“Frankly, a writer should be a hero of consciousness.” -Jim Harrison
In 1986, novelist and poet Jim Harrison entertained Jim Fergus, an interviewer from The Paris Review, at his Michigan farm over a period of five days. Harrison was busy bird hunting and preparing elaborate meals for his guests, but he made room to talk shop. In my mind, Harrison is plain brilliant, so to “hear” him speak in this interview is a special treat. I’m especially impressed with how he continually offers up what Rilke, Rimbaud and other poets had to say on any given subject.
I’m also interested in what Harrison had to say in ’86 on “the business” of his writing. “The first seventeen years of our marriage we averaged less than ten grand a year,” he says.
Curiously, things kept going downhill. I would get cheated on the most minor little screenplay. I’d write one for money and then they wouldn’t pay me. These things kept happening. My older daughter is still angry about what we went through, and I must admit I am occasionally. But there’s nothing unique about it, and all it does is make you enormously cynical. At the end of that ghastly time I met Jack Nicholson on the set of McGuane’s movie, The Missouri Breaks. We got talking and he asked me if I had one of my novels with me, and I had one, I think it was Wolf. He read it and enjoyed it. He told me that if I ever got an idea for him, to call him up. Well, I never have any of those ideas. I wasn’t even sure what he meant. I think he said later that I was the only one he ever told that to who never called. A year afterwards, I was out in L.A. and he called up and asked me to go to a movie. It was really pleasant, and I was impressed with his interest in every art form. It was right after Cuckoo’s Nest and all these people tried to swarm all over him after the movie. Anyway, later he heard I was broke and he thought it was unseemly. So he rigged up a deal so that I could finish the book I had started, which was Legends of the Fall.
I love how Jack–who Harrison calls “an extraordinary person, really literate and intensely perceptive”–thought Harrison’s poverty unseemly. The power of a benefactor is as potent today, as ever.
Further along in the interview, Harrison is asked if he feels any pressure to write the Big Book? “I feel absolutely no pressure of any kind,” he says. “People don’t realize how irrational and decadent an act of literature is in the first place, and to feel pressure in a literary sense is hopeless.”
The Paris Review is an amazing publication. And now that its interview archives are available for free on the web, it’s an astounding digital resource for writers and fans of literature.
Would you like to hear about the craft of writing from the likes of William Carlos Williams, Evelyn Waugh, John Steinbeck, E.B. White, Vladimir Nabokov, Jack Kerouac, E. M. Forster, Frank O’Connor, William Styron, Dorothy Parker and so on? Of course you would and it’s all there for the reading, thanks to the work and generosity of the literary magazine’s writer’s, editors and publishers (past and present).
I just read a 1956 Paris Review interview with William Faulkner and learned a lot about the author in the process. His answers are matter of fact, and I imagine they’re a good reflection of his personality. Thankfully, his answers are also funny. For instance, let’s look at his answer regarding how he became a writer…
I was living in New Orleans, doing whatever kind of work was necessary to earn a little money now and then. I met Sherwood Anderson. We would walk about the city in the afternoon and talk to people. In the evenings we would meet again and sit over a bottle or two while he talked and I listened. In the forenoon I would never see him. He was secluded, working. The next day we would repeat. I decided that if that was the life of a writer, then becoming a writer was the thing for me. So I began to write my first book. At once I found that writing was fun. I even forgot that I hadn’t seen Mr. Anderson for three weeks until he walked in my door, the first time he ever came to see me, and said, “What’s wrong? Are you mad at me?†I told him I was writing a book. He said, “My God,†and walked out. When I finished the book—it was Soldier’s Pay—I met Mrs. Anderson on the street. She asked how the book was going, and I said I’d finished it. She said, “Sherwood says that he will make a trade with you. If he doesn’t have to read your manuscript he will tell his publisher to accept it.†I said, “Done,†and that’s how I became a writer.
Faulkner also had a certain ruthlessness and mono-focus about him. According to him that’s what a writer needs to get the job done.
The writer doesn’t need economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil and some paper. I’ve never known anything good in writing to come from having accepted any free gift of money. The good writer never applies to a foundation. He’s too busy writing something. If he isn’t first rate he fools himself by saying he hasn’t got time or economic freedom. Good art can come out of thieves, bootleggers, or horse swipes. People really are afraid to find out just how much hardship and poverty they can stand. They are afraid to find out how tough they are. Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don’t have time to bother with success or getting rich. Success is feminine and like a woman; if you cringe before her, she will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back of your hand. Then maybe she will do the crawling.
