INTERVIEWS

Mount Dora Citizen, June, 2016

BOBBY BOWIE RAN FAST FOR THE HURRICANES. NOW HE WRITES LIKE THE WIND

Author Robert “U.R” Bowie grew up in Mount Dora, playing football for the Golden Hurricanes under legendary Coach Dan Spear, who took his team to four conference championships in the 1950s.  After graduating from high school, Bowie hit the road to attend college, enter the military, teach, and ultimately write. His 1998 book “A Roast for Coach Dan Spear” offers a wonderful window on life in Mount Dora in the ’50s. He now lives in Gainesville where he writes full time. Recently we caught up with Bowie to find out how one home town boy made his way in the world, and what of Mount Dora he took with him. 

You grew up in Mount Dora in the 1950s. What was that like?

It was much hotter than it is now; in fact, it was unbearably hot, sometimes even in September. In the dead of summer our whole family slept out on the back porch, since the inside of our little block house on Seventh Avenue was an oven—at least until three or four in the morning.

Well, it wasn’t really any hotter than it is now, but this was the era before air conditioning. I still remember when we had an icebox, and the iceman cometh twice a week to deliver a huge block of sparkling ice—hustling it into the house on enormous tongs. Then again, we bought a television set only in 1956, so I had the wonderful privilege of growing up, largely, without that goof box in the house. In those days we didn’t have what they call “play dates,” and children could wander the streets unsupervised. When I was four or five years old my mother sent me off down Highland Street to Fifth Avenue, to play with Billy Moon. Nobody worried that I would be kidnapped on the way there or back. In a word, halcyon days!

Of course, it’s hard answering a question like that. I used to go to Russia all the time, and when I returned people would ask, “What was Russia like?” I’d say, “Hold on. I’d have to write a whole book to answer that.” But, in the case of Mt. Dora in the 1950s, I havewritten a book—A Roast for Coach Dan Spear—so there’s where you’ll find your answer.

A Roast for Coach Dan Spear centers around a single football game you played on Nov. 1, 1957, under Mount Dora’s legendary high school football coach. What was it like playing football back then?

Football was still the same game sixty years ago, but a lot of things were different. We played in pads and modern-style helmets. We in the ’50s just missed the era of the leather helmets. We didn’t have protection for our faces in those days; it was only in my senior year that we got to wear a little bar that jutted out for some protection.

The schools in Central Florida in those days were small. Enrollment at Mt. Dora High was such that you didn’t have to “make” the team. If you came out for football you were on it. Of course, Dan Spear was a difficult taskmaster, and a lot of players couldn’t take the discipline and quit.

We all played both offense and defense in those days; there weren’t enough players to specialize, like today. Another thing is that the players were small. We didn’t have weight rooms, and nobody was bulked up. A big lineman would weigh, at most, two hundred pounds, and in 1957 I don’t think we had anyone on our team that big. I played my last two seasons as a running back at 155, and that was a decent size for a high school running back in those days. Our captain, center and middle linebacker, Billy Moon, weighed in at about 125.

One other big difference: the schools were segregated back then, so we had no black players on our team, nor did any team that we played.

Of all the things Coach Spear drilled into you, what has proved the most durable?

Dan Spear taught us that you have to be tough, and that you don’t quit, even when adversity is in the ascendancy. It’s a good lesson to take with you through life.

Mount Dora was a much more segregated town back then. How did you see it as a kid?

Very strange place. Racism dripping from the humid air. Racial tension everywhere. Strong feelings against “carpet-bagging Yankees, trying to force integration down our throats.” Sheriff Willis McCall versus crusading newspaperwoman Mabel Norris Reese. The Groveland rape case, the Platt affair at Mt. Dora High School. Interesting times.

Where did your story take you after left Mount Dora? 

