A conversation with author Ron Hansen
Conducted by Katherine Poythress
Katherine Poythress
Issue date: 3/13/08 Section: Arts
KP: When did you decide to write fiction?
Hansen: I decided accidentally. It's just something I really enjoyed doing. I read something like Jules Verne or Edgar Allan Poe and I would be sorry that the story ended, and I would want to continue it. A friend of mine was talking about his reach to become a poet and he realized it was almost the exact opposite: he would want to compress something, almost like taking a story and turning it into what you would find in a TV Guide to summarize it. For him it was all compacting, and for me it was all expanding.
KP: Have you ever tried writing poetry?
Hansen: I have written a couple poems. One is just a sonnet in honor of Gerard Manley Hopkins, so it'd be kind of a Hopkins sonnet, and another one was just kind of a joke going on, it was a poem for a book of poems written by dogs, so it was written from the voice of my own dog.
KP: Did you ever study any other languages?
Hansen: Latin, French and Spanish. A little German. I went to a Jesuit high school where, at that time, everybody had to take two years of Latin and for those who chose the classics program, you took four years of Latin. And then I had a year of Latin when I was in college as well. And then I've taken classes in French and Spanish as well, though I'm not fluent in either one.
KP: How would you say your brief stint in the Army has influenced your fiction writing?
Hansen: Well I did write a novel based on those experiences, but it never got published. It was called "The Escort." Do you know John Irving's novel "A Prayer for Owen Meany"? The end of the book actually is kind of a summary of what my novel was about. John was my teacher when I was at Iowa and he read this novel, and then when I hadn't published it, he asked if he could use some of the scenes in it. He didn't want to actually travel to Arizona to look at the landscape, so he had me write letters to him about what southern Arizona was like, and those are actually the letters Owen Meany writes to his friend John in the novel.
KP: "The Assassination of Jesse James" was just turned into a movie. How does it work when you have a published novel - who buys the rights and how the process goes?
Hansen: All the studios have people paid to look at all the new novels that are coming out, and see if there's anything that might make a good movie. And my novels tend to have the kinds of plots that could be translated into movies. Almost all of them have been optioned at one point for a movie.
KP: What is that specific plot characteristic that is conducive to movies?
Hansen: It's putting people in situations where the drama is visual, or theatrical. A lot of novels are really very interior, it's what people are thinking that is what the movie would be about, and thinking doesn't play well in movies. I usually have kind of bold novels, it's easy to tell what the novel is about. Like "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" is right out there.
KP: How would you classify your work? Would you say it fits into a specific genre?
Hansen: A lot of it has been historical fiction. There was one of those annuals that comes out and tells biographical details about a writer and it said, "Hansen occupies a peculiar position between the literary and the popular."All my novels I think are literary, but they take popular genres and treat them seriously. So they're accessible to a more general audience, but at the same time satisfying to literateurs.
KP: Were you pleased with the way "Jesse James" turned out as a movie?
Hansen: Yeah.
KP: You said you read a lot of weird stuff. Like what?
Hansen: I just finished a short story. I sent it to my agent on Friday, so I'm not sure what the fate of it is. But it's a story of an article I read in a Tucson newspaper back in 1987, so 20 years ago. And I was really struck by it, and I turned it into a black comedy, but it was a real true story about a woman and her boyfriend tried to murder her husband... and the funny thing about it is, they manage to kill him somehow and they take him out into the desert in Tucson, they dig the hole for him and put him in, and when the sun comes up they realize they buried him under an overpass. And several cars have already pulled over and they're looking down at what they've done, so they're immediately caught. And I just laughed out loud when I read this story, even though it's the story of a real homicide. And I carried it around with me for a long time and finally just decided to write a short story out of it.
KP: What's your advice to aspiring fiction writers?
Hansen: Any kind of writing is good for you. That can include writing letters. It's kind of a muscle you need to exercise. I think, also, the other piece of advice is to write the book that you would like to read.
