Nov. 1, 1930: A.R. Gurney born.
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Q&A with Matthew Guinn
Matthew Guinn is the author of the new novel The Scribe. He also has written the novel The Resurrectionist and the nonfiction work After Southern Modernism. He was the writer James Dickey's assistant at the University of South Carolina. His teaching career includes the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Tulane University's School of Continuing Studies. A native of Atlanta, he lives in Jackson, Mississippi.
Q:
Why did you decide to set your novel in Atlanta in 1881?
A:
That International Cotton Exposition really did take place. A lot of historians
say it was the moment when the New South was born. Henry Grady [who appears in the novel] was real. He was
antebellum in his attitudes toward race, but in favor of the South being
industrialized. He saw how war and the end of slavery had devastated the South,
and he wanted it to get more industrial.
I’m
a son of Atlanta—it’s always been the same city that hosted the 1996 Olympics,
the same attitude: the New York of the South. The sprawling development I’m
driving through right now is the story of my life, and the story of Atlanta…
Q:
You write in a historical note at the end of the book, "Writing a
historical novel is a bit like a tightrope act." How did you blend fact
and fiction, and what did you see as the right balance between the two?
A:
It’s historical fiction, a historical novel. Some people are too caught up in
factuality. I admitted [in the book] to the three things I changed [from actual fact]; I’m
not jerking your chain.
It’s
enough to make you feel you’re there, but not enough to make you feel you’re
back in history class. Twenty-five years ago, if somebody had told me I would
write historical fiction, I would say, You’re crazy! History was so dry and
dull.
But
I was fortunate to stumble on things that were too strange to believe. The
premise for The Resurrectionist really did happen. I couldn’t believe no one
had written a novel about it!
Q:
Why did you decide to write novels, and not nonfiction books, about these
topics?
A:
My dissertation was nonfiction, After Southern Modernism...I
like stories. I had just got out of grad school, and I discovered James Lee
Burke. I had been reading high literature, and [I thought], I remember story
now! It was a book that you could not at all figure out how it would end.
My
wife prevailed on me to read In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien. It’s a
literary book, but driven by plot. I thought I would like to write something
like that. I was thrilled by the Edgar nomination for The Resurrectionist…
This
[book] was always going to be about a serial killer. It embodies the Old South,
someone who wishes [the Civil War] had ended differently.
Q:
So are Burke and O’Brien two of the authors you feel inspired by?
A:
Yes, and James Dickey of course. Deliverance is one of the great novels. I knew
Andrew Lytle, a Southern Agrarian, who wrote The Velvet Horn, which was
published in 1957. He was a great teacher. And Larry Brown was the writer who
drew me to Mississippi.
Q:
How did you come up with your detective, Thomas Canby?
A:
All your characters are either a person you aspire to be or a person you
despise. Canby in some ways is somebody I’d aspire to be. He’s brave, courageous,
doesn’t take pat answers from anyone. Some reviews say he’s violent…he’s
violent where he needs to be. There’s the great Emerson quote, that your
goodness needs some edge to it. Canby is like that. And with my Celtic
background, how cool if his dad is a bona fide immigrant. There was a huge wave
of [Irish immigration] in the 19th century.
Q:
Do you know how your novels will end before you start writing, or do you make
many changes as you go along?
A:
I’m open to changing it, but I find the middle to be a great part…I get
tableaus, scenes that are frozen, of the first and last [parts]. In between is
the real exploration. I love it when you get surprised every now and then….
Q:
Race is one of the big issues in the book. Why did you choose to explore that?
A:
Shelby Foote said that if you want to understand America, you have to
understand the Civil War. It’s true, and it’s very true about the South.
[A
group of] writers bought an ad [recently urging the removal of the Confederate]
symbol from the flag [in Mississippi]. It’s important to argue against [the
symbol], unless you have ingrained racism.
The
book I’m working on now is about the convict leasing system [which affected
African Americans]—under trumped-up charges, they were leased to mining
companies to pay off fines. It was almost worse than slavery.
It’s
not to polish up liberal bona fides but…it’s not fair to expect black
Mississippians to [live] under an emblem [of the Confederacy...This involves] a sense of justice….I feel like I have
something left to learn.
Q:
Can you say more about the book you’re working on now?
A:
It’s set in Birmingham. This is a spoiler, but it follows Thomas Canby and
Cyrus Underwood to Birmingham. Serial killings start up in Birmingham. I think
of them as eruptions of evil in U.S. history. The convict slavery system made
people rich, rich, rich. There are still families in the South whose wealth is
based on slave labor.
I’m
pleased that people want to know more about Underwood and Canby. This is a bit
more Underwood’s story. He’s a fascinating person.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
Friday, October 30, 2015
Q&A with Tracy Crow
Tracy Crow is the author of the new book On Point: A Guide to Writing the Military Story. She also has written the memoir Eyes Right and edited the anthology Red, White, & True. She is a former Marine Corps officer, and she lives in North Carolina.