Gainesville (University of Florida), then the U.S. Army—South Carolina (basic training), Monterey, California (studying Russian at the Defense Language Institute, nine-month intensive course), Virginia (voice-intercept training), Germany (three months of living in a field tent, overlooking the East German border), England (two years stationed at Menwith Hill, West Yorkshire, 13^thASA Field Station)—Orlando (taught ninth-grade English for one year at Maynard Evans High School), New Orleans (Tulane University, M.A. in Russian), Nashville (Vanderbilt University, Ph.D. in Russian), Oxford, Ohio (Miami University, taught Russian language, literature and culture for thirty years), Great Novgorod, Russia (one year teaching on a Fulbright Scholar Grant), South Carolina (in retirement, twelve years, working as a consultant in Russian mentalities to people doing business with Russia), Gainesville (retirement, writing fiction).

What did you take with you from Mount Dora? How has it affected your teaching and writing?

I suppose that a lot of things went with me subconsciously; your early, formative years are always an important part of the life that is to come. I know I took with me the kid I was back then. Your basic sense of self never changes. In essence, I’m still that weird, introverted child of eight, not comfortable in his own skin, who was walking down Grandview in 1948, looking at the blooming flame vine on the fence and thinking, thinking, always thinking. As our principal at Mt. Dora High School, Prof. Roseborough, used to say, “Huh, huh, now that Bowie, he’s a thinker.”

How much has Mount Dora of 1953 changed from the one of 2016?

Mt. Dora has gone from a redneck citrus town to a yuppified, gentrified artsy kind of place these days. Practically all the people I knew are gone. Most of them dwell at the far end of Donnelly St. So if I’m looking for the city fathers/mothers of my childhood and youth, as well as plenty of friends from my own generation, there’s where I have to go to find them. The air still smells the same, though—humidified, semi-tropical—and the Spanish moss still hangs down with that same lugubrious blowing in the breeze, the mourning doves still coo, and the camphor berries still crunch underfoot when you walk Seventh Avenue.

A Roast for Coach Dan Spear was published in 1998, but it had a history before that. How did you come to write that book?

It started out with an actual “roast,” held to honor Coach Spear in downtown Mt. Dora—in  April, 1994. I was living/working in Ohio then, and could not attend, but I sent a short written reminiscence of my years living in Florida and playing football. They read this, or at least part of it, at the roast, it was favorably received—even circulated around town—and after that I decided to expand it into a book, which I published three years later.

You had once thought that the book would make a good movie.

Yes. I had hopes of having it made into one of these formulaic Hollywood football movies. I sent copies to Burt Reynolds and Billy Bob Thornton, who, unfortunately, did not reply. They are busy men and still may not have read my book, but I expect to hear from them any time now.

Have you kept in touch with any of your teammates?

We had a big reunion in 1997, to celebrate the forty-year anniversary of our victory over Bishop Moore—which is detailed in the book. People who still remember that, however, are hard to find these days. I’m still in touch with Billy Moon (captain, star center and middle linebacker on that team), Earle Williams (guard), and Neil Stoothoff (quarterback). Billy Vanzant, another teammate, died this May.

What other books have you written?

I have a total of eight books in print now; the last four, all published over a period of one year (2014-2015), are stories (literary fiction). Several of my books have a Russian angle, as I have spent my whole life trying to understand Russia. My most recent novel is The Tale of the Bastard Feverfew, the story of a prison rebellion in Ohio. I write fiction under the pen name U.R. Bowie, and all of my books are available for sale on Amazon.

Many of your characters seem pretty hard-scrabble. Did you find them in Mount Dora, or further on down the road?

I didn’t find any of them in Mt. Dora, other than people in the Dan Spear book. Most of them I invented, conjuring them up out of my own hard-scrabble imagination! You might note, by the way, that I spell the name of the town “Mt. Dora,” which, I gather, some residents frown upon these days. Back in my time everyone wrote it that way. “Mt. Dora” suggests the idea of an actual mountain, puts us “Dorans” way high up, on a first-name basis with, say, Mt. Whitney: “I climbed Mt. Dora.” And I have, many times over!

