Steve Erickson Saw Trumpism Coming

fear for the values at its foundation. The piece is an indictment not of America but of modern Americans, people in denial of our past, still exhausted and divided by Vietnam, and too angry at each other to harness any goodwill. America wearies of democracy, it begins, and the result is a hysteria of which we're barely conscious, a hysteria in which democracy appears as a spectacle of impotence and corruption. Since writing these words, Ericsson has become one of America's

foremost novelists. He's got ten books, countless awards, and a Guggenheim Fellowship to prove it. But in all I knew was that someone had finally put his finger on what felt sick about this country. The nation gets meaner and more petty, he writes, until rage is the only national passion left. Twenty one years later, the national sickness Steve Erickson diagnosed has only progressed. The rage has evolved beyond

what I even anticipated. Then. I've become more aware over the years that have passed of this profound division in the country that I realized now has always been there. Um. You know, if people ask how did we get to where we are now, my answer would be, We've actually always been here. We've always been these twin Americas, the one that made a promise and the one that broke the promise the moment it was made. And we've never we've never really reconciled the two. And I think it's

going to be difficult to reconcile the two. I'm not sure that the America that elected the first African American president can be reconciled with an America that voted for the first president and modern memory to be openly endorsed

by the ku Klux Klan. You reference something here. I'm gonna read this um as one historical phenomenon after another from the assassination of John F. Kennedy, to the Vietnam War, to Watergate, to O. J. Simpson hurtling down the L A Freeways is offered as a moment when the country lost its innocence. We have not grown up enough to accept that America has never been innocent at all. That's such an idealist, romantic country was created out of such

profound transgressions. Is a more complicated paradox than we can entertain. Now. I want you to articulate for our when they can

read other things for written by you. You know what happened to us in the wake of Vietnam, You know, I think we we had to reconcile ourselves with what could not be reconciled with, which was fifty thousand Americans, not to mention the countless hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, of Vietnamese who died for what exactly I mean, we we don't have an answer to that, and nobody believed anymore at that point that national interests that right, the

collapse of Southeast Asia will somehow to us meant meant anything to the national interests, in the same way that a hundred years later, we still don't know what World War one was really about you were old enough to go to Vietnam? Did you go? No? I um was in Nixon's lottery, which matched you up with your birthday, and you've got a number, and if your number was below two hundred, you were probably gonna go. I got number three. Your life was hanging in the balance depending

on this random chance of this lottery. And I think that when that can't be reconciled a national people have to create some psychic rationalization for it. It's it's because the meaninglessness is too overwhelming to live with someone like Cruise who say that Vietnam wasn't the problem, the countercultural reaction to it and the lawlessness of what happened to it,

nothing infuriates me more than that. You can take the excesses of the drugs, the silliness, the ephemera of the represent tations of the countercultural movement in our society and stripped those away and say this was when people cared. And people who belittle and blame the countercultural protests of that period. I don't know why it is that nothing infuriates me more than that when I read that, well, because they're blaming the wrong thing. But I will make

this distinction. The first time somebody burned an American flag, I think we lost the next fifty years. There were bad tactics in the service of good causes that the right was then able to But to go back even further, you know, talking about what we've choked down and the loss of American innocence. A hundred and fifty years after the fact, there are still millions of white people who will not admit the Civil War was about slavery. That is the American version of Holocaust denial. It keeps us

from becoming what we want to become. It's a lack of a knowledgement that keeps us from fulfilling the American idea. I think Americans, whether they're trying to rationalize the meaninglessness of Vietnam or two and fifty years of slavery, it maybe in the American DNA too, always think that everything is year zero. It might be in the American DNA to have cut ourselves loose from history and therefore not ever have to answer for it or to it. Trump

is not something that happened to America. America happened to America, and Trump is the result of that. Trump is um was born out of claims, in the face of all evidence, that the first African American president was not a real American and not a real president, to which the Republican Party at the time said almost nothing. And the Republican Party deserved what it got. Unfortunately we got it too.

What is your political process and what's your political rearing with your parents when you were young group in southern California, your whole life, that's correct, And um, I was raised a conservative Republican by my my parents who were you know, my were artists, who were artists and who had started out when they were very young as FDR Democrats. But like a lot of people at that point, we're starting

to drift right. Word well, I think that Cold War Cold War um, and then later on in the sixties reaction to the counterculture um, which I you know, I think has has defined our politics over half a century more than we know. I think a lot of the reason, for instance, that working class people are persuaded to not vote their economic interest is because of these values that came out of this county linked between the culture or

the mainstream and the states exactly. And and so you know, I I was raised a m a Republican conservative, And to make a long story short, and number of things happened. First of all, by the time I came of age, or was seventeen or eighteen, I realized that on the great domestic crucible of the day, which was civil rights and racial justice, conservatives were on the wrong side morally

