Oral History Program Mary Knowles Interviewed by Pam Wilson 30 November 1972 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Mary Knowles Interviewed by Pam Wilson 30 November 1972 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Knowles, Mary, an oral history by Pam Wilson, 30 November 1972, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Mary Knowles. The interview was conducted on November 30, 1972, by Pam Wilson, in the location of 1025 Darling, Ogden, Utah. Knowles discusses her personal history and experience with writing. PW: This is an interview of Mary Knowles, by Pam Wilson, on November 30, 1972, for the Weber State College Oral History Program. This interview is being conducted at her home at 1025 Darling, Ogden, Utah at 12:25 in the afternoon. Mrs. Knowles, tell me a little bit about yourself, your childhood and your parents. MK: Well, my mother died, I was born in a little mining town in McGill, Nevada. My mother died when I was three months old and my maternal grandparents that lived in Salt Lake took me to rear. They were very wonderful grandparents. My grandfather was a Mormon bishop so this was the type of household that I was brought up in. They not only took me, but they took three of my cousins after their father was killed, so then after rearing ten children, they then took on a family of four, I lived with them. My father was a mechanical engineer who traveled in countries like Africa, South America and Nicaragua, Canada. He was an expert in the construction of vergatory pharmasis which has to do with the smeltering of ore, and this is why he had to go to these different countries. So I grew up in Salt Lake City, and my very early memories are, of course being in this great big house of my grandparents. We called my grandfather Daddy Bishop, I guess because he was a bishop; and my grandmother, whose name was Rachel, we called her Grandma Ray. Then I spent a year in South America with my father. He remarried again when I was 13 and I have two half-brothers. And then I married right after I was out of High School. My grandmother died, and I married right 1 after I was out of high school. I have always written. When I was a little girl I used to write stories. So that, of course I grew up with my aunts and uncles who were not my older brothers and sisters, so in other words I grew up in a very big family. My, I can remember waking up in the night and hearing the old city and county building clock chime, I think it still works all right. I met my husband, he is also a Salt Lake boy, and I met him in church, and as I say, we were married very young. That's about it I guess, dear. PW: OK. When you were a child, what sort of things did your mother read to you? MK: My grandmother, dear. PW: Ah-ah. MK: Well, she read to me from Grimm’s Fairy Tales and of course, we had a great deal of reading from the Book of Mormon and the Bible and Grandmother did not have very good eyesight so there wasn't too much reading anyway. PW: OK. What did you read on your own as a child? MK: Anything I could get my hands on. I went to the library and would bring books home by the shopping bagful. As I said, Grimm’s Fairytales and I liked Treasure Island, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s stories and I early discovered as I got a little older, Faith Baldwin and Kathleen Norris and Mary Roberts Reinhart. And then as I became a little more adult, I progressed into, oh let's see, I was trying to think who wrote Old Jewels. Marie Sandos, I think that's her name. Oh, I couldn't name all the authors, but I have always read very widely. PW: On these trips to the library, did you go alone, or did you have help? 2 MK: Oh no. There was always the librarian. The librarian was most helpful. I think any librarian is, if you let her know what you are interested in. I think she will sort of direct your reading. I was always interested in anything historical. I don't know, I guess one of the earliest ones that I read, I guess I was a little too young for it because it sort of gave me nightmares, was, I don't know if I am pronouncing this correctly or not, is it Les Miserables. PW: I think so. MK: Yes. I loved that and I have read it several times. I read it again when I was older, I liked historical background very much. Then, of course, as I got older the Bronte Sisters and things that we carted such. But still, I still read and like a lot. I loved Alice in Wonderland, which is really a philosophical book, I like that. PW: That's interesting. What was your first writing effort, can you remember? MK: Oh, I was about eleven years old, I guess, and I think I wrote about, no I guess I was twelve, because I was starting the romantic age and I wrote a story about a girl which was very much in love with a boy, girl meets boy of course, the formula is still the rage. She tried to, she didn't know if the boy liked her or not and she is trying to test by making herself very charming but not too attractive, and she wore glasses. And in those days, they just didn't make passes at girls that wore glasses and so I thought I solved it in rather a unique way. I had a little sneezing spell and the glasses fell off and he recognized her and he must have been pretty stupid if he couldn't otherwise. That was one of my first attempts. Then when I was in, I went to LDS High School, which is no longer in existence and I won a short story contest there called Charity, a very short 3 story. It wasn't too bad, looking back. That was my early efforts, then I didn't do too much until after I was married to start writing again. PW: I see. Was anyone or anything especially encouraging to you when you first started? MK: Oh, I had a teacher in LDS High School, what was his name, Kenneth Bennion. He took time one day to have me stay after class and told me I had a gift of writing and to do the very best I could. He gave me a long talk on writing, not copying anyone else’s style but perfect in my own style, and I think this was the most encouragement I ever received because he was a very good teacher to begin with. So I tried when I wrote after that, and as I say, I didn't do too much writing after that until after I was married, to write the very best I could and to write about something that I knew, which is always very good advice to anyone I think. PW: Can you remember specifically, what else he taught you? MK: Well, he told me to make use of the senses, in my work. The sense of smell, the sense of taste, the sense of feeling and sense of hearing and to observe things. Not only things, but people very closely. There are no two people alike, I remember he said then, that there are no new plots, but the people, each person is different and in the way in which he reacts to a situation is completely individual in his very own and I think it was mostly then to observe and to put in your mind those things which you see, and the mannerisms of people. I think that he talked to me about an hour and a half that day and that was mostly then to observe and remembering and trying to see people as individuals and not just as non-entities. 