Can a reader of Russian literature better understand a small town like Mount Dora? Or did growing up in Mount Dora help you understand Russian Literature?

I suppose that to really understand Russian literature you have to be a bit warped. If you’ve ever been around many Russians you’ll understand what I mean. Me, I was “different” from childhood on. It didn’t have anything to do with living in Florida or in Mt. Dora. Some of us are just born that way!

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a wild comic novel about obesity, called One Ton. It features a young man who aspires to be the first human being ever to attain to 2000 pounds. I hope to have the book in print by the end of this year or early next year. It’s funny! Well, I least I think it’s funny. While writing it, I have to pause periodically, to roll on the floor, clutching at my sides and laughing out of control.

Anything else that’s new?

I have a “presence” online now. Which would be great if anybody ever went looking for me on line! I have a blog (U.R. Bowie on Russian Literature), a website (urbowie.com) and an Amazon author page. I’m the fiction editor now of the literary journalBacopa, published in Gainesville. I get to read all the fiction submissions. Of every 200 stories I read I find one good one. Immediately I burst into tears of joy and call up the author—to thank him/her with all my heart for the gift of her/his art!

All of U.R. Bowie’s books, including “A Roast For Coach Dan Spear,” are available at Amazon.com

See also: “Remembering Coach Dan Spear”, Mount Dora Citizen, Oct. 30, 2015

David Cohea, Writer (david@mountdoracitizen.com)

Do you have an MFA in creative writing?

Oh, God, no. But I do have a Ph.D. in Russian literature.

Yeah, but that didn’t teach you how to write.

Reading Russian writers taught me how to write. That and forty years of practice.

What was the subject of your Ph.D. dissertation?

I wrote my dissertation on the Russian writer Ivan Bunin. He is canonical in Russia, still not well known in the West, although he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1933. I have published two books of my translations of Bunin’s stories and novellas.

Was it hard, writing a Ph.D. dissertation?

It was so long ago that I can’t even remember! No, seriously, I didn’t find it hard writing the dissertation. I was keenly interested in the subject, and I’ve always enjoyed writing.

Who do you see as your potential audience as a writer?

That’s a hard question. I would welcome anyone who wants to read my stuff, but, realistically speaking, I suppose most of my readers would consist of people who love highly creative literary fiction. I don’t really write in any other genre (crime novels, romance novels, detective novels, domestic literary realism).

What’s “domestic literary realism”?

That’s the life’s blood of the MFA writer. The kind of stuff you see published, for example, in the New Yorker.

You don’t like New Yorker fiction?

It’s okay. They publish three or four stories every year that are really good.

You seem to be prejudiced against MFA writers.

No, not entirely. Keep in mind that one of my favorite writers, Flannery O’Connor, studied creative writing at Iowa. She later remarked in an interview that the program didn’t much influence how she wrote. She already knew how she wanted to write before she went to Iowa. She benefitted mightily, however, by being advised as to what great writers to read. She, for example, had never heard of Nikolai Gogol, but after she read him at Iowa, she was strongly influenced by him. Then again, at Iowa she made the kind of connections that would soon smooth the way for her publishing debut as a creative writer.

So you do see potential benefits for writers to complete an MFA program.

Yes. They can benefit just by being in an atmosphere where they are encouraged to write every day. You have to develop a habit of writing daily to get good at writing. But, then again, you don’t have to be in an MFA program to make yourself write every day. On the other hand, being in a community of writers has great potential benefits. Later on, when you begin to play the perennial game of sucking up to journals, book publishers, and agents to get your stuff in print, it will help to have the connections. In fact, having connections is the best way of “going forward,” not just in the writing game, but also in any profession at all.

What kind of connections did you take advantage of in order to become a published writer?

