Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Steve Yarbrough: Safe From the Neighbors

And now it's my pleasure to welcome to the store Steve Yarbrough. Steve was born in Mississippi and his writing which has been compared to that of Flannery O'Connor consistently draws on themes from Southern history and contemporary Southern life. He's written several novels and short story collections and over the years has received many awards including the Mississippi authors award the California Book Award and the Richard Wright award. And in addition he has a 2004 novel prisoners of war was a finalist for the PEN Faulkner Award. He's been a professor of creative writing for many years as I'm sure many of you know he recently joined the faculty at Hammerstein college. His new novel safe from the neighbors centers on the high school history teacher in a small Mississippi town whose life demonstrates the lasting legacy of a shared history. A recent review in The Washington Post called it a satisfying deftly constructed narrative that contemplates the difficulty with which we shed our ties to history. What we might learn from the mistakes of our forebears or fail to learn and just what a complicated and mysterious business cause and effect is. After the reading we will have time for questions followed by a signing here at the

front as always had like to thank anyone who purchases a copy of the book here this evening. By doing so you're supporting both a local independent bookstore and this author series. And now please join me in welcoming Steve Yarbrough. The other night and South Hadley the young woman who introduced me was also from Mississippi and they asked her to introduce me in Mississippi accent but hers was different from mine and I got up and told everybody they were hearing an upper class accent from her and they were going to hear something different from me. The novel I'm going to read from the narrator is a high school history teacher is as you just heard and there are few things that I need to tell you about this brief section I'll read an order for it to make any sense. The narrator

has gotten himself involved in an extramarital affair with someone who has returned to his hometown. Someone that he knew in the early 60s and he realizes that a personal tragedy in her life the murder of her mother coincided with a very public event the integration of the University of Mississippi by an African-American student named James Meredith. If you don't know anything about that event JFK had to send around 30000 troops into Mississippi in order to put one student in the university and the whole study erupted into a powder keg. And so my narrator is trying to find out how his family might or might not be connected to both of those events. To the loss of his best friend's mother and to what happened in Oxford that night. I think you also need to

know that he was mentored by a very liberal newspaper editor in Mississippi his name is Ellis and he has become worried about whether or not Ellis might be involved in those events because of Ellis's reaction when he mentioned the man to him who used to work in the barber shop and who used to deliver a newspaper a couple of names in here. There's a reference to Maggie that's the childhood friend that my narrator has gotten involved with and a reference to Parker Sturtevant Who is this or this really did happen. There was a there was a cotton farmer in my hometown who owned a barber shop and he farmed cotton six days a week and cut hair on Seventh. Well on Saturday and we were all terrified of me. You did not want to get in his chair because you would leave with nothing. He was he was bald himself and he just cut everybody's hair off because he was telling stories the

whole time. You just lose track of what was going on. So Monday writer is now going to track down the other barber who has been gone for many many years. Andrew has no middle initial aged 77 lived about five miles south of Pine Bluff some distance west of us 65. He took me on the phone there were several other mobile homes on his road and a few of the mailboxes had numbers on them. But I'd be at the right place he said when I saw a trailer with a rusty garbage barrel near the front steps. I finally found it got out and rapped on the door. Within seconds it swung open. Come on in that rest be voice. He was bald and bent with a hugely wrinkled face and a bulbous nose and he wore a pair of glasses with black plastic Grahams and thick lenses. The front of the shirt was sold most likely about a back of spit so you should

cut your hair. He asks going at me. He looked only very glee like the man I remembered that and even if you saw him saunter over the wheel of his truck after spending the night with Jim Beam I had a thick growth of hair and always wore clean fresh smelling shirt. He was well-built too with prominent showed hers that suggested he once might have been a good football player. Yes sir I said You sure did. I do a good job. The best looks like you might could use a tram right now. Yes or I guess that's a fair assessment. Parker he said never could cut hair worth a shit. He only did it says he'd have somebody to run his mouth to said Your name's Mark look I knew it was one of the disciples woke up thinking if it wasn't Mark it might have been John knew it when Philip nor Andrew knew there may been an Andrew my serf didn't reckon it could have been Judas. Folks generally don't name the kids that he

gestured at the counter separating the living room from the kitchen. It was covered by whiskey bottles. Evan Williams and black velvet all of them were the 1.7 leaders and most looked empty like a drink at 10 am I better decline I said since I've got to drive back. I don't reckon you'd mind if I was to have one. No sir go ahead and help yourself. You can sit over yonder he said nodding at the lumpy sofa a birth which a framed newspaper article hung askew. Get yourself comfortable if you can. I walked over to the couch and scanned the article in 1967 in the Pine Bluff Chamber of Commerce to name the best service providers in various categories listing Andrew Owens as top barber. The article sitting on the local barber shop as I sit down I heard him Splash whisky into a cup. It was what bartenders call a long pour. He dragged a chair

