Thomas McGuane, who turned 84 in December, is still under contract at the New Yorker, where he first published fiction in 1994—and published his most recent short story just this week. McGuane landed his first contract at the publication after a long run as a Hollywood screenwriter and novelist and plenty of highs and lows, from very nearly flunking out of the University of Michigan to being nominated for a National Book Award. McGuane spoke with PW about the whole enchilada, from reenacting scenes from Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums at Michigan State’s Spartan Stadium in the early 1960 to his legacy, which he mostly boils down to trying to be useful as a chronicler of people and places he’s lived.
Who encouraged you to be a writer when you were young? There’s a recording of you, Jim Harrison, and Richard Ford in 2008 at Michigan State University, and there was lots of laughter as you three talked about your academic travails as college students.
I had a bad academic record, and not just in college. They were always trying to kick me out of high school, too. I hung in there by a thread for a long time, and it was staying with my one particular passion, literature and writing, that saved my bacon. During high school I went to Harvard’s summer school. I took 22 credits and earned a 4.0, which was a real outlier compared to my academic record. I remember one instructor, Gerald Chapman. He usually taught 17th-century English literature, though he had a passion for writing, too, and I was in his advanced writing course. I went to meet him at Widener Library. He was getting ready for a camping trip and had a Coleman stove out. He had the lid open, the wings out, and was reading the instructions. I’ll never forget it. He closed up the stove, looked at me, and said with his very heavy Texas accent: “If you want to be a writer, just go ahead. I think you’re the real deal.” I can’t tell you what that did to me as an 18-year-old who at that point was best known for failure. Even my father thought I was a fraud.
You’re known, in part, for your focus on masculinity as a writer. In the early 1960s, you attended Michigan State University, where sports are a big deal, then and now. Were you in the stands screaming on football Saturdays?
No, my friends and I actually thought jock culture was kind of horrible. I remember we had been reading Kerouac, specifically Dharma Bums where Jaffy Rider, the character based on Gary Snyder, would do these Zen charges down the sides of mountains. We said, "we can do that—in the stadium." We’d get in there when it was empty, get to the upper level, then run wide open down the bleachers all the way to the field, imitating scenes from Kerouac. I don’t know how we didn’t break our necks.
What’s it like to write for the New Yorker in your 80s?
I just renewed my contract there. I don’t work as hard as I once did and I’m not as flexible as I once was. The main thing is it’s hard at this age to imagine starting a novel where you’re going to hole up for three years. It’s hard even to write a story, in part because my criteria for what I actually like is escalated. So it takes me forever, even working on a story every day. Like a lot of old guys, my handwriting has deteriorated to the point where it’s out of the question to write by hand. I so missed the sound of a typewriter that I use this retrofitted Selectric keyboard that plugs into my laptop. There’s something about the tactile feedback loop and creativity. A lot of writers I know wish they were painters or something—anything where they could make a mess, you know? Anyway, I draft something and do a lot of revision. I mean, not like George Saunders. I know George a little bit—he’s a fanatic. He did 75 drafts of one of his recent stories and it was 15 pages long. I always do probably 10 drafts, then I fall prey to Deborah Treisman. She has really strong views on things and I rely on her in terms of taking some chances. The only thing I miss about the movies is the social scene, but I’ve supplemented that with some pretty good relationships with editors. Deborah has been my best editorial relationship and is a friend too. I’ve had several stories in The New Yorker over the last 16 or 18 years, but they’ve also rejected a lot of my stories in that period.
What’s your take on what’s happening in short stories today?
It’s really a characteristic American form, going back to Stephen Crane. Short stories don’t have the same place in our culture that they once did. When I was coming along, people would ask Norman Mailer what to do about world peace. That’s not going to happen anymore. Nobody gives a shit what writers have to say. I regret to say it’s getting to be like chamber music or something. F. Scott Fitzgerald made a handsome living writing short stories. That’s so far from possible now, even in literary fiction in general. Now people are just accepting it and so the values are pure literary values, and because of that, the short story has really flourished.
How do you think about your legacy as a writer or literary reputation in general?
John Cheever once said the key goal in life is to be useful. I would hope that out of my 50 years of writing there’s something in there that’s enduring, even just to help understand life in the places and time that I’ve lived. Cheever was a hero of mine when I started to write stories. The other day I read a critic who said hardly anybody remembers Cheever anymore. Saul Bellow, too, was a literary icon to me. His earlier books were breakouts as far as showing new ways to write. He was a maverick soul in his approach to literature and had this tremendous intellect, tremendous humanity and great sense of humor. I’d hate to think we are in an era in literature where people think Saul Bellow is obsolete, but I see signs of that with a lot of the writers I admired. I fear that literature is getting marginalized, along with Hollywood movies and much else. We’re just kind of moving through stuff too fast for my taste. Then again, writers can drift into irrelevance then pop up again. Kerouac was despised for about 30 years though now people seem to be discovering him again. I think maybe he was great.
Geoff Koch is a dad and occasional writer and poet. He lives in Oregon.
