Before his passing in 2024, Kris Kristofferson headlined thousands of shows, appeared in a plethora of feature films, and stunned the masses with his rough and gruff grisly charisma. That being so, it seems the man was always destined to be the center of many’s attention thanks to his music. However, the boxer and English literary scholar didn’t care if any of that transpired. Instead, he thought his artist presence would reside merely between himself and the isolation of being a writer.
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In the ’70s Kristofferson was one of the biggest pop-culture stars, and it’s thanks to both his music career and status as a bonified movie star. Though, he never set out to live that kind of life. For him, it was all about being a writer, nothing more. Hence, the decorated artist did not care what direction his career took so long as he could put words upon a page. However, it clearly went in his favor as he produced a phenomenal career as a pinnacle pop-culture figure.
Songwriter or Novelist—Kris Kristofferson Just Wanted to Write
Prior to becoming a household name, Kris Kristofferson lived several other lives. Notably, he was a boxer, an army helicopter pilot, janitor, and impressively, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University’s Merton College. Regarding the final title, Kristofferson received a master’s degree in English Literature upon his graduation in 1960. During his studies, Kristofferson’s planned thesis was “To examine how James Joyce’s Ulysses influenced William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying,” per Oxford.
So, it comes as no surprise that Kris Kristofferson was a devout student of linguistics and humanity. And what this amounted to was the desire to become America’s next generational voice either with music or prose. Regarding his Nashville entry, Kristofferson told Rolling Stone, “I came down to Nashville” and “I’d been playing in an Army band, so people introduced me around like I was somebody. Everybody still called me ‘Captain.’ And I wrote seven, maybe 11 songs that first week.”
Even though Kristofferson was seemingly putting all of his efforts into becoming a songwriter, he didn’t care about the result. He told the publication, “I thought if I didn’t make it as a songwriter I would at least get material to be the Great American Novelist.” “The people and places I was seeing were more exciting than anything I’d ever come across,” concluded Kristofferson. In essence, it didn’t matter what medium it was, Kristofferson simply wanted to become a writer.
Photo by Don Paulsen/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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