Convo with Sergio Troncoso About His Novel NOBODY’S PILGRIMS

Third Monday Convo

C.M. Mayo

Welcome to this second post, the first “convo” upon the re-launch of my blog after its unexpectedly lengthy brumation. Two weeks ago, on the first Monday of the month, I relaunched with the first “Book Notes”; this post, as on all third Mondays going forward, is for a convo, that is, a conversation, with another writer. 

You will find no AI-generated writing here. If I say I wrote it, I wrote it. And precisely because I do a lot of writing I don’t have the wherewithal to wrangle with a comments section. But I do welcome your comments. Write to me directly at pugandbee (at) protonmail (dot) com.

CONVO: SERGIO TRONCOSO ON NOBODY’S PILGRIM

We’ve crossed paths many a time in our literary careers, and become friends, and perhaps that was destiny, for Sergio Troncoso and I were born in same year and same city: El Paso, Texas. I was living in Mexico City when Troncoso’s passionate and highly original work popped up on my radar. That was maybe 25 years ago. I have since come to appreciate his writing as some of the most important coming out of the Texas borderlands, New York (where he has been living for many years), and the American literary tradition generally. In a word, Troncoso is an heir to Mark Twain— albeit with a very different style and subject matter than our man in white from Missouri.

Nobody’s Pilgrims was published in 2022 and, no surprise, quickly garnered accolades: the Top 10 List in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Social Advocacy of the In the Margins Book Awards; Gold Medal for Best Novel—Adventure or Drama (English) from International Latino Book Awards; Bronze Medal for The Rudolfo Anaya Best Latino-Focused Fiction Book Award (English) from International Latino Book Awards; named one of the Best Books of 2022 from The Texas Observer, and more. 

Nobody’s Pilgrims
by Sergio Troncoso
Lee & Low Books, 2022
ISBN: 1947627414

Here we go:

C.M. MAYO: What inspired you to write Nobody’s Pilgrims?

SERGIO TRONCOSO: I wanted to write an ‘adventure novel,’ which is what I called Nobody’s Pilgrims before it had a title. And I wanted to write a novel about ‘escaping the border,’ rather than primarily staying on the border, like From This Wicked Patch of Dust. I was also interested in a dystopian landscape and in seventeen-year-olds. I wanted to show how they form friendships on the fly, how they create a new community, and how resilient they are in the face of danger. All of these elements were/are in the inspiration. Also, I wanted to write a fast read, a thriller-type book that was action-oriented, suspenseful.

C.M. MAYO: As someone who is deeply familiar with both the US-Mexico borderlands and New England, what do you think are some of the most notable surprises for those coming to New England from the borderlands, and from New England to the borderlands? 

SERGIO TRONCOSO: Well, the first difference is in the landscape. In Ysleta and El Paso, you are in the Chihuahuan Desert, with mountains that rarely have snow on them, and where trees are few and far between. The heat in the desert is also impressive/oppressive. In New England, I was also intrigued, mystified by the forests (even if they are secondary forests), the lush vegetation at least in places like northwest Connecticut, and the heavy snow for months at a time. It’s a ‘cold desert,’ in a way. The second main difference is the people who live in these places. El Paso and Ysleta are populated primarily by Mexican immigrants, Mexican Americans, and a scattering of ‘Anglos,’ which is anybody who is not of Mexican heritage. For me, New England had very few (if any) Mexicans, but even that has begun to change in many communities. New England prided itself in being the origin of the United States, but I always saw the connection to the border, as the ‘renewal’ of the U.S. through the ‘brown pilgrims’ who were coming across today to find their place in a somewhat hostile world. Just as the New England pilgrims struggled to establish themselves, so do the ‘brown pilgrims’ coming from our southern border today. Because of that struggle, people formed tight communities and families. That process is repeating itself today, but with new immigrants. That’s why the characters in Nobody’s Pilgrims experience a gauntlet of evil: for those who survive such travails, they become bonded together forever, and they deeply understand what it is to become ‘American.’ The struggle is what makes you an ‘American,’ not the privileged fact that you or your ancestors were/are already here.

C.M. MAYO: I have always been intrigued by, as best as I recall (I may be misquoting) Douglas Glover, in a long-ago workshop, saying that a good novel boils down to a philosophical statement. Since you are a philosopher, I must ask: Would you agree? And if so, what is the philosophical statement of Nobody’s Pilgrims?

SERGIO TRONCOSO: Working together to survive, when you have nothing, creates a community. This is Aristotle, in a way: to understand community, it’s not very good to take an already formed community and understand it. What you need instead are the hardships those people in that group faced, how they faced them, and how (and whether) they survived: that story is what forms and defines a community. What you have after the gauntlet is simply the endpoint of community. To understand the community, you need to look at the actions it took to reach that endpoint.

C.M. MAYO: As you were writing Nobody’s Pilgrims, did you have in mind an ideal reader? If so, how might you describe that ideal reader?

SERGIO TRONCOSO: My ideal reader is an intelligent, inquisitive person who wants to be entertained, yet knows she also wants more than that, perhaps an exploration into the soul and society as well. Nobody’s Pilgrims is adult fiction.

C.M. MAYO: What was the most challenging aspect of writing this book?

SERGIO TRONCOSO: Well, I always work on a specific part of craft when I’m writing a new book. I wanted to write a fast-paced book that was character-driven. So for me the most important challenge was to know Turi, Molly and Arnulfo very well, as people on the page, so that the action came from them. I was also interested in depicting action, especially action in the face of violence, as a way to reveal character. That’s one of the reasons the book has so many evil people coming after the three teenagers: to understand their grit and character and even luck, you have to experience the gauntlet they go through and survive.

C.M. MAYO: What has most surprised you about its reception?

SERGIO TRONCOSO: I find it interesting that a few people are taken aback by the scenes of violence or that the book is populated by many evil people who are coming after the three teenagers. There seems to be a lower threshold for accepting violence in literature than, say, television, which is much much more violent. But for me, this difficult, sometimes violent world we live in and emphasized in Nobody’s Pilgrims was a way to reveal character and grit. Flannery O’Connor also routinely used violence in her stories to reveal who her characters really were, and I always found her stories very powerful precisely for that reason. I take violence as just another form of action, which reveals character, an Aristotelian viewpoint.

C.M. MAYO: Which writers have been the most important influences for you in general— and also, specifically, when you were writing Nobody’s Pilgrims? 

SERGIO TRONCOSO: Certainly Mark Twain and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both of which play a prominent role in Nobody’s Pilgrims. Turi is a reader, despite his poor upbringing and difficult home life. And he carries a copy of Huckleberry Finn in a crate when he joins Arnulfo on their cross-country adventure. When the two are hiding from the narcos pursuing them, Turi decides to hide in the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri, because he loves Twain. And that’s where they meet Molly Crump, a poor white teenager who also decides to run away from home with them. Turi and Molly connect and develop their relationship because they love words and word games, and they both love Mark Twain. Finally, both Turi and Molly face a similar dilemma that Huck faces in Huckleberry Finn: should you turn in or abandon your friend, or friends, because an (unjust) society or an (unjust) law requires you to do so? Arnulfo is an undocument immigrant, and Jim is a slave. At different points in my novel, Turi (and Molly) are faced with whether they should ditch Arnulfo, because they have run afoul of the state’s laws. But they don’t, because their friendship with Arnulfo supersedes anything demanded by the society they live in. So many connections to Twain, not the least of which is also the sense of adventure with young people as characters traveling and facing dangers, but also surviving.

C.M. MAYO: If it were to be filmed (and I ask because I think it will be) which actors could you see playing the lead characters?

SERGIO TRONCOSO: That’s a hard question to answer, because Hollywood, of course, is not my world, as you know. My agent, by the way, has gotten me two movie agents who are shopping the novel for a movie option. So you never know. I don’t know a lot of 17-25 year-old actors, but here’s what I would want. Mexican or Mexican American actors for Turi and Arnulfo. A Midwestern actor who knows/appreciates coming from a working class background, for Molly. To me, the authenticity of these characters should somehow be in the actors too. I also loved the casting of S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, which had very young actors playing the gritty, complex roles in her novel who later became big stars. But none of these actors were household names when they appeared in The Outsiders. Matt Dillion, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, Diane Lane, Emilio Estevez. That’s exactly the kind of high-quality young actors I would want in a film about Nobody’s Pilgrims.

C.M. MAYO: What’s next for you as a writer?

