Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 185: Tom McGuane On The Beauty of Not Knowing

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Ep. 185: Tom McGuane On The Beauty of Not Knowing · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: severely bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: where you stand with on X? All right, Thomas mcguen,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: are you okay talking about really old work of yours? Oh? Sure, right,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: I don't care what we're talking about. Because when you
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: when you look at all the things you've done and written, Um,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: where does Rancho Aldi? Where does the movie ranch Aldi Lux?
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Where do you stack that into? You know, if you
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: were gonna live, if you're gonna have had a tombstone,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: and they were gonna list your accomplishments on your tombstone,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: what I put Rancho Deluxe? Rancho and make the tombstone.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: I've already written the text for the tombstone. It says
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: it's been a great life. I wish I understood it well.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Rancho Deluxe was a happy accident in a way. I mean,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: it's never stopped playing, as I'm sure you're aware, But
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: basically what happened was a producer, uh bought nine two
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: in the Shade and they couldn't get the they couldn't
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: get the financing together in a short term, and they
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: said do you have because they didn't have a script,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I said, They said, do you have anything ready to go?
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: And I said, yes, I do, I have a screenplay
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: ready to go. That wasn't true. I hadn't written anything.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: And he said, well, i'll be I'll be back in
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: two weeks. Uh, and let's see what you've got. So
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: I went into my son's bedroom. He was about ten
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: years old at the time, and in two weeks I
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: had written Ranch of Deluxe. And he flew in from
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: l A and I said, here it is. And he
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: went back to my son's bedroom and he came back
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: out he said, this is great. We're gonna make it.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: So it was a lucky thing from then on, you know.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: And then there were people just were amused by the
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: idea that Jeff Bridges was early in his career. Sam
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Waterson was early in his career. My brother in law
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: did the music. Uh. Other people came up to hang out,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: like Warren Oates and Harry Dean Stanton and other people.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: We we just had a lot of fun making that movie.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: So I'm glad it have found an audience. Oh. I
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: recommend it to people all the time, but I find
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: that when I show it to people, they need to
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: have they need to have a little bit of pre awareness.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Yea of the West, Yeah, and some of the conflicts
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: and different personality archetypes from the West, well or else there.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: They wind up being a little baffled by it. Well
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: that's good. It's a litmus test. Yeah, that's good because
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: that was actually that was actually the impulse to write it,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: write it, because I mean, we were I was under
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: when I got here in the sixties. I was aware
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: there was this kind of official version of Montana life,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: which was the same as the Chamber of Commerce version.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: It was all big sky um uh cowboys and Indian stuff,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: and and everybody I knew was you know, poaching, selling, selling,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: uh the ill gut and gains to buy dope and
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: motorcycle parts. You know. I thought, well, this is what
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I know to be going on. Why doesn't anybody talk
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: about this? So that's what I wanted, That's kind of
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: what I wanted to do. I haven't quite got over that. Actually,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: I'm still very conscious between of the tension between what
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: I know was as a day to day person in
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Montana for fifty two years with the official version of
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: life in Montana, and I've always felt that tension that
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: I went and I'd like to use that think of
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: things i want to write about. Uh. You mentioned that
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: your brother in law does the music. And your brother
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: in law's Jimmy Buffett, and he has a cameo by
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: the way, he sho he would had a concert yesterday
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: in Michigan. People came wow. By the way, I have
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: to interject it. I just came back from a book
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: festival in France. Do you know how many readers came.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: They were running trains from Paris to sam Melo and
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Brittany just to carry readers. Could that happen here? That's yeah,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: that's really amazing. And in France, like I know that
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: your your late friend Jim Harrison would talk about how
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: well his books would do in France. Do you have
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of reader Do you get a lot of readers?
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: He and I both have more French readers and American readers.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Really yeah. In fact, one of the publishers over there said,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: you literary people would be out of business if it
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: weren't for France as semi true. Harry was there like
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: ten times a year. Yeah, he's already honored over there. Yeah,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: and he had a huge following there. Um. It was
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: really kind of a rock star over there, Odd who
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: they settled at him. Not odd in Jim's case, but
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: like Paul Austro, who's a sort of a not easily
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: absorbed writer. He's another rock star in France. This I'm
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: gonna come back to my question. I didn't get to
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: my thing yet about Ranchodi Lux. But because you know, I,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: as I talked about often, I grew up in Michigan
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: and we would and you for us like kids that
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: like to that like to read, um, and like the
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: fish and hunt like we all idolized you guys, and
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: we would think of you as like nuts on a dog.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: You and Jim Harrison, um, where people be like, who
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: do you like to read? And people would say mcgwain
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: and Harrison has that Do you feel that that's just
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: the thing that comes from like a Michigan perspective where
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: you guys are so lumped in because you both I
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: went to the same school there. Yeah, has that been
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: your whole life? Have you found that people will roll
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: you guys together even though you're writing is so different. Yeah, no,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: that's true. Uh, I mean it's confusing, I think, you know.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, Jim and I were pals from the time
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: we were just out of our teams, really, you know,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: I mean we just coulda grew up in some ways together,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: you know, pretty closely. Link. We wrote letters each at
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: least every week to each other for almost a half century.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I mean we did only stopped writing letters when he died.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: I mean we did that so we were mentally really
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: involved in each other's consciousness, you know, to the to
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: the degree that since Jim died, I've got this kind
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: of uh it's like a blank channel on my phone
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: or some blank thing, you know. I don't know what
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: to do with it, you know, because I filled it
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: up for two thirds of my life with these dialogue
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: that we we had going. Jim was Jim and I
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: were very interested in the same things, uh, Other than literature.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: We both hunted and fished constantly, or just found some
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: reason to be outdoors. He was a bird watcher, and
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: we wanted we didn't want to be in the house
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: as the bottom line, and he was a terrible terrible
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: hunter fisherman. He was all in his head. Really. I
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: remember one time we're you know, he couldn't hit He
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: couldn't hit up the barn with a bull fiddle, you know.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, but if you ever shot something, he'd run
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: out and grab it and say it's mine. Oh and
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: one time, one time I said, now, Jim, I said,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: I just shot that grouse. You know it's not yours.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: He said, I know it is mine. And I said, well, okay,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: but how how could we ever approve this? I said,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: you did let off your gun, but I know you
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: can't hit anything. He said, We're going to get a
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: cheese grater and we're gonna shred this bird in count Pellets.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: He said, you're what are you shooting? I said, I
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: don't know. I'm shooting seven a halfs. He said, well,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: I'm shooting eights and we'll be able to tell after
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: we shred this bird. Did you ever find out? I
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: think it's usual. I just handed the bird over. But
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: he had this tremendous responsiveness to anything in the natural world.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, um, he just ignited. You know, in the
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: presence of any little thing it was going on, you felt,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: you felt that in the like he did in a
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: genuine way, not just in a literary way. No, it's
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: very genuine, Like if he wasn't a writer, he would
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: still be doing that same thing. Yeah, right, I think
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: that's great. Yeah, that's where it hard a little bit
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: hard to understand him as I get older and older,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: is it's hard to um he kind of in some
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: ways like set stage a little bit for uh, kind
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: of the literary madman, you know, like he kind of
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: created in somebodys He kind of created what we expected
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: to see there, and it was always hard to tell,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Like as I get older, it's hard to tell to
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: what degree that that he did it because he got
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: away with it, you know, like he did it because
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: that became expected of him. You know. Yeah, there was
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: a lot of that, the wine and the food and yeah,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: the women, you know, yeah, I think that's right. I
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: mean there was a lot of that going on in
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: that era. You know, Hunter Thompson was very much like
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: you know, my son worked as Hunter tons of bodyguard briefly,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: and I was around Hunter a lot too, and you
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: you know, you to spend a a day with Hunter
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: doing stuff or being around be very normal. But the
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: minute there was an audience around everything changed, you know
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: for the worst. Yeah. Uh, Jim was very audience awear
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: two I think right. Yeah, But um he was also
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: you know he was he was a very genuine in
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: other ways and and the other thing about Harrison he
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: was not often recognized as he was unbelievably intelligent. Um.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: You could give him a tough European five page novel,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: he read it overnight and remember everything in it. Um.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: So that was That was probably the first thing I
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: would think about with Jim. But he was also pretty
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: curiously self propelled. I mean he would come out to
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Montana for long, long stretches. Nobody ever knew he had
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: a wife and children, you know, I mean he just
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: did what he felt like doing. He was remarkably uh,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: either independent or unilateral. Everyone looks. I want to come
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: back to my question about Rancho he Lucks. I was
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: worked as an arborist right for several years in western Montana,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: and I met a guy um the last name of
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: what Glenda and he had been brought up on a
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: ranch in the Bridge Arrange. And he one day I
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: was telling me he said he was reminiscing about being
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: a kid. He talked about how they were filming a
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: movie once and his dad sold someone. I came here
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: if it was a bull or a steer, Oh yeah,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: I know that. Yeah, I know that bull and that family.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah right, there's a big sheryl A. Yeah. It was great, great,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: that was a great actor. You know, we put him
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: in a motel room. I don't know how we did that.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Oh no, was it that the one? I thought the
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: one he was talking about, Yeah, he's talking about the
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: one we shot. Maybe it was the one of that.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: I just can't remember. But he had no idea about
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: the movie. You just knew a story about some people
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: making a movie. Maybe it was the one that went
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: into the hotel room. Yeah, and then then, uh, you know,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: we thought, well, we've gotta been the hotel room. What
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: are we gonna do with him? And then he then
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: he charged the TV set and explode. The TV exploded,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: perfect for the film, completely unplanned. Yeah. And then the one,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: the one that gets shot with the one gets so obvious,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: like if you've seen animals, you know, you know, when
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: you're seeing something real, it's like apocalypse. Now. I made
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: the mistake recently of showing my nine year old the
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: end sequence of Apocalypse now where they kill water buffalo
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: and I didn't remember it the way that it looked,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: and it traumatized them a little bit bad. But watching
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: in Rancholdilocks like that was a time like that. Stuff
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: doesn't wouldn't really happen anymore, that they would take a
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Sharp's buffalo rifle shoot something for the camera. Well, we
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: had stuff like that happened. I'm glad it doesn't happen anymore.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: I mean we had some catastrophes that we're making Missouri
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Breaks with horses. Um, we wanted horses. We wanted horses
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: to swim the big Horn and they got tangled up
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: with old barbed wire on the bottom and stuff. Yeah. Yeah,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: and that was your film with Marlon Brando. Did you
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: work on that one? Yeah, I lived with Brando for
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: a while. Uh. That's a huge hit in in Europe,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: the Missouri Breaks. Yeah, it's it's widely considered the best
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: modern Western. Just mad about it. I love it. Yeah,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: it's so off the wall, you know, I mean it was, Uh,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: it was very interesting. I mean Brandon Jack Nicholson's kind
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: of a prick, but Brando was really a fabulous human being.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: I just enjoyed all the time I had with him,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: because he just had almost a Harrison kind of big aura,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: you know, naturally speaking and uh and very unusual person.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: I mean when I was staying with him, these kids
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: would come over to the house to get him to
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: repair their bicycles and get a little workshop and he
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: could do some electronics to fix it, fix their their
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: walk man. And I mean, he's just a very ordinary guy.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Never saw The Godfather, never saw the movie. How detached
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: he was from the industry. What did you not like
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: about Jack Nicholson. Oh, it's just a prick, you know, uh,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: I said, It's a great actor. He was very much
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: overshadowed by Brando. Brando did an interview in which he
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: said it was he loved watching Jack act. He said,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: because like watching a guy with one finger play a
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: piano with one key, that that shouldn't bode well. And
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: then we cast the girl was hot girl, you know,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: for the the love interest thing, and she was just
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: as gorgeous girl. But they got to and Nicholson was
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: trying to be sort of interested in her, you know,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: sort of get into the sort of mood for the movie.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: When they arrived in mont tennis, she announced that she
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: was a lesbian and moved into a tent with her girlfriend.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: So anyway, you had to do it. Adapt man, that