and historically. Um That in turn undercut a basic tenet of conservatism, which says that the more that power devolves away from the federal government, down to the state, down to the locality, the greater individual freedom grows. The problem

with that is that is contradicted by history. On any number of occasions, it's taken the federal government intervening against the states to secure the a vidual freedoms of African Americans, women, gay people, and and then as my um ideas about the role of government in life changed, as I accepted that sometimes it takes the federal government to preserve the

social contract, uh conservatism changed. It became when I was identifying as a conservative as a teenager, it was closer to what we now think of as libertarianism, and in the late seventies and early eighties it starts to become On the one hand, more corporate and on the other hand, more theocratic. And it felt like, you know that that for all the lips service that conservatives give individual freedom,

what they really cared about was order. And the only individual freedoms that I've ever heard conservatives get exercised about where the freedom to make a profit and the freedom to own a gun. And so generally my polity picks shifted, while I think arguably the center of gravity shifted, because if you go back and look at, for instance, Barry Goldwaters views. Now, I mean, Goldwater was an environmentalist, he was pro gay rights, he was pro choice, he was

he supported the Voting Rights Act. Goldwater rightly identified as the most extreme nominee of a party in the twentieth century. Is well, I mean, his vote against the sixty four Civil Rights Act was a bad vote. Nonetheless, I think that his views, which were so extreme in nineteen sixty four, are now significantly to the left of the current Republican Party. So I shifted one way, the center of our country's political gravity shifted another way, and that's why I wound

up where I'm wound up to me. At the same time, philosophically, it's been this fiction between capitalism and democracy, right, like how much we're on a boat and which which containers to be throw over the side of the boat to keep the boat from from capsizing. Yeah, And I think the last ten to twenty years have just have just confirmed that or or validated unfettered capitalism nearly drove this

country over a cliff ten years. And you know, I think that there's a lot to the argument, the current argument that we're pretty close to an oligarchy at this point where we're there. It's very demoralizing, it's very depressing. Fifty years ago you could use the word capitalism and the expression free enterprise in the same sentence. Now it's

laughable to to think that capitalism is free enterprise. And the conservatives, who, um, you know, who are distressed by centralized state power, never seemed to feel the same distress over centralized corporate power. What was writing in your life? I mean, I'm not just saying that you were such an amazing writer and you've been reviewed with some of the most I mean just glowing. I mean that's a cliche.

And what was the writing process for you as a child and when when did you realize this is what I would do? I realized that pretty early. I was when I was young, let's say five years old, I stuttered very badly, and to the point the teachers I thought I couldn't read. And this is actually fairly typical of writers. You know, you have a verbal facility, but it's being obstructed, shuttered, shuttered in your speech, so you retreat inside your head. Uh, the verbal facility manifests itself

in written words. You're living inside your imagination. It doesn't make you more sociable. But um, I the time I got to college, I liked college a lot. I went to u C. L A. And I was why and why so for someone who's open minded, is you? Is why so California centric? Was there any thoughts of you, I want to go to Berlin, I want to go to London. I want to go Yes, but but it was far enough and it was and I remember a sense of liberation the time where you wining the valley

again Granada Hill. So for those who don't know Los Angeles, he's he's right. The gap between Granada Hills and Westwood Westwood really is like Paris. It was absolutely it was another world, you know, And I thought Westwood was the big city, you know it was, and uh and and after that, I um, I actually did go to europe Um and I lived there often over a while. So

U c l A was that step away. Steve Ericson is one of our leading thinkers on the legacy of the Sick Days and seventies, But a few people had more of an impact on how Americans saw that era in real time than Dan Rather. When President Nixon was elected in Night, I'm frankly vought at the time, here's a new breath of air. But I quickly learned that the Unixon people, including President Nixon, they had such a

deep and abiding hatred for the Prince. It revealed to me the first time we have a problem here an important reminder that America has come through this before. Rather his new book What Unites Us answers Ericson's question, can the many Americas be reconciled with a resounding yes. Here my whole conversation with Dan Rather at Here's the Thing, Dot Org, this is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening

to Here's the Thing. Steve Ericsson's most recent book is Shadow Bad, a funny, heartbreaking road trip through our divided country. The writing is intensely visual, which reflects Ericson's own alternate life path. I majored in film. Well, I started out a political science major UM, and I was taking a lot of literature courses, and I wanted to take some

film courses. But the bureaucracy at the time and may still be the case, was such that, UM, I could still take the political courses and the literature courses if I was a film major, but I couldn't take the film courses if I was a policy major. So it

