Tribute to A Champion of Western Literature

By Rick Bass, Guest Writer, 12-21-08

I met Carol Houck Smith in Utah, in 1986, when I attended my first writer’s conference. She would become my first New York editor, ultimately publishing my first book of fiction, a story collection, The Watch. I had saved up the $285 for non-resident admission to the conference, and drove out from Mississippi in my old bald-tired truck with my dogs and girlfriend. The conference was held at a posh Park City ski resort, and there was no way I could afford lodging there, or meals—I was just faking it, as I was also faking being a writer. I just showed up and jumped in. Elizabeth and I camped each night in the high Uinta Mountains beneath cold summer stars, got up early each morning and built a fire, made coffee and cooked bacon by the side of the frost-laced stream, then drive thirty miles to the ski town still smelling of woodsmoke, and showered in the hotel’s poolside restrooms. We kept the hounds chained beneath the shadiest tree on the ski resort’s lawn, where they sat like twin statutes, motionless, well-behaved for once, as if stunned by such non-Mississippi opulence.

I went to all the readings, panels and workshops, and inhaled the ideas, lectures, examples. At some point, maybe midweek, Carol came over and asked, Are those your dogs? What are their names?

Why did you name them that, where are you from, I’ve been petting them, they’re sweet hounds, how long have you been writing, what do you write about, your girlfriend is quite beautiful, did you know that, how did the two of you meet? You drove all the way out here?

And so passed 25 good years. It’s hard to put a finger on such luck, but I sense somehow that my dogs were connected to it. I had rescued them from the side of the road, and, immediately thereafter, good fortune befell me. They attracted her attention, and then her heart. I got to follow them down that path.

Carol was enamored with and admiring of, though not necessarily addicted to, youth. She saw and savored the brightness and wonder of it. So many of her writers were young. She was so deeply fond of all of them. That’s her euphemism for love. When talking about one of her writers, she would take a deep breath—her eyes would sparkle—and, as if preparing to utter the emotional revelation of a lifetime, she would say, “I’m deeply fond of him,” or, “I’m deeply fond of her.” We knew what she meant.

She was exceptionally mature, a quick intelligent mind and a fierce sense of justice—almost brittle, almost child-like. Sometimes she would get tense about something—some injustice--but then the adult part of her, the wisdom and maturity—the compassionate understanding—would kick in, and she would relax again, would regain her worldly editor’s perspective on humanity. She was a good person. Though I do not recall whether I ever heard her utter these exact words, I find myself imagining that in these situations she might suddenly release her tension with a shrug and a laugh and the observation that “Ah, well, it’s just life.”

I never heard her speak ill of anyone or anything. Sometimes she would purse her lips and say nothing, but I never saw her once bother to go down the low road. She just wanted things to get better, to always get better, and had interesting ideas about how to achieve this, and if my memory serves me correctly, she was right 100 percent of the time.

She was definitely old-school. I’ve been fortunate to stumble onto so many of the dwindling dinosaurs of the old school, now long-gone. Harry Foster, George Plimpton, Carol Smith, Sam Lawrence: they all loved a good story, and, it occurs to me only now, that, despite being Easterners (though Harry had grown up in Houston, before moving to Boston and then Maine), they all loved the West, and, despite their legendary commitments to literature, they understood and appreciated the dilemma and passions of Western writer-activists. I personally never received anything but support from editors like Carol, who, though their business was literature, approved of the commitment so many of their writers had for the land and communities where their writers lived.

For a lifelong New Yorker, Carol just flat loved the West. It energized her each time she came out, and she welcomed opportunities to attend conferences in the West, where she cast a hunter’s eye for young writers, young Western short story writers, still-formative but overflowing with energy and vitality, upon whom she could wreak her intelligence. She gave and gave, but it’s nice to consider that somehow she also received.

What would she want said about her? She would remind us that she loved dogs. She inhabited the lives of her writers fully, as do so many great editors—psychologist, psychiatrist, financial backer, etc.—and she took a mother’s or grandmother’s delight in the day to day trivia of not just her writers, but her writers’ children, pets, and hobbies. It should go without saying that she was fiercely loyal and bristled wonderfully at unfair reviews. She was attached to this world, engaged with this world, and somehow she did not let the superior magnitude or speed of her intelligence interfere in her relationships with those whose intellect and vitality was somewhat lesser; which is to say, almost everyone. This seems to me to be one of the many definitions or examples of grace, and of elegance.

She had the biggest, brightest, most inquisitive eyes you ever saw. The obituaries will describe her as being—as having been—bird-like, and that’s fair enough. But like no bird I ever saw.

It is an axiom that no one ever has etched on his or her headstone, “I wish I had spent more time at the office,” but damn, I wish I could do one more story with her, wish I had done one more story with her. She took delight in it, made it fun, she nurtured an intoxicating mix of the fun and the significant, the powerful, the enduring. She understood the failings of humanity and yet loved people anyway—all the more so, I think, for that understanding.

I can’t believe I’m saying this. Particularly in my youth, I took so many hikes, canoed so many rivers, climbed so many mountains, went on so many hunts and camping trips. But in the case of Carol, my great friend and editor, I’ll say it, just this once, and never again: Damn, I wish I could have one more day at the office.

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