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| Author Stephen Vittoria |
With a career rooted in documentary filmmaking and deep human storytelling, Stephen Vittoria turns inward with Christina and the Whitefish, his debut work of fiction. The novel reflects both a lifetime of creative exploration and a willingness to revisit unfinished stories with fresh perspective and emotional depth. In the conversation that follows, Vittoria traces the interesting journey behind the book, exploring its origins, characters, themes of resilience and empathy, and the personal discoveries that emerged along the way.
What sparked
the idea for Christina and the Whitefish? Were there specific memories
or people that shaped its foundation?
No doubt, the project has traveled a long and winding road. Christina and the Whitefish did not start as a novel. In 1990, the distributor of my first fictional film (Lou, Pat & Joe D aka Black & White) had committed to financing my next film—a screenplay entitled “Asbury Park,” which featured an ensemble cast. The terrific actor Danny Aiello (Moonstruck, Do the Right Thing) was slated to play Whitefish, with Daryl Hannah and Peter Horton taking the roles of characters that don’t exist in the novel. Weeks before we were set to turn on the cameras, the financing fell apart. A normal occurrence in the indie film world. While searching for another financier, I rewrote the screenplay with Whitefish as the main character. The revised project was entitled “Whitefish,” and in 1992, a production company in Los Angeles committed to producing. You guessed it, that deal fell apart, too. As a longtime baseball fan, strike three didn’t interest me, so I tossed the unproduced screenplay on the shelf.
Flash forward to 2020 and COVID. Overnight, my production company was at a standstill, and I suddenly had nothing but time—not to mention my favorite old screenplay. For more than a year, I drove to a quiet park in Playa Vista, California, parked under the same Australian willows, and wrote Christina and the Whitefish. Strange reality: I never once opened the screenplay. The arc of the story and the characters were still very much ingrained, and I also didn’t want to be influenced by what I wrote thirty years before. Thankfully, the novel is a much different narrative. The introduction of Christina as a co-equal—and in many ways, a more important character—demanded that I leave the past behind.
The foundation of the novel was shaped by a lifelong embrace of the antiwar movement. Most of my work, both in documentary film and nonfiction writing, has been a geopolitical polemic of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s famous and dire warning: “War is hell.” The big difference with my novel Christina and the Whitefish is that it’s not a political book, but a personal one, a narrative that dives deep and chronicles the lives of two uniquely rare characters.
What
inspired you to dive into self-discovery and personal challenges through
Christina’s story?
I’ve always been inspired by the women’s movement. I’ve always embraced revolutionary movements that fight for human rights. My political education included incredible women like Sojourner Truth, Betty Friedan, Andrea Dworkin, and Angela Davis, who wrote the foreword to my last nonfiction book, Murder Incorporated. I also had the good fortune of interviewing Gloria Steinem for my George McGovern documentary. So, as I prepared to tackle the novel, it became obvious to me that the “Asbury Park/Whitefish” story had way too much testosterone on the page. Clearly, it was a time to say, “Move over, boys… make room for Christina!”
Whitefish is a veteran from the Vietnam War. By 1994, when the novel takes place, his pain and trauma from that war have been somewhat tempered by time, not erased, but tempered. Christina is a recently returning veteran from the first Gulf War—an operation that witnessed more women deployed than any previous American war. Disconnected by time and space, I wanted to bring these two disparate characters together, not unlike two ships that pass in the night. It was important that Whitefish and Christina be separated by just about everything—age, gender, background—because empathy, resilience, healing, and love… and this isn’t romantic love, it’s basic human love and connection… all of it needs to transcend the trappings of society. Their very short journey together, twenty-three-year-old Christina and forty-nine-year-old Whitefish, becomes the journey of two souls, held together by trust and love.
Christina is also gay. She’s been with her partner, Jaime, since high school. It was a wonderful yet scary challenge to write about their relationship without falling back on the tired tropes used by television and film. I’m not a woman, and I’m not gay. I wanted desperately for their relationship to be authentic and true. Once the first draft of the novel was complete, I asked the toughest literary critic I knew, poet and literature professor Kathy Kremins, to read the draft. Kathy is also gay. So, when it came time for our ZOOM chat, I was scared as hell, convinced she’d crucify the work. She smiled, laughed, and said, “Seriously, is there a lesbian inside of you dying to get out?”
I was duly inspired (and relieved!). In fact, Kathy wrote the introductory poem to the book, entitled “Wild West.”
The
boardwalk feels so alive in the novel. What does it mean to you as a writer?
The Asbury Park
boardwalk of 1994 can only be defined as a nightmarish hellscape. No doubt the
reader’s curiosity would wonder, “What was this place like before it crumbled?”
I felt it was important to discuss its lavish past—a past chock-full of stunning
architecture and intriguing, oftentimes bizarre history, one that underscored
its shining moment in time. Ultimately, it was about breathing life into the
abandoned ghosts, helping the reader to experience what Whitefish was so
valiantly trying to save. It’s funny. Many readers not familiar with Asbury
Park have told me they now want to go there.
