Ed Cray

Journalism professor Ed Cray has led an eclectic life (wire service reporter, ACLU staffer, musical folklorist and founder of the Minority Educational Training Program at the Los Angeles Times). His publications are no less eclectic: he has written 18 well-regarded books, including biographies of Gen. George C. Marshall, Chief Justice Earl Warren and – most recently – Rambling Man, about folksinger Woody Guthrie. He is currently creating a Center for the Biography to be housed in USC’s Annenberg School for Communication. He spoke with writer Allison Engel about Woody Guthrie, discipline and the biographer’s art.

Rambling Man is full of surprises. Who knew that “This Land Is Your Land” began as a song about class disparity, written in response to Kate Smith’s hit version of “God Bless America”? What surprised you most about Guthrie?

There were a number of discoveries. Guthrie’s personal life was marked by tragedy. His beloved older sister was burned to death when Woody was 7. His mother, ill with Huntington’s chorea, threw a lantern at his father and burned him from the neck to the groin. Woody was 13, and effectively lost both his mother and father. Later, Woody lost a child to fire. This daughter was what the British call a ‘chime child,’ a marvelous child who inspired Woody to write all these incredible children’s songs, which I would argue, and Pete Seeger agrees with me, probably will be Woody’s lasting contribution. There isn’t a nursery school in the country that doesn’t have Woody Guthrie’s Songs to Grow On and More Songs to Grow On. They are just fabulous, full of funny lines and words, and written from a child’s point of view.

I’m surprised no one has made them into a children’s musical.

There’s a thought. Woody is so rife, so unbelievably fecund in his writings. The archive has about 10,000 pages of mostly unpublished material. Just cherry-picking, you could do at least three evenings of a one-man show and never repeat yourself. It’s not just poems and songs, it’s recounting of discussions, arguments he hears in bars, reminiscences. It’s rich with Woody’s characteristics: his sheer, loyal patriotism and love of the land, his optimism and his humor. Even when he was writing his protest songs, there was humor in them. His eternal optimism was a characteristic he got from his father.

Which is remarkable, given all the tragedies.

No question about it. It’s also important to understand that Woody Guthrie was not some rube, some natural-born poet who just fell off the turnip truck in the big city. Woody Guthrie was raised in a middle-class home. His father was a land broker who went broke in the Depression. As Woody once said, he lost a farm a day for 35 days. But Woody was very widely read. He was particularly interested in religion and specifically the Eastern religions. The hick was his stage role.

Your style is to write 1,000 words a day, edit it the next morning and move on. How do you get those 1,000 words down, day after day?

I stare at the computer until drops of blood pop out on my forehead. That’s stealing a line from the journalist Gene Fowler. Actually, it’s a matter of craftsmanship more than brilliant creativity. I don’t try to be a stylist. I try to be a storyteller and, using journalistic standards, move the story. I don’t like to stop for description. I don’t try to turn a phrase. In the case of Woody Guthrie, the less I try to show off as a writer, the more he stands out as a brilliant creator. Writing about the Columbia River, he wrote: “In the misty crystal glitter of her wild and windward spray….” It’s a lovely, poetic line. And he’s full of them.

Tell me about the Center for the Biography that you are establishing at USC.

Only about 20 percent of American colleges and universities teach biography, as a result of historians turning away from the “great man” theory in the ’60s and toward social history. But there are real problems in writing biography that deserve serious consideration. We held a framing committee meeting in mid-May [2007] with professional writers and academics who teach biography. The center is on its way to becoming a reality.

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