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This is the first in a series of interviews conducted by Austin-based writer S. Kirk Walsh.
Jim Magnuson is the Director of the James Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. He is the author of ten novels, including Without Barbarians, Ghost Dancing, and Windfall. His most recent novel, The Hounds of Winter, was published this fall by University of Texas Press. He also received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Texas Institute of Letters.
The first library I went to was in a little town of 5,000 in Reedsburg, Wisconsin. And there were always books in our house. In English class, I was supposed to report on all of the books I read. There was always some girl in my class who read like 100 books. It made me feel so behind. It was just a little small-town place.
Libraries became more important later in my life. At University of Wisconsin, I studied in libraries. Then, I went to New York City. This was my first marriage, and my wife was in graduate school, and we would go to the Columbia’s Butler Library at night. And I would write for three hours a night. To take breaks (because you know, writing fiction is intense), I would wander off to the periodicals and read obscure magazines, and try and figure out if it meant anything if you did publish in them. At the time, I was working as a social worker for the city.
Then, I had one novel was published, and another. I was basically writing for a living. I was just broke and needed to make a little money. And my editor said that there was an interesting screenplay about these orphan trains in New York that went to the Midwest with all of these kids in the 1850s. They wanted to make a novel, but it had to be written in seven months. I begin to go down to the New York Public Library at 42nd Street and explore some of the stranger archives where I would find old newspapers from the turn of the century. I felt like I got to know the New York library system well.
Since I’ve been here, the great secret is I work in the Perry-Castaņeda Library [at the University of Texas]. I have this carrel, and nobody knows where it is. It’s great because it has no phone, no refrigerator, and no bed, so there are no temptations. And also, people don’t know where it is. It is on the literary floor. Sometimes, it’s dangerous because I will run into my students and I will have to take circuitous routes to throw them off the scent. The other thing is that they change the books. In the beginning, I was walking through French literature. I always pick things off the shelves and read them for twenty minutes before I start writing. I love to just browse. Then they change them, so now it’s German and Russian.
I also see if anyone has checked my book out recently. It’s sort of terrible. It’s interesting as the world does digital: I’m so in love with the physical book and in terms of what it means. To me, just as a writer, it feels like a great honor to be able to get on a shelf. Even if a hundred yards down, there is Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. To make it up there seems like a very big deal. On the other hand, one of the saddest thing sometimes to open books which have never been checked out. It’s just astonishing— books that have never found a reader.
I wonder how many people write in libraries. This has just become my habit. I like it better than working at home. I like the separation. I like to be surrounded by books. Libraries are very much a part of my blood in that way. I love them. |
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