Woodland Valley Hideout
After the intense focus of editing Lester’s Movie was over and it was making its way into the world, my days at the cabin were empty.
One morning as I looked in the mirror I was suddenly disoriented by the shaggy creature staring back at me. Auster had brought me shaving supplies but I hadn’t bothered to use them. On an impulse I grabbed scissors, shaving cream, razor, and went to work. I didn’t stop until both scalp and face were smooth and hairless. The naked countenance in the mirror now was no less a stranger, but I was glad it was different.
I sent postcards to my mother and sister, letting them know I was okay. I asked Auster to mail them on one of his jaunts into Dutchess County, an hour away. He also tried to call Cate on my behalf from random phone booths, but she refused to take his calls. I wrote her a letter that he mailed with no return address so neither of us could be traced—a one-way communication that only made me feel more sad and alone.
Often in the pink light of dawn I would take long walks up Woodland Valley Road or strike off up the mountainsides into untracked forest. I was fascinated by the long straight rows of piled stones that ran uphill and down through empty woods, apparently the tumbled remains of walls made by pioneer farmers attempting to subsist in a frontier wilderness, possibly dating to Revolutionary times or even earlier.
Other days I walked down the narrow valley until it opened up wider to the sky and I could see more houses here and there on the forested slopes. That’s when I turned around and went back. I always stopped short of entering the village of Phoenicia, still cautious, still holding to the safety of invisibility.
Trapped in the cabin one rainy morning, I finally turned my attention to what was there inside. I browsed the shelves and saw mostly books about photography. One oversized but slender volume titled “Me and My Gun: Portraits” caught my eye, and I leafed through pages of images by various photographers, including the famous posed shot of Lee Harvey Oswald holding a newspaper and a rifle. One page that I had passed with barely a glance seemed to whisper a demand for a closer look, so I turned back. The black and white image was bland and staged, an empty corner of a suburban living room in which a hearth was lined with rows of rifles and pistols, machetes were hung above the fireplace, and the floor held belts full of bullets plus a bow and arrows. In the center, looking anachronistic in a dark suit with a bowler hat and an umbrella across his knee, sat a very British-looking gentleman. The caption read, “Mercenary soldier J.D. with his weapons collection, American Fork, Utah, 1975.” I leaned in closer. I could hardly accept what I was seeing, but without a doubt, it was Jack Dunne: Lester Spanda.
Like so many other things I had experienced that summer, it did not seem believable that this obscure photo would be found in precisely this house, where I was hiding from the killer this crazy dead man had brought into my life. I noted the photographer’s name for future reference, but I doubted I would follow up. I just wanted it all behind me, the sooner the better.
The rain disappeared early that afternoon, so I walked down Woodland Valley Road to where it curved past an empty green hillside on the right with a fence and a red structure like a small barn close to the road. This was further toward town than I had gone before. Across the street was a creek with a neighborhood of small houses on the far side. As I approached the red buildings, I was startled by a deja vu vibration up my spine, a chill cutting through the humid heat.
Ignoring the “Romer Mt. - Private Property” signs, I climbed the fence and walked a few yards through a grassy meadow that soon began to slope up toward dark pines. Then something stopped me. My sight seemed overlaid with a different version of the same landscape, in which I was surrounded by tall people, all facing the same direction and singing. I was small, and my left hand was up near my shoulder, enveloped by the large, strong, right hand of my father. I squinted in sunshine up at him, and he was singing too. The tune seemed sad, but he smiled as he sang. This was wondrous.
“Where have all the flowers gone?” a multitude of voices chorused in unison. When that song ended, the man with a banjo who stood on the little stage up front started another.
“Guantanamera…” they all sang, and I understood none of it. But here I was with my father, just the two of us together in a crowd on a sunny summer afternoon, and everything felt utterly perfect.