was a completely tactical choice, you know. Um it was a way of since since I knew I wanted to be a writer, and since what I majored and really didn't matter much to me, it was a matter it doesn't doesn't matter what you're majoring, right, because I was going to go off and do what I was gonna do. And so I made the strategic choice that allowed me to do all the things. Was film school, top film school. It was great, But you didn't pursue that. I didn't

pursue being a filmmaker. UM, could you have said, do you think you were capable? The guy, the stuttering boy from Granada Hills who goes inward with that was he was he able to express what he wanted to in film as well as as writing. I think you nailed it with the question. I mean I I realized at some point that I probably shouldn't make a choice. That both of these things would be really hard. It would

be impossible to try to do both. And the thing that that you're right on about is that film, as you would know better than I, is a more collaborative highly so ever as being a writer, you lock yourself in a room and you have as little um interaction with humanity as you can get away with. And you know what that suited me? That that's who I was. Um, what's the first time you sold a piece and you became a professional writer? I sold a piece actually to

the Los Angeles Times Calendar. The gist of it was that the line between reality and fiction was blurring. This was the early seventies. How does that work? Well, you know it works the way it still works, which is that I knew somebody who knew somebody and who could get the piece into the hands of the editor of what was then the l A Times Calendar and and and give it a real read. Because that's what it takes. I teach writing, and as I tell my students without

trying to depress them unduly. You know, editors look for a reason to say no. They're not looking for a reason to say yes. So you have to be sure you don't give them any reasons to say Now, how do you do that? When I submit a novel, for instance, it's it's pristine, it's so clean you can eat off the thing, and um it, it's laid out to look the way the book is gonna look, so they can

visualize how how it's gonna look, you know. And when I get papers from students where there are typos and that that kind of thing, I just explained to them you can't do that, I mean everything can you expect people to care if you don't care exactly? And every little flaw becomes cumulative, it builds up and it it reinforces this, uh, this impulse to turn the thing down. So you wrote this piece that did you have books you've written, you know, in your pocket. I was writing

novels all the time. I was writing, since I had I was in high school. I mean, I wrote five levels before I published one. Your first book that's published as what the first book is published in ve That's twelve years after I had published the first piece. And if you had told me at that time it was going to be I'm glad there was nobody to tell me it was going to be another twelve years, because

they they felt like twelve years in the wilderness. And by the time I sold the book, I remember the feeling was more relief than anything else, because it just seemed like it was it was never going to happen. And that is the same thing somebody who knows somebody. The thing that was instrumental was finding the right agent during that twelve years. How do you support yourself? You were doing the teaching thing then, were you know? I wasn't. I was what does the writer do? Those was right.

I was working for the PR department of the Auto Club. I had a job. I had a job job. I was also writing freelance pieces for the l A Times, the l A Weekly, which just had just launched in the late seventies. The Los Angeles Reader was another so um. I was cobbling together a living. But it was always clear in my mind that, you know, success for me meant becoming a published novelist. And when you got the

book published because you got a literary agent. And are you still with that literary Yes, you are, I am. And I had had several agents before her, none of them could sell my work. Um, I had gone to New York, uh to find an agent. I've interviewed with four agents. They had all read this, this novel what wound up being my first published novel. They all said, you know, it's a really interesting book, but I don't

think I can sell it. And then I finally found somebody who said, I don't know if I and sell it, but it's a really interesting book. And she wound up selling it to somebody who had turned it down. What's her name? Melanie Jackson? Who she? What company is she with? Her own? Why have you stayed with her all this time? What does she do for you? So here's a quick story that revolves around that first novel and how the

first novel sold. Um. She had submitted it to somebody as Simon, and she was who had turned it down, And a couple of months passed by and it's gone to some other people, and then one afternoon she gets a phone call from this editor as Simon, and she was through who had turned the book down, and the editor was bemoaning the fact that another book that she had turned down had gone on to be published and had gotten attention and was doing well, and she was thinking,

I shouldn't have turned that down in my age, and said, yeah, and you're gonna feel the same way when somebody publishes Ericsson And the next day, the next day Simon and Schuster bought the book. That's what a good agent does. You're pretty tough on Bill Clinton, and some of your writing, it goes to you. On the simplest level, he let you down. Yeah. I wound up voting for him twice. I still believe that, um uh, he might have done the country a favor if he had resigned during Monica.

It would have put Al Gore in, who probably would have won in two thousand. You know, once the issue became less about you know, he has a fair and became more about impeachment, I switched. I did not think what he had done was a constitutionally impeachable offense, and it was clear to me that that the Constitution was being molested by Republicans. Ken Starr has more conscience for what he did to this country. But you know, Bill Clinton sure helped them out keep giving them a target.

