Ivan Doig: Landscapes of a Western Mind

- [Narrator] Ivan Doig,a son of sheep herders, born in 1939, rural Montana is today one of the mostcelebrated literary voices of the American West.

- I saw the house that Doiglived in, it was a toughlife.

- Professors respondedto him by saying, "Damn, you're good."

- [Narrator] He dedicatedhimself to language.

- To me, language isthe point of all this.

The sound you canget to come up out of the white space there.

- [Narrator] To place.

- He's taken some of thelocal and made it universal.

- [Narrator] To characters.

- [Ivan] Well, I adore 'emall or I wouldn't write 'em.

- [Narrator]And to his craft.

- Underneath the pros,there's the soul of a poet.

- Nobody's lucky enough tolive in a place this small and isolated and havesomebody write so eloquentlyabout it.

So he's reallygiven us a legacy.

- [Narrator] Doig wasa bestselling writer, a National BookAward nominee.

He's one of the most prolific and influentialMontana authors.

And today he's inspiring anew generation of readers.

- [Sarah] When I first pickedup this "House of Sky", I was 25 years old.

- [Erik] The first IvanDoig book that I read "Ride With Me,Mariah Montana".

- I think young peoplewill find reflections of how difficult itis to be in the world.

It's real.

- [Carol] He made thelives of what we might call ordinary people heroic.

- [Narrator] Ivan Doig:Landscapes of a Western Mind was made possible by Vicky York, the Big Sky Film Grant, the GreaterMontana Foundation, encouraging communicationon issues, trends, and values ofimportance to Montanans.

Humanities Montana.

These generous donors.

And viewers likeyou, the Friends ofMontana PBS, thank you.

(soft upbeat music) - [Ivan] The magic ofplace is indelible.

It's extremes of landform.

It's powerful weather.

These immensities overwhelmthe fact of the peoplethinly, salt and pepperedacross the expanse.

The human stories,the Westerners whocarry on their lives against the big, boldlandscapes of those books.

I've always triedto attain a language which makes a shimmerbehind the story.

It is my utter beliefthat writers of caliber can ground their work inspecific land and lingo and yet be writing ofthat larger country that most familiar and mostmysterious place of all,life.

(birds chirping) (soft upbeat music) - [Narrator] Ivan was thethird generation descendant of Scottish immigrants.

He was born at the endof The Great Depression to sheep herder Charlie Doig and ranch cookBerneta Ringer Doig in White SulphurSprings, Montana.

Situated in a high valleyon the Rocky Mountain front, the town has home toabout 1,000 people today, a number that's remainedunchanged since 1939.

- Ivan was born into a ruralMontana that is unimaginable in the 21st century, even for most wholive in rural Montana.

So he was born in avery tough environment.

- Ivan's family historyand as it affected him, it's the povertythat rings through, the unsettlednessthat rings through.

When they arrived in Montana, they didn't arrive with theability to go for good land.

They were left withhigh, dry, cold.

- [Narrator] Whateverthe prospects might seem in a dreamy look around, the settlers were tryinga slab of lofty country which often would be toocold and dry for their crops, too open to a killing winterfor their cattle and sheep.

In those difficultdays of his youth, Doig's love ofwords came early.

- I can't remember when Ididn't know how to read.

My mother had read to meas she would sit quietly because of her asthma.

So I came outta thatwith great love of words.

On my sixth birthday, my mother's lifelongasthma at last killed her.

- [Narrator] Soon beforedaybreak on my sixthbirthday, my mother's breathing wheezedmore raggedly than ever, then quieted,and then stopped.

- Out of that camemy growing up.

- [Narrator] The rememberingbegins out of that newsilence.

Through the timesince, I reached back along my father's tellingsand around the urgings which would have meface about and forget, to feel into theseoldest shadows for the first suddenedge of it all.

- What I gleaned about Ivan'schildhood in its effect on his writing was, he was anonly child in an adult world and a difficult adult world.

- My dad worked inhis ranch hand jobs, entertained himselfin the nine saloons, White SulphurSprings, Montana.

- I picture Ivanplaying in the corner, kind of behind apiece of furniture and listening and listening.

- [Narrator] The Pioneerserved as the town's hiringsaloon.

Ranch hands looking for a job would leave wordwith the bartender.