It lasted only a vivid moment and I was back in my body on that muggy day in August 1995, but memories kept appearing like puzzle pieces, one after another, assembling a picture that hadn’t been in my thoughts even once in over three decades. My father had taken me to check out a summer camp in the mountains that he’d been saving money for—a special camp meant for people like us, he told me. We had a wonderful day together and he promised me that I could begin attending the camp next year when I was eight. I was overjoyed, but my happiness soon curdled to sour resentment when he told me the camp had closed just a few months after our visit. I didn’t understand, but I blamed him for disappointing me.
1962… yes, yes, Camp Woodland it was called. Now I was sitting on the ground by the road, leaning against the fence with my eyes closed, searching the dim vaults of memory.
“Pardon me, sir. You appear distressed. May I be of assistance?” A thin elderly man was addressing me. He had a trimmed white beard and an unruly tangle of white hair. His eyebrows were mostly black and swept up like little wings on either side. His shirt was a striking lavender.
“No, I’m fine, thank you,” I said, struggling to return to the present. “But can you tell me… was there once a Camp Woodland here?”
He pointed, nodding. “The actual camp was just up that road over there, on the mountainside. A couple of buildings still stand… mostly homes there now. But the annual music events, the folk festivals every August… those took place on exactly this spot. This was the Simpson Ski Slope then.” His look of concern cracked into an impish grin. “I attended many of them myself, unrepentant old socialist that I am, ha!”
“I just had such an amazing flashback,” I blurted. “My father brought me here once. People were singing together.”
“Probably led by Pete Seeger himself. Too bad the camp had to close down after more than twenty good years… another casualty of the idiotic Red Scare, if you ask me. Such were the times. So much more liberal today, thank the Universe, ha! And now I must continue my daily walk.”
“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been more helpful than you know.”
He strode away, but in the weeks to follow I saw him again, and in the ensuing months and years spent many treasured hours in his company. His name was Ted, a painter of carefully felt abstracts that were simultaneously geometric and sensuous, a man who would become like a second father to me, the soul-father that I had never had.
As I walked back up Woodland Valley toward the cabin, I saw on a large flat rock near the road a two-foot length of something delicately tubelike, translucent, textured. A snake had shed its old, dead skin.
© Brent Robison 2019
This is an excerpt of the novel Ponckhockie Union by Brent Robison, Recital Publishing 2019.
After the intense focus of editing Lester’s Movie was over and it was making its way into the world, my days at the cabin were empty.
One morning as I looked in the mirror I was suddenly disoriented by the shaggy creature staring back at me. Auster had brought me shaving supplies but I hadn’t bothered to use them. On an impulse I grabbed scissors, shaving cream, razor, and went to work. I didn’t stop until both scalp and face were smooth and hairless. The naked countenance in the mirror now was no less a stranger, but I was glad it was different.
I sent postcards to my mother and sister, letting them know I was okay. I asked Auster to mail them on one of his jaunts into Dutchess County, an hour away. He also tried to call Cate on my behalf from random phone booths, but she refused to take his calls. I wrote her a letter that he mailed with no return address so neither of us could be traced—a one-way communication that only made me feel more sad and alone.
Often in the pink light of dawn I would take long walks up Woodland Valley Road or strike off up the mountainsides into untracked forest. I was fascinated by the long straight rows of piled stones that ran uphill and down through empty woods, apparently the tumbled remains of walls made by pioneer farmers attempting to subsist in a frontier wilderness, possibly dating to Revolutionary times or even earlier.
Other days I walked down the narrow valley until it opened up wider to the sky and I could see more houses here and there on the forested slopes. That’s when I turned around and went back. I always stopped short of entering the village of Phoenicia, still cautious, still holding to the safety of invisibility.
