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Dirt Rag Articles
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Jim Crissman's story "Wallhangers" took first place in the 2007 Dirt Rag Literature Contest. Instead of wasting any more breath on an introduction, I'll simply suggest that you read James' winning entry and check out the following Rider Profile.
Name: Jim Crissman
Occupation: Veterinary toxicologic pathologist. Dead rats are my life. I think of it as helping animal rights types live long, healthy and earnest lives.
Hometown: Midland, MI
Current location: Hotel room, Edinburgh, Scotland. Working at a lab here this week.
Number of years mountain biking: About 9, I think.
First mountain bike: Specialized Stumpjumper Comp, FS. I've gone through 3 frames (great product support from Specialized) and just about every other part. All that's original are the handlebars, shifters, brakes, and seat post. Started as a real nice bike and evolved into a better one, but it's getting a little raggedy these days.
Current main bike: Ha! A brand new Gary Fisher HiFi Pro, thank you very much Gary Fisher and Dirt Rag!!! I actually won a Comp, but the guys at GF let me throw in a few of my own dollars to upgrade to the Pro. Quick yet plush are the words that come to mind.
Riding style: Subgeezer XC. Specialize in endos and face plants. Used to race a bit, but testosterone poisoning coupled with competitive zeal clouded my judgment, invariably ending with repairs required to bike or self. My friends have started to call me "Crash."
Favorite trail: Midland City Forest. I designed it and put at least 100 hrs a year into additions, improvements, and maintenance. It's my backyard and my passion. 13.4 miles now. I'd love to show it to you.
Favorite trail food: Apricot Clif bars. I don't know why it's the rarest, hardest-to-buy, flavor. I love them.
Best mountain bike vacation spot: Home. The most powerful word in the any language, and the most environmentally responsible. Utah is gorgeous, but in Michigan, the slick rock is actually slick, and we like it that way.
What music goes through your head while you're riding?
More language than music. Right now I'm hearing Graham Chapman of Monty Python in my head, protesting, "I'm not dead yet!" I have the T-shirt. But, music-wise, I like a lot of the new indie stuff that my kids introduce me to, like Cake. Holly Cole and Katie Melua are on heavy rotation on the bedroom stereo. If I rode with headphones, which I don't cuz I like to hear the world and talk to people, it would be hard to beat the Stones.
How did you get started mountain biking?
My two boys and I needed something to do on the weekends when my wife and daughter were off riding horses. After consulting with Henry and Charley, we went down to the bike shop and bought three mountain bikes at once. They quickly became much better riders than I am. Ah youth.
How long have you been reading Dirt Rag?
4-5 years? I dunno... since I discovered it. It's an intimate magazine. I think that's what I like about it. A community... like the good part of religion.
I understand you've been writing poetry for some time and that your winning entry "Wallhangers" was your first published work of fiction. Tell us a bit about your published poems.
In the mid-90s, when I found out there was a monthly poetry slam in Saginaw, I tried it. I found an instant appreciative audience and won the slam a number of times. I started submitting poems to literary journals (to call them small is redundant—nobody reads these things) and contests, and had some success. Eventually I published a chapbook, Jailbait in Holy Water, primarily of poems that had been published in those small journals.
Frankly the poetry crowd wore on me. Lots of smokers, alienated youth and sentimental old farts (which I fear I'm becoming). At open mics it seemed many were just waiting their turn and not listening—a one-sided conversation. I like poetry with strong verbs – things happening – a masculine sensibility, if I can say that without sounding sexist. Probably not. But I know lots of women who write powerful stuff – fearless – some of my favorites, really. Sharon Olds comes to mind.
Anyway, the Saginaw slam ended around the time I rediscovered biking, so it was just a matter of time before some of the writing sprouted spokes. It dawned on me that cyclists deserve their own poetry, and would embrace it, so my writing started to include a lot of bicycles. I go into bike shops and hang out just to look at them. I don't need a new bike, but they're beautiful, like musical instruments and painting. And even more beautiful in motion, of course.
How did you come up with the idea for "Wallhangers"?
I saw this guy riding around town in the winter in hunter orange camo coveralls and a huge gray beard. I mentioned him to my dentist – a good friend – and he thought he knew the guy—a local dentist who had lost it. Turns out it's not the same guy, but I put those two figments together into one guy, moved him one town over, and invented a history for him. I've never had so much fun writing anything in my life. By the way, the Navy Pilot was modeled after my late uncle, Captain John Eells. He really did that. He was a great guy and I saw the opportunity to stick him in for a cameo role.
Did winning the Dirt Rag literature contest change your life at all?
It made me incredibly happy – jumping up and down and hollering – for about an hour. As the euphoria ebbed, the anticipation for the new bike began. And what a fine ride it is. And, it has me thinking about my next story. You gonna let me enter again? Also, I now wear Dirt Rag socks and a Dirt Rag hoodie, and drink from a Dirt Rag beer glass, all of which seem to be changing my life in very subtle ways, unlike the after-shave that will instantly get you laid by exotic women. Good thing, I'm happily married and intend to stay that way.