4 PW: That's great. When you first began to write, either when you were young or after you were married, was there a particular writer that influenced you at any time? MK: I don't think influence…there wasn’t any. I think that all writers, I never reached a point where I tried to copy a style of a writer but I think that I was influenced by, let me think now, the sensitivity of writers, it's so difficult to remember right now. Of course, Marie Sandos, of course it's a brutal story, Old Jewels is a brutal story. I think that she had an empathy even with her very tyrannical father and I think it was sensitivity in things that influenced me most. I can't pick out any one writer, really, and say that he or she had any great effect on me. No, I tried always never to copy any writer, the style of any writer. I think, however, that writing is to learn the simplicity, the manner in which Richard Hemingway wrote the writing of earlier writers before his time was inclined to be rather wordy and verbose. And I think that he wrote with an economy of words. I think that I observe the different styles of writers, but I can't say that any one writer had a great effect on me, or influenced my own writing. PW: I see. What subjects through your education interested you? MK: What subjects? Creative writing, and English, they were always my best subjects. Reading, of course, and history, and I began to see history as people rather than just dates. Then I was very interested in it. And I still like to read historical things. But I think that is about all I can say on that. PW: How much education did you have? MK: Well, I graduated from high school and then I took night classes and then college classes. I have about two years of college. But I took it piece meal, but that took 5 months. And you know, Dr. Allred said that I have about the equivalent of a master’s degree in creative writing, because I've done so much. PW: That's tremendous. You mean that specifically that you have taken classes. MK: Oh yes, I have taken specific, not so much in creative writing but in various subjects. I think it is very important to have a knowledge of psychology and I took classes in psychology and humanities and literature. I enjoyed very much my literature classes and my drama classes and such as that. That is most of the type of thing that I took. I didn't take any creative writing classes, because by that time, when I started taking classes again my children were grown and by this time I had published a great deal so I didn't take creative writing. PW: Were these classes at Weber State? MK: Yes. PW: OK. What is it that makes you want to go on and finish what you are reading rather than…? MK: I want to know just what is going to happen. I want to know how the writer is going to solve the problems and it's the suspense in the thing. Quite often a very good writer and their description will keep me going but I think most often it is the interesting thing. PW: On the opposite of that, what would make you give up on a book and just put it down? MK: I don't know. Because to me I don’t have that much time to sit and read something that I don't think is giving me anything at all. If the author is too long in getting to his point and just winds around, I just can't be bothered. There is something else I would rather read, I think that is so with some of our well-known writers as far as best sellers are concerned. 6 I just don't think I am interested enough to continue, I have got other things that I want to read. PW: That is interesting. Of what importance do you think that television and movies are to a writer? MK: I think that the imagination is something that you can't define and can't describe. Quite often, I think that in watching a play something in the play might spark the imagination and will give you an idea for a story, the result of which would have nothing like what stimulated you. But you are stimulated by this event you might wonder, what if you took this minor character and made him a major character, what would happen? I think there is an awful lot of problem in television, but I think programs such as the—what is the name of the program which had to do with the England and English history, and shows us these great places in English, England?— I think that is all very good. There are some very fine plays on television, some very fine things offered. I think you have to be selective but I think it is foolish to sit and not participate. That is foolish but there are some good things. PW: What about movies? MK: Oh yes, I think that movies are stimulating to a writer, because I think if it is a movie that I like a great deal I won't go, perhaps, for the publicity to be in with or the things which I have heard about or because I have read the book. I will go the first time, mainly to enjoy the story then I will go back the second time to see just how the author achieved this or that, for a certain factor or motion. I see it clinically the second time and emotionally the first. 7 PW: That is a good approach. MK: You bet. You learn an awful lot in the way in which, even if they haven't stayed true to the book you make yourself, or ask yourself “Why didn't they?" and “Is this more effective the way that they have done it?” so you sort of get to analyze this or that. PW: It is really interesting. What do you think the greatest quality a writer can have? MK: Well, I think that is identification and I don't believe that writers are necessarily born, if I was a born writer, I have had to work awfully hard and I would hate to see what would happen if one had to be made. But I do think that a writer must have a feeling of sensitivity and the ability to recognize what is story material and what to do about it. Then, this comes back to, I think you can change yourself in much of this to observe, as my teacher told me that day, and to try to identify with people and then you would be able to put that in your stories. I think the best example I can give, I have given when I have talked in writers' conferences were two women that I knew during the Depression, and they both worked in this building somewhere here in Ogden. I don't know just where it was. But it had been previously quite a fine building and there were marvelous steps that went up to the second floor. Now on the second floor were the offices where people had to go and ask for help for welfare help and one of the women in that office, all she could see were the muddy footprints that dirtied those marble steps. The other woman could see what it meant to those people who had to come and humble themselves enough to ask for help, people who had always been self-supporting. There was the two differences. The one woman who always saw only the muddy footprints never in a million years would make a good writer, she couldn't begin to, but the other person 8 would because she had the ability to identify with the person. That is about the best way to describe it. PW: You mentioned that you need to know well what would be good story material. How do you determine that? MK: Well, now when you say good story material, I think that this is not exactly what I meant because you might write a story which is very fine and not find a place with salability. But I think to see something which can be worked into a story is what I mean. In other words, how do you adapt something which happens, fact and turn it into fiction, this is what you have to know, this is what you have the ability to do. I think that much of this you were born with and again a thought comes back to a sensitivity and an empathy so that you can identify a situation or a person. Otherwise you will never recognize what story material is. The same person, the way it was with the two women in the stories, they looked at