On this Talking Volumes, MPR’s Katherine Lanpher interviews Minnesota writer Bill Holm. Lanpher talks to Holm about his book “The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth.” Holm also reads from book.

Holm, is an essayist, musician, and poet. He is also a professor of English and creative writing Southwest State University.

Transcript:

(00:00:11) Good morning. Welcome to mid-morning. I'm Katherine Lanford. It's time for another round of talking volumes The Joint book club of Minnesota Public Radio the Star Tribune and the Loft literary Center and our next talking volumes featured author. Is that Prairie radical Bill home? Well known to many Minnesota readers for his provocative essays and poems including his books coming home crazy box elder bug variations and his most recent book eccentric islands for talking. Seems we've reached back a few years to his 1996 book The Heart can be filled anywhere on earth a look at the power of failure memory and Tiny mini OTA. Minnesota will join us as we talk to Bill home who joins us today in the studio. Thanks for being
(00:00:58) here. It's great pleasure to be up with the freeways in the
(00:01:02) stoplights. Now you write early on in the book that when you were 15, you had a very clear definition of failure. What was it?
(00:01:11) Today in many OTA. I was a farm boy who absolutely loved the place. I wanted to go to New York City and then abroad I was disgusted with I suppose local culture in the United States, you know, Nixon was vice president that you remember and Ezra Taft Benson was the secretary of agriculture. I just wanted to as they say blow the pop stand and see the city limit sign receding in the rearview mirror for the last time
(00:01:38) you write that failure is a As American as success, what do you mean by that?
(00:01:45) Well, we grow up surrounded by the language of success and you've heard it in the last week or two in politics the kind of language of Triumph the language of Victory the language of we're first the stock market is Raging away. You know, our military is the strongest in the world. We're the winners and you hear it in Sports Talk and when you go to high school, of course, that's what you also hear you hear Sports Talk. Oq here winning the contest you here triumphing in somehow. None of the things that America wanted you to be good at interested me, you know Sports and making money and being a professional joining one of the professions law or medicine. I wanted to be an eccentric writer in to have an eccentric life and to travel around and see eccentric places.
(00:02:35) Well, then you've achieved success. Haven't you
(00:02:37) well in a way except my bank account is a little And so I suppose in some ways in American terms. I don't own enough stuff. I haven't accumulated enough Goods. I don't have enough machines. I mean, I don't even own a TV, but they're thinking of taking up a collection for me and many others so that I could have my own
(00:03:00) what what prompted you to write this
(00:03:02) book. I'd always wanted to write it. I wrote an essay the first essay in the book to be written was it called the music of failure and it was an old lady she who gave me the gift of Music essentially. She was a church organist a woman who never married and she worked as what you would Now call a hired girl and she was not a very good musician, but she loved music beyond all things and I suppose she was the first person I ever heard play a piano. And so she was able to give me the gift of love of music and of handled and Bach and of the keyboard in the singing and I thought here's Pauline whom nobody has ever heard of a woman who never went to school who was not good-looking whenever married whenever had any money who worked as a domestic servant who was a sort of from a failed immigrant family where nobody ever made any money and they all died childless and yet she was a marvelous woman and able to give the gift. of great art and civilization So I wrote an essay to honor her and tell the story of her life and describe the gifts that you had given me and thinking that millionaires don't give gifts. It's people like Pauline who give gifts to their fellow citizens and to children and to their neighbors. So I wanted to populate a book with Pauline's neighbors with the other kind of old people in many OTA who had given me gifts when I was a child.
(00:04:26) I would love for you to read briefly from the book. You have a sort of introductory section that Think sets things up quite nicely.
(00:04:34) Well, if this winter doesn't depress you this paragraph probably will You know a lot of people who don't hear this stuff and they say oh no, that's so sad. I found myself in many Oda almost 40 broke unemployed divorced unpublished my immediate family dead and most of the people I loved and valued from my childhood ancient senile or going fast. I was strangely happy and began writing affectionate essays and poems about those people old Icelandic immigrants with odd accents Aunts Uncles and babysitter's who fed and praised me. Aces I thought I had forgotten that came to astonishment life in the middle of hot afternoons Wide Awake these were no dreams. It was my own history my own Consciousness knocking at an interior door asking for coffee and a little visit I obliged. What else could I do? I was brought up to have good manners at least toward the old the poor the harmless the generous The Eccentric the simple who always proved to be the most complicated of all when you take the trouble to ask them real questions, And most of all toward the dead my stock of rudeness even disdain. I reserved for those who I thought deserved it the rich the powerful the successful the well-adjusted the consciously beautiful the fashionable or any handy Authority that tried to order me down any road to that might lead to my joining any of those gangs and a little little touch of arrogance in that last sentence You know about to do a little criticism of the author and Zayn I'll get get out of the pulpit. They're all I get out of the
(00:06:12) pulpit. No, but you know why I love that section so much is the idea of your history your Consciousness knocking at the door and asking for coffee
(00:06:21) to visit now. There's a word that's lost its Credence in Minnesota. But you know, I used to call my mother. I remember and I'd say what were you doing? What were just visiting? Where were you while we went over to kisses and you know, Sophie and Edna came over there and we had a visit. And people used to sit around the kitchen table and they'd visit it wasn't having dialogue or dialoguing together. It was yeah, we have a little visit, you know, it's
(00:06:49) visiting we're talking to Bill home. In fact, we're having a visit with him right now and we'd like you to join us. It's one eight hundred two, four two two eight two eight one eight hundred two, four two two eight two eight Bill Homes book The Heart can be filled anywhere on Earth is are talking volumes selection will Talking to him at the Fitzgerald theater and January 11th, but we'd like to have you join this conversation right now. We're having a visit with Bill home. You're invited six five. One two, two seven six thousand six five. One two, two seven six thousand perhaps you can give us your own definition of what failure is and what success is now. When do you think you achieved failure?
