Legendry; Interview with Author Don Mitchell, Part 2 of 2

GREG HOY ya were already bored. This is Frank Anthony. Welcome to our Easter Eve production of legendary tonight Don Mitchell of Virgin's Vermont tells us about his life as a sheep farmer and his new book just released by Holton Mifflin the souls of lambs a book on the husbandry of sheep and more a book that reaches this Easter season for the souls of man. I'm proud to have as my Easter

legendary guest Don Michel over Jen's Vermont. Going along with this is the story of a shepherd and a lamb using symbols as familiar as the Old Testament. Dan Mitchell has written a contemporary fable that probes basic beliefs about life and love good and evil. The most powerful stories have always been simple ones. And this is a simple story. I Shepherd husbands his flock and watch as the seasons pass each year a new crop of lambs is conceived born nurtured to what purpose that men may eat meat. The shepherd

himself slaughters a lamb and eats nourishing his body. The cycle begins anew. This natural chain of events provokes many questions. What is the nature of love between man and Animal Man and Man. Does life entails expanding life can slaughter be sacramental. What is the cutting edge that divides responsibility from guilt. And finally what in man and beast alike transcends the flesh. In his fable of shepherd and the lamb done Michel brings nourishment to all who ponder the means and ends to a man's survival and the quality of Love done before we begin talking about your life and particularly your book the souls of lambs. Let's talk just a bit slightly recap about your background if you will where you were born.

Ok I am 31 years old I was born in Chicago in 1907 and raised in northern Illinois and then and now I go up all this around Philadelphia. I went to college. Yet at Swarthmore in Pennsylvania which is also near Philadelphia and then I did some time in California doing a screenplay for my first novel which is made into a successful motion picture. And then I came back to the east coast did my alternative service for the draft in Pennsylvania and then Boston landed in Vermont and discovered that I had a lid on it. Well it was interesting the way you said when you were in California you did some time that you feel you were sort of in prison or not in prison that I look back on it as a time of servitude voluntary servitude but but I wasn't making it. I wasn't responsibly for the conditions of my existence there the way I the way I am in for my.

Well as we mentioned on your first program last Saturday the first book that you wrote tripping which was published while you were in California made $100000 and you ended up with probably half of it. Give or take a few thousand somewhere. Do you feel that this third book that you've written the souls of lambs do you feel that this book may be that successful. I think this book has has has a crack at a national audience. I think it's and there's a there's But I like to consider it a cultural sweepstakes and this is the dark horse that's still running it hasn't been bumped off off the track yet. But there's many slips between the cup and the lip in the writing business. Although you would have had a hard time to convince me it's hard to make a living as a writer. Ten years ago I know now that's very hard to make a living as a writer. And if this book does succeed I'll be I'll be gratified

if it doesn't. I have other ways of making enough money to live to fall back on at most most writers in America have a have a hustle on the side. I think teaching writing in a college is the biggest hustle that writers have. I don't think it particularly is good for the writers who do it. And in my hustle on the side is that I keep and I don't know if raising the sheep is better for for the writer than teaching or not but I do know that it gives me a rhythm between cerebral work and physical work. I know it puts me in touch with with the changing seasons and elemental forces like like the weather in and in touch with phenomena like like birth and death. And so I I think on the whole it's been it's been a good way for a writer to live. Well your first book from dripping dealt with the calls for good regeneration.

Well actually it was about it was about the society of the generation of my parents as seen through the eyes of hippies. Yes. And what was it that brought so much success to the book. Well there was a cultural phenomenon of interest in in my generation when we were just in college. I think it was in part because the Vietnam War but also my generation is peculiar because it was raised in peace time. Const conceived just after World War Two. Raised in in peacetime by an affluent society that lavished attention upon child rearing as it has never been lavished I mean in my generation. If the three year olds became interested in dinosaurs the next week you went to the Natural History Museum then you got a book about dinosaurs and you got little plastic models a brown a source and Thors and so forth. Whatever

whatever. A kid expressed interest in all of a sudden his parents unfolded just as to and encourage him and stimulate him. And I think. They expected it a super generation of us and and it backfired tremendously because I think character is is made as much from from hardship and hard knocks as from this. This overweening nourishment of of young kids and and I think the phenomenon of interest in what we now call the counterculture was the society saying what happened. What happened to these kids that we took every effort to raise up right. And now they want to seize upon any expression of rejection of our cultural values and I was a small part of that phenomenon.