Trapped in the cabin one rainy morning, I finally turned my attention to what was there inside. I browsed the shelves and saw mostly books about photography. One oversized but slender volume titled “Me and My Gun: Portraits” caught my eye, and I leafed through pages of images by various photographers, including the famous posed shot of Lee Harvey Oswald holding a newspaper and a rifle. One page that I had passed with barely a glance seemed to whisper a demand for a closer look, so I turned back. The black and white image was bland and staged, an empty corner of a suburban living room in which a hearth was lined with rows of rifles and pistols, machetes were hung above the fireplace, and the floor held belts full of bullets plus a bow and arrows. In the center, looking anachronistic in a dark suit with a bowler hat and an umbrella across his knee, sat a very British-looking gentleman. The caption read, “Mercenary soldier J.D. with his weapons collection, American Fork, Utah, 1975.” I leaned in closer. I could hardly accept what I was seeing, but without a doubt, it was Jack Dunne: Lester Spanda.
Like so many other things I had experienced that summer, it did not seem believable that this obscure photo would be found in precisely this house, where I was hiding from the killer this crazy dead man had brought into my life. I noted the photographer’s name for future reference, but I doubted I would follow up. I just wanted it all behind me, the sooner the better.
The rain disappeared early that afternoon, so I walked down Woodland Valley Road to where it curved past an empty green hillside on the right with a fence and a red structure like a small barn close to the road. This was further toward town than I had gone before. Across the street was a creek with a neighborhood of small houses on the far side. As I approached the red buildings, I was startled by a deja vu vibration up my spine, a chill cutting through the humid heat.
Ignoring the “Romer Mt. - Private Property” signs, I climbed the fence and walked a few yards through a grassy meadow that soon began to slope up toward dark pines. Then something stopped me. My sight seemed overlaid with a different version of the same landscape, in which I was surrounded by tall people, all facing the same direction and singing. I was small, and my left hand was up near my shoulder, enveloped by the large, strong, right hand of my father. I squinted in sunshine up at him, and he was singing too. The tune seemed sad, but he smiled as he sang. This was wondrous.
“Where have all the flowers gone?” a multitude of voices chorused in unison. When that song ended, the man with a banjo who stood on the little stage up front started another.
“Guantanamera…” they all sang, and I understood none of it. But here I was with my father, just the two of us together in a crowd on a sunny summer afternoon, and everything felt utterly perfect.
It lasted only a vivid moment and I was back in my body on that muggy day in August 1995, but memories kept appearing like puzzle pieces, one after another, assembling a picture that hadn’t been in my thoughts even once in over three decades. My father had taken me to check out a summer camp in the mountains that he’d been saving money for—a special camp meant for people like us, he told me. We had a wonderful day together and he promised me that I could begin attending the camp next year when I was eight. I was overjoyed, but my happiness soon curdled to sour resentment when he told me the camp had closed just a few months after our visit. I didn’t understand, but I blamed him for disappointing me.
1962… yes, yes, Camp Woodland it was called. Now I was sitting on the ground by the road, leaning against the fence with my eyes closed, searching the dim vaults of memory.
“Pardon me, sir. You appear distressed. May I be of assistance?” A thin elderly man was addressing me. He had a trimmed white beard and an unruly tangle of white hair. His eyebrows were mostly black and swept up like little wings on either side. His shirt was a striking lavender.
“No, I’m fine, thank you,” I said, struggling to return to the present. “But can you tell me… was there once a Camp Woodland here?”
He pointed, nodding. “The actual camp was just up that road over there, on the mountainside. A couple of buildings still stand… mostly homes there now. But the annual music events, the folk festivals every August… those took place on exactly this spot. This was the Simpson Ski Slope then.” His look of concern cracked into an impish grin. “I attended many of them myself, unrepentant old socialist that I am, ha!”
“I just had such an amazing flashback,” I blurted. “My father brought me here once. People were singing together.”
“Probably led by Pete Seeger himself. Too bad the camp had to close down after more than twenty good years… another casualty of the idiotic Red Scare, if you ask me. Such were the times. So much more liberal today, thank the Universe, ha! And now I must continue my daily walk.”
“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been more helpful than you know.”
He strode away, but in the weeks to follow I saw him again, and in the ensuing months and years spent many treasured hours in his company. His name was Ted, a painter of carefully felt abstracts that were simultaneously geometric and sensuous, a man who would become like a second father to me, the soul-father that I had never had.
