Western Writers

An Interview with Ted Conover

By Jenny Shank, 4-11-11

	Ted Conover, photo by Ralph Gabriner.

On Thursday Ted Conover will be awarded the Evil Companions Literary Award, the longest-running literary prize in Denver, honoring distinguished writers with ties to the West. According to the website of the Denver Public Library Friends Foundation, “the award pays homage to a group of Denver writers who met in the 1950s and ‘60s to drink and discuss writing, and dubbed themselves the Evil Companions.” Conover grew up in Denver and has produced five engrossing, acclaimed works of investigative journalism, beginning with 1984’s Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America’s Hoboes, which he published when he was 26. Conover’s Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. His most recent book, The Routes of Man: Travels in the Paved World (Vintage, 352 pages, $15.95), is now available in paperback. I invited Conover to take a look back at his accomplished career, and he answered some questions via email about his books and how he sought to “move beyond the interview, that staple of journalism, to a deeper understanding, a felt knowledge.”

New West: You attended Denver Public Schools and graduated from Manual High School. In Rolling Nowhere, you mention that your father was a lawyer with a large downtown firm, but you went to school with students from less privileged circumstances. Did attending diverse schools contribute to your desire to immerse yourself in other cultures?

Ted Conover: Yes. It showed me that some important things were not on the curriculum—but suggested that maybe I could teach myself about them, nevertheless.

NW: Your first book, Rolling Nowhere, began as a research project during a year off from college at Amherst, where you were an anthropology student. You turned it into an undergraduate honors thesis, and later into a book. Did you originally see yourself as an anthropologist? When did you decide to become a journalist?

TC: I delivered the Rocky Mountain News in seventh grade, and I’d been a student journalist since ninth grade at Hill Junior High. I co-edited the newspaper at Manual with my friend Jay Leibold, and spent part of my senior year working at Sentinel Newspapers through the Executive Internship program of the Denver Public Schools.

I didn’t discover anthropology until college. And one of the things that fascinated me was the idea that it might improve my journalism—that by spending time living with people, and really getting to know them, I might move beyond the interview, that staple of journalism, to a deeper understanding, a felt knowledge.

NW: Researching and writing Rolling Nowhere seems to have set the tone for your career—all your other books similarly involve immersing yourself in an unfamiliar culture. Also, there are moments in Rolling Nowhere that hint at later subjects that you would pursue—for example, you spent a little time with some Mexican migrants, a subject you explore thoroughly in Coyotes, and you had a run-in with an unfair police officer, which presages Newjack. Can you account for how you were able to pick the perfect direction for your career at such a young age?

TC: Good observation—you’re right about those forward-looking elements of Rolling Nowhere. But who really understands these things? Some of it was probably luck, some of it was keeping an open mind about what my life might hold…and I’m sure that some of it was the fear of going to law school!

NW: There are a few general subjects that recur in your books—one is transportation or people who live in a nomadic way, and another is poverty (Whiteout, set in Aspen, perhaps serves as the counter example). Do you consider transportation and poverty to be the major themes of your work?

TC: No—movement/migration and class might be closer. And more important than either, to me, are probably the idea of transcending one’s self and circumstances, the possibilities of empathy, and the love of adventure.

NW: The one book that doesn’t involve some kind of travel theme is Newjack (I’ll count Whiteout as a travel book, because it involves skiing, hiking, and outdoor adventure.) In Newjack, you stay in one place, guarding over others who are not at liberty to leave, and observe how the experience changes you. Do you need to travel to be content?

TC: Just as Whiteout was about the opposite of poverty, which is affluence and the choices and sense of a future that money brings, Newjack was about the opposite of mobility, which is confinement. Sometimes I think that it can work very well to examine the flipside of the subject that you consider closest to your heart.

As for your second question, do I need to travel to be content? I think the answer is yes. Truly, it hits me every few weeks. I just got back from a trip today (to Georgia), and I feel so much better!

NW: Your career as summarized by Wikipedia looks like a well-planned, successful, lifelong inquiry into important topics and diverse people. But I imagine there were rough patches, times when projects did not work out. Did you ever begin to research a topic that never ultimately resulted in a book?

TC: Don’t believe Wikipedia—I have two file cabinets full of projects that didn’t work out. Had every idea been successful, I might have had eight or nine books by now. I don’t know a writer whose career hasn’t involved lots of dead ends.

NW: Research for your books involves a lot of physical exertion, travel, and a fair amount of danger. Do you think you might have to change your approach as you grow older?

TC: I hate reasonable questions like that!

I suppose the answer is yes…but so far, I think I could probably still undertake most of the challenges involved in my work to date. Whether I would want to, in some cases, is another matter. The biggest factor, actually, is having kids, and not wanting to be away from home for long stretches of time.

NW: The Evil Companions Literary Award honors a writer with ties to the American West. Your first three books were set in this region. Do you think you’ll write about the West again?

TC: Oh, definitely. The West appears in Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, my fourth book, in the guise of longed-for open space; and one of the short inter-chapters of The Routes of Man is about driving my dad’s sports car to Aspen at age 16 to visit a girl. I may live in New York City, but the West is who I am in many, many ways.

NW: Which of your books are you most proud of?

TC: Ah, it’s like having children: you love them all.

The 2011 Evil Companions Literary Award honoring Ted Conover will be held at the Oxford Hotel in Denver on Thursday, April 14 (6 p.m.). Only a few tickets remain, available for $60-$70. The event benefits the Denver Public Library.

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