Drinking with James Crumley

Our Pal the Rake links to a very evocative piece about one of the genre’s living legends written by William Kittredge for the Missoula Independent. The memories are fond, and the haze is alcoholic, but how does Crumley find time to write?

After decades of teaching, adventures in

Hollywood, marriages that didn’t take although the women were beauties,

Jim is presently settled into a house on the hill in Missoula with

Martha Elizabeth, his wife of 12 years (they were married the day after

I turned 60, so I remember). Jim counts the days when she’s out of town

and he’s left feeding the cats. When he was knocked out and

hospitalized with a life-threatening affliction, hooked up to a

breathing machine, Martha was shattered but brave and there constantly.

“The worst thing about being a

writer,” Crumley once said, “is that no one ever sees you work.” People

seem to think the 325-page novel manuscript must have been left on the

doorstep by Santa or dropped down the chimney by a stork. How could a

guy who is downtown so often, out and around, find the time for all

that typing and invention?

Crumley, up in his house, deep in

his nights (we imagine; who sees him work?), figures out his

beginnings, where, when and who, then follows his characters and lets

the story run. He listens to his people talk, not only what they say

but how they say it, pays close attention to the voices of his

characters, and the look of his own language on the page. It’s work. He

didn’t come on that idiomatic and often eloquent prose style by

accident. The other day I asked if he was going on a new novel. “The

first line,” he said. “That’s enough for now.” He’s found another

springboard. This can lead to a lot of pages in a hurry. In Mexico with

friends, typewriter on a fireplace mantel, ignoring the run of constant

parties, he hammered out the last third of One to Count Cadence.

Decades ago, I heard him tell a writing class that novels, and

idiosyncratic (crazed) people, are like topcoats, they have pockets

where things and thoughts can be hidden, to be uncovered later (or not

all). When a story is cooking in his imagination, he watches his

characters dance through evasions and recognitions, lying and

counter-lying, breaking down, breaking out, honoring both their worst

and best impulses. Solving the mysteries (who did what?) is secondary

to the mystery that these people might be, and the degree to which

they’re responsible for both brutalities and decencies. And, as we the

readers explore that one, who we are? The degree to which we are

responsible? And for what? How to live?

No wonder his current novel, The Right Madness, seems infused with extra special knowledge of what it’s like to be on the precipice.