At the Jim Bridger: Stories (2002) is Ron Carlson's sixth book. It follows three other story collections: The News of the World (1987), Plan B for the Middle Class (1991), and Hotel Eden (1997). He has also published two novels have been published: Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1977) and Truants (1981); a third novel, Speed of Light, is forthcoming in 2003. Carlson's writing has appeared in a wide variety of magazines, journals, and anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Pushcart Prize Anthology. In addition, he has won impressive literary awards, such as a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, the Ploughshares Cohen Prize, and a Pushcart Prize. For six seasons on KAET public television in Arizona, Carlson hosted Books and Company. He is a professor of English at Arizona State University and lives with his family in Scottsdale.

Writing has long been a staple in Carlson's life. During high school and college, he composed poetry and fiction when he wasn't cramming for physics and geology courses. In college, he initially resisted the urge to major in English, thinking it wouldn't lead to a viable career. However, his attraction to literature and writing finally won out over science and math, and he obtained bachelor's and master's degrees in English from the University of Utah in 1970 and 1972. Carlson went on to teach literature and writing in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, and for ten years at the Hotchkiss School, in Connecticut, before settling in to the creative writing program at Arizona State University in 1986.

On February 22, 2002, we met at Carlson's home to discuss his work, with a particular focus on his new collection, At the Jim Bridger. Three stories from that collection have been published in Tin House: "Evil Eye Allen," "The Clicker at Tips," and "At the El Sol." Carlson lives in upscale Scottsdale, but it isn't the fancy house or the decor that grabs a visitor's attention. It's the details that seem so artfully arranged they could be whimsical models for a painter's canvas: two bowling balls peeking from a front-yard ivy bed; a netted bag of garlic hanging on an entry pillar; rubber spiders poised on the threshold. Carlson opens the door, phone to his ear, an orange cat at his bare feet. The cat rolls and purrs as polite hellos are exchanged. On an otherwise bare dining room table, there's an assortment of open dictionaries. The cat drapes itself across a thick dictionary that lies by a window as we settle into den chairs facing the door—ready to greet family, friends, or strangers should the need arise as we talk about words.

Leslie Wootten: How do you see this new collection in relation to your previous work?

Ron Carlson: With story writers there is an evolution of the work, sometimes only vaguely perceptible, certainly hard to articulate, but I think with me this book represents a step further into the world, further from home. A better way to say that might be that these stories suggest a deeper value of home, what it can be. Again, not in every story, but generally.

This is also my tightest book in that I was less indulgent in making decisions. Several stories didn't make the cut. You omit stories until it hurts. When you're certain you've cut a good story, you leave it out and the collection is done.

LW: "The Clicker at Tips" reminds me of an earlier story you wrote, "Santa Monica." A man and woman who are former lovers reconnoiter in a bar. Can you talk about the differences and similarities between these two stories, written about fifteen years apart?

RC: The stories are parallel in that we have two people and one room. Both rooms are places I've been. The old Kings Head pub at the end of Santa Monica Boulevard, long gone now, and the other a big hall here in Tempe. "Santa Monica" is a favorite of mine because it is such a dry story, tight, most of the exposition, I see now, implied. I didn't have "Santa Monica" in mind when I wrote "The Clicker at Tips." In both stories, there's dissension between the man and woman. In a sense, the characters are tragically modern: edgy, ironic, self-aware, vaguely hip. Two or three of them work in media. Not the kind of characters I usually write about. Before I could get to them, believe in them, listen and find their dynamic, I needed those rooms. "The Clicker at Tips" started from the same notion my story "The Hotel Eden" did, again with a particular place—a "room"—in my own past. Once I established that room, the fictional characters had a believable footing.

LW: How important is place?

RC: As a teacher I talk a lot about place, and much of it boils down to what I heard the writer Shelby Hearon say: "Nothing happens nowhere." That's true, but more and more, I find myself saying—and believing—that place is fate. Henry James said, "Character is fate." But for me, the place is a huge instrument in finding the characters. Without the believability of place, the characters have difficulty holding my attention, convincing me of anything at all. That room in "Clicker" was everything to me: the big wooden door, the varnished cement floor, the pool tables and televisions, remote controls, clicking pool balls, pitchers of imported beer. Once I had the setting, I could let Matt sit down and take his medicine, so to speak.

