Noam rather than becoming a therapist. The Sufi proclaimed that working with Noam was my bliss. I shared with Noam some of my writings about the Sufi, and from then on, when he wrote to Noam for advice or to ask for a political statement, Noam would announce, “I heard again from your Sufi.” 

Whenever I wondered whether I was doing him and his body of work justice, I reminded myself of two things. First, my mantra: “I never write with malicious intent.” The writing flowed more easily without that added self-editing layer. And second, Noam strongly endorsed free speech, so why would he question my writing, even if he was a significant main character?

Even as I began to query agents in 2020, three years after my retirement, I continued to protect Noam’s time and privacy. My private editor pitched my book project to a potential publisher who wanted to contact Noam to ask whether he approved of my book. This is when I made another rookie mistake. I asked why he would need Noam’s permission, since Noam was a leading advocate of freedom of speech. I didn’t hear back and got back to pitching. 

Soon enough however, I realized others—prospective agent, potential publisher—might also want to know if Noam was okay with my writing about him. I talked with my editor again, and he agreed that it might be helpful to get Noam’s permission up front. 

Around the same time, I learned I would be undergoing open-heart surgery, and I figured I would write Noam to tell him, slipping in a request for his permission for me to publish this book while I had his sympathies. When he agreed, I realized how worried I had been about publishing our shared stories. Now I could turn my worries toward my health. 

The next spring, 2022, my editor and I agreed that I had a final draft. He pitched the book to the same publisher, O/R Books, that had originally wanted to contact Noam for permission. I got the call on my May birthday: O/R would publish my book. This marked the end of three long and wild adventures—working with Noam, writing my blog, and editing my stories into a book, and querying agents and publishers. I never did find an agent, and I’m still not sure whether that was a mistake. Marketing from 2023 through the present continues to be my fourth adventure. Noam, now 96, suffered a stroke in 2023, and my marketing talks and slide show now keep our memories close. 

In the end, I feel I did my due diligence in showing Noam’s vulnerability and humanness, and my own. I don’t think my book would have the same emotional impact on my readers without these personal stories, and without showcasing Noam’s humor. One of the reasons we read is to know we’re not alone, so why not reveal that even world-renowned people can vulnerable and soft-hearted? That laughing about the comedies of life can remind others to find lightness, especially during dark times. 

Bev Boisseau Stohl is a nonfiction writer with published essays in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the MIT Press, Brevity Blog, and other publications. She has interviewed with Reddit (AMA), Open Source radio, The Boston Globe, Current Affairs Magazine, CounterPunch, Green and Red Podcast, and others. Chomsky and Me was long-listed for the 2024 Mass Book Awards. She lives in Watertown with her wife and rescued pets. Learn more about her memoir here.