Knowing this, rancherswould stride in to ask about a haying hand orsomebody who knew how toirrigate.

The ranch hand mighthave his bedroll right there alongthe back saloon wall, and minutes later be inthe rancher's pickup.

- I wish that I could go backto the White Sulphur Springs of this "House of Sky" whereyou go to the 12 or so bars and you see differentcharacters in each one and yousee how each communityestablishment,which the bar was, meets the needs of adifferent subset of thatcommunity.

- [Narrator] As much asDoig'S world highlights hardships and local flavor, it also centers onhow communities arestitched together and how people relyon one another.

This lesson hits close tohome when Ivan's father, now a single parent andfearing for his own health, made a decision thatwould change their lives.

- My dad called mygrandmother, my mother'smother, whom he'd been at war withfor the past many years and asked if she would joinour household and help raiseme.

And so that became my family.

- Part of what's so tenderabout "This House of Sky" comes from this improbable son-in-law,mother-in-law conflation, hardcore folks who didn'tnecessarily see eye to eye but came to deeply respectand even love one another, although they wouldnever use that word.

- So do I wait forthe language of memory to come onto the exact tonesof how the three of us, across our three generations and our separationsof personality became something both moreand less than a family.

This newly formed householdwent where the work tookthem.

They moved allover the region calling differentcommunities home.

Among them, WhiteSulphur Springs, 16Mile, Grass Mountain, Ringling, andeventually Dupuyer.

- It was very commontrying to eek out a living, you kinda went from job tojob and we knew a lot ofpeople that had that kind of life.

- You go where the job was.

It didn't come to you.

- I mean, this is really whatmade this country were sheep before the cattleand the farming.

- Back in the day,herds of two, 3,000 would come through town.

They would camp at DupuyerCreek maybe overnight.

The sheep herderswere very nomadic.

They traveled with the sheep and the sheep had tokeep moving to eat.

- [Narrator] The Doig sheepherding meant they lived far from town.

But because Ivan wasa talented student, Charlie and Bessie arrangedfor him to board with afamily in Dupuyer so he couldattend high school.

If there was one knack in me,it was to hold in mind anyword I had ever seen, much ofthe way Dad could identify any sheep from all others.

- He had a gift withlanguage and maybe his future could unfold by wayof language somehow.

- He becomes the Latinand English teacher that sees the depth of histalent and word knowledge and has him applyingto universities allover the country.

- It was a kind of a moonshotfor our family, in essence.

I had a fulltuition scholarship which covered quitea lot of the expense but I washed dishes forfour years at Northwestern.

My folks put awayevery penny they could working their ranch jobs.

- [Narrator] Thetrain to Chicago stood like an endlesswall of windows.

Each of the three of ussnuffled in the Septemberair, turned aside to swallow.

Grandma's teary hug, as ever,she had talked herself around to the conviction thatwhatever I had made up my mindto do was the only thing.

You write us about itall and I'll do the like.

Dad's clampinghandshake in awe of all the educationawaiting me.

You're away to abig place, son.

Before Ivan found hiscalling as an author, his curiosity aboutpeople and stories led him to studyjournalism and history.

- Northwestern becomes thatincredibly rich way to study with the best minds inthe journalism field.

He quickly found professorsthat dazzled him and in turn, responded to him by saying,"Damn, you're good."

- [Narrator] It wasalso at Northwestern that Ivan would meet hispartner in both work andlife.

- There was a bignight, Chicago Night Out and to my surprise, thisnice quiet Montanan asked me.

We kept coming backtogether somehow and we seemed to have moreand more of a good time.

- [Narrator] They married in1965 and moved to Seattle.

Ivan earned a PhD in history from the Universityof Washington.

Puget Sound becametheir permanent home.

As my decisions do, the onenow came slowly, doggedly.

I kept on through theseminars and exams, claimed the degree thelast dusty furrow of it all but then I abandonedthe offer of a job at one of the country'slargest universities.

- He'd always wantedto do a book on his dad and as he would explain ifhe was going to write about his dad, he probably had towrite about his grandmother and if he wasgoing to do that, he probably had to writeabout himself and he was outthere.

He thought he wantedto write a play but his joke inlater years was, but he found he couldn't getthat many horses on stage.

