By
THIRSTY
Gerald
Hausman is an award-winning, bestselling author of over 70 books. He is best known for his works about Native Americans, animals, mythology and West
Indian culture. He has received 35 awards and commendations from Bank Street
College, International Reading Association, American Bookseller, Parents’
Choice, American Folklore Society, The New York Public Library, The Bulletin for Children’s Literature among
others. It has been said that “… he displays a deeper understanding of the
natural world than most writers of our generation,” and that “he awakens, not
only the poet’s skill and sensitivity, but also our own nature, power and
inherent divinity.”
His
latest book, Guns, is an anthology of
more than 20 contributors with stories that range from The Momaday Gun by Pulitzer Prize-winning author N. Scott Momaday
to Choice of Weapons by New York Times bestselling author Jane
Linkdskold. Stay Thirsty Magazine was
very pleased to visit with Gerald Hausman at his home in Santa Fe for this
Conversation.
STAY THIRSTY: Your new book, GUNS,
is an anthology of short stories and poems that each involves a gun. What was
your purpose in creating this book?
GERALD HAUSMAN: Our sole purpose was to open a conversation that seems to
have been shut tight since guns have become not just ubiquitous but dangerously
dominant in a culture which doesn't always know how to use them. It's a scary
world and guns have made it that much scarier. And safer at the same time. That
is the conundrum as old as gunpowder.
STAY THIRSTY: The gun is part and parcel of the American story. Why do you
think that is so?
GERALD HAUSMAN: The American Revolution may be the major event of the gun
paradigm in this country. That is to say our realization that the freedom of
the colonies depended upon the right to bear arms in the violent threat of a
"foreign" power on
American soil. The first to fall in this struggle
was Crispus Attucks, a black American Indian fighting on the American side. To
see this history up close, in diary form, is helpful, and the writers we chose to do this have historical relevance and power. The gun was there, we were there
(some of us, anyway, in lineage) and many of those old colonial families have a
story to tell about how the gun served them well and saved many lives. We may
have forgotten that part of it, lost in the annals of war and popular films
featuring "gun heroes."
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| GUNS |
STAY THIRSTY: You say that while we don’t have the vocabulary to frankly discuss
sex, we do when talking about the role of the gun in our lives. Why do you
think the gun brings out the best and the worst in people?
GERALD HAUSMAN: Actually the book states that Lawrence's remark about
Americans and sex also applies to Americans and guns: "We don't really
know how to talk about them except in the political sense – and this usually
comes out in a fiery bloom of passion harking back to the Second Amendment,
which, as we know was about arming militias during the Revolutionary War, not
about the personal rights of citizens. It was about preparedness for imminent
war." The gun seems to bring out the best and worst, as you wisely say,
because we don't know what to do with it. I think we are waiting for some new,
scientific and technological breakthrough whereby the gun may end up an
historical art object. Or perhaps a Gandhi-like individual will come along and
tutor us on non-violence all over again. Unlikely at this point, and one might
ask the question, is the gun somehow etched into our own DNA? One thing the
book points out is that guns are with us even if we are not with them. So the
whole insight here is once again a bit of a conundrum. As Marcus Garvey said,
"The guns are the rulers and mankind merely the trigger finger." The
question now is – Is that selfsame trigger finger coded into the mechanism of
our human brain?
STAY THIRSTY: You have assembled short stories and poems from writers both
known and unknown. Which one is your favorite and why?
GERALD HAUSMAN: I am partial to Scott Momaday who inspired the collection
and whose lead told me it was worth doing. So it all began with his story about
Billy the Kid's gun. We have never had a writer with as much poetical oratory
and
storytelling gift as Scott. Going back into Plains Indian history, you
might find one. But as for placing the lilt and beauty and forcefulness from
oral speech into written prose, I know of no one greater.
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| Gerald Hausman |
STAY THIRSTY: You have stories from such accomplished authors as N. Scott
Momaday, Aram Saroyan, Jane Lindskold, Hilary Hemingway & Jeff Lindsay and
Clyde H. Farnsworth, to name just a few. How did you pick the stories for GUNS?
GERALD HAUSMAN: Honestly, that was the easy part. If you build it, they will
come, but in this case, if you ask they will send.
STAY THIRSTY: You quote Thomas Jefferson in the Epigraphs: “Let your gun
therefore be the constant companion of your walks. Never think of taking a book
with you.” Do you think we are entering a period in American history where
Jefferson’s quote might again be highly relevant?
GERALD HAUSMAN: Indeed, that is so. I was speaking with a family member the
other day and she said she was thinking of carrying a gun in her car for
protection. The big problem, as I see it, is that non-users need to learn the
ethic of gun use and firearm handling and a whole lot of other things relating
to having a weapon of such power that it could take a life. Aram Saroyan speaks
of that in his poem about seeing a gun that his father once owned.
STAY THIRSTY: Have guns played a role in your life and do you now own a
gun?
GERALD HAUSMAN: I was raised in the old Boy Scout tradition – guns are not
toys, guns are guns and you must not use them off the rifle range, or some
such. So I became conversant with guns as a kid. My dad claimed he did not have
a gun in the house except for a .22 rifle that worked and a shotgun that did
not. But after he died we found two handguns he stored away in an old trunk.
The mystery of that continues to haunt me and curiously, it is a story similar
to Clyde Farnsworth's in the Anthology. In a page and a half Clyde's story
unveils the unveiled truth of the gun – every family has a tale to tell and
many have not told it in many a generation. Bill Worrell's story/ballad is a
case in point. An entire family dislodged and dislocated due to a terrible
incident with a gun. The family name was changed, their history in a sense
erased because of one crazy incident of anger and revenge. Incidentally, my
wife's family originally settled in Questa, New Mexico in the late 1800s and we
have her great-great grandfather's Colt .44. It has notches in the handle and
we were told by her father that those were for cattle rustlers. As I was
saying, every family has a gun story of some kind.
STAY THIRSTY: What is next up on your drawing board?
GERALD HAUSMAN: I have written a novel called Evil Chasing Way about UFOs in New Mexico, military secrets, cattle
mutilations and native origin stories from Navajo storytellers and translators.
This story went through many revisions over the past 20 years and a lot of new
material was added in the last draft. The novel is set in the late 70s, I was
there and I was privileged to see firsthand many of the things I wrote about.
Some parts of it still scare me, which is why I took so long to complete this
in the right way. I nearly lost my life with this book, not once but twice. And
I stopped working on it for two years and I vowed I would quit writing
altogether when my life was threatened. It's all in the book.
(Header photo credit: Alice Carney; Gerald Hausman photo credit: Mariah Fox)
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