To go with the Saunterer’s post (12/24/08) of Georgia O’Keeffe’s reason for taking latitude in her painting, Norman Maclean gives below his reason for taking latitude in his writing. The interviewer (Nicholas O’Connell) asked: "So in what sense are your stories true? Do you tell them exactly the way they happened?" Maclean replied:
No, I always allow myself a literary latitude. Often things don’t happen fast enough in life. Literature can condense them. I wrote the story on the Forest Service as if it happened all in one summer. But it happened in two or three summers. I didn’t consider that a violation at all.
Everything in the story happened to me in the Bitterroots. In the story I have a big fight. The fight was actually in a Chinese restaurant, but in the story I had it in the Oxford, a restaurant and gambling joint in Missoula. It’s been there for sixty or seventy years and a lot of us Missoula guys were brought up in there. And they said, “God, how could you put the Oxford up there in Hamilton?” I don’t think it made much difference in terms of the story. I felt at home in the Oxford, and I didn’t feel at home in Chinese restaurants. Little things like that, mostly for the sake of hastening the story on, of sharpening it. (Quoted from page 174 of The Norman Maclean Reader. O. Alan Weltzien, ed. The University of Chicago Press. 2008.)
For a brief biography of Norman Maclean, click here. (The Oxford is still going strong. For its picture and history, click here.)
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