But my real response here should go: Hey, you read "Santa Monica"! "Santa Monica" is in my collection The News of the World; how'd you find that?

LW: The television remote control is a recurring touchstone in "The Clicker at Tips." Did you know it was going to have such a large presence in the story?

RC: I knew what was going to happen with the clicker—the television remote control—because it happened to me. Twice. The first time I inadvertently changed the channel on the television in a bar in Moab, Utah. This was during deer-hunting season, and the place was full of women celebrating their husbands being away. The World Series was on the television, and somehow I ended up with the remote. The second time was a bit more purposeful, and I'm sorry for it. I didn't mean to be rude. Both situations turned out to be fun and funny for everybody. After a while. I've always favored the term "remote control"; it speaks clearly to the way we live.

LW: You weren't willing to fight another guy, like Matt is in the story?

RC: Let there be no ambiguity here: no. If someone walked toward my table with the understanding that I had changed his channel and he had the intent of harming me, I would immediately begin apologizing through my tears, or weeping through my apology. There's not much of a story in that. Look, a night out is a big adventure in my little life!

Matt is someone else, like all the guys in these stories. Even so, a writer shares part of all of his character's shadows—men and women—and though my own life tends to be sunny rather than dark, I was interested in investigating Matt's sense of self. This story—like so many others in this collection—involves a moment when Matt assumes responsibility for what he has done. Pays his dues. I prefer my characters to have quiet, yet physical, reactions. Matt's moment culminates in his willingness to fight and his saying, "I'd been waiting to meet this guy for a long time." That ending surprised me. I did not foresee the looming fight when Matt and Eve were fencing, but now it feels inevitable.

LW: You've talked elsewhere about how you start stories with an inventory item—the remote control, for example. How does having an inventory serve you as a writer?

RC: Inventory is a word I started using as a teacher to help writers see just what, frankly, was in the story they were writing. It's a writer's term in that regard, not a reader's term. Building an inventory, being specific at appropriate junctures, helps a writer survive the draft. An inventorie helps me by providing the fundamental credibility, which fuels my stamina to stay with the story. Without the stuff of the physical world and characters and conditions under which the characters are pressed, I feel as though I'm skating on ice so thin, it's evanescent. I work hard to make stories feel real. As I watch, listen, and gather, I'm never sure which objects are going to come back later and help me. We know in stories that we want a sense of seeing things at least twice. We're past the linear story. I've said before it's like juggling. Of course, I've also said before it's like bowling, driving at night, et cetera—you choose. You put something in your story, say a piano on the porch. It's there the first time because you needed to believe the house. Later, when you lose your way and are starting to founder in the ambiguous and turbulent waters of fiction, it's the piano that will keep you from drowning. The second time the piano appears it is going to be a surprise to you. You can write a story if you can tolerate sitting in your room until the piano comes back.

LW: What about the towels in "Towel Season"?

RC: The towels in "Towel Season" provide a simple example of inventory. Don't tell me I'm the first guy to trip over a stack of towels! But I started with the towels probably because I could understand them; I didn't know what the story was about, but suddenly I had my towels and this mathematician. Edison lives in two worlds, his house and his calculations. At one point, he sees a stack of fourteen towels at a neighbor's barbecue and thinks, "There was no way those towels were going home with the right families." When I wrote the line in limited third, I understood something essential about my character. I felt a kind of empathy between us—not that I was like him, but that I understood him. That knowledge, in turn, guided me in writing; it helped me stay close to the fabric of the story.

LW: In "Towel Season," you sit in the chairs of both Edison and his wife, Leslie. What is the "sitting in both chairs" process connected to this story?

RC: One of the things I knew going in was that there had to be point-of-view shifts to accomplish what I wanted. I had to imagine what it would be like to be Edison struggling to create a new mathematics. I also had to imagine what it would be like to be Leslie, a woman married to a person who cannot explain the work he does. Sitting in both chairs helped me understand—and portray—Edison and Leslie's marriage with its particular pressures during a summer of barbecues and swimming in the suburbs, a summer that becomes a test in this couple's life together.