I’ve never had any connections whatsoever and still don’t. After living a long life I still don’t have a clue about “networking,” or “going forward.” I’ve carried that monkey of non-networking on my back forever. Let us pause for a moment while I weep and bewail my fate.

(Pause)

Are you ready to go on?

Yes (blubber). As for the MFA programs in creative writing, I do agree with Flannery about one other thing. She once said that the MFA industry was cranking out far too many mediocre writers. She’s been dead fifty years and the situation is much worse now. The system perpetuates itself. Universities all over the U.S. have academic programs in creative writing. Mediocre writers have to find a job teaching creative writing in universities; then they help create more mediocre writers, who, in their turn, have to get a job teaching creative writing in order to create more mediocre writers. Of course, within that huge glomp of un-creativity there will be, occasionally, writers who are good. Meanwhile, writers are founding so-called literary journals all over the place, because the MFA folks, in order to get tenure as teachers of creative writing, have to publish their, in large part, mediocre stuff. And so it goes, “moving forward.”

You don’t seem to like that expression, “moving forward.”

I hate clichés. And I tend to doubt that there is really that much “moving forward” in American society, which is obsessed with linear movement and “progress.” Deep down I believe that human beings do a lot more of going round and round in circles than they do of “moving forward” along straight lines to getting somewhere. The MFA game is a good example of that: it, for the large part, is a whole lot of going round and round.

What advice would you have for a young person who wants to be a writer?

Hmm. It depends on what kind of writer that person wants to be.

Let’s say a young person who wants to be a really really really really good writer of highly creative literary fiction.

Number One: read read read read really really really really great writers (Shakespeare, Nabokov, Gogol, O’Connor, Robert Penn Warren). Don’t read second-rate writers. How can you tell the difference between first-rate writers and the second- and third-rate types? It might be hard at first, but if you train your mind in reading (by extensive reading) you will learn the difference. Then you can stop wasting time reading the mediocrities. And the real writers, if you read them carefully, will spark your creative mind and help you learn how to write.

Explain how that works.

Great writing lights up your brain. You take the spots lit up in your brain by great writing and you work with those spots. Practically all creativity comes out of developing previous creativity. It’s a sort of plagiarism, but not really, because you are not copying verbatim the creative passages of great writers. You are starting with those passages and then working off in a different direction, creating great passages of your own.

I see. You got to Number One above but not to Number Two.

Number Two: write write write every day for at least two-three hours. If you keep doing this diligently, doing your daily due diligence, you will eventually get good at what you’re doing. If you have the brains. And if you don’t have the brains to start with, there’s not really any reason ever to start. Get a job doing something else and give up trying to be a writer.

Are you inspired to write? Where do you get your inspiration?

Inspiration comes (as I was just saying) from reading great writers. It also comes out of the deepest wellsprings of the brain. We don’t even understand it very well. Romantic writers used to say that God was doing the writing for them, guiding their quill pens as they wrote. Recent studies in neuroscience have discovered that maybe it’s not God. There are zillions of neurons operating deep in our brains, and those neurons, unbeknownst altogether to us on the conscious level, are making decisions constantly about how we live our lives. That’s kind of scary, but, on the other hand, it’s good for a writer to have those inspired neuron-friends guiding his pen as he writes. You sit there sometimes and you think, Now where in the world did THAT idea come from? Why did my hero decide to do THAT? But it’s a good feeling nonetheless, when God or the neurons take over and the inspired writing flows out.

How does a writer nowadays get published?

Well, I already talked about this a little bit. The vast Writing Establishment has its literary journals, its writers’ retreats, its writers’ contests, agents, its MFA degrees. Joining up, tooting your own horn and beating your own drum on the Writing Establishment Bandwagon is the traditional way to get started. Say nice things about other writers, write nice reviews of their stuff (even if it’s awful), by way of getting them to write nice things about your own (awful or not awful) stuff. Go through an MFA program, suck up, network, send your writings off to contests, preferably tipping off one of your MFA professors in advance, which professor knows the professor who is judging the contest and will put in a good word on your behalf.

