Today I Wrote a Great Scene About a Flowing Stream

“Charles Frazier wrote Cold Mountain. He spent ten years writing it. Now, I resent the fact that his wife worked, and he could afford to take ten years to write a novel. My wife doesn’t work and I can’t afford to take ten years to write a novel that I haven’t even sold. So I resent that. And I didn’t like Cold Mountain. It wasn’t my kind of book. I don’t think writing about trees is that interesting. It’s a quest story, a string of pearls, and I didn’t believe any of it. However, it was a serious book. So I think that Charles Frazier deserves all the accolades and awards and money that he got for it, because it was a serious artistic effort. It didn’t appeal to me, I was a little personally resentful, but I admire that he had to delay his gratifications for ten years before anyone saw his book. He had to have the personal satisfaction of knowing, ‘Today I wrote a great scene about a flowing stream,’ and live with that. I can admire guys who are not my cup of tea as writers. But I’m furious with phonies.”

—Pat Jordan