On rage - and string beans

Pete Warzel, Special to the News

Published November 9, 2006 at midnight

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John Nichols is author of "The Milagro Beanfield War," the title most recently chosen as the focus of the One Book, One Denver reading program. We asked freelance writer and News book critic Pete Warzel, who hasknown John Nichols for 11 years, to conduct this interview by phone in advance of Nichols appearance in Denver next week. This is his report.

I met John Nichols in Taos, N.M.—his home, mythen part-time retreat. Nichols is the model of a serious writer, working through the night, sleeping through the morning, doing chores around his small adobe home in the afternoon, checking on children and grandchildren and working again. He makes time routinely for fly fishing and hunting, hiking high in the exquisite landscape around Taos with his notoriously bad heart —as if nature is as much a part of the his creative work as the solitary act of writing. John is a many-draft writer and packs every written word in bound drafts in a storage warehouse that is a treasure trove of the past 40 years of his literary history.

I remember seeing the first draft of The Milagro Beanfield War on the shelf to the left of the door and thinking, this is a very special place. His home is stacked with books everywhere, and there are metal file cabinets with every piece of correspondence he has written and received since his calling as a writer became clear.

Milagro is Nichols’ third published novel, followed by 16 more books, both fiction and non-fiction. Having lost track of each over the past two years,this was a good excuse to restart the conversation.

Question: You once told me that your writing routine involved a computer,but I never got the sense that you were using technology to your advantage. Have you entered the 21st century since then?

Answer: I write first drafts by hand,then I type them into the computer. But I hate looking at the computer or working on the computer,so I make a hard copy, then I scribble on the page and rewrite the book a hundred times on the hard copy and scribble and scribble until every page looks like a Jackson Pollack painting. And then I type it back in,and I do the same thing again and again and again. I do the manual labor. I just don’t like electricity. I don’t like that little hum.

But never say never. Who knows?I could change. I never thought I would go to Sea World,but two weeks ago,I took my granddaughters and I sat there and watched the orcas jumping in the water and dolphins doing back flips and I actually had a good time. I will,though, never go to Disney World or be a fan of the New York Yankees.

Q: Are you into grandfathering?

A: Yeah. You know,all I want to do for the rest of my life is to enjoy my golden years and be a senile little grandpa. I’m serious. I’m tired of marching every Saturday against the war in Iraq.

Q: Beginning,I think, with Milagro, your writing became more politically involved in both fiction and non-fiction. Is a writer morally obligated to become an activist in economic/social or environmental politics or can a writer just write?

A: Of course they must be political. All writers are morally obligated to overthrow the capitalist system and to end racism and chauvinism and sexism on the globe. And stop all pre-emptive wars and basically hold the feet of their country’s leaders to the flame. In most countries on earth, the definition of an artist is to be the social conscience in touch with the times.

Q: Milagro is now some 30 years old. Has its impact changed?

A: Maybe during the 1970’s it had greater impact because it was used pretty regularly in schools and universities as a kind of tool for organizing and presenting a world view that was accessible, simply because it had a lot of humor and people could enjoy reading it. (But) the ’80s and ’90s and the early 21st century have been a radically conservative time in the United States. This country has stumbled into a dream or nightmare that’s hard to fathom. I suppose The Milagro Beanfield War has stayed alive, but I don’t know to what extent it has been as influential above and beyond being a work of literature now.

Q: Do readers read it differently now?

A: I’d like to think that as everything collapses around us,people would begin to read Milagro with a little more understanding of its relevance to the current world situation. That’s pretty pontifical.

Q: How did the people of Taos react when the book was published?

A: Everybody wanted to shoot me. When you live in a small town,everybody thinks it’s a roman a clef. Basically Milagro is just made up of archetypes. But in a small town,the gossip flies and you try to navigate through those waters the best you can.

There were a lot of people in northern New Mexico who were pleased that their struggle had gotten a lot of publicity. There were many other people who felt that the novel basically exploited indigenous culture for my own personal profit and were angry at that. There were many people who were upset at the novel because they did not like its irreverence. And some people were really puzzled.

Publishers will tell you that the best way to sell a book is to have half the reviews be glowing and half be absolutely horrendous, and then you are home free.

Q: What does Joe Mondragon know that you don’t?

A: Nothing. Nothing, no. Basically how he survives is the way I survive. Maybe back when I "met"Joe when I was in my 30s,I didn’t know from nothing on how to survive, but he and all his buddies taught me....

You live for 38 years in northern New Mexico you are going to learn something about survival outside of the box. I said when I was 28 years old living in New York City that if I was going to be a writer I better make a vow of poverty. The chances are I am not going to earn a whole lot of money. Knowing that, I could always be a writer. If I don’t want things,I can keep doing my craft. And,you know,I made a promise that whether I earned five-grand a year or a 100-grand I would live a five-grand-a-year life,and I have done it ever since. I didn’t have to take another job.

