Robert Aquinas McNally
Robert Aquinas McNally is the author or coauthor of ten nonfiction books, most recently The Modoc War: A Story of Genocide at the Dawn of America’s Gilded Age, general-nonfiction finalist in the Northern California Book Awards and winner of a Commonwealth Club gold medal. His short nonfiction has appeared in periodicals ranging from Sierra and Wild West to Indian Country Today Media Network and California Wild. McNally is also the author of the full-length poetry collection Simply to Know Its Name, which won the Grayson Books Poetry Prize in 2014, as well as four chapbooks. His poems have appeared in a long list of journals and anthologies and been nominated five times for the Pushcart Prize.
Twitter: @ramcnally
Are there particular films that have influenced your writing?
Lawrence of Arabia, directed by David Lean. Yes, I’m dating myself. Still, it’s an amazing film for its stunning sense of landscape and for the way it narrates an historical period — WWI and its aftermath in the Middle East — through the interwoven lives of its most colorful characters. Amazing storytelling at every level. If I can make my work anywhere near that gripping, I’ve succeeded.
What period of history do you wish you knew more about?
Once upon a time, a high school teacher gave my class the assignment of writing about the century we most wish we were born in. I chose the 19th. Didn’t think of that again until I dove into the research for The Modoc War. I had to steep myself in the second half of 19th century, first in California and then across the United States. It’s a fascinating period, the ground from which we contemporary Americans rise. Now I’m working on a book about John Muir, so here we go again.
Not all books are for all readers … when you start a book and you just don’t like it, how long do you read until you bail?
I used to just keep plowing; something about an obsessive personality. Now, though, I find that I lose patience if the narrative isn’t clicking within the first quarter of the book. Sometimes I’ll save the book and try again later. Most of the time the wait makes no difference, but now and again a book lights up on the second deep dive. That happened most recently with a collection of short novels by Faulkner, who usually flummoxes me. Finally Old Man flew, while The Bear crashed and burned one more time.
Vacation druthers … city or rural destination?
Rural, for sure. Almost every summer, my two sons and I backpack into the mountains of far northern California to fish for trout, drink Irish whiskey, and hang out. That’s my idea of heaven. And when Gayle, my partner, and I travel, we head for places that offer something wild and wonderful. In Kenya, it was Maasai Mara; in Chile, Torres del Paine National Park; in Ecuador, both the Andes and the Galápagos; in Canada, the Alsek River from the Yukon across southeast Alaska. Don’t get no better.
What’s the difference between being a writer and an author? How do you shift gears between the two?
Being a writer turns on writing pure and simple: I pull the words and facts together to create narrative. It’s something like carpentry, about nailing and sawing and planing the various pieces to build a final structure and getting sawdust all over yourself. When that structure is published, you clean up and become an author. You serve as a guide to your own work, standing off at a distance and detailing what you’ve built for readers who ask. Frankly, that’s fun.
