THE AMERICAN STORYBAG

by Gerald Hausman

  THIRSTY: When you tell a story of struggle and failure, what do you want your listeners or readers to take away?

  GH: I am hopeful they learn something basic. Humility, for instance. When I tell the story of the boy (me) who won the Great Greased Flagpole Contest of 1957, I hope they do a little more than laugh at the ending. This is the story of the boy who plans to be the greatest flagpole climber of all time. He wins with ease where all the others his age have failed, but he has no humility when he reaches the top of the pole. Instead he leads the crowd of onlookers in a cheer of his name, whereupon he loses his balance and falls off the pole. In doing so, his bathing suit catches on a knot and rips off. I like to ask seventh and eight graders what they've learned from the story and they usually say - "Don't wear a tight bathing suit to a greased flagpole contest." But they also say - "You didn't need a big cheer, you won!" I like to add, "That story is about a young writer and egotist, who learns the hard way that it's not about the reception at the top, it's about the climb up from the bottom."

  THIRSTY: Do you take creative license with a story you have been told, in the same way an oral storyteller might, or do feel obligated to be true to the particular version you were told?

  GH: One of my Navajo roommates in college, artist, Jay DeGroat, once said to me, "I like to hear your versions of our stories because they sometimes show a different slant or vision. This is in our tradition, too. We appreciate the storyteller who adds a little detail here or there, because that shift may make for a better story, a better understanding of the nature of things." I believe that is what I do; I listen, I remember, I tell. When I am typing I am actually talking, and writing down what I say. That way the writing is more real, to me and to my readers. The "obligated truth" is really the moral, the point of the story, and one mustn't ever lose that thread or the purpose of the story is also lost. In the Navajo tradition, storytellers are watchful of the seasons, and they don't tell a winter coyote story in the middle of summer. I learned to be respectful of that.

  THIRSTY: Is there any conflict for you between the process of oral story telling, during which each teller becomes, in a sense, story's "author", and the process of writing it down, which establishes, or authorizes, a particular version?

  GH: If we lose the truth, the kernel of wisdom in the tale, we've lost the whole thing. But to keep it intact, we must sometimes embellish the story. I change the story around every time I tell it. But I never lose the kernel of wisdom, which is the reason for the telling. The written tale, in my mind, should also maintain that balance - the moral must be there and along with it the attributes, or embellishments that make the audience listen. Once a well-known author of children's books took an oral story of mine and re-told it. He thought he had done a brilliant job. But I thought that he'd missed some of the original oral magic that had made the story a great teachable lesson in personal ethics. He'd sacrificed something for the reality of his picture book audience. This can happen in rushing a book into print. Fortunately, I've worked with editors who were careful and the time constraints of creating picture books, for me, have usually been two to three years. That gives one the necessary time to reflect on the things mentioned here - is the moral true to the original teller? Is the story historically or mythically true? Is it fun to hear it/read it?

  THIRSTY: What do you mean by "mythically true"?

  GH: Mythology can be defined as the sacred history of humankind. This is different from what we call "history." Mythical stories, when you trace them back to their origin, often have a sacredness, a holy quality that comes from the bedrock of lore from which they emerged. "Those stories you call myths are our religion," a Navajo friend once told me. I like to stay within the guidelines he gave me long ago. For instance, Coyote is a goofball character but we have to remember, as storytellers, to show that his "goof ups" are what changed the mythical, or sacred history of Native America. Clowns and comics are necessary in our society. In all societies, I think.

  THIRSTY: What are you working on at present?

  GH: I am working on the re-issue of the six audio books I did in the 1980s. They will come out soon - I hope. Also gathering together all of the stories I've collected since 1965 and putting them into a kind of American Storybag, and separately from this, but along the same lines a collection of Navajo healing stories with turn of the last century photography and drawings from sand paintings.

  THIRSTY: Do you take your cue entirely from the storyteller or do you draw on a variety of literary influences?

  GH: I don't allow literary influences to come into it. I depend on the story, the teller, the tale to take me there and hold me spellbound until I have all the cues in their proper place. In the story of Sam for instance, which was reprinted in Cats of Myth, Simon & Schuster, 2000, the audience needs to say, "Yeah, that's what it's like to be at the bottom of the sea." The cues are all about allowing passage into the world of the imagination. The bottom line here is that one is responding to hearing or reading the story not living it exactly.

  THIRSTY: Which authors do you most admire?

  GH: Naturally, I love the ones who lean on cultural and mythical history. As a kid I was in love with Holling Clancy Holling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Carl Sandburg, Ernest Hemingway and a number of others. William Saroyan, Armenian-American story master (much in the oral tradition) is one of my favorite writers. His son Aram is a poet, but also a terrific storyteller whom I've always admired. Bob Arnold is a contemporary poet whose narrative poems of Vermont are some of the best stories I've ever read. I love the stories of Sci-Fi author Roger Zelazny and his son Trent's short stories as well. I love the tradition of father passing torch, or rather pen, to someone down the line - son, daughter, niece or grandchild. I've always admired the stories of Antiguan writer Jamaica Kincaid. She writes in the oral tradition and you can hear the almost-patois phrases ringing with poetry and plaintalk. Another woman whose writing I admire is Jamaican author Olive Senior. For the record, Barry Lopez is yet another favorite...how did you guess?