SERGIO TRONCOSO: I’m planning another novel and perhaps a book of essays. I don’t really like to talk about my work until it is done, or nearly done. But I’m always itching to work on something else, so for me that means writing notes, thinking of possible stories and characters, reading intensely for a purpose, and thinking some more. All of that will eventually coalesce in my brain into ‘something’ I’m excited about. And that something might be my next book or books. So stay tuned!

# # #

Our Lost Border: Essays On Life Amid The Narco-Violence, Arte Público Press, 2013Review by C.M. Mayo, Literal, issue 33, 
Read this same review on my blog, https://madam-mayo.com/texas-books-from-the-archives-a-review-of-sarah-cortez-and-sergio-troncosos-our-lost-border/

To Define Ourselves: Review of Crossing Borders: Personal Essays, Arte Público Press, 2011 & From This Wicked Patch of Dust, University of Arizona Press, 2011.
Review by C.M. Mayo, Literal, issue 28

# # #

© C.M. Mayo, 2026. www.cmmayowriter.com

I welcome your comments directly at pugandbee (at) protonmail (dot) com.

N.B.: The WordPress site is a mirror site of the Substack, and it is the latter that will take care of subscriptions— in other words, if you’re reading this on the WordPress site and you’d like to subscribe, and by the way it’s always free, just tootle on over to the Substack version of this same blog and click on “subscribe.”

HOME = LATEST POST

B. Traven at the Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City; A Western Publisher; Tall in the Saddle

First Monday Book Notes

C.M. Mayo

Welcome to this first post of the re-re-launch of my blog after another lengthy brumation. In days of yore, that is circa 2006-2022, this blog was entitled “Madam Mayo.” Last year I thought to revive it on self-hosted WordPress with a new name and sharper focus as “C.M. Mayo’s Book Notes + Convos”— and here we go again. Second try is the charm! From here on, look for book notes on the first Monday of the month and a convo (conversation) with another writer on the third Monday.

You will find no AI-generated writing here. If I say I wrote it, I wrote it. And precisely because I do a lot of writing I don’t have the wherewithal to wrangle with a comments section. But I do welcome your comments. Write to me directly at pugandbee (at) protonmail (dot) com.

B. TRAVEN AT THE MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY, MEXICO CITY

B. Traven’s 1926 Smith Premier typewriter. C’est moi in the reflection on the exhibit case glass

If you’re anywhere near Mexico City, don’t miss it: Mexico City’s Museum of Anthropology, one of the most outstanding museums in the world, has inaugurated a fascinating exhibition on the occasion the 100th anniversary of B. Traven’s iconic novel The Death Ship (in German, Das Totenschiff; in Spanish El Barco de la muerte). It also commemorates Traven’s photographic work for an expedition to Chiapas in 1926. The exhibition will continue through August 2026.

So who was B. Traven? Having fled the violent aftermath of the Weimar Republic, “Ret Marut,” publisher of the anarchist newspaper Der Ziegelbrenner, arrived in Tampico, Mexico in 1924 fresh out of prison and still fearing for his life— and hence presented himself under another alias, B. Traven. In Mexico B. Traven made his way as a photographer and writer, achieving international fame for his novel The Death Ship, and soon thereafter a series of stories and novels written and set in Mexico, the best known of which is The Treasure of Sierra Madre, made into a movie starring Humphrey Bogart.

Ever mysterious, the best-selling author remained in Mexico, sometimes Mexico City, oftentimes hiding away in Acapulco, until the end of his life in 1969. His death certificate carried the name Traven Torsvan Croves, but in recent years his stepdaughter Malú Montes de Oca and her husband Tim Heyman, who administer Traven’s literary archive, have revealed the author’s true identity— as Traven had revealed it to his Mexican Spanish translator, Rosa Elena Luján, who became his wife. He was Moritz Rathenau, the illegitimate son of Emil Rathenau and Helen Mareck, an Irish actress.

A captain of industry, Emil Rathenau founded Allgemeine Elektrizitäts Gesellschaft (AEG), one of the largest industrial enterprises in Germany. Also well-known to aficionados of German history is Emil Rathenau’s legitimate son, that is, Moritz Rathenau’s half-brother Walter, who, when serving as the Foreign Minister, was assassinated by machine gun fire and a grenade thrown into his automobile in 1922.

The exhibition shows Traven’s haunting photos including those of Lacandon Indians as well as his boots, equipment, and typewriters. From the exhibition catalog (my translation from the Spanish):

“1926. Traven becomes a photographer, explorer and anthropologist. As soon as he could earn enough from his writing, he registered as a student at the National Autonomous University (UNAM) in order to learn more about the country. He joined a group of artists and revolutionaries who gathered around Diego Rivera, among them the photographers Edward Weston and Tina Modotti. Ever curious, Traven learned photography from them. A group from the UNAM, organized by Enrique Palacios, hired him as a photographer working under the name Traven Torsvan, for an expedition to Chiapas from May to August, with the goal of preventing the recurrent plagues of locusts in that state. When the official expedition ended in August he discovered some previously undocumented Mayan ruins, and he analyzed the region from an anthropological perspective, studying its geography, ethnicities, languages, economy, agriculture, cuisine, textiles, folk art, and social organization. He returned repeatedly to Chiapas and wrote a unique book, a blend of anthropology and travel memoir: Tierra de primavera [Land des Frühlings / Land of Springtime], with 64 pages of original photographs, published in Berlin in 1928.”

*

A Western Publisher: Paul Elder & Company 1898-1968
By David Mostardi
Book Club of California, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-7325482-7-5

At once an object of beautiful craftsmanship, a thought-provoking business history, and a reference work for rare book collectors and scholars, A Western Publisher: Paul Elder & Company 1898-1968 is the first book about this venerable bookseller and publisher. After his bookshop was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire, Elder built back and went on to loom over many decades more of the San Francisco book scene. And no small scene it was.

Because my father worked in San Francisco’s printing industry, from a tender age I was aware of the city’s fine printing tradition and vibrant literary culture. Paul Elder & Co. closed when I was 7 years old; while I cannot claim that I remember his bookshop, I vividly recall the elegance and unique energy of downtown San Francisco. It was arty, it was new England-y with a frisson of Chinese and Italian and beatnik, it smelled of the sea, and, seen even from the bottoms of the canyon-like streets lined with office buildings and hotels, flocks of seagulls wheeled overhead. Ladies sported tailored coats and wild earrings; the cable car bell clanged and, like some robotic megafauna, how it toiled up and down those steep hills with its unholy screeching and rumbling. (The cable car wasn’t just for tourists then.) San Francisco was always foggy and cold, or maybe rainy and cold, and the antiques stores, oh there were so many of them, all so beautiful and redolent of lemon polish.

For books I was taken to the public library in the suburb where we lived, but when I was old enough to get to the city on my own, I found that San Francisco was larded through with independent bookshops. Book culture, like commerce in general, has changed radically in my lifetime. Brick-and-mortar booksellers such as Paul Elder & Co. are, for the most part, gone with the wind, as are the many rare book dealers’ shops and, by the way, my mom’s favorite antiques stores. So much of what made the city worth visiting has disappeared or moved online. So for me, leafing through this lovely tome was a bit of time travel, sweet and sad.

*

Tall in the Saddle: The Life of Ben Johnson, Hollywood’s Real Cowboy
By Kathryn Jones
University Press of Mississippi, 2026
ISBN: 9781496861559

Worldwide the 20th century’s entertainment was dominated by or, at a minimum, heavily influenced by that glamor factory known as Hollywood, and Westerns were among the most numerous and popular of its productions. What was the grounding for these Westerns, and why did they appeal so strongly to so many diverse peoples? It’s a question I’ve been sitting with for some years. I don’t pretend to have all the answers but I have concluded that one ineluctible element in the glamor of Hollywood’s Westerns has to do with horses— the mesmerizing beauty of the animals, whether they be standing, grazing, trotting, snorting, jumping, tumbling off a cliff— and most of all, men displaying their mastery over and communion with horses. Horsemanship is not specific to the American West, of course; ever since horsemanship first emerged in Mesopotamia some 4,000 years ago, and until the advent of the automobile in the early 20th century, in wide swaths of the world horses had been fundamental for accumulating, displaying, and defending wealth, status, and power.

