Western Writers
An Interview with Ron Carlson
By Jenny Shank, 9-13-07
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Talented fiction writer Ron Carlson will be a featured presenter at Saturday’s Gala Reading during Missoula’s Montana Festival of the Book. Carlson is a busy man these days--his first novel in 26 years, Five Skies, was published by Viking in May, he recently left Arizona (where he taught for many years at Arizona State) for California, where he now directs UC Irvine’s graduate creative writing program, and last week Graywolf Press released his new writing manual, Ron Carlson Writes a Story. I interviewed Ron Carlson via email about Five Skies, his current projects, and the “used and abused” West.
NewWest: Most of Five Skies takes place outdoors, with the men only venturing into town to buy supplies or do their laundry. Were you inspired by a particular camping trip or a familiarity with a place?
Ron Carlson: I’m a lifelong camper/fisherman. My dad took me to Spirit Lake in the Uinta Mountains of Utah when I was seven and I’ve been every year or two. Last week I was at Fox Lake in those mountains. Camping is elemental, of course, and I wanted an elemental setting for this book, first for my own pleasure and second so it could test these men.
NW: Did setting the novel mostly outdoors affect the plot in unexpected ways?
RC: My joke is that place is fate, off the Henry James note that character is fate. I work to create a believable place so that I can stay fully in the work, believing it as I go. Nothing happens nowhere. Places are diminishing; there is almost no here now in this country; cities repeat themselves and we’ve made the outdoors into a kind of theme park. I set this story at the edge of the world as well as I could, and all of the inventory of that world helped me as I wandered forward: the sand, the rocks, the sky.
NW: I happened to be at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference when you were teaching there in 2004, and I remember that you spoke about how when writing a short story, you like to be led wherever it takes you, and to leave yourself open for surprise. With a novel, you said you can’t be quite as free form with it, that there have to be a few stations that you have in mind to begin with, places you know you’re going to stop along the way. Did you follow this philosophy in writing Five Skies, and if so, what were the stations you had in mind?
RC: Stories are such a mysterious and intense pleasure, full of discovery. The talk I gave at Bread Loaf is now my first book on writing, Ron Carlson Writes a Story (published this month by Graywolf) and it lays out the process of finding the story. With the novel I knew the men would be constructing a ramp ( a monumentally stupid project) in a pristine place and that they would proceed with scrupulous skill. Two thirds of the way through, I made the other two decisions about the end of the book. The day I made those decisions I didn’t write and I didn’t write the next day. Then I climbed back up and wrote the ending of the story.
NW: Did you know what Darwin and Arthur’s secrets were going to be before you started the book?
RC: I knew Arthur worked in the film business and that the things he had made were temporary; built and then taken down. Both men’s histories unfolded as I went, noting my way under the outer story of their construction work.
NW: You include many detailed descriptions about the men’s construction project, including the specific supplies they use and how exactly they complete each part of the project. How did you go about making these moments dramatic?
RC: I simply wanted them to be credible and so I wrote it board by board. That’s all. It was a pleasure to write. Good work is a rare thing. I didn’t know if it would be dramatic or not.
NW: Arthur Key is a very interesting character-- he’s a craftsman with a disdain for the shoddy way that things are often done. I wondered about where his fear comes from. I found it unusual, because most people who have that sort of caution and worry about safety are parents and Art isn’t a parent; he’s a fairly isolated individual. (Though he does become a sort of surrogate parent for Ronnie.) Can you discuss the genesis of Arthur?
RC: Arthur Key is about eight guys. I wanted him to be a consummate craftsman/engineer who could deal with any broken thing in the real world, but I also knew he would be locked up, first as a man, and then by his past. I think his affection for his friends emerges almost reluctantly. He can read a blueprint, but his heart is trickier, more coded, and he’s learned not to trust it.
NW: There’s a brotherhood among these men that doesn’t have any of the pettiness that many work relationships can have. For example, Darwin never questions how much the medical care for Ronnie will cost. Do you think this camaraderie might be easier to come by when people are engaged in making tangible things together than when they are working on more abstract projects?
RC: I don’t know. The men do what they have to do, up against the real facts of the place and the day. In each moment I stayed with them. I wanted their reactions and interactions to be what men might do, not what characters serving a story might do.
NW: I was left with a number of questions after reading Five Skies, such as if there honor in doing work well if the result is of little practical benefit. What do you think?
RC: There is terrific value in a good day’s work, committed carefully. What that work serves is a question for the ages. I could see a collision coming between the way they were making the ramp and the ultimate vision of such a project.
NW: Five Skies was the first novel you had written in many years, and I read in “Poets & Writers” that you are working on another novel. Are you in novel writing mode now? How did this shift come about?
RC: I’ve written a number of stories in the past two years, but I am writing novels. I can’t say why. Something happened to me, my desire to sustain these dreams. The pleasures and challenges of the longer form have my attention now.
NW: Has the response to this book been different than it has been for your short story collections? Are more readers willing to pick up a novel?
RC: I’ve never had more mail on any book. I’ve been gratified by the response. My favorite note is that readers are giving it to their parents, which means they want to talk about it with someone. Conventional wisdom is that people prefer novels, but that doesn’t enter into my writing plans. You have to write what you are keen for. Period.
NW: You seem to set most of your fiction in the West. Do you consider yourself a Western writer?
RC: Absolutely. Whatever that is. The West is used and abused, and it is not a single thing, especially the new urban west and the way California has affected all of the Rocky Mountain states. There are still remote, real places, but I’m not romantic about any of it. We’ve all seen it change, but there is a larger world here, a sky, the place over the next hills which calls to me. I was born in Utah and have lived in Arizona most of my adult life. I’m now in California which, despite the papers, is still in the West.
NW: Your book Ron Carlson Writes a Story just came out from Graywolf Press. What is this book about? Are there writing guides that you admire?
RC: As I noted above, that book is my talk to any writers who happen to be in their first ten stories, and it is a simple guided tour of all the decisions I made in writing one of my first stories. There are many many wondeful books on writing. I like Annie Dillard’s, Steven King’s, Janet Burroway’s. There are forty. My book is a very focused look at the process and the craft.
Ron Carlson will read from Five Skies during the Gala Reading at the Montana Festival of the Book on Saturday, September 15 (7:30 p.m., Wilma Theatre). Carlson will also participate in the panel “Short and Sweet: The Short Story” with James Lee Burke, Claire Davis, and Rick DeMarinis (Saturday, 2:30 p.m., Wilma Theatre).
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