4-part Hob Broun Interview: Tape 1 | Tape 2 | Tape 3 | Tape 4

The above is the 3rd tape of an audio interview of Hob Broun by Schuyler Ingle, recorded on cassette in September of 1985. The interview was never made public, except some of the material was used in this obituary in the LA Times. The recordings were intended to be used as reference only, so the quality is not great, and at times it was in inaudible or unintelligible, despite best efforts to clean it up. There were also gaps in Hob Broun's speech, being that he was on a respirator (which you can hear in the background), so a lot of these long gaps and small talk were edited out to make it easier for the listener. On this tape, he talks about being a quadriplegic, mobility, traveling, memory, Woodstock, depression, assisted suicide, writing Inner Tube, rejection, criticism, Gordon Lish, short stories, photography, Eadweard Muybridge, and publicity, amongst other things. The following is a written transcript of tape 3. We will post the last tape as we transcribe it.

[FROM NOTES, NOT INCLUDED IN AUDIO—HB: $5000 for the whole rig (computer), paid for by the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation. Now that I have proved to be a productive client, they've given it to me. Adult and Family Services, or welfare, wanted to put me in a nursing home. Home care for someone on a respirator is an idea they don't like. First, there's something called the Nurse Practice Act which means only a registered nurse can suction, which is complete nonsense. When mucous builds up they have to suction it. I have bad sinuses and when they start draining down it becomes a real problem. But you certainly don't need a trained nurse, if you can clean a fish tank, you can do this.]

HB: [They also claimed it would be cheaper, which is nonsense, We went] ... back and forth. The day of the hearing, half an hour before, they gave up and said all right. And so here I am.

SI: Isn't there a center in Portland for quads?

HB: Yah, it's called Myers Court. It's near here, so the people who have worked for me have worked there. But, no, I definitely would not want to do that.

SI: What's unattractive about that?

HB: Oh, I want my privacy. I don't want to be in a sort of quasi-institution with a bunch of other quads. I would want to be living with a bunch of normal people. I'd just want to be on my own.

SI: You talked yesterday about how if you'd learned to be one thing early on you'd learn to be alone. And if you weren't a quad now would you be living that much different than the way you're living?

HB: Oh, sure I would. I'd probably, if I weren't with Freda I'd be moving around. Just like I was before, from city to city.

SI: So this has forced you to be stationary. How often did you move?

HB: Well, I mean, that's my choice, if I wanted to I could go on one of those wheel chair nature trails ... all that insanity. How often did I move? Oh, every couple of seasons after I left Philadelphia. I went to San Francisco. I went to Seattle. Went back to Woodstock, came back out here again.

SI: What's behind all that?

HB: Oh, I don't know, I just enjoyed it, and I had the facilities to do it. And I like discovering new places. I was taking a lot of pictures. I was actually getting more into photography than writing. And unfortunately that got cut short. I was getting pretty good at it, and it was starting to interest me more and more.

SI: Well, did you have the income still from your inheritance to bankroll all this?

HB: Yah, I had some. Which I subsequently had to [unintelligible]. I signed that all over to my old man. But right before this happened, Freda and I were talking about moving back in together.

SI: How long had you been broken up?

HB: Oh, we never broke up. We just stopped living together, we talked all the time and saw each other, and that went on, I don't know, a couple of years I guess.

SI: Well, it's interesting that you've been forced to stop moving and stop looking outward and taking pictures of what you're seeing, and just sit and come back inward, think of your own pictures basically.

HB: Well, like I say, that's the way I've accommodated to this situation. I don't know, I think all that—I think all those mechanisms of denial are just really just unhealthy. All those dying, cancerous children at Disney World, all that stuff, just oooah ... If I can't do it, I don't want some substitute or some pretense. If you can't, you can't, you just have to do, you know, find some other way.

SI: Do you feel at this point you're just marking time?

HB: Like I said yesterday, it's just the next day. I don't think about, uh, I only look backwards. I don't look forward at all.

SI: What do you see when you look backwards?

HB: Oh, I think about the past all the time. I mean that's my sort of a resource. But to think of 10 more years of this would be ooouuh, it's just unthinkable. You just have to turn away.

SI: It's life without parole.

