ALUMNI STORIES
J. Michael Orenduff, ’69 MA
We hope you enjoy this interchange between J Michael Orenduff, ‘69 MA, the author of the award-winning Pot Thief mystery series, and reviewer Amanda Sutton. Read the review in the Winter 2011 Mirage.
Q: Why is your main character a pot thief, who is not exactly a revered character in southwestern culture?
A: First, perfect heroes are for comic books; real protagonists need a little moral ambiguity. Pot hunting is a vice that fits with the New Mexico setting. Second, the pot-hunting debate provides the framework for the philosophical issues I slip in on the unsuspecting reader. Why is it acceptable for me to have a Russian icon on my wall but not acceptable to have an Anasazi pot on the shelf next to it? Why do we talk about Native American and European culture as if they were both homogenous? Navajos and Iroquois have no more in common than Albanians and Finns. The Pot Thief books are humorous murder mysteries, but they explore serious philosophical issues of culture and ethnicity.
Q: You, like Hubert, have pursued various occupations. What is it about writing that intrigues, inspires, or reflects your own beliefs?
A: I write about things in order to understand them. As a graduate student at UNM, I was fortunate to have teachers who forced me outside my comfort zone. I wanted to stick to analytic philosophy but was forced to write on subjects ranging from existentialism to the Taoist concept of wu wei. As a teacher, I found I gave better lectures when I wrote them out. I never looked at what I wrote in class, but writing it enabled me to understand it well enough to lecture on it. As an academic administrator, I enjoyed writing policy because it usually was in the writing process that I would discover flaws in university policies.
Q: What will your next book be?
A: The fourth book, The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier, will launch in March in Santa Fe, where it is set. The Pot Thief Who Studied Lawrence will be the fifth book, but it does not yet have a launch date.
Mike Orenduff grew up in southern New Mexico. He has been a college president at the University of Maine at Farmington, The American University in Bulgaria, New Mexico State University, and Bermuda College. He was Chancellor of the University of Maine System and a visiting faculty member at West Point. Mike has an M.A. from UNM and a doctorate in mathematical logic from Tulane. Mike is married to the noted art historian, Lai Chew Orenduff, and they are both on faculty at Valdosta State University.
Mike just learned that the first book, The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras, was named Best First Book and Best Mystery by the New Mexico Book Co-op, a statewide organization of writers, publishers, booksellers, and libraries, which sponsors an annual New Mexico Book of the Year.