I know it’s hard to skip over the misogyny in this last bit of commentary from the famous Southern writer. But there is power in what he said, if not in how he said it. Wanting fame or fortune isn’t going to deliver the manuscript. Manuscripts are written by tough people who refuse to quit or be distracted from the ultimate goal, which is the finished work, published or not.
[UPDATE] In a 1986 Paris Review interview with Jim Harrison, the interviewer says, “Faulkner once said that nothing could ruin a first-rate talent, to which Norman Mailer replied that Faulkner made more asinine remarks than any other major American novelist.” Harrison then says, “Except for Mailer. I think Faulkner was always defensive and he gave Chinese answers.”
This post is the countermeasure to my last (mostly depressing) post about the need for more high paying jobs in Oregon.
Ben Jacklet, managing editor of Oregon Business, believes the recession is nearly over in the U.S. and in Oregon. He says the state gained 42,000 jobs over the past year and hiring is picking up.
In fact, other than the recent closure of the Blue Heron paper mill in Oregon City, the business news out of Oregon has been uncharacteristically rosy lately. Intel is building a $2.5 billion factory in Hillsboro and just announced its most lucrative quarter ever. Facebook is pouring millions into its Prineville data center. Google is investing $100 million in Eastern Oregon wind power. Crop and beef prices are up for farmers and ranchers. Crab and salmon prices are up for fishermen. There will be a salmon fishery off the coast this summer. Exports are growing, with the weak dollar playing in Oregon’s favor. Bank of the Cascades, MBank and other financial institutions have avoided the wrath of the FDIC. New businesses are popping up in downtown Bend. Vestas, McMenamins, and the Portland Timbers are bringing new energy into downtown Portland. Statewide, trucking is up 26 percent year over year, online job ads are up 23 percent, and business and personal bankruptcies are down 3.4 and 8 percent respectively.
To me, this adds up to a preponderance of evidence. The U.S. recession allegedly ended in June 2009. And now it is finally ending in Oregon.
Okay then! Pop open a Willamette Valley sparkling wine and let’s toast.
I’ve tried to explain “the other side of Oregon” to friends from outside the state who don’t know about the economic hardships many Oregonians endure. The Beaver State’s high unemployment rate, coupled with inflation, is a misery inducer for those caught in its jaws–one in four Oregonians is under-employed and one in five is on food stamps.
When we consider these problems it’s easy to think only about the loss of low-to-middle income jobs, but it’s not just factory jobs and agricultural jobs that are missing from the local economy. Many of the region’s high paying jobs are going to outside talent because Oregon isn’t producing enough qualified workers. That was the message delivered by Intel software chief Renee James at Portland Business Alliance’s (PBA) annual meeting this morning.
According to The Oregonian, James said that the state’s education system isn’t generating enough skilled workers and that Oregon isn’t doing enough to support entrepreneurship. “Innovation leaves Portland,†James lamented in her keynote address at the Oregon Convention Center. “Instead of being a lifestyle city, we should endeavor to become an innovation city that has a great lifestyle.â€
It’s important to note that James, one of the top execs at Intel (which is Oregon’s largest employer), received her Bachelors and Masters from University of Oregon. So she’s clearly pulling for the home team. But sometimes the home team needs a new pitcher. And a new first baseman, center fielder, shortstop and so on.
Here’s a new commercial from PBA that makes the case for job creation:
When you click over to PBA’s microsite, ValueofJobs.com (as the video requests), there’s this additional information to consider:
Oregon is an income-tax-dependent state. The state’s schools, community colleges, universities, social and human services and corrections services all depend largely on revenue derived from taxes on personal income. The region’s low wages and declining per capita income translate into anemic state income tax revenues, which directly impacts the state’s ability to deliver social services. Economists have predicted that Oregon faces a decade of state budget deficits and is likely to fall about $3 billion short of the funds needed to maintain current services in every two-year budget cycle.
Bottom line, Oregonians need high paying jobs to reverse the tide. But is it wrong to think we might also benefit from a sales tax? To ensure essential services, the income has to come from somewhere. Certainly we’re all for a focus on jobs creation, but where do these jobs come from when the economy is ailing? Incentives for small business owners is a great start, but the state can only do so much, especially when it’s hamstrung by a budget shortfall. Businesses need to create jobs on their own, but many businesses are too busy hanging on to add another person to the payroll.