(00:07:31) Well as I described it in that essay, it was about 40 and I had gotten a divorce. I had not had any children. When I had no money, I had no job. I was pretty well when I was at claimed to be a poet and a writer and I had published an old poems in little magazines in a chapbook or something in his selected number of copies for selected numbers of people, but I didn't amount to anything as a writer and here I was and I was thunderously and debt my mother had died of melanoma without any insurance and I was home is an only child collecting the bills so I thought what a great. Well here I am almost 40 years old a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in debt no job. No family. No, no nothing and I was I thought well, it's an interesting situation. The universe is put me into let's see. What happens
(00:08:23) next. Well, how did you arrive back in Minnesota? It's you made some pretty interesting stops before you ended up back there
(00:08:29) when my mother died. I had to go back to probate the will and to deal with the bills and that kind of thing because I was an only child and then I used that Minnesota was cheap for one thing and also that it was where my material was is a writer and I lived on the east coast and I had been abroad and that kind of thing but I couldn't write about that. I wasn't a national writer the people I knew in my material were these godforsaken old immigrants belgians and Norwegians and icelanders in this godforsaken little town that if you told people where you were from, you know, what even then I used to get the Lake Wobegon jokes. It's a where are you from? And I say I'm from Minnesota Minnesota. They are right next to Lake Wobegon it he well except that he had of course exists and it is a kind of comical name like Saskatoon Saskatchewan and Canastota, South Dakota and Minnesota, Minnesota. And I began defending these people might say Well, it must be really out in the middle of The Boondocks. This is in the East coaster even up in the cities, you know, where nobody believes that the world exists West the Shakopee. So I would start telling these stories of these old icelanders and the things they loved their houses full of books and the gifts that they had given me as a kid and lots of them despite not being schooled. I mean they had some of them had never been inside a school in their life read in two or three languages read poetry honored poetry and valued it and people like Pauline without any musical education understood that Bach was the greatest gift that music had given to the human race and played that music. Every opportunity badly slowly and with great reverence and love so that all the old icelanders were buried to the you know, the last movement of Bach's st. Matthew passion and to Handel's Largo from Xerxes, you know with a few sliding missed notes here and there but nevertheless even with a Mist note, you hear something inside that music that says the world is a very large and remarkable place.
(00:10:36) You know, what? Review of this book said that you make a virtue out of parochial being parochial. What kind of virtue is that?
(00:10:46) Give me of being broke. I think everyone is Pearl fuel. It's just that in New York. They've never heard of many OTA Minnesota. This is often a problem that what are called quote Regional writers have my neighbor Fred Manfred was often Afflicted with this and that Fred thought he had the Nobel Prize coming and he was a wonderful man and he kept scribbling away these books making these epic novels of the settling of what he called Siouxland, which was that little corner of Dakota and, Iowa and, Minnesota. and of course the reviews in New York when they existed at all were terribly stupid about this, you know rough and boring life that Fred was describing and I thought to myself these are human beings Fred is describing and if Goethe was right that every human being contains every possibility then a place like many OTA also contains every possibility for human intelligence and for human failure and for evil and for cunning and skulduggery why they even have votes in many, you know many OTA I tell the story in the book and I can't resist many Auto was named in a crooked election with lost balance. You remember that flew when they had the election in about 1880 to name the town there were you know, the other names were Jaegers Ville Horton and upper yellow medicine Crossing, but the Norwegian immigrants wanted to name the down after Nils Jagger who had one of the General Stores, but the other keeper of a general store was a guy named doc seals. Who had been a sort of snake oil salesman for it'll probably selling whiskey to the local Indians and I kind of charming con man. Well dock seals thought that Horton and upper yellow medicine Crossing were pretty boring is Town names when the railroad was a naming all these little birds so he somehow connived before even before the election to get many Auto named many Odo officially by the post office Department. He had one of his employees after he had gotten everybody properly whisk eat up. Go steal The Ballot Box and go out in the mud Street in front of Doc sealed store and Tramp the ballots into the mud so they could never be counted and the Norwegians were Furious. I mean, so I'd say if I suppose it's a little like the gore force is now but I often thought of that during this election that too many OTA my little Hometown began with a kind of dish ballot disputed a crooked
(00:13:13) election. I have to say that I think you're writing would be different if you had grown up in Horton. Yeah it was There's just something Jaegers Ville. I don't think you'd be the same person Bill home.
