American Buffalo In Search of a Lost Icon

My book American Buffalo, I remember I had to lose 100 pages, which was hard to do.

He has a great book, too. I haven't seen it yet. It's really interesting.

I think his book's called American Buffalo, but it's really good.

Author of 10 books, plus three audio books on hunting, survival, and nature, including hits like The American Buffalo, In Search of a Lost Icon, and The MeatEater Fishing Game Cookbook.

I wrote a book and a big part of the book. The book is called American Buffalo and it had kind of like two things that, that made it happen.

Because that came in about 75,000 words.

When I got the audio version of my book and I turned it on, I couldn't, he didn't get a sentence out of his mouth. And I was across the room turning it off. It's that bad.

It's not how it sounds. He doesn't get it. It's not how it sounds.

I would rather have had Alvin and the chipmunks read this book. Then the guy read the book.

Random House has got the audio rights back. And I just spent three days in a studio and I read the whole damn book from start to end. And it's now, it's already available.

American Buffalo and Search of a Lost Icon read by me now and not some hoser.

And I rendered a bunch of it out and made a bunch of basically beef lard because that fat's good.

It's my understanding of how that works.

The animal that I wrote American Buffalo about, I rendered a bunch of...

The fact is we would only know of Buffalo's from history books if it weren't for a collective effort to save this species from the brink of extinction around the turn of the 20th century.

And the relationship with the Buffalo for six hundred generations, and it's really then becomes many more substories It's of course in a positive sense a parable of de-extinction.

There were thirty thirty five million at the beginning of the 19th century in 1800 and by 1885 There were fewer than a thousand. Nobody could find any wild and free outside of Yellowstone and maybe there were two dozen there.

We don't know and the rest were in zoos or in private collections And so this was a really perilous moment, but we brought it back from that This is also this it connects us to all the various corners of American history particularly the most pernicious myths that we suffer from the superficial ones about Manifest destiny without ever considering the consequences, you know, it's the Marlboro man dying of cancer It's a very complex sure story

It's interesting enough. I think focusing on the Buffalo was liberating in some ways it got us to decenter Hmm everything else right right and in the decentering it allows you to kind of reset or recalibrate a relationship to say a dominant white American culture or even to Privilege in some sort of reverse Thing kind of just knee-jerk revisionism native culture So it permitted through the act of seeing it through the eyes of the Buffalo I don't know if you've ever been in proximity of a Buffalo.

Steve Rinella wrote this amazing book called American Buffalo which is about this hunt and he goes on for American Buffalo tells great story of the American West and Megafauna in the United States one of my favorites we sell that in the painting porch

one of my all time favorites

I just reread American Buffalo which I told you is one of my favorites but even though I hadn't read it in probably 10 years I think about a line in the book like probably once a week it's the scene you find this Buffalo skull and you pick it up and you start sort of asking yourself these questions about like who shot at first like who found it first like I think you have it you're like what did this person think about this what time did they wake up in the morning what did they think about God I think about that question all the time whenever I come across something really old like this is a this building I'm talking to you and it's like 100 and something years old I think about like the person that sat in this room before me and like what went through their head what their understanding of the world was like and that that line in the book has always struck me as a very beautiful encapsulation of that idea

there is a fine line between being practical and being a candy ass which is a word that Steve's father used to describe someone who was the opposite of tough.

I reread it earlier this year. I love it. We carried the paint approach. You have to read American Buffalo seriously. One of my all-time favorite books.

I think about that question all the time whenever I come across something really old

It's the scene you find this Buffalo skull and you pick it up and you start sort of asking yourself these questions about like who shot it first? Like who found it first? Like I think you have it you're like what did this person think about this? What time did they wake up in the morning? What did they think about God?