things absolutely different. One person never would see story material in anything and another one of our writers at one of our writer’s conferences, Kathryn Berrett, who then was a very prolific writer because of her talk. One woman said, "Well, you have traveled, I have not done any traveling and have lived in just one country town, therefore I have nothing to write about." And Mrs. Berrett said that “If there are people in your town, then you have something to write about.” She couldn't see that she did. She could go to a foreign country and still not have anything to write about. She would write descriptions, but that is all she would write. PW: Do you feel that travel helps at all? MK: I think that travel gives you more experiences, yes. And I am certainly not against it, but to travel to become a writer, and just to become a writer and have something to write 9 about. If you don’t know, if you can't write about things around you and people around you, save the money and don't go abroad. You'll come against the same blind alley there. PW: I am sure that is true. What suggestions would you make to a writer attempting to develop his style? MK: Just to keep right on writing. He will find his own style. The only way you can do it is to write and write and write. Just keep on writing. That is the only way you can do it. I've never learned of an easy way, ever. PW: It sounds like you have really written a lot. MK: I have. PW: Could you sort of describe a picture of you sitting there writing, what goes through your mind and what time of day would it be? MK: Doesn't...I had to learn to discipline myself and write in the morning when I had more energy and because when I started my writing— again I mean I wrote very little when I was younger— but after I was married and started writing again I had no time to just sit and look at my typewriter. I learned, I disciplined myself that as I was hurrying around my different tasks, if I got an idea, I would work it over in my mind and do much of the work in my mind. You get an idea for a story and then you began thinking, “what if?” or “suppose that?” and so forth. You play the idea around in your mind until it feels right in your mind. I don't think that anybody can describe the creative process except that the idea comes from somewhere, it strikes you as being good and mull it over in your mind, and I have always known where to go and what to do with it. Sometimes, many, many 10 times I have gotten off on the wrong track and had to backtrack and say “just what was your original, what was the thing that originally inspired you and gave you the idea?” Go back and cut out this and then forward again. Now I don't think that anyone, there may be some people that can describe the creative processes, but I can't. PW: I thought that was a pretty good description. MK: Yeah, but you can't... It is not like an exact science. Like, say take two and two and add it and subtract and so forth, and you will come up with the same answer every time and so forth, and it just isn't that way at all. Much of it is intuitive, either you know it or you don't. PW: What kind of things are you working on at the present time? MK: Well, I'm trying my first novel and I can't talk to you much about that because I have learned that when something is in the process, that when you talk about it you lose much of your energy on it. I am trying a novel. PW: Okay. MK: Because short stories really are in a sad, sad way right now. Many of the magazines which printed fiction are gone and, I don't know, they aren't even in existence and magazines like McCall’s, Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping and such they might print on an issue, here they used to print five and six. So fiction is in a very sad way right now, so what will happen with this novel? Who knows, but I'll have a lot of fun doing it. PW: What kind of things have you written as far as short stories? 11 MK: Mostly family situations and young love and this type of thing. Most of the stimulation or stimuli are things I gained from my own household with my own children, or with my own friends and there is one very nice thing about writing, if you write steadily, you will get other ideas from what you are writing. From the present thing you are writing you get another idea and you get another idea from that and another idea from that. But you have to first go through writing about a million words before you reach that point. PW: What help have you received in the way of criticism or cutting? MK: Well, I belong to Blue Quill Writers Club and the time I belonged to it they were all very hard working writers and I learned more, and we used to, we were assigned to read and I would read a story and there were very honest criticisms and constructive criticisms. If two or three people agreed on the same flaw, I knew there was a flaw in there and I went back and tried to correct it. I think that the most constructive criticism I received was from editors. I think that the biggest cutting job I ever did was from American Magazine. My agent sent a story to them and they said that it was a good short story and it would make an outstanding short, short, and if I could cut it from five thousand words to fifteen hundred they would take it and pay me the same as they would for a large, long story. That's some cutting, thirty five hundred words and retain a story, but I did it, it took a… that was real discipline. PW: OK. What year of your education was most helpful to you in your development as a writer? MK: What years? Why the years of living I think. PW: Good answer. 12 MK: Many years of living. PW: Living, how do you feel about living? MK: Well, the experiences I had and everything of course, when you become a writer, everything is aggressive. You may not even believe me, you don't even know if you are adapting it or that you are going to use it. Who knows what you are going to use? I have a, I call it a sketch book, in which I put ideas, maybe it is just a name, maybe a paragraph, or maybe an idea for a story, maybe a five hundred words of a very sketchy plot which might work out someday. All these things come from living, not just sitting and staring into space. You have to live. PW: What contribution did your parents make to your writing? MK: Well, of course I never had the opportunity of ever knowing my mother but I think that the tremendous admiration that I had for my father and as I got older I began to realize and appreciate what he had gone through, to get his education. I think this stimulated me to keep trying. Then of course I learned from my grandparents such things as endurance and again to do the very best you could. I think I can say that this is the biggest effect they had on me. PW: Do you feel that there are some disadvantages in trying to raise a family and write at the same time? MK: Heck no. I did my writing when I was raising them, and I do now that they are grown. If you are going to write, you are going to write, and you are going to find time somehow to write. People that say that I don't have time to write, don't want to write very bad. No, 13 it isn't a disadvantage because your children and your husband are your friends and the rest of your family are all a part of living and that is where you get your ideas from. PW: How do you feel about contemporary literature and what is being written today? MK: Some of them are good, I think that some of them are