A clean writer: an interview with Robert Laxalt

Re\'ista de Estudios Norteamericanos, 11." 5 ( 1997), pp . 21 - 27 A CLEAN WRITER: AN INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT LAXALT DAVID R ío Un iversidad del País Vasco Robert Laxalt was boro in Alturas, California, in 1923. He grew up in Carson City, Nevada, and graduated from the Univcrsity ofN e va da in 1947. Thc foundcr director of thc University ofNevada Press, Laxalt has also been a United Prcss correspondent, a Fulbright research scholar, a consultant in Basque cu lture to the Library of Congress and a writer-in-residence at the University of Nevada. He currently serves as visiting professor at the Re ynolds School of Journalism at t he University of Nevada-Reno. Mr Laxalt is the author oftwelvc books, both fiction and nonfiction, and numero us articles for National Geographic and other magazines. His b ooks have won critica! accla im and awards throughout the world. Laxalt's Sweet Promised Land (1957) became the first sele ct ion of the National Book Socie ty in England andan alternate of the Literary Guild in the United States. A Man in the Wheatfield (1964) was chosen as one of the most distin guished works of American fiction for that year by the American Li brary Assoc ia tion. A Cup of Tea in Pamplona ( 19 85) ea med him the Tambor de Oro prize in Spain for his literary contributions to the Basque culture. The Basque Hotel ( 1989) was nominated fo r a Pulitzer Prize in fiction. Q. Mr L axa l t, may we start talking about your early literary ex p er iences? Elsewhere, you have said that the fact tha t you carne from an immigrant (Basque) household did not allow you to know certain books and authors during y our childhood. Co u ld you co mm ent on this? A. Well, 1 still remember when we moved from our little house to a nicer house in Carson City and we started visiting sorne of the well-educated families that lived on the same street ... My mother ju st coul dn' t believe that there could be a whole wall of books. But she started soon to ask for books, encyclop ed ias and everything else. And at that time l really loved to read. For example, when I was sick, during my rheumatic 22 Darid Río pcriod. my sistcrs wo uld hring me lots of books. Thcrc wcrc adventure hooks th at I lovcd: Jack London's novels, Jules Vemc's stories, the Tarzan books, Mary Shelley's Fra11kc11stei11. Bram Stoker's Dracula ... Howevcr. as I was from an immigmnt househol d, J didn 't read sorne of thc standard children \ books that werc com mon for Anglo-Sax on famil ic s. Thus, I didn 't read until mu ch later AliC<: in Wo11dala11d and it surprised me how wise and profound it was. In general, western. frontier and adven lure wcrc familiar forme, but the scrious rcading bcgan aftcr college. Q. When di d you decide to bccome a writcr and why? A. I don 't know. In the fírst place, my mothcr convinccd me that if I wcre a writer, I would die broke. My father was intcrestcd bccause he was a vcry good sto ryteller, but he ncvcr darcd to voicc an opinion on it. 1 loved to writc always, but I also knew practically that I couldn't make a living in that way. So. actually when I went to Nevada J was studying to become a diplomat, not Joumalism, b ut History and English, to join the diplomatic service. Howevcr, in ord cr to hclp myself through sc hool. I bcgan to writc stories part-time for thc Reno newspapcr. so 1 just got takcn on to that and followed it atier. I was almos! 22 at that time and writing th en was somcthing adven turous. I knew no writers. I never to ok a writing cla~s in my life. so this was a hu ge disadvantage. So. 1 was writing as be st as 1 co uld. a nd made errors. But I sta rt ed se ll ing stories almost from the bcginning. 