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: was such a seems like such an unusual time there
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: to be involved in the culture around here, because I
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: feel like this area hadn't really been discovered by broader America.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Now it's true, you know, and I feel some of
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: that's my fault, but you know, I was I mean,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: I was broke, you know. I was trying to figure
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: out how to survive here, and you can't. I couldn't
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: really survive writing literary fiction. I had a teaching gig
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: at Berkeley when one season and I thought, oh, I
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: don't want to do this because I loved teaching, but
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to write at the end of a
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: teaching day. And uh so I had to make some choices.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: And so I moved over and go to place for
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: twenty eight dollars a month on South Age Street in
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Livingstone and just started scrambling. You know. It's a room
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: for Sports Illustrated. I wrote novels, I wrote short stories,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: and then I wrote the movies. You know. Um, I
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: heard an interview with you not long ago where you
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: were talking about that you like to hunt quail. Yeah,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: I like any kind of bird hunting. Again, and you
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: had an observation about quail hunting where And I might
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: get this wrong, but I think this is basically what
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: you had said, is that when there's a covey of
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: quail and you kill one of them, you don't have
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: the guilt that you might not otherwise have because you
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: think of the of the being as being the covey,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: and the covey lives on. Well, it's true, first of all,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: it's true, but yeah, but it's the same thing could
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: be true of any population if you look at it
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: at a metal level. Well, let's you kill a human
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: and be like, well, but humanity lives on. Well that's
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: a great point actually, and I'm you're a little jump
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: ahead of me on that, but I think I think
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: you're right. You know, Ivan Stradarn once said, he said,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: people are really in the animal world. You know what
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: they talk about hunters, They're very worried about the individual
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: animal and not particularly worried about the species. And uh,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: that's key to what you are You've got guys are doing.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: And I agree with that. However, every now and then
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: I'll be out grouse hunting and two grouse will get up,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: like it's late November. I'll kill one of them and
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: the other one goes off for a long winter, and
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: I sort of feel shitty. I can imagine, but for
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: some reason, I mean, I I have I have a
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: covey of huns that I've been shooting into for thirty years.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: They're always the same side, you know, it's always twelve
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: to sixteen birds. I'll kill three or four birds every
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: year cove. He's always in the same place, always the
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: same size. If there are grasshoppers for the babies that year.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Did you used to hunt big game a little bit
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: and and not in your interest in that faded? I
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: don't know. I mean I was getting to be a
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: little bit of a trophy hunter, which was a sort
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: of against my principles. But we ate a lot of game.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: I remember when my son and I I was for
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: a while, I was a single parent, and uh, we
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: were eating a lot of game. And I didn't have
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: any money, and I said, I said to him one time, oh,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: I had a movie sailor something happened. I had a
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: bunch of money suddenly, And I said to him I'm
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: going to town to get some steaks. We're not gonna
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: eat this deer meat for a while. And so I
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: went and I get these beautiful ribbis, you know. And
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: he was out playing in the yard and I cooked
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: up these rig ribbies and he came walking in the house.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: He said, oh my god, what's stinking up the house.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: I said, it's these steaks. He said, oh God, throw
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: them away. The whole house stinks. He ran around opening
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: the windows to get this beef stink out of the house.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: So that kind of was a watershed moment for me.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just, uh that and the fact, the
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: overnoticed fact that people don't seem to know where meat
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: comes from. And uh, I like, how you say that's overnoticed.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: And I remember one time we're down in Florida and
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: my wife I like to snook fish and my wife
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: loves to eat snook, you know, And she said she
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: was going to the movies and a little community center.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: She said, catch a snook tonight. We'll have a snook
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: for dinner. So I went out and labored away, and
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: I look this big snook and I'm down on the
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: dock and I'm getting ready to give him the wood shampoo,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: and my wife's car lights come into the dry way
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: and she could gets out of the car and I said,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: I got what I'm just gonna bring up to the
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: house now, and she said, don't hurt him. She had
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: been a filet. Should have been happy when he said,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: you became a trophy hunter for a while. What do
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: you mean? Well, I got like interested trying to find
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: a big like you wanting to find a big mule here? Yeah,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: and uh did you find one? Yeah, a huge one?
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: If there's five of them. I killed the big one.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: It looked like an alk lying out among the five pointers.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: I mean he had an orange crate on his head,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: and uh, I knew I'd never kill a bigger wood.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: And also I questioned how good he was going to
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: be to eat? Uh and uh, But I mean I
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: look back on it, I mean I really missed those
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: days of really being obsessed, you know, getting up in
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: the morning and thinking which way the wind is and
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: how much snow there is. You know, where I think
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: they'll be that day, or where I could stay out,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: where they'll come out of the trees, and I mean
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: where that whole scenario is running in your head. It's
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: fun to be obsessed, you know, I mean I like
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: being obsessed. Uh, And and I kind of missed that
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: part of it. And on the strictly the meat level,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: I mean probably uh, last year's fawn would be the
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: one to shoot you if you wanted to want some meat.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: And there's not much of a quest involved there, There's
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: no there's the sort of predatory adrenaline. Doesn't necessarily get
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: engaged over that that sort of thing. But probably one
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: of the reasons I've drifted towards bird hunting so much
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: is I really get obsessed with that. You know, I've
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: always I've had bird dogs my entire life and just
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: watching each one mind developed and how they get, how
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: they figure the game out, and how we do this together. Um.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Uh that that's a similar obsession. And you try you
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: travel a little bit to hunt, right because I remember
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: in an email you mentioned that you were done in
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Texas hunting quail. Yeah. I've got a friend who lives
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: over by McAllister who had a little quail camp down there. Um,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: a couple of trailers on on a on a lot
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: in West Texas and then we find leases or places
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: we can go. Um, I have a I have a
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: friend Burt Jones. Do you remember Burt Jones, quarterback for Indianapolis?
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Great player? Really I know, Yeah, he's a wonder wonderful guy. Anyway,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: he's got a quail least out there and West Texas.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: West Texas is a great place to bird hunt because
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: it's totally First of all, there's a lot of habitat
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: left in West Texas for these birds. Uh. And it's
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: completely dependent on weather. I mean, you'll go almost to
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: zero where you couldn't find a quail with a helicopter,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: and a year later they're hitting you on the head,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: you know, just depending on the rain and the particular
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: distribution of weeds and things like that. Um So, anyway,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna hunt with him this year. And then broke
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: and I went to a couple of places uh uh
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: in Georgia and um, North Florida. In fact, my cousins
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: were all here and we had a big quail dinner
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: night before last. I brought a big lot of them back. Uh.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: But I that whole quest thing that shared things like
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: for forty years I competed on cutting horses, and there's
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: a little similar thing where you're just trying to understand
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: what that horses figuring out and you're trying to cooperate
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: in that quest, you know. And it's the same with
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: bird dogs. You know, you see that that moment where
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: they're wondering, wondering if you're kind of off track, and
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: they look up at you and they're a hundred yards out,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: and you go, you go like you know that communications thing,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: and then when boom, when it works, you know, and
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: they've got them and you know they're out in front
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: and it's your job now, and they kind of they
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: kind of look back a little bit like this, and
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: I mean it's very the heat rises considered. Yeah, what
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: is it real quick? What does it mean to compete
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: on a cutting horse? Oh that's a long story, but
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: I mean if you don't haven't seen a cutting or something.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: I mean the rule book is ad pages long. So,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: but it's basically, uh, you know, sorting cattle in a
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: competitive situation with very athletic, speedy, tough thing to figure out.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: You never get to the bottom of it. It's very
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: tough and sorting just like they throw you in an
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: arena with a hundred and you cut out the tube. Yeah,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: you'd have to see it. We'd have to have a
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: a video to you could show you what was going on,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: you know, what correctness and what the horses are doing,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: what the riders are doing. Um. But the analogy to
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: bird hunting is is that it doesn't work unless you
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: have a pretty profound and sort of emotional relationship with
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: that horse or that dog. I mean, I've seen really
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: good dog handler you know, would if that dog got
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: out three yards and you wanted to stop and turn
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: and go someplace else. I know, dog handlers tap on
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: the whistle and that dog will freeze. I mean, just
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: chill and go someplace else Whereas if you you can
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: blow the whistle all day long, that won't dog won't
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: even hear you. And all it is the tap, but
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: the the communication is so intricate at that level that
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: and you have to work at it all the time
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: for it to happen. So um, that's kind of supplanted
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: my big game hunting thing. Uh, but I've very you know,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: I really value the impulse to hunt big game. I mean,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: we're all talking about this all the time, but they
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: need stakeholders, and uh, I had I was fishing in
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: the Bahamas with them. Uh, Johnny Morris. You don't guys
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: know who Johnny the founder of bass Pro shops. Yeah,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: he's got two hundred billion and loyal customers. He's he
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: just won the Audubon Award. Very much more of a
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: environmentally alert person in the Cabella's group were. But it's
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: one of the same now. Yeah, but the purchase and
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: but their data tells them that the gun and hunting
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: community is declining. And I was talking to my friend
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: and Barbara big Timber and his son manageres Cabella's a
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Missoul and they're frustrated because they're not getting then the
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: volume of weaponry um that they used to get before
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: this changeover is because Johnny Morris knows the future really
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: is fishing, not hunting um. And you know, we have
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: a wonderful shop here in town, sporting and story called
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: the Sport. Have you all ever been in the Sport? No,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: I haven't. Anyway, it's been real deepot from sales and
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: stuff like that, And until very recently it was just
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: you know, all sporting things, you know, varmint rifles, big
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: game rifles and shotguns and all that stuff. Well, it's
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: just the great presence of high concealable weapons. Now in
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: a K forty seven's completely supplanted. This sort of not completely.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: They still carry a lots, but it's I mean, it's
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: a huge presence in that store in Big Timber, I mean,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: you know, so, you know, I know, there's a lot
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: of zealotry around the Second Amendment and a lot of
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: controversy about that, but all these people who are sort
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: of gun nuts. I'm sort of a gun nut, but
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: all these people are sort of gun nuts who are
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: fanatical about our rights to have every kind of gun
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: and have it in every place, church, at school, every place,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: by the way, except the legislature. In the banks, can't
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: take guns there. You take them to kindergarten, but you
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: can't take them to a bank. Yeah, I've seen warnings
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: in entering sporting good stores. Yeah about Yeah, you can't
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: take them to the can't take them to the n
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: r A convention, yeah, in Las Vegas. Yeah so. But
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: but my point is not so much that is that
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: they're more interested in what often flies under the aegis
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: of hunting weapons. They're more interested in protecting the rights
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: to have as many of those they want. They're not
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: very interested in protecting the quarry or the wildlife that
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: these are supposedly uh being sold to exploit. So they're
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: not they're not they're not. They're not battlers for public
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: land access, they're not battlers for well being, wildlife and
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: any of that. They just want the guns. And I
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: don't get that. A lot of people become pretty segmented
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: when it comes to the things that they're giving advocacy for. Yeah,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: you know, like when someone's a crusader for something. Yeah,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: they tend to fixate. Well that's that's that's possible. They
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: noticed that they're sort of boundaries there. I mean, it's
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: like the smart play there. The smart play is to understand,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: um like play there is to understand and I think
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: the people that were playing the real long game on
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: that do understand that public participation in certain activities depends
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: on viable resources and depends on access and then they
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: understand that. But some people, um, you know, there's people
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: like there's elements of the of the gun community that
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: they even have a derogatory term for people that focus
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: too much on hunting, where you become a fund fud
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: would be someone who views firearm ownership through the lens
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: of hunting would be a fud if you d like
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, I'm gathering elmer fud. Oh oh yeah.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Have you found like you know you can't fix stupid?