away from the kitchen table that had plastic decals plastered all over the top of the back rest. I noticed that they were everywhere on his walls on the kitchen cabinet. Even on the coffee table. Son of rice fields best pro shops permaculture red line. Like my Dickens. Yes impressive us it looks like you've got a few hundred. That's my hobby. There's folks tells me you can buy the pack on the computer but I never food nothing like that. I come by my own honest. I see one I like a bud. I don't want a body else choosing them for me. I understand my sister sent me one from time to time but she got a handle on my taste. He took a big swig and wiped his mouth on his forearm. I drink too much he said. I always have. If I cut your hair back at Parker's I don't reckon that will surprise you. Actually I said the main thing I remember is that kids fall all over

ourselves trying to jump in your chair and stay out of mischief started once. That's what my me think of you. This project I'm on that I mentioned will be looking at how businesses developed in the Delta roughly from the end of World War 2 into the beginning of the 21st century. And if I'm right about it you had to judge. So I thought you could tell me a little bit about both. You used to deliver the commercial pill didn't you. The look that came over his face was one on seeing a lot of back when I was doing interviews for my depression era oral history project. It would appear on the faces of people who had accepted their own sick in significance as a given and were startled to learn that anybody else thought otherwise. Sure enough did. He said I started delivering it just before Christmas a 58 and kept at it till I moved over here. You know when exactly it was that December of 62. I pulled out a pan and small notebook I'd bought at a convenience store in Dumas December

62. Yessiree I wrote the date in my pen. What made you leave flooring. If you don't mind my asking dumb Mondo. I finally got my hands on a little bit of money and decided to go into business for myself. They had a shop over here for sale. I've done real good for a long time. He pointed at the article on the wall above my head. I noticed you taking a look at that he's a barber in Pine Bluff. Doesn't surprise me one bit. The big good barber. He said The main thing you got to do is listen. You get to hear a man out when he tells you how he wants his haircut then you've got to figure out how to make it look just a tad better than he imagined. That's why Parker never was no good. The only person he ever listened to was a self. It took another slug where things worked out over here though I found they run into debt and had to sell the place. One because I didn't do a good job. Even drunk I

could hear it just fine didn't ignore buddies they're nothing like that but there are some folks that don't care for the smell of whiskey. I spent the next 25 years working in a chemical plant around there it stunk so bad nobody could smell the beams coming off me. I used to love her I smelled and suddenly felt like I needed to say oh and did he left. That was Tara competitor you smelled on me he said. See I dribble a bit of it in my hands after I washed him and maybe you didn't notice but I always wash my hands after each and every haircut. That's just standard practice but you'd be surprised how many folks get in her and quit doing it. You remember what it was like on Saturday mornings Sturtevant. Yes there are sometimes the same like half the town was in there. Absolutely. You know Parker come in with fertilizer on his hands grab them clippers and set to work on folks to say it.

If you dropped a few cotton seeds on their scopes it took root. I pose several questions about Sturtevant asking how many haircuts he had given an average week whether or not the price changed dramatically during the time he worked there how often he had to renew his license and what the cost how frequently his Clippers had to be replaced and then come to get answers to any of them. Yet they were interesting in and of themselves and I noted each one in my pay and then I said Now could I get you to talk a little bit about the paper route. You sure enough good let me just get another little drawing. He got to pour himself another one sit back down. What you want to know. Well to begin with do you remember how many subscribers you have seen like by the time I moved away I must have close to 300 where you say you lived near fairway crossroads James Mays my father. Tall skinny fellow like crewcut Yes sir that was him. His hair.

Unless I misremember was naturally oily. Some fellows you put your hands in the hair and it's like dipping a microscope and nothing about it that's just how it goes and washing it all the time just makes it worse. Anyway when it come to the purple fairway one but a small part of the picture for me. See I had folks that subscribed on Route 2 but I had them that lived on Route 1 as well. My territory stretch from south the Choctaw Creek all the way up to the county line. Now you may not know it but there was a little bit of a war going on in them years between the commercial appeal and I rag down in Jackson Clarion-Ledger. Yes indeed and when I started the god delivered the Jackson paper had a age. Do you remember who that was. Phelan I'm abuzz Durkan buzz was short for Buzzard and I called him that because he looked like one. Now he didn't have my mind liability because he never took a drink in his life but he couldn't throw worth a damn. So you folks don't want their paper wet and I don't want to muddy and the surest goddamn

