However the dirth of any visual creations, his creativity itself did not lag.   During this epoch time he wrote his seminal and completely remarkable work of fiction, prose, and poetry "Talfulano".   See:  the essay at right.

 

When Bill returned to New Mexico from Toronto after the close of Vietnam Era conflicts, he and second wife Judith, brought home to New Mexico one more than they left with--that was Bill's eighth, and final, child--Aren.   They returned not to Alamogordo (and Bill would not get to Taos for sometime) but to Socorro, New Mexico. 

 

In Socorro, Judith worked at the New Mexico Insitute of Mining and Technology (NM Tech) working administrative computer programming and teaching Fortran--that now all but forgotten language that was once the bullwark of the binary world.  Bill, eventually, found work there at NM Tech too, courtesy of that school's "we'll do things our way" attitude, which allowed, even lacking any proper academic credential, he might teach college level studio art,  design sets, act and produce plays with Alan and Nancy Marshal.  Bill loved the gig in at least one way--the students always abandoned their paints and brushes when the semester was over.  He got to use them on his canvases!

 

Bill's pal in creative pursuits, Alan Marshal, was director of humanities for this unique institution that focused on engineering, astrophysics, petroleum recovery and the like--an instutuion that most certainly did not focus on the arts and humanities. Still is it interesting to note that Bill, who throughout his life, even before Socorro, kept abreast of the latest in science particularly in the mind boggling area of quantum physics (and who relished the fact that his collectors included NASA scientists, leading psychologists and innovative medical doctors) never had any relationship, beyond his matriculated student years with UC, Berkley and Idaho's Boise State Universy, with any other academic institution except this now highly regarded left-brained encampment on New Mexico's Rio Grande and that most ancient of colonial trade routes, the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro . 

 

Perhaps he was reminded negatively of the close winters of his native Idaho.  Whatever the causes, there are presently no known surviving paintings from Bill's Toronto period--not one.  The Bill Rane Story will most certainly take a new turn if any images from that time are discovered now or in the future.  But, the lack of known painting output in that time is a dirth that is more than ameliorated with Bill's powerful writing accomplishment during what was for him and his family a necessary hiatus north to side step that most destructive American conflict--Vietnam. 

 

The Smith began its run as a literary magazine but evolved into an important publishing house for alternative poets and the avant-garde.  It survives, and flourishes to this day having published many, many important poets.   It would be a wide stretch to claim that The Smith (or for that matter "Talfulano") ever achieved financial nirvana but The Smith's reputation in its field is undeniable.

 

The beauty of Bill's work "Talfulano" cannot be overstated.  It is cadenced for oral presentation and captures completely the era of Bill's youth, his struggle and ultimate redemption.  While it is a personal story it is also a historical reflection on  the Territorial Era of the American Northwest and the rise of the still powerful American logos of "Marlboro Man" or, in Bill's words, "Montanus Americus". 

 

Perhaps like other things "Bill", Talfulano is presented in a unique form that is nonetheless sucessful as a literary expression.  Neither fish nor foul but both, the book, lacking other appropriate descriptors, has been called "prose/poetry".  It would be better, of course, to just call it "writing" as, once again, the "shoe horn" to category was of no concern to Bill--only the drive for expression mattered.  In his mind, no doubt, the peculiar form was the only means to achieve that expression completely and, therefore, the only correct form possible--a painterly solution to a problem of writing.  [Now with apology to Tom Wolfe] this is Bill's "The Written Image".

 

While the work was completed in manuscript in Toronto, Bill did not learn of Harry Smith's intention to publish the work until after the family's return to New Mexico.   Famously, family friend John C. Worthwine, of Boise, Idaho, called Bill to inform him of a notice of intent to publish printed in the magazine Writer's Digest. 

 

It seems Harry Smith didn't know where to find Bill and ran the advertisement giving notice that he had "flying green" (a check) for one Bill Rane "last seen in the Sausalito Boondocks".   The news of the publication of this work was a major turning point and confidence builder for Bill who had given up on ever seeing it published and who, during his Socorro years, was sometimes known to over indulge alcohol and doubt that he would ever find a public acceptance for his creative genius. 

 

The publication of Talfulano for the first time projected on family, friends and colleagues (some of whom had, perhaps, their own doubts as to the worth of Bill's creative expression), the unmistakeable realization that his artistic merits were important matters, after all, that would ultimately be valued in the greater world.   Indeed, in proved true, that through the publicaiton of Talfulano, Bill did, in fact, draw the initial attention of his first significant painting collectors and patrons. 

 

Bill had worked other written materials, such a movie script "Up the Rope he goes" and "The Vinegar Bomb" (both unpublished and, perhaps, lost to history), before and after Talfulano.   He also had it in his mind that he might write a work called "The Diary of a Tomb Painter".   However, there is no evidence, whatesoever, that the "Diary" was ever more than a powerful thought or a muse or codice that he worked in his paintings.   No written materials have ever been identified as 'notes' or 'outline' for the Diary book.  The full significance of the imagery and "mythos" of the "Tomb Painter", in fact, did not emerge until Bill's public memorial in Taos, NM [October 2, 2005].

 

While writing Talfulano, in Toronto, life was not easy for Bill and he wrote this work largely isolated, moody, and secluded in a winter's drafty attic.   He, at times, regretted his decision to leave out one of the original chapters found in the earlier drafts.  His changes from the galley proofs at the time of printing were so extensive that they became a frustrated legend for New York publisher and impressario of the beatnik poets, Harry Smith.

 

All in all, the publication of Talfulano was realized against the odds with a backdrop of the unlikely nonetheless achieved.

 

While Bill is today known more as a Taos Painter of import, reknown and significance, history alone may yet decide where his greatest achievement lay--whether on the canvas or on the page.