So we have rafts of Hollywood actors, professionals with agents, dermatologists, and dentists, who wouldn’t necessarily know a horse from a taxidermied antelope, and then we have the real deal: Ben Johnson. As he told one of his biographers’ sources: “I like to work cattle and I like to rope. That’s about the size of it.”

Son of the foreman of Oklahoma’s vast Chapman-Barnard Ranch, as a teenager Ben went on the payroll doing the rough, tough work of a ranch hand. How Ben ended up in Hollywood is a story that might come straight out of an American version of A Thousand and One Nights. The eccentric multimillionaire Howard Hughes got the notion to make a movie about Billy the Kid starring pinup girl Jane Russell— this would be The Outlaw which premiered in 1943. For his movie Hughes wanted a herd of 300 horses; the Chapman-Barnard Ranch out in Oklahoma was the ranch that could supply such an order. And who was to ensure that the herd arrived in Hollywood fed, hydrated, and healthy? That would be handsome young cowboy Ben Johnson, and writes Jones, Ben would be “trailed by a gaggle of reporters and studio press agents who met the train.”

Ben Johnson found his horsemanship skills in high demand in Hollywood. He worked as a wrangler and on camera doing doubling and stunt work, and soon took on acting roles himself. In the midst of this unlikely and highly successful career Ben went off to become the 1953 the world team roping champion, then returned to Hollywood full-time for more film work.

In a grand career that spanned decades he worked with leading directors, including John Ford, George Stevens, Sam Peckinpah, and Peter Bognanovich, and appeared alongside an astoundingly long list of stars, prime among them John Wayne, and including Clint Eastwood, Charlton Heston, William Holden, Alan Ladd, Steve McQueen and Jimmy Stewart. Of note, Ben Johnson played a villain in the iconic western “Shane,” and his career culminated in an Academy Award as supporting actor in “The Last Picture Show.”

Author Kathryn Jones is an experienced journalist whose works of poetry earned her induction to the Texas Institute of Letters, hence no surprise that Tall in the Saddle is both deeply researched and beautifully written. Given the span of Johnson’s career, and Jones’ meticulous research, including a broad range of interviews with people in the industry, this biography also stands as an important contribution to the history of the film industry and to the cultural history of the 20th century itself.

# # #

© C.M. Mayo, 2026, all rights reserved. www.cmmayowriter.com

I welcome your comments directly at pugandbee (at) protonmail (dot) com.

N.B.: The WordPress site is a mirror site of the Substack, and it is the latter that will take care of subscriptions— in other words, if you’re reading this on the WordPress site and you’d like to subscribe, and by the way it’s always free, just tootle on over to the Substack version of this same blog and click on “subscribe.”

_____

A New Path Forward + Book Notes on Lewis Fisher’s Maverick & More)

The last few years have been… different. Everyone’s been getting through these times (or not) in their own way; a good part of mine was a tactical retreat from the screens. What I had expected to be a month or two away from my usual haunts on the Internet stretched into a sabbatical of more than 2 years. I’m sorry to say that I fell woefully behind on email, however, in other respects, I used the time well. In the coming months I’ll be posting more about the books that I have forthcoming in 2026 and 2027.

So I’m back and ye olde blog, that one that ran from 2006-2022 with the funny moniker, Madam Mayo, has a sharper focus and a new name: “C.M. Mayo’s Blog Notes + Convos.”

From here on, look for a post on the first Monday of the month with book notes, and on an occasional the third Monday of the month a convo, or conversation, however that be defined, usually with another writer.

UPDATE: April 1, 2026: Oh well, this announcement was only about a year too soon! It will happen, though. Look for a relaunch soon.

May these posts prove informative and fun, and spark your interest to learn more about these books and authors. If you’d like to subscribe, check out the mirror-site over at Substack [link will be live shortly] which offers an easy sign-up for the free twice monthly email. You can also follow the Substack version of this blog for free on the Substack app.

Herewith, this first Monday of April, some notes on three of the most sparkling out of the books I’ve read over the past two years.

Maverick: The American Name That Became a Legend
by Lewis Fisher
Trinity University Press, 2017
ISBN: 9781595348388

This slim book of 150 pages (not counting the ample notes, selected bibliography, and an index) is that rare confection of an entertaining read that is at the same time an important scholarly work, indeed one that stands as remarkable contribution to linguistic history, American cultural history, and Texas history. (It did nothing to improve my already much-eroded confidence in journalists, however. Seems that back when, a number of them made up perfectly fictional and defamatory stories about Sam A. Maverick.) Highly recommended.

Read more about this book at Trinity University Press
Read more about the author at the Texas State Historical Association

*

The Outsider: The Life and Work of Lafcadio Hearn
by Steve Kemme
Tuttle Publishing, 2023
ISBN: 9784805317600

This is another of those rare confections, a book you can take to the beach, as it were, but that also stands as an important scholarly contribution. Lafcadio Hearn’s was an fantastically varied, strange, heart-breaking, and accomplished life. Born in Greece in 1850 to a Greek mother and an Anglo-Irish British Army officer, raised in Dublin by a paternal aunt, further educated in the Britain and France, twice abandoned by his family, and badly injured (losing his sight in one eye), he ended up as a crime reporter in Cincinatti, Ohio. Fired for having violated the miscegenation laws in marrying a black woman, he went to Louisiana, where he reported on creole culture and voodoo, from there to the French West Indies, and then, incredibly, Japan, where he secured work as a professor, married into a Japanese samurai family, and left such an extraordinary body of work on Japanese folklore that to this day he is considered an icon in Japan. The author of this biography, Steve Kemme, has done a magnificent job of researching all phases of Hearn’s life and works, from reporting to a cookbook to fiction to literary and anthropological essays. I am astounded that Hearn isn’t better known in literary circles in the United States. Inspired by this biography, I’ve dipped into some of Hearn’s writings, and am now making my way through Hearn’s 1903 memoir, Two years in the French Far West Indies. My main impression: this guy had mega duende. Highly recommended.

Read more about this book at Tuttle Publishing

*

The Importance of Not Being Ernest: My Life with the Uninvited Hemingway
by Mark Kurlansky
Books & Books Press, 2022
ISBN: 978-1642504637

I first encountered Kurlansky’s work in 2007, when I selected his Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea for the Dayton Peace Prize. In the years since I’ve been slowly reading through Kulansky’s oeuvre— so far, The Basque History of the World, Paper, Salt, Cod, and Salmon— but it’ll be a marathon, if a fun one, to get through the half of them; he’s written 39 books. So, as you might guess, he’s been around for some time— including more than half of the 20th century.

I often wonder if younger writers can appreciate how Ernest Hemingway, as both a modernist writer with a uniquely entrancing style, and as a big handsome slob of a celebrity, loomed over nearly the whole of that century. Back when, even decades after Hemingway’s demise, I don’t think any American with serious literary ambitions could avoid nurturing a strong opinion or ten about Hemingway and, at some point, like it or not, mimicking his macho, childlike style. (“Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.”— From The Old Man and the Sea.)

Mark Kurlansky’s memoir of his own career as a playwright turned journalist and foreign correspondent and author is fascinating and important in its own right, but, to his consternation, in every major chapter of his writing life, from Paris, Basque country, to Havana, and then Idaho, there loomed that Macy’s Thanksgiving parade balloon-sized shadow of Ernest Hemingway. Kurlansky wasn’t following Hemingway, it was more as if Hemingway himself were following Kurlansky in some eerie way, as if time itself were not what we think it is, its warp and its woof perhaps some spiralling construct of other peoples’ imaginal projections. And so the book becomes a literary chimera: a personal memoir stitched onto someone else’s full-fledged biography— or viceversa. This is a serious, richly informative, and beautifully written book about Kurlansky and about Hemingway. But it is also deeply strange.

Read more about this book at the author’s website.

Comments? I don’t have the wherewithal to manage a comments section, however I do welcome your comments via email. Write to me directly at pugandbee@protonmail.com

If you’d like to subscribe for free, please visit this blog’s mirror-site on Substack, where you’ll find the sign-up form.

Please note: I do not utilize AI LLMs to generate content. If I said I wrote it, I wrote it.

HOME = LATEST POST

John Steinbeck’s Use of Wigged-Out Exaggeration in “Travels with Charley”

BY C.M. MAYO — September 12, 2022
UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).

Second Mondays of every other month I devote to my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing. Welcome!
> For the archive of workshop posts click here.

