美国国家公共电台 NPR Documentarian Says 'Anarchist Cookbook' Author Was Filled With Remorse

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

If you've been around long enough, you have seen this book - black cover, blocky white letters, instructions for making your own explosives inside. "The Anarchist 1 Cookbook" was first published 45 years ago. And it comes with this warning.

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WILLIAM POWELL: Keep in mind that the topics written about here are illegal and constitute a threat. Also, more importantly, almost all the recipes are dangerous. This book is not for children or morons 2.

MCEVERS: That's the man who wrote the cookbook, William Powell. He was 19 years old at the time. It was the height of protests against the Vietnam War. And since then, "The Anarchist Cookbook" has sold more than 2 million copies.

Now there's a new documentary about William Powell by filmmaker Charlie Siskel. And he spent a long time with Powell, asking him if he feels remorse 3 about creating something that was later used by people to commit violence. Siskel stopped by the studio the other day, and I asked him how he first got interested in William Powell.

CHARLIE SISKEL: Well, I'd been familiar with the book...

MCEVERS: As so many people are, yes.

SISKEL: ...In the '70s and '80s growing up. And it was notorious. It was the kind of thing that kids in the suburbs had to get their parents angry. And I imagine none of the people who had it growing up that I knew had any plans to use it in any way. It was just sort of a - kind of a cult 4 status thing. But the book was associated with the Columbine shootings and has been associated, sadly, with a number of school shootings and incidents.

So I was aware of the legacy 5 of the book. And it got me wondering about the author. And so I started to do some research about him and saw that he had written a couple of public statements but had pretty much vanished. And so I was interested in trying to track him down and hear what he had to say.

MCEVERS: And so how did you first get in touch with him? And how did you convince him, Powell, to talk to you?

SISKEL: Well, I reached out to him. I just tracked him down. And I talked to him about what interested me about his story, the parallels between his story, writing this book at age 19, and, you know, creating a kind of Frankenstein's monster, something that he was unable to control after creating it because the book, I imagined, haunted him throughout his life.

MCEVERS: And what did you find out? I mean, who was the 19-year-old Bill Powell, the man who wrote this book?

SISKEL: Well, Bill was an angry young man, and with reason. I think Bill, like a number of kids who have gone on to commit acts of violence, usually males, was sort of let down by the adult world. There were people who could have been role models - teachers, for example - who were abusive toward Bill. And he was bullied 6 as a kid.

MCEVERS: And then he went on to do something very different with his life, didn't he? What did he go on to do?

SISKEL: He did. I would say, you know, Bill sort of redeemed 7 himself. He went to college and then became a teacher. He himself started working with kids who had emotional problems, kids who suffered from ADD and ADHD. And he worked in schools around the world.

MCEVERS: A lot of the film, while telling his story, is also this dialogue between the two of you and going back and forth 8 a lot about how he feels now. How - does he feel responsible? And there's this one exchange I want to play.

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POWELL: There is a sense of while I do feel responsible, I didn't do it. Somebody else - somebody else with a perverted 9, distorted sense of reality did something awful.

MCEVERS: When he says I didn't do it, he means I didn't shoot people. I didn't take my own advice in this book and make explosives and I didn't kill people, right?

SISKEL: Exactly. And I think that's absolutely true. I think Bill has for many years wrestled 10 with this, can relate to those emotions, to feeling on the one hand that you deserve redemption, that you deserve a second chance, and on the other hand feeling that you have done something wrong and that you feel a sense of guilt 11 over. And clearly, I think, Bill is a complex enough person to hold on to both of those emotions at once.

MCEVERS: Bill Powell actually died suddenly last summer. Is that right?

SISKEL: He did. He passed away before the film came out and about a year after we met.

MCEVERS: Do you think he died at peace?

SISKEL: That's a really hard question to answer. I think, you know, Bill was a lovely person. He led a wonderful life in his adulthood 12. He was doing what he loved to do. And I think he was happy and I suppose at peace. I don't think he ever fully 13 reconciled the place that the book would play in his life and where it belonged. And I don't know that Bill ever resolved the conflicts in his own mind about the book. But I think writing his memoir 14 and hopefully the film helped him to move a bit further along in that journey.

MCEVERS: Charlie Siskel, thank you so much.

SISKEL: Thank you.

MCEVERS: Charlie Siskel's new documentary is "American Anarchist." And just a note here - William Powell's obituary 15 appeared in a number of publications just last week even though he died in July.

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