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

The above is the 4th and final 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 fan mail, his partner Freda, Gordon Lish, Don Delillo, his agent, finances, and vegetarianism, and he demonstrates the sip-and-puff device device he used to write his final books. The following is a written transcript of tape 4.

HB: I got a lot of weird mail behind me. Yah, I got a strange letter from a guy in Du Quoin, Illinois, or something. It was a page and a half long and it was about, oh, you know, factory layoffs, people losing their jobs. And perhaps this was something I would want to write about. I guess this guy gets The Sunday Times in Du Quoin. But I sure don't know what he got out of that review.

SI: Is this replying to a review, he hadn't even read the book?

HB: No, he went out and bought it. And was gonna write to me as soon as he finished it. [tape cuts out]. No, I keep hoping all my old girlfriends will write to me. I remember them all. [...] I did hear from a guy I knew in high school and haven't seen since, he lives in Seattle. Who told me he'd read The Times thing, gone out to Tower books. And he was going to come down and visit me, I haven't heard from him since, either.

SI: How do your friends keep up with you ... [tape cuts out]

HB: Well, some haven't. But most of the old ones and close ones have. And I write a lot of letters, they write to me. They come and visit every so often. Kevin [McMahon] has been up here a couple of times. My friend Sam, who I have known since I was three, has been out here from Massachusetts a couple of times. But essentially I'm, you know, on my own. And none of these people who work for me are really peers. Except for one guy, who I can just talk to about stuff. And he can even tell me things I didn't know about. I mean, that's nice, every so often. And Freda comes once a month, at least. I mean, I guess in a way, we're even more dependent on each other than ever. Which is sorta awful and great, pretty inextricable.

SI: How long have you known Freda?

HB: Mmm, let's see. Ten, eleven years. I had to chase for about a year and a half before I finally caught her.

SI: Freda in college must have been something.

HB: I didn't, I hardly knew her. She was sort of this strange black presence, that I saw around, we didn't hang out with the same people at all. [tape cuts out] ... other, typical, sorta California airhead intellectual type. Beautiful redhead that I was madly in love with for years, had come out to stay with me in New York, and she brought Freda over to the apartment one afternoon. And she subsequently started fucking my roommate while I was at work. And that whole thing came apart, but I kept in touch with Freda. And we talked all the time and went out, but she wouldn't sleep with me. It would ruin our friendship, but I didn't give up. [inaudible] She's pretty miserable at this point in her life. But there's not much I can do about it. You see the picture of that old guy there, that's her dad. Who I got to know pretty well, and, he had a pretty black, uh, a sort of irretrievably black view of the world. Which I think he passed on to her. He died on my birthday, this past May 25th, had a heart attack. I was very fond of him, he was an old commie. We travelled together for a while. And when I came out here the last time, he drove out with me. And we went around to see the Grand Canyon and all that stuff. He had really bad arthritis, he was afraid of heights. Once he'd get out of the car with his cane I'd say, "come on Aaron, come on."

SI: Look over the edge.

HB: Yah, we'd get closer and closer and I'd say "come on".

SI: Does her brother come through for her at all, or is he off in his own world?

HB: They just were never close at all, ever. [...] Yah, there's some parts of her in that book. In different characters, things she's said to me. Some of that real bleak stuff.

SI: Yah, you can hear Freda in there a lot. I guess maybe that's why so much of that book was so comfortable for me. [tape cuts out]

HB: Well, she's the only one that has any understanding of where I am at the moment. Who has the slightest penetration to this reality. So, it's real important that [inaudible] ... and it's the same in the other direction. So we really are stuck with each other. Can't do without each other. So if we go we have to do it at the same time. It just wouldn't be right any other way.

SI: Do you stay in touch with someone like Gordon Lish, does he—

HB: Yah, I write to him—

SI: A correspondence kind of thing?

HB: Oh, not really, he's always in a real hurry. And I got pissed at him after that photograph thing. So I didn't write to him for a while, but we started writing again. You know, about literary stuff. Another one of his big buddies is Don Delillo. And I thought his White Noise book was just a fucking brilliant masterpiece. And I wrote Gordon a two-page letter about it and he wrote back and told me I was one of the great minds that he knew. Yah, I recommend that, I recommend that to everyone.

SI: The only Delillo I read was, uh, it's got "dog" in the title. It's about a post-Vietnam character—

HB: With the Hitler home movies? I enjoyed that, that's one of his, he has sorta two levels, or actually three, he's written books under pseudonyms, which were real knock-off fast things. And then he's written stuff like Ratner's Star, that was a real ambitious literary work. Which was a big mess with some great stuff and some okay stuff. And some bad stuff, it was worth reading, though, I liked it. But White Noise doesn't have any mistakes in it. Or at least I didn't find any the first time I read it, I loved it. And I made Freda read it and she thought it was great. But what's sad is so few people read novels, including most of my friends, they just don't. If I was more concerned about the fate of my work that would scare the hell out of me. I mean it's like, you know, the smokestack industries, and you say to yourself, Jesus, I mean, you're dead kid. There's just no interest, there's no room, it's obsolete. But as long as they keep giving me contracts ...

