Gaines Steer Revealed
Sir Richard Bloggins Scoops Oprah...Gets the first interview with the reclusive writer and publisher of The Pronoia Times.
Sir Richard: Mr. Steer, we see from the Masthead of your newspaper, The Pronoia Times, that you are the owner, editor, publisher, feature writer, cartoonist, reporter, book reviewer, and (frankly, your prose bears a marked resemblance to that of the listed Foreign Correspondent: Judge Gaston B. Hayes, Sr., Ret.”) What’s up?
This is a trustory.
“Gaino” Steer became a writer one fine June day when he was 37 years old. It happened this way...
I stopped by the newspaper office to get a free newspaper, as was my custom in those days. Just as I reached for the newspaper, the Editor of the Community Section, Beth, walked by and recognized me. “Aren’t you Gaines? We rode together to
“Yeah, I remember. You’re Beth.”
“What are you doing here”, she asked politely.
“Oh, I was just trying to get up the nerve to ask you for a job.” I reported rather creatively.
A few days later when I turned in my first story, the result of a “stringer assignment” to cover the Elk’s Club luncheon, Beth asked if I had any ideas for more stories. Great! Now I was about ready to begin paying for those free newspapers. Why I have more ideas than I have sense…..
“Sure, want to hear some of them?” I ventured.
Before I knew it, I became a feature writer for the “Maryland Independent” and had a huge portfolio brimming with stories. I also took photos to accompany my stories, as was the practice with small country newspapers in 1980. Then….
Sir Richard: Excuse me, Mr. Steer, I had asked you about The Pronoia Times. Current!
Gaines: Oh, I was getting there. See you shouldn’t rush a story teller. We like to set up our stories with some background stuff.
Sir Richard: But I didn’t want a story. I asked you a simple, straightforward question.
Gaines: Fair enough. You get to ask the questions and I get to tell you the answers. I know the drill. But see, I always tell a story. If you listen to the story you will learn lots more than even the question requires.
Sir Richard: I get that!
Gaines: Then I started simultaneously writing for another paper, “The St. Mary’s Beacon.” One of the oldest newspapers in the
Sir Richard: So that’s how you got the idea for The Pronoia Times…?
Gaines: Oh, no! You’re way ahead of me….. I hadn’t even gotten my second divorce yet. But I don’t mind skipping that part…
Now the story slows down. Gaines became a “writer who writes to himself” It’s an awfully long story actually so I’ll “name drop” a while to catch you up. So I began to engage in what I call “inspirational writing.” Also I refer to it as “intuitive writing.” This is an unabridged style of writing that was inspired by Ira Progoff’s work: At A Journal Workshop. Heavy duty! Tons of exercises for insight. I can’t begin to describe it! Then along came Edgar Cayce’s Sleeping Prophet in which he suggest that a self-writer like me could ask questions and record the answers. I musta been a good subject ‘cause notebooks piled up and the years went by.
Sir Richard: Years went by?
Gaines: Yeah, years went by. Meanwhile I developed my penchant for story tellin’. Mama ad given me Richard Chase’s Southern Appalachian told stories recorded by him in Jack Tales. You weren’t supposed to read them you always tell them doin’ the best you can with that old timey mountain vernacular. It’s like redneck Southern talk with words and phrases from European ancestors. Cunningly beautiful. “Hit don’t differ,” for example.
Sir Richard: I can imagine….
Gaines: Exactly! Lotsa imagination and all….. So long story short, I spent 25 years as a “meandering journal writer”
Sir Richard: You don’t say. Is what you mean when you refer to yourself as a “jackleg journalist?”
Gaines: Oh, I see you’ve read my book: A Story Worth Tellin.
Sir Richard: Yes, I was doing background for this interview.
Gaines: Did you “get it?”
Sir Richard: Get what?
Gaines: Sorry, you’re drawing me off my story.
Sir Richard: Do please continue. You had spent 25 years, I believe, writing to yourself.
Sir Richard: Yes.
Gaines: It’s a saga of a story about how I wrote A Story Worth Tellin’. I ‘spect it’d take two or three days to tell it all. Did you know that I was in nine writers groups during all the time I wrote the book?
Sir Richard: I think you mentioned that in the book….
Gaines: Wore ‘em all out I guess….So all the years I was writing to myself and collecting “the documentation” for the book, I was trying to figure out what kinda writer I was going to be when I grew up.