- [Narrator] Ivan's driveto recount his childhood would eventually inspirea lifetime of storytelling but it was in 1973 thathe embarked on writing his first book,"This House of Sky" while Carol supported themby teaching journalism.

I began to workfull-time at writing.

I offered to Carol,I know you married me for better or worse but thisis somewhere off the scale.

She answered, asever, "Do it."

(soft upbeat music) (soft upbeat music) - I have felt that theWest has its own riches of storytelling and language.

To me, language isthe point of all this.

The dance oflanguage on the page is what literatureis all about.

The sound you canget to come up out of the white space there.

The way people talk, the waythey act, the way thingslook, that's all born outof love of language.

When I was doing my firstbook, "This House of Sky", one of the thingsI did was sit down with five by eight filecards and begin remembering what things were called.

What did we call those littlepens that we put the ewes in when they had their lambs?

Jugs, ah-huh.

And what did we bringthem in to the shed before we jug them?

Ah-huh, the gutwagon.

And so all of a sudden you'vegot these two very powerful pieces of memory as wellas strong words to go with.

Well, you multiply that byseveral thousand file cards and you begin to havethe makings of a book.

(soft upbeat music) (soft upbeat music) - [Jan] What aresome of the tabs, what are thetitles of the tabs?

Can you read 'em?

- Drinking, barsand brothels, jokes, cussing and Montana lingo.

- So this is his interestin getting things right in his books.

He doesn't want characterswho don't use the right lingo or who cuss wrong, you know?

I don't know,what does it say?

- Wouldn't thatjust frost your ass?

- [Narrator] People whowere poor in all else are often rich in language.

The everyday dance and pranceof the imaginative tongues I grew up around musthave drilled that into me.

There is a delicious hungerof the ear behind stories and I spent a lot of time simply followingthe sound of voices.

- If we were eating, saybreakfast in a cafe inMontana, he had his ears out.

He was listening and hewould write 'em down.

- We would make fun of Ivanand his little notebook because there wasnever a dinner in which hedidn't whip it out and write down somebody'sinteresting expression.

But that was just Ivan.

- [Narrator] That capture infiction of the prance andplay of a community's everydaylanguage seems to me vital to know the world of place.

- After he got a draft down,he could start editing.

He loved the editing 'causehe loved the language and the little bit ofdetail that he could put in.

He wanted to makeevery sentence sing.

- Ivan wrote andrewrote and rewrote.

When you look atIvan's manuscripts, you see the degree to whichhe wants every sentence to be just right.

- So he's busycorrecting himself but he's also very busycorrecting his editor.

(soft upbeat music) So his editor might say, "Do you really wannaspell howdy this way?"

No, that's the way mycharacter has to say howdy,you know?

- Stylistically, he's amaster and Ivan was very fond of talking about thepoetry beneath the pros.

- He's a greatnarrator, right?

He describes places andpeople in detail but he goesbeyond.

He stretches, he forceshimself into the realm oflyricism.

He builds this little pieceof art in every sentence and sometimes when youread one of his sentences, you have to pause, right?

You said, "What did he say?

"I need to read it again."

So when you approachIvan Doig's books, you should neverbe in a hurry.

You just need totaste every sentence.

(soft upbeat music) - [Ivan] I glance higherfor some hint of the weather and the square of airbroadens and broadens to become the blue expanseover Montana range land.

So vast and vaulting that itrears from the foundationline of the plains horizon toform the walls and roof of all of life's experience that my youngerself could imagine.

A single great house of sky.

(soft upbeat music) (tractor roaring) - [Narrator] Doig'stender and vivid portrayal of the people from hisyouth was just the beginning of his bringing individualsto life on the page.

Whether they were real people or historicallyinspired creations, Doig showed great affectionfor his characters and was committed torevealing the complexity of their lives.

- You talk about essencesof the west, of big canvas, with hard lives beinglived against it.

I never had to look very farto find that kind ofmaterial.

- The people in Doig'slife inspired more than just his memoirs.

He mined his past forfictional characters as well.

- Zoe, from the "Bartender'sTale" as a character, is so captivating andinteresting because shecaptures what it's like to bea 12 year old girl in a non-stereotypical way.

Zoe proved to besomething like a pint sized force of nature, thin as a toothpickand a sharp.

