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Author Claire Vaye Watkins is both object and observer of the desert of the Southwest. His collection of bestselling short stories, Warrior-born (2012), and critically acclaimed novel, Golden Famous Citrus (2015), both take place in the ever-changing deserts of Nevada and California, its home region.
Last fall Watkins released a powerful and peculiar new novel titled I love you but I chose the darkness, which received rave reviews in the national press. Being a kind of autobiographical fiction, the main character shares the same name as the author. And the book delves into Watkins ‘personal family history, including a large section on his late father Paul Watkins’ connection to the Manson family.
Now Watkins teaches creative writing remotely at UC Irvine and is living his best life in the wilderness.
After teaching in the Midwest, you returned home to live near Joshua Tree. How does it feel to be back? It’s very intense, because the Mojave Desert is my first landscape. On a deep and primordial level, I have been here since I was my mother’s egg, when my grandmother was pregnant with my mother. So it’s deeply peaceful, as if the sky is the right color and the right height. Plants mean something to me. When I see a small animal or my neighbors, I say to myself, “Hello, I know about you. “
Your last book presents a rather ambivalent opinion on Las Vegas. What do you think of the city? I have a lot of tenderness and affection for this. That’s why I allowed this character of Claire to be so critical of her and to be so afraid of her. She thinks of it like a vortex pulling her back. When I grew up in Southern Nevada, I was constantly encouraged to leave and was really warned in a terrible, almost fatalistic way, like “Little girl, don’t go into the forest”, but this was, “You have to get out of here or you’ll end up in Las Vegas.”
Do you have a favorite literature on the American West? The writer who lit the American West for me was Wallace Stegner, especially his non-fiction. … that of Mary Austin The land of light rain is a very cool book. … She travels through Death Valley and the Mojave. Cadillac Desert: the American West and its endangered water by Marc Reisner. Oh, Sally Denton’s book The profiteers relates to this Nevada business, but it also really helped me understand the history of the place. Sally Zanjani has an excellent book on Sarah Winnemucca. … the book by Ben Ehrenreich Desert Notebooks isn’t easy in Las Vegas, but I think Las Vegas can handle that sort of thing.
How does it feel to be called the ‘new voice of the American West’ by the Los Angeles times? Like The great Lebowski, this is just a man’s opinion. The author of the title wrote this. I mean, I see myself that way, as a regional writer and belonging to a specific place. Obviously… I am obsessed with the history, geology and natural history of this place.
Using this voice, what should people know about our wilderness? We continue to see this myth of the desert as a wasteland and a sacrificial place. We are seeing this with the so-called “green gold rush†in the drylands, particularly lithium mining and industrial solar panels. … I’m afraid this was a long continuation of the profit motive that gave us 1,000 nuclear bombs dropped on the desert, Yucca Mountain, and some truly destructive mining. … These are the places where we are going to be. It feeds your soul, even if you never go to the wilderness, to know it’s there. It is a very important part of being fully human. So, for me, the industrialization of nature is a rottenness of the soul.
If people want to learn more about the threat to the public nature of industrial solar power and mining, they should check out Basin and Range Watch, Protect Thacker Pass, and People of Red Mountain.
Your latest novel is autobiographical. What is real and what is fiction? The great thing about books is that they look real. [This is] a novel that claims to be a memoir. Like, why didn’t you just write a brief? Well, because none of that really happened. But, of course, some of them did.
How is Claire the author different from Claire the character in the book? [She’s] only a part of me, like an identity… what the Jungians would call a shadow. It’s the mean, naughty, scary, secretive part of you. She’s also as much me as any other character I’ve ever written. If I write a story about an old man digging for gold in the Gold Rush, he’s as much Claire as Claire is Claire.
What is your daily creative routine? I wake up, have a coffee and write by hand in a notebook. I’m not looking [screens] until at least noon, if I can help myself. … Usually I walk in the mountains for two hours, I sit up there, I read, I drink a beer and I watch the sun. The pandemic has made me too hard on myself, like if you don’t write X number of words today that’s a problem. … Instead, how about I didn’t jump off a building today. It appears to be a great achievement. I continued to live and breathe and fed on the good food. So I just tried to let go of any kind of internalized capitalist logic regarding artistic creation.
What advice would you give to someone interested in writing as a hobby? The Nevada landscape itself is a huge invitation to write. Pay close attention to what you see and notice when you are curious. For me, it’s this weird little cabin all by itself.
Do you have any travel tips for the Mojave Desert and Las Vegas? Shoshone [California] is a great place to land if you are new to exploring the hinterland as it is this lovely little walled village with a lovely swimming pool. I love to walk around the Tecopa area, the Amargosa Canyon Trail off the coast of China Ranch which is of course a legendary destination. You can see the Amargosa River rising to the surface. It is an incredibly beautiful place. [In Las Vegas], the Writer’s Block, of course. I really like… the mountains, Red Rock. I really like Springs Preserve; my grandma lived right next to Springs Preserve before it was Springs Preserve.
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