The Fiction of American Democracy - The Wall Street Journal

Posted: 30 Oct 2020 08:56 AM PDT

America's independence was won on the battlefield, but American democracy was written into existence. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution created the country that America aspires to be, where all people are created equal and politics is a common effort to establish a more perfect union. This is the ideal democracy that Walt Whitman likened to "leaves of grass": "Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,/Growing among black folks as among white,/Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same."

When Whitman wrote those lines in 1855, of course, the divisions among whites, Blacks and Native Americans were stark and bloody. But like so many American writers, Whitman couldn't reconcile himself to the way reality fell short of the founding ideal. The idea that literature should keep a distance from politics, that art should exist for its own sake, has never found much traction in this country. On the contrary, American literature is constantly analyzing the state of the nation, posing in countless ways the question that the poet Allen Ginsberg stated directly and plaintively: "America, when will you be angelic?"

Today's writers continue that tradition, whether they are telling stories about real politicians—like Curtis Sittenfeld and Thomas Mallon, who have used fiction to delve into the minds of Hillary Clinton and Richard Nixon—or using the techniques of fantasy and science fiction—like Suzanne Collins's popular "Hunger Games" series, set in a dystopian future where a wealthy Capitol takes poor children as "tributes," forcing them to compete in a televised fight to the death. Even contemporary novelists who don't tackle politics head-on often end up writing about it—like Ben Lerner, whose 2019 novel "The Topeka School" draws on his own experience as a high-school debater to show how political argument becomes toxic.

On the eve of a particularly bitter presidential election, literature offers a useful reminder that Americans have always been consumed by politics and partisanship. Washington Irving's story "Rip Van Winkle," which turns 200 this year, may be the earliest work of American fiction that is still widely known. Everyone remembers that the title character falls asleep for many years and returns home to find a changed world. But the specific change that Irving had in mind was the way the Revolution had made Americans—even the residents of a remote village in New York's Catskill Mountains—obsessed with politics.

Feature: Hollywood Hank - Amarillo.com

Posted: 30 Oct 2020 02:53 PM PDT

Michele McAffrey | Amarillo Globe-News

If you don't live in a cave in Palo Duro Canyon, you've probably heard the news already: Hank the Cowdog has hit the big time – if he hadn't already, after 75 published outings and nearly 10 million books sold. In September, the news broke that Hank would be launching his own podcast, with Matthew McConaughey voicing the Panhandle's favorite cowdog. It seemed, to those of us who grew up on the High Plains, somehow inevitable that Hank would catch the attention of Hollywood. After all, Hank the Cowdog has been such a vital part of Texas Panhandle life for so long, it was only a matter of time before the quality and unique humor of these stories gained an even wider audience.

And here in Amarillo, folks couldn't be more proud. The Yellow City has long provided a sort of "second home" for Hank (aside from the ranch, of course). Author John Erickson has recorded every single one of the Hank stories in an Amarillo recording studio, and Erickson has two sons living in Amarillo. In fact one of those sons, Mark Erickson – who you may know as the lead singer of popular local band Comanche Moon – was one of the driving forces behind the "Hank the Cowdog" podcast.

Now, sit back on the porch and get yourself an iced tea, as the autumn sun sets in the west, and hear a tale of how a canine Head of Ranch Security made his way to Hollywood.

A Nutshell History of a Famous Cowdog

A longtime cowhand and ranch manager (albeit an unusual one; he'd also spent a couple of years at Harvard Divinity School), John Erickson began writing about the ranching life long before he struck gold with the first "Hank" book. In the late 1970s, while working on a ranch in Oklahoma, Erickson began writing for ranching and livestock publications, primarily The Cattleman and San Angelo's Livestock Weekly, as well as Rodeo Sports News and Western Horseman. He soon found that he preferred writing about daily life on the ranch, rather than attempting more lofty subject matter. "I started off trying to be a man of literature," John says on a crackly, socially-distanced phone call from his ranch in the northern Texas Panhandle, "sending a lot of novels and query letters to New York publishers. And I just didn't get anywhere with it."

Most of those early articles, as John recalls, involved cattle and horses and coyotes and buzzards. Writing about animals was simply fun, he discovered. And, perhaps most importantly, John began to develop his sense of humor through those early stories – a sense that had been put into a deep slumber during his college and grad-school years. "When you work around animals, you can't escape having a sense of humor because you get into situations you can't control. Universities didn't have much of a sense of humor in the sixties, when I was there. And I don't know that they do yet. But livestock publications did."

It was in writing about those ranch animals that John received the first idea for what would become a nationwide phenomenon. The first "Hank the Cowdog" outing was a series of 12 short stories he wrote for The Cattleman, stories that were supposed to be about Erickson's work as a cowboy. "The Cattleman did not publish fiction," he notes, "but the first 'Hank' story was definitely a fictional short story. It was narrated by a dog. What else can you say? Editors are usually very quick to notice things like that, but the lady didn't say anything about it. They ran it."

At the time, Erickson didn't give much thought to the stories. But then he started doing live reading events in Perryton, Booker, Spearman, Liberal, and the Oklahoma Panhandle, events where he was handed a microphone and allowed to read a few stories. Inevitably, the Hank stories would get the biggest response. "I didn't think it was necessarily the best story of the bunch," Erickson recalls. "But my audiences would say, 'You need to do more with that dog.' If they hadn't told me that, I don't know that I would've had sense enough to take the next step, which was to give Hank a whole book."

By that time, still smarting from the memory of scads of New York rejection slips, Erickson made a decision that would prove remarkably prescient: He didn't send the manuscript to a publisher. "I didn't figure I really needed a publisher or an editor or an agent," he says. "I needed readers, and I thought I could find them pretty close to home." So, in the spring of 1983, John Erickson launched Maverick Books from his garage – and promptly brought out the first Hank book. "I didn't think that Hank was going to be a star," he admits. But that first Hank release was so easy to sell that he quickly penned a second book.

One surprising aspect of those early releases: Kids weren't Erickson's intended audience. "I was not writing for children. I was writing for adults involved in agriculture, and there were never any children in audiences when I went out and did programs." Soon enough, however, that began to change. Kids started stealing the books from their parents, staying up late reading them, then, eventually, taking their parents' books to school. Erickson began receiving calls from teachers and librarians, invitations to do programs in local schools. And he found that public schools were a great place to sell books. "It was pleasant work, and I got paid for it," he remembers. "I kind of specialized in going into schools, usually in rural areas, small schools in the Panhandle, South Plains, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska." Book by book, school by school, Erickson began to build a loyal audience. Today, he notes with pride, "We're in the second and third generation of [that audience]."

As John's son, Mark, proudly notes, "[The Texas Panhandle] doesn't get much attention from the outside world, and as a result I think our geography, our culture and our people are a well-kept secret. The Hank stories are Panhandle stories, written by a Panhandle native about Panhandle people."

Meant to Be

The funny thing is, Erickson never changed the way he wrote the Hank stories – it was simply that the right audience found Hank. And at some point, though he hadn't changed his methods, John Erickson became known as an author of children's books. "I always did the same program, whether I was doing a program for an audience of adults, or an audience of children, or a mixture of the two."

Since 1983, Erickson's been applying his rancher's work ethic to writing about an imaginary ranch dog. Now, almost 40 years after that first release, John has written more than 80 Hank books (75 have been published, with more on the way). Seven days a week, he goes to the writing office on his ranch at 5 a.m. "I go whether I'm working on anything or not. I either write, or I sit there and read, but I've got to do something. For 4 or 4 ½ hours, that's what I do."

Every year during the fall or early winter, Erickson begins to gain the sense that it's time to start another book, and he will start writing. And later, sometime in the late spring or summer, he'll start another book. He rarely has any idea of where the story is going to go. He only knows what the first sentence will be – and he has a large cast of characters to play with. "I might begin describing the weather, as it is on that particular day, or something that I see in the trees or the grass, something my dogs have done that's funny. And one thing just leads to another."