horrible trash. You are foolish to waste your eyesight on it. When I learned my craft, we were taught that a skilled writer, speaking of such which has become so blackened, but that is the way to pronounce it. It is spelled out for you one, two, three and I was taught when you did that type of thing so skillfully that the informed knew what was happening and the uninformed were not afflicted by it and that is real writing. Anybody, anybody can write pornography, it doesn't take any great skill, but to apply things and get the idea across, it is just as stimulating, much more so, for that takes real craftsmanship and that is my opinion of much of the writing, it is just plain trash. I think we are going to have a swinging back of the pendulum where people are going to start reading something like this and feel that they just don't have time. It makes an awful lot of money. When it is turned into movies, you can rake an awful lot of money. They can have it as far as I am concerned. PW: What effect do you think that this type of literature is having? MK: Oh, I think that the young people, because it is the “in” thing, read it and I think that sometimes their judging is a little warped because they haven't yet got the maturity that goes with the years, they haven't learned yet to be selective and I think that it has been a bad influence. On the other hand I think you can't say to them, don't read this and don't read that, I remember that when my children were growing up, Forever Amber was the thing then and when my son told me he was reading it and I said go ahead and then after a while he put it down and I said “aren't you reading it?” and he said “No. It is 14 just in bed and out of bed, in bed and out of bed.” And he said that after a while it gets a little boring. So I think that young people that have had any education or appreciation, it's just too much of too much. However, I think there are some that are influenced by it, unfortunately, but then again maybe it has to do with the maturity of the person, I don't know. PW: Do you know other people’s feelings about contemporary literature, other writers? MK: Well, most of the writers I know I think feel the same way that I do about it. But the same thing possibly could have been done with fewer four-letter words. It would take a little more skill to do it but I think it is the sloppiness in crafts. That is what it is, just sloppy. Maybe they are speaking in the way of the affluent or the modern young person, yes, but from the writer’s standpoint, I think it could have been done a little more skillfully. PW: How do you feel about censorship? MK: You can't, I don't think. I don't approve of censorship in that you sight of people. You may not read this and you may not read that and I don't believe in that. I think that hard core pornography certainly should not be put on the market for young people to get it, but I think that if you censor things too much you are going to make it so attractive to young people that come hell or high water they are going to get it. I think that much has to do with the way in which they have been educated. If they have been taught to appreciate good literature and as the saying "the skill of the craftsman" and the way they have presented something I think that they will read this type of thing and after a while they will think “Blah, why waste my time on it?” I don't think you can censor things, no I don't. I think it is a mistake to try to censor things, 15 PW: Okay. What advice would you give to the young writer? MK: Well, I think to become....One of the things I think that they should do is read and read and read. I think that observation is one of the main things and then they just have to, just plain sit down and write and write, and it is a very lonely thing to sit and look at a blank piece of paper if you have nothing in your mind to put on it. Writing, nobody can help you when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, you just have to do it all by yourself. If you really want to do it you will write, otherwise you won't. And that's all, I just keep writing and observe everything. PW: Would you tell them to avoid any pitfalls? MK: I think that any pitfall I would tell them to avoid is writing about something that is absolutely not familiar, because they are just going to ruin it, they are going to do very badly with it and it is going to run into faults just as faults come. If I write about something which I don't believe in and then write about something in which I just know nothing, the reader is going to sense it right now. You just can't get out of that type of thing. PW: Have you had any experience trying to write about something you didn't know anything about? MK: Oh yes, when I first learned to write, I did as most other writers do, and in the very beginning stages I thought that to write about something that was a foreign background was extremely romantic and this is what did it. But of course, I found out but I had to find out the hard way, by trying to do it and finding out that there was not anything to it and then just thinking, alright, I didn't think I would write about something on which I am 16 familiar, I just happened to get an idea. I remember a girl that I met in Dressmaking College a situation there. I just forgot rooms and everything there and I just sat down and wrote a story about a girl in which I had known and what would happen to her and it was something in which I knew and I knew her very well. That is the only thing that I can say about that. If you write about something in which you know nothing..... I think that if you want to do something that has a historical background, read everything you can on the subject, so that you have the feel of the place about which you are writing the characters because I don't think that you must learn it yourself, the things that are around you but you are going to write about something with a foreign background or such, study it so thoroughly that there is no amount that is foreign to you. You really know it and then you go ahead. PW: What is the greatest difficulty for you when you are writing? MK: Oh, golly I don't know. I don't think I have any difficulty writing, it is just right now at the present time there aren't enough buyers, not enough markets, so I am trying a new Meld of a novel and I have taught myself to newer go five thousand words because it is better to have thirty five hundred words and now I will have to teach myself to have about fifty thousand or fifty five thousand words. It is a new and very challenging field to me. But I am enjoying it. PW: Has it been a big adjustment to make that big of increase in words? MK: Oh, it was at first until a good friend of mine who is also a teacher told me to think of every chapter as a short story. Each chapter is constructed much like a short story with a problem and type of advances and leaves the end of the chapter with a high type of suspense so that person will want to read the next chapter and that is the only way that 17 I can do it. I have no idea just how it is going to turn out, no idea in the world. But if you don't try, I've never known an amateur that came to you and said “may I see what you have in your desk?” you have to try it. You have to try something on your own, PW: How much time do you spend writing? MK: Well, because I work forty hours a week, I try to on the days that I am working to get about an hour