Laura Hillenbrand likes The Smiths

by Thomas Dimopoulos

Right from the start, like a fury of thoroughbreds storming out of the gate, the box office numbers were staggering.
“Seabiscuit” was in more than 2,400 theaters, brought in nearly $50 million and sat perched at the No. 4 spot in the entire country - all in just the first two weeks of its release.

And Laura Hillenbrand, the author of the book "Seabiscuit," is exhausted.

On Tuesday, a CNN film crew came to her Washington, D.C., home to tape an interview. On Wednesday, she spent the afternoon visiting her doctor.
“I stay quiet mostly during the day,” she says. “Although I’ll have like one big punch, a time when I can get some things done.”

Hillenbrand’s debut book, “Seabiscuit,” has lit up the nation ever since its release in 2001, but she has not been physically able to enjoy the accolades coming her way.
Even as the celebrity-filled movie premieres, dazzling galas and literary honors continue, the author who got the whole party started has been living with chronic fatigue syndrome for the better part of the past 16 years.

Completing the book was a task that required all her energies. The result of her efforts has left her physically exhausted.

“To someone on the outside, someone who doesn’t know (about the illness), I seem to be completely normal,” the 36-year-old author says. “But there are other times like today, for instance. Today I went to the doctor’s which took a few hours and now after coming back home, I just get really tired.”

She has lived nearly half her life with CFS. It is a disability that renders her housebound for lengthy periods of time.
Predating her illness is a lifelong affinity for horses. As a child she rode them, and as an adult, she began writing about them. She began publishing articles in the late 1980s, while in her early 20s.

Hillenbrand’s focus included everything from thoroughbred racing and veterinary medical topics to investigative horse stories. She remembers first coming across a photograph of Seabiscuit when she was a little girl.
Her book on the unlikely champion and the equally unlikely cast of characters-turned-heroes is one of those beautifully synchronized moments in life when the perfect story is told at exactly the right time.

So staggeringly awesome is the popularity of Hillenbrand’s “Seabiscuit: An American Legend,” it would be difficult to find anyone from California to the New York islands that hasn’t either been touched, or at the very least heard about the story of that horse.

More than two years after its release, the original hardcover publication continues to count among the top 10 most popular nonfiction books in the country.
Both the mass market paperback and the larger trade soft cover edition each sit at the very top of their respective categories - number one in the nation - dwarfing otherwise perennial chart-toppers Nora Roberts, Tom Clancy and the late Dr. Robert Atkins.
The recently released film “Seabiscuit” - for which the author was a consultant - has brought in more than $50 million and is one of the most popular movies in North America.

Hillenbrand clearly remembers the day she was first stricken ill.

It was a Sunday night in March 1987. She was 19 years old.
Initially, it came on as “an intense wave of nausea,” she wrote in an article published in “The New Yorker” in early July. Hillenbrand continually battled illness and fatigue while completing the article.
“That New Yorker piece took two years to write,” she says.

That initial episode in 1987 was the beginning of the disabilities that would plague her, forcing her to drop out of college, return to her mother’s home and undergo examination from physicians to psychiatrists, all the while enduring the social shunning from people who did not understand what CFS was.
It came during a time that should have been otherwise innocent and carefree.

She was enrolled in classes at Kenyon College, making friends, deciding the path her life would take and enjoying her music.

“What kind of music?” she was asked.

“I listened to a lot of what used to be known called ‘progressive’, but I guess now they call it alternative,” she says. “I liked bands like the Cure and some of the more ‘pop’ kind of things, like The Police and Lloyd Cole and the Commotions - I liked them a lot.”
The memories of Cure front man Robert Smith and his mopey black eyeliner draws a chuckle from Hillenbrand.

“I’d also listen to The Smiths a lot,” she says.

The British post-punk quartet were among the coolest college scene makers of the 1980s.
Their songs “Panic” and “There is a Light That Never Goes Out” could be heard streaming out campus windows from vinyl-draped turntables and then-new CD players.

“Take me out tonight/Where there’s music and there’s people/ And they’re young and alive,” sang The Smiths’ young lead singer, whose name was Morrissey, and was the next generation’s new Elvis:
“Take me out tonight/ Because I want to see people and I want to see life ... There is a light and it never goes out.”

“Public Gets First Chance At Man o’ War Yearlings Thursday” reads the headline across the top of the sports page of The Saratogian on Tuesday, Aug. 4, 1936. Across the side of the page is the “Saratoga Chart” - a listing of the previous day’s races that details Seabiscuit’s victory of the day’s fifth race.
Scarcely more than a footnote at the time, the event would prove to be a major development. At Saratoga that day were Charles and Marcella Howard. It was the first time they would see Seabiscuit race.

“The Howards were in Saratoga to attend the yearling sales on Bing Crosby’s behalf,” Hillenbrand says.
While in town the couple decided to attend some of the races as well.

