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Seldom Disappointed

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"Seldom Disappointed"
Tony Hillerman
ISBN 0-06-019445-6

I am one of those readers Tony Hillerman writes about in this memoir who does not like mysteries but reads his books. Like those folks, the Navajo cultural stuff is what interests me. Well, maybe there is something more than that. It is Tony Hillerman's remarkable ability to tell a story.

Hillerman grew up in Oklahoma, the son of poor parents for whom he had much respect. The title of his memoir comes from something his mother used to say, that one who did not expect too much from life was seldom disappointed. This was an outlook not uncommon to Hillerman's generation. Also, like many young men of his generation, he went off to the war in Europe.

As a combat infantryman, Hillerman won the silver star, the bronze star, and got blown-up by a mine. Yet there is little bitterness in him about the war. This is one of the few memoirs relating to WWII in which a former soldier describes the opposing German soldiers as "other teenagers". The casual manner in which Hillerman writes about his war experiences and later about his literary success seems to reflect a stoic outlook about "that short run toward the Last Great Adventure".

After the war, a couple of years studying journalism at the University of Oklahoma led to work as a reporter in Texas, Oklahoma, and eventually New Mexico. Fifteen years of newspaper work and being editor of the Albuquerque paper led to some connections with the University of New Mexico and its journalism department. Hillerman taught there for about fifteen years until he lost his enthusiasm for teaching and wanted to write.

Hillerman learned the Navajo culture from Navaho acquaintances who sensed his sincere interest. Having attended eight grades at an Indian school in Oklahoma and having had Indian playmates helped put him at ease with the people. He came to understand the Navajo ceremonies and values, which he made use of in his stories. For authentic and respectful portrayal of Navajo (Dineh) culture in his books, the tribe declared him "Special Friend of the Dineh".

In this memoir, one learns the origin of some of the material in Hillerman's books. For example, one of his villains is based in part on a death row killer who asked Hillerman and the Santa Fe AP bureau chief to write about him so that his mother might claim his body. It seems that he had been abandoned as a child by his mother and did not know her whereabouts.

Hillerman's "breakout book", my favorite, came in 1988 with the publication of "Thief of Time", about the theft of artifacts from Indian ruins for sale to collectors. It was his first book to make the "New York Times" bestseller list, and doing that, Hillerman explains, guarantees an author very large sales due to the way it is used by bookstore managers for ordering books.

At the end of this memoir, Hillerman reflects back positively on seventy five years of life. "They've been far better than anyone deserves", he writes.

By the way, Hillerman says that he interrupted a Navajo police novel to complete this memoir. I am looking forward to it.

Hillerman is part of Brokaw's Greatest Generation. That's a trite notion, but Hillerman can wear that mantle proudly. This book covers a lot of ground. It's about the Depression, growing up in Texas. It's about being in the Infantry in World War II. He seems to do a good job of describing war and armies of young kids killing each other. It's sobering if you read the history books, about policies gone bad and the rise of bad governments. In the end it's about kids killing kids, and I don't pretend there's any way to avoid that in many instances. I'd like to.

Eventually, Hillerman ends up in New Mexico. The stuff about political corruption is priceless. It sounds a little like Arizona, where I grew up. Those confessions when you have a bike lock around a suspects privates make a guy a bit cynical. But it's little glimpses of the legislature and the university that really explain how things work in the mountain west. Hillerman comes off as a good guy. Not a hero, but a good guy.

I've met Mr. Hillerman. I've read all the books. I like the idea of finding harmony with the land and with ourselves. He seems to (want to) understand how people go bad. Sometimes it may be because they grow up with nothing, and sometimes because they grow up with too much. His books take the view that people are generally the product of the pressures they face growing up, and sometimes the influences produce rotten scoundrels. That's not the simplistic view of 'personal responsibility', but Hillerman doesn't offer excuses, only explanations. And, as a mystery writer, he 'needs' bad people, right? This book provides interesting explanations, from real life, for some of his villains. There's a hierarchy of evil in some of his books, trashed-out people trying to survive and powerful manipulators pulling their strings. It's interesting to juxtapose this on 'authority' that is based on constant cleansing and renewal of blessing. What makes this book so great is that you see how a writer's experience molds everything he does, and what sometimes seems like a formula is, hopefully, a very rich blending of human experience that has generated unique perspective. I have more respect for the books since I read this book, and I was already a fan.

Hillerman makes me proud to live in the Southwest.

George Sears

As an Anglo author who writes a mystery series starring a Latino private eye, I have always felt a strong kinship with Tony Hillerman, an Anglo author who writes mysteries starring Navajo tribal police officers. I found this autobiography a fascinating read. SELDOM DISAPPOINTED was never disappointing. From the days of his youth growing up in Oklahoma to his days of success here and now, Tony Hillerman tells a great tale. It is the greatest story he's ever told. His memories of his mother are particularly touching, as is his affectionate comments about his wife and children. Then, of course, there is his professional career. Read SELDOM DISAPPOINTED as soon as you can. You won't be disappointed.