1 sold the first s tor y article 1 wrote and 1 sold t hc first fic ti on story I wrote. Q. Ho wever, during those first years you wcrc not very certai n of your succcss as a writer. E ven you wrote a letter to your litera1y agent where you includcd the following statement: « I'm born and raiscd here, thc son of a livestockman, and conducting a very intcrcsting cxperiment: how long does it take a writcr to starve to death.» A. Well, al first I didii't think I was that good.just trying to stay alivc as a writcr, makc a living. So. l thought to havc ajob and th cn writing was somet hing you did extra, for fun and plcasurc. Thcn, after Sweet Promised Land 1 bcgan to take it seriously. Q. Do you share Hemin gway's definition of writing as a gut-tearing ordeal? A. No, ncvcr gut-tearing and ncver an agony. It is an utmost pleasure, really. Howcver, 1 am very careful, writing and r ew riting. I follow word upon word, sentence upon sentence. Sometimes I ge t into a writing block and 1 d on't know exactly where l'm going ncxt. Th cn, in desperation I ju st typc ali bunches of everything, crazy. and thcn out of that will come sorne sense of or der of what I'm really t1ying to say. But, mostly, I'm a very careful writer. Q. You don 't write vcry long books. Is there any particular reason for i t? A. Wcll, t here are at lcast three reasons. One, the n ews paper training has made me a writer. Two , that's the kind of writing I like to do. And three, I guess it's the Basque part in me. They are shm1-spoken people, so me too. You do not find too many Ba sques that waste words. Q. The autobiographical elements play an important role in most of your works, both fiction and non-fiction. Do you think that personal exper i ence is fundamental for a writer? A Clea11 Wrirer: A11 l11terview with Robert Laxa/r 23 A. I think so, like Hcrningway said. writing comes from what you know. Yes, I think that personal expcrienccs are vcry important bccause we leam from perso nal lirnitations, about what you would do upon certain circumstances. For example, l learnt an awful lot about myself in politics, working with my brother in his political campaigns. Aftcr you havc becn through a política! carnpaign, nobody is gonna fool you. You get to be a good judge of human naturc. Politics fascinated me, but joumalism was valuable, too, becausc of the experiences it gave to you. For instancc, The lean Year all(f Other Stories, that was from journa lism, taking actual cvcnts and inventing. Andas a professor now, I ! ove the exchangc with yo u ng minds. I've watched too many people get old and their reactions, their ways, becomc old, too. But with young rninds. you stay young. So, J 've leamt from each of these activities. Q. Relatcd to this, why have you not writtcn a book abo ut your university expcriencc'? I think that you mcntioned this possibilily in the past. but so far you have not dealt with this subject. A. Well, I havc nearly forgotten 1 wrotc a prctty good share of a book on academia and administration crisis. And it is not bad, but it is about a negative crisis. I t hink that in the university you often havc divcrsity: a lot ofwondcrful teachcrs and profcssors, but also a fcw that have totally disillusioned me. Thcy have to stab each other in the back, they have no scnsc of honor. I did a satire on politics in The Govemor's Mansion, hui 1 cannot do this on thc univcrsity. Q. By thc way. why do you includc at the beginning ofThe Governor's Mamion thc following words: «All characters and events are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dcad is strictly coincidcntal.» Is it dueto its political contcnt? IfI'm not mistakcn, you have1ú uscd this statement in any of your earlicr novcls or short stories. A. Wcll, thcse are not my words, the publishers includcd them. I know th at the university board of regcnts was wonied because I used real facts and narneshoodlums, J. Edgar Hoovcr. Howard Hughcs and Sinatra. It was an era that Nevada convenien tly forgot becausc it was emha rras sing .. . Wcll, you start thc book. you start an incident and you start writing, you follow the sense of the dramatic, and you add charactcristics so that thc incident and the charactcrs are totally unrecognizable. Today if you askcd me what really h ap pcned in The Governor's Mansion, cxactly what literally happencd, I cou ldn 't tell you what ofthis is literally tme or is invention, I couldn 't . On sorne in cidents I fabricatcd, invented. somcthing to dress them up. With t hc hoodlums, howcver, I didn 't do any dressing. I used real narnes, but I didn 't rip them. I don 