North Carolina People; Doris Betts, Author

That evening ladies and gentlemen if you're viewing North Carolina people this week on Friday I want to tell you that at this very moment Carolina campuses Chapel Hill the North Carolinian of society is giving its reward for this year to dars. They're going to meet and talk with her in just a few seconds. North Carolina people is brought to you by walkover banking investments and financial services for individuals businesses and corporations. We are here. Let's get started. Gentlemen I want to say also that at this very occasion the carillon and they are now saying that Doris Betts professorship in creative writing so big night for you Doris in Chapel Hill again as you've had many others but we're so proud for you. Thank you it is a big night. Very exciting for me. Well you know particularly so to give such emphasis to creative

writing on campus all the twirling around us today with computers and technology and everything else it's great to see a professorship honoring the expression of the human spirit. And yet you know writing is really always been at the center Chapel Hill from Thomas Wolfe from Prophet Koch on and we've turned out a great many young talented writers with more to come. And so it's to honor that program and NAMI and that program is going to go on Therefore I'm very excited about seeing seeing the inheritance of a good program that will be getting better and bigger where we are in the program but we're also recognizing the major national talent that's what you are and I want to show our viewers Tonight here are three books. That sharp teeth of love take a good look at this. Go down to the bookstore pick up this paperback or hardback it's gov's new edition of Doris his most recent novel. Two other books you can get their

base of the Southern Wow it is wonderful paperback from the same publisher and then a biography of our distinguished novelist Doris Betts done by Elizabeth evidence which is also there and you'll you'll find these delightful experiences. Doris we salute you all three. Thank now. And I want to go back a little bit further. Now I was reading in the book David Perkins put together the other day about Mr. Herbert's book. Bible stories for The Young and the old one that had an enormous impact on you back in those early days all seven hundred fifty seven pages. That was a book that my mother saved money to buy and bought $5 down a dollar a week at a time when that was a lot of money. And so of course I had to read it. You don't waste it. And my family thought big books were like big cuts of meat. You were getting your money's worth and so I almost memorized it and I has had a big

effect on my writing in many ways. When that article came out though I had a lovely letter from a lady in Raleigh who had known Mr. Hurlbut up in Chautauqua in New York and apparently he told stories about the Bible to children and he had constructed a sort of Jerusalem and Judea by the waterfront. And he had strings attached to the building so he could make the walls of Jericho collapse and make Sodom and Gomorrah go down and it would be the equivalent of a TV program for you for things that you said in this article that you were sitting over there looking at her books working dad was over on the other side reading Zang gray and Tarzan and mom would say to you Doris if you know those dirty words in the book of bad words and you said oh no mom skip over before you. Yes I did she thought there were books that were good for you.

And then there were books that might lead you astray sort of like falling in with bad companions and of all my father's books but what she called Blood and Thunder books and when the preacher came she would hide them under the couch. I read it and I did too above both to her grave. Well I mention that because I want to read two sentences that you said in this little article Robert convince me that individuals matter their biographies were significant. Their small lives passed on to the eye of God. But even a story could be a vessel for truth. No Not could but sure. And then you said that the cowboy books taught me something to a love of action landscape that animals have a preference for the kind of protagonist who takes things in his own hands. The poor between these two literate to be seen in almost everything I've written here. And I think that all the Orb of your work all these novels you've done. I used to get in front of the mirror and practice narrowing my eyes like cowboys did right

before they drew their guns and I thought that to act was much more important than to sit and gaze at one's navel. And I still think that and I still have a preference for that kind of writing even if it's philosophical in nature. But all your books move. I hope so. Everybody moves. So what about the new one the sharp teeth of love. What's the story there. I haven't had a chance to look at it yet. Well that's the one that leaves Chapel Hill and goes out west into the Reno area where I did go and like any other day I was sort of appalled at all that gambling especially by a little blue haired ladies on Social Security. But what interested me was that Tanzan Donner of that famous Donner Party which I ended up in with cannibalism in 1846 actually come from North Carolina had married a Solsbury boy and had taught school in Elizabeth City and buried a half a family here. And I always think superstitious things like that make you feel that