Tony Hillerman tells a touching story of a great writer from Brokaw's "greatest generation" and his rise to literary success and acclaim. His views of small town Oklahoma during the depression are sensitive and yet lively. His recounting of the struggles of a foot soldier in World War II are moving, especially to a fellow veteran of a different era. The true story is a window into the soul of a man who could create Jim Chee, and more importantly, Joe Leaphorn.

Completely fascinating and thought provoking. Full of so many surprises and unexpected pleasures. I thought his portrayal of growing up in depression Oklahoma a revelation and a window to a time those of us who grew up later can hardly imagine. His infantryman's view of WWII must be read by anyone with any delusions of the "glories" of war. His immersion into the world of journalism and politics at the city, state and university level enlightens. And the joys of family life that have sustained him will sustain all. His whole attitude toward life and all the cards that he has been dealt is an example for us all. I have been a fan of his books and have regularly given or loaned my copies. Having studied anthropology in the distant past, I've found his portrayals of the modern day Navaho and surrounding groups to be better than any ethnography I have ever read - plus his mysteries are so well done, using the cultural complexities to further the plot. The only part I skipped was at the very end where he discusses each book - and only because I think I want to go back and reread them - in order. Tony Hillerman fills a need we didn't know we had until he came along and this book does the same. Thanks a lot!

Tony Hillerman is a great author, and a man has the right to write his autobiography any way he chooses. That having been said, there are some disappointments in store for potential readers, most of whom will be perusing the book for insights into Hillerman's creative mindset. Hillerman does an excellent job of describing his childhood in Oklahoma, his World War II experiences, and his subsequent life as a college student and journalist. It is only about two thirds of the way through the book (at p. 251), however, that he seriously begins addressing the fiction which has made him famous. Furthermore, as Hillerman himself notes (see p. 321), only six books are discussed in any depth in the text: The Blessing Way (at pp. 266-73), The Fly on the Wall (at pp. 274-82), Dance Hall of the Dead (at pp. 283-88), The People of Darkness (at pp.294-98), Hunting Badger (at pp. 300-10), and Finding Moon (at pp. 311-17). All the others are discussed in more depth in an addition (at pp. 321-31), which to me was the most interesting part of the book. Why they were not treated in more depth at appropriate places in the text is never explained.

The volume also has no index, so that it is not possible to trace themes without riffling through the book. Additionally, the bibliography of Hillerman's works lists two compilations, The Joe Leaphorn Mysteries and The Jim Chee Mysteries, but inexplicably leaves out a third, Leaphorn & Chee.

One is left with the impression of a hastily-produced book, with a thoughtfully crafted and detailed account of Hillerman's early years supplemented by a more impressionistic, some might say spotty, conclusion. Hopefully Hillerman's health will give him a chance to return to the genre and produce and produce a more satisfying, definitive account of his life and work.

Samuel Pyeatt Menefee

Tony Hillerman grew up in poverty during the Depression in rural Sacred Heart, Oklahoma, but as he himself points out, "when you're a kid you don't know you're deprived unless you see someone who isn't. That didn't happen around Sacred Heart."

Apparently, growing up in Sacred Heart was relatively uninspiring, for the only thing Hillerman ever wrote based on his hometown was "the introduction to a scholarly book about one- and two-room schools in the Great Plains States." But it was there that he played war games with his boyhood friends, not realizing that the stage would soon be set for his participation in the real thing: the Second World War.

In the meantime, he discovered books - literally - stacks of boxes of them in a storeroom at his local church. The books were left behind when the Benedictines relocated their school and Hillerman offered to list and organize them for the pastor, while borrowing many of them for reading. And when he had depleted that treasure trove, he moved on to books requested by mail from the state library.

Describing leaving home for the first time to attend college, Hillerman says, "I was skinny, clumsy, slow of foot....had the sort of ears that made Ross Perot a favorite of cartoonists, a large and bony nose, and a tendency to do stupid things to minimize the risk of being considered a sissy by my peers."

After one semester, he decided the academic life wasn't for him - a decision he would reconsider later in life; first using the GI Bill to study journalism at the University of Oklahoma, then attending the University of New Mexico at the age of 38 for graduate studies. In between, he worked for 15 years as a crime reporter, with the crimes he witnessed later providing sparks for his mystery novels.

His Second World War experiences take up the bulk of this memoir, which is an honest one at that. As part of the army induction process, Hillerman details how he was called into a room for questioning by a captain. A naïve country boy at the time, he wasn't quite sure what the captain was getting at: "'Do you like boys?' the captain asked. I said sure, a lot of them. 'Do you like girls?'"