Sir Richard: But you were well past 50 years old…
Gaines: Hell, I can’t help that. ‘Sides I had some stuff to take care of, so to speak.
Sir Richard: Sir, I read your book from cover to cover. It took me 7 vacation days to finish. You are drastically understating when you state that: “you had some stuff to take care of, so to speak.” Do please continue.
Gaines: Sure did! So finally I got the book signed, sealed and delivered to the press in
Sir Richard: Wait a minute. I’m confused. You’re telling me stuff about the book and I originally only asked you a lead-in question about the newspaper, that “whatever times”, you call it.
Gaines: The Pronoia Times. Pronoia means an “alternative to paranoia.” Why don’t you let me finish the story….. So after 25 long years of trying to figure out what I ultimately wanted to write. You know beyond writing to myself. Assuming I wanted to write in addition “to myself”, which I do and did want to do.
Sir Richard: Keep going…
Gaines: Well, here is exactly what happened in a nutshell. Long story short….
Sir Richard: long story short….
Gaines: The very exact day that the book finally went to press after months of millions of e-mails and meeting between me and Lance {the layout artist} and Wendy {the editor} for month after month. We nearly drove each other crazy.
Sir Richard: I can sense that.
Gaines: On that very day, June 13th I heard by pure serendipitous accident that I could print a newspaper spreadsheet of four pages, 5,000 copies for only $315.
I want to tell you this. The sky lit up like it was a reverse apocalypse. I mean the answer came. I was going to write my own newspaper. I immediately started writing. I cut up a newspaper in my bedroom and made manila folders of the sections. Sports, editorial, art and entertainment. All of it.
Sir Richard: Is that the end of your answer, Mr. Steer.
Gaines: Hardly. I wrote about half of the paper yet something was wrong. Amiss.
Sir Richard: What?
Gaines: The paper didn’t have an “over-arching theme.” I was writing like crazy and…
Sir Richard: I believe that!
Gaines: See I didn’t want it to be just another angry, liberal paper with a negative tone and all like the “Indy.” Here I was waiting over 20 years for an answer to my big question: “what kind of a writer do I want to be?” And I was getting what was on top, if you know what I mean. The old social activist was mad and he was gonna write the very devil out of something. I was temporarily confused.
Sir Richard: Evidently!
Gaines: Then I do what I usually do when I get confused or get the dithers.
Sir Richard: You got drunk? Sorry, that was in bad taste. I did read your book. I apologize for that comment…that question. Crude!
Gaines: That’s Ok. My storytelling makes people do weird stuff all the time. Have you ever seen the whole earth catalogue?
Sir Richard: No, but I gather from you book that it was the model that “inspired the book.” I think that’s a quote from that longish introduction you wrote.
Gaines: Yeah. So I called Steve.
Sir Richard: Wait. Who’s Steve?
Gaines: He’s in my men’s group. We six men have been together for an average of 15 years. Did I tell you about that yet?
Sir Richard: Better not tell me right now.
Gaines: OK. I called Steve and told him all about the newspaper idea and the $315. Steve likes to talk on the phone and we take turns listening.
Sir Richard: Really?
Gaines: Know what he said?
Sir Richard: I have no earthly idea…
Gaines: He asked me if I’d ever heard of Rob Brezsny and “pronoia.” Steve had forgotten the word but told me it was the opposite of paranoia and sounded like the concept I was fishing and wichin’ for. Got that?
Sir Richard: Got what?
Gaines: You’re not listening. I just told you how I came to discover the overarching theme for the paper. After over twenty years the answer came the very day that the book went to
Sir Richard: Is Rob in this men’s group.
Gaines: Of course not. He lives on the West Coast. He’s a nationally known columnist who has written a book titled Pronoia is The Antidote for Paranoia.
Sir Richard: You lost me somewhere in there, Gaines.
Gaines: Want me to start the trustory all over again.
Sir Richard: No! Please No!
Gaines: Why don’t you check out Rob’s website. He’s also a great story teller. Just Google his name. It’s called Free Will or Truth and Beauty Laboratory.
Sir Richard: For real?
Gaines: Of course. All of my stories are for real. You should know that by now!
Sir Richard: The Truth and Beauty Laboratory?
Gaines: Yes.
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