(00:13:26) Well, you know Medio de always did turn out the literary types partly because everybody always chuckled when they heard the name and if you've got a humorous town named that already gets people laughing you may as well tell him another joke and see if you can get their attention and write it down on
(00:13:39) paper. Let's go to Marty Marty. Welcome to
(00:13:43) mid-morning. Thank you enjoying the
(00:13:46) program. Where you calling from Marty. I think Paul okay,
(00:13:49) mr. Home. Just wanted to say that I am a black guy. From Washington DC. We stumbled across one of your books to of your books at the Marion Park library and it was great Universal you were talking about a character who may have been developmentally delayed in a community where you grew up and it just sent me on a trip back in Northeast Washington DC to so many eccentrics or or people who were somehow a marginalized on the edges and but We're really a part of that community. And so I just wanted to say thank you and that I think you speak to a lot more people than just minnesotans and small towns. I hope that thank you for saying that. That's the nicest thing that that I could hear about that book because I didn't mean it to be a book about many Auto as a special place. It was different from other places, but rather that it was typical and I'd had very interesting mail on that book when it came. Sometimes from people in the South there from the West. And from various in a little corners of the country that are quite unlike many OTA and they'd say, you know, I knew all those people in your book The Old Bag Lady and the lady who played the piano badly for church and the carpenter with the loose Dentures who read books all night and drank too much whiskey and the lady in town who was the best cook and always had the best fried chicken. I knew them all but none of them had Icelandic names. I mean they had Yankee names or black names or German names or Jewish names? And I think that's what I meant to say in that book that these people exist in everybody's life and one of your jobs I suppose is a grown-up is to honor your own dead. We've had a lot of complaint in American books about miserable childhoods, and I think every childhood is miserable in its own way and joyous in its own way and if you survive to adulthood you ought to be grateful, but then at that point, it's your business to find something. To praise even in the unlikeliest corners of your own childhood
(00:16:02) one thing that struck me when rereading the heart can be filled anywhere on Earth is that this is a book that could be written about any small town or any just small community that this is a book as much about how we look at life as it is about how you looked at many
(00:16:18) Oda. And not necessarily even rural I think you know you could do this book in a twin cities neighborhood. I'm always sorry that somebody didn't write a book about the east side of st. Paul, you know, when it was still a sort of ethnic Enclave in the bottom of Payne Avenue is all Italians
(00:16:33) and or sweet hollow for the instance, right? We're going to go to Janelle and st. Paul. Jonelle. Welcome to mid-morning welcome and I just wanted to say hi to Bill is a longtime friend from Gustavus. And then also to comment on the visiting I Yeah, I had an
(00:16:51) opportunity to spend some time with my parents as last weekend and we did some of that visiting with aunts and uncles and it was great. You've got to sort of steal your bladder to get plenty of cups of thin coffee into it. And you know, if they're all the jokes that everybody tells about a little lunch but if you go out in this is true is true in Scandinavia is it isn't many OTA if somebody says will come into the house for a little coffee. That means three kinds of bars. And you know a little plate of cheese and a little plate to pastries and maybe some pie and whatever else is in the freezer and you can't not eat that stuff.
(00:17:28) I'm so sorry. We have nothing here for you right now. Here. We are visiting and we've gotten you bad coffee, but there are no
(00:17:35) bars. It's a little thin. This is real Minnesota coffee. You make here
(00:17:40) Minnesota Public Radio. We have to
(00:17:41) have no sir. But I do give I do give a recipe for real Minnesota coffee in this book. One of my claims is even if the book is no good in my proses lousy. There's a couple of Recipes that work in one of the recipes in if you had to guess Davis Janelle you remember my young zeg coffee Farm water was sometimes so bad in Minnesota that the coffee would be just acrid. So one of the ways they would make the coffee drinkable is the mix beat up an
(00:18:07) egg. I've never understood why the egg was necessary what clears the
(00:18:11) coffee? I mean so you'd get those big church basement pots, you know, the big white porcelain pots and you boil water in it and you'd make this sort of awful looking glop of coffee grounds and eggs and you drop it in and it would sort of go blowpipe and then you would steep it about three times and just let it settle to the bottom and then you had a little strainer to pour the coffee, but the coffee was actually so clear at that point because of something in the egg. I have no idea what the chemistry was that it would take the impurities out of the water. And you would get if not strong coffee. I mean there's we're not talking Starbucks espresso here. We're talking you can see to the bottom of the cup but it didn't have the kind of sulfurous taste that farm water. Sometimes had
(00:18:55) we're going to go to Peter and Minneapolis. Welcome to mid-morning.
(00:18:59) Hi. I really enjoyed your book on China. I thought that was great. And actually I heard you talk about Fred man Fred I didn't call with that in mind, but I had met him years and years ago and he was something and you know, he was six foot nine. So 610 on good days. He'd lie a little bit high with a I was just a kid and I was just in awe of him. He was something else but what I was going to tell you about was years ago, I used to drive a cab and you know, I could always count on the fact that the people that you knew we're going to give you a really good tip. Are the ones that you could you could just see that they just barely had it. I mean they the people that it was just amazing people who were just barely getting by and yet they would always be very generous. I'm not sure that ties how closely that ties to your book and what you're talking about. But that's what I thought of when you were talking about the people the myth of the failures that missed its from the small town that that's what happened to me. Those people were always so generous. Thank you Peter. You know that I've gotta respond a little story I want Timing chain once went out on the freeway between just about halfway to Fargo from through North Dakota from Bismarck. And there I shit on the freeway and you know, I was brought up in many OTA that if you didn't stop for somebody by the side of the road and your father heard about it you were in deep trouble. You were always supposed to stop particularly when the weather was bad. But always well I'm standing by the side of the freeway with my hood up trying to wave somebody down in the Lexus in the Mercedes and the Buicks and The Cadillacs are in the SUVs are accelerating and going by in the other lane. And I thought where are the cops when you need them? Well wasn't the cops you finally stopped. It was a poor young couple in about an hour, you know, 79 Plymouth half rusted out and the guy says you haven't trouble buddy I said, I don't know what it is. And he says well, I'm a mechanical and see what you know, pop that hood again. We'll see and he looks at it and he says, you know, I'm fridge or timing chain is out there going to have to get a toe into Fargo. But you know, there's a couple of places that I wouldn't go to because they overcharged you but this guy's pretty good. He's fair and he's I'll give you a ride into Fargo. And so I'm coasting into Fargo in this Rusty 79 Plymouth and in a way coming home crazy is about
