Epilogue: It's Not Over
- Epilogue:It's Not Over
When a writer dies, what's left to do?
Chuck Bowden died at age sixty-nine while napping on the couch at the home of his companion and writing partner Molly Molloy. He had cut down on cigarettes and started working out again, but years of red wine, unfiltered Lucky Strikes, and missed checkups had taken their toll. A call was made, paramedics came, more calls were made, and the word echoed among his friends and readers that they had lost someone special in their lives. Memorials were held, where family and friends showed up to say a few words, to console and be consoled. Photos of Chuck were displayed, some of his garb was laid out, and candles were lit. On a panel at the 2015 Tucson Festival of Books, Jim Harrison, Clara Jeffery, and Luis Alberto Urrea paid tribute, told stories, and pondered the meaning of Chuck's work (see the transcript of "Charles Bowden's Southwest," moderated by J. C. Mutchler, in this issue). At the suggestion of Chuck's friend Ray Carroll, the Pima County Board of Supervisors renamed the visitor-recreation center near the summit of the range featured in Frog Mountain Blues the Chuck Bowden Mount Lemmon Community Center.
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We can anticipate a biography someday, though readers can hardly expect it to contain any hidden secrets—Chuck was famous for announcing his sins in his own books, repeatedly, to the delight of readers and dismay of family, friends, and lovers. His public persona was his private ego. There was no secret lifestyle, cache of diamonds, or double-agent life. If anything, he revealed more in his books than he did in close conversation, but the man wearing the fleece jacket and jeans, hunched in the cab of a mini pickup truck, sleeping on the ground or a thin [End Page 217] mattress on the floor, was the same Chuck Bowden that readers knew. A cup of coffee at the ready, laptop computer ever-charged, and bursting with questions, he rushed to his next interview eager to meet the looming deadline. He left behind no big bank account, no dreams unfulfilled, just stories yet to be written.
Fortunately, Chuck's literary legacy promises to endure. The University of Arizona Press has reissued Blue Desert, with an introduction by Francisco Cantú, and Frog Mountain Blues, with an introduction by poet Alison Hawthorne Deming. With backing from Mary Martha Miles, Chuck's literary trustee, and the Lannan Foundation, the University of Texas Press is reprinting Chuck's other books that have gone out of print, along with perhaps eight unpublished manuscripts.
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It's a disservice to Bowden's talent and interests to pigeonhole him as a "southwestern" writer. He was that, but along the way he earned a national audience. He gained broad attention with his first book, Killing the Hidden Waters (1977), written in the vein of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, with Chuck sounding the alarm to impending water crises in the West and Midwest. Today, virtually every community in America faces a water problem of one kind or another.
The breadth and immediacy of his feature stories for the Tucson Citizen brought Chuck to the attention of the Pulitzer Prize and Robert F. Kennedy Book Award committees. Concurrently, he began contributing freelance editorials and book reviews to USA Today, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, while filing stories with High Country News, Wild Earth, Buzzworm, Outside, Arizona Highways, and Phoenix Magazine. These, in turn, brought Chuck to the attention of editors at GQ, Harper's, the Atlantic, Esquire, Aperture, and National Geographic, where his articles ran alongside the work of Jim Harrison, Jon Krakauer, Barry Lopez, Malcolm Gladwell, Terry Tempest Williams, Ann Zwinger, Rick Bass, Annie Dillard, and Paul Ehrlich. Radio and television producers frequently sought his opinions on topics such as the U.S.-Mexico border or America's addiction to recreational drugs. Chuck invariably obliged with a pithy quote or a firsthand perspective that often clashed with government reports.
Bowden's books, especially the later ones, likewise addressed national and international issues. Although better...
