Lady Banks' Commonplace BookOctober/November 2010: Of cardinals, goobers and fake bangs
October/November 2010: Of cardinals, goobers and fake bangs
- Tuesday, 09 November 2010 22:20
In which her ladyship is visited by a very rude weather system and in consequence rediscovers her poetry books, it is announced that a southerner has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Ms. Mindy Friddle's arm turns purple, Ms. Lee Smith mutters to herself, Mr. Pat Conroy wonders if novels have lost their stories, Mr. Bill Coffey decides he is a better writer than a baseball player, readers are encouraged to become goobers, and a woman gets her photo taken with fake bangs at the Waffle House Museum.
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Dearest readers,
Something rather awful, that has become something rather wonderful, happened to her ladyship several weeks ago. A wild and wet lady named Tropical Storm Nicole (such a lovely name, so unsuited to storm systems) came to visit bringing with her about six months’ worth of rainfall in the space of six days.
Her ladyship’s roof, I am sorry to say, sprung a leak. This in turn caused the ceiling to become first damp, then sodden, and finally to collapse altogether, right on top of the book cases in her library that are dedicated to poetry, and what her ladyship calls, inaccurately, “belles lettres.”
As disasters go, there have been worse. But her ladyship was nonetheless forced to spend several long days clearing the room of damp clumps of insulation and sticky pieces of (no longer) dry wall. Then several more days looking for a person to fix her ceiling because her ladyship, however handy with a turn of phrase, is not at all handy with a hammer.
The last week, however, her ladyship has been carefully removing all the books that may have been damaged by their unfortunate encounter with a falling mass of wet plaster, and carefully cleaning them one by one, and laying them out on her picnic table to air in the dry October breezes. And this is where she discovered the silver lining to such an otherwise tedious event. She has, in effect, reacquainted herself with the volumes in her poetry bookcase, and those in her book case devoted to essays and the criticism of literature. With forgotten collections of poetry by James Still and James Applewhite, and compilations of Appalachian writing and Southern fiction. It has been too long, her ladyship thought as she leafed through the long-untouched pages, since I have read this. And because a cardinal chose that moment to chitter angrily above her head for disturbing his access to the seeds in the dormant fall garden, her ladyship decided to include the James Still poem you see below in this edition of her commonplace book.
And to exhort her readers to take a moment and cast their eyes over the books they haven’t looked at in some time. Those books, she assures, still speak to you.
Her ladyship, the editor
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Literary Gossip & News:
At this point, even people without twitter accounts will have heard that the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to a Southerner. Granted, “South America” isn’t usually what comes to mind when one talks about southern literature, but her ladyship will not quibble with a little thing like a mix up in continental references. Mario Vargas Llosa, she believes, was long overdue for the recognition. (And on a somewhat more personal note, her ladyship was uncommonly relieved this year to hear the prize had been awarded to someone she had actually heard of.)
The word “Nobel” does have a way of overshadowing other awards and recognitions, but there were a few writers honored this season that her ladyship was pleased to note:
Library of Virginia Literary Awards were announced on October 17. Novelist Barbara Kingsolver, historian Woody Holton and poet Debra Nystrom are the top winners for fiction, nonfiction and poetry, respectively.
Also, poets Kate Daniels (Richmond, VA) and Jeff Daniel Marion (Knoxville, TN) will be honored by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Daniels will receive the 2011 Hanes Award for Poetry, putting her in the company of poets such as Yusef Komunyakaa and Ellen Bryant Voigt, where she certainly deserves to be. Marion will receive the James Still Award for Writing About the Appalachian South, an honor that has also gone to writers such as Silas House and Ron Rash, among others. (At this point, her ladyship would like to direct her readers to the “commonplace” part of her commonplace book, where she has included a poem from Still of which she is particularly fond.)
Mindy Friddle was the recipient of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction, an honor which came with a certificate, a ceremony, and had the unusual side effect of turning her arm purple.
