This interview was conducted by Art Crankstaff, staff writer for the Benson News.
Art: Mr. Watson, nice to meet you.
JW And you Art, I enjoy your work.
Art, Thanks. Now, for the record, what has the response been for your book, Raincrow, which, by the way, I quite enjoyed.. Especially the part about.....
JW Art, I guess... perhaps we should get on with the interview.. The response has been similar to my experience marketing Fenceposts. People in Europe and other parts of America reacted more favorably than our Omahans, or Flatwaterians. Perhaps because it is about them. They don't quite know how to react. Or, I should say, some of the reactions I have had have not been at all positive. I devoted a chapter of my book to the fictional character, Tom Raincrow's ex wife and children, I heard from some individuals who thought they recognized themselves in the story. They thought they had been impugned. It was harassment, actually. The events were taken out of context.
Generally though, I have been reactionless, friends don't see the need to tell me what they think about the book--- --- and that is OK. The print reviews have been oblique, but favorable. Perhaps because the book was meant to be like an old worn shoe, it was meant to speak of those more innocent day's of the past; it was also a final statement of departure from the past. It is an obituary of a sort, for Bighat anyway.
Art:: Oh yes, Bighat. He is a fictional character, in a fiction, who, I get the distinct impression, was someone you knew very well?
JW: Oh yes, . But he's truly gone, except for nights when the South wind stirs the pine trees, and the tavern down the street has music wafting on the breeze,When I've got 5 dollars in my pocket,
Art: An invisible recurring character.
JW Exactly. Durable, pliable, wholly unreliable. Chrome plated surrogated.
Art- So, was it worth some of the negative reactions?
JW- Well, I had hoped it might open a dialogue. Unfortunately it pushed some individuals farther away. But this book is the truth, to me, you understand. My truth. Someone else sees my truth as lies. It hurts someone; that is the way of the world. The path writing takes. I have no regrets. I hope someday they will see through the anger they are trapped by. I cannot mold people's truth's. I would not want to.
Art: How did this book come about?
JW A dream, Art. I wanted to see my name on the spine of a book at the local library- I've wanted that since I was a kid. I figured if so many hundreds of thousands of others could do it-- being a story teller, it would have to happen eventually. The notes I take seemed to be pointing in this direction- my wife, pushed me, and finally said, "You need to have a cut off point- just say, It's done. Otherwise you will be tinkering and editing ten years from now."
Art; I am glad she pushed you. What do you say we finish this interview over lunch at Louis?
JW, Say, Art. You're a deep thinking cove, aren't you?
Later, over a burger basket and a pint of Bud, perched on the little saddles against the back wall by the dingy cowboy mural.
Art; you're buying aren't you?
JW: A broke journalist. Of course. Isn't that the way of it.
Art- Back to the book. I recognized different influences. Who were your teachers?.
JW.. Well, American writers. Not that I don't love the writer's of the world; Dickens, what could be more delightful, the poets, Blake....Baudelaire, Blaise Pascal, Cervantes, Tolstoy, History, the precise use of language from another time and place. I just finished Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels. Beautiful. My wife tells me, "If you didn't read so much, you'd get a lot more writing done." She's right of course.
But the Americans.... Hell, I am an American. When I came to write, they would be the model. I would have to write in the American way. Favorites? Frost, first and foremost. Stopping by woods on a snowy evening. A tramp in mudtime. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. Twain of course for all the great quotations, and Huckleberry Finn, our greatest novel, America's first stand up comic, sorry Herman, the whale book is a close second, Whitman, and Steinbeck, Hemingway of course, an Illinois boy like me, bigger than life. Fitzgerald. No one can touch him for elegance and beauty of language. Kerouac and Bukowski, Carver, Cormac McCarthy, his trilogy. All the pretty horses, fantastic stuff.
Our Nebraska writer's. Mari Sandoz, Willa Cather... My Antonia! What a joy that is to read. Loren Eiseley, John Neihardt.... I've gone to Bancroft to see his Sioux prayer garden, the museum built in remembrance.
I love history- Shelby Foote's 3 volume history of the Civil War, a history written by a poet, Sandbergs Lincoln, A Soldiers Story, Omar M. Bradley.
Art: You didn't mention Wright Morris-
JW. In my opinion he is a better photographer than writer. His photographs, to me are essential plains images.
Art: What are you reading now?
JW Just finished Chronicles by Bob Dylan. Dylan's book is great reading.. By a musician who has written great songs in every era since the 60's. Some great stories, and he paints pictures with words- a poet writing prose.
Art- Does that appeal to you?
JW- Not many writers can pull it off. Deliverance by James Dickey is a great example of a poetic novel that works. Now to me, Faulkner reads like poetry, but his images were so dense, so tangled, reading him could be exhausting. As I get older I have more patience and experience. I see things in a writer's work I could not have known, years ago. I read Sanctuary recently. No wonder it seemed so foreign to me as a 20 year old.
I've grown more selective about my reading. I just started rereading the Screwtape Letters.by C.S. Lewis. It is so good and so true, it draws me every so often. I don't reread many books. I heard there is a spoken word edition featuring John Cleese, that is a great match.
What appeals to me? It has to uplift me. I won't spend an extra minute on something that is negative. I don't have to search for negativity. It is all around. I can only control my reaction to it. I will not go there. So, if an author is just lost in the maze of life- searching dead ends and trying to lay their load on me, I can spot it quickly. Of course it may have been written by a humorous person. In that case it will be sarcasm, lampooning, parody, or slapstick. You will be amused while the author takes you nowhere. I want to grow. My son doesn't like to hear that. To this young man, change is accompanied by fear.
Art: In the book, you draw it to a close in 2040- what are you trying to say here? Is this prophecy?
JW: as a child and later on as a young person, I saw myself in dreams; an old man, white hair fluttering in the breeze. So this was like an insurance policy. If I wrote myself as an old man- I would last until that date.
Art: Hey, I'm getting kind of dry here---
JW--- Oh yeah. "Hey waitress, bring us a pitcher."
Art: What's next?
JW: right now I am concentrating on the music, my second CD is nearly done. I need to promote Raincrow more, get it out there. So- if you are a literary agent or editor- publish this thing with the right distribution and publicity; it will take off.......
Two hours later...
Art: we should take off.
JW: What, I just put a buck in the jukebox!!!
.