How to make your writing more vivid? One technique is to bring in specific detail that appeals to the senses (smells, sounds, texture…). Another is to toss out imagery (as Zeus might hurl thunderbolts!). Yet another: to manipulate the scansion. One of my favorite techniques, although I rarely employ it myself, is what I like to call “wigged-out exaggeration.” When used sparingly, with taste, I find way-out exaggeration both vivid and funny. And I think most readers do, too. We know it’s too absurd to be true, and yet—we return the author’s wink—it is somehow “true.”

John Steinbeck (1902-1968), who is best known for his novels, The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, was a master of this technique. It so happens that recently I reread Travels with Charley (1962), his memoir of a rambling journey across the United States in a custom camper with his poodle. I found Travels with Charley at once charming, expertly-crafted, lightweight, prophetic and peculiar— but I’m not here to serve you up a big fat deep-fried critical essay, but rather, a use-it-now technique for your own writing.

Herewith some examples from Travels with Charley of “wigged-out exaggeration” (page numbers refer to the 2000 Penguin Classic edition):

“Khaki cotton trousers, bought in an army surplus store, covered my shanks, while my upper regions rejoiced in a hunting coat with corduroy cuffs and collar and a game pocket in the rear big enough to smuggle an Indian princess into a Y.M.C.A.” (p.32)

“For George is an old gray cat who has accumulated a hatred of people and things so intense that even hidden upstairs he communicated his prayer that you will go away. If a bomb should fall and wipe out every living thing except Miss Brace, George would be happy.” (pp.40-41)

“The recipes, the herbs, the wine, the preparation that goes into a good venison dish would make an old shoe a gourmet’s delight.” (p.45)

“Charley and I stayed at the grandest auto court we could find that night, a place only the rich could afford, a pleasure dome of ivory and apes and peacocks and moreover with a restaurant, and room service.” (p.69)

“When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.” (p.70)

“I cooked improbable dinners in my disposable aluminum pans, made coffee so rich and sturdy it would float a nail…” (p.84)

“No effort had been spared to make the cabins uncomfortable and ugly.” (p.130)

“I was so full of humble gratefulness, I could hardly speak. That happened on a Sunday in Oregon in the rain, and I hope that evil-looking service-station man may live a thousand years and people the earth with his offspring.” (p.142)

“All the food along the way tasted of soup, even the soup.” (p.208)

*

I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.

Shake It Up with Emulation-Permutation Exercises

Top Books Read 2020

Why Do Old Books Smell? / Plus from the Archives: 
“What the Muse Sent Me About the Tenth Muse, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz”

From the Archives: Henry R. Magruder’s Woodcuts  from his Memoir, “Sketches of the Last Year of the Mexican Empire”

BY C.M. MAYO — August 15, 2022 
UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).

This Monday finds me in deep noodling, mainly on my Far West Texas book but also, Schritt für Schritt, my translation of Countess Paula Kollonitz’s memoir of her visit to Mexico in 1864.

Relatedly, herewith, from the archives (specifically, ye olde research blog Maximilian & Carlota ), are Henry R. Magruder’s woodcuts from his memoir of his visit some two years later: Sketches of the Last Year of the Mexican Empire. Magruder’s was one of the many memoirs that I read as part of my research into my novel based on the true story, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire. Just as Kollonitz’s memoir has been bringing it all to mind so vividly, Magruder’s woodcuts provide a glimpse of the garden paradise that was once Mexico City— and so much more.

*

Published in 1868, Henry R. Magruder’s Sketches of the Last Year of the Mexican Empire is a rare and valuable record if the final year of Mexico’s Second Empire, a period roughly the same as the “French Intervention.” Magruder, an ardent Catholic, came to Mexico in 1866 with his father, the ex-Confederate General John Magruder. 

The illustrations are the author’s own woodcuts of five landscapes (Veracruz; Acasingo; Chapultepec; Tacubaya; Valley of Mexico;) and five portraits (Aguadors; Coal Bearers; Mexican; Ranchero; Tortilla Makers). 

“In the course of the morning we entered the port of Vera Cruz, which town with its glittering Church-domes, dazzlingly white spires and many coloured houses, preseted from the distance the appearance of an eastern city. On nearer approach one is grievously disappointed. The scavaenger birds are protected and encouraged to frequent the place as they maintain the sanitary condition of the streets, they give a wierd appearance to the town and look like birds of ill omen, they fly all over Vera Cruz unmolested.”

“At eight in the evening we stopped at a village called “Acasingo” and heard that a diligence [stagecoach] had been plundered that morning, and if we persisted in continuing our journey that night, should certainly be attacked; what the crowd of Mexican standing around, and all talking at once, and not one of us understanding what was said, we foolishly allowed ourselves to be pursuaded by the rest of the travellers, to remain the night in the place, we alighted and before we had time to reconnoitre, the stage had driven off and we were forced to remain whether we would or not. On searching for an inn we were suprised to find that as Acasingo was not a regular halting place, such an establishment as an hotel did not exist; fortunately we found some people who offered us one large bedless room for our party; the apartment we had obtained must in former years have been very fine, the walls being still covered with traces of old frescoe paintings, it possessed a very fine balcony overlooking the “Plaza” or Square, which, although it may not even possess enough houses to surround it, every Mexican town contains. We found there were shutters, but no glass to the window, and were obliged to make up beds for the ladies on the chairs, the geltemen of the party sleeping on the floors…”

“From the entrance of the Church [Villa de Guadalupe] I had a view of the surrounding scenery which will never be obliterated from my mind, in one word it was gorgeous and magnificent. In the distance the fair Capital, its many spires and dome glittering in the midday sun, surrounded by the blue lakes, and the plains overgrown with the wierd looking Maguey plants; far away in the distance the beautiful snowy mountains, of which one never wearies, bounded one side of the valley, whilst on the other the park and grounds of the Emperor’s summer residence the famous Chapultepec stood in bold relief against the distant blue mountains…”

“The Paseo is about two miles in length— only the upper division of which is used by carriages the lower one being almost exclusively occupied by those on horseback. After leaving the crowded drive the road becomes pretty and is shady all the way, and the surrounding scenery most lovely, arriving at the end of the Paseo the rider finds a most romantic convent: “La Piedad,” the road here divides into two, branching off into different directions, one of which leads to Tacubaya and the other to San Angel a small village in the mountains.”

“The climate of the valley of Mexico may be likened to a perpetual spring, little rain falls except in the months of July, August and September, and then usually in the afternoon between two and five o’clock, exercise can always be taken in the mornings. Sometimes the showers or “Aguaseras” [sic] as they are called are so heavy, that in a few moments the streets are flooded and impassable unless on horseback or on the shoulders of the Indians who during the season make a business of vcarrying people.”

“The City of Mexico is supplied with water from the mountains by means of two grand aqueducts, which terminate in the town in large and very handsome fountains, whence the “Aguadors” [sic] fetch the water in their earthen vessels. These aqueducts are almost in ruins and greatly need repair for at intervals the water may be seen trickling through crevices.”

“These wretched indians are generally not overly clean, and if one comes into close contact with them, it is advisable on returning home to shake one’s coat.”

“The nearer we approached Puebla the more crowded grew the road, and I then for the first time observed the picturesque dress of the Mexican “Rauchiero” [sic] which is composed of yellow leather, elaborately embroidered with silver and gold; the seams of the trousers are decorated with a row of gold or silver buttons, the sleevs of the short and jaunty jacket being trimmed in the same style, over the shoulder hangs gracefully a “serape,” a kind of large scarf fenerally of white and red tho’ all colors may be seen, on the head an enormous “Sombrero” or hat with a large brim also enriched with silver and gold is worn; the Mexican men generally ride on horseback and have the most magnificent saddles, the pommels of which besides being high are of solid silver, exquisitely chased and engraved.”

“In the place of bread a cake called “Tortilla” is generally eaten, in reality it is the bread of the country, it is made of corn-meal mixed with water until it has the consistency of paste, which is pressed between the cook’s hands to flatten it and afterwards baked; it has little taste and is generally heavy.”

*

I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.

Ignacio Solares’ “The Orders” in Gargoyle Magazine #72

More on Seeing as an Artist or, 
The Rich Mine of Stories About Those Who “See” the Emperor’s Clothes

Reading Mexico: 
Recommendations for a Book Club of Extra-Curious 
& Adventurous English-Language Readers

Q & A with Judy Alter About “The Most Land, the Best Cattle: The Waggoners of Texas”

BY C.M. MAYO — August 1, 2022 
UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).