or an hour and a half in the morning. That is about all I can do, but on my days off I try to get about four or five hours. Now when I was writing a great deal and without working, and that was before my husband died, I tried for at least four hours a day. Then if I wanted to type, I do my first two drafts longhand so that is the only way I learned and that is the only way I can get it. PW: You must have had a lot of things published. How did you feel about your first published? MK: Oh, I thought it was the greatest thing, the greatest piece of literature that ever appeared in print, of course. I am still proud of it and I am not ashamed of anything I have written. My grandchildren are getting to the point that they want to read this and that and I am very thrilled that I can say “here this and this,” and not make any apologies for it. Say “oh, I didn't mean that or skip this or that.” I can let them read it and I am still very proud of it. If I had written some of the other stuff, I wouldn't want it in my name. PW: As far as a rough draft goes, how many of those and how much rewriting is necessary? MK: Now honey, it all depends, as I say, I am an intuitive writer. I get an idea, I might have been thinking about it for a long time and mulling it over in my mind but suddenly the 18 idea appears that this type of thing, that this is one of my stories from Woman’s Day. It came to me, just the whole thing and I sat and wrote it in one rough draft and on the second draft, I didn't have too much to change. You know, the idea just came like that. So I have learned though to write and rewrite and it is a matter of writing so long that you get to know as you read where you are off the track somewhere and you know you are off the track and then you have to backtrack and say where and how. But as I say these drama stories, I just can't say that you do just this or that, there is no… To me there is no set way that I can say that I do this or I do that. The same way with a seam, I take the seam and work them out. Sometimes I get the idea and the ending first will come to me. A very good ending and then I kind of work that and say “Why do I have this ending?” Sometimes I think of the beginning, I almost start, my stories with a character placed in a dramatic situation and then how does she solve it or how does she face her problems. How does she get out of it? Now to me, this is writing. I don't, know, I guess that is why this thing of doing the novel has been quite interesting because you do have to have a great deal of plot to think up fifty thousand words. My other stories have all been intuitive, having to do with the emotions of a person in a particular situation, not much plot. PW: You just pointed to this illustration, do you have your stories illustrated? MK: The magazine takes care of that. PW: Then they sent you this after... MK: Why, yes to my delight, here comes this very lovely picture and it says valued at $250.00 and I say what did I do, what in the heaven’s name did I do when I was unconscious and I opened it and there was a letter from Betty Fennon of Woman’s Day 19 and said “I thought you might like this picture. I just love it.” The story is called "Remember This Day." It’s a story of a girl that on her wedding day is going to remember everything that happens that day so that someday she can tell this little girl she is going to have everything about it because she has never had anyone she could tell the things she sees him with here. And of course, before the story ends she finds out this man she is marrying and whom she loves but thinks he is the type of person you cannot tell these things to, is to the very same type of person that she is and has never been able to tell anybody. PW: Oh. MK: So that was one of my favorite stories. Naturally, no plot, just simply what happens to her on her day, her wedding day. PW: Oh that sounds like a good story. MK: It is, it is one of my favorites. PW: Have there ever been any times of discouragement for you as a writer? MK: Good Lord yes. I have thrown my stories clear across the room. Sometimes I even burned a few, I think I burned a few and I wish I hadn't done it. Oh I have given up many times because I was so discouraged. If you learn something else, I would get an idea from that and of course, I had to write it. Oh you bet I've been discouraged especially when a story I thought was really good was turned down and I would see something in a magazine which I knew was not as good as my story. Then I would feel, “Well dog-gone it, this isn't quite fair.” but I never dwelled on it very long and went on to the next story. PW: Have you had your share of rejection slips? 20 MK: Oh, I could have papered the house with them. Heavens yes, I have got a million of them. PW: What advice would you give writers in regards to that? MK: Just paper a room with them. At the price of paper, if you get a rejection slip say that was for so many thousand words I wrote and that is for that much further I wrote. Oh yes, you will get rejections. The market is extremely tough right now. The biggest and the best field right now is in the teenage magazines, and believe it or not the confession magazines which are not the confession magazine of twenty years ago. They are very moral stories and they give you a learned description and picture on the cover to entice you on but the contents are not such. It is the confession story now is almost where the, what they called the split stories, were about twenty five years ago, in which there was a moral and the story said something and almost demonstrated what you might call a theme and the confession magazine is what I call very well done. But it is a special art. You can't just take a reject from what they call a slick magazine and send it to a confession. It is highly specialized. It is a field that you have to study. Of course, children’s literature is always very good, but much depends on the illustrations that are used, a colorful illustration will sell a child theme and that again is a very specialized field. I never have gone into that because I have never been too interested in learning that field. It is all a new field, it isn't just like you start with children stories in advance, you never do that. PW: What other kinds of things have you done? MK: I've done articles upon request. I loathe doing articles but I have done them if a magazine has requested that I do as such with the writer’s journals, and I did one for the 21 writer’s year book one time upon request. That is the only other type of thing that I have done. PW: Other than short stories? MK: Oh yes, the short stories have always been my field. PW: Okay. Are there other interests that you have right now, other hobbies or… MK: Oh, I do some sewing and knitting and this type of thing but that is about all I have time for. I like to watch and observe. A writer, I hope that writers will get into the habit of observing and remembering that no two people see things in the same way. This is the plot for the writer. There are no new plots, they have all been done, there is no new situation, they have all been done, but the way in which the writer looks at the situation, the way he solves it, and the way he sees it is himself, it is individual and this is what makes a good writer. There is a book on the market right now, I am very anxious, and I don't know if it is out right now, I've got to inquire, but it was written by