Writer Max Schott died on October 28 while in hospice care in Ojai; his wife, Elaine, who had also been in hospice, died the next day, their friend Tom Moore reported.
Elaine Schott was a violinist with the Santa Barbara Symphony and a well-known teacher of the instrument. Max was also a teacher, known best perhaps as a beloved writing instructor at the College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara, the inspiration for any number of young writers.
His novel about a horse trainer, Murphy’s Romance, was made into a film in 1985 starring Sally Field and James Garner, what John Wilson called “a movie about as far removed from the book as moonshine is from the moon” in previewing a talk by Schott in the Independent in 2007. Schott’s essays and novels reflected what he knew best: horses and the life around them, as he was a serious rodeo rider in his early days.
Schott wrote a column for the Independent in the early ’90s, and his work last appeared in the paper in 2025, in part a remembrance of Ralph Camarillo, from whom a 15-year-old Max learned to train horses:
Ralph urged his gelding up next to her reached down took hold of the reins — though she didn’t look inclined to run off —
I might have seen Ralph’s face
From fear (if I were dead or even badly injured my uncle would not like it) —
Relieved and then angry —
Anger and self blame
(Send a boy to do a man’s job) —
That’s what happens when you let a boy do a man’s job —
My seriousness about the job we were trying to do made him smile —
I was alive and evidently unhurt —
In thinking about Ralph I don’t want to make him into a better man than he was —
Or a worse —
He was a hero to me — a hero and not an angel —
I want to see him clearly —
Look back and see him more clearly than I do —