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Have you found in your career this is guy. There's
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: probably a double edged sword to your involvement and throughout
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: your life with hunting, the implicit x bliss at involvement
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: with firearm ownership and fishing, where it's made up so
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: much of what you write about and so much of
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: your understanding of the world. But then you not out
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: of necessity and perhaps personal preference, You've worked with many
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: people who would be regarded, you know, like people in
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles or Hollywood, people in New York who would
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: have an innate suspicion of those things. So on one hand,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: you're probably uh penalized in some way because of the
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: things you've been involved in. But in the other hand,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't be here if it weren't for those things,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: because those are the things that make up your work.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: When I hear that, like in my line of work, personally,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: when I heard it, some media enterprise or whatever doesn't
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: want to work with us because of the hunting thing,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: or because of the gun thing. I'm always like, oh,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: what a bummer, But I'm like, baha on it. If
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: it wasn't for those things, I wouldn't talk. I wouldn't
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: have any reason to be in the conversation anyways. Yeah,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: because this is all I've ever talked about. Yeah, right,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: right right? How have you ever felt that? Uh? Have
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: you ever felt that in a way that was painful
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: to you? Well? You know, you know, I'm in the
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: American Academy and I go back there for those meetings,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: and one of my good friends is Joey Williams and
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Joy Williams the most eloquent anti hunting book I ever.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: She's the best anti hunting writer out there. No, She's
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: fantastically good. And she just feels it very strongly, you know.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't I don't quibble at all with
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: the genuineness of her rage against the idea of killing animals.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: And the old the old head of the uh uh
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Humane Society once said, you know, why would you want
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: to kill something that wished to live? You know, it's
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: a big question. How do you get around it? I mean, uh,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: you can't skip it, you know. Um, And I'm not
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: sure you get by by saying an incremental portion of
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: the meat I eat, I killed myself. You know, I mean,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a big McDonald's guy. Was right. Yeah,
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: I like junk food. I like good food. I like
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: junk food. But um so. But when I'm back in
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: the bubble, you know, I know there are things that's
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: just gonna be warfare if we want to have to
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: talk about it. I'm under contract to the New Yorker.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't send them a hunting story. I barely would
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: send him a fishing story. You send him a lot
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: of story a lot of cattle ranchers. Yeah, oh yeah, Listen,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: I'm aware of the of the uh, the the contradictory
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: nature of it. There's no doubt about it. Do you
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: feel that they wouldn't Do you feel that they would
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: not publish a story they had a protagonist or antagonist
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: who was a hunter. I don't know, but probably not.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: But I mean, one of the things that drives me,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: and one one reason I'm fairly comfortable with a ranching
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: culture is that some pretty profound studies have indicated that
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: when a ranch goes out of business for any reason,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: if it goes out of business for any reason. No
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: matter what other trajectory it goes to, biodiversity drops sharply. Okay,
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: So even though you know I most of my friends
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: after at this point in my life were our right
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: wing ranchers, you know, Um, for reasons I could never
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: quite understand it. But but my county went, My county
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: went for Donald Trump. They're doing. I don't want them
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: to go out of business, you know. And also, uh,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: also I know that their reasons for voting and thinking
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: the way they do are a lot more subtle than
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: they are ascribed to them. Um. A lot of them
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: I know had problems with Obama, not because he was black,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: but because he's an elitist and talked like a Harvard guy.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: They had real issues with his his his way of
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: expressing himself. He reminded him of the kind of people
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: that are trying to run them out of here. Uh
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: nadn't care if it's black, I mean anything to him. Uh.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: There is a simplified way I found that, you know,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: time and again where there's a very but people have
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: people on both sides do it where you try to
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: boil people's motivations down to something that you know is unfair. Yeah,
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: but it's it helps with the rhetoric. I just got
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: a friend of mine just forward forward to a really
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: brilliant piece. Actually it was in the Washington Post that
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Rum Emmanuel wrote Rum fishes here, and it was the
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: idea that the only way to beat Trump was the
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: best way to beat Trump is to not try to
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: out trump him. Um, and that the idea, uh, that
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: the squad is going to somehow another destroy at the
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: election is just craziness because moderates have always dominated presidential elections.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: And but it is tempting to fight fire with fire,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: you know. Uh, I mean I find this age culturally
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: politically to be unbelievably obnoxious. You know. I was just
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: I just came back from this book toward Europe, and
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, they wanted to know why we machine gun
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: our kids and why we do all these awful things.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: And it used to be you go to France, there's
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: quite a little bit of hostility between the Americans and
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: French people, even among intellectuals and culturally elites. It's not
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: true anymore. They just feel sorry for us. Uh. They
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: think that we are taking what was the greatest experiment
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: democracy in the history of the world and ruining it,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: and they can't figure out why we're doing that. They
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: mean that because you think they mean that just because
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: of the aesthetics, like the name calling and the divisiveness
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: like that aspect of American that level of discourse, of
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: the kind of wall building, and the and the a
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: country that uh build on the idea of free trade
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: wanting to launch all these tariffs, I mean, doesn't make
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: sense to them. Looks like we've flipped out and knowing that, uh,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: that approach has tremendous support here. Right, It's real, it's
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: it's it's kind of alarming. But if you if you
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: live in a very conservative community, you know that that's
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: just part of what people are. You know, you know,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: it's just part of what people are. It's not it's
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: not as sweeping an indictment as it looks like it is.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Do you feel it? Do you feel politically? I mean,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: I know politically you probably feel out of place, But
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: do you feel out of place being in a I
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: mean being you've been involved in ranching, but you but
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: you sit outside of ranchers in general? Just being a
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: writer's bad enough. I mean, uh, uh no, I I
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: was I feel pretty comfortable, you know, I spent ten
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: years roping stairs in the Northern Rodeo Association. Yeah no, no,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: it's and uh, you know they think they just view
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: my progressive ism is just another quirk. You know, some
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: guy's got a drinking problem. I've got a progressive as
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: a problem. What are the Because there's a there's a
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: three you sit on the you're in the fly Fishing
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: Hall of Fame, the Academy of Arts and Letters, and
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: then there's a there's a schizophrenic. There's a horse. But
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: what's ther You're in some horse hall of fame. Yeah,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: cutting cords, all of fame. Yeah, I don't know. I mean,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: I just saw this thing. I read this quote. It
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: was just so great. Dostoevsky visited Charles Dickens, and Charles
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Dickens said, well, I'm really too people, he said. There,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: he said, I'm the person who creates all you know,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: all these these are positive characters. I'm also the guy
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: that creates scool Scrooge, and and he said, there's are
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: two two of me that does these two things in
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Dosky said only two. So I write an interview with
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: you or you're talking to I think some kind of
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: He's like a literary reviewer. I can't remember his name,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: like like a literary figure. Um, and you were talking
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: about a thing that you like, you were explaining that,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: I thing you liked about horses, and you think they
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: liked about fishing because they had ritualistic qualities too. I
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: think that's right. Yeah, keep explaining that a little bit. Uh,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: I think it's partly that. And it's something I mean,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: my my problem. My father used to accuse me, this
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: is I'm just interest interured so many things. You know,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: there's a problem. I can see that. Yeah. And and uh,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: but those are things that really concentrate me, you know,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, and pretty quickly too. I mean, it's afternoon,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna string up a fly rod, and the minute
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: I set foot in the water river, all the kind
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: of conflicts and sort of multiplicity of my brain life
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: are going to go away. I'm just gonna I mean,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna get focused. And and uh, part of the
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: things that enables you to focus, you don't have to
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: reinvent the wheel every time you go hunting or you
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: go fishing. There there is there is there is ritualized
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: behavior that has a quasi religious dimension to it. And uh,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: you know, since I don't have any other kind of religion,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: I like to I like to access that thing, that
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: pattern of doing things. It's the right way to do things.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: And hunting is full of that, and and so fishing.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Give an example of of an activity that you would find,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: I mean an activity within the activity, an activity within
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: fishing or an activity within hunting, that would be the
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: type of ritualistic behavior you're talking about. Boy, let me
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: think I come up without well, I'm not sure I can.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: I'd have to, I'd have to brow down that for
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: a while. What you're saying, I think so that I
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: understand correctly. It's not so much the rituals that man
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: or humans have come up for these activities, but more
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: so the rituals they just come about of doing the activity. Well,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: I think probably that. I mean, it's some of it
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: is habit for him. There's some of the things you
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: know that my father, my grandfather were hunters, or right
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: ways to do things. They're right ways. They're right ways
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: around guns and dogs and things that you're supposed to do.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: How are you supposed to take care of things? Um? Uh?