Do you feel Don. People in this country put too much emphasis on youth as such. Yes I think we'll finally put less emphasis on it because if you look at the at the demographic pattern for America in the coming 20 30 years we're going to become an older nation. There's no question about it you can see who is already born in and what possible type of nation fall into what age categories. And we're going to have to place increasing emphasis upon applying more adult values. I think it's a good thing in the sense that we will become more conservatively oriented. Well I don't I don't think that necessarily follows that I think there are there are conservative influences that affect any person as a as they become older. And yet I think I think much of much of what convulsed our society a decade ago. It has produced some good change I think for

example that that my generation is less materialistic than my parents generation and will always be that. And and to me that's a that's a good sign and a hopeful sign. You know a direct result of our involvement in Vietnam. Well as a direct result of of the the wholesale questioning of American values which the Vietnam War precipitated Yes. What was your second book for stroke about. My second novel four stroke was about a group living in communal marriage with which I had some but not nearly enough. That's confusing some but not much experience. And it was written as though it were an engine overhaul manual for the Corvair. And this this

metaphor. Didn't work. And when I say a metaphor I was about four people living together taking apart an engine to rebuild it and taking it apart right down to the crankshaft and at every step the relations between the people were reflected in mechanics. And if you didn't really want to know about push rods and tappets and gaskets and so forth inside of an engine then they had a hard time with the book and also had it have the great misfortune of being published the same week as a book. We are no Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the whole land was talking about this. This new book sort of fiction not really fiction that it used mechanics as a metaphor for human relations human values and it was in my book it was a it was a great. Disappointment. And it was a bit disappointing to my publishers too but part of the part of the book's problem was that

I had such misgivings about the promotional work that I had been asked to do from my first book that I refused to do anything for for STRUG I didn't give any interviews I didn't have to lift a finger and and publishers like offers to work for their books and I and I'm resigning as something that has to be done if you want to if you want to make a living as a writer that that comes with it public relations. That's right. Well now you're your third book came out last week the souls of lambs. Yes actually it's my fourth book I wrote a third book. I spent four long from winters writing a long novel that when I finished it I couldn't sell couldn't get published. And. It became apparent that it wasn't going to get published about a year and a half ago and after about two months of depression and and risking the loss of

my identity as a as a writer which is which is dear to my heart. I realize that that I could I could sort of heist the theme of the book and it's a long complex book about a failed minister a failed psychiatry wrist and a young anorectic girl who thinks that she's Katherine of Sienna. I could heist the theme from this book and and recycle it in a very simple story about an old man raising sheep for slaughter. And I knew about sheep because I was raising them and I certainly knew the theme of the novel because I had wrestled with that for four years and so the result the souls of the Lambs was written very quickly I I wrote a draft that I would say is 95 percent of the final draft in 23 days. And just a burst of activity because I well because I was so

glad to be something from what I had thought was a wasted four years a long time to waste. Well it was certainly a building block it was a background that went into this for one thing. Maybe other things will come out of it. Who knows. How was your reception at Houghton Mifflin when you first brought this book to them. They wanted it immediately. Yes. And I wasn't I wasn't surprised at all. I've never I've never written something that I knew was good the minute the minute I began it you know I felt good about all the way through but this this was more like a work of nonfiction the first thing I wrote was a table of contents. And then I began on page one and began writing the first chapter and then I wrote the second chapter. And. In other words the materials of the book were sewed were sewed deeply the materials of my life that that I and I never had to have had to struggle to give birth to this book. The way you do with a

novel in a novel you're always trying to to decide what it is you had to say in the course of trying to say it. And to me this is the difference between a short story and a novel. A novel is a is a journey in which the writer explores what he feels about about a theme and doesn't expect to come up with his final answer until about 10 pages before the end in fact if things go right. You just set up a situation with characters in an action which if you carry to some logical point your feelings about. The theme will be made plain to you of the writer and the characters stand up and finish the action for you. That's that's what I think a good novel is all about. A short story you'd better know what you're going to say and how you're going to say it before you before you put a pen to page because you haven't got time to to to to work out your conclusion in the course of things

that you know she was doing and this is a distinction that I think holds whether we're talking about issue or story of 70 pages or a novel of 50 pages. And I guess it was her mittens idea to call the souls of Lana's a fable I think it's I think it's not inappropriate. It stands someplace between fiction and nonfiction. And I think it like it almost defines a genre unto itself. Well it's a bromance story isn't a story about a different way of life and it's one of the newest Vermaak stories that we have. What do you feel Don is the overriding main theme of the souls of the Lambs. Well the theme of the souls of the Lambs is that it's possible to to to raise and slaughter and eat meat

and do all those things in a loving a loving fashion. This thing grew out of your earlier novel a much longer novel. Yes I'd say I did the in the in the novel that I couldn't sell the failed psychiatrist was trying to be found in Philadelphia and that evil heresy called Cathar isn't Cathar ism is is a man a key and heresy and as the heresy against which the Catholic church preached the Inquisition and man a key ism has been has been a heresy and in the Christian tradition as long as there have been man a key and it's a very simple idea it's that is that good and evil are implacable eternal opponents warring with each other and and the visible world of matter is the domain