(00:21:38) this. That's your book about
(00:21:40) China, which is really a book about many or to all my books are about many old. I don't know anything about China and I had some adventures and many O2 looked a little different when I got home, but one of the things I found was in a poor country when you would go and have dinner he'd go to somebody's house for dinner. The first place they'd have 20 courses and they'd be cooking on, you know, a five gallon pail with a piece of chicken wire and they'd bankrupt themselves for the best wine in the best food and it was wonderful wonderful evenings full of gaiety and then they'd say would you like to see our apartment? And these are the Dismal cement apartments two rooms, you know, no toilet no plumbing and furniture that packing crates and a few lovely things, you know, like an old piece of calligraphy from Grandpa. But you'd go through these houses and if they say, how do you like this? What do you say, you know, if I remember once we were looking at a lamp it was a light bulb with a sort of artificial Greek head over it. It was a terrible piece of catch and they said this is our weed. You got this lamp last year. What do you think of this? I mean, do you say it's a terrible piece of kitchen? It's utterly tasteless crap. You don't say that you say it's lovely, you know, it's a very nice lamp. They said you really liked it. It seems very nice and they say well we would be so honored if you would take this lamp as a gift from us. I mean the same thing what happened to the calligraphy on the wall or a family treasure you'd go to the houses of people who are so infinitely poor. And they would give you whatever you admired and I thought that's kind of the way it works. You know, and he Dinah if you go out to dinner and you know, you're there's an Austrian cut glass chandelier over the mahogany table and he said God that's a beautiful Chandelier and the host always says Julie like that chandelier. I love it. It's gorgeous. He said, you know, we've got too much crap. Anyway, we don't need that. It doesn't give good light. Anyway, when you're eating let me get that down you take that home with you.
(00:23:35) We're having a with Bill home. SAS musician and poet. He's also the talking volumes selection for our most recent edition of that book club. We share with the Star Tribune and with the Loft literary Center, we're talking to him about his book The Heart can be filled anywhere on Earth. It's a look at the power of failure the power of memory the power of Minnesota Minnesota. We'd like to have you join our visit. Come on pick up the phone 1-800-288-1560 for to 208 in the Twin Cities. It's six five one two, two seven six thousand six five. One two, two seven six thousand. Now if you need more information about talking volumes or about our selection of the heart can be filled anywhere on Earth go to Minnesota Public Radio dot-org and click on the talking volumes icon. All right, I'm Catherine land for your listening to mid-morning. We're going to turn now to credit Cunningham. She's standing by with the latest from the Minnesota Public Radio Newsroom. Thank you Catherine and good morning. President-elect bush is meeting today with a Democrat who could become part. His administration Louisiana Senator, John Breaux has been mentioned as a possible Energy Secretary bro has expressed reluctance at leaving the Senate since it's evenly divided but he hasn't ruled it out bush is expected to begin making cabinet announcements as early as tomorrow. I'd say one of the first appointments to be announced could be General Colin Powell as Secretary of State the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has been switched off for the last time in President Clinton calls that a Triumph for the common good in 1986. The Ukrainian plant was the The site of the world's worst nuclear power plant accident there was intense International pressure to shut down the Plant the threat of contamination has prompted Cargill turkey products to voluntarily recall 17 million pounds of Ready-to-Eat poultry products. The products were packaged under various Brands and sold throughout the United States Iceland and Venezuela. The company says concern customers should return the items to the store for a refund. The government is looking into whether the products could be linked to 25 cases of listeriosis in the United States most of which have a Heard since July the products were made at cargill's Waco Texas facility in Regional news and attorney for man accused of killing. His estranged wife has asked that the trial of Joseph who Joseph you be moved from the Dakota County to Hennepin County attorneys told the judge yesterday that the extensive media coverage of the death may have tainted the jury pool in Dakota County who is scheduled to go to trial in March in connection with the August 22nd shooting death of Marie you at the family's home in Eagan. The judge is expected to rule within a week. Eek his next court appearance is February 26th. There is a winter storm watch for the north tonight and Saturday and a winter storm watch for the far Southeast on Saturday. There is a chance of light snow in the forecast today for the state of Minnesota with high temperatures ranging from near 10 above in the Northwest 225 above in the Southeast at this hour. Some light snow is falling in Rochester a temperature a 14 above. It's cloudy in Duluth. The temperature of nine above some light snow is falling in st. Cloud and 10 above and in the Twin Cities cloudy. Is a temperature of 13 above zero, that's a look at the latest news. News programming is made possible in part by membership contributions from listeners like you if you have not yet made your 2000 contribution. Please call 1-800 to to 7 2011 today. Today's programming is sponsored in part by Betty and Paul Picard to wish happy birthday to two great guys Brennan and Hunt green. It's one of Minnesota's most beloved holiday events, the Minnesota dance theaters Nutcracker fantasy. If you're a Minnesota Public Radio member, we'd like to thank you for your support with a special members-only discount on tickets to the December twenty first performance at the historic Orpheum Theater. Just call Ticketmaster at six one two, six seven three zero four zero four and remember to have your member number handy That's The Nutcracker fantasy December 21st. 4mp our Members Only. And Catherine land for your listening to mid morning here on Minnesota Public Radio. We're continuing our conversation with Bill home. He is our latest talking volumes featured author. We're going to be talking to him on January 11th at the Fitzgerald theater about his 1996 book The Heart can be filled anywhere on Earth. If you need more information about talking volumes, you can go to Minnesota Public Radio dot-org click on the talking volumes icon boy. We look forward to New on January 11th also want to remind you that this Sunday senior cultural editor. John Hobbit will have a profile of Bill home in the Star Tribune. Of course. This book club is it's a partnership. It's the Loft literary Center the Star Tribune and Minnesota Public Radio. Now, this is a book club. You want to join come on. We also want to remind you that you can join our conversation right now. That's one eight hundred two, four two two eight two eight one eight hundred two, four two two eight two eight if you're in the Twin Cities, It's six five one two, two seven six thousand. Let's go to the phones. It's Mike and Barnum. Welcome to mid-morning by Mike. Oh, hi, how are you doing?
