After writer Terry Davis' fall, a rising
February 25, 2012
By Robb Murray The Free Press
MANKATO — The rumors of Terry Davis’ demise have been greatly exaggerated.
Sure, he was, as they say, on his deathbed, connected to tubes and machines and surrounded by loved ones, many of whom believed they were there to say farewell to Davis, farewell to the man who wrote “Vision Quest,” to the man who has been mentor to many, a titan in a community full of writers.
But like many great stories, Terry Davis’ latest life turn came with a twist.
“We all came to Rochester to say goodbye,” said Becky Davis, Terry’s ex-wife. “And the palliative care team came in and said, ‘We’ll give you time to say goodbye and then we’ll pull the tube. Could be minutes or it could be days. We’ll make him comfortable.”
Davis’ loved ones took that time and said what they needed to say. And when that time was up, doctors came in to remove the life-support equipment that was keeping him alive. Doctors said it’s just not possible to recover from that kind of head injury.
Then Davis opened his eyes. He was alert. And instead of calling him a goner, they were calling him Lazarus. Literally.
“Now, every time they see me, they say ‘Oh, you’re the guy who should be dead!’” Davis said.
After a fall in his home Jan. 15 left him clinging to life, Davis, 65, says he feels like he has cheated death, and been given another chance to be the kind of man he wishes he could be. He also says he feels renewed vigor to finish the writing projects he’s got going, including a joint project he recently finished with Becky Davis.
The fall has also, however, shown him just how insidious his bipolar disorder is and has become. As he recovers, he’s in a sort of transition on his medication, which can manifest itself in a very emotional effect.
But he’s still Terry Davis, hyper-vivid imagination and all, and the 200 members of his “Friends of Terry Davis Get Well Soon Fan Page” on Facebook — many of whom Davis taught during his 25 years at Minnesota State University — can’t wait until he gets better. Soon.
The fall
Davis lives in Good Thunder, in a home he continues to work on.
One day, he and friends say, he could hear his cat, Peanut, crying. He assumed the cat was behind an unfinished wall in the bathroom, so Davis decided to help the cat out.
He positioned a ladder in the bathtub and climbed, hoping to peer over the wall and back behind it, to coax Peanut out. That’s when he slipped off the ladder and hit his head.
Davis has lost track of time following the fall. When asked, he estimated it was about an hour and a half between the fall and when he was taken to the hospital. When told it was actually three days, he said, “I don’t remember. I just remember really, really awful pain.”
Before going to the hospital, though, he does remember calling his girlfriend.
“I called her and said, ‘Jesus, I’m scared,’” Davis said.
After an examination at Mayo Clinic Health System in Mankato three days after his fall, Davis was airlifted to St. Marys Hospital in Rochester. That’s where Davis nearly died. Subdural hemorrhaging, Davis said. His brain took a beating when he fell.
“It was pretty devastating,” said Becky Davis. “We thought he was going to be seriously damaged and this brilliant mind would be gone.”
But like Louden Swain in Davis’ wrestling-based book “Vision Quest,” Davis didn’t give in. And somehow, just before they were about to remove life-support equipment, Davis opened his eyes.
In the days following, he was visited by scores of medical professionals. Among them was his brain surgeon, a former high school wrestler himself, who’d been told after the fact that Davis had written one of the most memorable tales ever told about high school wrestling.
“The surgeon said to me, ‘It was an honor to see the brain that wrote ‘Vision Quest,’” Davis said.
Ongoing health problems
The fall wasn’t Davis first run-in with health problems. In 2009, the year he both retired from teaching and shut down his motorcycle restoration business in Rapidan, doctors discovered Davis’ aorta, from chest to abdomen, was coming apart.
They fixed the upper part of it and saved his life. But the lower part requires medication, blood thinners, to keep it working. Doctors told him back then that they couldn’t fix the lower part. But since then, Davis said, some doctors have been performing lower aorta surgeries, and he’s hoping to have that surgery as soon as he can.
“Even now, the aorta isn’t strong enough to maintain the good strong blood flow that I need,” he said.
Bipolar exacerbated
For the moment, Davis is recovering nicely. In his physical therapy sessions, he’s progressed from tipping over as he walks around the corner to being able to negotiate corners without incident. But he won’t be running any 5Ks anytime soon.