Through the rest of 2022, look for a post on Texas Books (apropos of my own book-in-progress on Far West Texas) on the first Monday of every other month.  On the fourth Monday of every other month I post a Q & A with a fellow writer. This Monday, August 1st, it’s a two-fer: a Q & A with Judy Alter about her superb contribution to Texas history and, of particular interest to me, ranching history. The Most Land, the Best Cattle also happens to be a wild story, and a fun read.

“I think there are two kinds of readers for this book: those who know Texas history and the cattle industry and will appreciate it on one level, while there’s a host of people who will read on another level for sort of vicarious experience, wishing they were cattle barons, had that money and power and what seemed a glamorous life. The first kind of reader is also more likely to appreciate the very real contributions W. D. Waggoner made to Fort Worth and North Texas generally. I think his work sometimes get lost in the glitz.”
— Judy Alter

From the catalog copy:

“In the 19th century, Daniel Waggoner and his son, W.T. (Tom), put together an empire in North Texas that became the largest ranch under one fence in the nation. The 520,000-plus acres or 800 square miles covers six counties and sits on a large oil field in the Red River Valley of North Texas. Over the years, the estate also owned five banks, three cottonseed oil mills, and a coal company.

“While the Waggoner men built the empire, their wives and daughters enjoyed the fruits of their labor. This dynasty’s love of the land was rivaled only by their love of money and celebrity, and the different family factions eventually clashed.

“Although Dan seems to have led a fairly low-profile life, W. T. moved to Fort Worth, became a bank director, built two office buildings, ran his cattle on the Big Pasture in Indian Territory (Oklahoma), hosted Teddy Roosevelt at a wolf hunt in the Big Pasture, and sent Quanah Parker to Washington, D.C., for Roosevelt’s inauguration. W. T. had three children including his daughter, Electra, the light of his life. W. T. built a mansion in Fort Worth for her—today the house, the last surviving cattle baron mansion on Fort Worth’s Silk Stocking Row, is open to the public for tours and events. Electra, an international celebrity and extravagant shopper (she once spent $10,000 in one day at Neiman Marcus), died at the age of forty-three.

“W.T.’s brother Guy had nine wives; his brother E. Paul, partier and horse breeder, was married to the same woman for fifty years and had one daughter, Electra II. Electra II was a both a celebrity and a talented sculptor, best known for a heroic-size statue of Will Rogers on his horse, Soapsuds, as well as busts of two presidents and various movie stars. She is said to once have been involved with Cary Grant. After marriage to an executive she settled in a mansion at the ranch and raised two daughters.

“This colorful history of one of Texas’s most influential ranching families demonstrates that it took strength and determination to survive in the ranching world… and the society it spawned.”

Judy Alter, author of
The Most Land, the Best Cattle

C.M. MAYO: What inspired you to write The Most Land, the Best Cattle?

JUDY ALTER: I’d studied this family for years, drawn by the career of Electra II who with wealth, beauty, and sophistication, could have spent her days reading Silver Screen and eating bonbons but she developed her talent and carved out a career. Of course when you scratch beneath the surface there’s a much bigger story. But that’s where is started some thirty-plus years ago.

C.M. MAYO: Of course your book was published in 2021, the midst of the pandemic, but apart from that, what has most surprised you about its reception?

JUDY ALTER: I guess the people who read it. I was so pleased with Red Steagall’s endorsement and with the sales—my books are not generally bestsellers, but this one did better than usual. I think Texans are always interested in the ranch families and their stories. I have not heard from the one descendant still living who had a prominent part in the book and that’s a disappointment—he wrote a nice note saying he had it and he and his family looked forward to reading it, but then I heard no more.

C.M. MAYO: Which writers have been the most important influences for you in general— and also, specifically, when you were writing The Most Land, the Best Cattle? 

JUDY ALTER: The late Texas novelist Elmer Kelton, who captured Texas history from before the Alamo through the early twenty-first century had more influence on me than anyone else. He was a good friend and mentor. Erin Turner who edited my first book with TwoDot taught me a great deal about crafting creative nonfiction. I suppose McMurtry’s early novels—Horseman, Pass By and Leaving Cheyenne—also were influential.

C.M. MAYO: I am genuinely surprised not to have come across much about the Waggoners and their stupendous ranch, and the celebrity Electras, before I read your book. Surely the Waggoner’s story, or rather stories about them, and the Electras, Electra I and Electra II, have been an influence on such novels as Giant (later made into the movie starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean), and TV shows such as Dallas. Might you say more in this wise?

JUDY ALTER: It is surprising that more wasn’t known about the Waggoners, because their twentieth century history is full of divorce and scandal and lawsuits. Yet in their own way, they were private. None of them left any memoirs, glimpses into their thoughts and feelings (except two impersonal, disorganized scrapbooks of Electra II—I was fortunate enough to study them years ago; now they are in the Red River Valley Museum with public access forbidden). There were occasionally features in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas Monthly, and other places. 

I’m not sure what family Edna Ferber had in mind—in many ways, it could have been the Waggoners, or the King/Kleberg owners of the King Ranch (they generally kept a much lower profile than the Waggoners). I’ve never seen a reference to much research by Ferber. In the same way, parts of Dallas may have been inspired. W. T. Waggoner (second generation) was the patriarch for many years, and while crusty and taciturn and interesting, he was not flamboyant. That came with his daughter and his grandchildren.

C.M. MAYO: Electra II, Electra Waggoner Biggs has to be one of the most unusual artists in Texas history, which certainly has no shortage of characters! Do you think, or do you know of any evidence that she might have been inspired by the example of the sculptor Elisabeth Ney?

JUDY ALTER: No such luck. She took a sculpting class in NYC on a whim, discovered she had a talent for it, and began to work at it. In the afternoons. Evenings, she dined, danced, and partied; mornings, she slept. But she really did put a lot of hard work into the Will Rogers piece.

C.M. MAYO: What’s next for you as a writer?

JUDY ALTER: I’m working on a book about the life and work of Helen Corbitt, doyenne of food at Neiman Marcus in the fifties and sixties, cookbook author, etc. I want to place her against the background of what was happening with food in America. Tentative title: Tastemaker: Helen Corbitt, Neiman Marcus, and America’s Changing Foodways. But, like Electra’s sculpture, it’s slow going and hard work.

PROCESS-RELATED QUESTIONS 

C.M. MAYO: As you were writing The Most Land, the Best Cattle, did you have in mind an ideal reader? If so, how might you describe that ideal reader?

JUDY ALTER: I think there are two kinds of readers for this book: those who know Texas history and the cattle industry and will appreciate it on one level, while there’s a host of people who will read on another level for sort of vicarious experience, wishing they were cattle barons, had that money and power and what seemed a glamorous life. The first kind of reader is also more likely to appreciate the very real contributions W. D. Waggoner made to Fort Worth and North Texas generally. I think his work sometimes gets lost in the glitz.

C.M. MAYO: What was the most challenging aspect of researching and writing this book?

JUDY ALTER: Fleshing out the story, because they left so little in the way of personal records. The editor encouraged me to use my storytelling skills and create scenes—I know purist historians frown on such. In fact, I cannot do that with the Corbitt book, and as a result it’s harder to catch her distinctive personality, red-haired Irish temper and all.

C.M. MAYO:  Researching a book like this requires extraordinary organizational skills. Can you talk about your working library and how you keep track of the books you read / consulted for The Most Land, the Best Cattle? 

JUDY ALTER: In recent years I’ve written more fiction than not, so the research skills I gathered in graduate school have grown rusty. I kept a pile of Waggoner-related books on one corner of a bookcase where they were handy, and I tried to keep a running bibliography as I went on my computer. Beyond that my notes are handwritten on legal pads, which is most inefficient but comes naturally to me. To find a specific note I sometimes had to page through an entire pad. 

C.M. MAYO:  And how do you keep track of articles, both on-line and on paper?

JUDY ALTER: I keep that running bibliography on my computer and labeled each legal pad page with the source—in my own handwriting which is increasing illegible, even to me, as I age.

C.M. MAYO:  Any other tips to share / hard-earned lessons in organizing one’s research?

JUDY ALTER: I’ve often though of going back to the 3×5 note cards of grad school. It was a much more efficient way to organize. But after one or two tries, I found myself reaching for a legal pad. I just bought a new supply of twelve of them.