want to hit in the front door like a goddamn brick at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. He pitched them and did under folks his trucks even throwed one right through somebodies window one night time I quit I had old buzzard bait to shit. If I recall right I said the barbershop open pretty early every day didn't it. 9:00 a.m.. And I never unlocked the door late one time. Not one damn time. Yet you delivered this pipers in the middle of the night. So what was a typical day like for you back then. Did you ever sleep. Well I closed up every day at 5:00 so I head on home usually have a drink or two. Never more than three or four except come Saturday and then I'd lay down about 7:30 and sleep to 12:30 or 1:00. Get up have a little coffee and eat me some and I'll be waiting at the bus station when the Greyhound dropped him off. Sometimes the bus was a little early sometimes a little late but I'd usually throw the first paper round to 215. Most days I pull back into my

own yard by 5 o'clock jump out run in lay down on the couch grab two or three hours and start all over. I couldn't help but express amazement that he'd borne up under that kind of schedule. How did you survive doing that for five years I ask. A week would plan kill me. Is there anything more beautiful than a smile in a time ravaged face. Them's the best years of my life he said. I couldn't wait to start my day. I love cutting hair and I love being by myself late at night throwing papers. My drinking hadn't got out of control yet. My wife then left me and I still had a drain. See I'd always wanted to shop. I had to go you know what I'm saying. I did. Even though it had been a long time since I had any specific personal ambition myself. If you'd asked me to identify the exact moment I lost it I wouldn't have been able to. I figure most folks just woke up one morning and understand that it's gone.

My goal now if I had wanted all was to keep sleeping with Maggie as long as I could without getting caught. I tried not to think about next month or next year only look forward to next Wednesday. Speaking of owning your own shop us you mention coming into some money that made it possible. But I'd be prying too much if I ask if you aren't above working two jobs. I'm specially interested in entrepreneurial activity and sounds like you busted your bird and made your dream a reality. He left and took another swallow. I busted my bird all right he said. But I would have had to busted a good bit longer to make the money in my own shop. No I got lucky for once in my life and found me an investor. Someone here in Palm bluff. No actually somebody over an alluring mind if I ask. He fell silent and shifted in his chair looking down into his cup as if

maybe it held the solution to this particularly vexing problem. I knew he was trying to decide whether to lie or tell the truth. Finally he lifted his head and said. If I tell you you're going to put dancer in a book are you. Since there would be no book it was easy enough to say No sir. I give you my word after you tell me. I knew I'd been right to wonder if Ellis Buchanan possibly could have forgotten A.O. ones. Half an hour later after promising to send him a copy of my book if it ever got published I rose to leave. As if you were a boy about to ask the prettiest girl in town for a date. He ducked his head and wondered would not like a little tram free of charge. So I told him yes and he went down the hall and returned a moment later with his clippers in a pair of scissors in a yellow bit sheet. I straddled the chair he'd been sitting in and he dropped that sheet over my lap in

chest and gave me the best haircut I've had since 1960 to quit the Delta as a region and to it it's not even like the rest of Mississippi. You know it was originally. Heavily heavily forested there was a there was a lot of water everywhere there were mosquitoes there were snipers all over the place and those settlers who went in there and cut the you know cut the trees down and figured out how to farm the land. We're pretty ruthless and hearty people. And you know there are plenty of stories about how they had that ride a horse 40 miles for a party and and be there drunk I'll wake and you know go back and do a little farming and do it all over again. And people in the rest of the state just you know they're crazy down there and

that's the way it is. I still think that there's a original consciousness but I do get a little bit nervous when you know when you get 20 or 30 riders from the south together and they're all throwing the same names around and I think it's important to remember that foreigners you know the riders that Faulkner was rating him you probably have seen what was in his libraries I have many times. He wasn't reading Augustus Baldwin Longstreet he was reading primarily European writers. And so while I think that that there is a Southern literature I also think it's a part of American literature and part of world literature. And. I would hope that it doesn't remind are that it doesn't let itself get overly insular. Because I think that's the beginning of the end. You know with any art I haven't lived in Miss it well except for one year when I

was writer and writer in residence speculum as I haven't lived in Mississippi since I was 21 years old and I'm 53 now. But I know you know I never thought what it meant to come from the place I come from until I wasn't there anymore it was just my day to day reality. I want to move to California. Virtually every day somebody would ask me a question that I had never been asked they would say where are you from. And you know people say that to you enough you start asking yourself the same question Where am I from. I was never particularly interested in reading about Southern history until I didn't live there anymore. And you know I grew up during the Civil Rights Movement I saw how all of these things happening around me but that that was just day to day reality it was in my face and moving fast and didn't have the ability to step back from it and make any sense out of it.

