William Gay Interviewed at the Oxford American

William Gay has carved for himself an enduring position in the modern Southern literary landscape, and the echoes of his work have reverberated far beyond the red clay hills surrounding his home in Hohenwald, Tennessee. The South of his books is often dark and violent, yet thankful for such simple sights as a hayfield at dusk filled with fireflies, or a demure feminine smile. In a 2000 NEW YORK TIMES book review, fellow Southerner Tony Earley wrote, “At his best, Gay writes with the wisdom and patience of a man who has witnessed hard times and learned that panic or hedging won’t make better times come any sooner; he looks upon beauty and violence with equal measure and makes an accurate accounting of how much of each the human heart contains.”

Gay has published three novels: THE LONG HOME, PROVINCES OF NIGHT, and TWILIGHT, as well as a collection of short stories called I HATE TO SEE THAT EVENING SUN GO DOWN, with a new novel, THE LOST COUNTRY, forthcoming. Recently, we traveled to Hohenwald to interview the author in the rural area of Tennessee that forms the backdrop of his stories. We found him there, tucked away in the misty hills where many of his characters have been lost and never heard from again, in his hopelessly idyllic log home. Inside, we sipped coffee and listened as he spoke candidly of his life and his work on a drizzly, cold day that lent itself to the unwinding of old Tennessee mysteries.

THE OXFORD AMERICAN: You’ve got a novel coming out soon. Can you tell us a little about it?

WILLIAM GAY: Yeah. It’s called THE LOST COUNTRY. It’s sort of a road novel, about a guy named Dewey Edgewater who’s just been discharged from the Navy and he’s hitchhiking back from California to Tennessee. The idea is like a place you can’t get back to, like youth or innocence, and Edgewater’s trying to get back to his life before he lost his innocence and became more worldly. And it’s about a one-armed con man—there used to be these con men that went around the South. They had these ways of ripping people off. When I was a kid this guy came through, and he was spraying barn roofs. And my grandfather’s barn leaked real bad, so he hired this guy. He told him that it was guaranteed to stop all leaks. So my grandfather came up with the money and paid the guy to spray the roof, but it was just like a mixture of black oil and diesel fuel or something. He just sprayed it and got the money and split, and then when it rained, it rained inside as well as outside, just like it did before. But that’s what the guy did for a living. There were people who sold Bibles. They had your name printed in a Bible and would tell you that two or three payments had been paid on it, you know, but they read the obituary notices in the paper, they knew when somebody had died. And then if it was a middle-class person, somebody with a little money, they would show up with a Bible that had their name stamped in it from the deceased person. And that person would want to own that Bible, you know, because her husband or whoever had already paid some on it for her. But it was just a cheap Bible.

The con man [in THE LOST COUNTRY], Roosterfish, is a guy like that.

A Writer’s Apprenticeship: Larry Brown – Part II of VIII

Hi--here's a quick link to the next Larry Brown post on Darnell Arnoult's blog.


More from Fried Chicken later on this week. We're digging out from book boxes right now.

Larry Brown News

I post it when I have it, folks. And as I'm right in the middle of moving sixty-five cases of books, along with the unimportant stuff, this is likely all you'll get out of me this week, so pay attention to Darnell Arnoult at Dancing with the Gorilla.

Larry Brown (July 9, 1951 – November 24, 2001) is one of the most important contemporary Southern writers, and he is also one of the most important American writers. Brown’s work often focuses on the rural and small-town working class and those members of society who haven’t quite got their toe hold, or they’ve had it and lost it. He writes about men, women, and children struggling toward something better than what they have. His stories are real, they are gritty, and some would say they are gothic.  I say they’re damn good, and through his work, Larry Brown has become one of  my best teachers. You’ll hear more about Brown’s work in each installment this month.

Brown left this world with a lot of stories unwritten, but he also left a legacy of instruction any writer would be smart to study. Larry Brown has said a writer signs on for an apprenticeship, and no one knows how long his or her apprenticeship will last. Brown also once said he shot and burned an early novel and would have hung it if he could have figured out how to do it. Yet he learned enough from the writing of that novel to do a better job writing the next novel. Barry Hannah says in the introduction to Brown’s last novel, Miracle of Catfish, that when Brown showed him the short story “Facing the Music” Hannah was foolish enough to think Brown had peaked. Larry Brown was just getting his engine warm.

It strikes me that people may be interested, too, in an introductory essay to Night Train I wrote some years ago, an essay that concerns Larry Brown.

More next week, people, when I come up for air.

Norma White Dead

Sad news. Thanks to Kevin Stewart off Facebook for the link. Her husband of course, was The Dancing Outlaw, Jesco White. 

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- In a West Virginia-produced film about them, Jesco "The Dancing Outlaw" White and his wife Norma J. White gave the world a glimpse into their unusual lives. Norma White, 70, died in Charleston Thursday after suffering from a terminal illness.


Filmmaker Jacob Young helped bring Jesco to the attention of a national audience when Young created his "Different Drummer" series for Public Television.

In the film, the couple compared themselves to Elvis and Priscilla Presley. They said their relationship had its rough patches, but Norma White was always in love with the man who became a cult phenomenon.

Some videos, in case you don't know of Jesco and Norma White.





 

Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mothers

Still: Literature of the Mountain South

Here's a magazine and a notion that's sure to become a favorite. Celebrate the inaugural issue of Still, edited by Silas House (fiction) Marianne Worthington (poetry) and Jason Howard (nonfiction). From their 'about the name' page:

About our name . . .

To be a writer is to learn how to be still.

The moonshine still is one of the stereotypical images of Appalachia.

As a culture, Appalachia has been told for decades that it is disappearing.  We are still here, proud and strong as ever.

James Still, author of River of Earth, The Wolfpen Poems, and many other great works, is the grandfather of modern Appalachian literature and has inspired us all.

Just at a glance, this one's going to require your attention with every new issue.

Leveling Appalachia

Link courtesy of Endless Emendation.

During the last two decades, mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia has destroyed or severely damaged more than a million acres of forest and buried nearly 2,000 miles of streams. Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining, a video report produced by Yale Environment 360 in collaboration with MediaStorm, focuses on the environmental and social impacts of this practice and examines the long-term effects on the region’s forests and waterways.

At a time when the Obama administration is reviewing mining permit applications throughout West Virginia and three other states, this video offers a first-hand look at mountaintop removal and what is at stake for Appalachia’s environment and its people.