I am not Southern by birth. I was born in north Texas and raised in the west, in spaces known for harsh winds, wide horizons, and voices loud enough to get through the first and reach the second. Because of this I was a stranger in a strange land when I moved to the South and I worried I would always be an outsider. Over several years, I read a barrel load of books on how nuanced, complex and wonderful life here can be here, but no book taught me more or made me feel more at home than Anne Rivers Siddons’s collection of essays, John Chancellor Makes Me Cry. Mrs. Siddons was raised in a small Georgia town and graduated from Auburn before beginning a career in Atlanta, first in advertising and then as a novelist. Between those two jobs came the essay collection in this book. It is a heartfelt account of adjusting to adult life after the raw newness (and gleam) of one’s twenties has disappeared but before the confidence that comes with seniority has set in. In Passages, Gail Sheehy wrote of this as the age when 30-somethings double down on the mortgage/kids/picket fence paradigm and Ms….
I’m proud to say that a writer once cost me a job. At one time, the U. S. Air Force thought of making me a journalist so I could write for base newspapers. I had passed all the tests easily and was interviewing with an editor of one of the largest papers in the command, a young Sargent in love with uniform creases and rules. We were talking about veterans of various branches who became successful writers and I mentioned liking the work of an Air Force veteran named Hunter S. Thompson. Steam poured out of the editor’s ears. “Thompson?” he squeaked, “Thompson! My college invited him to our Controversial Speakers forum and he showed up stoned!!” Internally I had two thoughts: 1) Well, yeah, everyone knows Hunter hates doing those speaker gigs, he’s going to show up wrecked and 2) I believe I just blew this interview. The next day, the Air Force decided I would be a better Supply Clerk than Reporter and ended my adventures in Journalism. I didn’t care. To be rejected because of liking Hunter Thompson’s writing is a badge of honor for me, and I’ve missed his wild, unpredictable forays since his death…
Picking up a new book is like setting off on an unknown road: you never know where it will take you. In the late 1970’s, I was reading every non-fiction book I could find about Judaism. The religion fascinated me, a lot of my college friends were Jewish and I was deciding if I should convert. Of course, I would not leave the delights of fiction, no matter what faith I followed, so I added several novels by Jewish authors thinking this would add dimension to my non-fiction studies. One novel proved I have literary ADD; after I read My Name is Asher Lev, I put books on Judaism aside and became obsessed with art. Even now I envy the reader who has not yet picked up Asher Lev because they haven’t heard his mesmerizing voice spilling through that opening sentence: My name is Asher Lev, the Asher Lev, about whom you have read in newspapers and magazines, about whom you talk so much at your dinner affairs and cocktail parties, the notorious and legendary Lev of the Brooklyn Crucifixion. That beginning has all of the power and immediacy of the opening paragraphs in All the Kings Men or Rebecca. …
Science Fiction and Fantasy weren’t respected literary genres when I was little. That’s hard to believe in the age of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games but the fiction welcomed on the best-seller lists and the book award nominations tended to fall in the “could-be-true-but-isn’t” category. These were heavy tomes with heavy ideas by heavy hitters in the writing game: Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, Bill Styron. (In those days, it was good to be a Southern Writer). Liking SF and Fantasy were almost considered the hallmark of an immature intellect. By the mid 1970’s the stigma was starting to lift but it was still heavy enough to obscure a brilliant novel. If you are looking for an intelligent, fascinating, often humorous trip through hell, I suggest you find a copy of Inferno by Niven and Pournelle. Inferno is dedicated to Dante Alighieri and is an homage to the first part of his Divine Comedy but the authors updated the structure. Instead of Dante himself, the hero of Inferno is Alan Carpentier, a minor SF writer who managed to fall from an eight story window while showing off at a Science Fiction convention. He returns to consciousness trapped in a bottle,…
My mom could not be predicted. When I was in my early 20’s, she called up long distance (an expensive activity) and ordered me to read a certain book. Now. She heard about it from Gladys who got the recommendation from Jill and now that Mom had read it, I had to. This made no sense. Mom knew one or two women named Jill but neither of them usually recommended books and there was no Gladys I could think of. Mom explained to me she had received a letter from one of her favorite writers, Gladys Taber, where Ms. Taber had verified her friend, Jill, revered a book called The Daughter of Time. Based on that letter, mom borrowed the novel from the library and read it. Now, she ordered me to do the same. This story might have ended there because I had developed the habit of ignoring Mom by then but my roommate, Stephanie was working at the college library so I asked her to pick up a copy of the book while she was on shift. When Stephanie got back that night, the book was in her hand. She looked up at me and said, “I’m…