(00:28:49) Okay. Well, first of all, I thank you for your show. It's really great and I'm a first-time caller, but I couldn't help after was silly conversation a little bit of my history as I grew up in the Twin Cities area. However, my mother grew up was raised in a small town in North Dakota. So consequently, we spent all my Summers there and a Time. Little town of farming community of about 300 people. I grew up. I joined the Navy has been 20 years traveling most of the world's major cities and then a couple of years ago came home and rediscovered my extended family Memorial Day of 1999. I went to a small town to visit a spur-of-the-moment thing where my grandfather and grandmother are buried. I met one of my cousins and we went and while I was standing there was rainy and it was Andy and it was cold and it was miserable but I felt warm and safe back in this community and and I made a point of mentioning to her just just how that wasn't how that was strange and the people there and how they were so different and what she had told me was that when those areas were settled and the values that they brought in the diversity they faced with the weather and settling a new land how they had to rely on each other and how they develop those relationships and relationships with the environment. The how that was kept alive boy. Oh boy. That's true. It's in immigrant communities. You had no choice but to live with weather and in some ways, you know this awful weather that we live in in North Dakota and Minnesota is formed Us in his made us, you know, there are jokes that you know Garrison tells in their true about bad weather building character. Well, it does in a way and the character might not always be good and it might not always be something that we fancy we probably need a little more Italy and us to loosen up but it surely has something and that that's a wonderful image of standing in the rain to novelists who should read if you're discovering your North Dakota boy Hood read Larry. Why would he who's got a wonderful book called beyond the bedroom wall about family in North Dakota and woman named Lois Hudson who I don't remember the name of the novel at the moment, but there's wonderful wonderful stuff. That's come out of North Dakota about that. And when you think of it, you know, why shouldn't literature come out of North Dakota. We're out of many order. I mean, I was in Greece last month and I was floating around in the islands that Odysseus was floating around on his way back to Ithaca all literature is local and there's something parochial and week in a culture that classifies literature from one place as Regional and from another place as National. That's a weakness in US In a kind of inferiority complex in America will have grown up when we understand that North Dakota is as likely to hatch. The greatest of American books is Manhattan her California.
(00:31:52) You said once in an interview that this book also could have been titled renting the world from the dead. Yep. What do you mean by that?
(00:32:00) I stole that phrase from Robert Bly who used it in The Sibling Society. And Robert is talking about the relations of young people and old people in the fact that the young these days don't have much of a sense of History. That's true. I teach and we fairly well lost our connection to sequences of events. But when you think of it, there are a lot more dead than living and the world did not begin with your birth and that somehow the work you do whether it's a scientist or a historian or an artist or just as a human being living your life. You stand on the shoulders of your ancestors. And if everybody who's ever amounted to anything and given some gift to civilization that even if you don't love Bach for instance, if you're a Lutheran or if you're a human being you stand on his shoulders and even if you're not a reader of Russian in you try to be a writer and you try to create a room and create a scene you stand on Tolstoy shoulders and that's not bad. It's nice to have connections.
(00:33:00) Both suddenly feels crowded Tolstoy.
(00:33:05) All these dead people here piled up to the ceiling.
(00:33:08) We don't have enough chairs. Let's go to John and Saint Paul. Welcome to mid-morning.
(00:33:13) Thanks for taking my call Bill. Enjoy your work and I'm from Watson Minnesota. And I don't remember which piece of literature it is. What the one piece I always remember that you have written is the piece about having a prairie. I And that's an old piece for Minnesota monthly magazine in the 70s. Yeah. Well, I tell you that's one of my favorite little stories and I found out over the years that that's what I've got because the if I'm away from the furry for too long. I kind of missed that notion of a horizontal Vista. So thanks for your work and people like us should old when they take us to the North Woods and they shared The Boundary Waters wonderful and say get out the chainsaw. Let's plant some beans. You can't
(00:33:54) see. Well, what do you mean by a prairie? I
(00:33:57) And once made the distinction being the Prairie, I in the woods I the Prairie eyes the eyelid likes to see a long way the I have distance and also the eye that sees a small thing in detail. I mean in other words in order to look at the Prairie, you have to get right down into it with your nose. But otherwise, I like seeing great sweeps of landscape even a little Hill in the prairie, you know on the South Dakota border you can see 30 40 miles. And people take me to the North Woods or they take me to Canyons God. I hate Canyons. Oh Lord, I get claustrophobia and they say isn't it beautiful in the woods that leafy canopy and saying is there we go out in the middle of the lake where we can see something. I'm getting a little nervous
(00:34:38) here. Let's go to David and Grand Forks. Welcome to mid-morning.