Do you think about writing while you're riding?
I think about images and the words to capture them a lot, and not just while riding, and not as a discipline, more as just this pleasurable thing my mind does to entertain itself. Language is like paint: you can slop it on or draw stick figures with it, it can clash and repulse or fascinate and draw you in, it can form images that are abstract and confusing or clear and photographic.
What type of reading do you favor?
I like a lot of different writing, from poems to well-crafted essays. But I really enjoy a good novel or short story. I just finished reading The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. Wow. No fancy prose, just a hell of a story. The movie will probably be out by the time you read this, but before they release it they have to get the child actors out of Afghanistan so the Taliban doesn't kill them.
I also like modern poetry and short story anthologies, like the annual Pushcart Prize and the American Best-of series—such smorgasbords of great contemporary stuff, often by authors I've never heard of. I wasn't an English major, and I've never had time to be a really voracious reader, so I take these remedial short cuts to a sort of working man's literacy.
Do you have a favorite writer?
Of course there are way too many greats to pick just one. I was flattered beyond words to be compared in the Dirt Rag blogs to Jim Harrison and Tom McGuane. Those guys are great. But if you made me name just one, it would be Annie Proulx, the author of the novel, Shipping News, and most famously, her short story, Brokeback Mountain. When I was starting on "Wallhangers," and getting nowhere (confirmed by my wife), I put it down and read a few of Proulx's short stories from "Close Range." I was reminded that one can introduce characters and kill them off in the same paragraph, move the plot decades at a stroke. That example and a poet's verbal economy allowed me to pack Dermott McDougal's life into the 3000-word Dirt Rag contest limit, though I thought I ended it awfully abruptly, like an old stag movie, where they apparently just run out of film. I wanted to say a lot more, maybe let him have a few years of happily ever after, but I ran out of words so I killed him off. Writers really do get to play God.
Which famous writer would have made a great mountain biker?
All of my favorites mentioned above, including Annie—and Hemingway, of course, if he was sober. Wouldn't want to run into any trees. It's all about that deep hunger for life, to live it fully. They write that way, and I think that's what drives a lot of riders, me included. After riding a dozen miles of singletrack together we would eat venison and sweet potatoes, drink to excess, and carouse shamelessly. They're all permanently invited to dinner and can show up unannounced.
Any hobbies, or something you do to relax?
Besides biking, writing and trailbuilding, there is bowhunting. We live on venison, Michigan's most plentiful, lean and organic meat. I like a person who is willing to shoot their own food. Flyfishing, but not so much these days—I'll return to that someday; it's beautiful, but catch-and-release is hard on my self-reliant soul.Woodworking: another creative outlet with the potential for great beauty. And I'd like to become a birdwatcher before my hearing goes completely, but right now there isn't much time. At 57, I feel like I've got to move as fast as I can, while I can. Bowhunting, flyfishing and woodworking are all a little like mountain biking: they're all doing it the hard way and in success there is grace.
You could get a gun, or a spinning rod and a worm, or go to the furniture store, or a ride something with a motor, but that takes the hard beauty out of it. Okay, it's true that our clothes dressers are grad student yard-sale left-overs from 30+ years ago, and one of them fell off a truck in a move twenty years ago, and I've been meaning to build new ones for decades now—so there might have to be a furniture store in our future. But no worms. No worms, goddammit.
Anything else you'd like to add?
Thanks again for the new bike. I love you guys.
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| Comment from Jim Crissman on 2008-04-26 |
| Hey Jose, I just found your note -- after all these months. I'm a little obsessed with checking the Dirt Rag website for chatter on the lit contest, but somehow missed your comment. I just want to say thanks for those kind words. I hope you're entering again this year that was a good story last year as I recall. Mine is in for 2008 -- actually wrote 2 this winter, so have one in reserve for next year. Will check the monkeybutt site today. Write on. Jim |
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| Comment from Jose Rodriguez on 2007-12-18 |
| I love your short story, wallhangers, so much that I printed it as an example of how to write concise and precise prose to get a story moving along. I read a lot and have an eclectic taste, from the old Greeks to dark new writers, but I think Wallhangers hit the spot regarding how to tell a story, as Victor Hugo said, without arabesques. I have read all of Annie Proulx’s books. I have always been impressed how well she can write with the forcefulness of a he-man, and I mean that as a compliment, no touchy-feely stuff there. Jack London would make a hell of a mountain biker, with his penchant for outdoor stories and loner-meets-nature inclinations.
Thank you for your comments on my Monkey Butt story. If you wonder what monkey butt is, check this web site http//www.antimonkeybutt.com/
Typos are my course and the vane of my life. English is a second language for me so I’m still confounded by some of the ass-backwards grammar rules in English. Keep up your prose writing you have a talent for good stories and how to tell them. Don’t give up.
Jose Rodriguez |
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