't like hurting in books . It 's easy to do that, bu t I don 't like to do that. Q. Which are your main literary mod els or influences? You ha ve bcen compared to a grcat number of different writers: Ernest Hcrningway, John Steinbeck, Williarn Saroya n, Waltcr Van Tilburg Clark, Sh erwoodAnderson and even Juan Ramón Jim énez. A. When l startcd writing, I had not read Steinbeck, I had not read Hemingway, though when I started r ead ing him , I lik ed hirn very much. Wal ter Van Tilbur g Clark did not influen ce my writing either, because I was a clean wr iter, a nd what I was writing 24 David Río about 1 lived, and he didn 't... None ofthe Russian writers eithcr, though 1 liked Turgenev. 1 think Jack Lon don probably influen ced me subconsciously becau se 1 loved the adventure, the clean writing. However, I never tried imitating any of them. Q. It seems that critics do not agrce on a definition for your style of wr iting. Thus, some of them have called it simple, direct, unadomed and j oumalis tic. However, other critics have talkcd about its poetic and lyrical qualities. How would yo u define it yourself? A. I th ink it 's very dangerous for a writer to try to defi ne his style of wr iti ng because you have to believe that and you will be in trouble. But if you wish me to do so, I would say clean, clean writing, no obscurities. Q. You said once, «l have worked hard to dev elop a styl e.» Do you consid er that the style of Sweet Promised Land is your natural style? And, parti cularly. could you exp l ain the im po rtance of humor in it? A. It 's my style, that was wr itten from the heart. I had no models to come from. Someone said I should read The Retum of the Na ti ve by Thomas Hardy . I refused because I wanted to write my own book amir haven' t read it yet. Sweet Promi sed Land was a bo ok written with no influence of any other writers. And humor is importan! in it. I love humor . I think that if a book is very se ri ous, you can use humor as a counterpart. lt helps thc message that you want to co nvey. And so much can be accomplished with humor. I particularly l ove the Ba sq uc se nse of humor because it is wry, ironic and sacrilegious. Q. Do you agrec that the main sub ject of Sweet Promised Land is thc modem individual 's need for meaning, for a sen se of pla ce and identity? A. Yes, that makes sense to me. I guess 1 wa s search ing for ide nt ity, but I was wr iting mo stly about my father and my anc es to rs' identity as a byproduct. I think that ídcntity is very impo rtant to me. Q. Would you say that in this book the immigrant's desire for integration and his reluctance to lose his cthnic identity actas opposing forces? A. Yes, I think that is sound, bul both forces are nol mutually exclusive, they go together, th ey influence one an oth cr. Q. Critics have cmphasized the contrast between Sweet Pr omised Land, a nonfiction book, and A Man in the Whealfield, your first novel. How different do you think both works really are? A. Oh, the y're altogether different. Sweet Promised Land was publishcd by Harper's and they loved itas a memoir, an affecti onate memoir ofhi s so n to his father. Then, I se nt them A Man in the Wheatfield, with ali thc snake business in it, and th ey almosl hada heai1 attack. They did mean injustice in the sense that they didn 't realize that a writcr can ha ve man y facets Lh rough his life. Then, El.izabeth Lawrence at Harper 's sent it out to sorne critica! readers and they said it was superior. Then she realized th ere was something th ere , the book went out and the reviews we re ve ry good news. Q. Could you explain the genesis of A Man in the Wheatfield'! A. My view of the book is not objective and also there are things that happen in the creative proces s that the author is not aw are co nsc ious ly, they ex ist in the A C/ean Writer: An l nten • ie w with Robert Laxalt 25 subconsciou s. 1 think that writing comes from what is purely superstition, imaginati on, fo lk memory, actual memory and anger, injustice. Whe n a writer has to speak ou t to say something, th at makes a diffcrence .. .ln fact, I had been wo rking on another novel for a ycar anda half, but