a housewife who, when her children were grown, became very bored with life and she wrote this, she said why can't I write a novel. She wrote this best seller, The Man Who Loved Tap Dancing, and it is a western, it has a western background and has been bought by the movies. Now I have just got to read that, but she did a great deal of research and she did a lot of reading of many, many different books as she had never done any writing before. This can be a hobby in its self. Reading is a hobby for me. As I say, I reach a point that no matter what someone says about a book if I get to a certain point and it is nothing but pornography, then in four letter words I just figure forget it, I just haven't got the time, my eyesight has got to go on something else. I think that this is more what people will do if they become more selective. This is better than censoring anything for a 22 person to be really educated in what is good, and what is fine. Now I read The Godfather, and I could hardly put it down. This was a case where the action kept you going and much of the pornography in it, I sort of put in the category of the times and I can almost forget it to go on with the action in the story because it was depicting very well a period of time and just what the organization of The Godfather was. It really was interesting, it was interesting and I thought they adapted it very well. Did you read the book? PW: Yes. MK: Ah-ah. PW: And I saw the movie. MK: Yeah. It was a great deal of violence and that there again remember that having the attention is good, you have got to hold the attention of the reader. That takes a lot of skill. PW: OK. Could you give us an example of how to adapt fact to fiction? MK: Well, I think I can give you a good example, using something that has happened in our family, something that is very simple. When my daughter bought her first car, from this buying of the car I got the idea for three separate stories all of which sold. It was a very old car and I'm sure the salesman told her that it was driven by the old lady in Pasadena and so forth, but in reality, it was quite a shabby car, it was a '39 Plymouth and her father and I told her not to buy a car now and wait until spring or wait until summer or until she had a little bit more money and to get a really good car. But she had car fever and she had her own money and so she bought this old car. It was in February and a 23 very, very cold year and she got it on a Saturday, and on Sunday morning my husband and I were looking at the paper and she was getting ready for Sunday School and as I said, it was a very miserable, miserable day and as she went out towards the car, my husband said, now she doesn't think that forever more that she is going to be able to go out and start that car. I said yes she does because I heard her call her friends and she is picking them up and taking them to Sunday School. He says she will never do it and he says “I've tried to warn her, I've tried to tell her, let her take the consequences.” So of course, she got out there and she tried to start it and the car was cold and we could hear the engine turn over, and almost touch and almost touch, and it didn't. So after a while she came in and said to her father, "it won't start." And instead of him being angry with her which he was, she looked so crushed because she had spent all her hard earned money on it and he said, “Let’s see what we can do about it,” and so he got on his clothes and he went out in that nasty weather and helped fix the car. It meant that he would have to drive down to one of the service stations that was open on Sunday and buy a new battery which she paid for at $2.00 a week to pay him. Well, how do you get a story out of that? Well, you have to think of the ingredient, or the thing that impressed you most. It wasn't the stubbornness of the daughter, no, but it was the absolute infinite patience of the father who had also at one time maybe spent his money a little foolishly and understood how she felt. So I took the patience of the father and used this, I wanted to use this as the main theme and I told it from the viewpoint of a husband. You can take this thing of patience and it doesn't have to be the father that is patient but during the story the father was. But I took it from the view point of the husband that wakens on his twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and he wants to tell his wife, Kitty, how much he 24 loves her and he has never been the type of person who was flowery and demonstrative. And on this day he has decided that somehow he is going to tell Kitty how much he loves her and he has wonderful plans made, he has made reservations at a most exclusive dining place in town, he has bought a corsage to be delivered to her, and she knows nothing about this and he is just thinking as he watched her and how beautiful she is that all these things he is going to do. And all of a sudden he hears this sputter, sputter, sputter and he looks out the window and here is his son who has bought a car but will not start. Of course he is mad because he didn't know for sure that his son had bought it. So the morning begins instead of a little romance, he and his wife have a little tiff over the boy who has taken this car, bought this car, when it is not a good car at all, and he is going to go and pick his girlfriend up and they are going on a picnic. So he says to his son, the last word he says to his son is when it breaks down, don't bother me. Alright there. It goes to the next situation and he tries to tell his wife again how much he loves her and here comes her sister walking, coming up the walk. Her husband had just recently died and he had not been a very faithful husband, he played around a lot and they knew she was grieving more because he had not been the type of husband that she had dreamed he was, really more than the fact that he was dead. She is so grief stricken that when he talks to her and makes feel, in fact he had been with her husband the night before he was killed and he had really said something rather nice about his wife. But this man had wrote a poem that he was going to tell his wife on this wedding anniversary and he even gives the poem to the girl. He says to the sister-in-law and said that her husband had wrote it. O. , the next thing that happens is that their daughter wants to go, she wants to earn the scout badge which means she 25 must make a reed basket. He goes with her into the slush and into the marshes to get these reeds for this reed basket. It winds up that any time he wants to be romantic with his wife, this happens. The crowning touch is when his son finally calls him clear out to hell, and the car has broken down exactly as his father had said would happen. He wants to say sit down, to heck with it. He can picture where it is and there is nothing he can do but to go with his wife to get the son whose car has broken down. Then of course, he knows that by the time they get back that the reservation for the supper club is going to be too late so they end their day at this sort of a hamburger joint which does have a box and a little dance floor and after he has bailed, or has gotten his sons car started and his son says you were right dad, I was a fool to buy it and so forth why, he is dancing with Kitty and he is swarmed with problems and he tries to tell her that this is the one day that he wanted to tell her how much he loves