Her face was always ashow, her generous mouth sometimes sly,sometimes pursed, the tip of hertongue indicating when she was really thinking, her eyes going big beyondbelief when something pleasedher, and when something didn't, she could curl herlip practically tothe tip of her nose.

She's strong and she'sconfident and she's witty and she's precocious.

- [Speaker] You need toread "Bartender's Tale".

- Yes, that's right.

Zoe has a lot of the samecharacteristics that Vickihas.

That's all I'llsay about that.

- It's fiction, we know that, - We know it's fiction and weknow it's not to the letter.

However, as we've discussed- - [Speaker] Yeah.

- Okay, dream on.

- [Narrator] And Doigdidn't stop with characters from his own life, leaning onhis journalistic experience, he dug throughhistoric records.

He met strangers in archivalphotos who inspiredcharacters and he recordedcountless oral histories.

- [Clifford] Wehad a few droughts, after that comeall kinds of pests.

One year it would begrasshoppers.

- [Ivan] Your dad wasstill trying to farm?

- [Frances] He wasstill trying to farm and I was trying to teachschool with all my money which was only $99 a month.

- [Narrator] Sometimeswithin these interviews were the seeds of new novels including a White SulphurSprings hometown legend who found success as a singerin the Harlem Renaissance.

Taylor Gordon would inspireone of the main characters in the book,"Prairie Nocturne".

- [Ivan] This interview withTaylor Gordon is being taped on July 3rd, 1968.

- [Taylor] I moved to Harlem and then I was working forthe New York CentralRailroad.

When I was railroading,I could sing, learn how to sing better.

- [Narrator] Because Doigloved his characters, he found ways tobring them back.

- [Alan] He recyclescharacters becauseimaginatively, he's not done with them.

And he exhibits that most ofall in the Montana trilogy with the threegenerations of McCaskills.

And the Montana trilogyreally stamps his reputation.

- [Narrator] Doig had made alife in the Pacific Northwest but his mind and heartremained concerned with thepeople he left in rural Montana.

He devoted himself toshowcasing an American west he experienced yetdidn't see represented.

- [Ivan] One of thechallenges for those of us writing out here isthat the larger society has long had its own mythicnotion of life out west.

None of the guys good or bad, seems ever to do alick of everyday work.

- Come and get it.

- [Ivan] Milk a cow, churnbutter, plant a potato.

Books set out here onthe west side of America didn't give much attentionto the workaday life and the valid voicesof our region.

The west of peoplewho came to build rather than to gun sling.

To work but to danceand laugh along with it.

- He's not just interested inthe landscape as beautiful, I mean it's there, buthe's interested in people making a livingon the landscape.

It's such a huge placeand he writes so well about the little peopleon the landscape.

(soft upbeat music) - Doig always honorsall kinds of work.

He creates characters whoare experts with their hands and they stay with it,they don't give up.

In "English Creek", you have forest rangersand firefighters.

In "Dancing inthe Rascal Fair", you have a school teacherand a sheep rancher.

In "Bucking the Sun", youhave all kinds of machinists and bartenders andprostitutes and the list goeson and on.

- [Narrator] Doig's heroesaren't bosses and barons but rather the hard workersand his full cast ofcharacters always includes a greatersampling of society.

- And there are minorcharacters who are failures, there are drunks, thereare people in trouble who don't get out of troubleby the last page of thenovel.

- Montana valueshistorically, have to do withsomething about self-sufficiency and Ithink probably it has to do with hard work andcommunity as well.

People who maybe down and out but are deservingnevertheless, of yourrespect.

I think Ivan hadthat in spades.

(soft upbeat music) (wind howling) - He can reproduce the winds, he can reproduce thesounds of the winds, of what the cottonwoodtrees look and sound like when they're seeding in Juneor when leaf fall time comes.

- He spends a lot of timedescribing the environment.

- [Narrator] The darktimbered mountains aroundthem went white as icebergs.

The tops of sagebrushvanished under drifts.

- The landscape featuresin all of his books.

"Dancing at the Rascal Fair"is particularly interesting because he has createdthis imaginary landscape that combines severalreal landscapes along the RockyMountain front.

And he has maps drawn,especially for this book which tells you right awaywhen you're opening the book, "Oh, the landscape, theplace, is very importanthere."

