Interview with Stephen Harrigan
AS: How long have you been a student of the Alamo?
SH: I started to think about the Alamo seriously when I was about twelve years old. This would
have been around 1960, when I had just seen the John Wayne movie and set myself the task of
reading Lon Tinkle’s Thirteen Days to Glory, John Myers Myers’ The Alamo and then Walter Lord’s
magnificent A Time to Stand, which I admire more and more with each passing decade for its concision,
sobriety, and ground-breaking research.
My interview with Stephen Harrigan, author of Gates of the Alamo, was conducted on July 1st, 2007.
AS: How long have you been a student of the Alamo?
SH: I started to think about the Alamo seriously when I was about twelve years old. This would
have been around 1960, when I had just seen the John Wayne movie and set myself the task of
reading Lon Tinkle’s Thirteen Days to Glory, John Myers Myers’ The Alamo and then Walter Lord’s
magnificent A Time to Stand, which I admire more and more with each passing decade for its concision,
sobriety, and ground-breaking research.
AS: How long did it take you to write Gates of the Alamo and how much research did you put into the novel?
SH: The book took eight years. I researched for about two years and then decided I’d better just dive in
or I’d be too intimidated to ever get started. I make my living primarily as a screenwriter, and so the book
had to be written in my spare time between and around movie projects. The research was endless. Typically
I would manage to write a few paragraphs and then would have to stop and look something up or consult with
one of many historians–Tom Lindley, Steve Hardin, Alan Huffines, Frank de la Teja, Paul Hutton, Bill Groneman, Kevin Young, Jim Crisp, and many
others –who were kind enough to offer assistance about some particularly thorny or obscure point.
AS: What was the purpose behind the title?
SH: No purpose other than desperation. I knew I wanted the word Alamo in the title but after literally years of searching
could not find anything that worked. Finally my friend Elizabeth Crook, who was writing her own novel centering around
the Goliad massacre, told me that her publisher had rejected her working title “The Gates of the Presidio.” They were afraid that
general readers would not know what a presidio was or be able to pronounce it. I shamelessly said to her, “Well, if you’re not using
it, could I have it?” She good-naturedly agreed, and went on to publish her novel under the title “Promised Lands.”
AS: In my opinion, your characterization of David Crockett was dead on, no pun intended. What references did you use to bring the former congressman to life?
SH: Crockett was the easiest historical character to grasp because he left such a great paper trail. Not only is there his own autobiography, which
is deeply revealing, but also the numerous accounts of the people who met him and tried to pin down his peculiar magnetism and celebrity. I read all
the biographies as well but it was Crockett’s voice in his own writings that really fixed him in my imagination.
AS: I understand characters from your novel were mentioned or used in other Alamo works. What were the titles and how were they portrayed?
SH: Before I started writing The Gates of the Alamo I met Elizabeth Crook, and through her Jeff Long. We all hit it off really well but were a little
concerned when we discovered that we were all writing novels about the Texas Revolution. Elizabeth had staked out Goliad, Jeff was doing San Jacinto,
and I was taking on the Alamo. I suggested that instead of feeling territorial about this we should sort of join forces and have characters in each others’ novels
making cameo appearances. So if you read Jeff’s “Empire of Bones” you’ll find my character Terrell Mott wandering through and talking to Sam Houston, and Elizabeth’s character from “Promised Lands”, Hugh Kenner, makes a guest appearance in my book. I can’t remember what character from Jeff’s book ended up in Elizabeth’s, but
there’s a walk-on there as well.
AS: What was the biggest obstacle for you to climb in the writing of your novel?
SH: A book like this is nothing but obstacles. It’s so big and populated with so many characters that on a logistical level just keeping
track of everybody is a major chore. But in the case of the Alamo there’s is just so little information that can be trusted at face value,
and so a lot of my time was spent trying to decide what really happened. How did Crockett really die? Was there more than one
reinforcement? Was there anything resembling a line-in-the-sand moment? And trying to understand the complexities of the political
situation in Mexico was a real brain-twister for me.
AS: Out of all the characters in your book, who do you closely identify yourself with?
SH: Most of the major characters in the book are fictional, and as is true with all fictional characters, I think, they inevitably share certain traits,
attitudes and preoccupations of the author. But being a novelist means closely identifying yourself with everybody you write about, really
getting inside them and trying to understand what is driving them and making them behave the way they do. I never had a thought that there
would be heroes and villains in the book. That’s the sort of exterior judgment that just doesn’t interest me.
AS: Do you have any plans pertaining the Alamo in the near future? Are you working on another novel at the moment?
SH: I’m working on another novel set in 1919 in San Antonio, West Texas, and France. To my surprise, a minor character in The Gates of the
Alamo recently popped up in it, and you can’t write a novel about San Antonio without having people taking note of the Alamo. And my most
recent novel, Challenger Park, featured a contemporary scene where people were drinking a Texas Hill Country champagne named Victory or Death.
But as far as the Alamo being a central subject, I think I’m done.
AS: I understand you and author Jeff Long were good friends. And with a subject such as the Alamo, personal conflict may become heated because of different theories and beliefs. How did you and Mr. Long keep such a great relationship with one another?
SH: I read Jeff’s book Duel of Eagles when it first came out and thought then, as now, that it was brilliantly written. When I started doing my own serious Alamo research, I found myself diverging from Jeff’s point of view. But the idea that I could not be friends with a writer I admire who is also a great human being–someone who has repeatedly put himself at risk in various global hotspots in order to deliver medical supplies or help ensure fair elections–over arcane matters of historical disagreement is ludicrous to me. I’ve had the good fortune to be friends with many Alamo historians and it’s dismaying to me when they fall out with each other. Besides, it’s been almost eight years since my own book came out, and when I look through it now I often find that my own views have changed and that I’m in violent disagreement with myself.
A big thanks to Mr.Harrigan for taking the time to do the interview with me! I suggest to pick up a copy of his novel. It’s a great read!
~Wade