by Sam Kulla

Editor’s Note: This is the last in our three part series on Claude Alick’s work, philosophy of independent publishing, and life history. His most recent book, Dancing With The Yumawalli, is available through bookstores everywhere.

“In life, human beings are the same,” says Claude Alick. “They bring up the notion of race and that means little. I think it’s more like tribalism, when you really think about it. Science has told us over and over that race is a false concept. The perception was invented by philosophers striving to justify man’s inhumanity to man. So they had to do the break down of white, yellow, black and red.” Born and raised in Saint Georges on the island of Grenada, where he lived until he was 19, the Missoula-based writer explains that the main concept he seeks to emphasize in his work is that regardless of where people live on this planet, what tribes they pledge allegiance to, we are all the same creature.

“In my work, that can come out in subtle ways, as subtext. I’m always trying to convey the universality of human emotions. Things happening in Grenada transpire as they would anywhere else on the planet. People fall in love, there’s jealously, there’s cheating, we say and do the most foolish and dangerous things, to our selves and others, and that’s everywhere.”

In his late teens, Claude served as the only crew member on the Maccoboy III, a 45-foot North Sea trawler owned by David and Happy starter of York Village Maine. “I was deckhand, dishwasher, bartender, all of it. I was the only crew member except for the captain and his wife.” Claude wrote in those days, though not the same as he does now. “It was mostly poetry, journaling of events and places that I found important at the time. I lost most of that stuff in the last forty years.” Meaning that these days, when Claude writes about the Grenada of his youth, he works strictly from memory. “It’s hard to explain the process,” he says, “But one thing seems to follow on others as memories are rekindled and character take on lives of their own.”

He worked the Maccoboy III to southern Maine for two summers, sixty- nine and seventy, after which, Dave Strater asked simply, “Would you like to return to school?” Clearly an opportunity to seize, Claude was able to acquire a student visa and remained in Maine when the Yacht, under the command of a new captain and his wife, returned to Grenada the next year to work the charter season. In two years Claude had a degree in Automotive Technology, which he used to work himself through school and another degree in English and Economics. “I was writing more at this point, because as an English student you have to. At Lemoyne-Owen College, in Memphis, Tennessee, I was exposed to the black writers of the Harlem renaissance. Paul Lawrence Dunbar, WEB Dubois, Claude McKay and Jean Toomer, to name a few. I have some real fond memories of that campus on Walker Avenue and those days in Memphis. I wrote a Story in Wet Storage called, ‘Walking in Memphis.’ I stole the title of course. I still hadn’t grasped first person narratives or limited third etc, and just wrote full omniscient pieces. Mainly island stories,” he says, remembering one about two fishermen lost at sea.

“Their boat capsized and they ended up holding on to the side for many days until one of the guy decided to give up, and his friend watched him float off and drown.  Sometime later, the second fisherman was rescued. A big part of the story was how this experience stays with that fisherman throughout his life. In the narrative, the fisherman was telling this story to his son to illustrate a point.”

Married to his first wife and done with his education in Memphis, Claude began looking for a place to get an advanced degree. He ended up in Missoula on the advice of his then father in-law, a railroad man who had seen the town and liked it. “It seemed like an interesting Place to raise a child, and in those days you could rent an entire house for about 250 bucks per month. I decide then, this was the town for me, and it still is.”

Juggling the responsibility of a family and work as well as his education and writing, he happened to talk with Bill Kittredge. Kittredge said, “You don’t need a formal education or a degree to write. Just go ahead and write. Don’t stop, just keep doing it.” So Claude quit school.

“Writing is a mainstay in my life. If I had a life where all I did was work and get a paycheck, that wouldn’t sustain me. My writing sustains me. It moves my life somewhere beyond the ordinary. Money would be nice but it’s not the ultimate goal. I write anytime, I usually have all sorts of works in progress, so if I need to finish something I set a deadline for myself and I do that. Not a regimented schedule at all, just when it needs to be. I write in the middle of the day, at night when everybody is asleep, maybe with a beer or a glass of merlot. I write now mainly about my family. I mine their lives and retrieve little nuggets. My brother Wayne got arrested and put in jail on the French island of Guadalupe in the Caribbean. They accused him of being a smuggler. That becomes fodder for a story. He’s a Rastafarian, he had this big blowup with a bunch of guys in his little circle and that becomes a story. That’s actually the story ‘Redemption Songs’ in Wet Storage.”

Claude is in the process of crafting his first non-fiction project, a book about human hair. “I want to get into the economics and religious significance of human hair,” he says and jokes, “It might be some Rastafarian coming out in me!”

To this day he still makes regular trips home to Grenada to keep in touch with family and make sure they aren’t too shocked by all he reveals about them in his tales. Comparing the arts of love and literature, Claude remarked, “In living it and in writing it, you connect through honesty. One has to be honest in the process of writing just as in the process of love.”