that's the story you're supposed to tell. So it's a story about the Donner party but it's very contemporary. I will say that the meanest review I've got about it which does deal with philosophy said it read as if the author had been kidnapped by a theologian on speed. Well it takes a little thought absorbed but they are most of our viewers. That's a social reform President Gary and I grew up in almost my mother's side so she she'd send me up to grandpa's every summer. He was a big AARP. I've never known discipline like that again in your life. No they call that old fashioned Calvinism and I think it still is and ever I met my husband at the AARP saw McCain and I've been down to earth skin for an honorary degree and I thought at the time by my not of read what I have written because I don't believe it is now stringent enough to pass the catechism teachers are going to say you need to you have to memorize a chemical Where are some of both the little one and then what they

call the Shorter Catechism which is longer all strands and no baseball to do no ads and no movies on Sunday. In fact Nope no playing on Sunday. I mean Sunday this Sabbath I should say. And in those days I only sang psalms because God wrote and only people wrote the hymns and they only serve grape juice at communion because wine is a mocker and strong drink is raging and impulse of very conservative church. But it was very good for me that's where I learned scripture and where I learned to write I think 65 years later I can tell you everything that happened in those service alphabetically so that you then present old mate where you had to listen you were not allowed to wiggle. And there every Saturday night grandfather would figure out how much he'd made in the store. You have a big old country store of a Virginia and he'd take 10 percent and put it all over. And sure enough next Sunday that went right into letting me take that out first you know file first and they they had here do that pretty regularly. Well.

Three decades you've been around this university. You said there's occasional North Carolinian society your subject was my lifelong love affair with this place. You were the first woman to be chairperson of the faculty here right. You've been involved in everything from athletics to love that trip. So what about Chapel Hill than your life. I think it must be hard for people now to know what Chapel Hill stood for when I was a child in the 30s. And it was not entirely admiring because it was thought to be too liberal and at the same time it was like Mecca or like like St. Peter's in Rome. And people both wanted to go there and didn't want their children to go there because they would read the wrong books as mother would say. And I grew up in some all of it and my father who came here to visit and who worked in a mill and didn't have a chance for much education was simply stunned by this campus because he

said what they do there is not like making clothes if you can't tell what the product is you don't know whether you're doing a good job or a terrible job you won't know for 30 years. And he brought back a little box of picture postcards of the campus buildings and he would deal these out on the kitchen table I would say that's the administration building and this is the whack and so on. And I looked forward to the day when I might come here and in high school the journalism department would bring high school editors here. So I came in as thousands must have for that weekend and met Phillips are also in my fate was sealed. That's all. When did you know that you had to write very young very young before school. Really. I wrote quite terrible poems that my mother unfortunately saved so I have no illusion that there were any good. But that's where you got then the first contact with us was by coming here.

And so have many others it surprises you how often I would talk to people my age and younger who first came to this campus because they were yearbook at it or were newspaper editors. It's been a great recruiting thing for the university but also you know in those days people used to go out of the house schools to encourage students to come here now we have too many. It's big but I think Roy Armstrong was named who used to come to my high school and he would talk about Chapel Hill and again the legend. It wasn't the same thing is the legend of Charlie justice or Lenny Rosenbluth that's a legend too. But this was a legend about the man. Did you find as you watch this place for the last 30 years and seen it change. Have we stuck to that underlying principle. I think we go up and down. I asked spoke about two weeks ago to the reunion of the class of 958 because that's about the time that we came

back when my husband into law school and several parents who were there said you know my children did not have the experience that I had. They did not have a close relationship with an individual professor as Addie had. And I think that has become much more difficult to maintain just from size alone. It's one reason the creative writing program is beloved by students is because it's intimate. And they are into many of the classes that a large where they have to sort of fight their way to be noticed. And in the writing classes they're very real individuals. Now it can still happen with professors and students but the student has to work harder at it. And the professor has to work harder at it too I think. Still you still find that fire a number or really water right. Oh yeah something yeah. More of the stuff now than ever many more now partly because now the program is well known.