He’s also in a transition period on his medication. The drugs he takes to treat his bipolar disorder, he says, were getting in the way of the drugs doctors had given him to aid in the recovery from the fall. The combination has made him very emotional and prone to tears for reasons even he doesn’t understand.
Davis says he can remember struggling with being bipolar as far back as high school. Ever since then it’s always been there, a dark passenger in the back of his mind waiting to prey on him when he’s weak.
“In public, I feel like everyone is smarter than I am, better looking than I am, richer than I am, and happier,” Davis said. “I’ve got this bipolar snake down inside of me that’s always telling me I don’t deserve anything good.”
In the future, he says, he will be a different person.
“I want to be nicer,” he said. “I believe a good man is one who does for others ... I want to be a good man.”
He says that he plans to be more public about his disorder, and he can think of no better place to do that than through his writing.
Still writing
Davis’ best known work is “Vision Quest,” a novel that was turned into a major motion picture starring Matthew Modine in 1995.
But Davis doesn’t consider it his best work.
“I’ve always thought my best book was ‘Mysterious Ways,’” he said. “Since 1984, though, something’s always nagged me about it.”
He thinks he knows why. In the end, the character’s actions weren’t quite true to the character, and he thinks he’s gotten that figured out now.
He’s also got a new novel in the works, including a book called “The Fiery Heart of Kilamanjaro,” which features a woman addicted to online poker and a man with bipolar disorder.
In the past, when his bipolar disorder has crept into his writing, he’d try to suppress it. In this case, however, has essentially taken his hands off the steering wheel and let the disorder take over. The result has been a character full of life and rich, authentic detail — the kind that only a writer with the disorder can produce.
Davis says he loves the character, and loves the book.
“I’m glad for the chance to show people what a vicious disease bipolar is,” he said.
By Robb Murray The Free Press
MANKATO — The rumors of Terry Davis’ demise have been greatly exaggerated.
Sure, he was, as they say, on his deathbed, connected to tubes and machines and surrounded by loved ones, many of whom believed they were there to say farewell to Davis, farewell to the man who wrote “Vision Quest,” to the man who has been mentor to many, a titan in a community full of writers.
But like many great stories, Terry Davis’ latest life turn came with a twist.
“We all came to Rochester to say goodbye,” said Becky Davis, Terry’s ex-wife. “And the palliative care team came in and said, ‘We’ll give you time to say goodbye and then we’ll pull the tube. Could be minutes or it could be days. We’ll make him comfortable.”
Davis’ loved ones took that time and said what they needed to say. And when that time was up, doctors came in to remove the life-support equipment that was keeping him alive. Doctors said it’s just not possible to recover from that kind of head injury.
Then Davis opened his eyes. He was alert. And instead of calling him a goner, they were calling him Lazarus. Literally.
“Now, every time they see me, they say ‘Oh, you’re the guy who should be dead!’” Davis said.
After a fall in his home Jan. 15 left him clinging to life, Davis, 65, says he feels like he has cheated death, and been given another chance to be the kind of man he wishes he could be. He also says he feels renewed vigor to finish the writing projects he’s got going, including a joint project he recently finished with Becky Davis.
The fall has also, however, shown him just how insidious his bipolar disorder is and has become. As he recovers, he’s in a sort of transition on his medication, which can manifest itself in a very emotional effect.
But he’s still Terry Davis, hyper-vivid imagination and all, and the 200 members of his “Friends of Terry Davis Get Well Soon Fan Page” on Facebook — many of whom Davis taught during his 25 years at Minnesota State University — can’t wait until he gets better. Soon.
The fall
Davis lives in Good Thunder, in a home he continues to work on.
One day, he and friends say, he could hear his cat, Peanut, crying. He assumed the cat was behind an unfinished wall in the bathroom, so Davis decided to help the cat out.
He positioned a ladder in the bathtub and climbed, hoping to peer over the wall and back behind it, to coax Peanut out. That’s when he slipped off the ladder and hit his head.
Davis has lost track of time following the fall. When asked, he estimated it was about an hour and a half between the fall and when he was taken to the hospital. When told it was actually three days, he said, “I don’t remember. I just remember really, really awful pain.”
Before going to the hospital, though, he does remember calling his girlfriend.
“I called her and said, ‘Jesus, I’m scared,’” Davis said.
After an examination at Mayo Clinic Health System in Mankato three days after his fall, Davis was airlifted to St. Marys Hospital in Rochester. That’s where Davis nearly died. Subdural hemorrhaging, Davis said. His brain took a beating when he fell.
