![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
RIP, Tony Hillerman 1925 - 2008
Oct. 27th, 2008 08:28 pmTony Hillerman, one of my favorite storytellers, just died at the age of 83. He was the author of the Navajo Tribal Police mysteries, which were wonderfully complex, character-driven stories.
I first discovered his stories many years ago; back then, I was less interested in character and more interested in action, and thought the stories rather slow-moving. Now, as I've gotten older, I find myself less satisfied with high-action, high-cardboard characters and prefer complex, believable people in my stories... and I enjoy Mr. Hillerman's stories a lot more. Finally, last year, during my trips to and from California, I crossed the country he wrote about (and the country Louis L'Amour wrote about), including parts of the Navajo reservation. I understand the setting of his stories a bit better now.
The inner and outer conflict between the Navajo way and the white man's world is a recurring theme, and results in two very complex protagonists for his stories. All of his stories depended on the people, the culture, the region they were set in; you could not take a Jim Chee or Joe Leaphorn story and change the names and drop it in New York City. It just wouldn't work.
From the point of view of an aspiring writer (me), his stories are good examples of how particular characters can drive the plot--their actions influenced by their cultural background and attitudes, and the constraints imposed and opportunities provided by the harsh, beautiful desert country. Crimes are committed for the traditional reasons you find all around the world: greed, revenge, hatred, folly--yet events unfold the way they do because of the mindset of the characters, because the population is scattered thinly across a vast, mountainous, beautiful desert wilderness with bad or no roads, few telephones, and a tiny native police force to cover all that, and because of competing jurisdictions and interests...
History/backstory is always an integral part of why things happen in his stories. Mr. Hillerman did a good job of grounding his characters in the world, giving them histories that matter as opposed to letting them be generic blobs with names and descriptions. A plot turned on a certain rancher's habit of suing his neighbors for fun, and on another's hobby of flying an elderly WWII-era scout plane... and on a criminal who used his Ute father's stories of how he evaded pursuing Navajo to evade a manhunt of his own.
Raise a glass to Tony Hillerman, or better yet, read some of his books. He lived to a ripe old age, and gave us some excellent stories. What more can a writer desire?
I first discovered his stories many years ago; back then, I was less interested in character and more interested in action, and thought the stories rather slow-moving. Now, as I've gotten older, I find myself less satisfied with high-action, high-cardboard characters and prefer complex, believable people in my stories... and I enjoy Mr. Hillerman's stories a lot more. Finally, last year, during my trips to and from California, I crossed the country he wrote about (and the country Louis L'Amour wrote about), including parts of the Navajo reservation. I understand the setting of his stories a bit better now.
The inner and outer conflict between the Navajo way and the white man's world is a recurring theme, and results in two very complex protagonists for his stories. All of his stories depended on the people, the culture, the region they were set in; you could not take a Jim Chee or Joe Leaphorn story and change the names and drop it in New York City. It just wouldn't work.
From the point of view of an aspiring writer (me), his stories are good examples of how particular characters can drive the plot--their actions influenced by their cultural background and attitudes, and the constraints imposed and opportunities provided by the harsh, beautiful desert country. Crimes are committed for the traditional reasons you find all around the world: greed, revenge, hatred, folly--yet events unfold the way they do because of the mindset of the characters, because the population is scattered thinly across a vast, mountainous, beautiful desert wilderness with bad or no roads, few telephones, and a tiny native police force to cover all that, and because of competing jurisdictions and interests...
History/backstory is always an integral part of why things happen in his stories. Mr. Hillerman did a good job of grounding his characters in the world, giving them histories that matter as opposed to letting them be generic blobs with names and descriptions. A plot turned on a certain rancher's habit of suing his neighbors for fun, and on another's hobby of flying an elderly WWII-era scout plane... and on a criminal who used his Ute father's stories of how he evaded pursuing Navajo to evade a manhunt of his own.
Raise a glass to Tony Hillerman, or better yet, read some of his books. He lived to a ripe old age, and gave us some excellent stories. What more can a writer desire?