- I see that Dupuyeris Gros Ventre and Dupuyer Creekis English Creek.

You can recognizecertain aspects.

The huge rocky mountains, thebig sky, the clouds, the air.

- Ivan wrote and lived withthat incredible diligence and attention to detail.

Being in settings, goingback and standing on the road to the Sixteen countryand looking all around and have Caroltaking photos of it.

- He would say, "Carol, take a picture ofme holding these rocks."

Because he wanted to rememberwhat the rocks looked like when he got home.

- You wanted to see if histwo characters could sleep in the upper lobbies of OldFaithful Lodge inYellowstone.

So we climbed all the wayup and Ivan stretched out on the historic sofa andyes, he could scope out what he could see.

- You and Ivan were inMontana and he says, "Well, I wanna getup before sunrise "and go out onthis certain butte to see what thesunrise looks like," the way Jick, hismain character, thenarrator of the book, would see it.

So he gets up at fourin the morning which- - Not only he, we.

- [David] Yeah,right, yes, we.

- Ivan did his own intenseresearch for "Sea Runners".

He went to Alaska andthe Alaska Archives.

For "English Creek" and"Dancing at the Rascal Fair", he and Carol went to Scotlandand looked at records.

Here in the States, herelied heavily on the library at the Universityof Washington but when he and Carol setaside time to travel Montana, then we were allpart of that mix.

He'd be here at theHistorical Society, he'd go to the ButteHistorical Society.

- When they came over here,they always stayed with us.

And Ivan and Carol snuckout always before breakfast to go to the archives.

- The genesis of "TheEleventh Man" came from thelate great Dave Walter of theMontana Historical Society who Ivan credits with tellinghim this story of the top 11 on the class of 1941Montana Agricultural College i.e MSU Bozeman'sfootball team and the fact that all ofthem were killed in combat.

- [Narrator] Storefrontby dozing storefront, the town still lookedas if the world of war had nothing to do withit, yet he knew better.

- That's the other beautifulthing about reading IvanDoig.

It's great literature butit also takes some time to tell you about some veryimportant parts of ourhistory and how men andwomen in Montana were going to maketheir contributionsand live their lives.

- "Bucking the Sun" may bemore than most of his novels, tells us about the decadeof Ivan Doig's childhood, how absolutely hard scrabbleand desperate it was.

- [Narrator] As "Buckingthe Sun" depicts, the Fort Peck Dam changedthe face of Montana throughout the 1930sand offered new work to those who could handle it.

Fort Peck's snowenthusiastically degenerated into Fort Peck's mud.

Clods of clay likesquashed bricks were churned up everywhereby the crawler tracks and the bulldozers.

Tough dam workers watchedtheir chance to sidle offalone and stand for a minute as iflooking around for something, actually just to sniff thetalcum smell of spring.

Doig's unique formof historical fiction and his evocative depictionsto the west earned him aplace among writers such as WallaceStegner, Norman McLean, Bill Kittredge, MarieClearman Blew, Tom McGuane, James Welch and others.

He contributed to theircollective project of illuminatingdisparate experiencesof the American West.

They brought forthstories of ranching towns, Native American experiencesand industrial progress.

- Like a lot of writers, heleft in order to come home.

You go away actually toimaginatively best own the landscapes thatyou grew up in.

- [Narrator] Before Ivanbecame a writer of fiction, he and Carol returned toMontana throughout the 70s to conduct interviewsand research.

They took a room for severalmonths at the RinglingMansion which at the time functionedas a boarding house.

- [Ivan] I've sat at akeyboard trying to recollectclearly the circumstances ofportions of the western past that I'd personallybeen through.

Some comes easily enough,who can ever forget what a sheep rancher'smood was late in lambing when his feet were achingfrom all those weeks of living in overshoes.

But memory is notalways enough.

In fact, seldom isyour own memory enough when you're tryingto write accurately.

- [Narrator] Doig's approachto writing about place, even for his own memoirwas always as a historian.

- [Bessie] We had chickens.

- [Ivan] Yeah, that's right.

I had forgotten chickens.

- [Bessie] Remember how weused to have to catch 'em and run 'em down?

- [Ivan] How manysheep did they run?

Any idea?

- [Charlie] About 1,200 each.

Sheep was only what 75cents a head to a dollar.

