Awhile ago I told you about a new book that just happens to include the Forgotonia
region as the topic of one of its chapters.
As you might guess from its subtitle, True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States That Never Made It, it’s filled with fun bits of trivia. Like the fact that we might have made Cuba a state if it weren’t for oh, you know, pure racism. Or the fact that Chicagoans once thought that downstate farmers held all the political power—a direct opposite of the feelings behind the Forgotonia movement—and wanted their own state.
Each proposed state is featured in a short, dryly humorous write-up and a corresponding map created by the author, whose career has focused on documentary filmmaking and teaching before publishing this book. Trinklein was a writer and producer for the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary Pioneers of Television, as well as The Gold Rush (1998) and The Oregon Trail (1993).
Lost States gets you thinking about how we define ourselves as a nation and as state citizens. And about how arbitrary some of the decisions behind our concrete-seeming realities really are. (Case in point? The recent news that legislative districts in Illinois are still determined by whichever political party pulls the winning slip of paper out of a hat.)
The book and its author, Michael Trinklein, have recently been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, C-SPAN, and many other media outlets. As I read the book and began following the author on his blog, I really wanted to know more about him. How he got the idea for the book? How had he heard about the Forgotonia movement? Did he visit this region? And if so, what did he think of it?
So I dialed him up. (Well, the e-mail way.) And Trinklein, whose book was featured in The New Yorker, was gracious enough to grant a phone interview to this blogger.
(So it was a tad embarrassing when I didn’t know the answer to the one thing he really wanted to know from me: should “Forgotonia” have one “T” or two?)
Learn more about how the idea for the book took shape, what he thinks about life in the Midwest, and more—and leave me your thoughts, proposed statehood suggestions, or questions—below.
A Q&A with Lost States author Michael J. Trinklein
So, what state are you from? You’re talking to me now from Wisconsin. Is that where you’re from originally? Tell me about your life leading up to this book.
Well, I was born in Illinois; we lived in Evanston until I was five. But I grew up in Wisconsin. I went to college at the University of Wisconsin, and after that I
went to the University of Iowa for graduate school. I majored in filmmaking in both, and I then took job teaching filmmaking at Idaho State University, and I was there for 20 years. That spurred me on to do the book, partly, because the geography of Idaho is really screwy.
So in looking at the list of documentaries you’ve worked on, and then at this book, it seems like the common theme of your research or general interest is history. In the films you made, how did you get inspired to pursue those subjects?
For The Oregon Trail, I think it was something about…well, growing up in Wisconsin and Illinois, history can seem a little bit further away than it is in Idaho; I mean, I knew people in Idaho who were older than the state! [laughs]. I remember very distinctly being on family vacation out west and seeing the [still visible] ruts [from wagon wheels], and hearing about how “those are actually from the Oregon trail.” It was so fascinating to me that we could walk in the same steps as people from history. That kind of got me started.
You thank your parents in the book for dragging you through practically every state in the country. So do you really credit those childhood car trips with sparking your interest in geography?
You know, when I was growing up, interstates were still young. We went to California on a four-day trip, we went to Mexico, to Texas. And in the era before iPods, you had to look out the window, you had to see the land. It was always kind of fascinating how… Living where I live now, and where you live now, when you’re driving west toward Denver, it’s fairly flat. And then all of a sudden the interstate starts to double back on itself, twisting back on itself [as you approach the mountains]. And I remember saying to my grandfather, ‘They can do that?’ So yeah, we went everywhere, and it was fascinating to see the land change a bit.
What initially got you thinking about doing this book project?
Growing up, I was always kind of interested in maps. As a kid, when I was young, they’d give away free ones at the gas station; I kind of collected them, and as I would study them over, I wondered, “Why are they running a road through there and not there?” I remember, in about 1975 or so, as a teenager, there was an article in Newsweek about the potential State of Superior [the secession of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan from the rest of the state], and I remember just being blown away by that; I couldn’t even believe you can do that. I mean, in my generation, we haven’t seen any new states added, so I remember thinking, “Can you really do that?”