of evil and good resides someplace else and good in the form of spirit is imprisoned in man. And so under under this heresy of the highest act of faith for for a man is to commit suicide because and this frees his spirit to leave the cage of matter and go back into into some the theory all round that it came from. This is been this is been treated as a heresy by the Christian church. And yet I think Christianity has always had a man a key element in it. In Christianity we we do personify the good as a benevolent loving God Father and we personify evil as a demi or a Jew or Satan. And we depict man as as good as cop between the two. And every human act that has any kind of ethical consequences places man in the position of choosing whether he is

going to to work on behalf of Satan to work on behalf of God. And and yet as a shepherd as a husband a sheep. I think I fw felt that good and evil were not these implacable eternal opponents but rather almost like two sides of a coin. Because because in an eating meat or indeed eating anything we destroy something that was once alive. And I don't care personally whether it's a vegetable or animal. And yet without doing this we can't nourish our bodies and nourishment. We hold to be good. And and so you're using that as as a as a starting point I tried to construct an ethical system in which good and evil were not perceived Desis

eternally opposing forces but rather as as natural components of all human acts and indeed of of human loving. And so that's that gives you an idea of what the book is about. What's happening today on your farm and remark what's happening to your land. We're just about 90 percent through landing we have an unusual breed of sheep. They're from Finland and they've been bred for prolific AC which means that they're apt to have triplets and sometimes they have quadruplets and actually purify and sheep I have a cross bred fin Purif and sheep have had seven lambs you know that are now there's only two teats on a sheep and so it's quite a bit of competition to see who's who's going to get enough milk and without artificial feeding systems it's very hard hard to to to raise the sheep.

We had done. We had a land herself only 12 months old who we bred it seven months last fall and last night she had quadruplets. I never I've never seen more than twins out of a 12 month old sheep. Mo she can't even breed until they're 18 months. They had their first lamb usually single at 24 months and this breed you can first mate them when they're seven months old to have lambs is Ezio ings. And it's a busy time of year we have. Thirty four sheep and they've all land in the past oh 18 19 days which means there's lambs coming around the clock and somebody has got to be there because when you have multiple births you have to make sure the mother accepts each land off and if they have three they'll reject one and then you have a problem on your hands. So what does it mean if they're rejected. Well I can't explain the

phenomenon and I've often experienced the phenomenon being reversed if you can get the land to suckle off and you see what had been a strong maternal hatred just translated all the sudden into maternal love it's a crazy kind of power that that you're working with when you. But often as soon as Alana was born how often but sometimes since I was born the mother turns around sniffs it doesn't like it sometimes is a you has always had ram lands and all of a sudden she hears a Ulama and maybe it is different to her. Sometimes it's you who's always had twins. All of a sudden she has triplets and she can't make any sense out of the what the third man is doing there. But I have no final explanation for why it happens but when it happens you want to have a shepherd there. How do you feel about the way you're living today.

Your low ball and Ward energy and your lifestyle and what you hope to do for the future. Well after after a brief flirtation with money and and fame I decided that that I wanted to determine the conditions of my own existence more completely than I than I could in Los Angeles or or San Francisco or the Philadelphia suburbs. I mean it was too much of an intrusion into your life all the time. Yes there's anybody who lives in a city or even in business one realizes it is a very exciting sensory overload. You're just bombarded with things to perceive things to look at things to see and do. And yet for me at least I I lost perspective on it. And the things that I felt were most important when I went when I lived in cities and was most important to

me is building during a lifestyle that allows me to write with with complete freedom and I hopefully at least six months out of the year. And and to do that first of all I I I set out to to reduce the amount of money it took me to live to the bare minimum and we got that My wife and I down to about $5000 a year. And you could not live by any means comfortably in a city on $5000 a year. And yet in Vermont if you have if you have some animals to eat in a garden for vegetables and and if you're handy with tools you can fix your car and you're handy with a hammer so you can so you can build a house and fix your toilet and keep your wood stove working and so forth. Then you can live what I would call a comfortable and and

and we warding in even ennobling life and very little money. And to me as a as a writer that's important because like I can no longer look to my writing as a guaranteed source of income. And yet I want to keep doing it whether it's a source of income or not. Well Don for the thousands of young people of your generation who are trying to live their style of life I think this is a very interesting and very rewarding story. And I want to thank you for being with us on legendry today. Also I hope your book the souls of the Lambs brings you a lot of fruitful reward for the work that you've been doing. Thank you. I hope it brings them lots of readers. You know in the EU are urgent being a

you. This is Frank Anthony. Thank you for joining us we've done Michel and the souls of the Lambs. Tonight on legendary. The second and fourth Wednesdays of next month. Don Michel is our Vermont artist in performance when he reads prose poetry from the souls of lambs. From legendary and all of us said BPR a happy and blessed Easter to you. You are. You.