- [Narrator] Then my fatherand my grandmother go, together, backelsewhere in memory, and I'm left to thinkthrough the fortune of all weexperienced together.

And of how, now,my single outline meets the time sweptair that knew theirs.

- He is trying to understandhow the past exists in the present.

Reading "This House onSky" is really emotional.

When you see Charliesuccumbing to emphysema, it's really hard becausehis voice is with you.

You know when youwrite about the dead, you make them less dead.

(soft upbeat music) - Memory is a setof sagas we live by.

By now, my days wouldseem blank, unlit, if these familiarsurges could not come.

A certain turn in my deskchair and the leather cushion must creak, the quick drygroan of a saddle under mylegs and my father'sand his father's.

The taste in the air asrain comes over the city is forever a flavor backfrom a Montana community too tiny to be called a town.

The people here inMontana say to me, "Why didn't he evermove back to Montana?"

And I have toexplain that Montana, he said he was starvedout of Montana.

It's so tragic when herealizes that he has to leave in order to survive, in orderto help his family survive.

- It stirs somethinginside of us.

You cannot read "This Houseof Sky" without weeping.

- It can be tough.

He writes in thatone section where, see, it makes me cry evenjust thinking about it.

- [Ivan] Worry, anedginess set in on dad.

The weather had anunaccountable chill and with our shorn eweswe had on our hands a double thousand of theworld's most undressedcreatures.

And dragging across thespire line of the Rockies, black clouds were beginningto fray into rain.

We're gonna have tohightail it for the brush on two medicinewith these sheep.

Lady, you'll haveto work the dogs; dog the bejesus out of 'em.

Ivan can run, he can geton the head end of the band and try to push 'emtoward that big coulee.

- They lose hundreds.

- [Ivan] Exhausted andfreezing, they jutted theirnecks flat along the ground, rolledtheir eyes, and did theirdying.

- They're dottedout on the prairie.

It's heartbreaking.

- [Ivan] We abandonedthese stragglers, humped white on the prairiebehind us like small boulders left by a glacier andfought on with the sheep still eddying acrossthe grassland.

- And if you'rein charge of it, it's that muchmore heartbreaking.

- [Ivan] As much as at anyone instant in my life, I can say, here I was turned.

How long such a momenthad been in the making, I am the last judgebecause once made, it seemed to have begunfarther back than I couldremember and yet to have happenedlike an eye blink.

I had no steady idea aboutwhat I would do in life but I intended now that itwould not include moreseasons of sheep on that vastgambling table of Blackfeetrangeland.

(soft upbeat music) (soft upbeat music) When I'm asked at booksignings and readings what my working habits are, I hardly know what to sayexcept pathologicaldiligence.

- He was justplain a hard worker who came with thedisciplines that began when he and his dad andgrandma were on a ranch.

You know, Ivan wascommitted to 400 words a day and he would say tobright-eyed, new youngwriters, "If you can actually get400 words a day down, "you have a book."

- Ivan started veryearly in the morning.

By the time I might wannaget up at 6:30 or seven, he would've hadhis breakfast, his one small pot of coffeefor the day and then he wouldgo fetch the newspapers and mycup of tea and bring them tome.

I mean, that's the kindaguy he was, you know?

In his dogged way, then he'd go work untilhe had those words.

- [Narrator] Ivan'sdetermination was testedearly in his career as "This Houseof Sky", his first book, was rejected over and over.

And over.

More than 40 times.

- When he wrote the beginning of "This House of Sky" 40times, he typed it 40 times.

- To me, work isits own country.

You've got to spenda lot of time at it and how do you do that?

You have to takea lot of time.

And it's not asgrim as it sounds, words areinteresting company.

- [Narrator] It wasfinally in 1978, Harcourt Brace Jovanovichpublished "This House ofSky".

- It was a sort ofbreakaway memoir.

(soft upbeat music) Who at the time was reallyinterested in the memoir of a late 30s man?

And yet it became thisincredible success.

- Did you and Ivan know thatthat book was gonna hit it so big and so- - [Carol] Oh, heavens no.

- So you were just kinda,"Okay, this is his firstbook.

"Let's hope for the best."

And then, boom!

he just took of?

- [Carol] Yeah.

- [Narrator] From"This House of Sky" to "Last Bus to Wisdom",Ivan wrote 16 books earning manyprestigious awards.