the only copy of it was stolen while we were in France. So, I tried to reconstruct i t, but it didn 't work. At the back of my mind I had the idea about the new novel, and 1 had cven done sorne research on raltles nak es before 1 left America. So, I began thinking seriously about the book in a state of despair. I had these elements bouncing around in my hcad, but befare 1 wrote the wor k I had to sorl out two dreams or nightmarcs that J used to have: one was the dream of a child and thc other was a nightmare that I still had until I wrote the novel. Then I never had this dream again. I guess that the novel was my exorcism. Both dreams progressed to the dreams of Fath er Sav ia in the book. We ll , about the characters, they grow as you write aboul them, and they take on characteris ti cs often different from the ones you conceived. Every one of the characters in this novel gr ew up in th is fashion. So, Fat her Savio was cr ea ted after a Jesuit pr iest at St. Clara University in Ca lifornia, but l added new dimensions. And part of the priest is in me, in my dreams, in my backgro und (1 was raised in a Catholic family and my sister was a nun). Now, Smale Calder w as crea te d after a man that li ved in Dayton and had the gift of picking up ratllesnakcs and nevcr be in g bitten. Al so I knew rattlers. So, 1 took this strange chemistry and inve ntion to makc my charactcr, an innocent living in an unattracti ve world and almost repul sive environment, who ]oves snakes for the sake of their grace and movement. And I chose a settin g: a town peopled by Jtalian immigrants. 1 couldn 't use Americans be ca u se Smale was the outsider and he was American. T couldn ºt use Basques because they just don 't show their em ot ions. So the only ot her group I knew was th e Italians. 1 was only struck by their classic nature: classic reactions, classic anger, classic politicians a nd classic underlying passion. I realized that l was writing in this book about the meanings of such overused words as good, evil, lave , cnvy, ego, hypocrisy, innocence, and sy mbol and myth. This book was my expl ora ti on into ali the things y ou don 't know. As Hemingway said, «writing comes from what you know, but it also comes from a li thc things you cannot know.» So, I guess that the book was my own devil de mat erialized. Q. Which is the importance of sy mbols in this novel? Perhaps you have even heard about a cri ti c who sa id that the book collapsed under a heavy load of symbo ll at ry. A. I only used a few symbols in it because 1, on principie, do not like too many symbols. Besides, whatever symbols 1 used, they were eanhbound symbols. The snake, for example, as a Christian sy mbol for evil, though in Greek times they ha d a different, holy meaning. A nd then, sorne were purposcful. Manuel Cafferata, for exa mple, he sta nds for Emmanuel or God, the fa ther symbol who cr ea tes the town. And things like that. Q. W ou ld you say th at in In a Hun dred Graves: A Basque Portrait and A Cup of Tea in Pamp/011a, both of them set in the Basque Country, the meaning of the past and tradition constitute a recurrent tap ie? 26 Dm ·id Río A. Well. not exactly so. In In a H1111dred Grai·es I was jusi trying to capture thc Basquc villages. lt was my Basque project. I was taki ng notes. voluminous notes and l didn 't know ift he incidcnt or the convcrsati on was wo rth a story. Then , when l had put th em down, t he only problem thcrc was what ordcr to pul the stories in in a small volume. Actually those werc act ual notes becausc I realized, once 1 got there. it was almost impossiblc to fiml a formula for exp laining what was going on the Basqucvi ll age. I was just trying to hui Id a rnosaic of a Basque villa ge by takin g: i ndividua ls and incidcnts. Thcn I made one mista ke on a particular s to ry in the hook , «No Crossroads for Augustine.» The story should havc becn a novella, it had all the ingredients for a novella. And A Cup offra in Pamplona was strictly adventure. I wasn 't making a big statemcnt, though I made a social comment on what happens in countries where rich and poor are so sharply divi<lcd. In the time the book was written one