All I wanted to do was write,and I always knew that the good times would be replaced by bad times. I’m 66 years old now,and I pretty much live the same as I did when I was 22,living in New York in a $42-month apartment. The result is that I just got to write —I got to do what I wanted to do and that is a really rare thing in our country. I don’t desire things. It’s really funny.

Q: Except John, I know that way down deep you desire a $2,500 Winston bamboo fly rod.

A: No. I could give a...you know somebody once gave me a bamboo fly rod; they gave it to me, and I took it down to the Rio Grande and within 15minutes,I broke it. And that was my little lesson. But now I have traded my obsession in fishing for an obsession in observing bighorn sheep on the ridges, the tundra alpine ridges around Taos at 12-or 13-thousand feet. I climb up about every five days,and looking for bighorns is like fishing. When I find one,it’s like getting a great strike on the river.

Q: We know there is more to John Nichols than Milagro...

A: God I hope so. I’m not just a cheap hooker on Main Street.

Q: Does Milagro lead a reader to the other John Nichols’ books?

A: I don’t know. Most of my life, people come up to me and say "Hey, I really enjoyed your book. "If I am in a really bad mood, I say "Oh, are you talking about The Sterile Cuckoo, or The Voice of the Butterfly, or A Ghost in the Music? Or do you mean If Mountains Die, or The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn?" You know? But most of the time I just say "thank you." Cause I know they are talking about The Milagro Beanfield War,and I know they haven’t read it they’ve just watched Redford’s movie.

Q: As part of this whole One Book celebration,the Starz Denver International Film Festival is going to screen Milagro.

A: I hope so. Yes.

Q: How was the experience of filming the movie?

A: God. The book was on option for 14years. A number of writers wrote different screenplays. Redford got involved,and it changed it. It became a larger,Universal production rather than just this small, independent thing. When that production came to New Mexico,it was,needless to say,kind of like having an elephant in the living room. It upset my apple cart to the extent that I wasn’t used to that kind of spotlight.

And so the final stages of that 14 years when the film finally got made were traumatic and destabilizing, but after it was all over,life went on... .But those things pass. In the end,the Milagro movie is a gentle and compassionate and loving movie. It’s humorous and quite gentle and sort of poignant.

Q: Ed Abbey’s letters were recently published,and you show up in them comparatively frequently.

A: My good friend Dave Peterson edited (the book). I love Dave Peterson.

Q: And apparently Abbey loved you...

A: No he didn’t. We only met twice,and the one time,he tried to hit on my girlfriend.

Q: Well in one letter, some 20years ago, you sound like two old broken-down men.

A: Well we were, but I outlived the (expletive). He had more women in his life,but I got to live a little longer.

Q: There might be a mathematical proof in that.

A: Could be. I don’t know. We had a friendship by postcards. I really liked Ed’s books. The Monkey Wrench Gang came out,I think,a year after Milagro,and it’s a great book. It’s funny and it’s caustic and sarcastic and it’s off the charts. Lots of Ed’s other books are just sensational. He was a cool guy. But we never hung out. So I have a handful of postcards from Ed,and he, in his library or whatever, has a handful of communist propaganda letters from me. We scratched each other the wrong way politically.

Q: You also are a photographer.

A: I was. I was a snapshot artist. I figured out how to hustle my pictures with words. I take a camera now when I go up into the mountains and I take panoramas. They are not professional,but they are cool and go along with all the notes I take when I am hiking. And some day when I can’t go into the mountains anymore I’m going to write some incredible book about my adventures above timberline in the mountains around Taos.

Q: "American Blood"is a powerful book, a disturbing book. Actually, it’smy favorite of your novels...

A: Really? Jesus Christ. You get a gold star on your forehead. You got guts,mother------.

Q: It is set in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Is there relevance in that book today,given the riven state of our society over a similar kind of war? Do you feel any of the rage you did when you wrote that book?

A: I think the Disney Channel is about to do a series on that book. You know,Pete,I have felt that rage ever since I was about 22years old,and it hasn’t lessened. I felt the rage when we were in Vietnam and when we got out. I felt the rage in Panama and Granada and yada yada yada. Who can help but feel the rage today?

I get asked regularly to give talks about the environment, to give talks about the war, to give talks about how do we have hope in a desperate age. I’ve been doing it all my life and I understand that the struggle never ends. The horrors will continue. There will never be a moment when you cannot afford not to be activist. Civil rights and human rights will always be under attack. The concerns about the environment have never lessened.

People tell me that this is the worst time that ever was,and I say: Wait a minute,I was born in 1940,and during the first five years of my life,60 million people were murdered worldwide;6 million of them were deliberately incinerated in order to commit ethnic cleansing against Jews. So the fact is,the world is a traumatic place to live,and human behavior is really a pain. You could read Barbara Tuchman’s book about the 14th century and say, holy mackerel, how did anybody survive that?

