CONTRA COSTA TIMES Sun, Jul. 28, 2002 Writer thrives despite early struggles Winer's childhood difficulties inspire rich characters of 'The Color Midnight Made' By Cassandra Braun CONTRA COSTA TIMES JUDGING FROM author Andrew Winer's accomplishments, one would never guess that the hardships faced by Conrad Clay, the young protagonist in his debut novel "The Color Midnight Made," would be his own. At 36, Winer has not only published his first novel but he's also an accomplished painter, has completed master's degrees in both creative writing and painting, and currently teaches creative writing at the respected Pomona College in Southern California. His would not appear to be the resume of someone who grew up in a single-parent household that migrated from one economically challenged Bay Area community to the next. And yet, as Winer acknowledges, the key issues facing Conrad in "The Color Midnight Made" are the same ones he faced as a young man. This semi-autobiographical book follows 10-year-old Conrad through a very tumultuous year as he struggles to deal with the external and internal trials of growing up in an economically depressed African-American community of Alameda. Both his parents lose their jobs with the closing of the Alameda Naval station, and we join Conrad just as his family begins to disintegrate under the economic strains. Like Conrad, Winer's father left the family when he was very young, leaving his mother to raise him with few resources. She later remarried, and both she and her second husband worked for the Naval hospital Oak Knoll in Oakland. As a result, Winer says, they moved frequently during his youth, from Pleasant Hill and Concord to Oakland and El Cerrito. "Good fiction comes out of a place of suffering, and a novel, in a way, is an attempt to bring a harmonious narrative out of chaos," says Winer, who was recently in the Bay Area on tour with his book. "This novel, for me, was my attempt to find beauty and joy, and a certain humor, amid the pain and suffering." Academic success Still, Winer managed to flourish in school and, at the urging of his parents, studied computer engineering at UCLA. Eventually, though, Winer followed his heart and dove into the world of art, earning his master's in painting and establishing his work in the Los Angeles art community. Winer fell into writing serendipitously while later working as an artist in New York City. He was suffering from depression at the time, and as a relatively harmless means of self-medicating, he began immersing himself in films, at times watching numerous movies in one evening. In little time, Winer says, he had educated himself in the history of cinema. As a result, the narrative style of film slowly crept into his psyche, and during the day, into his paintings. For Winer, however, the acrylic-on-canvas medium turned out to be too restrictive for the stories he wanted to tell. He turned to writing screenplays, moving to Los Angeles, where he had some success selling a screenplay, "Honky!," to New Regency and Fox. "But I realized that I was still an artist, and if I was going to write, I wanted my writing to be art," recalls Winer. He later enrolled in UC Irvine's creative-writing program to develop his short stories, one of which was the basis for "Midnight." "The boy (Conrad) was really speaking to me," says Winer. "I decided I can either write the coming-of-age novel where a young man goes to New York to be an artist, which I thought was more typical. Or I can try to tackle this more challenging book from the point of view of a 10-year-old." After four years, and more than 400 pages of trimming from the original manuscript, Winer published "Midnight." Through his eyes Beyond the obvious allusion in the book's title, Winer's artistic visual eye clearly marks the story's language and images. Winer plays with sight and color throughout the novel. "Vision is such a big theme in this book," explains Winer. "I didn't really set out to do that. A 10-year-old boy or girl tends to go through the world with pretty wide-opened eyes; they're not jaded yet, like many adults. So naturally, the book is about seeing. How does this child see the world and see these kind of horrific and beautiful things happening to him? If you're a writer, really what you are is a seer. And then you transcribe that into words." At the opening of the novel, Conrad is embarrassed to discover he is colorblind. He laments, "They say I can't see colors. They're lying. I can see colors in people. Pops is camouflage. Our teacher Mr. Garabedian is tan like a weed." Conrad's condition becomes a metaphor for his inability to make judgments on race. His best friend, Loop, is African-American, and Conrad consistently turns to Loop's more stable and nurturing home life for solace from his increasingly violent alcoholic father and withdrawn mother. Conrad's colorblindness further alludes to his inability to define himself. He continues, "I got a color for everybody. Except me." Two voices Conrad's confusion manifests itself particularly in his voice throughout the book. He oscillates from "standard" English when he's with his parents to Ebonics-style slang when he's talking to Loop and others outside his home. "I wanted to show that the way he spoke with his peers was not acceptable to his mother in his house. She really criticizes him, and it's a source of shame to him. And that was all very real," says Winer, referring to his own experiences. This was especially troubling for Winer, who says that as a child growing up in an economically depressed area, language can be the only tool one can afford to define oneself. "That was how your sense of self-worth, your self-esteem, was formed," explains Winer. "We didn't have a lot of money -- none of our neighbors did, either -- so in neighborhoods that are economically challenged, language becomes more important. That becomes your possession. So your ability to wield it was how you were judged; it was how you survived ... We were total crack linguists. We were coming up with words every day." In the book, the result becomes incredibly inventive slang, like "decking," in reference to skateboarding, or "sleazing," as in hanging out or dropping in. But in the end, Conrad comes to discovering himself in terms of color: "Waves rolled past us like gleaming lips of light. It was so bright I couldn't tell the bay from the sky, and it was all a color I'd never seen, which had me excited and afraid at the same time. What color was it? ... the color was too full to be a what -- it was a who ... Suddenly a warm feeling trembled down though every bone in my body ... I had seen this color before I'd seen it out of the corner of my own eyes all my life." Cassandra Braun is a Times feature writer. She can be reached at 925-977-8483 or cbraun@cctimes.com. PROFILE WHO: Andrew Winer WHAT: Author of "The Color Midnight Made" (Washington Square Press, $24, 258 pages)