As I walked back up Woodland Valley toward the cabin, I saw on a large flat rock near the road a two-foot length of something delicately tubelike, translucent, textured. A snake had shed its old, dead skin.
© Brent Robison 2019
This is an excerpt of the novel Ponckhockie Union by Brent Robison, Recital Publishing 2019.
Narrated by Brent Robison.
Narrated by Brent Robison.
POST RECITAL
TALK
TN: In your story, there’s the idea that reality can only be experienced through the senses of individuals, and therefore truth must be relative—a sort of Greek Sophist idea. The dialogue of your Danish prince seems to express that. Is he a philosopher? What do you think?
BR: It’s nice to be confused with Shakespeare, but, uh, you’re talking about the wrong story. Mine is Woodland Valley Hideout, not Hamlet.
SFX: Rustling papers
TN: Oh... really... My apologies. I obviously got my notes mixed up. Must have been all that Rugby I played as a kid. Now let me see... (more rustling) Woodland Valley... Okay here it is. Sorry—what did you say your name was? I’m sure we must have met somewhere.
BR: Sometimes you worry me. It’s Brent… Robison.
TN: Ah yes, Brent... of course, of course. Now in this story—Woodland Valley Hideout, which is an excerpt from your novel Ponckhockie Union, and doesn’t involve a Danish Prince—I detect certain philosophical themes. When you write: “it did not seem believable that this obscure photo would be found in precisely this house, where I was hiding from the killer this crazy dead man had brought into my life.” —Something unexpected shows up in an unexpected place. It’s a sort of double negative. Does that mean anything?
BR: Well, synchronicities and coincidences and contrived reality—those elements are quite an important theme in my novel. Now, do things like this have any ultimate, cosmic meaning? I don’t really know. I can’t say one way or the other. But do they have meaning to Ben Rose, the protagonist? They do in the sense that they help him wake up to the true strangeness of reality, the way sometimes things feel contrived, almost like a story is being written of one’s actual life. This is the way I often feel about my life, so I guess these things have meaning to me.
TN: It’s almost as if infinity consists of finite elements. There are only so many combinations available, so sooner or later one like you describe will show up. I also get a sense of recursiveness—a recursiveness of meaning. But then this is just a story you wrote, so none of this really applies—or does it?
BR: Well, yes, in “reality,” whatever that is, randomness and, uh, statistics, the statistics of chance, dictate that these kinds of coincidences or even synchronicities will occur a certain amount. But then you ask, this is just a story, so does it really apply? Well, that’s a good out—I mean this is just a story, and the universe of the story is not precisely our universe. It’s similar but it’s not exactly the same. So maybe certain math laws are different there.
TN: Another theme that crops up in the story, and indeed in your whole novel is memory. That’s not necessarily surprising. I mean, where would we be without memory? What did you say your name was again?
BR: Um… maybe you want me to say I forgot?
TN: That was a joke—or like a joke, just not funny, otherwise like a joke...
(Brent is not amused)
BR: Hm, yeah, otherwise, huh.
TN: I borrowed that from a friend. I like it so much I use it at every opportunity. But where was I? Memory... yes... so your protagonist discovers a place he remembers he’s been to before... with his father when he was a boy. In other words he stumbles on a memory. Unexpected. You seem to be describing the imperfection of memory. He doesn’t know where he is going and then he remembers he’s been there before. And even then the memory is incomplete. He doesn’t know what had been occurring when he first went there. Sounds a bit like Columbus, who didn’t know where he was going, didn’t know where he was when he got there, didn’t know where he’d been when he got back. But I digress. In your story, it takes a stranger to elaborate on the memory. What do you make of this?