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: And you really feel it when you're around people who
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: haven't had that kind of approach to it. They don't.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: They don't have to inherit it genetically, but they have
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: to honor these kinds of practices about the way the
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: way you do things. And I guess that's ritualized. Now
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: that's that's a funny observation or not funny. But I
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: do notice that I hadn't thought to put it in
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: those words. But when you're with someone, I spent a
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: lot of time around people who uh have began hunting
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: later in life. It began fishing later in life, and
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: it does that they have in their behavior or in
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: the way they do things. You realize there's nothing really wrote, Yeah,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: there's nothing that they do it because that's how they
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: were shown to do it and always did it. And
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: I find too, now that I'm a parent, um, I
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: oftentimes encounter other parents with young kids who, for whatever reason,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: are parenting with all new strategies that they earned or
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: read about or heard about, rather than sort of the
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: activities that you would have seen the way your grandparents behaved,
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: and there was a way your parents behaved and the
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: expectations of children and these things sort of march on,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: you know, And then I'll meet people who parent totally
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: outside of whatever inertia has gathered up, right, Yeah, that's great,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: that's interesting. And they're like, oh no, we're trying, um,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: we're trying a new type of parenting. And it strikes
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: me in the same way that you see the same
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: thing in certain like just tying a fishing hook on,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: Like there's the person that does it all the time,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: and there's the person that seems to be dabbling, like
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: the dabbles in there, right. Um, I just have a
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: thought of a version of that. I have a good friend.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: I won't name him because he's so well known, but oh,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: go ahead, but he you know, I have fished for
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: steelhead for a long time, and there's a lot of
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: stuff about fishing through a run and if you catch
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: a fish, you know, you need to go all the
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: way back to the top of the run letter or
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: whoever was the run fish on? Yeah, And I was.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: I was in a Charo del Fuego with this friend
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: of mine and we hit this really great run on
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: the Sea Run river and I said, you go ahead
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: and fish through it, and I'll fishing behind you and
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: you can catch fish. Blah blah blah. So he fished
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: all the way down and get to the bottom of
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: the run, catches a nice fish, like a sixteen pounds
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: he run brown trop and he circles all the way
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: back and he gets in front of me to do
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: it again. And I remember fishing that when I was
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: living and going to school and steel that fishing in
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: northern California. I mean, they have these lineups, you know
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: that there was really strict. You know, everybody in the
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: lineup was a phenomenal cast. They're all great fisherman. If
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: you went down, caught a fish and circled up and
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: got in front of him, it'd be time for an obituary.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: He just I looked at I thought, is that rude?
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: Or is he stupid or uh, you know, I couldn't
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: or greedy. I mean, I couldn't couldn't figure out. So,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, I thought, this is I had the moment
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: of being this sort of out of body experience. Am
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: I with a lunatic? I like reading your short stories
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: a lot um. If I had to pick one thing
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: of the of the all the kinds of work you do,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: from novels, short stories, nonfiction essays, you know, I like
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: your short stories the most personally, I do too. But
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: why are the characters, Um, why are your characters in
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: your fiction so different and at wits end and kind
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: of disheveled and their personal lives? Then when you read
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: you about you and your friends in your life, it's
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: it's like a completely different worldview. Well I'm suppressing the truth.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Well, I don't know, but I mean
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: I think that especially short Fisher depends on a sort
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: of a crisis atmosphere. I mean it has. In a
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: effective short story, a lot should be at stake, you know,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: it should not be the quotidian day to day lives
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: of people, you know, unless unless it's a Ray Carbor story.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: Um so, I I mean a narrative. Fictional narrative is
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: kind of driven by conflict in a way. Um, and
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: you know it's Henry James said, it only has one
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: responsibility and that is to be interesting, you know, and
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: that's it's not the same level of interest that you
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: have and nonfiction, you know, where it's fact driven or
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: information driven and stuff like that. It's a very different
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: kind of atmosphere. So it calls on different things. I
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: think then that sort of stuff you would describe in
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: your life as a hotter or officierman or all those
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: other things, although those could be part of it. I'm
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: reading this. Some just got this book UH called um
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: uh Fishing in Paradise, SOI going to title something like that.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: But it's about a guy who lived in Sweden during
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: the period the fishing. He's a fishing fanatic. It was
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: during the period when the Swedish dream of a sort
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: of utopian society. That's the title fishing in Utopia, when
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: the utopia dream and Scandinavia was still intact before the
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: big waves of immigration. All the things that have changed
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: that happened, and he's gone back as a fisherman. But
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: he's really an observer of what has happened to this
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: utopian fantasy of the Swedish people and how it's changing everything.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: So the idea, I find this a very appealing idea,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: The idea of of UH finding a way these things
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: that we do impinge on other things that are less recreational,
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: for example, than what we're talking about, or less UH
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: focused on solip systemically focused on the things we want
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: to provide for ourselves as individualized, individualized characters known as
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: the great hunter or the Great fisherman or something like that,
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: and there was a little bit broader view of how
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: these activities uh illuminate other things. And so I just
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: got this book and I just started reading. It's very interesting,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: kind of kind of way to do it. Uh in
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: you your characters also have uh an incredibly dim view
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: of marriage. You have a dim view of marriage. And
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: it's funny because the thing that makes it okay, I
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: guess yeah, is that you the man is typically at
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: the at fault. Well that's interesting. I mean, I like
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: the idea of of faulty men. You know, that kind
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: of feels to me. I don't know why anybody gets
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: married anymore. I mean, it seems like slightly defund institution.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: So well, I mean, what what is it? I mean,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: it's sort of documentation for something you do anyway, you know, uh,
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: And I have a checkered married history. I mean my
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: history is that I been married three times, but I've
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: now been married for forty two years to the same person,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: so it's kind of a little bit of an odd thing.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: And one of the marriages for like eight months, So, um,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: what what goes on in an eight months marriage? Lust?
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: I guess yeah, I don't know acts or an accident
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: or rebounding or doing all those kinds of things. Uh,
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: the background of growing up in an Irish Catholic household,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: which is supposed to do you know. I mean, I
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: would never get married a second time under the current
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: uh sort of cultural convictions. But on the other hand,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: I've been in this really happy marriage for more than
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: half my life and forty two years. That's a long time.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: And uh so I've I'm not I just don't see
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: why it needs that kind of impremontor you know, of officialness. Uh.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: Not bad. I mean, if it makes people feel more committed,
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: you know, um, then they should do it. And I
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: did it, you know um. But I don't think it
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: has a lot of meaning anymore. And statistically, almost most
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: marriages in the divorce. So what does that say about it? Yeah,
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: that in and of itself, what does that say about it?
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: It's a non enduring institution. No, I think it was.
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: I feel that it's helpful. It's helpful because it makes
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: you take yourself seriously. Yeah, Oh, I see that's what
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: I felt. Yeah, I felt like, all of a sudden,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: it makes you take some part of yourself more seriously
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: than he might. That well, that's a good reason to
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: do it, and I feel like it also, it's like
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: you're putting certain things to rest. You know, I had
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: chasing girls, right, Yeah, at the time you spend Remember
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: buddy my I was talking about. He got married and
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: the next day he felt like he needed one of
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: those old top hats from the nineteen so he could
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: like head out to work, Like he felt like he
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: should be grabbing his briefcase and putting his hat on
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: and getting onto the business of life now that he's married.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: And he said that was the first time he ever
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: felt that way, like there was some other reason. There
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: was he had this other reason to go work. Did
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: he fall out of his eyechair? Whatever? How could? Why
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: are you? Have you ever been married and you're thirty
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: five and you're beautiful? What's going wrong here? Because you
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: don't believe in the institution. It's you know, I think
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: for me. Yeah, and they need to feel healthy. Yeah, Well,
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: you can't apply all these criteria. You have to shoot
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: from the hip, grant if you're gonna continue, let's put
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: your headset on. I gave you one. I think there
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: are a couple of situations where I could have almost
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: been at that place and then you know things fell apart. Um.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: Has anyone asked you to get married and you said no, no, no,
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: that hasn't happened. Um. Yeah, I don't, you know, mm hmm,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think that wherever at and arrived
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: at place really, you know, if I look back at
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: my life past couple of years, the decade before, UM,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: there's always been a core of myself that kind of knows.
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: But a lot of other things. Do you wish you
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: would ever get married? You look forward to I want
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: a family? I do. I do, I would like a family, UM,
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: But I think that before that happens, I I do
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: want to feel that the person I'm with UM is
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: committed to teaming up with me in in doing that.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: Have you ever considered a starter hubby starter? UM? No, No,
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I have. UM. I think I
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: think I have maybe some feelings similarly to what you
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: have around marriage as an institution. And I think that
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: or I've come to a place now with the experiences
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: that I've had that I think, Uh, to be in
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: partnership with someone is a choice that you make every day, UM,
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: and that you it is you renew that every day
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: for as long as the both of you do no no,
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: then you're wasting all kinds of time. Why because that's
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, do you feel like you do you feel
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: like you stay in something, I like, force yourself to
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: be part part of the beauty of it is. This
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: part of the beauty of it is and not the
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: whole thing. I'm not I'm not trying to like trivialize marriage,
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: but like a nice thing about marriage is that you
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: make a set of decisions. You have a lot of
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: time to think about those decisions, right, there's a hundred
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: ways to get out of it, and you add it
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: all up in your head and you decide that this
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: is what I'll do. And then at that moment you
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: stop pretending that you didn't make that decision. It becomes
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: like the thing that you did and the thing that
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: you now do, And then you turn yourself to the
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: other ship in life, and you don't wake up every
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: day being like, am I really committed to this person?