(00:34:42) Hi Bill. I've read a lot of your stuff over the years. I was introduced to your stuff in a article in Minnesota monthly in the late 80s actually and Put all your books over the years and in 97, we had her little flood up here. I lost them all Kelly should send you a couple. I appreciate it. But yeah, I didn't know you had a new book coming out and I'm going down this afternoon and picking it up before I go to
(00:35:09) work. All right. Well, thanks that gives us an opportunity to make the distinction here because eccentric islands is your new book and for talking volumes. We're reaching back to an older book. Let's talk about eccentric islands for one moment you talk about how Effie Can-Can we were talked about how well they can build character, but you also write about how geography can shape character.
(00:35:30) Yeah Enix entry. Of course. I always was my joke is all my books are about many OTA in that The Eccentric Islands book begins with my first imaginary Island, which was a cottonwood tree in the middle of my father's flax field that I you know made into my imaginary Island. And then it ends with a little quote that I found in an 18th century Explorer in Saskatchewan when they were first exploring the trackless wastes of prairie Canada and they would see trees, you know, which was always a sign of a River Course in some water somewhere. They would call that an island and they would say we took the dog sleds toward the island in the howling blizzard. So those little Oasis in the prairie those places were trees grew in there was a creek we're called islands and I thought what a lovely metaphor so that an island doesn't only have to be something surrounded by water. It can also be trees surrounded by a half a continent of snow and grass.
(00:36:28) We're going to go to John and st. Paul. Welcome to mid-morning. Hello. Hi
(00:36:34) Bill. I love you support equality and the observations you have a small town. I've been spending a lot of time in. Early in the last few years. I've noticed a difference between the city and the small town in the small town when they make change they look in your eyes and in the city when they make changes they look at your hands and I've just noticed them into London difference in between the small town and the big town I grew up in Minneapolis. But what I'm curious about is why do the people of Ely have a real disdain for the big city people in the big city people have a real disdain for the small town people and was wondering what does that come from this disdain of of the small and the big well, I think that's an ancient. Current thing not just an American literature but in European literature the dish they in of the Urbane for the rural, I've been remembering the Marx's Communist Manifesto. He calls the idiocy of Rural Life and one of the things that communism will do is it will bring industry in factories and cities were workers can live together and not be isolated in the idiocy of Rural Life. Well, I think whatever March was right about He was dead wrong about that one. But that contempt for the country goes back a long way and either have contempt for it or to romanticize it. And that's the opposite thing. There's lots of stuff in American literature at the moment that romanticizes the healthy and wholesome rural character sin and evil and decadence and Corruption can exist as well on an isolated Farm among wholesome Luther and immigrants is they can in any and all sleazy Manhattan
(00:38:05) Globe. Well, you heard it here first. We're talking to Bill home. He is the talking volumes author for our latest edition of The Joint book club. Run by Minnesota Public Radio the Star Tribune and the Loft literary Center. We're talking to him about his 1996 book The Heart can be filled anywhere on Earth. We'd like to have you join this conversation. It's one eight hundred two, four two two eight two eight in the Twin Cities, six, five. One two, two seven six thousand. Now you've talked about how you're one of your passions in life is music and how that was given to you by Pauline bar Del Pardo. All apart all okay and you've also obviously you have this passion for writing one of the other passions you have that you write about in a very compelling way in this book is your life as an eater.
(00:38:58) Well, you know, that's because of my anorexia, you know, if I had to deal with that issue and I think of myself as a recovering anorexic in those who examined me usually find that I'm doing pretty well.
(00:39:07) Thank you for covered quite nicely.
(00:39:09) Yeah. I do love eating. I mean who
(00:39:11) doesn't what is vinit are te
(00:39:14) v? No territory is Icelandic soul food. For immigrants not for icelanders. I mean, it's almost there's just a you know something they still making bakeries in the old country, but you hardly get fussy about it. But if you grow up in an Icelandic immigrant Community, everybody's mother made this so it's the food and there's a version of it in every culture and I like lutefisk. Cabuya or whatever old bean curd that connect you to your own past. It's like proust's Madeleine's and you know the remembrance of things past but it's essentially a prune cake. It's a kind of cookie dough flavored with cardamom lots of cardamom if you believe in that leading a spicy and exciting life And then you boil down prunes. Well now the icelanders interestingly enough put rhubarb in it in the old country and Americans go and have a piece of Icelandic Venus are too and they say, oh no, I was wrong. You don't put rhubarb prunes prunes the ice under safe at are you talking about? This is Iceland. This is what report in Iceland they say, well my mother put prunes in the vena territory and that's right. They even have arguments about how many layers and other defrost it.
(00:40:20) So it's a layered
(00:40:21) cake. Yeah. It's a proof that you have. Accurate and it's and of course exciting people cure it in a cheese cloth soaked in brandy or bourbon.
(00:40:31) Wow, and there's a rest of their several recipes
(00:40:33) for this way and I'll but they put the right one is there and I indicate which is the right one and if you make the wrong one, your moral turpitude is your responsibility not
(00:40:41) mine in in this book. You have the best defense for eating lutefisk that I've ever read and I thought perhaps we should revisit that because it is the holiday season and I think there are many folks who are going to find themselves confronted with a piece of lutefisk. That's the right
(00:40:58) verb.