LW: In "At the Jim Bridger," everyone is named except Donner's wife and the "woman who was not his wife." What is the significance of that?

RC: I tend to name characters and places in stories, but I knew by page four or five of "Bridger" that the "woman who was not his wife" was as far as Donner could carry it. The phrase became a kind of mantra. With it the rest of the story announced itself to me—that is, I understood what the dichotomy was going to be. Donner is a simple man essentially, and part of his difficulty is that he thinks this way, in black and white, if you will. Some of the story is about his inability to tolerate his own culpability.

LW: How important was it to you to have an unfired gun in "At the Jim Bridger"?

RC: Guns, as you know, are generally trouble. For the writer and most everybody else. We've seen arsenals on television and in movies and everybody is always waving his gun around. "Put your hands up." I love that one. Better: "Reach for the sky!" I'm for gun control in fiction, by which I mean: do we have to see the gun? Look at the gun in Gatsby. Can't we just see the coat in which there may be a gun? Too often the story serves the gun, and that is wrong. In my story, Rusty takes a handgun into the mountains presumably to do himself harm. When he finds Donner and the fire, he throws the gun into the snow and says, "I was dead for a while, but I guess I'm back." If we have to physically see a gun in a story—as we do here—this is generally as much as I allow myself. What I tell my students is that if you need the gun, you haven't done your work.

LW: How important are metaphors in "At the Jim Bridger"? I'm thinking of Donner standing in the dark looking through a "painted window" at festive dancing inside.

RC: I wasn't thinking in terms of metaphors. My intention was to write a story with sharp contrasting pressures and textures. The cold darkness outside and the warm brightness inside is a simple physical demonstration of the contrast I wanted. I like the New Year's Eve party—that room—with its sense of shelter, light, and enclosure. The party operates against the cold night in the physical way I wanted. This story, like "Clicker at Tips," involves a moment when a character assumes responsibility for what he has done. Matt in "Clicker" decides to fight; Donner steps into the cold and watches Rusty and the woman not his wife—two people he's been intimate with—dance together in the warm brightness. Usually I consider motif/metaphor after the drafts are finished, and then if I see something small that I can polish without making a speech, I do it.

LW: Why does Rick narrate "Evil Eye Allen" and not Evil Eye himself?

RC: If you look at my stories, from "Harwell" to "Sunny Billy Day" and probably six or seven others, I use "the second person through the door," the involved witness, to tell the story. I want two stories. I want the events, whatever they may be, and I want the lens. I knew only the name when I started writing the story. I see now that Evil Eye would not have been interested in telling it. One of the implicit questions running under much of my work is "How are you getting the information that's presented?" I want that question answered up front. The narrator Rick says in the first paragraph, "I haven't said that very well." With this statement, he establishes that the information he offers is his version, imperfect as it may be. Readers have no doubt, then, that the story's information is filtered through Rick's eyes. They are reminded of it time and again as the piece progresses. Evil Eye says to Rick, "When you write the story of my name ... write [it] truly but with delicacy ... you were there and you know me. ..." He also says, "Leave nothing out. Put everything in the story." Later, as Rick embarks on the "most retold of all Evil Eye's outings," he admits the "story has a thousand variations." Once again, we are reminded that we are getting Rick's version of what happened. We are reminded that some of all of this is getting on Rick.

LW: The "most retold outing" is when Rick observes eye contact between Evil Eye and Janey. That's an important moment for Rick, isn't it?

RC: Yes, and even then there is no mistaking that Rick is telling his particular version of the story. About the eye contact, he says, "Their look was as serious as looks get, and I could never read such things, but this one said something like: Something ends here, something begins." He doesn't have exact words for what that "something" is, but he understands its importance. Evil Eye is an interesting kid with a fresh take, at least as Rick describes him. I like Evil Eye. Beautiful but "self-contained" Janey becomes more human when viewed through Rick's eyes. The story, though, is Rick's story. It's not so much about Evil Eye and Janey as it is about Rick himself.

