Ron Tanner’s fifth book, a story collection titled Far West, was awarded the Elixir Press 2020 Fiction Prize. Covid-related monkey wrenches delayed its publication until earlier this month, but supply chain issues have not constrained its ability to find readers and pitch them headfirst into amazing fictional worlds west of the Rockies: Reno, Spokane, Baja California, Berkeley, Visalia, the Zuni Nation in New Mexico—finally, as far west as the Marshall Islands, the setting for his last novel, Missile Paradise (2016).
The fortunately discredited history textbook term is Manifest Destiny. Better perhaps to boil the 400-year saga of white Americans down to two verbs. Go and know. Then keep moving, no matter what you’ve destroyed in your wake in your quest for knowledge. But what happens when you hit the end of the trail? What happens when the frontier stops—or is stopped for you by poor decision-making, human loss, and the economic realities of late capitalism?
The Westerners in Tanner’s stories, drifters, grifters, orange sorters, musicians, chicken farmers, fathers and mothers and daughters, struggle valiantly against the closing of their frontiers. But there is always Fate to tempt with one more pull on the slot machine. Their victories, when they earn them, are shot through with Tanner’s compassionate wisdom and a sly sense of humor.
Among Ron Tanner’s many professional achievements are a Pushcart Prize, a gold medal from the Faulkner Society, a James Michener Fellowship, the Jack Dyer Prize, and the Charles Angoff Prize. I suspect he is the only Professor Emeritus at Loyola University-Maryland who has built his own wood-fired pizza oven. Ron’s ability to hammer, wire, plumb, lay sheetrock, tile, and brick, paint, wallpaper, plant, harvest, cook, and can, served him in good stead when he and his wife, Jill Eicher, moved out of Charles Village in 2015 to fulfill a dream project—restoring a nineteenth century farm in Reisterstown to working condition. Seven years later, their Good Contrivance Farm is an incorporated non-profit dedicated to “promoting the preservation and restoration of small farms in Maryland.”
Of particular interest to writers of every genre and experience level is The Good Contrivance Writer’s Retreat. Tanner and Eicher transformed two derelict outbuildings on their property into the Barn Loft Apartment and the Henhouse Cottage, beautifully appointed living spaces designed for writers to finish that first (or tenth) draft in blissful solitude. Check out the magic at www.historicfarm.org.
Ron Tanner is the man you want next to you when the grid goes out. (And it will.) He’ll know how to keep you alive and warm with his technical savvy, his unmatched talent for telling stories, and his great big heart. Join Ron virtually in a virtual discussion of Far West hosted at 7 pm on January, 26 by his close friend, Geoff Becker, who shares his gift for narrative sentences and blues chord progressions.
Baltimore Fishbowl: Can you riff on the notion of “far” and the idea of “west” in your collection? Are you suggesting that your characters don’t–or couldn’t–exist east of the Rockies? To what extent is landscape destiny?
Ron Tanner: All you have to do is look at someone’s screensaver to understand how important landscape is. Most of us want a window with a spectacular view. In recent years, you’ve heard of people restoring themselves with a “forest bath”–a walk in the woods. And now more than ever, people are hyper-sensitive to their surroundings, whether it’s the feng shui of their living room or the plantings on their patio. Which is to say landscapes include interiors as well as exteriors. And the outside always affects the inside.
The “far” of my west refers to how removed I feel when in America’s western landscape. It’s big sky country, vast horizons, frighteningly steep mountains. Living in that world changes how you see yourself in the cosmos. Even though I no longer live in the west, that change remains, my soul sometimes windy with Arizona dust and Nevada tumbleweeds.
BFB: Sea turtles, farm dogs, a celebrity chimpanzee, a three-foot rattler, barn cats, a mule, blind kittens, a basset hound, a flock of chickens, a death-defying Chihuahua–animals are key to the Tanner universe. Do you plan for them, or do they just show up?
RT: Animals make great characters in fiction, providing comic relief but also revealing a lot about the people who interact with them. That’s why I’m often looking for an opportunity to add an animal to my stories.
BFB: Several stories in Far West reference covid. Was masking up, or unmasking your people, as much of a drag in shaping the narrative as it is in real life? Did you feel a need to be current?
RT: I updated a couple of stories to include masking, which is pretty easy to do, actually. I like the addition of masks because it complicates the world a bit more and is fun to play with. It’s very likely that in the near future, a mention of masks will sound anachronistic. But, on the other hand, perhaps it will become a commonplace because all of us will be wearing masks regularly.
BFB: Two pairs of Far West stories are linked. “Winnemucca” and “Wheels” both feature Rainy, a drummer in an all-girl country band fast approaching thirty. “Boom, Like That!” and “Diversity!” feature geographically challenged teenage lovers, Jeton and Nora. Can you talk about their placement in the collection? Why did you space them the way that you did?
RT: These four stories are excerpts from novels, one published (“Missile Paradise”) and the other retired (the final draft lost in a computer crash). I knew “Wheels” had the right ending for the collection. And “Winnemucca” had the right atmosphere for the beginning. They bookend the collection nicely and give readers a surprise when, at the collection’s end, they return to Rainy and her bandmates in their Nevada/Casino landscape. The two Marshall Islands stories I kept apart from each other (that is, not back-to-back) because, frankly, I have mixed feelings about “linked” stories and don’t really enjoy too many in any one collection. I want more variety.
BFB: You’ve been writing short fiction–and playing music–for at least forty years now. Any recent surprises you’ve discovered about either form?
RT: I have an easier time writing now than I did when younger, mainly because the pressure’s off. But also because I’ve learned a lot (and am still learning) about how to do this. The main thing: if it’s not fun, why do it? Writing for me is an indulgence in imaginative play and it’s more fun than it’s ever been.
Register for the Pratt-sponsored conversation about Far West here. January 26, 7 pm.
