Wayne Allensworth worked as an analyst for the Foreign Broadcast Information Service from 1991 to 2002. He is the author of The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia, published by Rowman & Littlefield in 1998. He is a Corresponding Editor of Chronicles magazine. His short story, Man of the West, was nominated for a Western Writers of America Spur award. He has contributed to the following collections: Exploring American History (Marshall Cavendish, 2008); Peace in the Promised Land: A Realist Scenario (Chronicles Books, 2006); Immigration and the American Identity (Chronicles Books, 2008); and Russian Nationalism and the National Reassertion of Russia, edited by Marlene Laruelle (Johns Hopkins University). He lives in Ft. Worth, Texas.
Read Part 1 of Wayne Allensworth’s interview:
Wayne Allensworth saddles up with SV’s Bob Shuman to talk about writing, formal institutions, and informal structures, in the conclusion to his two-part interview.
Read the prologue to FIELD OF BLOOD at the end of this post.
You mentioned Lonesome Dove as an example of an epic Western. What makes a Western an epic? Is “Field of Blood” an epic?
Epic Westerns are poetic, heroic, and tragic in the way of the ancient epics. There is a Homeric quality about them. They have a sweeping scope, taking in a series of adventures on a long trek, like the cattle drives in Red River and Lonesome Dove. The backdrop is the mythic West, Ford’s Monument Valley, for instance. The narrative may take place over a long period of time, maybe years, as in The Searchers, both Alan LeMay’s novel and Ford’s film. But all good Westerns, books and movies, carry the elements of the epic within them to some degree, the tragedy of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, for example, the fatal last shootout, fatal both literally and mythically, in The Wild Bunch or The Shootist. Every good Western evokes mythic heroes and storied battles. My Darling Clementine, Gunfight at the OK Corral, and Tombstone did that with the Earps and the Clantons.
My novel, Field of Blood, is an American epic, covering decades in time, encompassing wars, peacetime, and the new frontier situation the characters are confronted with. It’s about who we were, who we are, and what we are becoming. It is tragic, and in scope covers landscapes across the world and here at home. It’s a modern Western in the ways I’ve already covered, including a showdown very much in the vein of the old Westerns. So I hope it might be thought of as an epic story.
How did you come to write the novel–what was its inspiration? Why was it important to tell this story?
My professional life has been spent on following events in Russia and the former Soviet Union. In trying to explain that reality, I had to look closely at what had happened in a country that had collapsed, where the old structures had been swept away. There was a crisis of identity, as well as an economic and social crisis.
When the formal institutions of a country cease to function, or function only at a minimum level, then informal structures arise to fill the vacuum. Those informal structures often include organized crime, as well as economic and political “clans” that actually govern, and of course, family, a few close friends acting together. The circle of trust shrinks. The world becomes smaller. Life outside that circle becomes precarious.
Elections, court proceedings, these are mostly surface formalities. The rules are informal and are enforced outside the law and courts. It may not be the legal system or police who punish those who violate the rules, but the hit man, the enforcer, or the police acting on behalf of informal “clans” or the criminal world. On the other side of the coin, defending yourself means either seeking the protection of those who have the will and the weapons to do that, or acting yourself. Just look at vigilante groups in Mexico for an example of that. Often, it’s either current or former police or military, acting informally, who fill the gap.
Men belonging to a self-defense group stand at a checkpoint in the town of Las Colonias, Mexico, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2013. Two leaders of the main vigilante groups in western Michoacan state said Tuesday that they are pulling back from confronting the Knights Templar drug cartel because the Mexican government has promised to oust traffickers from the area. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
I found that a lot of Americans were quite naïve about how much, probably most, of the rest of the world operates. Americans have taken a law-based country, one with high levels of social trust, for granted, as the norm, when in fact it’s a very rare thing.
I lived in the Washington D.C. area for a number of years, and each time I visited my native Texas, I could see with my own eyes what was happening. And I could read about the crime and corruption I was familiar with from my professional life gaining a foothold in a place and among people I cared very much about. I could see what globalism meant for ordinary people. And I could see that it was happening all over the country. Nobody had asked us about this. People with power and influence were intent on creating a world they wanted, one in which our country and people were expendable. That explains where the premise for the book came from.
Do you consider yourself a political writer?
I didn’t set out to write a book about politics, but about people in a certain situation. It carries my world view with it, of course. Every writer has one. I didn’t intend the book to be overly didactic, though I think the point or points made are pretty clear. I think the situation we are in is plain to see now and all this is being talked about in a way it wasn’t when I started formulating this book and began writing back in 2010-2011. The story is about the characters and the choices they have to make. In the context of the story, what’s right or wrong and what can or should be done isn’t always clear. That’s the way life is.
A good story puts its characters in situations that require them to make hard choices, situations that test them, that present them with a dilemma, or make them think about the most fundamental issues. Life, death, God, meaning, loyalty, identity, fight or flight. Who is right, who is wrong, who the good guys or bad guys are isn’t always clear. I was aiming for that kind of story.
Thank you so much, Wayne.
Read the prologue to FIELD OF BLOOD: Field of Blood Prologue
(c) 2017 by Wayne Allensworth (answers) and Bob Shuman (questions). All rights reserved.
Credits: Wayne Allensworth photo (c) 2017 by Elizabeth Allensworth Merino. All rights reserved.
Photo Lonesome Dove: Cowboys and Indians Magazine.
Vigilante Group: Jammedup News
Texas: Free Creatives.
(c) 2017 by Wayne Allensworth (answers) and Bob Shuman (questions). All rights reserved.