Lee Smith has been awarded the Thomas Wolfe prize.. Neither Mr. Wolfe nor Ms. Smith needs any introduction or explanation, naturally. But her ladyship was rather charmed by Ms. Smith’s account of her first visit to the hallowed campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She remembered that she had just finished reading, Look Homeward, Angel. “I was stumbling around campus mumbling: a stone, a leaf, a door,” Smith said, recalling her awed recitation of Wolfe’s famous words.
Strange Travels:
Did you know that The Waffle House has a museum? Her ladyship did not. Did you know that one of the highlights of this museum is the scene set up where you may stick your head above the cut out of the original Waffle House waitress and have your picture taken (complete with FAKE BANGS)? Her ladyship did not know this either. At least, not until this intrepid young woman wrote about her experience doing this very thing.
And speaking of travels, there is at the moment a strange collection of musicians and raconteurs driving around the state of Georgia in a large blue bus that usually runs just fine. They are visiting over a dozen independent bookstores in the state as part of what they are calling their “Unchained Tour of Georgia.” At the helm is Mr. George Dawes Green, whom many of her ladyship’s readers will recognize as the author of the very fine novel Caveman’s Valentine. His goal in concocting this wild endeavor? “To reinvigorate the art of storytelling.”
Mr. Green is the creative genius behind The Moth—storytelling series and radio show in New York (City, naturally). But is it any surprise that when Mr. Green decided storytelling needed “reinvigorating” he came south? Not to her ladyship. Here in the South is where storytelling was born. Why, her ladyship believes that Scheherazade must have been a southerner.
You can see the tour here http://theunchainedtour.org/ (there are links to all the usual things, like twitter feeds and youtube videos).
Elsewhere: Here is a list of “Ten Essential Southern Novels” according to Mr. Barrett Hathcock, which her ladyship finds notable not because it does not include To Kill a Mockingbird, but because it includes three books that are not novels at all, but collections of stories.
Which makes this statement by Mr. Pat Conroy feel oddly poignant: “I was born into the century in which novels lost their stories…” His new memoir My Reading Life is reviewed here. But if Mr. Conroy is afraid that “novels have lost their stories,” well Meagan Mayhew Bergman is not. Her essay “Writing the Southern Landscape” caught her ladyship’s attention because, well, it is accompanied by a photograph of Prince in all his purple, ruffled glory. She describes her childhood cultural icons in a manner that makes her ladyship, the editor feel quite nostalgic: In 1963, in her essay "The Regional Writer," Miss O'Connor posed the idea of Southern literature becoming impossible to write in twenty years. That takes us to 1983. I was four years old. Reagan was president. Sally Ride made her maiden ride on the spaceship Challenger. Michael Jackson released his video for "Thriller." Return of the Jedi and Flashdance were major movies--ones I was not allowed to watch. Michael Jordan ruled the UNC basketball team.
And finally, her ladyship would also like to direct her readers to the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, which has recently published an online chapbook, New Constellations, of the poetry of the late and very much missed Jane Pupek. “I grew up,” says Pupek in the website’s “Southern Legitimacy Statement,” “in a small-town in rural Virginia, where folks slopped hogs and referred to dragonflies as "snake doctors." I'm not even going to admit to how many pieces of red velvet cake I have eaten in my life.
Jayne Pupek March 8, 1962 – August 30, 2010
Lady Banks’ Commonplace Book
Mountain Coal Town
These stark houses hung upon the hills,
The ragged slopes and interstices of the barren rock
Are havens for miners in an upper world.
Here is their pool of daylight and their stars
Waiting after darkness in the gutted cave
Emersed in coal and slate and flickering gleam.
A sweeter dampness rises from the river’s flowing
Than leaks from the black caverns of the earth,
and the ear here turns to man’s firm laughter
And the long clear whistle of the cardinal singing.
