An Interview with Dale L. Walker

By Steven Anderson Law

Originally published in 2000 on ReadWest Online Magazine

Revised November 2005

 

There are few in the business like Dale Walker. Not only has he contributed extensively as a nonfiction author, but he is also a consulting editor for Forge Books, and the fiction editor for famous authors such as Elmer Kelton, Win Blevins, the late Norman Zollinger, and others. He is a key authority on Jack London, and also held a role as editor for Louis L'Amour Western Magazine, providing the popular profiles and interviews that kept us in touch with who's-who in Western literature. And that's one of the most amazing qualities about Dale Walker. Though his knowledge of the history of the American West certainly ranks among the best in the world, Walker is one of the most respected members of the community of writers of the American West. His writings have earned him several Spur Awards, and his contributions over his career earned him the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement.

     The interview below was conducted in the year 2000, as ReadWest.com began its second year of operation. The idea behind the interview was to not only introduced readers to an author, but also to the art of western writing from a man who knows all facets of the business.

 

RW: Tell us about yourself and your family:

DW: I'm a midwesterner, born in Decatur, Illinois ("Soybean Capital of the World") who has lived in El Paso 40 years. I came here after a 4-year enlistment in the Navy to visit my father, a career army sergeant, who was stationed then at Fort Bliss. I liked the border and the desert and stayed, graduated with a B.A. degree in journalism from the University of Texas at El Paso, married Alice McCord, a local girl, and raised a family here.
     I was a newspaper reporter before and during my navy days, continued that profession in El Paso until taking a job as director of the news bureau at the university.

RW: How long have you been writing about the West?

DW: Since 1960 but my writing interests and published are far-ranging. I write historical nonfiction mostly--biography and military history--but also literary studies, some short fiction and literary criticism (I've been a book reviewer for 40 years), and newspaper work (I have written a book column for the Rocky Mountain News for 10 years and before that wrote weekly book columns for other papers.)

RW: Who inspired you to become a writer?

DW: It's hard to say. Newspaper work was a force for me but I had some small, mostly self-perceived, writing ability in my
early teens, was always a voracious reader. English and
composition were always easy for me in school. I had no "gift," if there is such a thing, but learned to write by that famous old way: by writing. Also by reading and paying attention to how other writers wrote.

RW: What are, or have been, your greatest writing challenges?

DW: I was a periodical writer for ten years, selling 12-20
magazine articles a year while holding down a fulltime job and
raising a family. I thought in terms of 2,500-5,000 words. I was lucky in writing my first book, a biography of the radical
journalist John Reed, in collaboration with the late Richard
O'Connor, a fabulous popular biographer-historian, who taught me--by example, mostly, and by answering a million  questions-- techniques in book writing and getting my brain to accept 90,000-120,000 words as a workable length.

RW: How is your work unique from other writing?

DW: I don't know that it is unique, but I hope so. I write
historical nonfiction mostly--well researched history that is
written, using the techniques of fiction, as a STORY. This isn't an invention of mine and is therefore not "unique"--but it is something I hope is a hallmark of my work.

RW: Whose writing do you admire the most (any genre)?

DW: I tend toward 19th and early 20th century writers, a lot of them nobody has heard of: Hubert H. Bancroft, Sir John Fortescue, Alexander Kinglake, Robert G. Ingersoll, Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, Mark Sullivan--many
others.
     Of modern writers, fiction and nonfiction, I admire Nicholas Monsarrat, Jan Morris, George MacDonald Fraser, Bernard Cornwell, Barbara Tuchman, Fawn Brodie, Stephen Ambrose, Samuel Eliot Morison, Bruce Catton, Shelby Foote, Dudley Pope, Patrick O'Brien--the list goes on and on. If my house were on fire and I had a few minutes to rescue my favorite books, I'd grab the six volumes of Mark Sullivan's OUR TIMES, Jan Morris's PAX BRITANNICA trilogy, the Stanford edition of Jack London's LETTERS...well, I'd probably get burned up in the fire trying to save books, including my own.

RW: What is your outlook on the future of Western fiction, or fiction about the West?

DW: It will always have a future, always be cyclical in popularity. But the old form, the formula story, is dead and writers need to learn to write a more historical story than a mythical one.

RW: What advice would you give new writers who want to write about the West?

DW: Keep in mind that the "West" does not necessarily mean the "Wild West," the lawman-outlaw period after the Civil War and the "West" does not necessarily mean west of the Mississippi and it began long before Lewis and Clark. In the 18th century the West was the Ohio Valley; to James Fenimore Cooper, the West was the Mohawk Valley. Daniel Boone's Kentucky was the "West" of his day. Writers need to think of "frontier" more than "West"--which is a vague word to begin with since everything is west of everything east of it. Personally, I'd like to see more frontier fiction set in Alaska, the Yukon, Canada, northern Mexico, and more set in
the early 19th century, in the pre-statehood eras of California, Oregon, the Missouri frontier, the Texas Republic. The field is wide open if the novel is good.