- Hello, I'm Beth Macmillan and welcome to "Arteffects."

This week, we're featuring a number of local artists who bring Reno's history to life in a number of ways.

First, we introduce you to anthropologist Bill Douglass, the founder and former director of the Basque Program at the University of Nevada.

Bill is the eldest son of Jack Douglass, a Nevada gaming pioneer who owned and operated the Comstock and Riverboat Casinos in downtown Reno until the late 1990s.

When Bill retired, he combined his family's history in Nevada gaming with his love for writing about the human experience.

(lighthearted music) - I read three or four hours a day.

I've got, I don't know, 5,000 books in my house.

If you're aspiring to write, you better be a reader.

I'm an anthropologist by training.

I've published two dozen books and 200 articles in my life.

And most of them have to do with Basque culture, Basque immigration, also Italian culture.

I was the director and founder of the Basque Program for 33 years and then retired, so it was the only job I ever had.

Until I was retired, I really didn't publish outside of my field.

But in 2002, I decided to write a book about fly fishing around the world, because I'm an inveterate fly fisherman and I had spent many, many years traveling to a lot of different destinations around the world.

So I wrote a book called "Casting About in the Reel World."

That was my first real venture in non-academic publishing.

And then at the same time, I was starting to work on "Starlight Hotel Casino."

(ethereal music) There's a way in which the novel is an ethnography of the casino industry.

I was an owner and an administrator in both the Riverboat and Comstock.

They went under in the late 1990s.

They failed for a variety of reasons, competition from Las Vegas, competition from Indian gaming spreading around the country, and evolution of technology and whatnot within the industry.

Starlight is a composite of the Riverboat and Comstock.

And so, the novel is about what happens within a casino family and the employees of a casino that's failing.

I actually started writing Starlight right after our family casinos collapsed.

Something would happen to me and I would think, that would work for such and such a character in Starlight, and so I jot it down, maybe write a couple of pages on yellow pad.

And then I had a whole box full of yellow pad.

When I finally sat down maybe three years ago to do the final edition, it was a way for me to get through and set aside that experience and get on with life.

"God, Manny was nervous as he waited to be admitted to the in progress meeting behind the closed doors.

Manny Cohen had always thought of himself as a good ad man, at least until he volunteered for assignment in this burg.

With Vegas's hands around his throat and Indian arrows pointed at its heart, Reno Gaming was toast.

Only the schmucks in the inner sanctum failed to realize it."

(lighthearted music) It's amazing how autobiographical all novels are and how focused they are upon family because those are the most intimate relationships that their authors have experienced in life.

As an anthropologist, you have to describe the setting that you're working in.

When God paints landscapes, he is an impressionist.

Except for the coastlines that separate watery domains from terrestrial ones and the occasional soaring mountain range, his transitions are subtle and shaded, more processed than events.

Not so in the Truckee Meadows, along whose western edge the alpine energies of the Sierra Nevada's dissipate in a last gasp of conifer groves.

To the east, juniper and sagebrush-covered foothills herald the beginning of the vast Great Basin.

In short, Reno sits astride the division between verdant California and the arid interior of the American West.

(lighthearted music continues) My writing style, I never work with an outline.

When I sit down and start on a project, even my academic work, I really don't know where the book's gonna go.

And then consequently, the last thing I do is come up with a title.

is come up with a title.

- [Announcer] Funding for Arteffects is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, Heidemarie Rochlin, Meg and Dillard Myers, in memory of Sue McDowell, the Carol Franc Buck Foundation, Chris and Parky May, and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

(upbeat music)