I also focused on the history because it’s so important to both main characters; therefore, it’s important to the reader. Please indulge me…
In the late 1980s and early 90s, Asbury Park and its boardwalk were the epitome of dystopian America, not unlike the midwestern Rust Belt. But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Asbury Park was a thriving seaside town, attracting wealthy vacationers from Philadelphia, Northern New Jersey, and New York—the boardwalk populated by women in petticoats carrying umbrellas and men strolling in three-piece suits. Truly, the Gilded Age, and very racist, with harsh and malignant segregationist policies firmly in place.
By mid-century, Asbury Park, along with Atlantic City, was one of New Jersey’s two main resort towns. Although, as history rolled into post-war America, tectonic shifts were well underway. The opening of the Garden State Parkway, a superhighway that stretched along the entire coast of New Jersey, now offered tri-state residents easy access to more than 140 miles of sparkling coastline and brand-new resorts—a stark departure from the two aging cities. And then, these same folks discovered air travel—to Florida, the Caribbean, Disneyland, and the world.
During the 1960s and 70s, many sections of Asbury Park resembled a ghost town. There’s a line in the novel that says it all: “Even the parking meters were rusted shut.” By 1990, the boardwalk hit rock bottom. Borrowing Dylan’s term, it was “Desolation Row.” But in my fiction, there was one exception: Whitefish’s “Club Southside”—a venerable oasis of vibrant life and intriguing characters. In a story that is ultimately about the resilience and healing of two human beings, I found the dying backdrop of Asbury Park the perfect canvas for Christina’s colorful redemption, not to mention Whitefish’s revival. This hellish environment also offered a great analogy for the characters’ pain and trauma.
Are there symbols or motifs in the novel you hope readers will pick up on or interpret in their own way?
Absolutely. In fact, I believe that once a novelist releases a fiction into the world, the story is now the shared property of author and reader. Rarely are there wrong interpretations. We all bring our unique sensibilities to a story, giving us the ability for free analysis. Readers have expressed a personal interpretation of certain aspects of the book that I never even thought about but then immediately loved. Christina and the Whitefish offers two very distinct opportunities for symbols that are footloose and fancy-free: one is the appearance of a soaring hawk, a true and important character in the story… and the other is the appearance of painter Edward Hopper in the parking lot of a New Jersey diner, some twenty years after his death. Also, the diner itself is very metaphoric.
If you could visit the world of Christina and the Whitefish, where would you go first, and why?
Easy. Drinking with the gang at Whitefish’s hand-carved bar in the Club Southside, jukebox wailing, trading barbs with Lil Abner, Madam Marie, Joe Fats, the three Texaco brothers, and, of course, Whitefish and Christina. In 1994, this joint was a sanctuary, a loving refuge for lost souls. I fell in love with every inch of this place. When you walk in the front door, you enter an alternative universe to what’s outside, on the boardwalk in Asbury Park.
If you could take Christina to any historical era, which would you pick, and how would she handle it?
I believe that
Christina is an old soul. She could exist in the Roman Empire but standing
right next to the women who challenged the Roman establishment, women like Fulvia, Zenobia, and Agrippina the
Younger. She could hang out with Abigail Adams in colonial Massachusetts or
Angela Davis 1960s Oakland. You get the picture.
If Christina had a personal motto or mantra (even if it’s not in the book), what would it be?
As we discussed earlier, the book is not a political narrative. It’s a personal narrative, although there’s a powerful antiwar thread that runs through it like a main circuit cable. As the story moves into Act Three, Christina would tell her fellow space travelers, “Don’t let the bastards make the unthinkable normal.”
As a writer,
do you feel like you’re learning from your characters as you write, or are you
more their guide?
I’m a very organic writer and absolutely learn from my characters. If you’re truly in sync with the characters as flesh and blood people, you’ll anticipate their needs and desires, what bothers them, what turns them on, how they communicate, and, of course, their dialogue. During the process, I was constantly surprised by twists and turns that I didn’t expect. Some of these were major shifts in tone or structure.
If Christina could meet a character from another book or movie, who would she click with, and what would they talk about?
I love this question, and I immediately thought of “Offred” in The Handmaid’s Tale. Besides Margaret Atwood being one of my favorite novelists, her amazing character of Offred (in the television series, her previous, real name is revealed as “June”) is courageous yet struggles with constant fear, like Christina. Offred has haunting memories of her recent past life, before tragedy, before trauma, like Christina. Offred demonstrates great intelligence, resilience, and the innate ability for survival against debilitating odds, just like Christina. Atwood’s protagonist exhibits active empathy for the others also oppressed in Gilead’s draconian system. Indeed, Offred’s been stripped of her previous identity. In many ways, Christina suffers a similar fate.
I do not doubt that Christina would join ranks with Offred and the other handmaidens, fighting back for their agency and rights in the repressive and über-patriarchal society known as Gilead. They’d discuss the meaning of independence, of freedom, and together, how they could bust apart the chains that bind. I also think they’d agree that Whitefish is a cool guy and that the Club Southside has terrific food.
More on Stephen
Vittoria: https://stephenvittoria.com/
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