C.M. MAYO: On research files: What happens to them when you are finished with the book? How do you store them? Do you give them to an archive? (Do you have any related advice for other writers with books that required significant original research?) 

JUDY ALTER: To my surprise, the Southwest Writers Collection, The Witliff Collecton, Texas State University-San Marcos, has kept my manuscripts, research materials, etc. for years. You can find my archive at Judy Alter : The Wittliff Collections (txst.edu) Since I now live in  600-square foot cottage, saving rought drafts, etc., would be impossible, and I’m grateful to the folks at San Marcos. As for advice, that’s a hard one: who knows whether or not your work will be of any worth. They tell me my efforts will help young writers see process. I hope. We are also increasingly losing a literary heritage because with computers, we simply rewrite rather than writing a complexly new manuscript each time as we did almost up into the eighties.

C.M. MAYO: How has the Digital Revolution affected your writing? Specifically, has it become more challenging to stay focused with the siren calls of email, texting, blogs, online newspapers and magazines, social media, and such? If so, do you have some tips and tricks you might be able to share? 

JUDY ALTER: Social media has definitely made it harder to focus. My technique is to read emails and Facebook first thing in the morning. Since I am a daily blogger (http://judys-stew.blogspot.com and http://gourmetonahotplate.blogspot.com ) and am also vocal about social and political issues, such early morning review can take the better part of a morning, and since I am addicted to an afternoon nap (that’s what retirement and age do for you), there is sometimes precious little writing done on some days, especially Mondays.

C.M. MAYO: For those looking to publish, what would be your most hard-earned piece of advice?

JUDY ALTER: That old word: persevere. And don’t be impatient. For most of us, success, if any, comes in slow drops and dribbles. But I would also advise joining writers’ groups. For many years I was active in Western Writers of America, inc. (editing the newsletter, chairing committees, serving on the board, and finally serving as president). Now, in my mystery-writing days, I find great support in the Guppies online chapter of Sisters in Crime.

*

Excerpt from Judy Alter’s The Most Land, the Best Cattle
(the conclusion of the section on Electra II),
reprinted by permission of the author:

[Electra Waggoner Biggs] was a woman of complexity. The wealth of her family—from the empire built largely by her great-grandfather and grandfather—enabled her to live and party on equal terms with East Coast celebrities, always surrounded by a cadre of admiring men. But, unlike her aunt, she did not content herself with that life; she spent time and effort developing her artistic skills and thereby bringing a certain stability to a family reputation that had been marked by flamboyance. In a family known for an astounding record of divorces, after one brief failed marriage she married for life in what was apparently a happy union. And she returned to make her life at the family ranch, as a wife and mother, the source of all good that had been given her. She once disparagingly claimed that there was no water on the land and the oil was played out, but she stayed there. She did not abandon society, traveling often to see friends and bringing celebrities to party at Santa Rosa. But the ranch seems to have been her anchor, and she was destined to be the one to preserve and continue the family heritage.

Yet when she tangled with Bucky Wharton over the future of the land, Electra was the one who wanted to sell and distribute the assets, although there is no record of the influences upon her by the early 1990s. Speculation is always dangerous, but without Johnny to guide her, she may have been influenced by those managing the ranch, including Gene Willingham. And during that period, there were no trustees of the estate, from whom she might have sought advice. It may be too that her health declined either mentally or physically, in her last years, coloring her judgment. If so, that is a well-kept family secret. 

When Electra Waggoner Biggs died at the age of eighty-nine, Bucky Wharton, W.T.’s great-grandson, was the sole Waggoner descendent left on the ranch—except for Helen Willingham, who continued to live there. And Bucky’s story is an entirely different chapter.

*

Learn more Judy Alter and The Most Land, the Best Cattle at her website.

I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.

From the Archives: 
A Review of Pekka Hämäläinen’s The Comanche Empire

The Marfa Mondays Podcast is Back! No. 21: 
“Great Power in One: Miss Charles Emily Wilson”

Q & A: Carolina Castillo Crimm on De León: A Tejano Family History 

Q & A with Rachel Fulton Brown About The Dragon Common Room and “Aurora Bearialis”

BY C.M. MAYO — July 25, 2022 
UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).

This blog posts on Mondays. The fourth Monday of every other month I devote to a Q & A with a fellow writer.

“Think fencing salle meets monastic scriptorium meets electric choir.” — Rachel Fulton Brown

Rachel Fulton Brown

A product of the on-the-edges cultural renaissance burbling up out of covid times, Aurora Bearialis is one of the most beautiful, original and charming books I have ever encountered. It is, by the way, a Christian children’s book modeled on medieval romance, brought into the world by a group of poets who meet online (group chat on Telegram), and by historian Rachel Fulton Brown. Visit her University of Chicago academic homepage; her “not-so-academic” blog; and her Dragon Common Room Books.

Aurora Bearialis
by The Dragon Common Room,
Illustrated by Handdrawnbear,
edited by Rachel Fulton Brown

C.M. MAYO: What is the Dragon Common Room, and what inspired you to write Aurora Bearialis?

RACHEL FULTON BROWN: The Dragon Common Room (DCR) is an online “digital classroom” which I started in May 2020 as a place for training in the art of Christian minstrelsy. Think fencing salle meets monastic scriptorium meets electric choir. In practical terms, DCR is a group chat on the social media platform Telegram, its members drawn from around the internet by their interest in Christianity, poetry, and imaginative mischief making. The core group of poets have been working together now for over two years, honing our ability to write in iambic pentameter. 

Aurora Bearialis is our second book. Our first book, Centrism Games, is a biting satire on the modern lack of virtue in the pursuit of Fame. Having delved into the hypocrisies and horrors of our adult world in this first poem, we wanted to write something more hopeful for children, modeled on the grail quests and chivalric adventures of medieval romance. We wanted to give children something challenging but fun that would invite them into the world of Christian symbolism. We chose animals as our main characters to give the story a more “fairy tale” quality, but with grounding in our primary reality.

Perhaps the best description of Aurora Bearialisis “Dante for children”: a medieval-style comedy working on multiple levels—historical, allegorical, moral, and mystical—with bears, penguins, and an albatross, who go in search of the Light.

C.M. MAYO: How did you find Handrawnbear? Because, Wow!

RACHEL FULTON BROWN: Handdrawnbear found us! She had been working for several years making drawings and animations at unBearables Media (https://unbearablesmedia.com/hand-drawn-bear/). I was in touch with one of their other creators and asked if there were anyone interested in doing illustrations for our new bear poem. Being a “bear,” she jumped at the chance! She has written on her own blog about how working with us has inspired her to write more Christian poetry (https://handdrawnbear.com/blogs/handdrawn-journal/the-once-mute-bear-finds-her-voice).

I notice that in her version of the story, I found her. This is a taste of what it was like working on Aurora Bearialis: it often felt as if the poem were writing itself or that we were discovering it along with the penguins and bears. To this day, I have only a vague memory of who wrote what or even whether the words or pictures came first. More often than not, we would be writing, and Handdrawnbear would show us her sketches, and we would suddenly realize what came next thanks to her drawings. And yet, she remembers the process as finding the visuals to fit the words. Both are true!

C.M. MAYO: As you were writing and editing and assembling Aurora Bearialis, did you have in mind an ideal reader? If so, might you say more about that ideal reader?

RACHEL FULTON BROWN: Our ideal reader is a child aged 8-12, with younger and older siblings or friends. We had long discussions over the vocabulary for our poem. We wanted it to be challenging enough to send readers (or listeners) to the dictionary, but whimsical enough to make them laugh. The poem alternates high mysticism with physical comedy, so, for example, after Abner the albatross tells our hero, the polar bear Ulfilas, about the melting stars in the Southern sky, he has to taunt the bear to get off his butt and swim for it, whereupon the polar bear bites the albatross in the butt, claiming a feather. 

We were also concerned to write a story for children with a strong moral, as well as a story that would point them to the beauties of the Christian liturgy. The characters in the story needed to grow in understanding over the course of their adventure and to face real threats to their courage. At the same time, we wanted the reader to feel caught up in the story, striving with the bears to answer the riddles that the penguins set. Conversely, we wanted the pictures to set puzzles that the text could not express, much as medieval manuscripts—or comic books—rely on both image and word. Thanks to Handdrawnbear’s experience with animation, it is possible to “read” the story simply by looking at the pictures, while the text points the reader to “Easter eggs” in the pictures only whales (or children dancing before the Ark) can find.