Today, The Ivan Doig Archiveat Montana State University in Bozeman is availableto the public at large.

(soft upbeat music) - What I want you tonotice is that evidence of the writingprocess is just woven throughout thisentire archive.

- [Narrator] Thearchive includes hisdiaries, manuscripts, pocket notebooks,correspondence, note cards, medical recordsand memorabilia.

- And this means thatthis is available for free for everybody now in theworld which is really huge.

It shows you how the authorthought as he was writing.

I remember when I discoveredthat we had the photo albums, after reading"This House of Sky" where he talked sopoetically about looking at the photoalbums to try and capture his memory of his mother.

It brought me to tears torealize we actually hadthese.

So as a writer, he of course,used the tools of writing and we're a little bitshocked to know that a manwho died in 2015 stillused a typewriter and this is literallycut and pasted.

You should runyour hand along it.

There's texture becauseit's all pieced together.

- [Student] All thedifferent whole punches.

- [Jan] Yeah.

- [Narrator] Also centralto Ivan's work process was his partnershipwith Carol.

- Carol turns out to bequite a keen critic of plot and character development.

That's the kind ofcriticism you really want or really should have.

- She was his researchassistant, his photographer, his first and last editor, and they were activecollaborators seven days aweek.

- She is a literaryintellectual in her own right who happened to bemarried to Ivan Doig and they bothmade each other.

(soft upbeat music) - [Carol] Well earned end ofthe day.

- [Ivan] Well, cheers.

- Nevermind the lettuce.

- Cheers.

(soft upbeat music) - [Narrator] In 2001, Ivan was diagnosed with apre-cancerous condition.

It laid dormant foryears but in 2006, he was told itwas progressing.

- And even in old age andeven as his health wasworsening, he still wentout on the road.

(soft upbeat music) - And I think that thatsort of heroic face to life is part of what he writesabout in all of his books is people who are facingreally difficult things and they face 'em.

- He knew 'causeit's in the notes, he knew that multiplemyeloma was a death sentence.

(soft upbeat music) What we didn't know washow long could he last?

His answer to that diagnosiswas to keep working and if anything, work faster.

(soft upbeat music) And so in the eightyears and three months, he wrote four books.

You know, gonna doas much as he could.

He had the next book figuredout so he never let up.

(soft upbeat music) - [Narrator] Language is thelight that comes out of us.

Imagine the words asif they are our way of creating earthlight asif what is being spoken by this man in awind swept dawn is going to carryeverlastingly upward.

The way starshineis pulsing constantly across the sky of time to us.

(soft upbeat music) (bright upbeat music) - As we look backon Ivan Doig, he's clearly oneof the giants.

I just, like a lotof us, counted on him and it was as though asupport had disappearedsuddenly.

He has left a dauntingexample of industry andinvention and quality and he hasmost importantly created intimate emotionalconnections with an enormousrange of readership.

- He had a really hugefollowing in this country.

I can remember heshowed us the bandaids he had in his pocket becausehis fingers would getblistered from signing books.

- As a reader, Ireally like Doig because youcan't put it down.

You can say I'm gonna readfor 10 minutes before bed but then you look at theclock and it's three hourslater.

- I think he methis goal of poetic.

He was doing what he loved and for me that mattersa whole lot as a reader that I'm reading someone who's whole heartand soul are there.

- He contributed to thedevelopment of the memoir as a genre in this country.

He was at a sort of cuttingedge of it at that time.

In terms of therest of his books, I think that they are readyfor more academic work.

His legacy is that he haswritten about a Montana thathas.. that is slipping away.

He's writing about peoplewho know how to work.

Now that isn'tnecessarily slipping away but I think thewillingness to focus on the work that peopledo and make it interesting and honor it is not acommon focus for writers.

- All right, and this used tobe where the Ranger Bar was, was the Log Cabin Bar.

- Ellie, Mary,Rita, and Vicki, they are the ones who beganIvan Doig's birthday party and Ivan Doig Highway andthe Ivan Doig Monument and just embraced thatpiece of Dupuyer's history.

- Okay, here we go.

Here comes Dupuyer, by golly.

(indistinct chatter) Ivan had a specialfeeling for Dupuyer.

So it is wonderful forme simply to be here.