LW: Eye contact is big in this book. Matt in "Clicker at Tips" says, "Eye contact is it, the beginning, middle, and end." There's eye contact in "Evil Eye Allen" and in "At the Jim Bridger," when Donner and Rusty's eyes meet and hold. Eye contact is pointedly avoided in "Gary Garrison's Wedding Vows." Gary can't look at Mark when she talks to him. She has to look over his shoulder. What about eye contact?

RC: I kid about eye contact in writing classes, but actually I think it's too often taken for granted. We use our eyes all day without thinking about them, then suddenly lightning strikes in the form of eye contact and we're pierced through with emotion. There is, of course, a long tradition about the power of the eyes, dating back to the Bible. Folks were turned to salt for looking when they shouldn't have (just one pillar, but still) and to stone before that—just for peeking at Medusa. Orpheus shouldn't have looked, and Cupid's arrows enter through the eye. It's not a wonder that so many of the great seers in song and story are blind. I'm waxing here, and I don't think of myself as belonging to any particular mythology. I'm very much interested in conveying real ways people connect and understand one another. Eye contact is powerful and honest. Be careful where you're pointing those things! There's no lying in the line between eyes. I think my personal credo may match Matt's.

LW: In "At Copper View," teenagers Daniel and Laura make up stories while eating lunch together on the school steps. They don't have eye contact.

RC: They exchange sandwiches. Make no mistake: when you exchange sandwiches, you don't need eye contact. Trading food is serious.

LW: There are two narratives in "At Copper View": Daniel's budding relationship with Laura and his discomfiting date with Jackie, homecoming queen of another school.

RC: The story traces a horrible date. The tone and texture here intrigued me. I was curious about the distances that began to appear. Daniel is a kid aware of his place in his changing life—with his relationship with Laura and the night with Jackie—but that knowledge finally doesn't help him. Early in the evening with Jackie, he shrugs off hostile advances from boys who demand to know why she is his date. Remaining detached and feeling safe, he thinks about telling the story to Laura later: "He would save it, the blazer, the sick line, the whole story, for Laura." As the evening closes, Daniel finds out about Jackie's unfortunate situation, and he can no longer keep any of his distances. He's caught and he knows it.

LW: Isn't being caught one of the themes of this book?

RC: Being caught is one of the themes. Caught, that is, in a moment of recognition when a character assumes responsibility for what he has done. We see it in "Clicker at Tips" and "At the Jim Bridger." Daniel's moment comes with his recognition that he cannot climb out of the story unscathed. There is no ledge of storytelling safety.

One of the elements of being human is our awareness of moments as we live them. This awareness sets us apart from animals. We have the capacity to stand alongside ourselves, watching and commenting as our experiences unfold. An example from my own life occurred when I played football in high school. Hanging up all my gear after the last game of the season, I said, "Well, that was American high school football. It was the fall of my senior year." A junior who heard me said, "What?" He didn't understand what I was doing. I said, "Nothing, nothing." I was young and old at once. There's a moment like that in "At Copper View." Daniel says, "We're teenage boys involved in American high school football, driving home from practice." His buddy Qualls shakes his head and says, "Right, boss." The boys and men in these stories are all shadows of me in some small way. I've always been intrigued by the "double life"—that is, the pleasure of having an experience, commenting on it, perhaps writing it down later. Having said that, I must also add that I've pushed hard in this book and the two previous collections to extend stories beyond my own experience. As you know, one of the exhilarating and sobering benefits of writing is to carry experiences you haven't had yourself.

LW: Yet "The Potato Gun" feels very personal.

RC: "The Potato Gun" certainly is the hottest story for me in terms of personal experience. My own mother died shortly before I began this story. Her death was a hot coal under everything I did.

The outer story here is a guy—Cooper—with a fifteen-year-old son, and the inherent challenges that come along with that. There's the prom and details of dressing, chauffeuring, dining, and partying that must be tended; there's the potato gun experiment that seems dangerous and the son's friends. Kids constantly test us by going beyond what we know. The test is vexing in a special way because we cannot ignore it. If we care about our children, as we all do, we must deal with the challenges they present, whatever the challenges are. The inner story involves the sudden death of Cooper's mother. Just as there is no adequate training for handling children, there is no helpful guide for coping with the death of a parent. I was affected by the way the inner and outer stories dovetailed with each other: there's the bumbling hint of impending sex for the high-schoolers. Juxtaposed with the joie de vivre that sex implies, there is the somber finality of death that Cooper carries in his heart.