(00:41:01) I even would eat it. I think after reading or your thoughts on this so
(00:41:06) please it's like you're doing a Passover dinner when you eat the bitter herbs you do that to remind yourself of your history and of the Dead that you rent the world from and one in our region each lutefisk, they eat it not because it's a pleasure because God it's I mean think of it. It's not but you did it does connect you with the life of your grandparents and it connects you with the sad immigration from Norway and the upheaval of path of the population of a country. It connects you with their you know, desire that you should have an education and you should be able to live in Minnetonka and make jokes about lutefisk. So when you eat it, you should almost lift the fork full up and toast the memory of your ancestors. And then of course if you have you know, a napkin ha ha ha. No you should have a bite or two. I always did my auntie Clara's was a character in this book The Cook would make lutefisk. And when I was invited to Clara's his house, I knew. It was my job to be polite and when my uncle ABO said yeah Clara's the lutefisk is so good this year. What do you think Billy and I'd say well, you're right double the lutefisk is just as good this year as it was last year pass the meatballs, but you'd have to have a couple of bites and you couldn't make any smart talk because there were people who were involved in a ritual and it was not your business to interfere with
(00:42:31) it. We're going to go to Spencer in Virginia Spencer. Welcome to
(00:42:35) mid-morning. Thank you. I just like to tell you I appreciate this program so much and I really am enjoying listening to Bill homes. I love the way he's connected to life. I was visiting with a friend one time and they were talking about these people were from Dakota and whenever there was a storm how the people literally gathered together in a home so they could spend the time together in our homes. Do you have any Recollections of anything like that? Well, I was even worse than My parents were poker players and they try to get snowed in over at one of the VIN Marla him boy. So you could have a penny-ante game where you had, you know, a couple of bottles of Guggenheim ER and some tuna fish sandwiches and all the necessary equipment for poker games. So I remember many wonderful card games and blizzards you always wanted to be snowed in with card players.
(00:43:22) Talk for a minute about the farm where you grew
(00:43:24) up. Well, my grandfather homesteaded part of the land and bought part of it from the st. Peter and Winona Railroad in 1885. And he had come from Iceland from the coast and I make a joke about this in eccentric islands, of course all the isolators because they had no last names they used patronymic. So he was somebody's son or daughter had to find a last name for citizenship papers. So he went from his farm. He had Homestead it down to Marshall and The name home which is equivalent of John doerr Smith. That's not de novo unusual name, but I finally looked it up in a dictionary and it means little island and I thought that showed real humor on the part of my grandfather that here. He is 2,000 miles from the sea and 5,000 miles from his former farm and he calls himself Island right there on the Dakota border, but I the farm was on top of a little tiny heel about 50 feet high and like a crazy Icelander. He built it into the North Wind, so On these snowy days. I always think of my childhood bedroom where I take a glass of water and set it by the side of the bed. And in the morning, the glass would be Frozen that would be grounds for child abuse now wouldn't it? Haha. No heat in the bedroom
(00:44:39) you travel to Iceland. In fact you taught in Iceland at one
(00:44:42) point and I'm a homeowner and Iceland to hell. I bought a house there you did. Yep and little Fjord in the north. Not that you order my relatives came from but I think a prettier
(00:44:51) one. How often do you go over
(00:44:53) was there all Last summer had a little Writers Workshop Carol, why taught in it? And we're going to do that for a couple of weeks every summer and then I'm just going to spend the rest of the summer writing and Iceland. But yeah, I love Iceland interestingly enough. My affection for Iceland and my desire to spend some time there increased as I realized how on Icelandic I was
(00:45:16) and how about
(00:45:16) anybody immigrants? You know, we had a black Colin we've had a German calling we've had somebody from North Dakota and we've had a guy from the military and all of these people, you know have come somehow to these Shores but the interesting thing is when you get here even in 15 minutes you go through a sea change and these people who called today all of them. They're my cousin's not the icelanders how so we're Americans. I mean For Better or Worse, we're complicit in this whole you know business we just went through in the election and it's lovely to honor your own immigrant past but the moment immigrants get here, they go through a great sea change don't know if it's the are don't know if it's the winter don't know if it's the, you know minerals in the water, but we become more closely connected to each other than we are to our past, but that just meant for me that Became an Ever more fascinating place the more foreign it
(00:46:10) got well, you know one thing I was curious about is what it is like to observe you grew up with an immigrant's memory of Iceland and then you went to see it yourself. And now you have a house. There are these competing visions of
(00:46:22) Iceland. Oh sure in the the Iceland that my grandparents left is long gone. I mean now these Firearms have all got people are sitting on the internet sending email and their little kids, you know, 12 13 years old. Got cell phones and beepers and they're calling each other as kids do in the Next Room and say hi. Where are you? I'm in the kitchen. Where are you? I'm in the living room. Well, what's going on in the kitchen? Well, we're making coffee what's going on in the living room. We're watching TV, but Sven is on the computer. Oh, that's pretty interesting. I mean, so it's a different world.
(00:46:57) Now, do you speak Icelandic
(00:46:59) very badly. I can survive and get through an evening if nobody speaks English, but that almost never happens in you know, Iceland among old people sometimes I have to speak Icelandic and they have to forgive me for my awful grammar my Dreadful vocabulary and my Butchery of
(00:47:15) pronunciation. We're going to go to Beverly and Duluth. Welcome to mid morning. Good morning. Hi. I remember coming across Bill Homes book music of failure in a public library and the writings and the photography both. I thought were very powerful. But you know, I really think that mr. Home. Give me cousin bills writings should be required reading in our schools because we can learn so much from the from what he what he writes about how he celebrates simpleness and learning from the simple patients acceptance looking out for others really appreciate how that is celebrated in bills writing.