Is that how you got your fiction published?

No. I never went through an MFA program, so I made none of the valuable contacts. I never learned how to network, or win writing contests, or get an agent. Actually, I once had an agent, years ago. She got my first novel read in the big New York publishing houses. They praised the novel (I still have the letters), but none of them wanted to take a chance on it. My stuff is highly uncommercial, and, after all, in the publishing world, as everywhere else in America, it’s all about making money. I can’t argue with that. Why would they want to publish a book and NOT make money?

So how did you get around your lack of success playing the literary game?

Well, I was getting on in years, already retired from my job as Russian professor. I had reams of fiction written and unpublished, forty years worth of stuff. I knew it was good. I never doubted that, but I had almost resigned myself to never getting any fiction in print in my lifetime. Then a wonderful new development came along. Amazon, with its imprint called Create Space, suddenly made it possible to self-publish your works in a new way. Self-publishing always had come with a kind of stigma. The idea is that if you had to publish it yourself it must be devoid of literary merit. But suddenly people all over the place are publishing through Create Space, and some of them are making big money.

Once again money is the main thing.

Unfortunately yes. Me, I’m not that interested in making big money. I’ve got enough to hold me for the duration, but making money is a way of getting recognized. People who make money self-publishing are suddenly getting calls from agents, who want to get them contracts with the big publishing houses, the few that are still left out there.

Wouldn’t it be better to publish your books with those big publishing houses?

Maybe so. But I didn’t have that option, I was getting nowhere playing the same old game, and suddenly I had a way to publish my books. Since last November I have published four works of fiction through Create Space.  You can find them all listed under my Author Page (“U.R. Bowie”) on Amazon. Then again, publishing a book with a big-time publisher isn’t always all that advantageous. In the first place, publishers don’t have the money to put into promoting your book. If they came up with $10,000 for publicity, publishing with them would be a big advantage. But now, the way it usually works is they might publish your book, but then they expect you to put up all the money and all the effort to promote sales. So here’s my question and the question asked by many who have decided to self-publish: if you’re doing nothing to promote my book, why should I pay you any royalties? Same goes for having an agent: if I can publish and promote my book by myself, why should I pay an agent? In the second place, publishers might publish your first book, but then, if it doesn’t make any money you are, in effect, banned from further publishing. Punished for your inability to generate filthy lucre.

But doesn’t it cost you huge money for printing your books?

No. Create Space covers the printing costs by printing on demand. That’s a stroke of genius. If you wanted to self-publish a book, say, twenty years ago, you had to cover the cost of a first printing (1000 copies, 2000 copies). Not any more. Publishing with Create Space makes the whole process easy and inexpensive. You can do your own interior layout by cutting and pasting your text into a template provided by Create Space. They are very amenable to helping you get through the process. Their paperback books look highly professional, and they also ease you into the process of putting your work up as an e-book. My latest novella, Own, is also available as an audiobook. That too, was an easy and inexpensive thing to do. I recorded the novel with myself as reader. Cheap.

Given the self-publication of your fiction, would establishment writers tend to sneer at you, denigrate your efforts?

Possibly so. Sneering is, after all, endemic in the human race. But if they put aside their prejudices and just read my stuff, with an open mind, the sneers would soon fade from their physiognomies. I’m talking about people who love literary fiction and know how to read it. As I’ve mentioned somewhere else, I can’t expect inveterate readers of, say, Stephen King, to have any interest in what I write. I’d be a fool to have such expectations.

Are you hoping that your books will some day make you famous?

No. Not really. I’m not sure I’d want to be famous. Fame can bring a lot of problems with it. Can you imagine how awful it would be to be, say, Brad Pitt, who can’t go anywhere without being recognized, who can’t really determine who is his real friend and who is trying to use him? No, I don’t want to be famous. But I would like a few good readers to read my books.

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