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: You just decided that's that that's where you're at, and
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: then that part of that question is gone, and all
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: the energy you'd apply to that question you apply to
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: other stuff. And I don't think that most people go
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: through that, um, the precursor that you describe, they all do. Yeah,
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: I agree. Okay, I gotta tell I gotta tell you
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: my approach to my very successful forty one or forty
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: two year marriage. You can all learn from this. Please
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: fall completely silent. I want to reverence silence. Ready. I
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: was lying on the floor of a bar and Key
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: West with a cocktail in my hand, and my soon
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: to be wife walked by, and she had this heavy
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: Alabama accent and I heard her talking, and I said,
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: raised my glass and I said, will you marry me
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: and take me to your southern mansion? And she said, well,
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: I don't have a merrit mansion, but sure I'll marry you.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: And we've been together for forty two years. That's how
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: much that That's how much forethought went into this. So,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: like I say, I've I've fought them through before they failed. Uh.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: I never meant to move to Montana. Everything that ever
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: happened to be had was an accident. So this rashi
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: asinutive approach, right, it's gonna it's gonna blow up like
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: an exploding cigar. Right. It's like, if you intellectually make
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: a decision to be a certain way into the future.
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: Then what if a disconnect arises between what you decide
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: intellectually you're going to be with who you organically feel
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: you become based on your experiences day by day. Yeah,
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: well I like to think, Okay, let me put it
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: this way. If I got out of it, I like
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: to think that I would do it as carefully and
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: with as much thought as I got into it. The
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: key to the whole thing is comedy. I mean, if
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: you if you like to laugh, and I do. My
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: wife likes to laugh. We laugh all day long, one
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: thing or another. And we could quit going to cuttings.
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: We had people say to a because we had a
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: little living quarters in our trailer. They said, we don't
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: know how to go to these rodeos anymore because we
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: could always hear the laughter out of your trailer at
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: the first of daylight. And uh so that's really you know,
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: because you have inevitably I mean, I don't know how
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: early on you are in your marriage, but they're full
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: of conflict one way or another. Yeah, man, you feel
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: like kids, um, we're a burden or a stress on?
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: Like were you able to keep that level of laughter
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: or was there a little bit of a low spot
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: as you sort of had to do. It adds to
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: the potential, it adds to the potential for conflicts. So
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: it tests your other resources, you know, I mean, because
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: you see you feel differently about what they should do.
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: And now that uh um, it's uh, you know, it's
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: unusual because my I had children and my wife had children.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: We got married and they became a sort of amalgamated
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: family and that worked out great. But Lori's daughter was
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: like five years old. She's fifty now, but she was
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: five years old and we first got together. And actually
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: my stepdaughter is the one I'm the closest to. Um.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: Uh So it's all so unpredictable. I mean, if if
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: I've learned anything in life is that it is so unpredictable.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: And it's a great mistake to imagine that it is predictable,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: because then you start imposing this kind of template of
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: what you imagine to be your control of over future events,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: which is nonexistent. Um. It's not the same as analyzing
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: the stock market. I mean, it's a it's much much
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: much more myriad, and it's but you just have to
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: you know, you have to you have to be good
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: on your feet. You know, you have to have a
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: sense of humor and be really good on your feet.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: And you have to have a highly qualified ego. What
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: do you mean by that, Well, you don't. You have
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: to lose that part of yourself that operates out in
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: the world where you really need to win a lot
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: oh um. And you have to have for it to
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: work over long term. You have to have a really
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: highly developed you have to train yourself with this. You
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: have to have a highly developed sense of fairness. You
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: just have to think about fairness all the time and
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: those kinds of things. Have you given up on or
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: did you ever tally wins and losses in marriage? I
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: do that, yeah, and I try him to quit, but
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: I do do it. Yeah. I don't think I've done that.
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, like other people's marriage. No, no, no, no.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: I mean I'll be like, wow, I gave in on
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: something that was important to me, and I'm like, okay,
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: never mind, and I remember that, and then I'm very
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: aware of it the next time. Oh, like your old one. Yeah,
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: and I'll be like bank account. I'll be like, well, yeah,
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: but I professional help. Yeah, it's not gonna work for you.
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: Like I gave up the one thing. But then so
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: I feel like I should get this thing because you won.
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: Oh I think you do. Do that actually a little bit, Um,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: we'll make formal deals to be like, I'll stop talking
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: about this. Yeah if if I get this win, Yeah,
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: I seriously bring negotiating. Yeah. You know you know. The
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: one I hate is when you say, when you finally
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: make a point, you're right about something, and the other
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: person says fine, I hate fine, Yeah, you wanted more
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: of a like you know what, you're right. It's like
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: I was told this woman who was in some kind
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: of relationship. I said, you know, when the guy tells
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: you that you're amazing, it's over. So are you Are
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: you familiar with Jerry Mills and the idea he keep
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: popularize this idea that about how to describe Southern literature, Oh,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: the mule theory and the dead mule theory. And he's like,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: how do you tell? Like that was like his defining
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: and he broughte this very spirited essay about the test
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: the litmus test of Southern literature has a dead mule
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: in it. In Um, In reading your work, I find that, uh,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: there's uh quite often there is our activities around irrigation always. Oh,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: there wasn't a lot of that because someone's ears like
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: someone's irrigating, carrying irrigating you. I was the irrigator, and
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: I hated it. It's really something the degree to which
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: when you're describing, like someone driving down a highway, a
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: thing that they're likely to notice there's some aspect of irrigation.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: I've never met anybody that likes that job. Nailed it.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: It's just the worst job. This is the worst job.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: In fact, about five years ago I managed to lease
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: the hay fields to somebody who liked to irrigate. I mean,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: if you have a ranch, if you have a ranch,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: if you have a ranch, everybody wants the grass and
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: nobody wants the irrigation. And uh so, you know, if
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: you're fathing, if you're phasing out, as I've been for
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: probably ten years, you're always trying to find somebody wants
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: some component of what you've been doing. Oh, I'll take
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: the grass or yeah, and nobody wants to fix the fence.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, I have all these little rules get cowboys.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: I fixed fence, but I don't build fence. Um, you know,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: I you know, I like working cattle, but I don't
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: want to irrigate, and we did a lot of that
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: ourselves for so long. But the part that I really
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: resented was the irrigation. I mean, we had one point
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: flood of irrigation. Flood of irrigation. Yeah, we had. We
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: had a gated pipe eventually, which help a little bit.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: But we ran a lot of cattle. At one time,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: I had a lot of land leased north of round
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: Up and we ran hearing steers out there. Oh you
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: were that heavy into running cattle that you releasing pasture
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: land had thirty thousand acres at least. Were you writing
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: then too much? Not much? Yeah, I was kind of.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's a very intense for a period of
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: time and then you ship, but then you've a lot
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: of free time. And oh so you like, I didn't
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: know you really really threw down and became that, but
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: you were a rancher. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Well, I
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean I remember I first made some money.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: I bought a place in uh in uh Paradise Valley
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: wasn't very big, but we had we always kept a
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: lot of roping steers around because we're always rodeoing. And
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: then we then we would lease some ground, and I
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: didn't really know what to do with the ranch. I
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: mean that was in my twenties. I've never had that background.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: And and uh, and I had a hired man, and uh,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: I knew this guy, Nevada rancher, old time Nevada ranch.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: He said, the main thing is to go to bed
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: at eight o'clock, get up at four, and then whoever
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: works for you'll feel guilty all day long. They'll do
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: anything you ask him to do. Then the guy used
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: to live in this ranch to get up at four
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: and go into the kitchen, turned the light on so
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: the neighbors would think that he was at work and
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: go back to bed. About did you enjoy doing being
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: the cattle business? Did I? Did you enjoy? Yeah? I got.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: I was infatuated with the whole thing because I had
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: a girlfriend in high school who who's uh was from
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: originally from Wyoming, and her dad gave me a summer jobs.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: So I started going to Wyoming when I was like
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: sixteen years old. Um tried to be a cowboy. So
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: I wanted to, you know, from that point on, any
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: time I was not actually in school, I was out
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: here and uh, I'm well over that, you know, but
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: it was I really joy it, really loved it, you know,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: I was really caught up in that. Uh. Kept a
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: lot of horses, went to ropings between here in California,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: and I really love the culture. I still kind of
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: like it. Where I really like it is where it
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: really is intact, you know, in West Texas is where
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: it is. I mean those, uh, the real full time
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: cowboys down there. They'll die poor and they have, but
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: they have incredible skills, um inherited skills, and great reverence
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: for their heritage, you know, and it makes them indifferent
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: to the fact that they'll never own anything, um just
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: what they've got a trailer, stock tailor, a couple of horses,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: a couple of saddles for ropes, and they're great and
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: they have a kind of a new era. And that
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: ranches down there really can't keep full time help. It's
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: not economical to do that. So once a year they'll
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: hire these guys that come out, come out with the
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: horse trailers, unload all their horses, gather all the rantriable, doctor,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: all the cattle, brand everybody, and they're going to get
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: a bill. Uh. So that's kept them going for another burst.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: I think one of the things that makes it that
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: other writers who write about the West and who write
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: about people who work the land, Um, the reason they
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: can't that I don't think they'll ever be able to
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: catch you, is because you have to read your work
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: and read it and read it and read it to
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: find an unbelievable moment. I'm sensitive to the stuff where
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: if I'm reading about someone, um, when I find that
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: they do something or some part of their life or
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: something they're doing at work feels phony. Uh it really,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: it just puts me off. I was watching the show
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: with my wife. She she was watching the show and
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: there was a guy who is supposedly a carpenter working
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: in this drama, and they had a carpenter in the
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: home doing some carpentry work, and as the cameras on him,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: it's clear that not only is he not a carpenter,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: but no one involved on the set, the writer like,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: no one had any idea what this individual would be
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: doing in a moment of him pretending to be a carpenter.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: And it's that's like, those glimpses are painful. But in
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: reading your stuff, there's one exception I'll tell you about later.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: And reading your stuff, um, no one ever does anything
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: that's not just totally believable. Another person who's really good.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: I feel as Corman McCarthy, but it's so fantastical and
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: it's and it becomes show off where Court McCarthy likes
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: to show you things he learned about in exhaustive research
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: and integrate him in and it's show offie. But your
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: stuff about what people are working or what they're out doing,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: or what business they're involved in, or how they made money,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: how they lost money, what they did yesterday. Every time
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: I read it, I'm like, yes, oh, good, well that's great,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: and I hope it stays true. Oh it is like
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: and I always wonder It's like part of the interests
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: of mine to meet you too, is always wondered, be like,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: how does he know all that stuff where it's not
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: made up? There's like the story is made up, but no,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: the parts of the story are all so perfect. That's great. Well,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: you know, I've always one of the things I feel
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: maybe separates what I want to do are the people
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: that I admire want to do um in writing is
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: that Uh. I always felt that your writing should come
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: from the zeitgeist, you know, the life you lead. I mean,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: if you think of Fitzgerald or Falkner or having Away,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: they're kind of writing out of their lives. Well, if