We have such a horrible side. I know that for many years my dad, who was a psychologist and a professor at UCCS in Colorado Springs, subscribed to a document titled the Seville Statement Against Violence. It was a statement made by educators and thinkers to the effect that the violence in human history was not inherently genetic, but was the result of programming, and that it could be resolved in a more positive and peaceful manner. We can change. It is very important for people to be able to say there is hope rather than it’s hopeless.

Q: You are focused more on the socio-economic aspects of life and activism, but you also take great interest in environmental and water issues. What is the biggest issue facing the West?

A: But let’s not forget the really sleazy books like Conjugal Bliss —my obsession with sophomoric and juvenile sex. Let us not stand too tall on the podium.

The biggest issue is just the world issue of globalization and the unchecked consumption of resources. It’s the same thing in Denver as it is in Calcutta. There is no isolated issue. John Muir,the naturalist,said when we try to pick anything out by itself,we find it connected to everything else. All our problems are universal. There is nothing unique to Denver or the West that is not the same to New York or Beijing. It’s one world. The melting of Antarctic is interchangeable with the fact that 3 billion people on this globe earn less than $2 a day.

Q: You once described writing as hard rock mining. Does that still hold true in your approach?

A: It’s like chewing through granite.... But I do like doing it. It’s really, really hard.

There’s a famous sportswriter named Red Smith who said that writing is easy, all you have to do is wake up in the morning, make a cup of coffee, sit down at the table and open a vein. You have to have enormous discipline. I have writtenevery day,six to 10hours a day, seven days a week for the last 45years. For me,it beats anything else. It’s kind of like getting up in the morning and going to the steel mill.

Q: Many Western-based writers take umbrage to the Eastern literary establishment viewing them as regional writers. I was in Austria several years ago and saw an article by you in a German magazine. Where do you fit? Nationally? Regionally? Internationally?

A: I’ve never been much of a cheerleader for regional definitions. I think it is all universal. I love James Welch just as much as I love Harry Cruz. I like Toni Morrison as much as Carl Hiaasen. I love Albert Camus as much as Gabriella Mistral.

Everybody is in it together. Once you start losing sight of the fact that it is all universal,then you start arguing about the number of angels on a head of a pin. Great writers and artists and sugar cane cutters come from everywhere.

Q: Have you ever grown beans?

A: Yeah. No. Yes, but I never grow frijoles, I just grow string beans. For the first 20years I lived in Taos,I had a wonderful garden. No, I’ve never grown pinto beans.

Q: Have you ever inhaled?

A: You know,all my life I have been terrified of drugs, any kind of drugs except alcohol and cigarettes. I did smoke cigarettes when I was young and when I got remarried —I went from being a non-smoker to 2 packs a day within four months of my second marriage. But that just meant it, the marriage, was exciting and good, and suicidal.

Q: How many milagros have you experienced in your life —miracles, not books?

A: None. No. Miracles are a ridiculous concept. Like anybody,I’ve had unbelievable stories of survival when I should have died. But life is a miracle. I was raised by naturalists who have an uncommon adoration of the natural world,and I was taught that at a very young age: the daily and constant miracle of creation. And I have also been obsessed by storytelling and learning, so that I have never been bored. I have been through tragedies, personal and national and international and cosmic, and it’s all been a magnificent trip. I’ve never had the fears that can be generated by wondering if there’s an afterlife.

So I’ve lived a life that has been relatively unblemished by the psychoses of the human imagination, at the same time that my life has been blessed by the riches of imagination. I’ve never lived in fear of mortality or fear of not accomplishing enough. Maybe that is a miracle. It’s probably a miracle if you manage to stumble about relatively unscathed.

Q: What would you like to talk about —you now have the floor on anything you choose.

A: Is the World Series game over yet tonight? I don’t know. You know if somebody gave me a pulpit I would say —Hey America, elections are coming up why don’t you vote for radical change from the path we have been following?Somebody has to start thinking outside this box. Also,I would remind people that Martin Luther King once said that "I would rather be dead than live in fear." And so what the heck is the so-called richest and most powerful nation on earth doing being totally boggled by fear? We’re so powerful,why are we so afraid? If I want to talk about something,I would just say "Stop being such scaredy cats."

In addition to the Rocky, Pete Warzel's reviews have appeared in "Southwest Book Views," "Inside/Outside Magazine" and the "American Book Review." He lives in Denver.

If you go

• What: John Nichols reads from and discusses his work

• Where and when: 7 p.m. Monday at West High School, 951 Elati St. Free. (Seating on a first-come, first-serve basis.) And noon Tuesday at Tattered Cover in LoDo, 1628 16th St. Free.

• Information: www.denvergov.org/ onebook for West High event; 303-436-1070 for Tattered Cover event.

More online

• This chat was condensed from a longer interview. For the full interview, go to www.RockyMountainNews.com. Click on "Spotlight," then "Books."

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