BR: Well, memory is notoriously unreliable, especially in children. But even as adults, when we think we’re calling up a memory, what we’re doing is recreating it, every time. Every time is new. Every time we bring up a memory, we’re bringing in influences from other memories that have happened since, we’re making unconscious edits and distortions. So there’s not a video camera in there recording things that we simply play back. In this case the stranger fills in some gaps, helps him understand what, as a little child, he had not had any understanding of. New levels of understanding things that have happened in his past, or belief systems he’s had in the past, are a major through-line of my novel, of which this is just one little chapter.
TN: You say that this stranger he meets, this painter, who fills in the gaps in his memory... This man becomes a soul father to him. What the fuck is a soul father? Is it some kind of paternal soulmate. And what is a soul mate? Is it just a feeling? Are you saying this man he met filled in the emotional gaps his biological father left behind? Is it an inverse Oedipus complex?
BR: (laughs) Well, I wouldn’t say it’s an inverse Oedipus complex. “Soul father” on one level is simply a more economical and poetic way of saying what you said. I wasn’t going to write in my novel that, uh, “this man became a second father, the man who filled the emotional gaps my biological father left behind.” I wouldn’t say that; I would say “soul father,” which I think is fairly obvious meaning. There’s biological father, father to the body, and the father to the soul suggests a level of connection that has more to do with internal interests, passions, feelings, than simply being about fathering the body.
TN: I never knew that the town of Phoenicia was a hotbed of socialism back in the day. What a pleasant surprise. Tell me more.
BR: Well, Camp Woodland was established in 1939, just outside the town of Phoenicia, in Woodland Valley. It lasted until 1962 and was a summer camp for kids, primarily populated by leftists, not specifically labeled socialist. But it was an ethnically diverse camp where kids were primarily taught—the idea was that they should learn about their democratic heritage, and they were taught by mixing with the local people and learning about their traditional folkways of the Catskills. And they learned—it was heavily focused on music. They learned old folk songs and dances, and they learned about the way that previous generations of rural folks had done things. Eric Weissberg, Janis Ian, John Herald—these are all folk musicians that were campers at Camp Woodland. Peter Seeger was there every summer. But of course the region also had right wingers who did not approve at all of what was going on at Camp Woodland. So partly due to financial problems, but also partly due to prejudice, they eventually folded.
TN: One more thing before we turn into pumpkins or mice, because it’s that time... Writers are notorious for using autobiographical details in their works, or the biographical details of people they know. Jack Kerouac was an example of that. The whole practice has a slightly negative tinge, as if it’s somehow cheating—passing off real events as fiction—lazy imagination. Yet it’s natural enough—writers being people as far as I know. When you describe the emotional growth of your protagonist are you talking about yourself? Let me know if I’m being rude. I can be an asshole.
BR: (laughs) Or maybe you just play one on the podcast. This business of the borderline between autobiography and fiction is always interesting to me, and I don’t think it has a negative tinge at all. And I think… fiction writers, if it just happens naturally and unconsciously that they pull from their life, well, fine, that is one way to approach it. And in fact, anything anyone ever writes, whether it’s presented as fiction or not, is a self-portrait. It can’t be otherwise. But I prefer to actually be quite conscious in choosing details from my own life, to mix them in with totally made-up stuff. I actually kind of get a kick out of the way the reader might be wondering, in a metafictional way, might be wondering what details in the story are actually from my life. And typically I don’t like to reveal that. But in this case I actually wanted to mention that the part about Ted the painter was actually conceived partly as a little insider tribute to my dear friend Ted Denyer, who was a painter who died in 2006 at the age of 89. And I… I had dinner with him every two weeks for ten years, and, in contrast to my biological father, who I really didn’t have a connection to under the surface. Ted was that soul father. So here’s a bit of autobiographical detail that I’m disclosing, as I usually don’t. But, um, in this case I had a reason.
TN: One more thing, talking about autobiographical details... your protagonist shaved his head. Did you ever do that yourself? Somehow you don’t strike me as a skinhead.
BR: Ah, my past is full of twists and turns you may know nothing about. And unfortunately it seems I’m slowly becoming a skinhead without shaving at all. The vicissitudes of age.
TN: Well thanks... what was your name again? Who are you?