Hillsdale College Collegian 2008
Hansen: I decided accidentally. It's just something I really enjoyed doing. I read something like Jules Verne or Edgar Allan Poe and I would be sorry that the story ended, and I would want to continue it. A friend of mine was talking about his reach to become a poet and he realized it was almost the exact opposite: he would want to compress something, almost like taking a story and turning it into what you would find in a TV Guide to summarize it. For him it was all compacting, and for me it was all expanding.
KP: Have you ever tried writing poetry?
Hansen: I have written a couple poems. One is just a sonnet in honor of Gerard Manley Hopkins, so it'd be kind of a Hopkins sonnet, and another one was just kind of a joke going on, it was a poem for a book of poems written by dogs, so it was written from the voice of my own dog.
KP: Did you ever study any other languages?
Hansen: Latin, French and Spanish. A little German. I went to a Jesuit high school where, at that time, everybody had to take two years of Latin and for those who chose the classics program, you took four years of Latin. And then I had a year of Latin when I was in college as well. And then I've taken classes in French and Spanish as well, though I'm not fluent in either one.
KP: How would you say your brief stint in the Army has influenced your fiction writing?
Hansen: Well I did write a novel based on those experiences, but it never got published. It was called "The Escort." Do you know John Irving's novel "A Prayer for Owen Meany"? The end of the book actually is kind of a summary of what my novel was about. John was my teacher when I was at Iowa and he read this novel, and then when I hadn't published it, he asked if he could use some of the scenes in it. He didn't want to actually travel to Arizona to look at the landscape, so he had me write letters to him about what southern Arizona was like, and those are actually the letters Owen Meany writes to his friend John in the novel.
KP: "The Assassination of Jesse James" was just turned into a movie. How does it work when you have a published novel - who buys the rights and how the process goes?
Hansen: All the studios have people paid to look at all the new novels that are coming out, and see if there's anything that might make a good movie. And my novels tend to have the kinds of plots that could be translated into movies. Almost all of them have been optioned at one point for a movie.
KP: What is that specific plot characteristic that is conducive to movies?
Hansen: It's putting people in situations where the drama is visual, or theatrical. A lot of novels are really very interior, it's what people are thinking that is what the movie would be about, and thinking doesn't play well in movies. I usually have kind of bold novels, it's easy to tell what the novel is about. Like "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" is right out there.
KP: How would you classify your work? Would you say it fits into a specific genre?
Hansen: A lot of it has been historical fiction. There was one of those annuals that comes out and tells biographical details about a writer and it said, "Hansen occupies a peculiar position between the literary and the popular."All my novels I think are literary, but they take popular genres and treat them seriously. So they're accessible to a more general audience, but at the same time satisfying to literateurs.
KP: Were you pleased with the way "Jesse James" turned out as a movie?
Hansen: Yeah.
KP: You said you read a lot of weird stuff. Like what?
Hansen: I just finished a short story. I sent it to my agent on Friday, so I'm not sure what the fate of it is. But it's a story of an article I read in a Tucson newspaper back in 1987, so 20 years ago. And I was really struck by it, and I turned it into a black comedy, but it was a real true story about a woman and her boyfriend tried to murder her husband... and the funny thing about it is, they manage to kill him somehow and they take him out into the desert in Tucson, they dig the hole for him and put him in, and when the sun comes up they realize they buried him under an overpass. And several cars have already pulled over and they're looking down at what they've done, so they're immediately caught. And I just laughed out loud when I read this story, even though it's the story of a real homicide. And I carried it around with me for a long time and finally just decided to write a short story out of it.
KP: What's your advice to aspiring fiction writers?
Hansen: Any kind of writing is good for you. That can include writing letters. It's kind of a muscle you need to exercise. I think, also, the other piece of advice is to write the book that you would like to read.
Hillsdale College Collegian 2008
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