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: I read I read lit Hub all the time, you know,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: in the morning, and those people are saying, well, I'm
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: researching something about you know, life in the in a
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: isis concentration camp. I've never been there, or I remember
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: this book. I got kind of in trouble over this book.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: And when the National Book Award was called a Letter
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: from Letters from Ecuador, it was kind of modernist book.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: It was totally boring, and it was I got into
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: trouble because I did an interview when there were five
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: finalists for the National Book Award and they're all five
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: avant garde women living in New York City. And I said,
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: and I said to somebody in an interview with the
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: New Yorker, I said, it's a big country. Didn't they
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: find somebody who had any had any uh any ability
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: out there the fifties States? Just these five women in
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: the anyway, everybody blew up. It was a night that's
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: on him a bit you need to get anyway, it
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: was horrible. It lasted for a long time as a
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: scandal because there was a gender component to it. That
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: was a gender component to it. And the the woman
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: who wrote the wrote the wrote the award winning book
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: which nobody wants to read. It's unreadable. Her name is
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: thinking of it now, but the name of the book
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: has letter from Ecuador, and she she said that she
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: wrote this book and a lot of it takes place
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: in Ecuador. She's very proud of the fact that she'd
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: never been there. Yeah, and uh so we get kind
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: of right now because I keep track of a lot
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: of new writers, you know, I'd like reading up and
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: coming writers. It persuades me that this game will last,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: you know, because there's so many good writers coming along,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: the really good, right young writers. And our women and
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: like Testa most Fager one of my favorites. They're just
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: some wonderful uh uh women writing. The reason is they're
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: not as oppressed by political correctness as the men are.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: And they're very rare, very they're very i mean, they're
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: just they just lay about themselves with a broad sword.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, they do any say anything they want to say.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: And it was all that's quite it's kind of invasive,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: kind of and it's really tense and full of interesting stuff.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: Whereas the men are so afraid of saying something wrong
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: about people who are overweight or uh, you know, unattractive
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: people somebody. They there's a kind of timidity about literary
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: fiction by young men that the women don't have to
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: deal with, and as a result, the men are not
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: very interesting at this point in time. Yeah, you see
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: it in comedy too, Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, female comics
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: caught loose. Absolutely. You mentioned earlier Key West you met
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: your wife, and Key West you were one of the
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: areas like this kind of fixation we had when I
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: say we that my brother's and nine and guys we
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: hung out with when we were in our kind of
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: in our twenties, like the fish a lot, and we
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: became really aware of um that we had missed the
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: boat on Key West, like something had happened in the
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: culture of fishing, in literature and whatnot. Something had happened
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: in Key West and it had died. Yeah. Can you
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: talk a little bit about your experiences in Key West
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: and what brought you down there and the fishing and
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: what you feel, um, what you feel died? Well, yeah,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: I can a little bit. I mean I went down there.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: It was a really uh it was a really virgil situation. Um.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: I went down there for for two reasons, three reasons.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: One was I was a sort of a bookish boy
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: and I was aware of its uh literary history. Secondly,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: it was a rundown cheap place to live, I mean
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: boat to Wall Street, which is one shop after another,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: and it was boarded up when I moved on there.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: There's no if your parents came from visit, there was
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: really no place to take him to dinner. There's one place,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: the A and B Lobster was terrible. And I had
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: the only skiff there. Yeah, I read that once. Yeah,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: I think it was one of your essays. Yeah, you
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: mentioned that at the time you had the only flat
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: skiff in Key West. What year was that, I think
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: sixty nine something like that. And um, so it was
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: a kind of uh it was partly a sort of
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: hippie brigadune, you know what I mean. Because it was
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: a cheap place to live. It felt like it wasn't
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: in the United States, and you know it was you know,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: half the people there were uh spoke Spanish or they
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: were conk sin spoke, you know, spoke this kind of
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: creole conk talk. And it was very interesting place. I mean,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: I was just loved it so much. It was such
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: a great place to be. And then in addition to that,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: I had a friend who was an outstanding traditional guide
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: who would who would give me a couple of his
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: clients that he didn't on a fish, usually because they
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: didn't know how to fish anyway. That was guiding. Those
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: people gave me a minimal living. And then I had
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: a little contract with Sports Illustrated. I think I had
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: to do six pieces a year for them. Between that
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: and my two days a week deal, I I had
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: a bare bones living and I could rent a rent
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: a place cheaply and just live my life. And it
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: was just a great place to be. And and I
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: know a lot of people who were there then I
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: still know them, and we all agree that it was
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: like it was like the thing that the best part
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: of our lives could never be replicated anywhere. It was
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: just there's nothing like it ever anywhere, never will be again.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: Um uh. And that's the feeling that I don't have exclusively.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, everybody I know who was there I just
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: heard from. I had. I had a friend, it's kind
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: of an artist, and he was smuggling dope. Everybody's smuggling dope.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: It was, you know, it was smuggling sail boats and
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: acoustic guitars was sort of the basic equipment for life
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: at Key West. And there were some very courageous guys
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: that were going to South America, you know, and bringing
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: bring back loads of pot. And it was considered you know,
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: it wasn't considered a grave thing if you if you
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: get caught. Yeah, And I had two good friends that
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: were bringing back a load of dope from Carla Hana
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: and they hunder ten foot coast guard cut her pull
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: alongside of him, and so they took a chainsaw and
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: they put a hole in the bottle of the boat
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: and sank it, and the coast guard boarded and put
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: a pump on it, pumped it back out, and they
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: and they and they were two great guys. They were
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: wonderful carpenters. So they went up to Eggland Air Force Base,
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: which was sort of a minimum security prison. They had
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: to make roll top death for the warden and all
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: the politicians up there and you know said, you know,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: go back to what you were doing. Well, one of
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: those guys, now he just you know, because now he's
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: a felon, so he had to do other things, so
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: he moved to the Bahamas. He's got this fantastic fishing
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: lodge on the Bahamas, he's got the he's got two
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: great restaurants in a bookstore and a tackle shop at
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: the US that he runs from Afar. You know, he said, well,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: if I'm a felon, I gotta do the best I can.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: And there are a couple of guys like that who
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: still remained and named over the Missouri. You know, they
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: couldn't guide anymore because they were felling, so they just
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: opened a big business. They have homes and belize and
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: they were forced by this limitation on their options something
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: even more creative. But your main draw Key West was
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: the fishing, right, unbelievable fishing. I mean, you have the Gulf.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: It's the head of the Gulf Stream, so you have
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: this phenomenal depth of species there, and then you have
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: the Gulf of Mexico, which is a whole different kind
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: of fish. You have the Gulf Stream, and you have
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: the Atlantic fishery. Um, it's very intricate, fascinating to try
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: to figure out. We didn't have GPS, we didn't have
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: cell phones, we didn't have online tide information. Uh, and
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: you had to convert everything like you get you get
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: a government tide book that Miami would be your closest information.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: You had to convert everything and like what the delays are? Yeah,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: and the delays were very different from the Gulf side
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: from Atlantic sided. They only might be a mile or
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: two apart, completely different tides, a difference of hours hours. Uh,
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: throughout throughout your life. Of because you've been around and
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: you've explored so much, do you have this do you
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: have this ongoing feeling that that um places are ending
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: all the time? Well, yeah, but do you feel like
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: the American West is like has ended? Well, it's very
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: you know, I no, not really. I mean I probably
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: that what I struggled with understanding in my fiction is
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: to try to figure out how it's moving on, because
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: when I got to Key West in the sixties, there
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: were people moving out because they thought it was ruined.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: When I left left there in seventy eight, that we're
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: quick going there in sight, I thought I was sure
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: it was done. And I know all these people that
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: have moved there since then, I just think it's been
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: the greatest lives and and and that's going to happen
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: here too. Well, is this is not gonna be uh,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: you know, the imagery, the vision we have in Montana
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: is not the same as it once was. I mean
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: it was when I got here in the sixties and
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: not much had changed. I mean, my neighbors were all
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: old family ranchers, you know, they were They were not polarized.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: You know, I was a hippie. That's so long hair?
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: You know, they were just why you get your hair
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: long while girls like it? You know, Oh, well that's
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: a good idea. And and uh, you know some of
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: the my rancher neighbors were born in the eight hundreds. Yeah,
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: you know, guy board in nine still ranching. Um. Then
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: it could kind of polarized us against them insiders I'll start,
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: you know, natives, non natives that could. That went on
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: for a while and we're kind of evolving out of
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: that now because there's so many that the what do
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: they call it the attrition rate in Montana, The turnover
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: rates has been very high. I'm not sure it's as
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: high as it used to be, but it was always
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: very high. People are always arriving at departing was part
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: of it. Do you feel as a writer that you're
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: more interested in tracking the change than you are in
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: lamenting or rooting for yep, Like you feel like you
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: can just you could almost stand back and like passively
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: observed as long as you hit it, hit the nail
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: on the head. Oh well, I mean I want to.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: There's a great book by Lewis Hyde that's just being
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: reviewed right now about the art of forgetting. You know,
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: you can't be uh, you can't be chained by your
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: the past or your own past. In many ways, you
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: really don't have much to say about what's going on.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: I Mean, one of the magic things about literature is
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: that it really is the only thing that can kind
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: of capture, uh, the atmosphere of a given moment um.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: You can look at the movies of the twenties, you
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: can read the newspapers of the nineties. You're never going
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: to get the feeling for the twenties that you're gonna
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: get from reading the Great Gaspee. I mean those that's
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: the only thing that can really Literature still is the
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: only thing that can really capture what it was like
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: to be there at that time. And it's no good
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: to be there at that time. But lamenting some other era. Um,
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: but that's hard to do. I mean, it's going by
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: you like clay pigeons, trying to catch up with it.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: Just what, you know, whatever, it is not easy. You
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: don't write from the past too much, not much. No. Um.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: Maybe I've kind of you know, I feel I've benefited
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: from the ability to kind of start over, you know.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, I wasn't very interested in living the life
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: I kind of grew up with. I mean, I had
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: a great life as a kid, you know, but I
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: didn't want to stay in the Midwest, you know, and
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: or stay in the southern Midwest. It seemed to be
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: much going on there. And also I had a kind
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: of a divided childhood because all my family lived in
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: on the Massachusetts coast, you know, and I loved it
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: out there, and my mother never wanted to leave there.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: So in the spring of the year, she just load
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: us kids up and we lows us up in the
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: car and drives back to my grandmother's falling down triple
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: decker Irish ghetto house and in Fall River, Massachusetts. And
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: I thought that was the greatest you know, go fish
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: for stripe bass with my cousins who just left. I've
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: been fly fishing with my cousin Fred for sixty five years.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: We just left. We're still doing it. You guys just fishingly.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: Don't need to say a whole lot of time. We'll
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: go anywhere we can go. Did you fish? I heard
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: mentioned that you were going to fish with Rachel Matten?