LW: Two hot-wire narratives that parallel each other and ultimately intersect.

RC: As the story ends, the spark between the inner and outer stories ignites when the girlfriend of Cooper's son steps forward and says, "I'm sorry for your loss." Although I was initially surprised at that, the action and the girl's consoling words provide a natural and fitting way for the two hot wires to join. When the girl spoke to Cooper it surprised me in the way dozens of secondary characters have surprised me when I've taken the time to listen to them. For me it is an illuminating pleasure of writing fiction.

My own mother was a character—by that I mean she was a woman about whom my friends would say, "Your mother is a character." She was brilliant and funny and I was lucky to be close to her all of her life. When something is that close to you, you don't always see clearly in the writing. You have to be very careful, and I was careful, but I wasn't completely sure if the two narratives held together. I didn't show the story to anyone for a long time. I waited and waited. I rewrote the story and waited some more. Finally, I read it to my wife and eventually let it go out.

LW: Do you normally read your work aloud as you write? You're such a lively reader of your stories in public—they seem to jump off the page into performance pieces. Do they seem different to you, on the page and spoken?

RC: Nothing goes out of my house without having been read aloud. My kids are used to seeing me standing around with a manuscript and a pencil, reading aloud. It's my way of finding the last things. I've always done it and it's a custom with me. But I don't do it with any audience in mind. I'm the audience. I read letters aloud, letters of recommendation and memos—it's near the last thing I do. I don't say anything aloud while I'm composing the piece, at least I don't think I do. To me, my work feels the same aloud and on the page. My opinion is that if a work depends on being presented aloud—particularly a comic piece—then it's probably not good enough. The page is the test I hold all my work to.

LW: "The Potato Gun" ends with a sense of community. "At the Jim Bridger" ends with a feeling of isolation.

RC: You are right about the stories being opposites, yet in both I was interested in exploring what grief is and where it resides in the body. When stricken, what resources do these guys have? Cooper in "Potato Gun" is trying to get his equilibrium back after losing his mother. As his son's prom night unfolds, Cooper mentally revisits the story of his own prom night many years earlier, a scenario that included Cooper's mother and his wife, Libby. Family history and current family activities help Cooper find a footing. Donner in "Bridger" has a story—the story of that night a year earlier when Rusty walked into his snow camp. He uses the story by telling parts of it to the woman not his wife. The story comes back to get him. Donner's two main characters—Rusty and the woman not his wife—are dancing together. I wanted Donner's regret and sense of responsibility to be physical, and it is as he stands alone in the cold night.

LW: "Gary Garrison's Wedding Vows" is the only story told primarily through the eyes of a woman, though there are some point-of-view shifts. How did you decide on that voice?

RC: I decided right away to stay with Gary as long as I could. If there is a way to stay consistently in limited third, I say do it. In this story, I couldn't get all I needed so I stepped to Juanita for the close. The piece has a storyteller, apparent in such lines as "There her story began," and "it was late in the year now." Shifting points of view are not my usual. Here, though, there were times when I needed certain characters to be out of the room and the shifts served as necessary bridges. This story also handles time with a sweep which is unusual for me. A season with its weeks passes. In most of my work the scenes have a shorter span; "Clicker at Tips" unfolds in an hour. Once I determine a story's stride, I'm able to stay consistent with time increments: inch by inch, minute by minute, month by month.

LW: Did you always know the story would pivot around Gary?

RC: I wrote a page or two about a young woman with a particularly intense sensitivity to the world. We all have days, weeks, even months when we are so sensitive, we think we may not make it. This character has that extreme sensitivity all the time. I followed her around, and soon realized the story was largely about her. After I got on track with that idea I thought, What about all my men? I was originally going to title the book, "Men" this or that, but as I wrote, I realized such a title wasn't going to happen.

Once I knew what the story was about, I focused on an image of candles in a church window. The candles came from my own experience. I was at a friend's wedding and there was a delay of about ten minutes. While waiting in the darkened church, I watched a candle flicker in the window. I heard geese honking in the surrounding fields. The actual wedding was on Long Island, but it could easily have been in northern Utah, the setting for this story.

