North Carolina People; Clyde Edgerton, Author

Production of North Carolina people is made possible by a grant from one Kovio bank a symbol of strength stability and service for over a century. Good evening ladies and gentlemen. First it was a rainy then

walking across Egypt. Then the float plane notebooks and now here are killer diller the fourth Algonquin book publication by Clyde Edgerton who's here with me tonight. Visit all North Carolina people he's a native of our state. Graduate of the university degrees in Chapel Hill and one of the most imaginative and creative novelists on the scene today tried the Washington Post recently wrote Clyde Edgerton is a miner of considerable skill burrowing into the hillside of humanity to find the characters so pure and so real that they might just sit beside us and tell us a tale that's pretty some pretty wonderful language. Sounds like a would be novelist going to say that's not even yours. Well it's great to have you here and it's going to be here get to visit with you a bit. I was reading somewhere that you and your good wife were sitting watching

PBS one morning and Eudora Welty was up there on the screen and all of a sudden all of those things had been going on in your mind to focus on what happened. Well that's exactly right it was my 14th 978 the Christmas before that I had written my first short story at the advanced age of 33 I guess. And Susan my wife and I had been in several productions of a short story by Eudora Welty live at the piano and we had to play different parts and we knew the play store so well we would recite parts of it back and forth from one end of the house to the other. And but I'd never seen or heard Eudora Welty that I'd admire that story and I was very much so. All of a sudden here she is reading while live at the piano. And it was I think you're right it was a but the fact of having written a short story and enjoyed fiction writing for many years that was

the straw I guess when I heard her read Wylie the piano and it was so delightful and meaningful that I decided the next morning which was just about the beginning of a summer vacation for me from teaching that I would start writing fiction seriously so that next summer I did I wrote several short story short stories and. Thought they were much better than they actually were now when I look back at them and started sending out fiction after that to try to get it published short stories. You went from that experience to Miss Ravenel did you daughter and write wonderful editor and she led you to the legendary Louis Reuben. Well it was that and also actually Lewis was the first contact. And I knew about him through Susan. Yeah my wife it had a course with Him or two and spoke very highly of him and his manner of teaching and there was about

or so and his interests in baseball so I knew about him and had read some of his criticism which I enjoyed very much it was almost for me like reading fiction it was enjoyable yet it was critical and I hadn't read criticism which I could enjoy that much so I had written enough to know that I admired him and his viewpoint very much and was hoping that he might respond favorably to a chapter of my book which I've been working on for a while so I wrote him and asked him and he wrote me one line back and said I'll be glad to look at the chapter and I told him in my initial letter that I would send him a baseball book that I was reading if he would look at one chapter of my book he wrote back said son. Well then when I decided to just sit in my chapter I thought I had a better chapter. But when I would start to see in that chapter I think the first one was better. So I decided to send him both an essay in the baseball book and a check for ten dollars to buy another baseball book since I was sending two chaps

instead of one. Heard from him shortly afterward saying he had sent that those two chapters to No. He asked me to send the entire manuscript to Shannon Ravenel who whose name I recognize from The Best American Short story I had dreamed of sending her something but it never had the nerve. And so here here he was asking me to since haven't heard he was starting publishing out which I knew nothing about. So I was very lucky and aspiring writers who were watching this program. If I were an inspiring writer and heard that story I would probably be jealous. Or was this one rainy. Yes this was a novel and here 200000 paperback copies later and thousands of hard backs Raney is in the steppes piece of the literature of this country you know. Well it's still on sale in bookstores and motion pictures. Ronnie has just been optioned by a group in Atlanta a small group of people down there who are who'd like to make a movie. They're these people trying to get movie business to

Atlanta so they have options and that means that there may or may not be a movie discovered. Every viewer in here and all of them from San Diego Los Angeles New York Washington everywhere are all very wonderful about your works. But to call you a great storyteller now I'm impressed with the fact is I've read your work. You don't miss much when you look at what you see in a conversation or a visit like the time you took the story about what happened when you went to visit the grandmother or mother. The bottom of the chair had gone it took 15 minutes to pull out of that thing and you go back write 20 pages about it. It's just you just instinctively do this accumulating all these. And I think what I do is not question I don't question why something might strike me. And often it's something funny if something if I see or hear something funny I make a note of it on a little note book transfer that to a journal