C.M. MAYO: What was the most challenging aspect of publishing this book?

RACHEL FULTON BROWN: Technically, the hardest part of publishing this book was the graphic design, for which we got help from one of Handdrawnbear’s friends, but the biggest challenge overall has been learning to work as a team. Telegram as a platform works amazingly well as a place for dynamic conversation. There, we are able not only to write, but also to share images, voice messages, and links, making it easy to compile references for both drawings and text. The difficulty comes as it does in any creative work with keeping to task while allowing inspiration to strike. 

My solution: work and pray like medieval monks! The “drakes” meet as a group every weekday at 6pm CST, starting and (ideally) stopping after exactly an hour. My experience as a writer and teacher has obviously been helpful, but the drakes have given me energy and companionship that I have never experienced as an academic historian working primarily on single-author articles and monographs. It has been a challenge for me articulating my own creative process to a group—setting goals, writing outlines, keeping to the daily practice—but it has also been a joy being able to suggest an idea to the group and watch it blossom and fruit in ways I could never have envisioned on my own.

C.M. MAYO: What has most surprised you about its reception? (And what has been its reception among your academic colleagues?)

RACHEL FULTON BROWN: It has surprised me most being swarmed by the children at St. John Cantius Church when I did a reading for them one Sunday after Mass! (I think they liked it, especially the part where the Griffin grabs the Panda as he is eating the offerings on the altar.) I have also done presentations on the book for a conference on Christian literature, which we recorded as a lecture at Cantius for the parents (https://youtu.be/5AmMrBXFgUM), and I have presented on it to the Catholic Society at Hillsdale College. 

When I talk about the book with my academic colleagues, they are, of course, dazzled by the pictures, but I can see them getting thoughtful about what it means to recover medieval Christian storytelling in a digital mode.

In the Dragon Common Room, we are using a digital medium (Telegram) to write metered poetry that reads like medieval exegesis of Scripture, on multiple levels simulatenously, with pictures and words working together to recover a multisensory awareness of metaphysical truth. Is academia with its visual focus on print ready for acoustically resonant Dantean poetry? The children at Cantius are!

C.M. MAYO: Which writers have been the most important influences for you as a creative writer, and also, specifically, when you were writing Aurora Bearialis?

RACHEL FULTON BROWN: I have been teaching a course at the University of Chicago on J.R.R. Tolkien for almost twenty years now, the final project for which is an invitation to “sub-create” within Tolkien’s legendarium in an artistic medium of the students’ choice. There is definitely something of Tolkien’s hobbits in our band of bears setting off on a quest that brings them to a mountain of fire, but there are doubtless layers that even I am not entirely conscious of, much as Tolkien described his own writing process.

We originally described the story as “The Hobbit (with bears) meets The Wizard of Oz (with penguins) meets Parzifal (with a griffin) meets The Voyage of St. Brendan (with the Leviathan), with a dash of Terry Pratchett’s Thud. Probably. Depending on what happens in the Ice City with the penguins. With gemstones inspired by Marbode of Rennes. I’m thinking there is something of The Silmarillion in the story soup as well. And probably some Pilgrim’s Progress.” I will be interested to hear what other influences readers discern, but one of my newer poets has for reasons unexplained started reading James Joyce, which I think is a clue.

C.M. MAYO: What’s next for you—and the Dragon Common Room?

RACHEL FULTON BROWN: Our next poem Draco Alchemicus is even more ambitious, with a new artist and a new stanza form. Think Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene meets Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, with pirates and insights from Marshall McLuhan on how “the medium is the message” and “the electric light is pure information.” We are launching a crowdfund this summer to help promote our work, but you can get a preview of the illustrations and opening stanzas on our website (https://www.dragoncommonroom.com).

Our new artist Zé Nuno Fraga is an experienced comic artist from Portugal, who specializes in truly terrifying Christian meditations, not to mention having an ethereal way with light. Our team has both shrunk and grown, as the poetry has gotten more demanding and we have expanded our technical range. We spent six months researching, brainstorming, and practicing Spenserian stanzas before starting to write this poem. 

The best thing about the poetry for me is the way it gives shape to my academic reading and writing. I find myself researching things I would never have thought to consider in depth—pirates and the spice trade and alchemy and modern economics, not to mention media studies and horse racing—while becoming attentive to things I encounter both in real life and online as at once symbols and story. 

A friend asked me recently about what the digital environment of social media and streaming means, as compared with the printed novel or electric film. I said, “You just said it. It’s streaming”—and then my newest poet started posting in our Telegram chat the opening pages of Finnegans Wake—“riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay.” The opening scene of Draco Alchemicus is set in a casino by the bay where our newlywed couple is betting on the horses. 

I’m thinking we’re going to need a bigger ark for the coming flood.

*

EXCERPT from Aurora Bearialis:

From Act III: The City
12
The Mayor of the Penguins ruffed his neck
and asked, “How come these strangers to our town?”
The guards replied, “We found them on their deck.
They climbed the Wall of Ice from base to crown!”
The Mayor turned with just a trace of geck:
“Do you denounce the seals as vicious clowns?”
“We seek the Light the albatross once spied.”
The Mayor squawked: “But how is that one pied?!”

13
“We rescued him from seals who called him fat.
They tortured him with fish he could not eat!”
“Why do you seek the Light?” the Mayor asked.
“To gaze upon its rhyme, celestial sweet.”
“The Light is not for unclean eyes of brats,
but only those whom riddles can’t defeat.”
Ulfilas grinned, his eyes narrowed to slits.
“No wizards nor their riddles match our wits!”

14
“You seek the Light, but it has come to you
upon the water where light meets the sky.
Tell me: can earth rejoice as angels do?
Can some birds swim like fish, or great fish fly?
The crystal door to heaven surrounds you.
The starry glass of Time is flowing by!”
His riddle fell to them as magic dice,
their destiny set down upon the ice.

15
The bears began to ruminate his words,
but crunches interrupted their deep thoughts.
“What tasty treats, such convivial birds!”
said Yuan with his mouth full. “Hits the spot!”
The Mayor and his courtiers gasped, perturbed.
The Magellanics cried, “What hast thou wrought?”
“How dare he!” “Seize him!” came great shouts of woe.
“We welcomed you as friends, but you are foe!”

16
The penguins gaped in horror as the bear
crawled up the altar, munching as he said,
“Who made these canapés? They’re yummy fare!”
The Mayor shook with anger, his wings spread,
but Panda did not even feel his stare
so hungry was his soul for their sea bread.
When—lo!—a beast with frightening, flaming jaws
swooped down and seized San Yuan in its claws!

—By permission of the editor, Rachel Fulton Brown.

*
To find your copy of Aurora Bearialis, visit Dragon Common Room Books.

I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.

Q & A with Christina Thompson on Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia

From the Archives: A Review of Pekka Hämäläinen’s The Comanche Empire

Duende and the Importance of Questioning ELB

Writing Memoir: Taber’s “To Write the Past” and Conover’s “Immersion”

BY C.M. MAYO — July 11, 2022 
UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).

Second Mondays of every other month I devote to my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing. Welcome!
> For the archive of workshop posts click here.

Please note: The end of March 2022 marks the 16th anniversary of this blog, after which point, until further notice, I will be posting approximately two Mondays a month. The posts on Texas Books, the writing workshop, my own work, and a Q & A with another writer, will continue, each posting every other month and, as ever, when there is a fifth Monday in a given month, that’s for the newsletter.

Two new works for my list of recommended books on the craft of creative writing:

Sara Mansfield Taber’s superb To Write the Past: A Memoir Writer’s Companion (Musings on the Philosophical, Personal, and Artistic Questions Faced by the Autobiographical Writer) is an especially welcome addition to this list. Not only is Taber a seasoned writing teacher, but her memoirs, which I have long admired, have achieved wide acclaim, among them: Born Under an Assumed Name; Bread of Three Rivers, and Dusk on the Campo. Her latest is Black Water and Tulips— and apropos of that extraordinary memoir of her life with her also extraordinary mother, later this year I hope to get Taber’s As to some of my Qs for this blog.

“I say literary memoir-writing is not navel gazing, or conceit, or prostitution, but an offering of truth in a world gone hazy about it. I say we all have a right to our own stories, our own versions of the truth, and the more versions we have the richer we are.”

— Sara Mansfield Taber, To Write the Past

P.S. See also Q & A with Sara Mansfield Taber on Chance Particulars: A Writer’s Field Notebook and listen in anytime to my podcast Conversations with Other Writers: Sara Mansfield Taber.