When he was able to answer the captain's question about whether he had a girlfriend sufficiently, the interrogation ended.

Whooping it up at a bar and grill before shipping out, Hillerman started with a Singapore Sling. By the end of the evening, the waiter was advising him the waffle he'd poured syrup on and was trying to cut with a knife and fork was a photograph in the menu.

Landing in Marseilles, and soon embarking on his first mission, Hillerman says, "we were not yet experienced enough to have been as scared as we should have been." He should've been plenty scared. According to war historian Steven Ambroise, combat infantry is "the most extreme experience a human can endure." Hillerman adds to this, "It's something that transcends even politics." He had a near-death experience after stumbling onto an antipersonnel mine, complete with a "most vivid memory of....warmth, comfort, an incredible sense of peacefulness....[and] God, welcoming me."

He returned to the States after the war and the fatigue caused by working as a chainman on a surveying crew helped him overcome "overpowering nausea," while "the dreams that came were simpler ones," compared to the horrific nightmares he had been experiencing since the war.

Shortly thereafter, he was hired to deliver oil field equipment to an oil well on a Navajo reservation. While doing so, he witnessed an Enemy Way ceremony commissioned for a couple of Navajo boys returning from the war, "to cure them of the evil influences they've encountered, being involved with so much death, and to restore them to harmony with their people." Renamed The Blessing Way at an editor's insistence, his memory of the event would form what he considered to be the best section of his first novel by the same name.

Hillerman is humble and modest when it comes to not taking credit for his accomplishments - among them, raising six children - but it is this very thing that would seem to be his downfall.

He's the first to admit he learned to maintain emotional distance during the war, and while this quality may have served him well as a crime journalist and mystery writer, it fails us here in his memoir.

The stories are good enough, but they lack emotion. Hillerman seems to have enjoyed the good experiences in his life, and he notes the unpleasant ones - but it's impossible to tell whether he loved or hated them.

The result is a flat recitation of events and situations in a life without feeling. As memoirs go, Seldom Disappointed is ultimately disappointing.

I've enjoyed reading many of Tony Hillerman's mysteries which are more about understanding bits of pieces of Native American culture in the high mountain country of New Mexico and the interactions of individuals, a nice contrast to the fast-paced, urban-setting mysteries rife with sex, violence, and foul-mouthed bad guys of many mystery authors. His memoir will delight his many fans because the picture it paints is one of an unassuming person who grew up in the poverty of the Great Depression, did more than his share as an infantry grunt in WWII, and relates his post-war life with his beloved wife, Marie, with warmth and modesty.

The book is plain and simply written and Hillerman's self-effacing demeanor sets it apart from the memoirs of other authors and artists who see the world only through the prism of their own egos. Hillerman does not reflect deeply on What It All Means, but merely relates in matter-of-fact fashion a journey through life.

His infantry tour describing the conditions in the bitter winter of 1944-45 concludes that Army Intelligence was seldom correct, the West Pointers directing the war were often but dimly aware of what was really needed, e.g., winter garb for what turned out to be the snowiest winter in Western Europe in 40 years, and that confusion and ignorance were constant companions. His "grunt" experiences are comparable to those described in more detail, and with much more reflection, by Raymond Gantler in his fine book,"Roll Me Over" written soon after WWII, of similar situations and experiences.

Hillerman's post-war experiences of university life, journalism, and, finally, his quest to be a novelist make up the final third of the memoir. Particularly interesting for budding novelists, and particularly those who have read his novels, are how incidents, individuals, and other miscellaneous happenings provide grist for what happens to Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee in their adventures.

In sum, Hillerman's account of his life is an honest, often moving account of an unassuming man who has realized his ambitions and cares to share a bit of this with others. A hard-to-put down book.

Those who love Tony Hillerman's books will reap rich rewards from plodding through the first few somewhat less interesting chapters. Stick with it; once Tony gets into the Army and WWII you will be whipping through those pages! Tony gives an intimate view of wartime experiences of a kind I have not read or heard from other veterans. There's no macho bravado here, just the cold hard facts with a little humor mixed in. And when you reach the history of Tony's writing career you won't want the book to end. This memoir gently and modestly gives an insight into the character of one of the best loved mystery writers in America.

I became a fan of Tony Hillerman's work three years ago after reading ''The Wailing Wind'', so my spirits understandably soared when I found I would be able to add a copy of his memoir to my growing collection of books he had already written.

I bought it as a birthday present for myself last year, and once again, in this particular work, he remains as good a storyteller as in the Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee mysteries he has written, and even though the book received its title from the observance made by Tony's mother, I doubt anyone who reads it will indeed be seldom disappointed!