Sample Interview with C. R. Yeager
Q.
You’ve run a landscaping business for over thirty years. Is that a first for a writer?
A. Probably not. Many writers— Eric Hoffer, Gary Snyder, Noel Gallagher of Oasis, for example--- have been tradesmen. I had a background in the outdoors as a kid, fishing and camping, and started doing horticulture in college. It was the only job I could find that allowed for solitude. I’ve since done others during the offseason, all of which have convinced me to stay self-employed. I'm still haunted by the Russian proverb 'the man who chases two hares catches neither,' but at least this hare doesn't have to eat grass, just cut it.
Q. Does running machinery all day help or hinder writing?
A. The droning sound--- ‘black noise,’ I call it, because of the exhaust--- actually fosters synapses. It’s noise that blocks out all other noise, a kind of shroud or womb. The summer my mother was pregnant with me she spent all her time in the bedroom with the window a.c. on--- that’s probably where that started. The difficulty is in breaking away from work to write down ideas. I’m very process-oriented. Many a one-liner has been left in the grass catcher.
Q. Is that how your pieces start--- as one-liners?
A. Both emotionally and conceptually. There’s nothing like that initial charge. It’s like dynamite going off. I literally double up with laughter sometimes when I’m working. My customers probably think I have an ulcer!
Q. How do your clients react to the book?
A. They can’t believe ‘it’ talks, let alone writes.
Q. You’re also dyslexic. What exactly is that?
A. It results from being used as a croquet mallet as a kid. Actually, as a specialist explained to me, it means you’re neither right-brained nor left-brained, but both-brained. Neither brain hemisphere dominates cognition, so there are momentary lapses in comprehension, info bottlenecks, transpositions. In America, where everything’s based on speed, people think I’m stupid. At least, in landscaping, it helps you avoid the Howard Cosell syndrome--- using words too hifalutin for the medium.
Q. For someone who has so much trouble with language, you handle it pretty well.
A. Not many people do cogitative humor; it’s mostly anecdotal: ‘My husband dry-cleaned the cat,’ stuff like that. As I have the luxury of not working on deadline, and a gift for comic metaphor, I owe it to my audience to give them something special, and to myself to get some fun from my ‘craft and sullen art.’
Q. Your book is dedicated to women. Why?
A. For better and worse, they’ve had the most influence on me. (‘For the women’ can also mean ‘take that!’--- that’s for the ‘worse!’) It’s also to honor domestic humorists like Aunty Erma, Jean Kerr, and Shirley Jackson in Life Among The Savages.
Q. You’re a boomer---
A. First, last, and always. Western civ definitely has peaked during my lifetime, despite the Banshees’ best attempts to demolish it.
Q. You dis your wife and daughter in the book, calling them Banshees, etc. Is that kosher?
A. You have to survive! I love them both exceedingly, but they’re not dewy-eyed sentimentalists like my mother-in-law. They prefer putting the hammer on you, WWF Smackdown-style. In any case, when I refer to myself as ‘having my head up my rear so often I could serve as my own proctologist,’ it’s obviously not one-sided.
Q. Will there be a sequel?
A. Unless someone pays me not to finish it! It’s called The Bureaucrat of Bedtime. It has fewer rants and an Anglo travel section, but covers similar ground. Unless the Bans totally decimate my ego, I have no plans to move to a lamasery, though I’d eventually like to write a travel book.
Q. Your mother was British, your dad American. Was it a G. I. relationship?
A. That’s the logical assumption. They really didn’t meet till 1951. Mom came to Cleveland to escape the war’s aftermath and a failed marriage, and worked in advertising. Dad, from Erie, was a graphics designer at GE who taught an art class at night. She was in it.
Q. Your mother has since passed---
A. ---to that great mothballed closet in the sky.
Q. She obviously had a lasting influence on your life and language.
A. Moreso than Dad, who wasn’t around that much early on. I had a British accent till the second grade. I’d get in trouble at school for stuff like rooting for the redcoats during a film on Bunker Hill. People here think I’m being affected when I use words like ‘umpteen,’ people overseas think I’m being ingratiating. But I grew up hearing them. As Mom would say, ‘Cahn’t bloody well win!’
