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Lawrence Clark PowellLawrence Clark Powell is an educator, naturalist, and author of more than a hundred books and articles on the Southwest.One Memorable Artistic Collaboration I'm not pinnable. I've known and worked with lots of writers and artists. You have to read my books! It's all in my books. But I knew Ansel Adams for years, in California. I admired him as a photographer. We had in common the Southwest as a setting; but we saw it absolutely differently. I wrote how I saw it and he took pictures of how he saw it, and it made a book (Photographs of the Southwest). But they aren't supposed to integrate. We're two individual persons wanting our own way and our own vision, and don't want anyone to mess around with it. Biggest Challenge About Being A Writer In Tucson
Best Neglected Resource I came (to Tucson) because of the UA library. Simple as that. I'm a writer and I needed a library, and this was the best in the Southwest between Texas and UCLA, and that's why I came and stayed. Our libraries need more books, more people, more users. The library defies use because it's so thick and rich, and you have to learn how to make it work. You have to be smart to use it. That's why we founded the library school--to teach people how to be librarians, and how to make librarians useful to writers. So we did a certain amount in our time, and I'll let others write about that. We came and stayed and worked and wrote, and all of my work from the last 30 years is indebted to librarians and libraries. Best Academic Role-Model I think we need people to stay, not people to move on through. Bernard Fontana (he's an ethnologist, field historian and author), has been one who came and stayed for 50 years. He's enriched the community very much. He's a wonderful man. Best Bookshop Singing Wind Bookshop has been around for 25 years. Winifred Bundy, the owner, was a student of mine. When she finished school she wanted to start a bookstore. I said, "Where are you going to put it in town?"; and she said, "I'm not going to have it in town, I'll have it out at the ranch." I said, "You're crazy"; and she said, "I've always been." We got off to a flying start. She was a wonderful student--learned to write by writing. I don't believe in courses in writing. I don't believe in creative workshops. Winn was just a naturally bookish person. She started a shop, and it's lasted as one of the (few) surviving bookshops in our community. She was right. People come from all over the world now to find her. (Her shop is north of Benson, off Ocotillo Road.) Best Reflection On Our Desert Culture
Well, you move on out, but the trouble is, it all moves after
you. There's no escape. But there shouldn't be. Out of the conflict
of feelings, things come; literature comes out of stress and tension,
and happiness makes no story...failure and tragedy make the story,
and we've had examples of that all around us. We just had one
and we threw the governor out of his office. There's some tension!
I think we're all going downhill fast, though it's a nice ride
if you can hang on. It's a violent society, certainly, that we're
living in; and yet there's a great peaceful area of it, out in
the desert.
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This is a desert community. It's a cowtown. Tucson has never piled
up any cultural humus, any leaf mold. You know, the people have
moved on. Unless you have a culture that builds up in layers,
it's not going to be rich. It's going to be thin, and the culture
here in the Southwest has been extraordinarily thin. I've tried
to write about some of the places where writers have achieved
depth because they've perceived (that) the top layers are not
the culture. The top layer is the land; it starts at the bottom
and works up.