HB: Exactly, right to life without parole. Can you pass me some of that tea there? It's probably just about the right temperature now. [drinks tea]. Yah, Freda just called me this morning and told me her sister-in-law, which she barely knows, has had these amnesiac episodes. And last week threw a really big seizure. So she was having all these flashbacks to two years ago.

SI: Have you always had a good grasp of memory? In your past?

HB: No, I've got a pretty good uhh.... what's curious, I don't know, with me anyway, it's like there are certain moments when a shutter clicks, and you get that piece. It's like a slide carousel, it's always the same pieces, you can't get around them. You can associate things with them, but that's the thing that's clear. And why the shutter clicks is a complete mystery to me. I mean, there are completely innocuous things I remember very vividly, that in and of themselves are really insignificant. But that will stand for a certain period, or a certain person, or something like that. And after a while you'd like some new pieces, but you're just stuck with the ones you got. Sometimes with a real effort you can find something new, but usually you're just riffling through the old stuff. I think about Woodstock a lot. That was to be my inheritance. That was going to be where I would spend my ratty, bad-tempered old age, throwing stones at passing children, "get off the property!" But it might as well be Venus now, for all that I'm ever going to go back there.

SI: What is the place at Woodstock, is it in town?

HB: No, it's out, a little over a mile from town. It's, oh, I think he's got about 30 acres by now. And a good-sized house and a pond across the road. It's nice. I spent a lot of happy times there, doing essentially nothing. That was where I would go when I wanted to do nothing, in a really concentrated and intense way. I have a really really old, old friend there, and back in the early '70s we used to go out and get drunk every night. I mean, you know, puking, falling down in the street drunk every night. And the next day we'd get on air mattresses and just sleep ... floating on the pond you'd wake up when you hit the weeds. And then paddle out to the middle again and go back to sleep. That was a pretty pleasant cycle. Then by five or six, you'd have some dinner and, we were ready to hit the bars again.

SI: Well, were you reasonably satisfied with your life and what you were doing?

HB: Things were great, things were coming along just perfect, yah. The book had just come out and yah, things were looking real good, which I guess is when this shit always happens.

SI: Well, when things look entirely bleak and grim, those are two words i actually hate, particularly grim. Or do you even bother looking at it like that? Or do you just wake up and deal with the day?

HB: Well, it's unavoidable. Sometimes you wish you could, you know, just click off. But in the last year I guess I've come around to some sort of accommodation to it.

SI: How about immediately after the surgery, when it was obvious that what you had was what you were going to have, was that a major depressant at the time?

HB: Oh yah, it was awful. I mean, for the first couple of months, I guess I was just sort of numb. And then yah, it was terrible for a long time. And Freda and I talked for a long time about how could I get out of this. But it's just against the rules. It's another one of those denials. I mean, that's about the most fundamental choice there is, and I am not allowed to make it. It's really crazy.

SI: Well, if you could make it today, do you think you would make it? Or is that an obscene question?

HB: No, it's a good question. I guess I'm not ready right at the moment. A year ago I was ready, definitely ready. But uh, somebody would have to help me out, you know. And whoever did would end up like Roswell Gilbert, with their nuts in a vice. Or their tits. No, now the only way to do it, is if she and I do it together.

SI: Very Gary Gilmore.

HB: That's the only way. So it's a pretty remote possibility. But at least it's a possibility.

SI: So in the meantime, you're left to write. Do you go outside at all?

HB: Never, well I haven't. Oh, you know, sometimes I go around the block or something. But uh, that's just another choice. That's just not my world out there at this point. And, when was the last time I went out? You know, on a trip, it was October. So it's been just about a year, I went down to the beach, and spent a weekend at this guy's cabin who works for me. And I might do it again in a couple of months. He has a really nice view of Haystack Rock. But I mean, what do I do out there, where do I go? Wherever I go I'm still just going to be sitting staring. And that's not uh, ... I don't know, it's just like rubber candy. And I'm perfectly happy not to, I'm not fighting any hankerings. I have my little routine, you know, from this room to that room.

SI: What is your routine? Get up and get bathed ...?

HB: Oh, it takes about an hour to get me up. And I come in here. I mean, I'm always on machines. I'm the perfect modern man. Either that one or this one.

SI: And you're on the respirator full time?

HB: Absolutely.

SI: What does that actually do, pump air in and out of you?

