10.16.2016  Novelist Carol Dawson's foray into history takes her down the highways of her home state

Roads as metaphor have attracted a pretty wide variety of authors through the ages—from the Apostle Paul to Chaucer to Kerouac to  McMurtry. The newest Texas tome to recognize the appeal of roads isMiles and Miles of Texasby Austin author Carol Dawson (with Roger Polson), with a foreword by none other than Willie Nelson. Dawson has been a force on the Texas literary and arts scene for three decades — from being a fine visual artist to writing widely respected literary fiction and nonfiction to teaching classes for the Writers’ League of Texas. She took a detour from promoting her latest book to be interviewed by email.

LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: So, Carol, what an interesting life you have experienced! I understand that you lived in New Zealand, England, Washington state, and Taos, New Mexico, to name a few places. But you grew up in Texas and returned to the Lone Star State a few years back. What brought you home?

When I finally came back to Texas from New Zealand (and living abroad elsewhere), I returned for a host of reasons: my publishers were in the U.S., my family was here, my parents were growing old, my children needed Texas centering. There were things I’d tremendously missed about living here, and other things I missed less. But ultimately, you can probably guess the core of truth: you can get the girl out of Texas, but you can’t get Texas out of her bones and blood cells. My travels and other life experiences had broadened me and widened my perspective, so that I found myself more ready to embrace my roots than ever before, for the best of reasons: it was purely a choice, rather than an accident of birth. There’s nothing quite like truly coming home.

You grew up in Corsicana, Texas. It seems like there is such a rich tradition of storytelling in East Texas. Did you come from a family of storytellers? How did growing up in that region inform your writing?

Storytelling is a long tradition in my family, as is all kinds of other public oral communication: my grandfather was a preacher, my grandmother a public speaker who traveled all over the country on the lecture circuit; my father was a trial attorney and law professor, my siblings state champion debaters and speakers, my uncles, aunts, and cousins teachers and professors, writers and lawyers. But the mentor, for me, was my grandfather, who also wrote books and encouraged my story-telling on paper. Historically, Corsicana is a wonderful place to grow up: a pulse of Southern Gothic mixed in with the everyday rhythms, a sense of days lived intensely and uniquely and connectedly inside the community, no matter how ordinary they might appear to outsiders. Corsicana has always got a cache of juicy stories. And I found that no matter where I lived, no matter how distant, I always tap into that sense of local and universal drama, that fascination with the moral shapes of lives lived within the town boundaries, in the books I write.

You are a very talented painter as well. Did you always want to be a writer? Or did you consider visual arts as a career? How do you blend the two interests?

You are very kind to say so!

I’ve always been interested in what both hemispheres of the brain can produce—in living as a fully-engaged creative resource. And yes, I’ve always wanted to be a writer, since the moment I first became literate. I also love making things with my hands and eyes, and translating concepts into a visual statement that prompts a very different impact from the subtleties of word associations and syntax. Mostly, I just like to use myself up as thoroughly as I can. I think that goes with the Texas credo: when you reach the end of your time, to die “rode hard and put up wet,” which might sound very lewd to outside ears, but which in Texas just means you’re a horse.

You graduated from the University of Texas in the mid-1970s. Many consider that to be Austin’s heyday. What was it like for you?

Bliss. Utter, vibrant, riveting, intellectually charged, freeing, exploratory bliss. The most exciting time, in a world full of pain and promise.

When did you decide to be a writer, and how would you describe your first big break?

I decided to be a writer as soon as I could form letters with a pencil. I started on little poems and worked up to stories. When I was in third grade, my older sister came home for the Christmas holidays from her freshman year in college and taught me how to write an Italian sonnet—rhyme scheme, iambic pentameter—which in turn gave me a structure, cadence—in other words, the discipline of a form. It was the best Christmas I’ve ever gotten. I’d have to say that that was my first big break. A springboard: the tools with which to craft and to pay attention.

Algonquin Books was your first publisher and Louis Rubin your first editor. Many would say Rubin was a modern-day Maxwell Perkins. You would go on to publish four novels in the 1990s with them. How would you describe those days?

Wonderful. Algonquin is a superb publishing house. I was very lucky to have Louis as my editor for my first novel—he retired and left the house just before it came out, so I feel I caught a train at the last minute, so to speak, with all his support and encouragement.

Your most recent book is nonfiction: Miles and Miles of Texas, a history of Texas highways, the story of the Texas Highway Department. Stephen Harrigan said, “In Carol Dawson’s and Roger Polson’s the story of the Texas Highway Department is the story of Texas itself—of Native American migration and Spanish exploration, of wars and revolutions, of skullduggery and heroism, of vicious prejudice and noble common purpose, of engineering triumphs and disasters, of greedy shortsightedness and grand shimmering visions.” Tell our readers more about the skullduggery! Describe the overall book as well.

The scandals emerge early on, when the Texas Highway department was first created in 1917. The governor who signed the bill into law that created it was James “Pa” Ferguson; he was impeached four months later, and then spent the next fifteen years (using his wife, who was elected a few years after he had to step down) as his proxy in wringing money from the department for his cronies and for his own ends. But a major power struggle ensued between all these upstanding engineers and citizens who wouldn’t put up with his grafting ways, and it makes for very rich storytelling.

You collaborated with Roger Polson on the book. Tell us about that.

Roger retired from many years’ service in TxDOT [the Texas Department of Transportation] a few years ago, and realized he wanted to commemorate the centennial of the agency. He had never written a book before, and approached me after having read some of mine. At first I was a bit bored by the proposition, as it sounded so dry and technical, but it only took a few seconds to realize what a great opportunity this was to tell the entire history of Texas, both pre-Anglo and after, through an entirely new lens. A meta-view, so to speak. Then I got very excited. Roger was the one who organized the project, spoke with the publisher, arranged for sponsorship, wrote many of the photo captions—all kinds of major tasks. I researched and wrote all the text. He has done an outstanding job.

You frequently teach aspiring authors through the Writers’ League of Texas workshops. Will you weigh in on the age-old debate—Can writing be taught?

You bet.

What’s next for Carol Dawson?

More books. More painting. And just emerging on the horizon as of this week: a book about a painter!

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