Q: Why did you decide to write this book?
A: I decided to write this book after the violent suicide of
a Marine Corps friend. We’ve all read or heard the startling statistic that 22
veterans a day commit suicide, but I’d never had a personal connection to this
statistic until my friend decided to end his life. I was devastated…
I feel as if I’ve been carrying a heavy chunk of shrapnel
inside me since my friend’s suicide. When I began to imagine the overarching
effects of 22 veterans a day choosing to end their lives, and how all these
suicides every single day led to unimaginable suffering for 22 families every
day and a countless number of friends, like me, I felt compelled to do
something.
Writing, as well as other creative arts, has healing value. I
learned this firsthand while drafting my own memoir, Eyes Right: Confessions
from a Woman Marine (University of Nebraska Press, 2012), and while compiling
and editing essays for my anthology, Red, White, & True: Stories from
Veterans and Families, WWII to Present (Potomac Books, 2014).
Q: You say in the book that writing is “a gift you’re giving
yourself.” How did that apply to you personally, and how do you see it helping
others, particularly those connected with the military?
A: For 15 years after leaving the Marines under conditions
that felt less than honorable, had you asked me why I resigned after 10 years,
I’m sorry to say I would have lied. I would have lied to save us both an
awkward moment of embarrassment. And throughout those 15 years, I repressed the
shame, regret, anger, and resentment.
But at the urging of an undergrad professor, I eventually started
writing about my military experiences – the emotionally safe ones, anyway. In
grad school, I realized that I would have to examine and write about the
deepest, darkest motivations that had fueled a drive to prove my worth as a
Marine, even though that drive led to the sacrifice of my health, marriage, and
motherhood.
Writing, for me anyway, is a profound gift of self-love,
especially the sort of writing that encourages a deep self-examination. Too
many of us are walking through life like zombies – half awake/half dead.
Writing for meaning urges us to wake up and become aware. Writing for meaning
also forces us to search for the patterns within our lives—for why we decided one
day to turn left after a lifetime of right turns.
For veterans and those who love and support veterans—I hope
no one waits as long as I did to gift themselves with some form of healing,
whether that’s writing, another creative art, or professional therapy.
Q: You advise, “Don’t quit.” How crucial is persistence for
writers?
A: I’ve known writers with far more skill or talent than I
have who have quit writing after receiving a rejection from an obscure literary
journal. The business of publishing requires a strong constitution and an
armor-like exterior for deflecting blows of rejection.
Every writer who has ever published has failed at some point—if
you consider rejections as failure. I don’t. Maybe it’s because I had to make
my living in sales, at one point in my life, and to survive on straight
commission you learn quickly that a certain number of “no’s” are inevitable on
the path toward a yes. The only true failure in writing is quitting.
Q: How did you come up with the book’s title, and what does
it signify for you?
A: I wanted a military term for the title, but for the longest
time while drafting On Point, I couldn’t arrive at a term or phrase that seemed
like a fit. One day, I remembered the military term for being on point, the
riskiest position for an infantryman. Writing is risky, too. I knew I had my
title. On Point reflected the risky infantry term, and offered a metaphor on
several levels—about risk and about staying the course.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Under contract, I’m working on a military-themed project
with a co-author that will shine a huge light on the contributions of women
veterans. That’s about all I can reveal at this point, other than the research
for this book has already changed the two of us in profound ways. I hope our
finished product will have the safe effect on our readers.
I’m also wrapping up revisions to a non-military novel that
I’ve been working on for a few years. I hope it will eventually find its way
into the world.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Yes, thanks! We tend to think that every military story
is a story about combat. Not true. I never saw combat, yet my story about life
as a woman Marine during the challenging 1980s still resonated for readers,
male and female.
And I’d like to add that the military story doesn’t belong
exclusively to the veteran. If you’re the spouse, significant other, parent,
grandparent, child or grandchild, and friend of a veteran, you have a military
story, too. Everyone has a story.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Q&A with Jay Atkinson
Jay Atkinson is the author of the new book Massacre on the Merrimack: Hannah Duston's Captivity and Revenge in Colonial America. It focuses on a series of events in late 17th century New England between English settlers and members of the Abenaki tribe. His other books include Ice Time and Legends of Winter Hill. His work has appeared in a variety of publications, including The New York Times and Men's Health, and he teaches journalism at Boston University.
Q: You write of Hannah Duston, “This was the story I had
been looking for.” What first intrigued you about her story?
A: The story occurred just a few miles from where I’m
sitting now. It’s a story I’ve been hearing since I was a kid. As a writer, the
whole thing becomes managing my time.
With this story, it was always hovering at the edges of my
consciousness. It’s a good story, but I knew it would be a three-year process.
Finally, it was the right project for me at the right time.
Q: The book includes so many details of Hannah Duston’s
story. How did you recreate them?
