|
Read Paulette Jiles Profile
SLR: When did you first start writing stories? When did you
know you wanted to spend you life writing?
PJ: I think I was eleven. I wrote an adventure story. Wrote
it out by hand and drew illustrations for it. Writing was all I ever
wanted to do other than live in the country and have horses. I have
been able to support myself by writing only recently.
SLR: What writers influenced you the most when you were
young?
PJ: Whoever wrote
Highwayman. My mother used to read it to
us aloud. It was dark and thrilling and it rhymed and there were
galloping horses and gibbous moons and Bess, the landlord’s
black-eyed daughter. Then whoever wrote Altair Four.
Riveting. I read it when I was twelve. It had four different points
of view. Later found that it was made into a film called
Forbidden
Planet which I never saw but the book was based on the
The Tempest
with a Prospero type person who created things that went remarkably
bad and ate or rent the characters. Food for thought.
Then a science-fiction short story called “fast Tuesday night”. My
mother also read
Tom Sawyer
to us. I was so surprised to find out
that Mark Twain was from Missouri. I thought that to be a full-time
writer you had to be from someplace like Mars or Boston.
SLR: What inspired you to switch from poetry to novel and
where did you come up with the idea of your first novel
Enemy Women?
PJ:
My poems just kept getting longer and longer. I tried to write a
novel twice and threw both away. Didn’t understand anything about
plot. Finally understood I was interested in writing an adventure
novel rather than a novel of psychological exploration. Adventure
novels have a whole different set of tools, different aims, etc. I
always admired
Hemingway but thought girls weren’t suppose to write
like that. The idea for
Enemy Women
came after I found that a large
number of women in Missouri were imprisoned during the Civil War.
SLR: When you write do you have the story outlined completely
in your head or does it unfold as you write?
PJ: No it usually unfolds on its own but hat can be torturous
and evenmore boring to explain. I general have a main idea.
SLR: In your research about the Ozarks, and the War, were
there any surprises? Did you learn something about your native
region that really struck you?
PJ: Yes. I learned a great many things about the Ozarks
during the War that were very alarming and upsetting and not
generally known. The fighting was far more savage and cold-blooded
than I had ever heard about. There is a lot of first-person
testimony that still has not been published except in ring binders.
Very little of this was passed down in family stories. However,
considering the Balkans, I suppose a little historical amnesia is
not altogether a bad thing.
SLR:
What has been your experience when talking with people from
across the country about the
Ozark Mountains?
Does it seem to you that Americans, beyond the mid-south region,
know very much about the Ozarks—the hills and hill people? Did you
come across stereotyping—a misunderstanding about the region? Or
perhaps a very clear understanding and an interest?
PJ: For a while in the 60’s and 70’s there was some interest
among urban hippies in the hill people. They were the Salt of the
Earth who knew ancient versions of Elizabethan ballads and had
Martin D-38’s in the hall closet that you could buy for $50 and made
corn whiskey but that was a passing fad.
According to
Albion’s Seed, the hills people (Scots-Irish) are
direct descendents of the very large wave of immigration from the
north of England/Lowland Scotland/Ulster that came to Colonial
American in the 120’s to about 1780. The other three main waves of
immigration to populate Colonial America were the Puritans, from
East Anglia (1600’s) who went to New England, the rich
plantation-owners for the south of England (1600’s) who went to
Virginia and Maryland and the Quakers who landed in Delaware and
Pennsylvania.
The Scots-Irish were the last group and the poorest an they had been
stereotyped and derided as rednecks before they ever got on a ship.
The Puritans, the Virginia Cavaliers and the Quakers were more
affluent and came earlier and had things like forks and carpets and
pet cats and ideologies. I guess those groups thought they’d got
clean away from the Scots-Irish, who were barbarous and feral, but
here they came, shiploads of them, in grimy plaids and shoeless as
usual. They had great survival skills, being accustomed to staying
alive on clabber and oatcakes. They took to the hills because that
was all that was left to settle and besides there were free turkeys
wandering around everywhere. They sang deeply mournful ballads. Made
their own whiskey, pulled their own teeth. A distinct culture,
formed out of the old British Kingdoms of Strathclyde and Rhedge.
Of course, things have changed, I too have a pet cat, Sam (mackerel
tabby with green eyes) and I have obtained a good deal on silver
forks on e-Bay.
SLR: The Ozarks have had a strong musical tradition to their
culture. Did music have a strong presence in your family? Did it
contribute to your poetic skills? If not, what do you attribute to
your poetic nature?
PJ: Yes, there was a lot of music in my family. My
grandfather and my mother and her two sisters loved to sing. They
could all play guitar and also they could shoot guns. They sang
traditional songs and Depression-era songs. I learned things like
Barbara Allen, All Around a Water Tank, I’ll Fly Away, Freight Train
Blues from them. I wanted to be able to sing with my mother and
aunts because they were beautiful and glamorous and could harmonize
and drive trucks and shoot off guns.
SLR:
Vance
Randolph researched the language and culture of the hill
people. What do you think of his research, if anything? And what
are your thoughts on the dialect of the region?
PJ: I have serious doubts about
Vance
Randolph. He seemed to
have traveled many miles to record a simple-minded dirty story but
never found out what happened to Alf Bowlin’s head.
There are many variations of hills dialects. I always wondered how
the north-of –England /Lowland Scots speech came to change into what
we hear today.
SLR:
How would you describe the
Ozark Mountains
in the present day for someone who has never been to this part of the
country?
PJ: Well, writers are not experts on anything except writing.
But! I will say television has in the main fairly drugged the
population. Speech patterns are now standardized Valley Girl, with
the little breathiness and ainty stresses. Lots of jaw action and
head tossing…of course this is happening in Norway, and Texas and
Brazil. But once in a while you can come upon somebody who speaks
with the pure and lovely old accent, but they are rare.
Other than that, there are wonderful lakes, springs, and rivers that
offer recreational opportunities unbounded. Go in October. The
leaves are colorful and the ticks are gone and the marijuana harvest
is over.
SLR: I read in a previous interview someone asked you about
the writers that influenced you the most and your response was
Cormac MacCarthy. Are there others? As a reader, what do you look
for in a novel?
PJ: Well, what I look for in a novel is a main character who
is worthy of sustained attention, who is not stupid, vain and
shallow or, if a country person, a moron. I look for a writer, who
in the main eschews irony and derisions as a quick and dirty way of
appearing intelligent, but instead tackles the challenge of creating
a character who is sincere and honest but not sentimentalized.
SLR: Are you reading anything now? Any recommendations?
PJ: I’m reading a
Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
and
A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides by Samuel Johnson/James
Boswell. I just finished all of
Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey-Maturin
series. I recommend all of the above.
SLR:
Thank you so much Ms. Jiles for taking time from your busy schedule
to talk with us.
| 