and or if there's something over here that seems to be striking I will remember it. If it's not convenient to write it down at the time then write it down so I so once I take these little pieces sometimes I see a few that fit together for some unknown reason. Again I don't question why this is why I'm struck by any particular sight or sound or since then something. An incident perhaps I will imagine or know of a character that might go with an incident and start writing about it because I'm very interested in it and it will it will develop into a story that I was unaware of when I first started writing about the incident. But in this particular case my two aunts were in there at that time when their seventies or eighties and my mother whose inner selves were visiting on a Sunday and my mother said I wasn't planning on telling you all about this but yesterday I sit in that chair with her and got stuck for about 15 minutes and couldn't get out the bottom was that being

recovered and we almost fell on the floor laughing WITH THAT was funny and she thought it was funny we were all just laughing will cause I'm thinking I'll go home and at least make a note of this was I made a note of it. Visioned that room and what else could be happening it so happened there's been a dog hanging around the back yard at her house so I just start putting things together and imagining and had a story which later turned into a novel in the discipline of writing up one of these great books. You write pieces and then keep moving along with Willow and all of a sudden you take what you have to another one here or move it here and back there. I did that this morning. How do you ever stop. What makes you say this is a good a good question. I don't know I mean I don't know. I think the difference between To answer your question I hope not only that it was too much length but a short story.

I can't write as I have difficulty writing short stories but I think when people write short stories they see a moment in a life where change takes place and they're able to wrap that moment into a story and have a neat package and when the change happens the see in the story. Well I've never been able to do anything but keep writing just as I'm talking now but when when I finally figure out what the story's about for example walk across Egypt was about for me anyway about a woman making a decision whether or not to keep a boy a juvenile delinquent. What about when she made that decision. I decided I could. Wrap it up. So I did. So it's almost as if while riding scenes that are interesting to me with interesting people and interesting a Vince that I finance I'm writing about those and when deciding what the book is about as I write and wants what it's about has been finished I want it. That's the simplest way I can put it it's more complicated than that but I think that's a fair representation of what happens when I'm writing a novel this morning.

Having read a draft last week of a book I'm working on now I realize that chapter 6 which introduced the second main character in the book needed to be Chapter Three because the first main character was introduced in the first two chapters so. So that was apparent only after I'd written six chapters that chapter need to be here instead of there so today. Thank goodness for computers I just moved around one of those commentators on your book said. You were such a reporter to censor you. You hear words but words that translate they transmit a point of view and a style of living and all this. W o t he won't do it but you mean will not. But they all read and the people don't hear it right with the what the. Southerners then you grew up in. Ghassan Khatib Did you know when you tell me about your family because I was sometimes

asked aren't just people ask me about that word won't it's a very interesting word because one reason it's interesting is because it occurs in pockets. I think throughout the south and in some places no one has ever heard use that weapon in my family. We only had the word Won't we didn't have the word weren't and we didn't have the word wasn't you're a good example of economy rather than say. There wasn't a reason we just said there was a reason I didn't say they want to run but there won't be no wars. Wasn't no warrants in the language. So when I lapse back into that or when I let forward into that which dialect that word words wasn't and weren't disappear and was Ronnie who is using that native dialect she always says won't be able to past 50. So was it true when you know that's commonplace though that one grew up where you grew up but you know I have also in other places in the south people

Southerners to be very puzzled by that and some just a few people if that question comes up in the audience who recognize that it's true with words like Feist. When you grew up did you talk about little brown little short haired dog as a feisty always said that had you say Feist with a T. We say all the flight over and we don't you know we said ours heard it is F A C E So that's another word that people ask about some places in the south perhaps other areas meaning small Yeah small right. Well let me ask you consider when people ask you. Who are the Southern riders or is there such a thing as a Southern writer. What they are really talking about is just what you've been characterizing isn't it. This is stop it's its reportorial its act its accuracy in the sense of the hair did you write about what's there in the reality of it. As distinguished from some other stuff I don't think it's I think it's more that that is some particular regional

connotation. Maybe I'm wrong but what's your what's your answer to that. Well the writing of Louis RUBINGH Ruben his examination that topic is fascinating and I mention that for those who are interested in hearing this subject or reading this explain far better than I could Robert Penn Warren is another person and they believe there is such very clearly such. A person who can legitimately be called a Southern rider because of the history of the region and the history of the region is embodied in people who ride in such a way that it's a done a fireable. Therefore the question keeps being dealt with is there is there are seven riders. So but Doris Betts for example is a slightly different point of view which is very interesting and I'm sure just to see the but she talks about rural versus urban riding and certain sensibilities and with

