How do you organize your books?
Like everything in my life, it’s kind of random. I’ve got reading stations all over the ranch, and I’m pretty sure I’m the only Wyoming rancher with a sun-faded copy of “The Dancing Wu Li Masters” sliding around on the dashboard of his truck.
Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).
Sitting with my wife, Judy, in our 1896 cabin in the Bighorn Mountains during a snowstorm, with a fire burning, discovering an author I’ve never read before.
What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?
“Doctor Dogbody’s Leg,” by James Norman Hall, one half of the duo that brought us the 1932 novel “Mutiny on the Bounty.” It’s the story of a peg-legged Royal Navy surgeon who enters a tavern in Portsmouth each night regaling the denizens with the implausible tale of how he lost his leg, the twist being it’s a different story every night.
What books are on your night stand?
I was lucky enough to get a prepublication copy of Willy Vlautin’s “The Horse.” I’ve been a big fan of his since running into him at a literary festival in Paris where I thought, “There’s a guy who looks even more painfully American than I do.” Elizabeth Crook’s “The Madstone” is next on deck, and then you’ve caught me at a rereading period with “Woman of Light,” by Kali Fajardo-Anstine, which is truly transcendent. I returned to “Rules of Civility,” by Amor Towles, after reading “Table for Two”; he’s so charming, entertaining and elegant you want to hit him in the head with a rock.
Who’s the second-best Wyoming writer (or writer on Wyoming)?
I’m a big Mark Spragg fan. He’s a very unassuming and humble guy, but his voice is nothing short of poetically epic.
What impact did seeing Walt Longmire onscreen have on your continuing to write the character?
Not much, in that I’d been writing the novels for seven years before Warner Bros. knocked on the door and most of the characters in my novels are drawn from people I know.
How do you sign books for your fans?
If somebody’s been standing for an hour to have three minutes of your time, don’t you owe them the best three minutes you can give them? Make eye contact, shake their hand, ask them about themselves and then sign their book with a genuine smile. It’s the very least you can do.
How will you know when you’re ready to move on from the Longmire series?
I’m not sure I ever will, but that doesn’t mean I won’t write other things. I’ve got a literary western, a psychological thriller and a World War II mystery already started. It’s just a question of having the time. I guess the answer to the question depends on how long he’ll be good company and have new and interesting stories to tell. So far, that doesn’t appear to be winding down.
What book would you most like to see turned into a movie or TV show that hasn’t already been adapted?
Brady Udall’s “The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint” is such a marvelous, humane saga, and I’ll never understand why somebody hasn’t made that book into a movie or limited series. I met him at the Tucson Festival of Books one time and told him I was going to kidnap him and lock him in a room if he didn’t start writing faster.
Another would be Curt Flood’s memoir, “The Way It Is.” His courtroom struggle to fight the Major League Baseball reserve clause, although resulting in failure, helped establish free agency. Can you imagine characters like Flood, Bob Gibson and an aged Jackie Robinson hobbling into a Supreme Court hearing on a cane?
What’s the most terrifying book you ever read?
“In the Miso Soup,” by Ryu Murakami. A little graphic for my tastes, but the tension is what makes the book so utterly compelling and breath-freezing.
You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?
Just to keep from being predictable, I’m going to limit it to the subcategory of deceased western writers.
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I’d go with Walter Van Tilburg Clark, who, after Owen Wister, is responsible for elevating the oater to a psychological level of responsible fiction with amazing books like “The Ox-Bow Incident” and “Track of the Cat.”
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Dorothy M. Johnson (no relation) is an all-time favorite with such an un-jingoistic understanding of the true West. Who knew a newspaperwoman and schoolteacher from Missoula wrote “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” “The Hanging Tree,” “A Man Called Horse” and my absolute favorite, “Lost Sister”?
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Jack Schaefer, whose tight, taut pen produced “Shane,” “Monte Walsh” and “The Canyon.”
Then I have to invite my buddy Tony Hillerman over to the table because he taught me more about what I do for a living in a four-hour dinner one time than a classroom ever could.
I know you said three, but I’m a self-confessed outlaw.