With the candle imagery in mind, I worked with "what ifs" until I got a draft. During a rewrite, I inserted Gary's conditions of the wedding vows early—about page three. After five sixths of the story was in place I cut to Juanita saying, "You want me to put my arm around you?" I wanted these two people standing alone by a pickup truck looking at the church where Gary and William are about to be married.

LW: The sandwich with fingerprints is a good example of an "inventory item."

RC: Men are new to Gary. She has no experience to draw on. A sandwich with fingerprints would be huge to her, especially when the fingerprints belong to a man she admires. I like physical evidence. I depend on it. And that's what this sandwich is. I don't want fingerprints on my sandwiches generally. In fact, I want people to keep their hands off my food, but it would be special to her.

LW: Was there any doubt in your mind which of the male characters Gary would marry?

RC: No, but my job was to convince readers that the man she does marry isn't a bad deal for her. If William comes in as Mr. Blue Blazer Slick Lawyer, readers will see me coming with my idea, and I want my idea lost. I want Gary's intense and confused emotions about Mark and William to be real. I also want her choice of William to be convincing by the honest earnestness of his courtship. I spent a couple of pages peeling William back to earn him in. That was one of the most challenging parts of the story for me, but it was essential. Once William was in, readers could believe that Gary's unusual wedding vows evolved naturally from her innate and powerful sensitivity.

LW: Many of these stories have obvious storytelling and storytellers in them. Did you know as you wrote "At the El Sol" that storytelling would actually—literally—save narrator Eugene Miner?

RC: I like stories within stories. I always have—particularly stories from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that include storytellers. "At the El Sol" is thick with layers of storytelling. There are Eugene's two stories—the current one where he's helping Mr. Cuppertino at the motel, and the Baby-Leo-Casino story he's recording daily in his journal.

LW: Why does Eugene hide his journal?

RC: All writers hide their work in one way or another—for a while. I've known writers who wouldn't let people walk behind them in a room! Good writing needs a kind of keeping. But Eugene hides it because it is a dangerous document and because he doesn't want to come back after his morning outing and see the damn thing.

LW: There are a couple nods at writers in this story.

RC: There are. One of them is when Eugene refers to writing in his journal: "I was working in my notebook every morning, trying to get the bare bones of my times with Baby and Leo in there, just the facts. . . . I'd write down the fundamentals, but . . . I'd go on a little bit. You're writing in the predawn dark and you go on a little bit." Writers do go on. I know I do. Writing "El Sol" was a good example of it.

My story "A Note on the Type" is a big nod at writers, particularly when the character Ray talks about what it's like to write his name everywhere. I was able to get my credo as a writer in there without tipping the whole thing over. That story is close to the line, but it still carries. In "At the El Sol" Eugene writes to anchor himself. He is writing every day, and I believe it to be a real activity, like anything we might do to save and secure the day.

LW: One of my favorite Ron Carlson quips is: "A writer is the person who has written today." What have you written today?

RC: I wrote a page about why a person might logically close the barn door after the horse has fled. Who leaves a barn door open whether the horses are home or away? It will not be in any of my fiction soon.

LW: You mentioned earlier the "double life" of a writer: the pleasure of having an experience and writing it down. Eugene has that pleasure.

RC: He certainly does—pleasure and that other thing: a sobering recognition. As a writing teacher and consultant, I've always encouraged people to go on, to stay in the room, keep writing, find out what's next. Despite the nod or two at writers here, I didn't want the story to be even remotely about writing. It is not some smart inside joke; it's a tough season for old Eugene.

LW: At this point in your career—after six books and a seventh soon to be published—how easy is it for you to stay in the room, to keep writing?

RC: Oh, the room. Elaine got me a new desk, my first new desk, and it is a beauty. I mean, I am not worthy. Pretty as it is, it is no help. Every day there comes a moment, I want to leave the room; it's part of the way I know I'm working. Most days, I do not leave. I'm being honest here. But the trouble with a gorgeous desk is that you only see it when you're not working. If you're in the work, the desk is long gone. It only appears when you break down or quit—standing there looking good, beautifully bearing your ugly problem.

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