“It was pretty devastating,” said Becky Davis. “We thought he was going to be seriously damaged and this brilliant mind would be gone.”
But like Louden Swain in Davis’ wrestling-based book “Vision Quest,” Davis didn’t give in. And somehow, just before they were about to remove life-support equipment, Davis opened his eyes.
In the days following, he was visited by scores of medical professionals. Among them was his brain surgeon, a former high school wrestler himself, who’d been told after the fact that Davis had written one of the most memorable tales ever told about high school wrestling.
“The surgeon said to me, ‘It was an honor to see the brain that wrote ‘Vision Quest,’” Davis said.
Ongoing health problems
The fall wasn’t Davis first run-in with health problems. In 2009, the year he both retired from teaching and shut down his motorcycle restoration business in Rapidan, doctors discovered Davis’ aorta, from chest to abdomen, was coming apart.
They fixed the upper part of it and saved his life. But the lower part requires medication, blood thinners, to keep it working. Doctors told him back then that they couldn’t fix the lower part. But since then, Davis said, some doctors have been performing lower aorta surgeries, and he’s hoping to have that surgery as soon as he can.
“Even now, the aorta isn’t strong enough to maintain the good strong blood flow that I need,” he said.
Bipolar exacerbated
For the moment, Davis is recovering nicely. In his physical therapy sessions, he’s progressed from tipping over as he walks around the corner to being able to negotiate corners without incident. But he won’t be running any 5Ks anytime soon.
He’s also in a transition period on his medication. The drugs he takes to treat his bipolar disorder, he says, were getting in the way of the drugs doctors had given him to aid in the recovery from the fall. The combination has made him very emotional and prone to tears for reasons even he doesn’t understand.
Davis says he can remember struggling with being bipolar as far back as high school. Ever since then it’s always been there, a dark passenger in the back of his mind waiting to prey on him when he’s weak.
“In public, I feel like everyone is smarter than I am, better looking than I am, richer than I am, and happier,” Davis said. “I’ve got this bipolar snake down inside of me that’s always telling me I don’t deserve anything good.”
In the future, he says, he will be a different person.
“I want to be nicer,” he said. “I believe a good man is one who does for others ... I want to be a good man.”
He says that he plans to be more public about his disorder, and he can think of no better place to do that than through his writing.
Still writing
Davis’ best known work is “Vision Quest,” a novel that was turned into a major motion picture starring Matthew Modine in 1995.
But Davis doesn’t consider it his best work.
“I’ve always thought my best book was ‘Mysterious Ways,’” he said. “Since 1984, though, something’s always nagged me about it.”
He thinks he knows why. In the end, the character’s actions weren’t quite true to the character, and he thinks he’s gotten that figured out now.
He’s also got a new novel in the works, including a book called “The Fiery Heart of Kilamanjaro,” which features a woman addicted to online poker and a man with bipolar disorder.
In the past, when his bipolar disorder has crept into his writing, he’d try to suppress it. In this case, however, has essentially taken his hands off the steering wheel and let the disorder take over. The result has been a character full of life and rich, authentic detail — the kind that only a writer with the disorder can produce.
Davis says he loves the character, and loves the book.
“I’m glad for the chance to show people what a vicious disease bipolar is,” he said.
Terry, Becky Davis team up for a pair of short stories....
Becky Davis didn’t have to think long about her reaction to getting involved with a writing project with her ex-husband.
“I was terrified,” said Becky, who is the author of a pair of novels and a faculty member at South Central College. “Terry is known for pushing things over the top. He’ll push to the nth degree.”
She was also excited at getting to work with him again.
Terry Davis, author of “Vision Quest,” and “If Rock and Roll Were a Machine,” agreed to take a short story Becky had written and write a companion story from a different perspective. Their stories are included with other paired essays in the newly released anthology, “Girl Meets Boy: Because There are Two Sides to Every Story.”
Their partnership began with Becky’s short story called “Mars at Night,” and is about an Iowa farm girl who loves her rural roots. The girl’s world is thrown out of whack, however, when hog factories move in and threaten her family farm. She’s also in love with the only Muslim kid in town.
Her fear, Becky said, was centered on the Muslim kid.
“I was just terrified at what Terry would do with this kid.”
And Terry, it seems, did a lot. So much so, that in editing, she got him to tone it down a little, but not so much where it lost the unique flavor Terry brought to it.