certain sensibilities and history come certain topics or certain words and you end up having the surface of a novel appearing in some ways like the surfaces be they southern or rural. What's interesting to me having heard that for the last few years the question debated over and over and over is to think a bit beyond that and think about levels beyond the surface and how interesting it would be for people to compare writers is more hopeful. This is more hopeful or less hopeful more writing about Fear Less writing about fear. But it's a fascinating topic that critics and scholars deal with in detail and I tend to just say if if I'm called Southern any kind of writer other than a bad writer I'll be very happy. You just tell the story. That's right. And I suppose to the storytelling. There's no doubt that an examination of

sociological examination of the history of storytelling. Probably because of the way people lived in the agricultural south there is a greater history there and people talk about sitting on the front porch telling stories and listening to people tell stories and someone recently said well it really doesn't happen. It never did happen that's a myth. But it did happen in some places and some places it's still happening. Right. And which is interesting as we were mixing before the show there. You can go at 20 30 miles away from Chapel Hill and find places even though it's more and more rare for places of very much like 50 years ago the barber shop at the corner drug drugstore the village station and you get started. Religion has a great deal to play in your blood and in your writings. Where did you get this working knowledge which you have of Southern Baptists and the rest of us. How do you stay current If you write.

Well I don't know if I think there are certain topics which maybe you don't need to stay current about that. I'm at the ocean televangelists B-12 the ocean I think you can always write the same about the ocean and I think you always write the same way about a Southern Baptist and I don't mean that in a negative way because when I visit a Southern Baptist church I think in my view the best of Southern Baptist Church is the very much like they were when I was growing up which were that's where my fondest memory is. But it is true that the televangelists are not weren't before at least before 44 in the last few years. But I grew up in a Southern Baptist Church almost in the church literally in that we went to Sunday morning Sunday afternoon although we didn't go every Wednesday night occasionally go Wednesday night and the man in the women in the church were not at all unlike aunts and uncles to me because of the I knew those people better than

any group since if I had been for example a faculty member a faculty member there was not the relationship with faculty members. And even though I'm there every day is there was somehow the family feeling with this church that in the music is what I always carry with me that precious. Then having been pulled away from a rural community to the city of Chapel Hill for undergraduate and study only returning there are certain kind of intellectual questions matters of faith and theology started asking myself and in some cases my mother. She and I would have long discussions about very interesting discussions about theological issues. So the power of my upbringing in the church and the seriousness with which good and evil were examined to me is something that is

in many ways been helpful in some ways caused some struggles. I think internal plaid I've noticed here in the news the reserve or yesterday. A review by Bill Maher's and their theater reviewer of the play I mean the play made of your book Walking across Egypt and the photograph here to the leaders of Mattie and Wesley. Bill writes reading this book is like seeing the big round table full of food you are put in your mouth that's Leeson is version of the book and he said. There's socializing a plenty of everybody from the talented cast to the technicians bring something to the stage now. What's it like to go and sit and watch what you've written come alive and react to it if it were really the edge of the sea that starts much of the credit

for the play in fact all the credit for the play goes to John justice who is a playwright who's written a number of plays. Of his own. And when I found out about his plays and saw them I ask him if he would be interested in adapting running and walking across Egypt and he has the stories on stage are different from the stories in the book in ways that are absolutely necessary. As I look back on it and it was done in ways I couldn't have done I think I would have had a hard time translating the novel to the stage because much more has to be done than I realized. And he did it he did a good job an excellent job I'm very glad he did that. But when I see the characters and I remember thinking up these characters and writing some of the situations and then see them in person it is a feeling and it's easy to get obsessed with the production which there have been four or five productions now and only one did I get slightly involved in by watching the casting watching the rehearsals. Paul Ferguson Chapel Hill did I think of a marvelous job with that and

watched how he worked with actors which was so different from anything I thought about. But I was very much involved and so thankful that it was close to what I had imagined it was and in some ways better than what I'd imagined and it was alive in a way that was very gratifying that that I could not get from sending the book out for people to read actually seeing it the story happen and hearing people respond to it was a was an unusual experience for me. As you have moved from rainy through a walk in a float plane and the list killer diller what happens in the sense of your confidence in writing in and saying what you want to say. You get bolder with it. You ever find yourself restraining yourself originally but as you develop a posture and a reputation and a lot of work you must do something do your stuff well so far.