--James Still
Author 2 Author: Karen Spears Zacharias talks to Billy Coffey
Before he became a novelist, Billy Coffey of Charlottesville, Va. was a blogger. Before that he was a ballplayer. There are glimpses of Billy in Peter Boyd, the main character in Coffey’s debut novel — Snow Day. Peter Boyd has a wife, two kids, a mortgage, and a car payment. Fortunately for him he also has a job. But word around the factory is that Peter’s about to lose his job. That has Peter worried sick, which is why he decides to take his own snow day off work. When his wife sends him to the market, Peter comes back with more than a loaf of bread and milk. Join author Karen Spears Zacharias as she talks with Billy Coffey about his debut book.
Karen: Tell readers about yourself. When did you decide to ditch your career as a Yankee to become a writer?
Billy: It was the spring of 1990, and it wasn’t by choice. I was a baseball player in high school. To me and most everyone else, that was what I would be doing for the next twenty years, which made school pretty irrelevant. I had seven classes my senior year, and four of them were study halls. My English teacher pulled me aside one day and said she wasn’t going to let me coast through the year, so she made me write a weekly column for the local newspaper.
I blew out my shoulder a few months later, and all of the scouts and letters stopped coming. It was one of the worst times I’ve ever experienced. I was seventeen, and I felt like my life was over.
So I wrote a column about it, about the fear and the depression and the need to pick myself up and move on. A week later I received an anonymous letter at school from a girl who said she’d been considering suicide. Reading my column had convinced her to try and turn her life around. That’s when I decided I had a better chance of making a difference in the world by holding a pen instead of a bat.
Karen: Your debut novel Snow Day has garnered quite a bit of attention and a huge ad in Book Page. Wow! Where did the idea for this book come from?
Billy: I took a job at a local factory in August 2000. It was without a doubt the last thing in the world I wanted to do, but it was the right thing for my family. The factory offered good pay, great benefits, and stable work. Then in December 2005, I was told I would likely be laid off. If hurting my shoulder was bad, this was much worse. By then my wife and I had two children, a mortgage, two car payments, and student loans. My wife’s job as a teacher’s aid was barely minimum wage, it was Christmastime, and our savings wouldn’t see us past two months. So I started writing down everything I was feeling and experiencing as a sort of free therapy. That’s how Snow Day was born.
Karen: I think a lot of readers will relate to Peter Boyd’s fears about his employment status. What is the message you want to give those readers in particular?
Billy: That losing your job because of the recession isn’t your fault, and it doesn’t mean you’ve failed. See it as a chance to return to the basics—the bread and milk—of your life. Lean on the things that make your life meaningful, things like faith and family and community. They won’t just get you through, they’ll give you a joy your job couldn’t.
Karen: In Snow Day the local Super Mart (recognizable to anyone who has spent time at the Wal-Mart Super Store) serves as the community gathering place. The major interaction of the day takes place at the Super Mart. Why did you make the Mart the community’s center? Is there commentary in that choice?
Billy: I love Wal-Mart, I truly do. I don’t go there to shop much, but just to watch people. These days everyone is trying to save as much as they can, and so you have people of all walks of life mingling there. Just the other day I watched a grandmother in overalls showing a man in a suit and tie how to find the best deal on canned green beans. It was wonderful. There are so many invisible lines drawn between people based on their status or their financial worth, but all of those lines disappear at the local Wal-Mart. I think it’s one of the most amazing places in the world.
Karen: You introduce readers to a cast of characters, all of whom teach Peter Boyd something about himself. Which of these characters were your favorites?
Billy: I was about to say Spooky Gray Man and his act of hidden charity, because that seems to be among everyone’s favorite. But honestly I think it’s Bobby Barnes, the man who lost his faith during a mission trip to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. There’s a lot of tragedy in him and a great sense of loss, but there’s also a lingering hope that his story isn’t over yet.
Karen: Are any of these characters modeled on real people from your own life? Or did you really stalk people at the local Mart searching for material?