For his part, “Mouths of the Ganges” — his companion piece to Becky’s — gave Terry a new literary outlet.
“It gave me a chance to pretend I’m this kid,” he said, “to be this kid, with that future.”
The Davises said the literary arrangement worked a little better than that other arrangement they had.
“I think we make way better friends than marriage partners,” Becky said.
The pair will read their stories at the Mankato Barnes and Noble at 7 p.m. March 20.
“I was terrified,” said Becky, who is the author of a pair of novels and a faculty member at South Central College. “Terry is known for pushing things over the top. He’ll push to the nth degree.”
She was also excited at getting to work with him again.
Terry Davis, author of “Vision Quest,” and “If Rock and Roll Were a Machine,” agreed to take a short story Becky had written and write a companion story from a different perspective. Their stories are included with other paired essays in the newly released anthology, “Girl Meets Boy: Because There are Two Sides to Every Story.”
Their partnership began with Becky’s short story called “Mars at Night,” and is about an Iowa farm girl who loves her rural roots. The girl’s world is thrown out of whack, however, when hog factories move in and threaten her family farm. She’s also in love with the only Muslim kid in town.
Her fear, Becky said, was centered on the Muslim kid.
“I was just terrified at what Terry would do with this kid.”
And Terry, it seems, did a lot. So much so, that in editing, she got him to tone it down a little, but not so much where it lost the unique flavor Terry brought to it.
For his part, “Mouths of the Ganges” — his companion piece to Becky’s — gave Terry a new literary outlet.
“It gave me a chance to pretend I’m this kid,” he said, “to be this kid, with that future.”
The Davises said the literary arrangement worked a little better than that other arrangement they had.
“I think we make way better friends than marriage partners,” Becky said.
The pair will read their stories at the Mankato Barnes and Noble at 7 p.m. March 20.
How I Wrote MOST LIKELY ... The First Time
by Craig Hansen -- June 21, 2011
My first published novel, MOST LIKELY, was released in May on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords. When people ask me how I wrote the novel, and how long it took, I have to laugh because it makes me sound like the writing version of The Flash. In preparing MOST LIKELY for ePublication, the whole process took me just under three months. What I sometimes don’t add, if I’m pressed to time, are two key words: This time.
You see, it is true that entering in the basic draft of MOST LIKELY took about three weeks. Not bad for a 63,000-word novel. Revisions took me another couple weeks. I then sent it to my beta readers, waited about a week or two, and revised some more based on that feedback. A couple weeks later, I sent the novel to my editor, who turned it around in an amazing ten-day time period. And then it took me a couple weeks to enter final changes and corrections, read over it one last time, and start the ePublishing process.
All in all, I began the process around the beginning of March and uploaded my novel to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords at a bleary-eyed 5:30 AM on May 24. After which I slept well past 2 PM, exhausted. By 9 PM that night, Most Likely went live … pretty much everywhere.
Yet that’s only half the story of MOST LIKELY’s journey to publication, because March to May 2011 is actually the second time I wrote the novel. My first crack at it happened back primarily in 1991, twenty years ago.
I was in my college writing program, working on my master’s degree back then. My mentor, graduate advisor and creative thesis advisor was young adult novelist Terry Davis, author of such books as VISION QUEST, MYSTERIOUS WAYS, and IF ROCK-N-ROLL WERE A MACHINE, IT WOULD BE A MOTORCYCLE.
I’d been studying the craft of novel writing under him since my undergraduate days; how the university then-known as Mankato State University, but now known as Minnesota State University-Mankato ever landed him is a mystery to me, to this day, but his presence pretty much guaranteed I had the kind of mentor I needed to develop as a writer in an academic setting.
Terry was not pretentious about writing. That’s a very rare quality in academia. He liked to keep things simple and admired clear, clean prose no matter what genre a student was writing in. While many college writing professors are hoping to mold their protégés into the next Norman Mailers or Harper Lees, Terry didn’t look down on genre writers. If a student wanted to write horror, science fiction, mysteries, or romances, he would help them hone their craft so that it was the best-written horror, science fiction, mystery or romance that student was capable of writing. And a lot of us admired him deeply for it. I imagine most of us still do. I know I do.
Even though Terry provided a safe haven for genre writers, I still felt pulled toward something more mainstream by my fellow students. I wanted to write something that would stretch and challenge me, not something safe.
