line with his wife, Katie Estill.
Reading Group Guide
WOE TO LIVE ON
A novel by
Daniel Woodrell
A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHOR OF WOE TO LIVE ON
Daniel Woodrell talks with Matt Baker of The Oxford American
SIX HOURS INTO my drive I hit the Missouri Ozarks and Doyle Redmond’s (narrator of Woodrell’s novel Give Us a Kiss) description of the landscape flares up in my mind: “Our region, the Ozarks, was all carved by water. When the ice age shifted, the world was nothing but a flood. The runoff through the ages since had slashed valleys and ravines and dark hollows through the mountains…. These mountains are among the oldest on the planet, worn down now to nubby, stubborn knobs. Ozark mountains seem to hunker instead of tower, and they are plenty rugged but without much of the majestic left in them.”
Daniel warned me that his house would be difficult to find, but I brushed off this warning, feeling confident that my car’s navigation system would deliver me to his front door. But about a mile from his house my friendly navigation voice informed me that “turn-by-turn navigation” was no longer possible. I cursed and immediately pulled over because I realized I had no idea where I was or where I was going. I had a general map of the area but I couldn’t pinpoint how to get to his house. I called my wife back in Chicago, and she pulled up a map on her computer and guided me, via phone, to his door.
He was outside, waving me down when I pulled up the small hill. I don’t know if it was because I’d arrived ten minutes later than I said I would or if he knew that my directional confidence would be tested, but he seemed to realize that he needed to be out front, that I would probably drive by a dozen times if he wasn’t. I was in the Ozarks, a little-known place that outsiders quickly stereotype and conveniently lob into the comedic punch lines, but a place, after all, that only natives can truly navigate.
This area (West Plains, Missouri) reminds me a little bit of Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Yes, especially this part of town where I live. We used to live in Arkansas—in Fayetteville, Eureka Springs, and in Jonesboro, for two semesters.
When you lived in Fayetteville did you run around with the University of Arkansas faculty and writers and such—Donald “Skip” Hays, Donald Harington, and others?
Yes, and speaking of Donald Harington, sometimes you get reviewed by someone who understands you so well that it really creeps you out. He was the first person to use the word “expressionism” to describe what I was doing. He was in his hospital bed when he wrote about Winter’s Bone. His wife sent it to me, a copy of his handwritten review. He went out of his way for someone he could’ve regarded as a threat. Some people choose to see other writers from similar parts of the world as a problem and some of them don’t. He was able to so thoroughly grasp what I was doing and even articulate it to me a little bit. I hadn’t spoken to Donald in at least a decade. I knew Skip, and Dale Ray Phillips was around. And what I liked about Fayetteville is you could go down to Rogers Rec any afternoon and find at least one or two other writers hanging around, sometimes seven, eight, or ten of us. Skip would be there sometimes and he’d fill the table top with empty bottles, I do remember that.
I’ve heard that early in your career, agents and publishers were trying to direct you toward a strict genre style.
They were trying to. My first agent really felt that was the path for me. If you’re writing, and not excited by it and getting some kind of interior pleasure out of it—that’s difficult to explain to people who haven’t experienced it—you really shouldn’t do it. In terms of a moneymaking profession, you can find faster ways of making money.
Then you gravitated to writing about the great and mysterious Ozarks.
This region is just not really well defined in most people’s minds. People don’t understand that you can go out in the woods and run into some stained-glass artist from Long Beach. Eureka Springs has got two or three classical artists who have chosen to live there for one reason or another. I mean, you don’t know what you’ll run into out here.
(Katie Estill, Daniel’s wife, walks into the room, and