Billy: Many of the characters are modeled on real people. I know a Bobby Barnes. I know a Kenny McCallom. A lot of the ideas that were turned into characters really did come from field trips to the Wal-Mart down the road. And there’s also a whole lot of me in there, too.
Karen: When you pick up a book to read, whose byline is on it?
Billy: I’ll read almost anything from Seneca to Calvin & Hobbes. I love Stephen King and Robert Fulghum, and lately I’ve been reading a lot of Flannery O’Connor. And, of course, Karen Spears Zacharias. Because she’s awesome.
Karen: HA! Good answer. What do you look for in a book as a reader?
Billy: Someone with heavy questions and a heavy heart, which I think means most of us. I might not be able to give you all the answers, but I’ll be glad to sit and wonder with you for a while.
Karen: I once heard a novelist say it’s harder to write about good marriages than bad ones. Do you think it’s more difficult to write about people who are happy with their lives than say malcontents or troublemakers?
Billy: I think good writing tends to revolve around some sort of conflict, so it can be harder to write about people who seem to have no conflicts at all. But I think there’s always some tension, even in happy lives. The world’s a rocky place. I don’t think happiness is found in trying to make your walk easier by grinding all those rocks into soft sand, I think it’s found by just putting on a pair of boots.
Karen: Faith is at the core of Snow Day, and all of your writing, really. Do you consider yourself a Christian writer? Or does that label limit you as an artist?
Billy: I think I see myself as more a writer who’s a Christian. Faith will always play a major role in anything I write. That’s just who I am. But it’s often a soft undercurrent rather than a riptide. There are a lot of people who read what I write and don’t believe in God at all, but they still get something out of it. I like that.
Karen: There are Believers who consider Santa to be a red-suited anti-Christ, yet, you claim Santa is God 101 for a child. Care to explain this heresy?
Billy: Here is someone who sees everything. He sees you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good. You know you should be good for goodness sake, but you just can’t do that all the time. But you know what? Chances are you’ll get presents anyway, things you know deep down you don’t deserve. Because no matter how many times you screw up, you know he still loves you.
Now, am I talking about Santa Claus or God?
Karen: One of your characters navigates life with a list of Reasonable Directions. Do you have such a list? One that you are teaching your children?
Billy: I keep a list. Like the Ten Commandments, it’s short, straightforward, and commonsensical. I’ll go back every January 1 and see if anything has happened over the past year that would warrant an edit. There have been amendments, but I’ve never repealed anything. And I do use it as a sort of guide for my children, but I’d rather they start working on their own.
Karen: There is a lot of negative news coming out of the publishing business. How was it you managed to get a contract during the midst of one of the publishing businesses most dour economic seasons?
Billy: Aside from the grace of God, I have no idea. My agent worked very hard to get the book to publishers, and FaithWords took a leap of faith. I think the fact that the subject matter was very applicable to the times helped a lot. It’s proof that if someone like me can get a publishing contract, anyone can.
Karen: What is it about writing that you love? And hate?
Billy: I love the simple act of sitting down to write, of just letting your hand fly across the page. There aren’t a lot of times in my life when I feel truly at peace, but I feel that when I write.
The worst part has to be the waiting. You’re waiting for revision notes, you’re waiting for the book cover, you’re waiting for promos and reviews and publication dates. You’ll drive yourself crazy if you don’t find something constructive to do.
Karen: Tell us about your writing process. What does a typical day for Billy Coffey look like?
Billy: I keep a daily quota of 1,000 words when I’m working on a book, and fitting that into a job and a family can be tough. I usually get up about 5:30 AM and get in a workout, then it’s to work. I can usually edit what I’ve written the day before during my break and then get in about 500 words during lunch, if things aren’t busy. I leave work at 4:00 PM, then it’s helping with dinner and doing homework with the kids and whatever needs to be done outside. My wife is a teacher, so those two hours or so after the kids get to bed that she uses to grade papers are when I read. Half of writing is reading; you can’t do one without the other. I’ll finish off my 1,000 words after everyone’s in bed, then repeat the process the next day. On a good day, I’m tired. On a bad one, I’m slumped in the corner sucking my thumb.
