Distinctly Montana Magazine

46 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S U M M E R 2 0 2 3 RR: Okay, so I'm here with Jim Burke, noted author of tons of books. I'm Russell Roland, author of Fif- ty-Six Counties and a few other books, and we're gonna talk about A. B. Guthrie, classic Montana au- thor who won a Pulitzer Prize for The Way West and was also nominated for an Oscar for Shane, which is actually one of my favorite movies of all time. So I guess I was gonna start by asking you, Jim, when did you first become aware of his work and what was it about it that spoke to you? JLB: Well I'm glad you asked that question. It's 1966. We moved out here to Missoula from Ken- tucky in order to teach, and we pulled in at the university, had a U-Haul truck, and we were real- ly tired and Pearl and the children we had rented a, an apartment. Anyway, I said there's a tennis court over there and I'm just gonna walk on over and hit on the backboard because been driving a long time. Walked over there, there was this man who was just flipping balls around, and he said, "well, let's play a game." And I said, "yeah, let's play." And then we played two or three games and I said, "Oh, I didn't introduce my- self. My name's Jim Burke." And then he said, "Well, my name's Bud Guthrie." He was the first person I met when we arrived in Missoula. RR: Wow. That's amazing. JLB: That was it. Yeah. That was it. And I didn't know who he was. I never had read any of his work. RR: So when did you discover his books then? JLB: Well, I, it was a, a while, some time passed, and then another friend of mine—this was in a tennis court in Fort Lauderdale—who started telling me about The Big Sky and The Way West. So somehow, to me, there's no way to deny metaphysical reality. There's just too many things that happen in a pecu- liar fashion, and it goes way beyond just, oh golly, you know, luck. Anyway, but that's how I met him and how I came to know his work. I dedicated one of my last few novels [House of the Rising Sun] to his memory and the memory of John Neihart, whom I knew quite well. He was my first poetry teacher at the University of Missouri back in the fifties. He was a great man. They were both great, and I think that without those two men, there would be no American West. They wrote about the West as it was. RR: I'm curious because I just finished The Way West for the first time and I agree with you that he was remarkable at capturing the West in a more realistic way. I mean, these are definitely men's stories mostly, but he captures the vulnerability and a lot more of the emotional landscape than a lot of the guys who write about the West did. JLB: They are more like us than they are the rep- lication of others. They (people in the past) were not different. They were just like us and, and most of them were brave, but they were also very fright- ened. It was like stepping off of a cliff... Reminds me of something Faulkner said. We read and see Shakespeare's work, not to discover what life was like in the 15th or 16th century, but to find our- selves in the heart of Shakespeare. We discover our own heart. That's it. That's what draws people into art. RR: So like I said before, Shane is one of my favorite movies. And again, I think a lot of the reason I love that movie is because it's a story that takes place in the West, it could take place anywhere. And you know, the, it's, the strength of it is the relationships between the characters. I'm not even sure what to ask, but do you share my admiration for that film? JLB: Oh, it has no peer. Yeah. It's an extraordinary film. And it be- came the guide for all what we would call Western movies, which it's not; it's not about the West, it's about humanity. It is the story of the search for the grail. It goes back to pre-Christian times, to Gaelic history. [Laughs] It gave Clint Eastwood a career. Yeah, it's a man with no name who appears out with nowhere. But it also, it's the story of the Song of Roland. RR: So, another thing I loved about Shane was, you know, he, and this is true of The Way West too, he, he has a totally different approach to love triangles than a lot of westerns do. So, for instance, in Shane, Joe can tell that Shane is enamored with his wife, Marian, and that she feels the same, but instead of, you know, becoming defensive and threatening him or whatever. He actually has a conversation with her where he tells her if something happens to him, he would completely understand if she ended up getting together with Shane, which is pretty unusual for a Western from the fifties, very different from the usual macho I'm-going-to-get- even-with-that-guy kind of stuff.. Even though they entertain those thoughts, they. They show their humanity by going in a different direction, you know? JLB: Well, that said, they are us. RR: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. They're not, yeah, they're not the fictional version of Western men. Have you written quite a few books that are set in the Montana area? JLB: Oh yeah, yeah. Quite a few. Even the Dave Robicheaux series goes up here. The third book won the Edgar— RR: Black Cherry Blues. I love that book. My Friend Bud Guthrie:

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