“The sale of Seabiscuit wasn’t at a public auction,” Hillenbrand says, referring to the headline. “It was a private sale.”
It is, coincidentally, nearly 67 years to the day that Charles Howard visited the racecourse paddock area, wrote out a check, and presented the newly purchased Seabiscuit to his wife, Marcella.

The horse had run twice at Saratoga the summer before, both times unsuccessfully. Returning in August of 1936, however, Seabiscuit triumphed in races on Aug. 3 and Aug. 10. They were the last competitions that Seabiscuit would run under the ownership of the Wheatley Stable. For his next race, the horse would be introduced to “Red” Pollard.

“He was a courageous person,” Hillenbrand says, citing Pollard as an inspiration for her to forge ahead with the book.
“Red and I have a lot in common. Our bodies are our main obstacles, and I identify with him a lot,” she says.
Despite physical obstacles and competitive odds, Pollard and Seabiscuit together would triumph.

Overcoming conflict is a major part of the Seabiscuit story, and Hillenbrand says her goal was to write it in a way that would be appeal to both racing fans and to the general public. She says that financial success wasn’t her primary goal. Doing the best job she could with the work was.

“I really didn’t think about how the book would do (commercially),” she says. “I was not emotionally wedded to it being a big success, but I was wedded to the idea of it being done well. That’s what I concentrated on and where my focus was at the end of the day when I went to sleep at night.”

While Saratoga Springs played a role in Seabiscuit’s journey, and Hillenbrand’s book has set the Spa City abuzz since its release, regrettably, she says, she hasn’t been able to make it to Saratoga.
In 1991, there was an ill-fated attempt to visit the Spa City, but during the 10-hour ride, her condition worsened and forced her to return to home half-way through the journey. As a result of the trip, it would be four years until she would feel well enough to write again.
She is, however, well known and respected in the area.

“I haven’t been able physically to make it to Saratoga,” Hillenbrand says, “but I have a lot of friends there.”
On July 31, Hillenbrand was honored by the Teresian House with the “Teresian Literary Achievement Award,” which jockey Jerry Bailey accepted on her behalf. And she has an ongoing relationship with the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.

“She is a great person to work with and has done a lot to revitalize interest in the history of racing,” says Kate Cravens, a curator at the museum.
It is a reciprocal relationship. Hillenbrand was aided in her research for the book, as well as for the newly published illustrated edition which cites Cravens, curator of collections Lori Fisher and other members of the museum in its introduction for their assistance.

“We did a major Seabiscuit exhibit that opened in July 2001, shortly after the book came out, and Laura had loaned many items. She had original newspapers from the 1930s and advertisements and things like games that featured Seabiscuit,” Cravens says. “Laura has many friends here.”

Alongside Hillenbrand’s success has also come a lot of publicity for CFS, placing the writer in a role as something of an unofficial spokesperson for the disease.

“I chose that role,” she says decidedly. “I used to sit there and wish that there was someone with credibility that could speak about it and to help people understand what it was. I realized, when the book went to No. 1, that I was in the position of being that person. I could be the one to speak out on their behalf.”

As for the future, she is non-committal.

“I have an idea of what I may be working on in the future, but I’m not telling anybody yet,” she says. “I have a terrible problem with vertigo, and lately I have been pushing myself extremely hard.”

Success has also brought her some financial security that has enabled her to arrange her living environment into a more user-friendly space.
“I live in a house that has been renovated in a way that is easier for me to use. There is a refrigerator upstairs, so I don’t have to go down the stairs all the time and a balcony just outside my office, so I can go outside.”

The wooden staircase is a challenge at times, particularly with her vertigo. She keeps boxes filled with cereal next to her computer which sits on a desk near the balcony window.
She is thankful that she has been able to do the renovations, although “I am certainly not wealthy,” she says. “It’s just that before (the book), we were really in trouble with money.”

Shortly after the book’s release in the summer of 2001, as the screenplay for the film was being put together, she responded to inquiries on the New York Racing Association message board questioning who she would like to see cast in the film’s lead roles.
Names like Sean Penn, Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall were bandied about.

“Oh we would play around, like, ‘Oh, who would you like to see in it?’ and we’d throw some names around,” she says. “But as soon as I heard who was in it, I couldn’t have been happier with the casting of the roles. And after watching their performances - I am doubly happy.”

While unable to attend Seabiscuit’s theatrical premiere, she did view an early version of the film in comfortable surroundings.

“They brought it right into my living room, and we sat and watched it,” she says.
And? “I was very excited watching it,” she says. “I love it. It’s really good.”

Hillenbrand knows, better than most perhaps, what courage combined with perseverance can accomplish. In the meantime, the races continue.
“Oh yes,” she says adamantly, as to whether the horse racing bug is still with her. “I continue to follow horse racing obsessively. And yes, I am following Funny Cide.”

As for those “dark days,” there is always The Smiths, on an infinite loop in a memory in time.
“There is a light and it never goes out,” they sing. “There is a light and it never goes out ...”


published in The Saratogian, Aug. 10, 2003