Karen: What are you working on next?
Billy: My next novel is called Paper Angels and will be out next November. I’ll spend all that waiting time writing book three, tentatively titled No Home for the Weary
From the Blogs {The Booksellers}
A Reading Life: Persuasion is my absolute favorite Jane Austen novel for two reasons. First, Anne is not an idiot. Second, she talks about books. I adore Anne Elliot’s self-possession. Her steadfast moral compass, and her clear-eyed understanding and acceptance of the foibles of those around her. She is not self-centered, like Emma, or melodramatic, like Marianne. She doesn’t jump to hasty conclusions, like Eliza Bennett, or dither like Eliza’s younger sisters. And while she does her share of suffering in silence like the redoubtable Elinor, she nevertheless finds great joy and satisfaction in the worthiest people around her. She is not, as Elinor can be, a complete doormat. Added to all this that she can have long discussions with young men about poetry and philosophy and the great writers of the age and you have . . . well, the person I would want to be if I was a gentleman’s daughter in Regency England. read more
Books & Breadboard: Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Until a few years ago, however, the study of relationships between humans and animals did not exist. Dr. Herzog noticed that most psychological experiments involved animals, but there weren’t any psychologists studying how humans think about and relate to animals. Now, after years of researching many different human-animal interactions—from animal rights activists and dog show enthusiasts to cock fighters and avid meat-eaters—he has published a book for the general public. “I was interested in writing a book that most people could read but with enough science to advance my field,” he told the crowd at Books & Breadboard. Interestingly, Dr. Herzog said he derived his literary inspiration not only from great science writers, such as Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins, but also from the detective novels he loves. His writing strategy mirrors that of his teaching technique: entertain people so that they hear what he has to say.
read more
Bound to Be Read: Me Cheeta: Cheeta the Chimp was just a baby in 1932 when he was snatched from the jungle of Liberia by the great animal importer Henry Trefflich. That same year, Cheeta appeared in Tarzan the Ape Man, and in 1934 in Tarzan and His Mate, in which he famously stole clothes from a naked Maureen O’Sullivan, who was dripping wet from an underwater swimming scene with Johnny Weissmuller. Other Tarzan films followed, and later roles with Bela Lugosi in the 1950s. Cheeta finally retired from the big screen after the 1967 film Doctor Dolittle with Rex Harrison, whose finger he accidentally bit backstage while being offered a placatory banana. Cheeta now lives in Palm Springs, where, at age seventy-seven, he is by far the oldest living chimpanzee ever recorded. read more
Page 854: One interesting feature of Wolf Hall is that it's written in the present tense, or the "historical present," as the present tense is called in fiction writing. As John Mullan pointed out in a recent article in The Guardian, it is a narrative strategy which, while it has a long history, seems to be popping up more and more in current fiction. Some critics see it as a cheap affectation, the result of the ascendancy of university writers' workshops. Mullan quotes Philip Pullman as calling the historical present "an abdication of narrative responsibility": by avoiding the past tense the author is relieved from -- or abdicates -- the responsibility of putting his or her own perspective on the narrative. On the other hand, it can provide an immediacy, a sense of presence, that past tense would perhaps lack. read more
Square Books: Perhaps the most anticipated book to be published this fall arrived Tuesday, October 19, the national on-sale date for The Fall of the House of Zeus: The Rise and Ruin of America’s Most Powerful Trial Lawyer, published by the Random House imprint of Crown Books. read more, http://vimeo.com/16092701
Hooray for Books: Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly After the death of her younger brother, Andi Alpers is clinically depressed and prescribed a myriad of anti-depressants to help her to cope with the loss. No matter what she does, it seems nothing is working to bring her out of the darkness. She’s doing terribly in school and only finds peace while playing her guitar or studying music. To top it all off, her father forces her to go to Paris with him on a business trip, where he’s performing a DNA study on a preserved human heart to see if it’s the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. read more
Read This!: recommended by your neighborhood southern booksellers
Her ladyship asks, in all seriousness, “Wouldn’t you like to be a goober?” Miss Kathy of the Bermuda Onion Blog has thrown down the, er, garden glove and issued The Okra Picks Challenge wherein she pretty much dares people to read as many books as they can from the latest list of Fall Okra Picks. (“Great southern books, fresh off the vine” goes the tag line. Her ladyship has pointed out to the management that okra does not actually grow on vines, but the management professes not to care.) These are forthcoming books that Southern indie booksellers don’t want to be missed. You can see the full list here.