her and of course, she says to him, you have been telling me all day long. Because of the things you have done. Now that is one story. Now another story that I got from the idea of this horrible car that had so many things wrong with it. I had a young girl who is in love, and I am telling it in the view point of a mechanic, who wakens and hears this car, this girl having terrible trouble with the car. He looks out and sees how old the car could be and so forth. He tells the girl, for heaven’s sake, pull out the choke. She gets out of the car and she says where is the choke? She lifts up the engine or the front of the car. He goes down to see if he can help her thinking stupid women, stupid women and then, of course he can see that she has spent all of her money for the car. The thing is that he becomes very interested in the car. Being a mechanic, he is absolutely sold on these old cars that you can fix yourself. In other words, it is almost like a doctor who sees almost a hopeless case but 26 he has got to fix it. So he becomes interested in the car and in the girl who says she is engaged to marry another man. Well the way it turns out, the girl is not engaged to marry another man and she bought this old car to intrigue the fellow knowing that he was interested in mechanics. I called it "Bachelors Beware" and it sold to a Canadian publication and that I got rather a surprising reaction to this because the editor said she liked it but if the girl had to confess that she tricked him in the end. I don't think you have to confess. But anyhow, I had to have her tell in front of him, I did all of this, and he said was it worth it, and she said yes. That is the second story. The third story that I got from the old car was when our two boys decided one night to borrow their sisters car which was parked out in front of the church and they didn't think that she would be out for a while and they had taken another set of car keys and the first that we knew about it was when my daughter said my car is gone. We told her to call the police then she called and then she said is there any chance that the boys have taken my other car keys and have the car. I said that they would never take it, but their father said, “oh yes,” and was getting into his trousers and went to try to head them off before the police picked them up but couldn't, which he couldn't do. Then we had to go down and explain that it was our daughter’s car. Ok, this is what happened. Now where do you get an idea for a story? Well, I think you get an idea, my idea, was here is parents who judge success differently than other people do. The blurb on the story said, there are many people in this story, characters, but the hero will surprise you, I told it in the view point of the father who was expecting a very successful and young industrious to come through and he knew that this industrialist liked this very special type of a very expensive cigar. So he thought he had this cigar to give the man when he came through the next day. He 27 thought that this is for a very special and very successful man. Then his bookkeeper comes in and he thinks here is a man who has been in the same job all of his life and he is the most unsuccessful man I know, even though he is through in his job. He goes home and he and his wife are talking about how satisfied they are with their only son, which is a mistake, don't ever do that and the phone rings and the police say the kid has been picked up for borrowing this old car and going on a lark with it. So they have to go down and get the kid, not out of jail as he is only 15, but they have to pay for taking the car, as he took it from the crankiest old man in town, just borrowed it. And as parents, they had to weed, I don't know just how many acres of his beets so they had to pay for it. But they come home, the mother and father, the father thinks, “What did I do wrong?” why would my boy do that when we have tried to bring him up correctly and teach him honesty. Then he thinks, not what will happen, pretty soon he will be old enough to have a girl. Then what will he do. He goes all through this rearing of the son and all the Devil and what a headache it is. The next day -when his bookkeeper comes in to give his report he says do you have children, he says, yes sir, I have eight and they are all grown and they are all married, and he thinks, My God, he has reared eight children, none of them are in jail, they are all good cities and he can still write out and make out beautiful reports. So he hands him the cigar. That is where the story ends. That is the example of three stories from one idea. PW: That is amazing. MK: That is it. PW: That shows you what can be done. 28 MK: Yeah, but you have to think. You get an idea and then you think where to begin and suppose that, now maybe. That is the way you get an idea, I remember one day I was sitting here on the porch and I had been sitting there for about two hours with my feet up and a neighbor passed by and said I wish that is all I had to do is sit with my feet up. I said I am working very hard, you have to have thinking time and dreaming time. PW: These stories, did you send them out to be published? MK: I sent them to my agent, they were all published. Two were in American Magazine and one was in the Canadian Home Journal. They have all been reprinted in almost every foreign country there is, I guess including Africa. PW: Is that right? Did you find that happens very often? MK: Well yes, quite often. First it is a universal problem and parents in any country identify with their problems, of rearing a family. This is a universal problem. It has nothing to do with race, creed, or language. PW: Well, speaking of problems, what world problems concern you the most? MK: I would, like to see us square around and stand on our own feet, instead of having so dog-gone many handouts to countries and to people. I think that is the biggest problem that I am concerned with right now. I am sure that it is going to adjust itself. I can't, this does concern me. And I hope that we are not going to be blown off the face of the earth. There always has been threats being blown off the face of the earth, so I am not going to worry about this. That is about all. PW: Are you concerned about anything that will have an effect on your children? 29 MK: Oh yes, I am extremely concerned over drugs. I think that my sons are having much more of a problem rearing their family than I had with mine. Because children are so exposed to drugs, I think that this is one of the biggest menaces in our country right now. I am extremely concerned over it. I think that children, or young people have not been alerted to the dangers of it. I don't know, this is a real problem. Yes I am concerned over it. PW: Well, I would like to thank you for the opportunity of interviewing you today. MK: You are very welcome. 