SI: Well, is Lish, fairly well happy with the way you're headed and what you're doing?

HB: He seems to be very enthused. I haven't shown him any of the new book at all. My agent keeps saying, "should I send this to him" ... "not yet, not yet, not yet." I didn't tell either of them that I was doing anything.

SI: How did you come up with your agent [Ivy Fischer Stone]?

HB: When I was doing all this research and getting ready, cuz then they just start pushing me and asking questions. I kept it a secret as long as I could. And I finally had to tell. Um, my agent, that's curious. I used to be an agent, and she replaced me in my job. And then went over to another agency. Where instead of being in a shit position, she was actually a literary agent. I can't remember how it worked, which one of us contacted the other. But I guess I gave her Newsreels at that point. And we went through, you know, 28, uh, immensely talented but no thank you letters, with that. And she loves everything I do, that's, which is what your agent is supposed to say, you know. She thinks I'm the greatest thing in America. So that's good, she's a nice lady. She's from Philadelphia, too. Had cancer, had a hysterectomy. Is married to someone, what the hell does he do? He works somewhere in Wall Street and he hates it. And the woman who runs the agency, who my dad knows, thinks I'm great too, so I'm in solid as far as they're concerned. I mean, they haven't made a penny off me, so [...]

SI: Well, are you still in a position where if you hit the big time you no longer handicapped?

HB: Yah, I'd have to put down a down payment on this house. Or buy a motor home, or there's certain things that are legal to do. If that happened I'd buy this house, or try, you know, acquire a piece, and make, start making payments. And that way I could maintain my position. No, it's tough, like selling that story for a hundred dollars. That caused trouble. And if I get a contract for a short story book, you know, another ten grand or something, that would be trouble.

SI: What's your limit in a year?

HB: Oh, I forget, I've got a lawyer. And that's what he gets paid to worry about.

SI: So at this point, what does the state pick up?

HB: I get, about, uh, social security, welfare, all that ... I think I get about $700–750 a month. Plus they pay most of the aids' salaries. My parents pick up the rest through a trust fund. Plus they pay for all the equipment. Which is a heavy nut, believe me, all those, all those suction catheters and gauze pads and all that stuff. If you were up in the trades you'd know how much all that shit is. Oh, I have no idea what the monthly nut is for that. Plenty. Plus these respirators, two of them. Which they won't buy, they keep renting them. And they must have paid for them three times by now. But we've stopped pointing that out to them, it's pointless.

SI: How many aids do you have in a day?

HB: There's three shifts. Now, a lot of quads who aren't on respirators, most of them, will have maybe two shifts a day. Sometimes they have live-in people. You know, they can be left alone, the worst thing that happens is, if they had a really violent muscle spasm they might fall out of their chair. Or end up with their head between the spokes. But if this baby comes off, I can't reach out there and put it back on, so somebody has to be here. 24 hours a day. You know, a lot of times, they don't do nothing. I'm here popping away at my letters and they're sitting out there.

SI: So you have a schedule of meals and stuff?

HB: No, I say, bring me something to eat, when I get hungry.

SI: Do you have to stay on a special diet?

HB: Oh, not ... I take vitamins. I have a decubitus, I should eat more protein. Believe it or not, Schuyler, I stopped eating meat.

SI: You're a veg quad, (or is it a quad veg)?

HB: That's right, because, for one reason and one reason only because of a movie that I saw. Where they showed you how they make the meat. And it was so horrible and so disgusting. And I said, I just really don't want any part of this at all. I'll never eat veal again, I'll probably lapse, but I'll definitely never eat a piece of veal ever again. [...] Hey, every time I went to an Italian restaurant I had the piccata. I loved it, it was great, but no more. Well, maybe they should have just brought me the veal piccata sauce on a big piece of bread. I probably would have enjoyed it as much, yah. So now I have to eat a lot of beans and stuff like that, which I fortunately like so it's no problem. No, I've actually been remarkably free of all the shit that's supposed to happen to you. I had a kidney infection last month, 104° temperature. Yah, it was kind of interesting for a couple of days. You know, I went down on a Sunday and came to Wednesday. Where have I been, it was like some drunken binge, when you wake up in a hotel room and it's three days later. But I haven't had pneumonia, which I'm supposed to. No, I have no lung problems at all.