Sadly, the cycle keeps repeating and the momentum we need keeps slipping away. It is time to take common sense steps to walk our way out of this. Growing industrial hemp for food, fiber and fuel is a common sense step and an American industry waiting to happen. Oregon could encourage farmers to grow hemp despite the federal law prohibiting the production of the crop. Many states would follow our lead on this and we could help right a serious wrong, but what’s important is increased farm incomes and the number of new businesses that would “crop up” to make things from hemp.
Perhaps you have a better idea? I’d love to hear it.
I decided to purchase The Chicago Transit Authority from Amazon the other day and the 1969 release from this hugely popular band is definitely worth the every penny. You might even call the double album a masterpiece of jazz fusion and rock.
Released in April 1969, the album (sometimes informally referred to simply as “CTA”) proved to be an immediate hit, reaching #17 in the US and #9 in the UK. While critical reaction was also strong, the album initially failed to produce any hit singles, and the group was seen as an album-oriented collective until their producer James Guercio later shortened some of the tracks for radio.
While clicking around these tubes to learn more about the band’s origins, I found fragments of a documentary that features Chicago in their native studio setting, the 4000 acre Caribou Ranch near Nederland, Colorado, which was purchased by Guercio for $1 million in 1971.
According to a page on Invicta Records’ website, Chicago filmed a network television special there, “Chicago: High in the Rockies” in 1973, the year Caribou Ranch opened. A second TV special “Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch,” was broadcast in 1974.
Elton John’s 1974 album Caribou was recorded at, and named after, the studio. Other artists who made records at Caribou Ranch include Earth Wind & Fire, The Beach Boys, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Joe Walsh, John Denver, Kris Kristofferson, Carole King, Waylon Jennings, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Ozark Mountain Daredevils, America, Chick Corea, Deep Purple and the list goes on. Chicago recorded a total of five studio albums in Nederland: Chicago VI, Chicago VII, Chicago VIII, Chicago X, and Chicago XI.
My research also revealed that Guercio founded Country Music Television and is a major landowner in Colorado and Montana. He also has his hand in cattle ranching, as well as energy and mineral investments. He has also amassed one of the world’s largest private collections of Gen. George Custer’s papers.
“The universe is made of stories, not atoms.” -Muriel Rukeyser
Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly is the author or What Technology Wants, and several other books. To my knowledge he doesn’t call himself a futurist, but he is one, and one of the best.
Writing on his blog, he images new futures for books that are interesting to consider. Let’s look at a small slice of what Kelly sees on the horizon:
Today the paper pages of a book are disappearing. What is left in their place is the conceptual structure of a book — a bunch of text united by a theme into an experience that takes a while to complete.
…What books have always wanted was to be annotated, marked up, underlined, dog-eared, summarized, cross-referenced, hyperlinked, shared, and talked-to. Being digital allows them to do all that and more.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t need any more distractions from the text. Yet, I hesitate to criticize this form that Kelly imagines because a more social book may, in fact, be a better experience of the work.
In a 1993 Paris Review interview with Ken Kesey, the great American novelist said, “The novel is a noble, classic form but it doesn’t have the juice it used to. If Shakespeare were alive today he’d be writing soap opera, daytime TV, or experimenting with video.”
At the time of the interview, digital books were only a rumor, but today they’re fast becoming commonplace. The question is will advances in technology help makes books even more compelling than they already are? Amazon and its competitors are certainly believers.
[UPDATE] According to Los Angeles Times, sales of e-books reached $90 million in February — more than tripling the number from a year earlier. Last summer, online retailer Amazon.com Inc. said sales of e-books for its Kindle reader had far eclipsed hardcover book sales, noting at the time that it had been selling e-books for only a little more over two years and had been selling paper books since 1995.
On Friday, Darby and I took a trip to Eugene to celebrate Ken Kesey Day. We looked at old photos and other artifacts including Kesey’s prison journal (he served six months for a marijuana bust). We attended a reading where University of Oregon scholars read passages from unpublished works by Kesey and finally we attended the west coast premier of The Magic Trip, a new documentary film that restores original footage shot in 1964 by Kesey and the Merry Pranksters on their journey from La Honda, California to New York City and back in the DayGlo-painted bus called “Further.”