Over the years, I kind of collected stories of states and borders. Some people collect baseball cards…[laughs] I collected those kinds of stories. It was kind of a fascination. I had a file of these stories for decades, but I guess I didn’t really start working on it in earnest until about 2005. It wasn’t something I did full-time.
But you really had mentally or physically collected the stories that make up the content of this book since you were a kid?
Absolutely. I’ve had this huge filing cabinet labeled “maps.”
Can you describe how you went about most of the research for the maps and the book?
I tried, wherever possible, to go to primary sources, and for me that generally meant newspapers from the era. Some of these states—Boston’s a good example—basically it was just [one source], the Boston Globe from 1919 [that was available], and nothing else. That’s one problem with a topic like this; the problem with talking with people from over a hundred years ago is that the people are not still around.
But [like the book states in the introduction], the point with these was not to do an exhaustive review, but to be light, to get people interested in maps, history, and geography.
For a few of them, it was really hard to find good information on. Others I didn’t want to do because there was already so much on them, like Puerto Rico, or splitting California—there are whole books on splitting up Texas. But I don’t think anyone’s really gathered these stories up before.
I was glad to see that you had included Forgotonia in the book, because I think mostly it was tongue-in-cheek, more of trying to make a point than anything.
What I’ve found is, in any of these proposals, there is a certain number of people who are dead serious, there are others who think it’s funny, and it’s hard to sort out which one’s the greatest number. Some of them started out as kind of a joke, but . . . I think all great ideas start out in life in somebody’s head, and they might sound crazy, but then they become reality.
Lost States was published by Quirk Books—and your book is quirky. Because of the sort of unusual subject matter, did you ever have a hard time getting people to understand why you were interested in this? Did you have a hard time pitching it to publishers?
Yeah, you know, I think I worked on it for awhile without even telling my family, [laughs], because they’d be wondering what I was doing …But a lot of these things had never been mapped, so it was kind of fun to do. I worked on it on the weekends, that’s kind of what I do for fun, as odd as that sounds. I did a sort of self-published version at first, but it sold, like, five copies [laughs]. But honestly that was okay, because the point was not to make a lot of money or anything. I did it because I thought it was fun. But yeah, it’s not easily compartmentalized. Some publishers would say they thought it would be a good childrens’ book. But then Quirk Books said they liked it, but that I’d have to expand the content. So I added more states.
You hear those classic stories a lot of times, about how they try to get something published and it’s “No one likes your book, then all of a sudden one publisher likes it, and it ends up doing really well.” Well, not to try to compare myself [to those writers], but that’s kind of how it works in real life.
So how did you first hear about the Forgotonia story?
I think I found it on the web. Only three or four of the stories in the book came that way; the others were through clippings or books actually. I think it was one of the stories I found when I was looking for “51st state” proposals, when I had to expand the book.
What did you find about Forgotonia that surprised you?
Well, just that…growing up with the freeways and seeing them built, I was fascinated that … [the proposed interstate] still isn’t done, and that everyone wants that road [laughs]. I looked into the highway legislation, and you know, it’s in there, and then they’re taking it out, and it’s like you can just kind of see everybody go [imitates frustrated cry] “oh, no!” … I think sometimes we forget how important those freeways are to commerce.
Since you did most of the research for the Forgotonia section by reading about it, have you ever had reason to actually visit the region?
I have driven back and forth to St. Louis a lot, so I have been on the fringes of that area many times.
So are there any observations about the area that stand out in your mind?
Well, [laughs], as you know, there’s corn. And I think that…I like that part of the country. I basically live in it. And Wisconsin and Iowa are not that different [from Illinois], of course. I like rural places… it’s kind of appealing to me. And part of the larger point of the book, I think, is that there’s a lot more to America than the just the coasts. [This region is] rural, but that’s a good thing.
It’s interesting to me that, when we were doing the Pioneers of TV series, and we were doing interviews with people in LA and New York, people in those places are not as happy, a lot of times, as people in the “flyover” states. We have this inferiority complex because we’re not on TV every night. But I think we’re a lot better off. When people are pushed together, they’re more stressed out. Here, there’s plenty of free parking [laughs]. So… it’s a pretty good lifestyle.
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