By high school we had moved to a nearby city and the good days were gone. I got myself into a University a year early but that first year my father died unexpectedly. That put me in a financial bind. I had to work and go to school. It wasn’t long before I was exhausted. Things were not as I thought they should be. I needed a change.
I headed west with two friends in a beat up Volkswagen bug on the door of which I had painted “California or bust”, the same slogan so often seen on wagons heading to the gold rush in 1849. It was the first true indication of my interest in California’s gold. I graduated from the University of California at Berkeley a few years later.
Because of the university some of the smartest people in the world pass through here. There is a variety of ideas that cover far more than just the political ones the town is known far. And since San Francisco is only a few miles away across the bay the cultural opportunities are tremendous. From early rock and roll with Janis Joplin and the Jefferson Airplane to evenings at the San Francisco Opera, Art and artist flourish in museums both in Berkeley and San Francisco. Berkeley is a unique place. I loved the environment.
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| John Putnam |
1.What do you write?
In
1849 alone 80 to 100,000 people came to California, the greatest spontaneous
mass migration in human history. San Francisco grew from almost nothing to
25,000 residents. 500 ships lay abandoned in the harbor. The gold country, virtually
empty two years before, burst forth with new towns often little more than tent
cities, but there was still no law, no courts, no jails, no schools or
churches, no government to either help or impede man’s search for wealth, and
almost no women anywhere. On the other hand saloons, often nothing more than a
barrel of liquor sitting under a tree, were everywhere.
And yet, because of the gold, far more money was
made in America in 1849 than ever before, and even more would be made the next
year and the one after that. By 1850 California became the 31st state of the
United States of America fulfilling President Polk’s campaign promise of
manifest destiny—America from sea to sea—made six years earlier. The Chinese
flocked to California in ever growing numbers signifying a tremendous
accomplishment for mankind. The last great gap in the world had closed. East
and west, for the first time in human history, were linked by the open waters
of the Pacific Ocean
2.Why do you write?
I write because I have to.The years of
thinking on a variety of topics acts like steam in a tea kettle, the ideas need
to come out. They mix with the history that also seeped into my pores and
infuse my writing with a purpose. Around these ideas I create characters all of
whom I throw into a pot, toss in a problem for seasoning and turn up the heat.
Then I sit back and watch their interaction. The problem always gets worse
before it gets better and I am often as amazed as you might be to see how the
book finally ends.
3.For whom do you write?
If you like action-packed
books that deal with the problems of men and women who find themselves in
harrowing situations then you will love my writing. Unlikely heroes and
unscrupulous villain vie against the all too real backdrop of a time and place
that began with so much gold available that there was almost no crime and
degenerated to a situation where the abundant crime committed went nearly
unpunished. There has never been atime in America more wild and free than the 6
years of the California gold rush and no other writer paints the pathos of this
era better.
4.By
whom are you inspired?
I’d have to go with Louis L’Amourfirst.
Years ago I ran across him in a downtown magazine shop, a fairly new place with
a decidedly old feel. To me his books were like potato chips, I couldn’t read
just one.
I went through every one of his works they had. If we roasted marshmallows together on a summer
night I would have to know if he ever gave any thought to writing something
beside a Western. I’d bet a Steinbeck against a Hemingway he did.
Elmore
Leonard I came across early in my life
through his movies—3:10 to Yuma, Last Stand at Saber River, Hombre, Valdez
is Coming, Mr. Majestyk—and I didn’t realize who wrote them until years
later. It was then I started reading his books and a little later read his
rules for writing.
They are earthy, homey rules and
have no trace of pretense about them. He tells us that he wrote the rules to
help him remain invisible when he wrote. He had to really believe that was important
to a successful book but I would love to hear his explanation over a cold beer.
At the top of this short list has to
be Mark Twain. I read Huck and Tom as a boy and loved them. Twain came west and
started writing for a Virginia City newspaper before he headed to San Francisco
where he met Bret Harte. Then he took off for the gold country and stayed in
Harte’s cabin on Jackass Hill.
We have that connection to the gold
rush in common. The story he wrote there, TheCelebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County, started his writing career, but it’s his understanding of
people and humanity that impresses me. I post a quote from him on Facebook
often and invariably get a lot of comments on it.
Twain touches people. His comments
sound as though he said them yesterday. There is a timelessness about him that
is uncanny. As we sip French brandy by that gold rush campfire, I’d like to
know the secret that keeps his comments so fresh. Is it related to his
compelling characters? Could I use it in my own writing?
Good characters are a must for a
great book and Twain understood that best of all.
5 .Can you
share your current writing (Any small Story/Poem) or Tell your Future
plan About writing?
I think I’ll leave this one a mystery.
6. Give five pieces of advice to a new writer?
Here are 5 of Elmore Leonard’s Rules for
Writing plus a bonus.
- Never use the words
"suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
- Use regional dialect,
patois, sparingly.
- Avoid detailed
descriptions of characters.
- Don't go into great
detail describing places and things.
- Try
to leave out the part that readers tend to skip
My most important rule is one that
sums up the rest: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
7.Give five pieces of advice
to a reader?
Here are five I borrowed
from Teddy Roosevelt. After more than a century they still sound good.
“A book must be interesting
to the particular reader at that particular time.”
“The reader, the booklover,
must meet his own needs without paying too much attention to what his neighbors
say those needs should be.”
“The reader must not
hypocritically pretend to like what he does not like.”
“Now and then I am asked as
to ‘what books a statesman should read,’ and my answer is, poetry and novels –
including short stories under the head of novels.”
“We all need more than
anything else to know human nature, to know the needs of the human soul; and
they will find this nature and these needs set forth as nowhere else by the
great imaginative writers, whether of prose or of poetry.”
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HANGTOWN CREEK
TALES FROM THE PROMISED LAND
INTO THE FACE OF THE DEVIL
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