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A Sit Down with the Man People Love to Hate: Minneapolis Critic Dwight Hobbes

"If you see things one way and nine people see it the other way, you're probably right."

As interviewed by Lyssa Hansen

Dwight Hobbes has done it all; write plays performed on stage, freelance for just about every newspaper and magazine in the Twin Cities area, strum his guitar in coffee houses and live on the streets. Hobbes' opinions have burned a lot of bridges in his career, but he doesn't care. I sit down with the man people love to hate and as he calls it, we shoot the shit.

How did your career in journalism start?

 I failed journalism at college. I went to Long Island University and I flunked out of journalism. Why, because I wasn't any good at it. And when I was teaching at U of Wisconsin, I mentioned that to the students and they were aghast; well if he failed journalism then why is he teaching us journalism?

It took me a long, long time to be able to get my mind around writing essays. I didn't start writing essays until 1992, before that all I had done was fiction. I wrote a lot of short stories, one of which got published in Essence Magazine. I grew up reading novels so therefore it was like second nature. You know, at least the art form was. It wasn't that I was great at it, but I was comfortable doing it.

So yeah, I came out here and I was staying at a homeless shelter downtown. Asha Blake used to be a local correspondent for KARE 11, and she was down there doing a story and I saw the camera lights and this cute little chick and I said, let's go stick my nose in and see what's going on. She interviewed me and she said, stay in touch. So, I wrote a letter to her at the station and she responded by saying I should turn it into an essay, and I didn't really give it too much thought. Turn it into an essay, why?

Then I was at this playwriting workshop and this fellow Anthony Porter came to the workshop with this magazine that he was the editor of called Colors: Journal of Opinion by Writers of Color. And he was looking for essays so…. I went and dug out that letter that I sent to Asher Blake and I sent it to him. And he gave me feedback on it. So I strengthened it and he published it, and I got paid. And I was like, I could get used to this. Now it's what I do. I write essays.

 What was it like being homeless?

It was a bitch. That's a long painful story that I just rather not go into. You know, I think about it just about every year, on one of these nights in December or something when students at the U pitch a tent and they spend the night outdoors to call attention to the homeless plight and I'm like heh, you think you're doing something. Believe me, one night outdoors don't impress me.

What kind of doors did the essay in Colors Magazine open for you?

John Habich, the arts editor at the Star Tribune, was at this panel discussion and I told him, "You're paper doesn't have any black writers and your white writers don't know black culture, so your paper doesn't know black culture. You ought to hire someone like me." I wasn't bashful or shy. And actually John Habich went back and the powers that be at the Star Tribune handed him his head.  Like hell no, we're not letting Dwight Hobbes write for this paper. See, along the way, I had started writing commentaries for a local newspaper called Insight News and I didn't pull any punches at all, and they didn't particularly care for that. They reached kind of a compromise where the paper refused to hire me on staff, but they let him give me freelance assignments.

What's it like working as a minority in an all white newsroom? What are the frustrations? 

The frustrations are being broke all the time, while you watch people who can't write half as good as you sitting around in expensive clothes. That's a frustration. The frustration is having to eat in soup kitchens between pay checks. It's really galling and quite honestly, it pisses me off. I can't get a foot in the door to save my life. You know, it was a miracle that my play Shelter even got produced here in town because nobody would give me a shot.

How do you feel about the Jungle Theater? You were quoted in the Twin Cities Daily Planet saying the Jungle was a white theater for white plays seen by white people.

 Penumbra's got black theater; Theatre Mu's got Asian theater, so why can't the Jungle Theater have a white theater? See, that's what I mean about saying things that you're not supposed to say. It's automatically supposed to be, "Boo, hiss, they're all white." Well I got news for you; they're allowed to be all white. Penumbra's all black isn't it? When Colors Magazine ran an essay contest for writers of color, white writers weren't allowed to submit. And I said, "White's a color. How come they can't be in on it too?"

See, if you're gonna have a conscience about humankind, you gotta have a conscience of all humankind. You got to be able to think for yourself. Make up your own mind about things, judge your own perceptions, and nine times out of ten, if you see things one way and nine people see it the other way, you're probably right. They're so damn busy saying what's expected of them. People love their illusions; it keeps them from having to do the hard work of thinking for themselves.

How did you learn how to write plays?

 Way back in the mid 80's Fred Hudson had a place called the Frederick Douglas Center for Creative Arts in New York. Fred has the unique talent of being able to let you learn instead of trying to put shit in you, you know. He had the ability to let you bring out what you already had. I mean, shit, learning how to write is not an easy thing to do. Otherwise everybody could do it. But, once you know what you're doing, that's a skill nobody can ever take away from you. It's a growth process and it can be agonizing because you don't just add hot water and I can do it! It takes time and effort and applying yourself. I've done manual labor, I've worked in factories, and I'm telling you, it's a hell of a lot easier because you don't have to think about it, you just do it.

When we did Shelter, I was blown away. The whole dang night, people were coming up to me with their playbill asking for my autograph. And I'm like, "What do you want my autograph for? I'm trying to get to the bar." Chuckle.

You seem to get rejected constantly; how do you keep your momentum going?

Something that you really want a whole lot, there's like this kind of mechanism in you that says there's no way you're going to get it, just because you want it. And if you can silence that voice, if you can shut the gremlins up, you get out of your own way.

I called Steve Kaplan at Minnesota Law and Business Magazine for a solid year, every couple of months, pitch him an idea, and he said, nah, not interested. One day he said, okay, that works. After a while, I got another story and then I became one of his semi regulars. The publisher down there, Bill White, God bless him, Bill had a running joke; he would say, "Steve Kaplan has the toughest job in publishing saying no to Dwight Hobbes." I was always in there pitching. But I didn't care; I came back in there the next day with something else. You gotta be open-minded enough with yourself so that you don't limit yourself to possibilities. And you've gotta be persistent.

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