A: The book’s research took about two years and six months,
and the research had a bifurcated way that it developed. The first 18 months,
all my research was indoors, reading all the accounts written about her, some
contemporaneous with her actions—those were pretty short.
And because I’m from the same area, I was able to go to the
special collections room in Haverhill where she lived. They had old deeds, and
ephemera relating to the Duston family. For the first year, I tried to get my
head around Abenaki warrior tactics, the English colonial government’s agrarian
society taking over the wilderness.
And then there was her story—a homesteading wife with [many]
children, a 39-year-old woman who had delivered a baby a week earlier, before
the Indians attacked. I had all these facts, and I had stick figures performing
these actions, and I had the choreography of what happened.
In the next year, I continued to spend time in libraries,
but I realized as we were going through two winters—in northern Massachusetts
and central New Hampshire, March is still winter--I started to realize that the
modern residents of the Merrimack Valley have an appreciation of the landscape.
But the homesteaders did not appreciate the landscape, but were appraising it
for threats, Indians hidden in the forest, the weather…
I do a lot of outdoors writing…I started traipsing around in
February and March on showshoes, over the route she would have taken. I learned
that the Indian routes were [used by settlers] later. I was following the
waterways, the roads, I was able to cross-country ski, and I could [recreate]
the route. I could describe it, because I was in it.
On March 30, in 2014 and 2015, I took a canoe trip from
where she killed her captors. We camped on a tiny island. It was 18 degrees
out. We had modern equipment, and still it was incredibly uncomfortable and
harsh.
By seeing the river swollen beyond its banks, there were
trees floating by, pieces of ice, I realized I could take the book research and
marry it to the visceral experience of being in the landscape, and that became
the strategy for the book.
Q: You write, “There is no disputing that Hannah’s story is
the story of the frontier, in microcosm…” How does it encapsulate many of the
issues surrounding the frontier?
A: She is representative of our later strategy. The English
finally conquered the Northeastern part of North America. The French role in
the New World got marginalized. What she did in two weeks [could] stand for
[the next] 200 years.
There was an incursion onto native land, and the savage
response of the original inhabitants—originally, they went along with the
settlers’ coopting some of the land…but once the Indians realized they were not
going to [be allowed] to continue fishing or hunting near Haverhill [that
changed].
The Indians saw [the land] as a communal and a spirit thing,
that you can’t own the land. When they responded with violence, the newcomers
perpetrated a solution that led to the eradication of the original inhabitants.
In her story, she was on the land, they attacked, and killed
her baby. She has an opportunity, weeks later, to kill [some of] them.
That becomes the model, not consciously, for what occurred
in the West in the 19th century…[the tribes] end up going through
the same thing. Originally, they made room, then there was a revolt, then the
eradication by the whites. Her story is the prologue of the American story.
Q: You ask, “Was
Hannah Duston the prototypical feminist avenger, or the harbinger of the Native
American genocide?” How would you answer that?
A:
When I was right out of college, I went to a creative writing program and
studied with Harry Crews. He led me to study Southern Gothic literature; all
Southern writers tell their story through the landscape. That led to the stuff
I write.
When
I left the University of Florida and came back here, I met another writer who
told me it’s the job of a narrative story to pose a question. He said the
answer to the question is both yes and no.
Is
she the prototypical feminist or a harbinger of genocide? To a degree, my
feelings and thoughts about what happened and who has the upper hand morally
continue to evolve.
I
look at the story from the prejudices of the 17th century, not my
own perspective. When it happened to her and to the Indians, they don’t realize
it will happen all over the country for the next 200 years.
What
I feel Duston represents is my own private matter. What the book does it is
makes people think about, Was there a way to settle the New World…and [create]
the United States we have now, and have treated Native Americans and African
Americans better? I don’t know.
This
kind of book conjures up questions. It’s my job to conjure up questions. As a
storyteller, I’m not a moral philosopher. I want a good story; I want to write
a book where people turn the pages.
Q: What
are you working on now?
A: I have a work of fiction nearly complete, and another
nonfiction project I’ve been working on, off and on. And I just struck upon a
concept for another nonfiction book. I have no shortage of ideas, just of time!
I teach at Boston University, I coach hockey, it’s a question of trying to
squeeze 18 hours [of work] into a 24-hour day.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: One thing people were startled to hear, when we were
shopping the proposal, we had lengthy teleconferences with publishers, and they
would say, It’s such a great story, how come no one has ever told it before? I
said, How is that my problem?
On the other hand, the thing most people won’t know is that
in her own time and 100 years after, Hannah Duston was one of the most famous
women in America…she was a celebrity…
[It wasn’t] until the 20th century, when the
ideals of motherhood changed—it was Grandma Moses in her rocking chair, not a
woman who would take the fight to the Indians—[that] she was forgotten.
Well into the 19th century, she’s well known—more
famous than Betsy Ross or Molly Pitcher. That’s something people won’t know—you
see it as an undiscovered story, but some of the best American writers that
ever lived wrote about her….
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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