As my friends said to me, he's he said to me, I had this horrible incident. I'll mention this because I throw my own thing on the table. I had this horrible incident where I left this blistering voicemail from my daughter that my then ex wife put on the internet. She released it to a tabloid organization that played it on the internet. And as my therapist said back then, he said, well, you know that was wrong, and that

made things worse, and that was terrible. But none of this would have happened if you hadn't left the voicemail. None of this would have happened if he hadn't done what he did. In the time we have left, I want to talk to about your books. How does that process for? Again, for our six listeners who are writers out there? The must be a rabid reader. I used to be a rabid reader. I don't always have the time to read, and when I'm working on a novel,

I don't read other fiction. I'll read history, or I may read poetry even but I don't I don't want to go into somebody else's world. Who are right? Was that you admire Pension, Marquez, Faulkner, Henry Miller, the Brontes, um. Those those were writers who influenced me in some way. Do you have a reading list you give to your students in the I do send it to me, Okay, I want that if I get one thing out of this. I mean they tend to, uh, they tend to form

object lessons. So you know you want to if I want to, for instance, show the students how landscape can be a character in um in a story The Sheltering sky By by Paul Bulls, or how voice is can drive a narrative Miller's Tropic of Cancer. Um. But and so that that's the function of the The reading list tends to Are you still teaching now? And you teach at I teach that you see riverside, and you see riverside, and so that's uh, how far off a dry is

that for you? From? Oh my god? I know? And you teach how the class meets how often once a week, once a week for three four hours, right? And if I have two classes that quarter, um, I'll put them both on the same day and I'll have one monster day. So just getting it out there, getting it out there and and then the class is entitled what well there are? I have the luxury of creating my own classes. Sometimes I'm teaching workshops, so we're critiquing the work of the students.

This coming quarter, this would probably be interesting to you. I'm teaching UM a course of fiction into film. That is, I give them a list of novels and then we watch the adaptation that this coming quarter September, October November. This this airs said, I'm not going to be out here. I can con visit your class again. Come sit on it fast. They would be thrilled if you were just

sitting in the room and listen to you talk. And so you do that, and you and how many years have you been at UC Riverside Now, I've been at u C Riverside now this is going into my fourth year. And why do you what do you what is that impulse in you to teach UM? Well, it pays my bill for starters. And I learned things about writing when I'm teaching things about writing, I learned. I do enjoy it, and I think I'm getting better at what's hard about it? For you? What do you wish you were better at?

You know, the hardest thing about it is, uh, is negotiating the fact that you really can't teach it, that writing is not that talent is not a teachable thing. Skill is a teachable thing. Um, you know that. But but but talent or vision or even voice are are things that the students have to bring there. And and the other thing about workshops and writing programs in general, which I think are generally really valuable, but they do, by their nature, tend to socialize what is really anti

social behavior. You know, you're sitting around with with with other people talking about your writing, and that's okay up to a point. There, there's also a point where you need to have the solitude to grapple with with your right that's right. Um, your most recent book is Shadow Bond. What to talk to me a little bit about how that came about? You know, I just one night I remember, Um,

the family was gone. I was alone, and I this will sound more mystical than I mean, but I had this vision if I can use such a grand work of of the Twin Towers suddenly reappearing in the Dakota Badlands twenty years after their fall, and people start to gather and um, uh, they become like this American Stonehenge, and people then start hearing music coming out of the towers, and and living in the southern tower is Jesse Pressley, who was the real life stillborn twin of Elvis, and

he's going mad hearing a voice in his head that sounds like him but he knows isn't his, and imagining an America where he survived in his brother's place. That's how I will write something, especially when I'm starting and it starts slow and it's intermittent and yes, and which which is not great. One of the things that I try to talk to the kids about is the more

of a routine you can make it, the better. But um, if I can't make it a routine, I'll write it, I'll be excited about it, and then as time goes by, I start to worry it to death. But you know, one of those unteachable things, along with voice and talent that we were talking about is is instinct. And after you've been doing it a long time, you start to develop an an instinct for what's working or what's not working. Which isn't to say that after um, a year and

a half, you're not so sure. You know, you you've been living with the material for that long, you've started to lose perspective. Um six publishers turned it down, as was the case with this novel, and moralize and you go, are they right? You know? UM? Am I wrong? Am I not seeing it? All those doubts. I don't think you ever stopped rappling with and where you're working on another book at the moment. I don't have an idea

in my head. Writer Steve Erickson American Weimar, which we linked to and Here's the Thing dot org stands as one of the sharpest essays ever written on the country's past and present. The current political crisis has only made its warning more urgent. But here's something to cheer you up. Ericson's Hollywood farce Zeroville is returning to its spiritual home. James Franco picked up the rights. He and Seth Rogan star that's coming next year at a theater near you.

This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing four