Featured Interview With John Egenes
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I grew up in Southern California and came of age in the sixties. I hitchhiked and rode freight trains all over the country and finally settled down in Northern New Mexico for 30 years or so, where I was both a musician and a saddlemaker. I now live in New Zealand, in the South Island, where I lecture in music at a major university. I still play and record constantly.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I remember reading all of Hugh Lofting’s Doctor Dolittle books, starting when I was about six years old. I have always been a reader, and am never without a book. In fact, I’m often teased about sitting in cafes, a cup of coffee in one hand and a book in the other. I read everything: novels, science fiction, non-fiction, westerns, research material, political and philosophical books, and everything in between.
I’ve been a songwriter most of my life, and have written lots of short stories and poems as well. “Man & Horse” is my first stab at producing a full length book. It has been very well received, and I’m now working on a work of fiction, a novel set in south Texas in the late nineteen sixties.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
There are so many of them that it’s impossible to choose. Different writers bring different things to the table, and I appreciate all of them: character development and presentation, the ability to spin a good yarn, eloquence and literacy of the prose, getting a reader to set aside their disbelief… all those things. There are so many great writers that I’d hate to just name a few, but I’ll try. I love well written books, and even moreso if they spin a good yarn. I like various genres. Writers like Mark Helprin, Tim Winton, Cory Doctorow, Neal Stephenson, Annie Proulx, David Brin, Margaret Attwood, James Morrow, Ivan Doig, Kim Stanley Robinson, John le Carre, Neil Gaiman. They are all marvelous writers who know how to string words and sentences together that flow like a river. A treat to read.
And then there are great nonfiction writers like Sherry Turkle, Andrew Dubber, Katherine Hayles, John Perry Barlow, Tim Wu, Naomi Klein, Lawrence Lessig, Matthew B. Crawford, Kevin Kelly, and a whole string of others… Wish I could list ’em all here.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
“Man & Horse: The Long Ride Across America” tells the tale of a long journey I made in 1974 with my horse, Gizmo. We crossed the United States, coast to coast, from California to Virginia. This is a memoir about our experiences then–me as a young man with a head full of dreams, and Gizmo as a young, inexperienced Quarter Horse. It’s also a look back upon those times, and a re-experiencing of an America that no longer exists.
The main purpose of the ride–if there was one–was to separate myself from my own surroundings and culture. I didn’t exactly think about it in those terms at the time, but I knew that I had a sort of inner need to cut my ties with the people and things I was familiar with, for at least a short time. So, I did that for seven months. Of course, Gizmo kept a thread tied to all of that, and he was the one constant in the whole journey, and in a good part of my life, come to think of it…
I didn’t set out to write a story that simply said, First I did this, and then I did this, and then I did…. Instead, I wanted to say, This is what it was like in 1974, and this is how it feels to live alone with a horse, to carry on long conversations with him, to struggle to keep us both alive and (somewhat) healthy. This is what America looked like back then, from between a horse’s ears.
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