30 SUMMARY PAPER ON WESTERN WRITERS The subject which I chose to explore through the Oral History Program was one in which I had considerable personal interest. The idea of interviewing writers came to me almost simultaneously as we discussed possible topics last summer during the workshop. Writing had been my emphasis as an English major, so naturally, I had a great love for a study of writing in regard to this program. The project itself had to do with the personalities and attitudes of the writers themselves. Rather than an information-oriented project, mine was a person-oriented project, which, nonetheless brought forth considerable information. Each writer was questioned along similar lines about their attitudes, feelings, experiences, and opinions about three areas: (1) their own personal development as a writer, (2) the development of other writers, and (3) the world at large. The questions were designed to be the kind which allows the interviewee to go into as much detail as he desires, and the questions I used were formulated and improved as I perceived their strengths and weaknesses. In attempting to analyze the project, the greatest benefit I derived from it was an understanding of people, how to talk with them, rather than to them, and how to perceive their feelings and thoughts as they speak. Last summer after learning and discussing the techniques of a successful interview, I experimented with friends. Friends, much the same as interviewees, require in conversation someone who can, who wants to, and who does listen. In observing discussions between people at various gatherings, it it surprising how few people listen—most of them are merely planning what they are going to say next. I admit that I have not been strong in this area in the past. Indeed, I have been one of those who drifts off away from the words of the speaking person, or who plans hurriedly a quick reply before he ever knows what to reply to. This project has changed that aspect of my personality, giving me a greater awareness of others, their needs and their feelings. Further analysis of the project would include the mention of my conclusion that there is an incredible difference between writers, although in many areas they seem to agree, at the same time. Each of them developed in a different manner; each has his own style and his own philosophy in regard to writing. Yet, they all agree that writing comes through intensive effort and persistence. Also, each one indicated a great need for empathy on the part of the writer, a quality which I think many people would not place such great emphasis on. Finally then, the project was one of enjoyment for me. I was able to learn about people, but also writing, and in addition, obtained a feeling for the task of writers, their frustrations as well as their hopes. A critique of any kind requires an objective analysis. A critique of oneself requires considerable objectivity, and at the same time, honesty in determining the positive and negative results. In critiquing my project I find many weaknesses, but I also find strengths. A look at the positive and negative aspects will reveal these. To begin, I think the most positive thing in the project was the interviewees themselves. All of them were more than willing to talk, to submit to questioning, and to donate their interviews to the college. Having designed the questions as open-ended and rather general, I was overjoyed to observe their uninhibited (or almost uninhibited) responses to them. In addition, those interviewed were all intelligent, enthusiastic people, extremely knowledgeable and competent in their field. From them I was able to obtain quite explicit information, without a great deal of rambling, although once in a while this became a problem temporarily. The best thing about the interviews themselves was the long response of the interviewee to one of my own short, general questions. An examination of the negative aspects reveals a lack of knowledge on my part in regard to those I interviewed. Had I had a better knowledge of them personally, I would have been able to zero in on specific areas or issues immediately, rather than come around to them by accident as the interview progressed. However, in spite of that handicap, the interviewees many times came around to revealing things of importance anyway. Another area I had difficulty with was the effect the tape had on the interviewee in regard to his willingness to divulge personal information of a negative nature. Even though the tape recorder was out of sight, more than once the interviewee remarked that he just couldn't say such things on tape. I assume from this then, that the tapes caused them to consider a bit more carefully what they were saying and how they were saying it. This of course, would have an effect on the accuracy and completeness of detail, and even of attitude in the interviews. Whenever this particular problem occurred, after one or two tries to bring them forward and out of their shells, I gave up. Perhaps this was a weakness on ray part, although I still felt that withholding information was their privilege. Therefore, I did not press them, and maybe I should have. Looking at the specific interviews, the worst was surely the first. Hoping for an hour interview, I did not plan for all the conversation and activity that went on prior to the actual taping. Mr. Perrins was very anxious to show me what he had written, and I was anxious to see it, but all the time, our time, was slipping away, and I ended up rushing him through the interview, making it impossible for him to explore any question or go into any depth concerning it. This could have been one of the best interviews, but my lack of planning lessened its success. The second interview I conducted was one I was very pleased with. Mrs. Larimore was easy to interview, and went into a lot of detail without unnecessary pushing. The unfortunate thing about her interview was that at one point I stopped the tape recorder and thereafter, the sound was very muffled for some reason. In the transcript, the interview halts suddenly, because of the inaudible words. The interview of Dr. Allred was perhaps the best, due for the most part to his own relaxed state and his dynamic personality and ability to express himself. He expanded upon many of the questions in much greater depth than others I interviewed. Mrs. Knowles's interview was very good, but due to the fact that she adheres to an extremely busy and hectic schedule, she rushed the interview slightly, thereby not going into the depth she might have if she had been freer in regard to time. My final interview, that of Olive Burt, was one of ideal circumstances. Seventy-eight years old, Mrs. Burt had unlimited time, and with great intelligence and recall, turned out an excellent interview. In this interview I was able to steer the questioning into other areas not related specifically to writing, and she explored them with enthusiasm. Perhaps an additional reason for the success of this interview is that her age and accordingly her experience enabled her to expound on a greater number of subjects and incidences with a more refined perspective. Thus, the interviews were anything but flawless. Many unexpected problems popped up, requiring immediate action, and the action was not always ideal. Still, all in all, the project was, I think, a success. The five interviews do present a well-defined picture of writing as a profession or otherwise. To the listener of the tapes, or the reader of the interviews, the project can and will contribute considerable knowledge and understanding. BIBLIOGRAPHY Brooks, Cleanth and Warren, Robert Penn. Modern Rhetoric. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc.), 1961. Brooks, Van Wyck. The Writer in America. (New York: E.P. Dutton), 1953. Hall, Donald. The Modern Stylists. (New York: The Free Press), 1968. Perrin, Laurence. Story and Structure. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World Inc.), 1966.