To read more CLICK HERE.
My first published novel, MOST LIKELY, was released in May on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords. When people ask me how I wrote the novel, and how long it took, I have to laugh because it makes me sound like the writing version of The Flash. In preparing MOST LIKELY for ePublication, the whole process took me just under three months. What I sometimes don’t add, if I’m pressed to time, are two key words: This time.
You see, it is true that entering in the basic draft of MOST LIKELY took about three weeks. Not bad for a 63,000-word novel. Revisions took me another couple weeks. I then sent it to my beta readers, waited about a week or two, and revised some more based on that feedback. A couple weeks later, I sent the novel to my editor, who turned it around in an amazing ten-day time period. And then it took me a couple weeks to enter final changes and corrections, read over it one last time, and start the ePublishing process.
All in all, I began the process around the beginning of March and uploaded my novel to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords at a bleary-eyed 5:30 AM on May 24. After which I slept well past 2 PM, exhausted. By 9 PM that night, Most Likely went live … pretty much everywhere.
Yet that’s only half the story of MOST LIKELY’s journey to publication, because March to May 2011 is actually the second time I wrote the novel. My first crack at it happened back primarily in 1991, twenty years ago.
I was in my college writing program, working on my master’s degree back then. My mentor, graduate advisor and creative thesis advisor was young adult novelist Terry Davis, author of such books as VISION QUEST, MYSTERIOUS WAYS, and IF ROCK-N-ROLL WERE A MACHINE, IT WOULD BE A MOTORCYCLE.
I’d been studying the craft of novel writing under him since my undergraduate days; how the university then-known as Mankato State University, but now known as Minnesota State University-Mankato ever landed him is a mystery to me, to this day, but his presence pretty much guaranteed I had the kind of mentor I needed to develop as a writer in an academic setting.
Terry was not pretentious about writing. That’s a very rare quality in academia. He liked to keep things simple and admired clear, clean prose no matter what genre a student was writing in. While many college writing professors are hoping to mold their protégés into the next Norman Mailers or Harper Lees, Terry didn’t look down on genre writers. If a student wanted to write horror, science fiction, mysteries, or romances, he would help them hone their craft so that it was the best-written horror, science fiction, mystery or romance that student was capable of writing. And a lot of us admired him deeply for it. I imagine most of us still do. I know I do.
Even though Terry provided a safe haven for genre writers, I still felt pulled toward something more mainstream by my fellow students. I wanted to write something that would stretch and challenge me, not something safe.
To read more CLICK HERE.
FREE PRESS: Novelist passionate about motorcycles
May 30, 2007
Novelist passionate about motorcycles
Shop will restore, service and sell bikes
Ron Gower
RAPIDAN — To fans of novelist Terry Davis, it’s no news that he loves motorcycles. They play a role in most of his fiction and articles, and Davis riding around Mankato on a Norton or Yamaha is a familiar sight.
Now Davis is carrying that passion a step further in real life. He will open his motorcycle shop, Clandestine Classic Cycles, in Rapidan, with a grand opening Friday.
“I’ve always had some kind of cycle shop hidden away, wherever I lived, and even now, out of the way in Rapidan, it’s a ‘clandestine’ place.”
This time, though, the shop is on a large scale, and he finally has room for all the cycles he has collected.
“I’ve always wanted to have a real full-size bike store, and when I saw this building for sale, I knew it would be perfect for my shop. It’s probably a case of arrested adolescence, but if I’m ever going to do it, now is the time,” says Davis, who has been an English professor at Minnesota State University for 20 years.
Davis is best known as the author of “Vision Quest,” “Mysterious Ways,” and “If Rock and Roll were a Machine” and has been a major figure in the creative writing program, where he teaches screenwriting and adolescent literature as well as fiction writing. His novels have won awards from the American Library Association and New York Public Library as best books for young adults. The novel “Vision Quest” was made into a 1985 movie.
His interest in cycles began growing up in Spokane, Wash., where he was also a wrestler and basketball player, and has continued throughout his career. Davis says to him cycles have always been a symbol of independence and also just a way to get outside. “They also are demanding: You have to be constantly alert and aware of the world around you. That’s not a bad exercise for a writer.”
No matter where that writing career took him, he found time and space to ride and “tinker” with bikes and also to buy used motorcycles that interested him.
