Breakfast In Montana
Summary: Montana has produced an extraordinary number of notable books and stories, many of which have been instrumental in defining the American West. A River Runs Through It, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Fools Crow, The Big Sky, Perma Red, and The Last Best Place, all Montana books. For this podcast, Montana writers Russell Rowland (In Open Spaces, Fifty-Six Counties: A Montana Journey) and Aaron Parrett (Montana Then and Now and Literary Butte) will discuss two books per episode, in an effort to explore what it is about Montana that produces so much fabulous literature.
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- Artist: Russell Rowland & Aaron Parrett
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Podcasts:
For this episode of Breakfast in Montana, writers Russell Rowland and Aaron Parrett discuss two books that should have received more acclaim, Matt Pavelich's short story collection, Survivors Said, and a 1979 novel published by Dirck Van Sickle called Montana Gothic.
For the fifth episode of Breakfast in Montana, Russell Rowland and Aaron Parrett discuss two of the most commercially successful Montana writers, Ivan Doig and Jamie Ford. We talk about the mysterious nature of successful books, and Jamie Ford tells us about his responsibility to write about the stories of Chinese immigrants in America.
In this episode of Breakfast in Montana, hosts Russell Rowland and Aaron Parrett discuss two books by Montana authors, The Hanging Tree by Dorothy Johnson, and Shaking Out the Dead, by Kate Cholewa. The Hanging Tree was made into a film starring Gary Cooper, another Montanan, one of several Johnson stories that made it to film. And yet she has never gained quite the status of male writers from her era like A. B. Guthrie. Cholewa's novel explores many similar topics, and we discuss the myth about women writers having a different style.
For the third episode of Breakfast in Montana, we discuss A Good Day to Die, by Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall and other classic novels about the West, as well as a novel by his daughter Jamie Harrison Potenberg called The Widow Nash. There are several interesting parallels between these two novels, despite the fact that they take place in different times and despite the fact that they are very different writers. But one thing we both agreed on...Jamie got the writing gene. The prose in each of these novels is stellar.
For this episode, we discuss two mysteries, the first being Death and the Good Life, one of only two novels written by notable Montana poet Richard Hugo, who was instrumental in developing the reputation for the Creative Writing department at the University of Montana. The second is a terrific mystery called A Bloom of Bones, by Allen Morris Jones, who is currently the editor of Big Sky Journal, as well as the publisher for Bangtail Press and a wonderful writer in his own right. Both of these novels feature protagonists that poets, which makes for an interesting discussion.
In this first episode, Russell and Aaron talk about two books from Butte, Mile High, Mile Deep by Richard K. O'Malley, and Brave Deeds, by David Abrams. These two books represent two of the interesting facets of Montana literature in that one of them, (Mile High) was written while O'Malley was the Associated Press Bureau Chief in Paris. But it's considered the quintessential Butte novel. The other, Brave Deeds, is about the war in Iraq, but it was written in Butte. So we discuss what constitutes a Montana book, what it is about Butte that has inspired so many good books, and what some of the common themes are that emerge from this fascinating town.
