Depth of Winter
Page 28
The second is perhaps a little more meaningful in that it expresses the moral quandary that Walt faces. Whether he’ll be able to retain the decency that makes him the man he is, or in the direst fight of his life, descend into being what it is that he’s attempting to thwart. I think that’s one of the greatest failings of westerns and a lot of crime fiction in that they fall prey to imitation not only in tone but in structure. In this case it’s a question of fighting violence with violence and absolute violence with absolutism where the character succumbs to a more predictable ending. I’m not sure if I succeeded, but I’m sure the readers will tell me.
Walt is a big reader, and an important scene early on involves Ambrose Bierce. Why include that reference? What are you trying to evoke? Who are some other authors who inspired you to write about Mexico? How do you see your book fitting into that canon?
You know, one of the things I might’ve underestimated in creating Walt was in making him a reader. Readers feel a kinship with him because we all know how much more you get out of life by reading.
I think Walt would have read Ambrose Bierce’s legendary short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” which dovetails well with Walt’s military service and unwanted interaction with the supernatural. I would imagine he would’ve graduated to The Devil’s Dictionary and other works in his time as an English major at the University of Southern California between football practice and before being shipped off to Vietnam courtesy of the United States Marine Corps.
Originally, I’d had Walt find an old pulp western in McGroder’s desk drawer but then thought it might be more interesting to have it be something a little more thought provoking; besides, both Walt and I share the horror of being anywhere without a book. Most readers nowadays don’t know that much about Bierce, who was a powerhouse of a writer back at the turn of the previous century along with being a much-feared critic and populist. Even fewer know that he ventured into Mexico at the time of the revolution and disappeared, something that would play heavily on Walt’s mind in his current situation. I found a biography of Bierce and stumbled onto the story about the mules at Brown’s Ferry and thought to myself that that definitely had to go into Depth of Winter.
That’s the difficulty of not doing your own research in that you might not find those little pearls that you come upon because you’re not sure exactly what you’re looking for. If you have researchers you have to tell them exactly what you’re looking for so as to not waste their time, but it might rob you of the ancillary information that might really inform the story, or as with the case in Depth of Winter, save the day.
Influences I’d list would be J. P. S. Brown, the author of The Forests of the Night and Jim Kane, who is and always will be one of my favorite authors, along with Steinbeck (The Pearl), Carlos Castaneda (The Teachings of Don Juan), Cormac McCarthy (All the Pretty Horses), and Malcolm Lowry (Under the Volcano). There are other, nonfiction influences such as Shod with Iron by border patrolman C. M. Newsome, The Texas Sheriff: Lord of the County Line by Thad Sitton, and Bill Jordan’s No Second Place Winner.
You often center your books on hot-button social issues. Why do you choose to address these in fiction? What do you hope your readers will learn from your books? What about Mexico’s current situation drew you to that setting?
I think you have to speak to the times or you’re not writing anything worth reading. I refer to what I write as socially responsible crime fiction, in that I’m looking to have something to say and not just pile up bodies like cordwood. One of the most important statements that you make in a whodunit is who done it, or more important, why they done it. I think even though Bidarte isn’t a product of the narco culture in Mexico, he’s found a home there, and the more research I did the more horrifying it became.
The situation in Mexico is truly desperate with the amount of illicit drugs and the carnage it produces, but the hope for Mexico’s future lies within the Mexican people, whom I’ve always admired. I’m continually appalled when I hear the term “lazy Mexicans” and think to myself, You’ve never worked with them, have you? On horseback or picking strawberries, I’ve found them to be some of the most honest, hardworking, good-hearted people I’ve ever met, and my money is on them solving the problems they face. I mean, there’s a reason Walt’s posse in this book is comprised of Mexican nationals. . . .
Even at their darkest, your books often include wonderful doses of humor. Why is that important to you? How do you manage to find humor in some pretty bleak situations?
I think humor is essential in the books, and maybe because it comes relatively easy to me, I tend to overlook speaking about it. Whenever students ask me how to make their characters more endearing, I always tell them to give them a sense of humor, then they inevitably tell me they’re not funny. I’m never quite sure what to say to that.
I think for Walt, the humor is law enforcement based, a defense technique that’s kept him emotionally alive through the years on the job. When you have days like Walt can have, you’ve got a choice to either laugh or cry, and I know which one I’d rather do. The humor serves him well in Depth of Winter because, if he didn’t keep his wits about him he’d definitely find himself in the throes of a deep depression, a place he’s been before and does not want to revisit. I think it’s also a simple point of intellect in that your mind is always working at its best when you are open to things and humor keeps us open to a lot.
The other aspect of the humor of the books, and I do mean humor and not comedy because it’s more based in the humanity of the characters than simply the plot, is that considering the desperate situations Walt deals with you have to give the readers a break in the tension. I think without these moments of levity a book can become a grind, and I don’t ever want that term used in describing my novels.
You have a lot of remarkable vehicles in your books, but particularly in this one.
Guilty as charged. I mean if you can’t talk about horses you might as well talk about cars, right? If you’ve ever been to Mexico you’d know what I’m referring to; I mean even the buses are decorated with every color you could imagine, usually plastered with advertisements for dentists, which is a thriving profession in border towns.
I’m always looking for an opportunity to do something unpredictable. When the Seer says they need a driver and a vehicle that will blend in—all I could think was that this needed to be the most conspicuous vehicle on the planet, hence the goat-fornicating, flat-beer-tasting son of a Nogales whore, the pink ’59 Cadillac that figures predominantly in the book. There are others, but the next that comes to mind is the Mercury 4x4 bus that Walt borrows toward the end of the book, which was another opportunity to go against the grain and put the sheriff in a very unlikely getaway vehicle. I used the Mercury because it was a metaphorical match and would stand up to the Phoenix that appears toward the end of the book.
Do you ever get tired of writing about Walt? What keeps him fresh?
You might think that after fourteen novels, two novellas, and an anthology of short stories, I might have gotten tired of Walt, but no, I haven’t. I suppose it’s the character himself and how he never ceases to surprise me. The greatest sin in the artistic world is predictability—nothing will make me put a book down or get up and walk out of a theater faster than being five pages or five minutes into a work and already having figured out the entire story and what the characters are going to do. I think Walt is multifaceted enough to hold my attention for the rest of my life.
Keeping the character fresh isn’t much of a challenge. Being with a literary press like Viking/Penguin I’m able to explore and stretch the medium in pretty much any way I like. Most of the plotlines from my books tend to come from small-town newspapers here in Wyoming and Montana, which keeps the books grounded in a reality but also is an unending source of material.
If I ever write a book where Walt is on a cruise ship, somebody needs to sneak up behind me and bur
y a Stillson wrench in the back of my head because I’m done.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Craig Johnson is the New York Times bestselling author of thirteen full-length novels in the Longmire mystery series, as well as three works of short fiction featuring the beloved sheriff. His acclaimed books have won the Western Writers of America's Spur Award, the Will Rogers Medallion Award for fiction, the Watson Award for a mystery novel with the best sidekick, and the Wyoming Historical Association's Book of the Year award. They have been named best books of the year by Publishers Weekly and Library Journal. Spirit of Steamboat was chosen as the first One Book Wyoming selection. The series has been adapted for television by Warner Bros. as the hit show Longmire, now an original program on Netflix. Johnson lives in Ucross, Wyoming, population twenty-five.
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