HB: I have no nerves to operate my lungs. If I take this off I can gasp, a little air. But within about... I don't know how many minutes it would take, but ... [cuts out]. Got to have that air, it's very important. And there's nothing left to operate those lungs. Last summer I was going into this uh, this real, you know, get with the program place, and they were going to fit me up with all these electronic implants so I could raise my arms. It was just all kind of so what to me gadgetry, which really wouldn't change my situation. The big thing was, could they put an electric implant in to operate my lungs. Well they tested me and found out they had just clipped every fucking wire. There was not a one left, so that was that. And that I would have done. But after that I quit going.

HB: The standard program terminology, is that these guys just give you more independence. It's just the whole denial game. I'm on this thing, I don't have any independence. No matter how many buttons they put on this thing, you can't alter that reality. You have to ... I don't know if it's a grace or a crime, but we large brains will adapt to anything, whether it's evil or a horrible situation. Well, that's not true, some people don't. There are guys I know about here in town who are quads who just, they're still biting people. And they just wigged out behind, a lot of them are really young. Like I said, they never really had a shot at anything. And now they just have to sit and watch. Some of them just, they don't get past it.

SI: Let's talk about Inner Tube a little bit. You said yesterday that you basically started with the opening line and ran from there.

HB: Literally, that's all, that's what I started with. I was up in Seattle for the summer and in the woman's house I was staying in there was a notebook. Fresh and pristine with nothing written in it. And on page one I put that sentence, or a version of it, beginning with those words. And I guess the next thing I did was buy some old TV repair manuals in a second-hand store and just sorta started flipping through them and writing things down, all kinds of stuff that I never used, that always happens. And it wasn't until, six months, I went back to Woodstock for the winter that I started writing. And I wrote that first chapter first, that was the beginning. And I sent it to some friends and they thought it was great. And then I just started writing pieces. And originally they all had titles of TV shows, all the chapters. But Lish talked me out of that, it was a bad idea. I mean, it was good idea, but it was just too cute. So I abandoned that after long hours of fitting the right one to the right one. But that's how it goes, you have to throw stuff away. And I guess I had written, oh maybe, 100–150 pages before I went into the hospital. And it was, what, maybe I guess maybe 8-9 months before I got this and started again.

SI: Was it difficult to pick it back up?

HB: Uh, yah, until one night when I had insomnia, which is another dividend of all this, I never had that before. But one night a whole chapter came to me, the one about the Armenian girl who gets raped in San Francisco. I just started writing furiously in my head, pretty much the whole thing from start to finish. And once I got that, then it was okay. And I just plugged away, started again, and re-wrote almost everything I had done before, just about every chapter I had done.

SI: What changed, did the point of view change?

HB: Um, I don't think it was a point of view. I think I just became more careful about the words. I just wasn't satisfied with what I had done. Some of it was sloppy and lazy. And this method is slow, and it makes you careful. You can't just pound stuff out and rush and run. And it makes you look and think, and there it is glowing on that green screen. You know, word order and rhythm and all that stuff is real important to me. You know, each sentence has to be right. Like I say, it can always be better. There's stuff that you just finally have to let slide, let it get away. I re-wrote all that stuff. And I don't think I changed the sense of it or the mood of it that much. It was just craft, as they say grandly in the theatre.

SI: I think, maybe it was Kakutani's review—

HB: Can you, I wish you'd send me a copy. I mean, it's clear that my agent is pretending it never happened. And I'll never see it from her. Like I said, if I got under her skin I want to see it. I got a rejection letter from North Point Press, on the first book I wrote called Newsreels, the first serious book I wrote. It was three-quarters of a page long. And this guy was mad, I mean, he was pissed. I mean it was essentially this was a disgusting book. You know, these are disgusting people, why should we care about them? The same thing. I loved it, I adored it, I copied it and sent it to people. My agent was shocked. And I said I got to this guy, really twisted his nuts. And that's what it's all about, you want to get into somebody's head. If they scream and squirm and hate it, it's the same thing. You got in there, either way it's fine with me.

SI: What other books have you written besides Odditorium and Inner Tube?

HB: Well, only two other serious grown-up books, Newsreels which is a novel about Los Angeles, which I still have some warmth for. And a bunch of short stories called Seizures, some of which I'm probably gonna try re-writing now. They're all at least 6, 7, 8 years old, because Lish wants to do a book of short stories.

SI: What's he think of them?

HB: Before this thing, it's actually over there in those files. He doesn't think they're as good as the new stuff I've been doing. Because I have been doing some short stories off and on. And he's right, but uh, i do like them, I mean, if I could save them I'd like to. I'd hate to think all that work just goes down the drain. There are a couple that I think I will try and rewrite, and bring up to speed or whatever. And Knopf for some reason I don't know why, is churning out these short story collections. And they are notorious non-sellers. Nobody buys short story collections. And particularly by somebody they've never heard of.

SI: How big a printing did they do on something like Inner Tube? Or Odditorium, you have no idea?

HB: Oh, I'm pretty bad at that. Freda always gives me a hard time about that, I don't know. Uh, Odditorium—

SI: Did Odditorium ever come out in paperback?

HB: No.

SI: That's too bad.

HB: Yah it is too bad, that's where its readership is. It needs to be out in those spin racks.

SI: Looking at all the dipshit women that Tom Robbins throws out there, and goes for miles with....

HB: Well, I think, Newsreels was mostly female point of view. A lot of the short stories I've been doing are female point of view. It's no big political—, it just seems that's what I end up doing, without really thinking about it. Women are more interesting.

SI: Well, was it an underdog down-trodden point of view?

HB: No more than any of the people I write, who are always in some way in trouble or fucked up, or wanting out, or wanting something else. Which is not how I felt, but I don't know, that's just what happens. I mean, it's not a decision, that's just what happens when I work.

SI: Does it carry through into the Surinam work?

HB: I'm not sure. That modern story line hasn't really developed yet. And I don't know how I will write about a guy whose 50 years old. Or almost 50, I don't know what he's gonna turn into. So far he's pretty, he's a kind of neutral guy. He's been through a lot and nothing surprises him. So he's kind of in his niche. This other character is much younger and he's in all sorts of trouble. He goes to Surinam from Kingston, Kingston, New York having never been to New York City 100 miles away. He's a glass plate photographer. I mean, yah, he's an interesting character, he's developing. I've got a pretty good line on him.

SI: Maybe he'll run into Eadweard Muybridge, while he's travelling in Central America, after he shot his wife's lover.

HB: He's an interesting guy, I would really like to work that story in. And copped an insanity plea and two years later hooked up with Leland Stanford. Yah, I just picked that up in a few sentences in some history of photography book. And I put it in my notes, I would definitely like to work that in.

SI: He has this whole period in Central America, right after he left the country and went to Central America.

HB: Was this before he met Stanford? Because Stanford bankrolled him at, wasn't it Penn he ended up at?

SI: Well, I don't know if Stanford bankrolled that, he did end up at Penn, but by that time he was established with his motion studies photography.

HB: Well, according to this book that I read anyway, Stanford had some major bet, for I don't know, many thousands, and Muybridge helped him settle it, with those string-tripped cameras. [...] Well, the whole technology of wet-plate photography is just, really insane. And to try and carry it out under those conditions. It's a wonder they got any pictures at all. And didn't all die at 30 from the fucking poisons, mercury vapors.

SI: So you don't foresee any great author tours?

HB: No, that was no loss, believe me. I did one shot here in town, less than a month before I went in, for Odditorium, I mean, what the hell, I don't know, Live at Noon, one of those shows, it was excruciating. I did great, or so they told me anyway. But it was not something I would I want to do more than a few times. I mean, there are people, Wayne Dyer, you know, there are people who will happily go anywhere, and go on your radio show, but oouuhh. Like I say, once I finish them, they're dead and buried. Because all the work is all for its own sake, there's no further aim. I mean, like I said, I like to get into someone's head. But it's all just to do the do.

SI: You don’t wonder how these babies are being received by your—

HB: Well, I mean I'd be lying if I said I absolutely didn't care, I had no interest. It's just sort of mild.

SI: Do you ever get fan mail?

HB: Oh, sure. I've already gotten a couple of crazy letters. The most mail I got was from the piece that you did. I got plastic prayers up the—, I wasn't in the proper mood. And I didn't save all that stuff, I really should of, some of it was— [tape stops]

[continued on cassette 4]