  THIRSTY: If Barry Lopez is correct, that "sometimes we need a story more than food to stay alive," why has it been more difficult for writers of short stories to get their work recognized than it is for writers of longer works?

  GH: I wouldn't know for sure, but I think we've sort of turned our back on the printed short story. The short story is alive and well on film, radio, internet and reality TV. But it's sadly missing in the classroom and the bookstore. Actually, I think this is perfectly OK. Because the short story is still thriving in blogs. It may have lost some of its literary glitter, but perhaps this is a good thing. It's there, it's real, we still love it for what it is, wherever it is.

  THIRSTY: Are you suggesting that any blogger can be a great storyteller?

  GH: Not every blogger but certainly "any" blogger, by which I mean, it's possible for any of us to become a very good or even a great blogger simply by learning the art of bloggy storytelling. There's a certain style to this and some people are very, very good at it. I have an author friend who is, I believe, a master blogger. His name is Gregory Pleshaw. I read everything he writes and publishes online.

  THIRSTY: Can blogging make up for the loss of our own oral tradition?

  GH: We've not lost the oral tradition. But maybe it's more common in films and blogs. People are reading more online. We're a mass market, information-driven society and we want what we want immediately. In the oldest of oral traditions you could wait years to hear the ending of a certain story. My Navajo friend Jay used to say, "You need to wait until there's snow on the mountaintop." I'd wait until winter and then he'd say, "Not that snow." But one year, he told me the story all the way through. Afterwards he said his father, a medicine man, told him I was finally ready to hear the ending. To come to the traditional ending of that particular story, I'd waited more than twenty years. The oral tradition doesn't submit to the urgency of an audience, and I like that about it. But still it seems to me that blogs may have their own kind of contem
porary kinesis. They come in so many forms, too - from poetry to outburst to oration to open letter. They're personal and have the common touch of the street and maybe even the trail. I think this may be a new kind of oral tradition in the culture at large. Wisdom is where you find it.

  Links:

  geraldhausman.com

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Hausman

  barrylopez.com

  ziggymarley.com

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggy_Marley

  bobmarley.com

  mariahfox.com

  tuffgongbooks.com

  Acknowledgements

  Grateful acknowledgement is here given to Judith McCue and Dusty Sang from Stay Thirsty Publishing. Special thanks to Judith for her editing acumen and to Dusty for his worldly wisdom on how to get this digital book up and running.

  Gulfshore Life Magazine of Naples, Florida for allowing me to use the following from my column Pine Island Soundings -- Along Came Bob Washington; A Tree Frog Named Houdini; The Parrot's Scribe; The Ancient Itch; A Rose for Charley.

  New Mexico Magazine for Talking Adobe

  Greenwillow/HarperCollins for Open Water Swimming

  E.P. Dutton for Snail

  Daw Books for Tyger, Tyger Purring Loud

  Simon & Schuster for Old Ben, Pam Snow, and the Blood of Summer

  About The Author

  Gerald Hausman, author of over 70 books, has traveled widely in America as a professional storyteller and public speaker. His work in Native American studies has been aired on radio coast-to-coast and cited in The New York Times and many other national and international publications.

  He has received 35 awards and honors (American Folklore Society; Bank Street College; New York Public Library; National Council of Social Studies; Parents Choice; Children's Book Council; Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) for his books, some of which have been adapted for film, many of which have been used in classrooms around the world.

  His collection of Native American origin stories, How Chipmunk Got Tiny Feet has reached over one million readers and his numerous books about Bob Marley, co-authored by Cedella Marley, have been reprinted each year since the 1990s. Mr. Hausman has been called "a native of the world" by teachers and educators in all walks of life.

  Table of Contents

  Storytelling in America

  Hero's Way

  A Real Life Goliath

  The Horse of the Navajo

  Listener

  Ishbish

  The Story of Terence Trueblood

  Bimini Blue

  On the Road

  Along Came Bob Washington

  The Billboard at the End of the World

  In and Around Onawa, Iowa

  From Esther with Love and Directions

  The Railroad Oil Field Cotton Boll Blues

  Lady Bug Blues

  Just for Fun

  Big Fat Harry Toe

  Time to Call the Dog

  A Tree Frog Named Houdini

  One Bright Night

  The Parrot's Scribe

  Reflections

  Three Guys from Atlantic City

  Just Like Geronimo

  My Mother and My Father

  Open Water Swimming

  The Ancient Itch

  Out of This World

  A Visit to Cross Creek

  Dead to the World

  Man Taken Aboard UFO

  Talking Adobe

  Let's Not Tell Anyone About This

  To the Blue Mountains of Jamaica

  Pirate Breath

  Moments of Truth

  Snail

  Curandero

  The Greatest Novelist to Come Out of Cuba

  Tyger, Tyger

  A Rose for Charley

  Old Ben, Pam Snow, and the Blood of Summer

  Yarns and Tales

  Rattlesnake Pete, Goiter Healer

  Sam

  The Biggest Barracuda

  The Seventh Bridle

  Of Lions and Men

  Discussion Questions

  Author Interview