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Woody wrote on everything-paper, napkins, envelopes, toilet tissue. He wrote by hand; he wrote with a typewriter.
He wrote letters, notes, commentary on anything he thought about.
He wrote books.
His first book was Bound for Glory, a rather imaginative autobiography. It was published in 1943 in the midst of his success as a singer-songwriter, and in it he tells of his life up to that time with vivid and creative descriptions.
The book was made into a film in 1976, starring David Carradine as Woody Guthrie. Carradine was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor, and the film won two Oscars, one for cinematography and one for best musical score.
Woody was listed in the screen credits as a "source writer," since his book was the basis for the script. This was nine years after his death, brought on by Huntington's Disease.
Besides Bound for Glory, he also wrote Seeds of Man, a rather fanciful recollection of a real road trip he took with his father and other men of the family to south Texas, to attempt to locate a treasure his Guthrie grandfather had found and lost years before.
And he was constantly writing columns for a variety of newspapers. His "Woody Sez"columns in the People's World newspaper became legendary.
In 1990, Pastures of Plenty, a collection of his unpublished writings, was published This was compiled by Harold Leventhal, who had been his manager and friend as well as an administrator in the Woody Guthrie Archives and Foundation, and Dave Marsh, author of several best selling books in his own right, dealing with 20th- Century popular music and musicians.
Marsh ends his introduction to Pastures of Plenty with a quote of Guthrie's. He sets it up by explaining when the quote was written and how. "The words were scrawled in a journal [in 1954, nearly at the end of his creative life] written in a hand so shaky that it took a full page to contain just these few lines. But they prove that there were things about Woody-his humor and his humanity, his sense of worth and history-that Huntington's Chorea never touched. Like the rest of this book, they're mostly about hope."
Woody wrote:
"I want you to pay a lot more attention to all my words longer and deeper
and quieter and louder than I ever could. You'll get more out of them than
I did around here."
In this book Woody's statement about the power of love is set forth. Here is an excerpt:
"Love is the only God I'll ever believe in.
"God is Love.
"God is really Love.
"Love cant operate in your behalf as long as your own sickly fear will not permit love to operate in your behalf.
"Love casts out hate.
"Love gets rid of all fears.
"Love overcomes all errors and excuses and pardons, and understands the key reasons why the mistake, the error, the stumble, the sprawl, the fall, was made.
"Love heals all."
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| | Copyright 2006 Pampa's Tribute to Woody Guthrie |
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