Each book has presented almost entirely different set of problems. What I enjoy about writing is I'm sure what many people enjoy about their jobs if they enjoy their jobs they go to work and they have a set of problems which they enjoy working on. And each day until the novel leaves I have a new set of problems to work on and with each book the problems have been quite different. It's almost as if I'm digging into to go back to that metaphor a different mount mountain and underneath the surface is something entirely different. So they've they've been different experiences only thing I can say I don't believe that I can say Boulder in any way in writing the books I do. I believe that I can edit myself quicker now. By that I mean what needs to be left out of the novel. Discover more readily than I used to struggle with having to eliminate a character or yes you get so involved with the music of gee whiz I can't do that.

Leslie I've got to do this. Well if I'm lucky if I'm lucky I can maintain a certain amount of control but the character is also acting. I'm lucky I'm doing all the work and the actor is too pliable is not speaking back or he's not and that happened with Kill Bill I had one of I had a main character an evangelist who until near the ending of that book was a main character and I had to get rid of him and put in another care level. Now you do a lot of teaching. What have you just been doing this past year where have you been. Well what do you think. How do you enjoy it. This was a unique experience for me in teaching in that I had only one class and I've taught at the college level English in a little bit of creative writing. I was at Agnes Scott with 12 students there were. Talented students and I was there for two weeks to launch the class in creative writing. Then I left them on their own and would correspond.

Then I would go back once a month and stay two days and meet with them individually and together. And it was a learning experience for me in that we worked on short stories they wrote short stories and we did presentations of rigorous theatre presentations it was it was a very good experience because I did not have to get involved with faculty politics or office its always there that I could just go to and teach which is so ideal that I'm sure most teachers don't have that opportunity. When you finish a killer diller you disclose it out in your bio and you wait on the printed version and when do you start thinking about novel number five or you already had it in mind in the first place. Well. It's hard for me it has been with each book when it's finished it goes away and stays away for anywhere from seven to nine months usually and then it's out in hardback it's hard for me to start on a new novel

until the one I finish comes out in hardback. For some I guess a psychological reason I feel that it's not finished. But I usually have an idea a rough idea of what's coming next and sometimes I'll start and find out within 30 or 40 pages that it will not flow. Put it away and start with another I was fortunate this time when I finished this one I had another one ready to go. So I'm into that about 100 pages now. Can you share with us what plot to work you go. No I can't it's about two brothers and these brothers represent. I try not to think about what they represent I try to think of it as people but one in a way is a classic Hunter and one is a classic thinker although it's not that clear I hope so that the problems that they confront in their family is what I'm writing about. And then they also take a fishing trip with a couple fellows which is enable me to write about some of my own draw from some of my fishing experiences and that's been been fun.

You obviously enjoy what you do. Hughes is such gusto about it. LEVIN That's about it. What do you say to these young people today come to you and say. Can I get is it possible today to be a novelist and start out now. What do you what do you try to say and all cases say yes. Occasionally someone will be writing so poorly and that they're so young. And I know the ground that could be covered with work that I would say yes it's possible. And I also at some point in conversation tell him that possibly they have no choice if they are obsessed with writing stories they will write stories. When people come to me and say I've been trying to write a book for 12 15 years and have been able to get started if I just had time I usually talk to that person but I usually know that they will probably not write the book but I will in all

cases help try to help someone be confident tell them to get back rejection I had two hundred two rejections and four years of about 13 stories so I try to make that clear that rejections will come back and come back and come back and that there's an apprentice period that writers have that people don't know about when we when I read someone they've been writing for a long time. Mark Twain Hemingway those people been writing a long time and had polished prose. I'm sorry I have to interrupt again we've used up our time but here it is. Is Fourth very popular novel killer diller clad Edgerton's work published by Algonquin. Now in the 50000 copy EDITION. So thank you for joining me on North Carolina people and good luck on this next novel and we'll all wait and enjoy. Thanks for having me Bill. Thanks for the program. Thank you sir. Production of North Carolina people is made possible by a grant from one Kovio bank

a symbol of strength stability and service for over a century.