It’s an extraordinary film, and a major achievement in editing by the filmmakers, Alex Gibney and Allison Ellwood. The Pranksters shot some 100 hours of footage on their coast-to-coast jaunt, but their audio and video rarely synced up (and there were other technical issues to address, as well). I’d say Gibney and Ellwood hit a home run, because the film is truly immersive. In fact, Ellwood said after the screening that she felt like she could smell the fumes from the bus at times.
Of course, many in the audience, myself included, were already familiar with the story. Tom Wolfe laid it out for all to see in his book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. It’s also the stuff of legend in Grateful Dead circles. Be that as it may, actually seeing the characters and hearing them is a gift. Finally, we have a sense for what it’s like to ride along with Neal Cassady at the wheel. We see the camaraderie between Ken Babbs and Kesey and other relationship dynamics (for instance, Kesey, or Swashbuckler to use his Prankster name, “steals” George Walker’s girlfriend after she gets on the bus in New York). The film also provides a great look at another time in America. Hippies did not yet exist in 1964, so while the Pranksters drew lots of curious onlookers, most had warm smiles on their faces. In other words, the American people were not scared by the Pranksters’ strangeness. That would come later, when the media, and other powers that be, enacted a smear campaign against free-thinking, freedom loving Americans.
There’s a passage in the film when Kesey talks about a writer needing to enjoy the process of writing a book, because the culmination of that process–the publishing part–isn’t much fun. It is worth noting that the idea to make this “travel film” was an attempt by Kesey to move beyond the confines of format. After all, his first two novels were huge literary successes. Why not push Further into another, more modern storytelling medium? That the Pranksters were filmmakers didn’t seem to matter to them. What mattered was the adventure and the pursuit.
That the group would manufacture its own drama was a given. Take Stark Naked–one Prankster who got a bit too high and wandered off into Larry McMurtry’s middle-class Houston neighborhood wrapped only in a blanket. She was picked up by the police and put into the psych ward. A friend from San Francisco had to come get her and take her home. Meanwhile, the Pranksters were unwittingly integrating a “colored” beach at Lake Pontchartrain, inadvertently leaving Babbs’ brother behind in Georgia, freaking Jack Kerouac out at a party in Manhattan and showing up at Tim Leary’s, where they failed to be welcomed except for the graciousness of Richard Alpert, a.k.a. Ram Daas.
As a literary device, I think the bus can be likened to Huck Finn’s raft. When the raft is the water, everybody’s safe and happy–that’s what going with the flow brings. When the raft pulls into harbor, trouble can ensue. That Kesey was made to serve time for a pot bust shortly after the bus trip culminated is an example of this. But even in the face of jail time, he managed to keep a positive outlook and he came out of the experience recommitted to his family and the work to be done at home in Oregon.
When Wolfe asked Kesey why he didn’t want to write anymore, Kesey said he’d “rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.” Kesey also said, “When people ask me what my greatest work is, it’s the bus. And they say, ‘Why the bus?’ It’s because the bus is a living piece of art where you’re out with the people and it’s happening right now, whereas writing, which is good, is removed.” Despite these sentiments, Kesey did continue to write. He also taught creative writing at U of O. In 1993, he published his third novel, Sailor Song, that may not reach the exalted heights of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes A Great Notion, but it is a very good book, nevertheless.
After the film last night, the filmmakers were joined on stage by Kesey biographer, Robert Faggen, and by Pranksters Mountain Girl, Ed McClanahan and George Walker. Walker, dressed in a DayGlo jumpsuit and Cat in the Hat tophat was the liveliest of the bunch, but all seemed to delight in the moment. The events in the movie happened 47 years ago, but the need to remember those events and the thoughts that created them and flowed from them are as important as ever. Personally, I feel reinvigorated to push for higher ground. For me that means getting my “real writer, not ad writer” self moving in the right direction again. For others it could mean just about anything. Anything, that is, that has to do with stretching oneself to be more compassionate, more vital and more involved. Kesey once said, “If it doesn’t uplift the human heart, piss on it.”
Note:University of Oregon is seeking funds to help purchase the Ken Kesey Collection and keep it in its current home, the UO Knight Library, as Kesey wished.
America is all tapped out. It’s all been discovered, mined and otherwise done. Am I right?
Of course not. There are still many special places tucked away, especially in hard to reach corners of the West. Although few places feel as tucked as Wallowa County, Oregon. It is the northeastern most county in the state, about six and half hours from Portland. The Nez Perce loved this part of the county, and fought hard to keep it. Once you see the granitic Wallowa Mountains against the aching blue sky, it’s easy to see why.