(00:48:03) I like that idea of using my books in the sky that I think of the royalty checks. I shall house in Iceland and you know by one in Cancun or somewhere. Well, I wouldn't actually that's that's a that's a lovely idea that the old music of failure by the way is still in print that was the first version of the the heart can be filled and it does have wonderful black and white photographs of the Prairies in it. I still have some affection for that old book and it's still in print with that one essay on it. That's in both books. I suppose in soulfire you somebody wanted to do a reader? Digest condensed version of what Bill home had to say in the world before, you know, he's carted off to the next one and tell him to read the essay the music of failure that I don't know if I've ever had any serious ideas about the world and my and my Notions of it that I don't say in that essay. So however badly or well I say them that's what it is. I have to say in the world
(00:49:02) you music is so clearly a strong passion for you. Writing obviously is necessary for you. How do those two passions intertwine? How do they interact for
(00:49:14) you? Well use music as a metaphor almost always has a chapter on the piano the island of the piano and music and I sometimes I print music in my books. That's my Indulgence. So the box elder bugs are full of my little box elder bug variations and eccentric islands has got a left-handed arrangement of malagasy folk tool. But for me music is, you know high right I get up in the morning and I sit at the kitchen table and if I get stuck in a paragraph is not going well. I work on hard piano pieces. So my technique always improves when I'm writing a book. And what I did eccentric Islands I learned about five or six big left hand pieces, you know, just working on left-hand technique go to oski and scriabin and Blumenfeld and that kind of thing and now I'm working another little book of poems and I'm trying to learn all the Chopin mazurkas. So if I get stuck I go into the piano and I work out fingerings and of course, I'm awkward and I'm not a professional pianist and nobody ever paid a listen to me, but it's such a joy to sit and see if you can make it sound. Little like
(00:50:19) Chopin, we're going to go to Gary and St. Paul. Welcome to mid morning.
(00:50:23) Good morning. I know you're just about out of time Bill. I wanted to know if there are any particular books, you're recommending these days. What have you read lately? That's really struck you the one that depressed me most as a book called The Twilight of American culture by Marshall Berman. It describes what's gone wrong in the school's it? None of it. We don't read enough. We don't think enough and unless we remedy that we really won't have a culture. I just got done reading a delightful not a delightful, but it's my favorite raver and rancher in American literature Philip Roth his book on academic Life The Human Stain I envy his raving and ranting and no matter how I try to fulminate I can never do it as grandly Azeroth. So if you like raving and ranting that one will get you through Christmas, but I'm also reading a book a kind of homage to I think the working class is coming back woman in Minnesota named Sherry register did a book about growing up in Alberta. During the big strike at the end of the 50s and I'm reading that it's just that of course, it's I was a teenager then and I remember that it was the end of Orville Freeman's political career. It's called packing house that can host daughter to wonderful book, but who knows, you know, those blue-collar types may become fashionable again,
(00:51:37) we have run out of time Bill home. We look forward to seeing you on January 11th at the
(00:51:41) Fitzgerald. Even if it's blizzarding. I'll be here. What a wonderful idea. This book club is thank you for doing
(00:51:46) it. Oh, thank you. Go home is the author of the heart can be filled anywhere on earth. That is our latest talking volumes selection want to remind you. They'll be a profile of Bill home this Sunday in the Star Tribune. We also urge you to go to our website Minnesota Public Radio dot-org to find out more about talking volumes and we urge you to show up on January 11th at the Fitzgerald theater where we will have a book club meeting and we're even hoping he doesn't know this yet to get Bill home to play the piano. Okay. We'll see you on January. Even if you've missed any mid-morning chose for the last week, you can find them online at Minnesota Public Radio dot-org make sure that you click the link for mid-morning. Broadcast of talking volumes is supported by 21 North Main.com where Book Lovers find 14 million gently read books including the works of today's authors. Each ailing was the darling of 1999 a year later thousands of websites are out of business, you know, it's been a tough year for a lot of people on the internet later. We check in with two e-tailers a year after they started their businesses. I would say we're slow and steady.
(00:52:54) I think this experience gives me a greater understanding of what I think is going to work in the
(00:52:58) future how they're doing on all things considered from NPR news. I'm Catherine Lanford. We want to thank Randy Johnson Genera Vasquez. Our producers Gabrielle Zuckerman and carried wire this week. Mike Edgerly is in for Gary. Eichten. What are you gonna do
(00:53:17) sir? Well, we're going to talk a little politics Catherine in the first hour Professor Stephen Shear from Carleton College will be along to talk about George w-- Bush and the Clinton Legacy one president departs another begins the job a new and then an hour to we're going to talk books. We won't have Bill home, but I bet we talk about summable Holmes books with Colleen Coughlin. She's a librarian. In and a bookstore owner and we're going to talk about giving books this Christmas. It's a great time to think about the kind of books that people close to you would like to have as gifts and maybe some books they wouldn't like to
(00:53:48) have why? Mr. Edgerly. Well, did I give you that list? I don't think I've seen that Catherine. I'll have to look harder for it. I suppose. All right, and of course we want to remind you again, if you need more information on talking volumes go to Minnesota Public Radio dot-org and again put January 11th down on your calendar for Bill home.
(00:54:08) Listen to Minnesota Public Radio. Even when you're out of town or away from your radio log onto Minnesota Public Radio dot-org to hear the latest news cast and live and archived audio from your favorite NPR programs. Stay in touch with Minnesota Public Radio
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