Cloquet author finds stories from home

Author Tim Jollymore continues to evolve. He grew up in Cloquet in the 1950s and '60s and held many different jobs from tree planter to traveling salesman to corporate manager to teacher. He moved from Minnesota to California and today splits his year between the two states. He began his writing career at age 62 and has published four novels, and recently spent time in Italy and Tunisia to research his fifth novel. In this interview with Tim, he talks about his writing, his life, and what it was like to grow up in Cloquet when he did.

Q Do you have a daily writing routine? If so, what is it?

A I am not always writing. The novelist Henry Miller said, "Don't be a dray horse. Live. Go out with friends. Drink if you want to." I abide be the first three. But when I am writing, I tend to work from 9 a.m. to 12 noon. Afterward, I do whatever else I want.

Q Is there a real-life inspiration for Els Mattila?

A Everyone has his dreams. Els is one of mine, I suppose: in New York, living in the village, being surrounded by the arts and letters there as can happen in no other place in the English-speaking world (London is a close second). So, I have to say, "Not yet." When Jollymore hits the big time, that's where he'll be. Until then, Els Mattila is purely fictional.

Q You've had many jobs during your lifetime. What was it like to be a traveling salesman and what did you sell?

A Although sales was not my first choice of a career, I spent a good number of years plying that trade first for New York Life Insurance in Duluth, then for Honeywell in Duluth, Minneapolis, and San Francisco. I sold kitchen remodeling as a contractor for over 10 years. And I sold education in the classroom for 15! A teacher must be a salesman as well as an educator. Learning takes motivation. The salesperson knows how to make that happen.

Q What drew you to California? How would you describe California and Californians to someone who has never been?

A Honeywell sent me to San Francisco from Minneapolis. I had a choice, but was not about to pass up an all-expenses-paid move. California is a country unto itself. The mix of newcomers, old hands (the mythical sixth-generation San Franciscans are now in their teens), Latinos, gringos, California African-Americans (largely, though not exclusively, from Louisiana, coming during World War II) and all the Russians, Philippinos, etc. You get the picture. So there are 40 million stories and 10 million types, but not just one Californian. The state? Magical, magnificent, and cool.

Q You write about "struggles of identity and loss in American society from the viewpoint of the under and working classes." Are you optimistic or pessimistic about their future in America?

A At the heart of novel writing is optimism. It must be so, for who would write gloom and doom as a fiction? That does not mean that any tale will be without trials or that each story will have a happy ending, of course, but that the act of living itself is a hopeful state, one which the novelist tries to capture and then reveal.

Q How did growing up in Cloquet shape the person you are today and your writing?

A The Cloquet of the 1950s and '60s was marked with a patriarchal stamp, sealed by the hands of executives of Northwest Paper in particular. Those people, whoever they might have been, set a tone in particular with education. The schools were excellent, and though I was only a sometime-good student, the basic principles of art and science, particularly the language arts, impressed me deeply. Of course, I wanted to be a teacher and a writer. My English teachers inspired me to follow along. The subject matter, the stories and poetry, led me to want to emulate. It took decades to get there (slow study, I guess). I began teaching at 48, writing at 62! Live to be 100 is the only solution. The patriarchy, such as it was, also drew sharp contrasts, perhaps an uncrossable line, between the plebeian and the patrician. The class divisions were accentuated, sometimes along racial lines. That proved a very good milieu for a novelist.

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Tim Jollymore will be speaking at the Cloquet Public Library at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 5. He will be discussing his newest novel, “People You’ve Been Before,” and focusing especially on characters and towns in fiction.