A. Probably not. Many writers— Eric Hoffer, Gary Snyder, Noel Gallagher of Oasis, for example--- have been tradesmen. I had a background in the outdoors as a kid, fishing and camping, and started doing horticulture in college. It was the only job I could find that allowed for solitude. I’ve since done others during the offseason, all of which have convinced me to stay self-employed. I'm still haunted by the Russian proverb 'the man who chases two hares catches neither,' but at least this hare doesn't have to eat grass, just cut it.
Q. Does running machinery all day help or hinder writing?
A. The droning sound--- ‘black noise,’ I call it, because of the exhaust--- actually fosters synapses. It’s noise that blocks out all other noise, a kind of shroud or womb. The summer my mother was pregnant with me she spent all her time in the bedroom with the window a.c. on--- that’s probably where that started. The difficulty is in breaking away from work to write down ideas. I’m very process-oriented. Many a one-liner has been left in the grass catcher.
Q. Is that how your pieces start--- as one-liners?
A. Both emotionally and conceptually. There’s nothing like that initial charge. It’s like dynamite going off. I literally double up with laughter sometimes when I’m working. My customers probably think I have an ulcer!
Q. How do your clients react to the book?
A. They can’t believe ‘it’ talks, let alone writes.
Q. You’re also dyslexic. What exactly is that?
A. It results from being used as a croquet mallet as a kid. Actually, as a specialist explained to me, it means you’re neither right-brained nor left-brained, but both-brained. Neither brain hemisphere dominates cognition, so there are momentary lapses in comprehension, info bottlenecks, transpositions. In America, where everything’s based on speed, people think I’m stupid. At least, in landscaping, it helps you avoid the Howard Cosell syndrome--- using words too hifalutin for the medium.
Q. For someone who has so much trouble with language, you handle it pretty well.
A. Not many people do cogitative humor; it’s mostly anecdotal: ‘My husband dry-cleaned the cat,’ stuff like that. As I have the luxury of not working on deadline, and a gift for comic metaphor, I owe it to my audience to give them something special, and to myself to get some fun from my ‘craft and sullen art.’
Q. Your book is dedicated to women. Why?
A. For better and worse, they’ve had the most influence on me. (‘For the women’ can also mean ‘take that!’--- that’s for the ‘worse!’) It’s also to honor domestic humorists like Aunty Erma, Jean Kerr, and Shirley Jackson in Life Among The Savages.
Q. You’re a boomer---
A. First, last, and always. Western civ definitely has peaked during my lifetime, despite the Banshees’ best attempts to demolish it.
Q. You dis your wife and daughter in the book, calling them Banshees, etc. Is that kosher?
A. You have to survive! I love them both exceedingly, but they’re not dewy-eyed sentimentalists like my mother-in-law. They prefer putting the hammer on you, WWF Smackdown-style. In any case, when I refer to myself as ‘having my head up my rear so often I could serve as my own proctologist,’ it’s obviously not one-sided.
Q. Will there be a sequel?
A. Unless someone pays me not to finish it! It’s called The Bureaucrat of Bedtime. It has fewer rants and an Anglo travel section, but covers similar ground. Unless the Bans totally decimate my ego, I have no plans to move to a lamasery, though I’d eventually like to write a travel book.
Q. Your mother was British, your dad American. Was it a G. I. relationship?
A. That’s the logical assumption. They really didn’t meet till 1951. Mom came to Cleveland to escape the war’s aftermath and a failed marriage, and worked in advertising. Dad, from Erie, was a graphics designer at GE who taught an art class at night. She was in it.
Q. Your mother has since passed---
A. ---to that great mothballed closet in the sky.
Q. She obviously had a lasting influence on your life and language.
A. Moreso than Dad, who wasn’t around that much early on. I had a British accent till the second grade. I’d get in trouble at school for stuff like rooting for the redcoats during a film on Bunker Hill. People here think I’m being affected when I use words like ‘umpteen,’ people overseas think I’m being ingratiating. But I grew up hearing them. As Mom would say, ‘Cahn’t bloody well win!’