- We are trying to make surethat Ivan has a readership that extendsacross generations.

- We just hope that there'llbe other writers who come and are inspired enough byhis long example to reach some of the places that hereached over and over again.

- Ivan was a kind person.

Sense of humor.

And he came to be rememberedmost of all, as a good man.

(bright upbeat music) - When I first pickedup "This House of Sky", I was 25 years old.

Reading about White SulphurSprings and the landscape and the ranching in themountains and the culture and the community,it really drew me.

Hi guys, how's it going?

- [Bartender] Can weget you a whiskey?

- Yes, you sure can.

It felt old fashionedin some ways the way Doigdescribed this place but it also seemedreally honest and real as far as what is the normhere and the culture here but also what'spossible here.

This is the suitewhere Mr. Ivan Doig lived while he was writing"This House of Sky".

He's spent aboutsix months here and these wallshave stories to tell and I think this is thekind of historical asset that we should share withthe community and the public.

I'm working with the currentowner to turn it into acommunity gathering place, an artist residencyand a place for writers or songwriters to come and a rural institutedown the line as well.

(soft upbeat music) - [Erik] The first IvanDoig book that I read was "Ride with Me,Mariah Montana", and it's about anewspaper photographer traveling around the stateduring the centennial.

My first job asa photographer was for this small townnewspaper in Montana.

I think his work hasinspired my photography in a number of ways.

The way heapproaches character is something thatI've tried to emulate, not glossing over the hardpart, the stuff in between.

You know these jobs that aredifficult at times inMontana.

Every time I drive throughRingling, I think about him.

(soft upbeat music) And I think about some ofthe lines in his books.

I keep a few of hisquotes on my phone, it's like an anchor for me.

(soft upbeat music) The spaces between stars are where the work ofthe universe is done, which to me means we focus onthe stars for the big events that happen but thebulk of life happens in between theresomewhere, in the gaps, when we're not evenpaying attention.

Oh man, look at this light.

What does thatlook like for me?

What does that mean to me?

Have I done the workthat I wanna do?

Have I left the legacythat I hope to leave?

(soft upbeat music) (soft upbeat music) - Our district covers an areaof about 150 square miles.

Our kids come from all over.

Everybody come up and writesomething on the board.

It can be character names,it can be a plot event.

You can write a themethat you remember.

Maybe the setting,keep it appropriate.

Not that thing that youwrote yesterday, please.

Students in Montana sometimesdon't get to see themselves reflected in work and wealways wanna provide them the windows and the mirrors, so windows into otherperspectives and cultures but we also wannaprovide them a mirror that reflects backat themselves.

- If this is not biblical, I shall alwaysbelieve it should be that all of us needsomeone who loves us enough to forgive usdespite the history.

- You know like younever really get stories about smaller towns.

- This kinda feelslike close home.

(soft upbeat music) - One of thoseuniversal themes that I've seen inmultiple Doig works is what does it meanto be able to look back on your childhoodand recognize the good things thathappened, the bad things thathappened, and how you feel about them.

And that provides usa really great way to open up thoseconversations with ourstudents about their own lives andtheir own experiences.

Mixed in with all of theother stuff that we read that's not as close to home,it gives us a goodopportunity to kind of examine whywe are the way we are.

How does our placeimpact our identity?

- I will see you guystomorrow, we will be watchingHamilton.

Have a good rest of your day.

(soft upbeat music) - [Jan] Many of uswould like to be Ivan Doig because of how devotedhe was to one thing and how devotedhe was to writing and how diligenthe was about it.

If we could have that kindof vision in our own lives, what could we accomplish?

(soft upbeat music) - [Ivan] So ifa sense of place is to be our hymn andmarching song across thiswest, let's allow somejazz into it.

Place is somethingto work from but also to work on, and, work toward.

(soft upbeat music) (soft upbeat music) (soft upbeat music) (soft upbeat music) (soft upbeat music) (soft upbeat music) - [Narrator] Ivan DoigLandscapes of a Western Mind was made possibleby Vicky York, the Big Sky Film Grant, the GreaterMontana Foundation, encouraging communicationon issues, trends, and values ofimportance to Montanans.

Humanities Montana.

These generous donors.

And viewers likeyou, the Friends ofMontana PBS, thank you.

(soft upbeat music)