Another vitally important aspect of the Hank empire has been audiobooks. Indeed, the "Hank the Cowdog" series was groundbreaking in this aspect. When Erickson started writing the Hank books, it was unusual for children's books – or any books, for that matter – to have audio versions. "At the time I started," John explains, "I was not patterning the books on a literary model. I was imitating the storytelling techniques of an oral tradition, which is natural to the ranching and cowboy community. So they were always meant to be read aloud. When we brought out that first book, I'd never heard of an audiobook. I didn't know of any author who had recorded his own books, but I wanted to have them in that format."

There were a couple of issues, however. Erickson didn't know anything about recording, and he couldn't afford to hire any voice talent. He did, however, know he could do the 14 voices in the first Hank book, so he asked around about recording spaces and found that there was a sound studio in Amarillo. He recorded the first Hank book in December 1982, and he has recorded every single book since then at Carlos Casso's Audio Refinery Recording Studio.

Hollywood Comes A-Callin'

The story of how Hank got hooked up with Matthew McConaughey has more to do with John's son, Mark Erickson, than with John himself. As John put it, "Mark is kind of specialized in working with those people."

John himself admitted his frustration with Tinseltown in the past. "I had my opportunity trying to work with movie people," he told me. "I never had any success with it. We've been trying to get a decent movie made since 1986. I got a call from Disney, and I went out and spent four days with them. That didn't work out. They wanted all the rights to all of my characters. Then we tried with Nickelodeon, and that didn't work. We've tried working with other groups, tried to start an investment group and do it on our own."

All of that began to change about four years ago, when the Ericksons received a call from director Jeff Nichols – an Austinite whose films "Mud" (which starred McConaughey), "Loving" and "Midnight Special" had recently garnered major critical acclaim. "I didn't know who he was," says John, "but Mark definitely did."

As Mark recalls, "Jeff Nichols and his son had been reading Hank together and he had a vision that he wanted to bring to the series. At the time, we were looking for a way to take Hank into new types of media. I knew Jeff's movies and had a lot of respect for his work."

Indeed, Mark Erickson was well aware that Nichols was an independently minded director who made his home in Texas, not Hollywood. So John and Mark started talking with Jeff's people, and they began discussing the possibilities for a movie to be written and directed by Nichols. Soon enough, Nichols had come up with a script based on the 11th Hank book, "Lost in the Dark Enchanted Forest." Nichols made a trip to California and began shopping the project, attracting interest from five studios. But, for one reason or another, the film project never got off the ground.

"Maybe his budget was too high," John conjectures. Or perhaps, John believes, the issue runs deeper than that. "I think the thing that's haunted us from the very beginning is that these books are regarded as 'hick literature' by people who live on the coast. They think these are books read by ignoramuses, that they're not relevant to the problems that people who live in New York and Los Angeles are thinking about. They're simple stories, and they involve people who work for a living, live in the country, and are surrounded by livestock. So it's been hard for us to get a serious hearing from people in the entertainment business."

Regardless, Nichols and his production crew – along with the investor group that had been built up around the project – decided the best next step was to do a podcast that Nichols would write and direct. As Mark remembers, "After talking with Jeff about Hank, it became clear that his vision aligned very closely with ours. Making a narrative, episodic podcast was a way that we could develop Hank independently without getting a studio involved." Nichols would bring in high-quality professional actors that he has worked with and has good working relationships with, a podcast that creates the kind of numbers that movie accountants take seriously.

"I don't know a whole lot about that world," says John. "But it's hits and likes and the kinds of things that happen in social media. That was our strategy. Then also, it might turn out to be a good way to make a living with stories."

And the strategy has paid off. The cast for the podcast is truly stunning, with a host of highly respected actors and up-and-coming actors, including Texan Jesse Plemons, Kirsten Dunst, Leslie Jordan, Joel Edgerton, and Michael Shannon. Since its launch, the podcast has been a major success – and there are still rumblings that it may one day develop into a movie project. From our vantage point, it looks like this humble dog from the Panhandle will continue his path toward worldwide recognition. Not too bad for the canine Head of Ranch Security at a spread in Ochiltree County, on the High Plains of Texas.

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The Fiction of American Democracy - The Wall Street Journal

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