BR: Ugh, not that again.
TN: In your story, there’s the idea that reality can only be experienced through the senses of individuals, and therefore truth must be relative—a sort of Greek Sophist idea. The dialogue of your Danish prince seems to express that. Is he a philosopher? What do you think?
BR: It’s nice to be confused with Shakespeare, but, uh, you’re talking about the wrong story. Mine is Woodland Valley Hideout, not Hamlet.
SFX: Rustling papers
TN: Oh... really... My apologies. I obviously got my notes mixed up. Must have been all that Rugby I played as a kid. Now let me see... (more rustling) Woodland Valley... Okay here it is. Sorry—what did you say your name was? I’m sure we must have met somewhere.
BR: Sometimes you worry me. It’s Brent… Robison.
TN: Ah yes, Brent... of course, of course. Now in this story—Woodland Valley Hideout, which is an excerpt from your novel Ponckhockie Union, and doesn’t involve a Danish Prince—I detect certain philosophical themes. When you write: “it did not seem believable that this obscure photo would be found in precisely this house, where I was hiding from the killer this crazy dead man had brought into my life.” —Something unexpected shows up in an unexpected place. It’s a sort of double negative. Does that mean anything?
BR: Well, synchronicities and coincidences and contrived reality—those elements are quite an important theme in my novel. Now, do things like this have any ultimate, cosmic meaning? I don’t really know. I can’t say one way or the other. But do they have meaning to Ben Rose, the protagonist? They do in the sense that they help him wake up to the true strangeness of reality, the way sometimes things feel contrived, almost like a story is being written of one’s actual life. This is the way I often feel about my life, so I guess these things have meaning to me.
TN: It’s almost as if infinity consists of finite elements. There are only so many combinations available, so sooner or later one like you describe will show up. I also get a sense of recursiveness—a recursiveness of meaning. But then this is just a story you wrote, so none of this really applies—or does it?
BR: Well, yes, in “reality,” whatever that is, randomness and, uh, statistics, the statistics of chance, dictate that these kinds of coincidences or even synchronicities will occur a certain amount. But then you ask, this is just a story, so does it really apply? Well, that’s a good out—I mean this is just a story, and the universe of the story is not precisely our universe. It’s similar but it’s not exactly the same. So maybe certain math laws are different there.
TN: Another theme that crops up in the story, and indeed in your whole novel is memory. That’s not necessarily surprising. I mean, where would we be without memory? What did you say your name was again?
BR: Um… maybe you want me to say I forgot?
TN: That was a joke—or like a joke, just not funny, otherwise like a joke...
(Brent is not amused)
BR: Hm, yeah, otherwise, huh.
TN: I borrowed that from a friend. I like it so much I use it at every opportunity. But where was I? Memory... yes... so your protagonist discovers a place he remembers he’s been to before... with his father when he was a boy. In other words he stumbles on a memory. Unexpected. You seem to be describing the imperfection of memory. He doesn’t know where he is going and then he remembers he’s been there before. And even then the memory is incomplete. He doesn’t know what had been occurring when he first went there. Sounds a bit like Columbus, who didn’t know where he was going, didn’t know where he was when he got there, didn’t know where he’d been when he got back. But I digress. In your story, it takes a stranger to elaborate on the memory. What do you make of this?
BR: Well, memory is notoriously unreliable, especially in children. But even as adults, when we think we’re calling up a memory, what we’re doing is recreating it, every time. Every time is new. Every time we bring up a memory, we’re bringing in influences from other memories that have happened since, we’re making unconscious edits and distortions. So there’s not a video camera in there recording things that we simply play back. In this case the stranger fills in some gaps, helps him understand what, as a little child, he had not had any understanding of. New levels of understanding things that have happened in his past, or belief systems he’s had in the past, are a major through-line of my novel, of which this is just one little chapter.