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: Do you do you fish? And tell? Like? Uh? I
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: was gonna Rachel was a bad fisherman. And I met
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: her once. I was surprised. I went to an event.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: It was her and Tucker Carlson on stage. They didn't
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: known each other and work together and we're friends. Their
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: friends with her, and they were bound by um an
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: interest in fishing. And they got up and they were
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: on stage together talking about that, and I was very
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: surprised that she was the angler. That's fascinating. Well, Tucker
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: Carlson comes to the same place we're go doing anyway
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: last or we were gonna go stripe fishing to stripe
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: bass fishing together. I'm a big admirer of hers and UM.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: And then NBC grounded her, just said, you know, you
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: can't go off for a few days. There's just she said,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: unless we actually she wrote back, she said, unless we
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: get real indictments. I can't go, oh, I got you so,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: and uh, what's the story you have where I can't
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: hear the name of it right now? You have a
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: story where you guys go hunting birds and and in
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: the end, uh, one of them, he goes off over
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: the hill and kills himself. Yeah. I hear that story.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: I hear so much about that story. That thing has
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: really had an ongoing life. What's that story called? It's
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: called there's two of those hunting stories, what's called sports one.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: This one's called Uh. Yeah. I had to read the
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: end a handful of times to make sure that in
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: fact he had going off and shot himself because he
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: gives his hunting partner. He kind of in a very
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: unceremonial way, explains a little bit about his dogs. Take
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: care of the dogs, Yeah, the care schedule. Yeah, when
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: she goes into heat, what she eats? And then he
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: wanders off over a hill, which is a little bit
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: misleading because they had seen the covey birds go over
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: the hill. But he goes over the hill and there's
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: a gunshot. Yeah. Well, you know I had to be like,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: oh what you know, I'm like, oh no, he absolutely
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: killed himself. Did that come from? It is that I
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: don't anything in your personal life, not really a couple
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: of things kind of, you know. I don't expect to
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: head out in the rapture, you know, But I always
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: thought the closest thing to rapture that I know is
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: to step into a cuvey covey rice. There's really nothing
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: like it. There's so much life, so many beating hearts,
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: so many eyes, so much expectation, all goes up like
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: a big celestial corsage. And I thought, if I was
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: gonna if I was going to sort of moored out
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: by my own hand, that would be kind of a
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: nice way to go. And I heard when my cousin
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: just told me he had an old friend, uh it
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: was terminally ill and was going to I'm gonna end
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: that day. Either knew that was his last day or
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: uh or they were going to pull the the pain
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: mid plugs or something. But he knew it was over.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: And there's an old friend of his lives in Rhode Island,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: and so he was very cheerful about it. He had
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: a great life, he had a good run, said me,
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: I find a find with this. Well, they said, what
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: do you want? He said, well, this was actually still
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: in the winter. He said, just build a big fire.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: I don't want my lap rob robe. I want my
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: bird dog, I want my cat. That's it off he want.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: He's fine with it. Were you friends with Richard Brodigan,
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: You have very you have very good friends. Tell a
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: little about that. I mean, were you involved, I mean,
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: were you It's kind of like this famous story about
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: a bunch of guys that were hunting and he was
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: supposed to show up, yeah, and didn't show up. The
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: thing that I remember the most was, um uh, I
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: thought he was doing great. I talked to him into
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: giving up drinking for a period, and he just transformative,
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: I mean physically changed. He had this big, sort of
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: projected belly, you know, and he's drinking all the time
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: and starting at daybreak practically. And then he spent this
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: whole summer being this happy, thin guy to give readings
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: around the neighborhood. Everybody was determined to resume drinking as
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: soon as possible, especially he liked to go to Japan
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: and stay drunk the whole time he was in Japan.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: That was his big deal. And I'm not sure. Maybe
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: it's put apart of bonding and culture or something in Japan.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: But um, so he came to my house, uh, and
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: he brought this black Japanese funerary funerary urn. Are you
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: Japanese or Chinese? Half Chinese? Half Chinese, half Chinese? So
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: you don't you know what a funerary urn is? Is
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: that Japanese or Chinese? But I believe that it's Japanese
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: and that's where the anyways, beautiful, beautiful black ceramic thing.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: He brought it over to my house and he said,
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: I want you to hang on to this, and he said,
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: you'll look, someone will call you for it. Fine, Richards,
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: I put it there. I had it two fly ras,
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: one of which I gave the ripped torn and uh,
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: not too long after that, I get a call, you know,
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: from his daughter. I think it was from his daughter saying,
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: you know, Richards committed suicide. We've sent the urn no ship. Yeah.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: He even told her where to find it. Huh. You
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: know why I asked you about that. We're driving up here,
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: driving around looking for your house. Um yoanninging here Yannie
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: and I were talking about our friend Doug, who's out
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: here with a couple of buddies of his from Wisconsin.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: Right now, they're here in Montana and they're just driving
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: around fishing, and Joannice mentioned me that part of their
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: plan while they're driving around fishing is to read Trout
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: Fishing in America. And I said to Joannice, well, you know,
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: it doesn't really have anything to do with trout fishing,
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: and he said, they know. Oh, that's great, greatly. Hey,
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: I gotta Richard's daughter just sent me a new addition
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: of it. I might be able to see it. I
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: saw it the other day, Um of troun Fishing in
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: America with Billy Collins introduction. Okay, isn't that cool? Yeah? Well,
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: it was a magical book. I mean, and whatever it was,
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know what it was. I've read it two
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: or three times. It's just a great book. Yeah, one
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: of the most requestioned books in the entire American library systems,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: right up there with Huckleberry Finn or something. You know,
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: there's a couple more questions for you. There's the thing
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: that I've read where you've written it a couple of
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: times or said in interviews, UM that fishing is the
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: second most published subject after mathematics. Yeah, what does that mean? Though?
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: I have no idea. It is way too much stuff
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: about fishing out there. I hate to throw throw another
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: little one out there. No. I thought about that when
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: I came in and looked at your bookshelves, and I
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: remembered that. I can't remember if you wrote it or
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: said in an interview, but you've written it. Was the
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: second most published subject, next to mathematics. I don't know why.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: It's just because for the sort of outdoor activities, especially
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: the ones with any kind of a predatorial component, it's
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: the most contemplative. So it may that maybe what what
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: leads to it. I have a book that I tried
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: to get. It's called Blood notts um unbelievable book by
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: an English writer, A good name for a fishing book. Yeah.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: He was the he was the dance critic of The Observer,
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: really and he wrote the stunning book about fishing. Um.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: And uh, I mean it's just a great book U.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: And I got all sorts of people to help promoted.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: I had always always renowned people write blurbs and stuff
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: for it really didn't they was published very poorly and
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: didn't really go anywhere. Um. But it was one of
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: these books like the book about the Swedish utopia VSA
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: v angling you know. Uh. And this guy grew up
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: he comes from. It starts out dad was teaching him
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: to fish, and he he never could understand why his
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: mother would get up in the morning and apply saves
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: to his fire to father's body and then they get
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: dressed and go fishing, and he couldn't understand what that
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: was about. Uh. And then as he learned to fish,
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: he started quick singing his dad about these things. Turned
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: out his dad was in a tank battle and his
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: talent in the Nazi tank hit it with an anti
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: tank weapon of some kind of The thing burst into
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: flame and he was one of the first guys to
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: get a total plastic surgery treatment of the Second World War. Well,
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: that kind of folds in as he's learning to fish.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: Then he has a He has a hero at school
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: who's like one of those super male figures that young
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: guys kind of identified with when they're kids in school.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: He's a falconer, he's a great fisherman, and he followed
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: him through life. They often fish together. The hero guy
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: joined the Royal Irish Constabulary in uh in Northern Ireland
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: during the troubles. These guys all went to this ancient
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: Catholic college in England's like six year old college and
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: grew up in this kind of intense Catholic atmosphere. He
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: joins the the r U R what it was called,
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: and he's captured by the I ra A uh and
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: they tortured him for two weeks. They brought fake priests
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: in to do the last rites, and then they killed
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: him and then leers. Afterwards, this guy fishing runs into
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: some of those I ra A guys and they said, well,
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: I can tell you this about your friend. He was
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: a real soldier, he never broke But this is all
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: interwoven with with hardcore serious fishing. And I began to think,
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: you know, it's pretty seamless, you know. Then O, this
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: would have happened if he hadn't been a fisherman, you know. So, Uh,
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: what's the name Harry? Uh? Oh? What is that? Uh? Anyway,
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: there's a wonderful writer. He died long ago. What about fishing? Uh?
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: Starlight Angling Club was was one of his one of
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: his books. They were so intermeshed with life, you know,
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: And that's so maybe that's why there's so much fishing
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: stuff out there. I don't know, do you feel that
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: if you ended the world now and let it start
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: back over again and the world gets going again, would
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: um would so many writers that fish be fly fisherman?
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: Or do you think you could let it start over
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: again and it would wind up that so many writers
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: that fish were spin fisherman. What a question? I don't know.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, the mentality of trying to
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: catch a fish with a fly is so very different,
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: I mean with spin fisherman basically attacking fish. Yeah, and
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: I like that, And uh, you have to fly fishing
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: is you kind of have to make a deal. You
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: know what English fly fishing writer Shaip, what do you do?