There are people who come here entirely to take creative writing and because it's not a graduate program as it usually is in most schools I think we have as fine an undergraduate program as many im if they programs and they work as hard and take as many or more writing classes. So the top writers in the state are very apt to want to come here. You see this young girl coming from over there in the Piedmont. Like you did. Yeah all those years ago when you see your shes timid for a bit you know shes talented one of the worst. What do you do to make her really open up and tell you what's in her heart. Usually she can do it on paper anyway. Speaking up in class she doesn't want to do it's criticizing other people's work. She doesn't want to in fact it's hard for her to have her own criticize but she can usually unless you mistreat her tell you the most vulnerable things about herself and her family and have found both positive and

negative and that's that may be your main job is to encourage students to tell the truth as they see it. And then you start saying well this sentence could be a little better. But you don't tamper with the truth that you know or with. They are longing to tell it which is innate. Thank Yous just saying. The literary scene in this region of America changed so dramatically in your life. What's what what's the reason for so many wonderful writers around you here in this area but all over the South. Well it's not just because we're Southerners. I'm sure that you're just as much a national novelist as anybody else. But is there something about it. Well Louis Ruben says you don't see many conferences for northeastern writing he says. So there is something about the tag but in North Carolina I think what happened from about the 50s own is that any number of writers did stay in institutions to teach here it was

Jesse Raider it duke it was Bill Black man up in the western part of the state was John Foster West. Then you get there students teaching Reynolds Price Fred chapel over at u in C G and so on. And thus you get a kind of avalanche it accumulates and the other thing that happens is that young writers see professional writers they're not just pictures in books. They are people real people who may have grown up in your own town. There were no writers when I was growing up. And the first writer I saw was when I went to college. Now I think we're all out giving readings in lab rare reason small arts councils all over the state and so that makes you think well this can be done. I don't have to be Shakespeare far away. So there's enough happening in the culture. Exactly it makes it like your book stores better book reviewing more literary magazines there's a kind of you know a gathering

of stain so people get more interested in looking at themselves through the eyes of a novelist that way. So how would you characterize the America of a what's what's the state of it's over with. Well for you to ask me five or six years ago I would say it's getting too intellectual and sword for the word games. But I agree with David Lodge who picked say the 40 best young American novelist five of whom were from our program I hasten to say. And he said he saw that the trend was back to what he called the realistic novel The family novel. The sort of the coverage of time and place and it sounds a little bit like the 19th century novel like Dickens except modernize. So I think that's the new development. When I hear you are what people call semi-retire I welcome you to the fraternity.

They say it ruins your Saturday so what are you doing with it. Are you handling it. And yeah I'm trying to write. And my mother lives with us and so that takes a little of both of her time and man. I plan to do something in the yard but I don't want to. That's one reason I didn't want you to come over there and see it and play and do this. But mostly I'm writing and reading. What how most of us don't know that you have what 20 horses out there. Twenty one everyone and several lit look a little fat. Well that's what I say. How did you get it. How did you get involved with animals. Well we were just going to have one or two horses when we bought the farm and we pictured ourselves riding on trails through the woods etc. and then we were going to breed a few and make a great deal of money the bottom fell out of the Arab horse market just about when we got into it and our breeding program was replaced by the stallions breeding program they took there straight over fences and to the mayors directly and so we now have more horses then

we ever meant to. And they're a bit like lap dogs. You can't sell them exactly they're all personalities from say you get you get to the attached and exactly one out you're a marvelous observer of the human saying you've seen a lot happen in this country. All of us have since we came here. Why would you characterize the spirit of the country today. What about the moral fiber issue that you hear so much about. Are you worried about anything you say as a model. Sometimes I am worried about the state of morals and have places as it happens I'm listening on my car. Takes right now to the biography of Harry Truman by David McCullough. And it's just instructive to hear Truman say well I did that because it was right. That's not very long ago. And I wish

we were hearing more of that in in the way of an example in sports in politics in entertainment that people felt they had a responsibility. So I missed that. On the other hand I would be more discouraged if I had were not still close to young people in the university. If I believed everything I read in the newspapers I would think that it was a rotten generation. But I do know better. I think there are some marvelous young people who are going to be excellent and ethical leaders. I point out I find this generation that where they seem to ignore. What surrounds them a bit in the side that's not the way we're gonna go. They're just going on they're not loud they're not making a big show or a performance of it that's why some people feel that unlike the 60s they have no commitments I don't find that true. I think they do have commitments. They're just pragmatic and being specific about them. If you find young people today more concerned about poor people displaced people with people that