TN: You say that this stranger he meets, this painter, who fills in the gaps in his memory... This man becomes a soul father to him. What the fuck is a soul father? Is it some kind of paternal soulmate. And what is a soul mate? Is it just a feeling? Are you saying this man he met filled in the emotional gaps his biological father left behind? Is it an inverse Oedipus complex?
BR: (laughs) Well, I wouldn’t say it’s an inverse Oedipus complex. “Soul father” on one level is simply a more economical and poetic way of saying what you said. I wasn’t going to write in my novel that, uh, “this man became a second father, the man who filled the emotional gaps my biological father left behind.” I wouldn’t say that; I would say “soul father,” which I think is fairly obvious meaning. There’s biological father, father to the body, and the father to the soul suggests a level of connection that has more to do with internal interests, passions, feelings, than simply being about fathering the body.
TN: I never knew that the town of Phoenicia was a hotbed of socialism back in the day. What a pleasant surprise. Tell me more.
BR: Well, Camp Woodland was established in 1939, just outside the town of Phoenicia, in Woodland Valley. It lasted until 1962 and was a summer camp for kids, primarily populated by leftists, not specifically labeled socialist. But it was an ethnically diverse camp where kids were primarily taught—the idea was that they should learn about their democratic heritage, and they were taught by mixing with the local people and learning about their traditional folkways of the Catskills. And they learned—it was heavily focused on music. They learned old folk songs and dances, and they learned about the way that previous generations of rural folks had done things. Eric Weissberg, Janis Ian, John Herald—these are all folk musicians that were campers at Camp Woodland. Peter Seeger was there every summer. But of course the region also had right wingers who did not approve at all of what was going on at Camp Woodland. So partly due to financial problems, but also partly due to prejudice, they eventually folded.
TN: One more thing before we turn into pumpkins or mice, because it’s that time... Writers are notorious for using autobiographical details in their works, or the biographical details of people they know. Jack Kerouac was an example of that. The whole practice has a slightly negative tinge, as if it’s somehow cheating—passing off real events as fiction—lazy imagination. Yet it’s natural enough—writers being people as far as I know. When you describe the emotional growth of your protagonist are you talking about yourself? Let me know if I’m being rude. I can be an asshole.
BR: (laughs) Or maybe you just play one on the podcast. This business of the borderline between autobiography and fiction is always interesting to me, and I don’t think it has a negative tinge at all. And I think… fiction writers, if it just happens naturally and unconsciously that they pull from their life, well, fine, that is one way to approach it. And in fact, anything anyone ever writes, whether it’s presented as fiction or not, is a self-portrait. It can’t be otherwise. But I prefer to actually be quite conscious in choosing details from my own life, to mix them in with totally made-up stuff. I actually kind of get a kick out of the way the reader might be wondering, in a metafictional way, might be wondering what details in the story are actually from my life. And typically I don’t like to reveal that. But in this case I actually wanted to mention that the part about Ted the painter was actually conceived partly as a little insider tribute to my dear friend Ted Denyer, who was a painter who died in 2006 at the age of 89. And I… I had dinner with him every two weeks for ten years, and, in contrast to my biological father, who I really didn’t have a connection to under the surface. Ted was that soul father. So here’s a bit of autobiographical detail that I’m disclosing, as I usually don’t. But, um, in this case I had a reason.
TN: One more thing, talking about autobiographical details... your protagonist shaved his head. Did you ever do that yourself? Somehow you don’t strike me as a skinhead.
BR: Ah, my past is full of twists and turns you may know nothing about. And unfortunately it seems I’m slowly becoming a skinhead without shaving at all. The vicissitudes of age.
TN: Well thanks... what was your name again? Who are you?
BR: Ugh, not that again.
Music on this episode:
Cindy by Pete Seeger
License PD
Singer/songwriter Dan Bern performed live for the Songcircle
show on KBOO Community Radio in Portland, Oregon - October 19, 2018.
License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Sound Effects used under license:
Pop concert by klangbeeld
License CC BY 3.0
Pencil Writing Close A by Inspector J
License CC BY 3.0