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: What's this all about? He said, Well, you make a
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: cast and then you await results. That's a that's a
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: whole other thing. Then, you know, you know what I'm saying, Man,
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: I like them. I like all that. I like any
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: kind of fishing you got. You got a line in
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: one of your fishing stories where you're talking about a
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: fly presenting a fly to a fish. You said that
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: it's like a highway exit that's labeled free beer, right,
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: and most motorists are just gonna blow pass. Some motors
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: are gonna think like, oh, that's a ruse and they're
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: gonna ambush me and kill me. I didn't remember saying this,
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: but some guys are just gonna get off. There are
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: gonna take those are the fishy catch. You know. He
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: had a magic moment. I was last year. I was
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: fishing on the New Fork of the Green and Wyoming.
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: I was fishing with dry flies. That big, big dry flies.
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: Are a lot of great drakes on the water and
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: fired out there's floating along, dancing along. We're all filled
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: with hope. This big brown trout comes up. It stalls.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: He says, this is bullshit and he swims away. As
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: he swims away, it's all going downstream. He's developing doubts.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: I can see him go through this thing, and he goes,
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: I think I'll eat it. So I recently had uh.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: But we're at my mother's home, and my mother lives
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: in the house I was brought up in, and my kid,
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: who's nine, he looks under the pontoon boat. She's got
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: a pontoon boat moored up to her dock. He looks
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: out of the pontoon ball. There's a big, large mouth
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: um feeling it hovering in the hovering in the shadows,
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: you know, and he takes his beach saying and eventually
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: gets a big what we call like a horn nose chub.
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: Those big those now they get the males get a
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: knobby knows on him and I free hook it on
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: their for him. There's no weight, it's just this chubb
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: and I tell him to flick it up under there,
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: you know. And the way that fish, just the total
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: conviction with which that fish took that chubb, like no
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: hesitation or doubt like something like that. Though, it is
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: a little bit magical to watch. Well, that fish is
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: like I'll take it, I buy it. And it's interesting
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: because you know, it's almost startling. You know, there's fish
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: that living around docks and stuff in Florida. You know,
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: they've had so many people try to catch them. I mean,
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: you can slide a live shrimp down their face like this.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: They're not gonna let it fall uh one more for you.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: I know. It's on the way in. There's turkeys hanging
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: around here. Are they living here? Yere? Around? Are they
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: migrate up and down? No, there're a lot of a
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: lot of them around here, and they get very yeah,
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: they get very tame. They hone in on the imagine
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: that they're only making their living because they can winner
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: up around animals, livestock. I think that's part of it.
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: We had we had one living on rusty, living on
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: the porch all winter long, and he went off with
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: his pack. Used to be when we would grain our
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: horses out of a trough, you know, we take a
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: bucket of grain and put it in this long wooden
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: trough and we gotta go out there. The horses will
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: be lined up and there'll be turkeys lined up between
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: the horses. So do you do you hunt the turkeys?
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: Do I have turkeys? It wouldn't be very sporting here.
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: I have gone turkey hunting. I haven't been successful at it,
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: but I've gone turkey hunting when I've been visiting my
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: in laws in Alabama, and that's very that seems very
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: interesting to me. But I mean, this would be case
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: of going out and plugging one. I mean, these are
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: Miriam's turkeys. They were established there a New Mexico turkey originally.
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: They they're like hans. They just found a biota that
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: they could move right into. Uh. Remember earlier I was
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: praising you for just how believable everything, and you're and
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: your work is We're gonna move on to something unbelievable. Yeah,
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: I just want to ask you about the one thing
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: that I was like, uh, that's not cracked. What was it?
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: You know, your story Canyon Ferry. Yeah, there's a guy
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: that's taken like his he's taking a kid out of
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: ice fishing on Canyon Ferry Lake, but it's the wintertime
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: and he has a coffee can full of crawlers. Oh
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: I really didn't like that. Yeah, they'd phrazed, wouldn't they
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: Just he wouldn't have that guy. Yeah, he wouldn't have
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: that guy, wouldn't have that. He couldn't buy him like that. Yeah,
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: it might be true. Ye know. I feel like if
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: you ever do a revised version, you need to change.
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: He needs to have a styrofoam container. Yea that he
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: bought a Bob Wartz a styrofoam container from the cold.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: That was the only thing I've ever read. And this
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: is this is this sounds like an insult, but it's
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: a it's a compliment. How many books have you written?
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know, fifteen or something, I guess, and how
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: many how many short stories? I don't know? A lot.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: I just collected him in excess of like, you know,
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: dozens and dozens and he've written an entire of essays
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: about horses. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I just want to
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: point out that all that and that I'll take it
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: if that's the worst one time when I was like, no, oh,
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: it was painful, but it just I think that it
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: it reveals how um, just the how well versed you've
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: become in your life, just everything having to do with America. Yeah, no,
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: I'm you know, it's funny. I have a friend who's uh,
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: who just married you just married a girl from Prague.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: There's a guy that I fished to sail with luck
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: and she has some kind of a uh problem coming
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: going out of the country. I mean her, you know,
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: you can't just get married now and automatically assaults of
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: this problem. So they're out of the country now, they're
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: wandering around, they've been on the Croatian coast, they're doing stuff. Um.
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: But I can tell how homesick he is for America.
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: And he's a real ex hippie, you know, he's not
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: nostalgic about America. But I lived over I lived in
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: Ireland one time. I lived in Spain. I lived in Italy,
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: but I was always trying to find what's going on
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: in America, you know. And uh and also I got
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: sort of educated in the early idea that there was
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: such a thing as American literature that wasn't the same
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: as English literature. That was actually when I was going
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: to college. That was a relatively new idea that you know,
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: it wasn't always in the air. And uh, programs like
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: American Studies, all those kinds of things. The old idea
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: that there is such a thing. We're not just a
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: disparate in Malick, we are kind of a people. Uh
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: and that's not been for sure forever. And uh so
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of now that I see it, kind of imperiled.
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: I'm just really interested in what it is, what this
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: country is, what it is to be an American. Um
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: And when I just was overseas, I really noticed that.
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: I was just like, what's going on. I gotta get
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: the Buildings Gazette. I'm done in Brittany, you know, powing
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: mysel phone. What's going to happen to the Billings Gazette today?
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: It's kind of it's kind of ignorant in a way
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: to look at that, but I don't long to be
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: an expatriate as some people did at one time, never
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: did want to be. And whenever I'm not here, I
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: want to know what's going on and I and I
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: would like to kind of claw my way to a
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: sort of a template or an overview of what an act,
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: what this country actually is, since it's changing so quickly.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: My wife had a job for a while where it
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: would have been possible to go and take a position overseas,
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: and when she brought this up to me, I told
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: that I was just too American to live somewhere else,
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: which I felt was Yeah, I thought I wouldn't be
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: able to pull it off. I wouldn't be able to
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: pull it off either. And you know you noticed it
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: if you you know, if you get translated a lot,
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: because they really have a lot of a lot of
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: uh problems with our language, you know what I mean.
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: For example, they couldn't translate the title Cloudbursts, which is
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: my collected stories. French couldn't translate that there isn't a cloud,
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: but there isn't a term for that. Where do they
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: go with I can't remember? Or what's what? Whatever they
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: went with? What's it? Translate speak French. They went with
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: wandlecil city near when I was in franchise. Is that
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: a nice tale? Oh yeah, it's very nice. Thank you.
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: There is there anything that you wish you've gotten asked about?
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: They didn't get asked about here today? Yeah? Any you
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: want to wedge, you know, But this has been really fun.
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: I could do this for a long time because it's
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of intuitive. You know, I'm I'm
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: enjoying this. I guess I was concerned that there would
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: be more of a template for what we were going
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: to go toward that hasn't happened. Um, maybe I missed out.
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: What would that have been? I think you sucked up.
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but that's what I like. That approach
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: to anything. I mean, that's the way I write. You know,
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: something arrests my attention. I have no idea what's going
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: to happen. I had an image one time we rented
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: a house down the Gulf coast when you're I went
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: down ahead of time. I didn't know anybody at this town.
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: It was seemed very strange to me that people seemed
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: fairly strange. But I had the rental host, you know,
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: on the renter, the realtor gave me the keys, and
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: I went out to look at the Gulf of Mexico
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: and the the wind blew the door shot. Now I'm
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: on the porch. I can't get back into the house.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: I don't know anybody. Somebody drove me there, and I
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: mean I felt this kind of derascinated panic, you know.
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: Suddenly I became nobody on this windy porch. So that's
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: how I had to go on. I had just had
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: that image. I said, well, wonder where this goes? And
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: that life is kind of like that, I think. And
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: that's what most fiction writers, uh uh, admit at some
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: point in a time, most of them not all that
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: writing is really improvisitory. I mean, as a cheever said
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: it over and over again. In fact, my my experience
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: is if you really know where it's going, it's probably
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: not going to be any good. You don't write the
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: end first, no, no, hell no. But I revised a lot.
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a rewriter, you know. I do a
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: lot of drafts, but I don't know where it's going.
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: Maybe I want to be a reader when I'm writing.
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: I want to be a reader with a little bit
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: of an advantage, which is what I used to do
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: magazine stories, which is totally different, but pieces of reporting
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: or whatever. I would start with a place I wanted
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: to get, like a really cool scene or something that
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: was impactful, and then picture writing the rest of the
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: article in the way that would warrant such an impactful ending.
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: Did you actually follow through with that or oh, that's
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: just how I would start. I feel like if only
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: I could write something so good that it could end
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: with this and have it makes sense. I wrote a
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: note down, I wrote this note of dialogue done. I'm
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: gonna try to do something but eventually and it just
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: just in quotes. It's just a u ass whole Did
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: you dictate this? I don't know where is that going?
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: But it has energy. You know, well, this is the
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: perfect way to get out of the interview. Stay tuned
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: as you read the life's work of Tom mcwayne and
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: watch for that line and you'll have a feeling of
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: coming full circle back to this. But seriously, thank you
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: for coming on. Appreciate it. I appreciate it, and I
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: am kind of a fan of what you do. Keep
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: it as loose as it as it has been, and
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: the only way you can be sure of. That is
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: when you realize how many enemies he requires. There's a
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: couple out there. Yeah, I'm sure. Well, thank you again,
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: appreciate it. Okay, my pleasure.