Informant38

Robert(Birnbaum): Was your detailed description of the horsemanship and riding�was that a kind of nose-thumbing gesture directed at Eastern readers?



Thomas(McGuane): No, no, no. For some reason the concretia that is associated with these kind of ritual processes is something that has always appealed to me. I used to fish with a guy who had an old wooden rowboat. He was a great fisherman. I was always trying to figure out why he was such a successful fisherman. He did everything in a ritualistic way. He had a bailing can that was an old Maxwell house can, cut off in this perfect way. Always went there. Oars went there. After you anchored the anchor went here, the line was coiled there. The whole outfit wasn�t worth a hundred dollars. It was nearly all he had, but it was so deeply ritualized that it had a kind of glow. I don�t know what this all means, but there is a lot of that in horsemanship. It�s part of its appeal in a way. All those things the vacarros did, hang up their bridles with the reins hanging down. Most people would just throw the reins over the hook where they hang everything. Well, if you hang 'em like that when you go to ride the horse, they�ve got these two weird curves in them. So the vacarros would hang their reins hanging in opposing directions. They�d pulled the bridle down on the horse and the reins would hang like they are supposed to. There are thousands of little things like that associated with horsemanship or fishing or aviation. I think it�s a mistake for people not to have a good bit of that in their lives. A good bit of reassuring ritual�empty ritual being the thing to be avoided.
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and again:

Robert: Is there a movement to identify a Western school of, in the way that Southern writing is marked?



Thomas: That attempt is in place. I don�t see a lot of merit in it, frankly. (laughs) I get asked about that, �What about the Montana school of writing?� I have this filthy little trick I play. I answer, �It would be like talking about the New Jersey School of writing.� They all burst into laughter. I say, "Wait a minute. We�ve got Walt Whitman, We have William Carlos Williams. We have Allen Ginsberg. We can put Bruce Springsteen in there. We can put Stephen Crane. Maybe New Jersey writing is not as negligible as you horse laughers think it is?� (laughs) Anyway, I don�t even believe in American writing. I�ve heard myself saying that a lot. The problems of writing, the issues of writing are really universal. They are the same in Mexico, the same in the Yugoslavia and the same in Montana. And getting away from that notion you are headed down the twisted road to local color and other things.