Those bikes — more than 70 of them at the moment — will be on display in the huge building he’s purchased on the small town’s main drag and converted into a modern store and shop. It is an eclectic assortment — from Triumph to BSA, Norton to Yamaha, mainly a “retro” store, but with several new Royal Enfields at the top of the line.
“My aim will be to sell good vintage bikes at a reasonable price,” says Davis, who plans to run the store himself while on sabbatical this year.
He plans to restore and service all the bikes he sells, and assisting him will be a partner, Paul Matejcek of Mankato. Matejcek recently graduated from MSU with a degree in speech therapy but will concentrate on cycles for the time being. The store also will sell some accessories and memorabilia, including Clandestine Cycle T-shirts with the motto “If Rock and Roll Were a Machine, It’d be a Motorcycle.”
Although Davis says the shop is only a hobby, it’s a hobby on a grand scale, and in a way just the culmination of what’s always been a major passion with the writer.
“It’s a risk, at age 60, but something my whole life has been leading to. This is something that will keep me going, just as riding cycles does.”
Novelist passionate about motorcycles
Shop will restore, service and sell bikes
Ron Gower
RAPIDAN — To fans of novelist Terry Davis, it’s no news that he loves motorcycles. They play a role in most of his fiction and articles, and Davis riding around Mankato on a Norton or Yamaha is a familiar sight.
Now Davis is carrying that passion a step further in real life. He will open his motorcycle shop, Clandestine Classic Cycles, in Rapidan, with a grand opening Friday.
“I’ve always had some kind of cycle shop hidden away, wherever I lived, and even now, out of the way in Rapidan, it’s a ‘clandestine’ place.”
This time, though, the shop is on a large scale, and he finally has room for all the cycles he has collected.
“I’ve always wanted to have a real full-size bike store, and when I saw this building for sale, I knew it would be perfect for my shop. It’s probably a case of arrested adolescence, but if I’m ever going to do it, now is the time,” says Davis, who has been an English professor at Minnesota State University for 20 years.
Davis is best known as the author of “Vision Quest,” “Mysterious Ways,” and “If Rock and Roll were a Machine” and has been a major figure in the creative writing program, where he teaches screenwriting and adolescent literature as well as fiction writing. His novels have won awards from the American Library Association and New York Public Library as best books for young adults. The novel “Vision Quest” was made into a 1985 movie.
His interest in cycles began growing up in Spokane, Wash., where he was also a wrestler and basketball player, and has continued throughout his career. Davis says to him cycles have always been a symbol of independence and also just a way to get outside. “They also are demanding: You have to be constantly alert and aware of the world around you. That’s not a bad exercise for a writer.”
No matter where that writing career took him, he found time and space to ride and “tinker” with bikes and also to buy used motorcycles that interested him.
Those bikes — more than 70 of them at the moment — will be on display in the huge building he’s purchased on the small town’s main drag and converted into a modern store and shop. It is an eclectic assortment — from Triumph to BSA, Norton to Yamaha, mainly a “retro” store, but with several new Royal Enfields at the top of the line.
“My aim will be to sell good vintage bikes at a reasonable price,” says Davis, who plans to run the store himself while on sabbatical this year.
He plans to restore and service all the bikes he sells, and assisting him will be a partner, Paul Matejcek of Mankato. Matejcek recently graduated from MSU with a degree in speech therapy but will concentrate on cycles for the time being. The store also will sell some accessories and memorabilia, including Clandestine Cycle T-shirts with the motto “If Rock and Roll Were a Machine, It’d be a Motorcycle.”
Although Davis says the shop is only a hobby, it’s a hobby on a grand scale, and in a way just the culmination of what’s always been a major passion with the writer.
“It’s a risk, at age 60, but something my whole life has been leading to. This is something that will keep me going, just as riding cycles does.”
Photos by John Cross
2006-04-09 By Joe Tougas, Free Press Staff Writer
When Terry Davis talks, he often does so with a fierce intensity marked with serious, silent pauses. There's a suspense to those pauses.
For starters, they have you wondering - if only for those few seconds - where this author, screenwriter, motorcycle fanatic and colorful college English professor will land on a particular topic.
Plus, that dead-serious look on his face makes you half expect him to hit the roof in furious anger. The funny part is that this silence often ends not with a flourish of high volume, but often with gently raised eyebrows, a soft smile and an almost whisper of a response.
