Look and Listen

Biography

The work of Bruce Hoppe serves as a good example of bringing the best of ones life to the page. His writing conveys the experience of one who has lived a broad and deep life, adventurous and spirited. “She was smiling through her tears. ‘But I don’t think he ever let a single pretty day get by. He was in every one of them to the fullest.’ She pointed out to the expanse of tableland that stretched beyond the cliff; so vast the earth’s contour verified by the camber of the far horizon. ‘It’s what this is for,’ she said. And Joe couldn’t tell whether she meant the rolling grassland below, now bathed in the fiery hues of the sunrise, or the planet that embraced it all.” (from Don’t Let All the Pretty Days Get By) Born and raised in the Polish community in Chicago, Bruce is a third generation American and the first of his extended family to graduate from college. He enrolled at Kansas State University aiming at a career in equine veterinary medicine but switched to a B.S. in biology after discovering that, “What I was really interested in was the other end of the horse.” Graduation was followed by a two-year stint in the Peace Corp. The eruption of the Biafran/Nigerian civil war in mid-tour as a high school science teacher necessitated a hasty ad hoc evacuation. Reassigned to Kenya, Bruce talked his way into assisting in wildlife field research at Serengeti Plains National Park. After finishing his Peace Corp service Bruce went west and has remained there ever since. He has lived and worked at a wide range of jobs in thirty years of beating about the backwaters of the western high plains from Texas to Montana. He built a log cabin in Montana, cowboyed on ranches from border to border and trained cutting horses professionally for the past twenty-five years. He is also known to have played guitar and performed in a honky-tonk band or two along the way. Having finally pronounced his life research sufficient to think he might, at last, have something to say, Bruce applied for and was accepted in the M.F.A. Creative Writing program at Antioch University Los Angeles. “Even if I don’t produce a New York Times bestseller,” he’s quick to point out, “I can always payoff my student loans with my social security checks.” He graduated from Antioch in June 2004. In addition to holding an MFA degree Bruce was a journalist for a newspaper in rural New Mexico for five years where he won nine New Mexico Press Association awards for writing. A firm believer in the importance of humor in literary fiction, Bruce is fond of quoting Mark Twain. “The truth must be told through humor…otherwise people will kill you.”

Inspiration

I have always had this nagging notion that, however bad things get, global warming, ethnic cleansing, the planet as global terrorist village, for the human condition to prevail, somewhere in the mix there must remain a healthy dose of the ability to laugh. The Dalai Lama knows this. Tom Robbins knows this. Mark Twain certainly knew this. The guffaw, the chuckle, the belly laugh are primary manifestations of the human spirit with a common job description--to refuse to allow you to succumb to despair, no matter what panic-of-the-day CNN happens to be dishing out in the latest 24 news cycle. So, I say let the writing reflect this. And, in some modest way, maybe my stories will remind readers of their own capacity to endure with a laugh when it counts. After all, my guess is that the thing that pisses off Osama Bin Laudin the most is to not be taken seriously.