QUESTIONS 8
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52 December 2021
James McGrath Morris
Author of Tony Hillerman: A Life Interview By Fowler Roberts
Q
What’s the biggest surprise you’ve experienced while doing the research for the Tony Hillerman biography?
A
In the 1960s when Hillerman was in his 40s and a student in the graduate program at University of New Mexico he wrote a piece about an outbreak of the bubonic plague in New Mexico and the editor True Magazine asked him to revise the piece to make the biologist more of a detective so that the piece would unfold as a detective story. Hillerman, of course, would go on to write detective fictional books. And I think at that moment, he was seeing for the first time the power of using a detective as a means of a narrative spread for a piece of work.
Q
What was Tony Hillerman’s best personal quality in your opinion?
A
When he met with enormous success, nothing changed about him. Many writers who become successful forget that they were writers who were once not successful. Hillerman never forgot that. He never stood on the shoulders of others in a way of pushing them down.
Q A
Of all of his books, what’s your favorite?
My favorite is Dance Hall of the Dead. It’s his second Navajo novel. The reason this novel is so marvelous is that you see Zuni culture and spirituality and history through the eyes of a Navajo who is constantly comparing it to his own culture and spirituality. So as opposed to an Anglo offering expository writing on the Zuni culture, you’re seeing it through the lenses of Joe Leaphorn which makes the book just a marvelous achievement.
Q A
Okay, and what is your least favorite Hillerman book? Probably, Talking Gods. It has maybe the very best opening of any novel that he’s written, but by this point Tony was running out of energy to invent something brand new each time. 18 novels is very hard to pull off.
Q
Has Tony Hillerman’s daughter Anne supported your writing of his biography?
A
Anne is not only a writer who has carried on the three characters Leaphorn, Chee and Bernadette Manuelito. She’s also the executor of his estate. And for me as a biographer, I had to have permission from the estate to his papers, his photographs, his diaries and his books. She granted me permission to use all this material and in return she would get to read the book twice before it was published. To Anne’s credit, she