In order to meet the challenge, you only need to read three of the books on the list. For this accomplishment, you are awards the epithet of “goober.” If you read more, the honorary titles become more elegant.
Here, then, are some of the things people have been writing about the books on the list:
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter: A word about the title: according to the author in the epigraph, southern children are taught to spell “Mississippi” as “M, I, crooked letter, crooked letter, I, crooked letter, crooked letter, I, humpback, humpback, I.” can’t tell you too much about what happens, except that this author sure knows how to tell a story! And the way he weaves the Southern culture and atmosphere into every pore of his prose is just a beautiful thing. via Rhapsody in Books
Zora and Me: I’ve been interested in Zora Neal Hurston ever since we lived in Auburn, Alabama. Even though Hurston claimed Eatonville, Florida as her home, she was actually born in Notasulga, Alabama which is very close to Auburn. Believe me when I say that Notasulga is proud of Hurston! I love that Zora and Me includes a biography, a timeline of the author’s life and a bibliography, because this book is sure to spark an interest in the young reader! via Bermuda Onion
The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove (a summer Okra Pick) is more about the relationship between mothers and daughters - how we damage those we love in thinking we are trying to protect them. It's about finding that space where you can be content with who you are as a person in this world, as a daughter, a sister, a lover, a friend. via A Novel Source
The Miracle of Mercy Land: (a STARS author) First off I want to say that if you are thinking of veering away from this book because you aren’t interested in religion in your reading – while Miracle is listed under Christian it is not a religious book. It’s a book about nice people in a nice town where there’s remorse for old actions and the possibility of making an old wrong right again, if everyone’s willing. via Dew on the Kudzu
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The Okra Picks, 2010 Fall Edition:
Fiction:
A Perfect Love Song by Patti Callahan Henry
9781593156169 Vanguard Press, October 2010 $15.95
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin
9780060594664 Morrow, October 2010 $24.99
I Still Dream About You by Fannie Flagg
9781400065936 Random House November 2010 $26.00
Love, Charleston by Beth Webb Hart
9781595542014 Thomas Nelson, September 2010 $14.99
My Only Sunshine by Lou Dischler
9781891885723, Hub City, October 2010 $21.95
Virals by Kathy Reichs
9781595143426 Razorbill, November 2010 (Penguin) $17.99
Zora and Me by Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon
9780763643003 Candlewick Press October 2010 $16.99Z
The Typist by Michael Knight
9780802119506 Atlantic Monthly Press August 2010 $20.00
Nonfiction:
Carry the Rock by Jay Jennings
9781605296371 Rodale September 2010
Greek Revival by Patricia Moore-Pastides
9781570039393 USC Press October 2010 $34.95
My Reading Life by Pat Conroy
9780385533577 Nan A. Talese, November 2010 $25.00
Southern Plate by Christy Jordan
9780061991011 Morrow, October 2010 $27.50
They Came to Nashville by Marshall Chapman
9780826517357 Vanderbilt U Press, October 2010 $25.00
Lady Banks’ Bookshelf
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