In his lifetime, T.S. Hawkins lived in a log cabin, moved from Missouri to California in a covered wagon and helped found the town of Hollister. He also wrote a book.
But what Hawkins couldn’t know is that his great-great grandson Dave Eggers—the best selling author of 10 books and founder of a publishing company—would take a liking to his work nearly a century after it was printed.
About 200 copies of Hawkins’ autobiography “Some Recollections of a Busy Life” were published in 1913, and now—more than 100 years later—about 2,000 more copies of the work will be released with a foreword written by Eggers. In his address to readers, Eggers used pieces of a story about Hollister that he published recently in The New Yorker.
Eggers spoke by phone with the Free Lance.
“I think that it’s astonishing how many changes there have been to, I think, everyday life, just in a 100 years,” Eggers told the Free Lance last week. “The fact that he grew up in a log cabin with a dirt floor and wearing clothes made out of bark and eating squirrels—and then even in the course of his lifetime there were such radical changes.”
Eggers, perhaps best known as the author of the best-selling 2000 memoir “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”—a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—is a novelist and screenwriter who lauds his relative’s writing skills.
“The book itself, whether you know Hawkins or not, is very well written,” Eggers said. “It’s beautifully written.”
Eggers’ own works include “Zeitoun”, “You Shall Know Our Velocity”, “How We are Hungry”, “What is What” and most recently “Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?” He also co-wrote the screenplay for the 2009 film “Where the Wild Things Are”.
The new release of his relative’s work will return from the printer in early October and will be available by Nov. 1, he said. Eggers hopes to sell at least half of the print run locally, he said. It won’t be available through any of the big online retailers, he said.
“It’s at the press right now and should be done and on a truck in a few weeks,” Eggers told the Free Lance on Friday.
For Eggers, releasing his great-great grandfather’s book is a chance to share the real story of Hollister, which people often confuse with the fictional surf town celebrated on sweatshirts and jeans made by Hollister Co., an Abercrombie & Fitch subsidiary.
Several themes in Hawkins’ book still ring true. At the time, people were interested in stories of the journey or pilgrimage west, Eggers said.
“I think all of that sort of speaks to our interest in how all of these frontier people came west and settled California. Not that it wasn’t settled, but established these towns and farms in California, more like they are now,” he said. “And then, of course, I think it’s interesting that everyone around the world knows this word ‘Hollister.’ And I think that kept it on my mind and kept me thinking that people would want to know the real story.”
News that Eggers had written about Hollister for The New Yorker – putting the small, rural town on a national stage, albeit briefly—spread through social media this summer.
In the article, called “The Actual Hollister”, Eggers speaks of his personal connection to the city Hawkins played a role in founding. In slow plodding and often lyrical prose, Eggers tells the story behind the Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital’s name, introduces Colonel W.W. Hollister and references San Justo Ranch. He also talks of his recent visit, which included a transformative trip to a barbershop where locals thought he was a federal agent or police officer.
“The year I turned forty-three, I woke up one morning and thought it would be a good day to go to Hollister,” Eggers wrote in the more than 6,000-word piece published in July. “It was the kind of trip a middle-aged man takes when his children are at a trampoline birthday party.”
Over the years, Eggers has stopped in the town on his way to see family in Los Angeles, with the first visit always being to the hospital his relative helped build after Hawkins’ treasured granddaughter—for which the building is named—died of appendicitis. The magazine story was based on a single stop in the town, Eggers said.
“But that visit was just spurred for no reason,” he said.
It turned out to be the day that the hospital was opening a new wing, a state-of-the-art birthing area, and Eggers reflected on how the expansion fit his great-great grandfather’s dream “to bring the best health care possible” to the area.
“I think sometimes you just have these odd days,” he said. “But it ended up there was a very beautiful ceremony for the opening of the hospital and it was very beautiful to see what they had done with health care in the area.”
Eggers wrote all his notes that day while the ideas were fresh, he said. He also had a tape recorder—which he keeps regularly in his backpack—and on the way home he recorded his thoughts, he said.
He showed The New Yorker a rough draft and they helped “get it into shape” since the original was a hefty 12,000 or 13,000 words, more than twice what was published by the magazine, Eggers said.
The final version focuses on the contrast between the imagined Hollister surf town and what Eggers calls “the real town, which is a fantastic small city that I hope people would be interested in.”
“I think Hollister represents all the best things about California and about this country,” he said. “So when we see the word ‘Hollister’ maybe people would think about the real place rather than some fictional, made-up surf town.”
Those wanting to pre-order the book “Some Recollections of a Busy Life: The Forgotten Story of the Real Town of Hollister, California” can do so for $25 through Eggers’ publishing company, McSweeney’s: store.mcsweeneys.net/products/some-recollections-of-a-busy-life. The book is also for sale in hardcover on Amazon.com for $23.88.