had to kccp station ami appearancc, and for a peasant to break the code of station was disaster. Q. Which is. in your opinion. the most importan! common thread of your Basquefamily trilogy (The Rasque Hotel. Chi/d of the Holy Ghost and Th e Governor's Ma11sio 11)'? A. Family ... Child f~f'tlu : Holy Glwst was wrirt en hecause my mother was hurt so hadly. I didn 't try to portray the villag:e as cruel. it's just thc way things were. In a way th at's healthy hecause it casts credibility on the rcst of it, too ... The Basque Hotel, that was jus i a ki<l 's experiencc growing up. The kid doesn 't understand what the immigrants are su ppo sed to be. lt 's a kit! not denying his ancestry, it is just that he can 't understand it. In The Gm·ernm"s Mansio11 family is fundamental, to o. I think that during that period thc !ove of people for the ir relatives was so strong th at they would sacrifice their own carcers in order to help family. Also I rea lized writing it that this was an invaluable experience. I finished thc book and then I had this dream of going home. but thcre was no home and no family. I wrote it and it was Monique, my daughtcr. who rcad it and sa id: «Papa, th at's the en d of your book.» I coul<ln't sce it and then l did sec it. She was right. Q. You have publish ed so far two co llections of short stories: The Vio/ent Lwzd: Tales the Old 1i'mers Tell and A Lean Ycar a!ld 01/zer S10ries. Both of them includc an impo11ant number of «Western» storics. How can you cxplain your attraction toward this genre, co nsidercd as a mino r onc by sorne critics? A. Well, The \iiole11t Land was my first attempt to take an actual event and fictionalize it, dramatize it. So, most of th e stories actually happened, but I gave them dialogue, descriptions, Indians, soldiers ... A Lean Year. we ll , I was trying to find out w hat kind of wr iter I was and obviously I didn 't know anything about the world of writing up there. And I chose Western stories because it was all that I kn ew then. And my first !ove has always been the Wc st ancl the people there. Q. A Lean Year and Other Stories co nsists of stori es that you wrote in the fift ies and that you h ave n 't changcd for th eir puhlication in 1994. Sorne of t hem were rejected then and now th ey are pub li shed. How do you explain this change? Is it du e to an evo l ut ion in the audience orto the fact that you now have a long-established reputation as a writer and editors ca n accept your stories without taki ng risks? A Clean Wrirer: An lnten·ú·v.· with Roba! Laxalt 27 A. Yes , I gucss it \ this sccond reason. I never tried to put ali thcse stories togethcr, but at that time I was rcally fighting the establishment. l was afraid that every one of these stories would be taboo in the magazine markct. They were too «dark» for th e establishment. You didn 't write about gambling, politicians or executions. Howe vcr , I got evcry story in then. except «T he Murdcrer,» «The Hcrd Stalker» anda couplc of othcrs. but they wcrc totally taboo. Q. Finally, which are your writing plans for thc immcdiatc future? A. I'm writing a novella loosc ly bascd on an inciden! my father had to do wi th in 1912. It's a story about a young white cowboy and his closest friend. an Indian boy. Thc story involves rustlcrs, bandits and sorne remarkable India ns that you have ncvcr seen befo re. lt 's gonna be a serious story. I can draw on my knowledge of Indians and cowbo ys a nd my dad\ experienccs, too. Oh, and my last book it will be about Africa, about my cxpcricnce thcrc in World War II . 1 kcpt a diary of it until the point I was dyi ng of what secmed to be dysentcry. I had a weird experience a couple of months ago. I opcncd the diary. and I realized that the diary was importan! not because of what it said, but beca use of what it did n ' t say. It brought back so man y bad rncmories that I had to e lose the book. At thc end of it it says: «why do you continuc writing if you are going to die in t wo wceks'?» So. 1 thrcw it down and I forgot about it. But thcre is a potential therc, if I am l ucky to get detached. Thcrc 's a potcntial there for the best thing 1 ever write in my l if e.