And that's just the small talk in his office on the one-year anniversary of Sept. 11, in which Davis mentioned both an appreciation of how Americans seemed to get closer in the previous year, and an embarrassment over what he called a media-led orgy of grief. Whatever goes on in those silent moments, it's not a concern as to what will sound comfortable.
Those who attend Davis' reading at MSU tonight will discover this as he reads from a work in progress titled "The Silk Ball," a story of Laotian refugees who wind up in Spokane, Wash. Davis defines the story as being about the power of love and what happens to people who don't have love.
"It's a strange mixture, I'm afraid, of tenderness and violence," Davis said, eager to read from the work. "They've never heard anything like this at a reading before."
Davis' writing career, as well as his personal life, has had extremes. In the early 1980s, while living and working in Washington, he saw his first novel, "Vision Quest," become a major motion picture starring Matthew Modine and Linda Fiorentino. The book had drawn praise from, among others, John Irving, who compared it to "The Catcher In The Rye." Davis followed the book up with 1984's "Mysterious Ways" and, after moving to Mankato to teach at Mankato State University, "If Rock and Roll Were a Machine."
Despite success, his depression during the past 15 years would grow so strong as to make him doubt his own talent or take himself seriously. He'd still write daily, but his depression would get so deep that, on the occasions he found himself onto something he liked, he considered himself unworthy to be associated with good material.
Having recently undergone successful treatment and medical care, Davis is burning again. Like musicians on stage or athletes in their prime, there's a burning that takes place when they are performing, said Davis, a former wrestler. And today he feels as good as he did when he was at his athletic peak.
That burning is going into his work, where it before may have gone into thin air. Not only is he finishing work on "The Silk Ball," but he will by next week hold the new edition of "Mysterious Ways," which he has spent the past few years rewriting to a more mature voice.
A similarly rewritten "Vision Quest" was published last year after being out of print for two years, and "Rock and Roll" will be reissued in spring 2003.
Davis said he has no problem going back and rewriting the old books, noting that Louise Erdrich rewrote "Love Medicine" twice after publication. Both "Vision Quest" and "Mysterious Ways" needed a more mature voice, he said - from both the characters and the author.
"I'm such a different person and a different writer now," he said. "Terry Davis at 25 wrote that book ... I did my best with those books, but I can do better now."
It's showing. He has editors already expressing interest in "The Silk Ball" as well as an agent ready to promote it to the major publishers. Davis is pleased that he's still able to generate that kind of interest and faith in the industry.
"I'm trying something that's kind of out there, and it looks like I'll have some people hanging out there with me," he said.
Davis is also working on a sequel to "Vision Quest" in which Louden Swain's son is a main character who befriends a young fan of his father's and finds an enormous challenge trying to live outside of his father's shadow. Davis has talked in the past with Modine about appearing in a sequel, and while Modine didn't think a sequel was necessary, Davis said, he told him to keep him posted on progress of the book.
"I was thinking he might want to direct," Davis said. "If I'm able to get rolling on this, who's to say somebody else with more money and power could get him on board?"
Davis is getting reacquainted with the industry of book writing - the business side of the business, he said - and how essential it is if the goal is to be published and distributed on a national level. It can be exhausting and, as in the recent decision of publishers to cut a chapter from the "Mysterious Ways" reissue, frustrating.
But the business end of it all is a necessary stretch requiring the kind of endurance - and burning - of a long-distance writer.
Photo by John Cross
http://www.mnsu.edu/news/read/?id=old-1032411600&paper=topstories
Other Press Links
NEW VQ Article & Interview
Don't miss this great new audio (MP3) interview with Davis on the popular NATSUKASHI: Where Movies and Memories Collide blog. Davis discusses VISION Quest, in this 2009 feature.
2009 Wrestling interviews
Davis was also feature on Wrestling Talk recently. Enjoy the transcript of that interview HERE. And if that's not enough, check out his Wresting 411 interview HERE.
Literary Road Trip
...also featured Davis in September of 2009. Check out that blog here.
Don't miss this great new audio (MP3) interview with Davis on the popular NATSUKASHI: Where Movies and Memories Collide blog. Davis discusses VISION Quest, in this 2009 feature.
2009 Wrestling interviews
Davis was also feature on Wrestling Talk recently. Enjoy the transcript of that interview HERE. And if that's not enough, check out his Wresting 411 interview HERE.
Literary Road Trip
...also featured Davis in September of 2009. Check out that blog here.