they really are actually giving of themselves or working at. Well it's surprising how many of the young people on this campus are engaged in some kind of service activity off campus and in fact they have a movement now called apples in which various classes give credit for additional service opportunities that students do from tutoring the young they're very good at tutoring the young disadvantaged grade school child. And there was an entire literacy program set up by an undergraduate here that's been very successful. A great many things like that that I think don't always make the news but they make the future. What do you say to that young freshman comes out of us a bit. I will learn how to write. And you got all this wisdom and experience and I'm sure you gave the answer you gave me when I ask you the same question you said Here's a pencil. Let's go to work. But to some degree I don't say that

but it's refreshing to have a mage like that with you. You try to give the award try your hand. Yes but also what a class teaches you is to be critical of the work that you have done to do it the second time in the third term. Nobody wants to do that and I think revision is is harder and you have to believe it's really going to be better. I met coming over here I met a mother of a student who is now in Costa Rica and I said what's I see having a good time she said no it's raining and he's having to stay indoors and work on his novel laughs and God is with him. I know exactly what I want to reach down here to get this new book of yours would appear again so that our friends can see it. Sharp teeth of love it's good summer reading now so get out of the bookstore find it without a minute times you have to rewrite here. All that I had to rewrite a great deal. And when they sent me the cover asked Oh I

hate this cover. This is the ugliest cover. Please do not use this cover and you can see what kind of clout. I have a publisher you know as they do the reverse is much as I do what people ask you when you go around these books meetings where you talk about this another six or seven eight or nine novels now or what questions they ask you most often. A great many people who are also in similar retirement want to write. And they want to have very specific questions asked but they usually start off by saying how do you get an agent and I'll say how much do you have written. And sometimes they only have a title but they're already thinking about royalties and so on. I'm pretty sure they will not get anything done out so do you think it's much harder to get published now than when I was beginning. And I try to be realistic about that without discouraging people. Sometimes what you write you're only writing for your family anyway and

that's perfectly valuable. You don't have to be in New York publishing house should you just be totally oblivious to anything he said puts in your heart mind put on a brain that what you tell. No I'm afraid if you do you will remain an amateur. You should be oblivious for the first draft and then you have to go back and really work. And I don't know that everybody wants to do that. Most people think that it's easy to write a novel because they have read a lot of them. Nobody says things like I believe I will take up the violin. They all know you have to take lessons and practice but writing is slow also. It's accumulative practice project. I once asked one of your fellow barbless from Syria what happens after the new book comes out. He said I don't want to see you at the moment actually but everything to do with. But what's ahead.

Well let's start with thinking about our always have something in the background so I'm working on a novel now that is about an embezzler. And as soon as I got interested in there you know there was an embezzlement in Chapel Hill in New York and people began sending me clippings about embezzling and I am interested in that southern middle aged woman who has been stealing bland for 40 years but everybody loves her she was always at work at 7:00 a.m. and she gave the Little League uniforms and nobody could believe that Miss Amy could have knocked off $700000 so it was sad. I'm intrigued by that. It's usually a Robin Hood attitude so I'm having an interesting time writing about my criminal secret side. When you get that is do you this with the pocket book. Write down a set and stuff it away refused to read. Yes but I also keep a notebook all the time especially on an on a novel and even even something that I'm reading now think oh that's so

good my character might think that now write it down but I'll put in a margin paraphrase. Well that's fun though in that I've never seen you if you weren't really exhilarating. Talking about your work and creativeness just what you give students all the time why they love to go to your class. So what I just get excited in class. It has never gotten to me. And it's partly because no semester is like every student writes something different. I had a girl student who wrote about her puberty experience in some physical detail and a young man fainted out of his chair. It was just a little more detail and cared. But I thought well that would not have happened 30 years ago when I came back here to teach then it was mostly boys. Very few girls and the girls wrote a very proper thing. Yes. We've used up all of our time to be a friend but again congratulations on the North

Carolinian award in the professorship in creative writing at Chapel Hill. Granderson thank you very much. North Carolina people is brought to you by walkover banking investments and financial services for individuals businesses and corporations. Walk over you. We are here let's get started.