WESTERN SKIES - March 5, 2005

*** PAM HOUSTON INTERVIEW ***

ERIC WHITNEY: Colorado Author Pam Houston has published her first novel. Houston, who lives near Creede, has written two collections of short stories, Cowboys are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat, as well as a book of essays and several plays.

She's in Colorado Springs this week to address the Colorado Language Arts Society. Contributor Sarah Jackson talked with Houston about her new book, and how living in Colorado colors her work.

SARAH JACKSON: Like the protagonist in your book Sighthound, you're an east coaster by origin. How did you decide to settle in the west and write a novel that so closely details Colorado life?

PAM HOUSTON: When I first came out west I was so impressed by the mountains and the rivers. I was a river guide, I was a hunting guide, and I was so impressed by the western landscape you know and it was almost like I said all I need to do is describe this and set down a few characters in this scenery and something's bound to happen.

And my life has been very rich and a lot of that richness comes from not only the beauty of the San Juan Mountains where I live and the Colorado plateau in general but also the people and the type of people that have chosen to make their homes in Colorado.

JACKSON: On the cover of the book there's a photograph of an Irish wolfhound beautifully superimposed on a blue sky with the green pasture in the foreground and mountains beyond. Is that your ranch?

HOUSTON: It isn't my ranch, it was a stock photo. But the dog, which was a late addition to the cover, there in the bound galley that came out prior to the book's publication there was a different dog on the cover in a kind of a circle and he wasn't my dog. And he, you know, was a fine looking dog but I thought his ears were too short.

Anyway, some of the booksellers didn't like that cover and so the idea of putting this kind of ghost image of the dog into the sky came very late in the process and they ended up using one of my own photographs of my own dog, so it's really nice to have him up there.

JACKSON: You must have been very attached to your dog.

HOUSTON: I was very attached to my dog. The original idea for this book came because I myself spent so many hours in a veterinary medical hospital with my own dog who was diagnosed with osteosarcoma and had a lot of experimental surgeries and eventually had a leg amputated and then had three really good years of remission before the disease came back. So I spent the better part of three years in this community of veterinarians and vet students.

JACKSON: Sighthound tells the story a woman, Rae, and her remarkable dog Dante, and I'm sure it's autobiographical as you've said in other interviews that all your writing is eighty-two percent nonfiction. What inspired you to write about this experience?

HOUSTON: The pet owners, the pet people who were not afraid to emote and not afraid to really express how sorry they were and what big, big tragedies it was in their lives when they lost these animals that they were so attached to. It just seemed to me a very rich environment for a novel.

JACKSON: What is it about dogs that appeals to you?

HOUSTON: You know, dogs do everything they do with their full attention. They want the bone, they want it with their full attention, they're happy to see you, they're happy to see you with their full attention.

You know there's some sort of purity of emotion in that we as humans see and kind of long for. A way that we could be that unequivocal, and we could be that expressive, and we could be that joyful and that depressed. They do everything entirely, and for me that's been the real value of dogs, many different dogs in my life.

JACKSON: The book is told from multiple points of view, including the people in Rae's life, the dogs' Dante and Rose, and also the ranch cat, Stanley who had a macabre way of showing off his mouse hunting prowess. Was there a real-life Stanley?

HOUSTON: It was actually my house-sitter's cat who would eat everything but the heads and then leave the heads in a row. I mean she, he, it was a he, really would. It was eerie. And it was totally like a pride thing. He was like "look, look what I've done, look what I've done for you."

JACKSON: I like that you're able to do a cat point of view as well as a dog's. So, your next official appearance in Colorado will be this month in Colorado Springs?

HOUSTON: Yes, I'm going to be speaking and reading, I believe, at the Colorado Language Arts Society conference, which happens on the twelfth at the Broadmoor Hotel.

JACKSON: I hope to see you there. Pam Houston, thank you for talking with us.

HOUSTON: Thank you so much for doing this.

JACKSON: Pam Houston's new novel is Sighthound.