SI: Can you show me how this thing works? Is that tough to—

HB: Um, let me, I'll get this guy to set it up. You want to fire this up, Paul? Bring that mouthpiece over, no, they're in the other box, yah, that one. CPM goes in first. Yah, that's it. [...]

PAUL: This mouthpiece isn't my best friend here.

HB: No, nobody likes it. Ken kept promising to fix it, but he never did.

PAUL: It needs a new clamp, that's more rounded.

HB: Yah, or at least a V, I don't know who designed that. Okay. Yah, put the WordStar in now. And stick that blank one on the other side. Can you make some more tea for me?

PAUL: Yah, hot?

HB: Yah, winter has begun. Oh, I forgot one important thing. You got to hook that thing up there. And you can bring me my [undecipherable], or I can do this without my glasses, that's alright. That small type is pretty blurred. No, it's still not working. See if that jack is pushed in all the way. Or is there a kink in it maybe? Yah, that. [...] There we go. That little scanner deal costs, I don't know, like 2000 bucks. Well, how many are they gonna sell in a year? [more bleeping and setting up] So that thing's almost full. All those little things are pieces of the new book. Ahh, let's see. [...]

SI: How is this working, you're stopping it on a line, as it scans down?

HB: [more bleeping] Children love this. I write their name for them and then make it disappear. They get a big kick out of that. Yah, it's pretty much just the standard keyboard ... And you can program things into this, I don't use that probably as much as I could ... that's one of the program lines. Now here's a rather long name of a character. Which I don't have to type, I can just do that. Common words, like "the," "and" and let's ... now, I can program in a lot more, but I don't. Because a lot of times it's simpler just to type. [...] The tab indent is set. The line spacing I always have to do, for some reason, I don't know why. [...] Why leave that menu up there, I don't know. I guess just because I'm used to seeing it. And it would seem large and blank without it. [...] But yah, you stop it on a line. Then hit your letter if it's in the first column. You just go twice, then, it's supposedly laid out, so that the most common letters are over to the left, now there's "E," right first, so they're the easiest to get to. [...] I mean, it's really a pretty neat little thing.

SI: Sucking and blowing, basically. It's all sucking?

HB: No, just blow, it's a pneumatic switch, that little black thing down on the floor, that's a good few hundred, that's where it all happens. And it takes, I mean, nothing.

SI: It's a lot faster than I thought it was gonna be.

HB: Is it? Well, you can see the scan rate is adjustable. I've got it on nine—

SI: So, you could go even faster?

HB: I could go faster, yah. But I'm comfortable with this so I just leave it there. [...] It's still screwing up on me though. Now instead of saying bad sector when it feels like it. Because those disks were all dirty and fucked up and so on. It says "R O" when it feels like it. And you never know when it's gonna do it. And every so often it does, and you have to do it all over again. And when you're working at this speed, that is really ...

SI: ... nerve wracking.

HB: But I always do so I don't forget.

SI: You save it as you go along?

HB: Yah, I started doing that, but uh, it will do "R O" when you tell it to save it. So you don't really gain anything that way.

SI: That's the other thing, I didn't quite realize was that your attention is all over here, right, not on this?

HB: Yah, I don't look over there. Sometimes if I feel like fooling around, I'll try and look away and time it if I can hit the letters. I can usually get the ones that are close, all the way to the left. It's a little more difficult to get the ones, oops ... shut up. [...] Our handy escape key. The other annoying thing is, in order to unlock it you have to turn it off, and then on again. [...] Well, if I'm editing through something, I'm gonna hit "control," whoops. See, it's easy to screw up. Okay, then you're locked into that. And you can move up and down, and like, if I wanted to go, let's say, eight words back. [...] I should have a set text up there, but ... eight A, well, you can hear it clicking, that takes me eight words back. So that way I don't have to keep punching "control." It's all locked in and I can zip around and up and down, but in order to get it out of lock...

SI: You have to go on and on ...

HB: And sometimes it just turns off. And then the aid has to come in and power on off again, so it will start scanning. But actually it's not, uh, I'm perfectly satisfied with that, it's that. That's what I'd smash if my hands worked. Oh, that thing would have been in pieces months ago. And I keep an old picture of my typewriter up there. Just for old time's sake, it had all those Chinese fortunes taped on the front. And the printer is horribly noisy.

SI: Is that one of those shrieky, beep, beep—

HB: Dot matrix, yah. [...]

SI: So, should I pull this stuff out?

HB: Uh, down below to the left, under the counter there's a power switch. Yah, you see the orange thing?

SI: Yah, do you shut it off with the stuff in it?

HB: Oh, is that bad? [...] Yah, they say you're not supposed to leave them in there overnight. I've done that a couple times, oh my god. That's what this repair guy told me. That just a speck of dust can screw these things up. And I was leaving these things just all over the place, and people were in here smoking and all this stuff. [tape ends]