*

Ted Conover’s Immersion: A Writer’s Guide to Going Deep is an invaluable guide for any writer who wants to go undercover (and don’t we all, at least a little bit, sometimes?) Conover is the author of several works of unsettlingly original anthropological literary reporting / memoirs of immersion, among them, Coyotes, Whiteout, and Newjack.

“A writer came up to me recently after I gave a talk and asked, ‘When you do these immersions, can you be yourself?’

“Yes, I said. Yes, because who can you be besides yourself?”

— Ted Conover, Immersion

“The best immersive researchers are probably those attentive to social cues, people who are reasonably social and reasonably self-aware. My operating philosophy is that many people are frightened of strangers, so the first thing you want to be is nonthreatening. You want to try to fit in. If you are young and have body piercings and tattoos and hope to sit in on a meeting of your great aunt’s chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, consider leaving studs and hoops at home and covering some of your skin.”
— Ted Conover, Immersion

*

I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.

It Can Be Done! This Writer’s Distraction Free Smartphone (DFS),
Plus an App Evaluation Flowchart to Tailor-Make Your Own

Q & A with Biographer David O. Stewart 
on the Stunning Fact of George Washington

Notes on Tom Lea and His Epic Masterpiece 
of a Western, The Wonderful Country

The Most Extraordinary and Beautiful Translation I Have Ever Seen (And You Just Might Say the Same)

BY C.M. MAYO — June 20, 2022 
UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).

Because of some recent whatnot & etc. this finds me flailingly behind with my email. Slowly but surely I am catching up; however you will never find me complaining about email when among the missives are such beautiful gifts as this, from American poet Hiram Larew:

Dear Ms. Mayo—

I thought you might enjoy these two clips.   

In a 2+-minute video, Eric Epstein offers his American Sign Language interpretation of Magic, a poem that first appeared in Orbis and then in my collection, Mud Ajar. Eric Epstein’s American Sign Language Interpretation of Larew’s Poem, “Magic” – YouTube

And, in a 4+ minute Behind the Scenes video, Mr. Epstein describes the process he used to translate the poem into ASL.

Behind the Scenes — Eric Epstein Discusses How He Translated “Magic” – YouTube

I thank Eric for his open, amazing spirit.  

To the magic of ASL and poetry!

Hiram Larew

*

I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.

Translating Across the Border

Spotlight on Mexican Fiction: “The Apaches of Kiev” by Agustín Cadena in Tupelo Quarterly and Much More

Q & A: Roger Greenwald on Translating
Tarjei Vesaas’s Through Naked Branches

Texas Books: From the Archives: A Review of Sarah Cortez and Sergio Troncoso’s “Our Lost Border”

BY C.M. MAYO — June 6, 2022 
UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).

This blog posts on Mondays. In 2022 first Mondays of the month are for Texas Books, posts in which I share with you some of the more unusual and interesting books in the Texas Bibliothek, that is, my working library. 
> For the archive of all Texas-related posts click here.
P.S. Listen in any time to the related Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project.

The end of March 2022 marks the 16th anniversary of this blog, after which point, until further notice, I will be posting approximately two Mondays a month. The posts on Texas Books, the writing workshop, my own work, and a Q & A with another writer, will continue, each posting every other month and, as ever, when there is a fifth Monday in a given month, a newsletter.

OUR LOST BORDER
Edited by Sarah Cortez and Sergio Troncoso
Arte Público Press, Houston, Texas
Trade paperback $19.95, March 30, 2013 
ISBN: 978-1-55885-752-0

Review by C.M. Mayo originally published in Literal, 2013

Lurid television, newspaper stories, and cliché-ridden movies about Mexico abound in English; rare is any writing that plumbs to meaningful depths or attempts to explore its complexities. And so, out of a concatenation of ignorance, presumption and prejudice, those North Americans who read only English have been deprived of the stories that would help them see the Spanish-speaking peoples and cultures right next door, and even within the United States itself, and the tragedies daily unfolding because of or, at the very least kindled by, the voracious North American appetite for drugs. For this reason, Our Lost Border: Essays on Life Amid the Narco-Violence, a treasure trove of one dozen personal essays, deserves to be celebrated, read, and discussed in every community in North America. 

Not a book about Mexico or narcotrafficking per se, Our Lost Border is meant, in the words of its editors, Chicano writers Sarah Cortez and Sergio Troncoso, “to bear witness,” to share what it has been like to live and travel in this region of Mexico’s many regions, and what has been lost.

Snaking from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, the 2,000 mile-long U.S,-Mexico border is more than a fence or river or line on a map of arid wastelands; it is the home of a third culture or, rather, conglomeration of unique and hybrid cultures that are, in the words of the editors, “a living experience, at once both vital and energizing, sometimes full of thorny contradictions, sometimes replete with grace-filled opportunities.” 

In “A World Between Two Worlds,” Troncoso asks, “what if in your lifetime you witness a culture and a way of life that has been lost?” And with finesse of the accomplished novelist that he is, Troncoso shows us how it was in his childhood, crossing easily from El Paso to Ciudad Juárez: family suppers at Ciros Taquería near the cathedral; visits to his godmother, Doña Romita, who had a stall in the mercado and who gave him an onyx chess set; getting his hair cut by “Nati” at Los Hermanos Mesa… Then, suddenly, came the carjackings, kidnappings, shootings, extorsions. For Troncoso, as for so many others fronterizos, the loss can be measured not only in numbers— homicides, restaurants closed, houses abandoned— but also in the painful pinching off of opportunities to segue from one culture and language with such ease, as when he was a child, for that had opened up his sense of possibility, creativity, and clear-sightedness, allowed him develop a practical fluidity, what he calls a “border mentality”— not to judge people, not to accept the presumptions of the hinterlands, whether of the U.S. or Mexico, but “to find out for yourself what would work and what would not.” 

For many years along the border, and in some parts of the interior, drug violence was a long-festering problem. It began to veer out of control in the mid-1990s; by the mid-2000s it had become acute, metastasising beyond the drug trade itself into kidnapping, extorsion and other crimes. Short on money and training— in part a result of a series of fiscal crises beginning in the early 1970s— the Mexican police had proven ineffective, easily outgunned or bribed. Shortly after he took office in late 2006, President Felipe Calderón unleashed the armed forces in an all-out war against the cartels and that was when the violence along the border erupted as the narco gangs fought pitched battles not only against the army, marines, and federal and local police, but also and especially, and in grotesquely gory incidents, each other. Some of the worst fighting concentrated in the border state of Tamaulipas in its major city, Tampico, which is a several hours’ drive south of the border with Texas, but a major port for cocaine transhipments. 

In the opening essay, “The Widest of Borders,” Mexican writer Liliana V. Blum provides a Who’s Who of the narco-gangs, from the Gulf Cartel, which got its start with liquor smuggling during Prohibition, to its off-shoot, the Zetas, which formed around a nucleus of Mexican Army special forces deserters in 1999, then joined the Beltrán Leyva Brothers, blood enemies of the Sinaloa Cartel. Fine a writer as she is, Blum’s experiences, which included having to drive her car through the sticky blood of a mass murder scene on the way home from her daughter’s school, make discouraging reading. 

In “Selling Tita’s House,” Texas writer Mari Cristina Cigarroa recounts her family’s visits and Christmases to her grandparents’ elegant and beloved mansion in Nuevo Laredo. But then, with soldiers in fatigues patrolling the streets, Nuevo Laredo seemed “more like an occupied city during a war.” Chillingly, she writes, “I awoke to the reality that cartels controlled Nuevo Laredo the day I could no longer visit the family’s ranch on the outskirts of the city.”

The strongest and most shocking essay is journalist Diego Osorno’s “The Battle for Ciudad Mier,” about a town shattered in the war between the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel for Tampaulipas. 

I have hope for Mexico for, as as an American citizen who has lived in Mexico’s capital and traveled and written about its astonishingly varied history, literature, and varied regions for over two decades, I know its greatness, its achievements, its resilience, and creativity. But in his foreword, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith rightly chides, “The United States needs to wake up.”

I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.

Great Power in One: Miss Charles Emily Wilson

Edna Ferber’s Giant 
& A Selection of Related Books, 
Plus Two Related Videos On (Yes) the Nuremberg Trials

Why Translate? The Case of the President of Mexico’s Secret Book