8 Questions Fowler Roberts

QUESTIONS8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

James mcGrath morris Author of Tony Hillerman: A Life Interview By Fowler Roberts

QWhat’s the biggest surprise you’ve

AMy 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

experienced while doing the research for the Tony Hillerman biography?

AIn the 1960s when Hillerman was in culture and spirituality. So as opposed to an Anglo offering 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.

QWhat was Tony Hillerman’s best personal quality in your your writing of his biography?

AAnne is not only a writer who has carried

opinion?

AWhen he met with enormous success, nothing changed about him. Many writers who become Bernadette Manuelito. She’s also the executor of his estate. And for me as a biographer, I had 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.

QOf all of his books, what’s your favorite?

and spirituality and history through the eyes of a Navajo who is constantly comparing it to his own expository writing on the Zuni culture, you’re seeing it through the lenses of Joe Leaphorn which makes the book just a marvelous achievement.

QOkay, and what is your least favorite Hillerman book?

AProbably, 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.

QHas Tony Hillerman’s daughter Anne supported

on the three characters Leaphorn, Chee and 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

found nothing objectionable. And I think part of the reason she did is that she’s a former journalist and understood the importance of having an independently written biography of her dad.

QSo who’s the better detective in your opinion, Chee or Leaphorn?

A(laughs) No one has asked me that question. And I frankly don’t know the answer. For me, Chee is the more intriguing detective, in that his struggle with balancing a life between the Anglo and Navajo world resonates in a way much more effectively than Leaphorn. And I think he’s much more successful in engaging the reader into understanding the difference between the two worlds. His conversations with his many girlfriends, when he’s trying to explain to them, particularly the Anglo one, how his world operates I think it’s really enlightening. So, I think Chee plays a more successful role. time outsiders came to the Navajo Nation were either anthropologists wanting to pick apart their lives or reporters who wanted to ask questions about corruption, alcoholism, obesity, poverty, those kinds of things. And here was Hillerman who wrote his books in a very respectful manner that used their spirituality and their culture as a backdrop for the world at large. So, for those Navajos, he is much beloved. I remember meeting a young child at the Chinle Elementary School who told me about how his grandmother has a special shelf in her hogan reserved for Hillerman books. But for younger Navajos who have been raised with a heightened sensitivity about cultural appropriation, there are many of them who object to what Hillerman did and aren’t as fond of him as others might be.

QThe final question is, what are you most looking forward to on your book tour?

QOkay. What’s the toughest crowd you’ve encountered so far on your book tour?

AI haven’t yet. It’s very early. I am likely to encounter a difficult crowd on the Navajo Nation. I’ve spoken on the Navajo Nation about Hillerman and people have been very friendly. And what I’ve discovered is that there’s two groups of Navajos. The older Navajos tend to look at Hillerman with a great deal of kindness and affection. And the reason being is that in the past the only AI am going to Oklahoma to speak at Konawa High School where Tony Hillerman went to high school, there are still people there who remember the Hillerman family. The local townspeople are going to turn out because it’s a small town that in many ways America has forgotten, like many mid-western towns. The idea of bringing Hillerman’s story along with a signed book and a photograph of him back to that setting and talking to them is a kind of reward authors just so rarely get.

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