As much as I wanted to see nature’s grandeur up close, I have to admit I was also curious about Terminal Gravity in Enterprise. Terminal Gravity is one of the finest brewers in Oregon, and in the nation, and it comes from a tiny town in a remote part of the state. Naturally, that gets the wheels spinning in more ways than one. What is this place where rivers and beers flow freely, I wanted to know.
I’m happy to report that Terminal Gravity is a friendly little spot. We sampled some of the seasonal beers that they do not bottle and then came back for dinner. I ordered seared Ahi tuna and a Double IPA. That’s the thing about small town Oregon, you can place that order and have every confidence that it will be delicious upon delivery.
The next morning, we drove a few more miles over to Joseph, Oregon and found the town to be even more charming than Enterprise. We visited Wallowa Lake and then settled in for a great breakfast at Old Town Cafe, before heading to Walla Walla for the rest of the weekend.
Walla Walla in southeast Washington is another off-the-beaten path destination, although it’s much more well known than Wallowa County, Oregon. It’s well known because the wine industry has exploded in the area over the last decade (it’s also home to Whitman College). The wine business is now a $100 million a year business in Walla Walla County and wine snobs and non-snobs alike are flocking to the little city from points near and far to quaff the local vino.
There are 108 tasting rooms in Walla Walla County and 140-plus bonded wineries. The historic downtown is literally jammed with tasting rooms, the airport industrial area has another 20-plus producers and then there are the estate wineries out in the country. I love to get a feel for the land where the grapes are grown, so we focused our visits on the estate wineries south of town on this first trip to the area. We were particularly impressed with Tertulia Cellars’ Cabernet Sauvignon. We also got into some serious Syrah over at Waters Winery and had a nice picnic on their picnic table. Dusted Valley is another producer south of town that’s well regarded and well worth visiting.
Grateful Dead hasn’t played a show in 16 years. Yet the band just sold through all 7200 individually numbered, limited edition versions of EUROPE ’72: THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS in four days. Each box set sells for $450.
When you do the math, that’s $3,240,000. And this is merely the opening round. The band will continue to offer the 72-disc collection for $450, it just won’t come with all the cool packaging and shit.
“Well love is love and not fade away.”
The now sold out limited edition version comes housed in a replica steamer trunk reminiscent of the ones prevalently used at the time. Along with the music–a vast majority of which is previously unreleased–the travel chest contains tour memorabilia, a coffee-table book with never-before-seen photos and a comprehensive essay by noted author Blair Jackson. Both the limited edition and CD-only versions are set to ship in September.
EUROPE ’72: THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS offers a snapshot of a band at the top of its game, still ascending in the wake of three straight hit albums—Workingman’s Dead, American Beauty, and the live Grateful Dead a.k.a. “Skull & Roses”. It had been a year since the lineup had gone to its single-drummer configuration, six months since Keith Godchaux had been broken in as the group’s exceptional pianist, and this marked the first tour to feature Donna Godchaux as a member of the touring band.
I’d like to see the band makes other definitive tour collections. Europe ’90, for instance, would be one I’d make room for, given that I was in Stockholm, Essen, Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfort, Paris and London to hear every note.
Stax/Concord will release the appropriately titled, Man In Motion, from singer-songwriter and rock star Warren Haynes on May 10.
The new album is a snapshot of a creatively restless musician who is constantly in artistic motion himself. “Musicians are students for life. We have to continually take new approaches,” affirms Haynes.
Here are two tracks from the album, played live at Christmas Jam last December:
Man In Motion clocks in at over an hour, allowing for its ten tracks to breathe and develop. The studio band includes Ivan Neville on background vocals and organ, Ian McLagan on piano, Ruthie Foster on background vocals, George Porter, Jr. on bass and Ron Holloway on saxophone. Haynes recorded the album at Willie Nelson’s Pedernales Studios to two-inch tape with vintage tube microphones and everyone playing together in the same room. “We recorded it live to capture the emotion, passion, and spontaneity.”
“Soul music was my first love,” says Haynes. “The first LPs I had growing up in Asheville were greatest hits compilations from Stevie Wonder, The Four Tops, James Brown, Junior Walker, Aretha Franklin, The Temptations, Wilson Pickett, and The Supremes.”
All CD, LP and Bundle pre-orders will receive an Exclusive Bonus DVD, featuring the Warren Haynes Band’s complete set from last December’s Christmas Jam in Asheville.