So I think of living somewhere else this has made me you know an odd sort of was a bring a greater degree of focus to what I left I think. It's curious to some people think I've only written about Mississippi I really have and short and short stories always felt perfectly capable of writing about any place that had a number of stories set in Eastern Europe or in other parts of Europe or California or you know on the East Coast but the novels have always seemed to need to be rooted in a place I knew in a deeper way. Well I haven't written a story in about 12 years and I think I've psyched myself out. I love that form so much. I think I feel like when I go back to it I'm going to have to just start all over again and learn how to do it. I mean my process has never been different no

matter what I'm writing because I'm a an inherently lazy person. I don't like to work long hours. I write about an hour and a half or two hours a day but I have to do it every day. I can't I can't take a day off and I pretty much did that with stories just as I do with novels. It plays absolute havoc with any ability to go on vacation or anything like that you know. Or I should say it's working on me maybe that's a maybe that would be a better way to put it I'm writing a novel set in western Virginia where I lived for a few years in the 1980s. I started it twice. The first time it was it was a third person novel. And somehow or other that wasn't working and so I decided to see if I can make a go of it with the first person narrator in it. It felt a lot better and it's curious.

As a novelist I seem to follow the same progression I did as a short story writer when I started writing stories I was on the style was in a sort of cinematic third person and then gradually I drifted toward first person narration and by the time I quit writing stories I was on the style was doing the same thing with the novels. The first four were you know kind of roving third person and that for whatever reason doesn't feel quite right anymore. So I don't know what the next step is you shoot yourself I guess. I mean how do you write in the second person or you write on toilet or something. I mean I hear those voices in my head all the time and I don't think I'm particularly adept at capturing other dialects. You know that the dialect from the region that I'm from is even different from what you would hear a hundred hundred twenty miles away in some instances radically

different. So I'm occasionally asked well gosh you haven't lived there since you were you were 21. Why do you still have the accent. Well I don't want to lose the accent. I don't have to call my dad to hear what somebody sounds like from that area. You know I have to do is open my mouth and I can hear it. And you know in the funny things happened to me up here. We lost power the other night in Stoneham during the you know the storm. And I kept trying to call the electric company and leave the message you know on the automated system saying we have a power outage. And so when it asked me what is your reason for calling I would say report an outage. And it kept saying we cannot understand you. And so my wife was just walking into the living room when I had absolutely had it. And I I was in the act of saying a report an outage.

And then I got it. You know when I sounded like a robot. You know my editors from the Willamette Valley. He is married to a woman from Mississippi. It's Gary Fisk John. You know and he sounds very different from me and he only works with I think a couple of writers from the south. But so no but it probably does help that he would never pose the kind of question. I remember someone once Escuela Smith with the story in The New Yorker Les had referred to a double wall. And there was a marginal and you know Querrey double what you know well a double wide. Well how did California. To just be perfectly blunt. No there were some wonderful things about California but the part that I lived in the Central Valley I lived in Fresno. And I had a lot of friends

there really. And it was a good place for me to write but I just in the landscape felt strange to me. It was flat and barren and burned and. I just never felt at home there and I came up here and until I came up for my interview about a year ago at Emerson I'd only been appeared one time in my life I came up to visit on Drug Abuse about 25 or 26 years ago and I loved it and I thought you know if I ever get a chance to live up there I'm going to People ask me all the time especially young people. Why did you leave California for here which just goes to show that the grass always looks greener I guess somewhere else. This grass looks greener to me. So happy to be here. Part of you know part of it just has to do with the business of publishing there was there was a period in my life maybe back in the early

90s when I thought OK I'm you know if I don't manage to write a novel I'm just never going to get a book published again. And so initially I thought OK I have to do this even know I love stories most I have to figure out some way to do this. And it was really a struggle with the first novel and I think you can read it and tell that it's and that I'm a short story writer honestly. But over time I got much more comfortable writing novels and it may have something to do with with the fact that I think if you're on a three or 400 page project that a couple hours a day you know you just kind of sink into it and and roll along for a couple of years. There were times when I was writing stories when I felt the need to go a little bit longer and you know we had small children at the time and sometimes it

wasn't always possible. So a couple of things they're coming together I guess. And then as I said I respect that form so much that I think you really need to devote yourself to it if you're going to do it. And for whatever reason I don't really seem to be able to do that these days. I think you know how much I love William Trevor and Alice Munro and if I could go on and on. I don't think it has anything to do with teaching. I'm actually happier teaching stories and novels for whatever reason. Maybe because you can address the whole thing you know pretty easily and a couple of hours swears. You need more time to really go at a novel. I think no Lord no. I would be a horrible historian is if I can't figure out what I want to know I just make things less with my time. That's what my dad said years ago I wrote an essay

about a Country Music Television show that had been around as a child and published in Oxford American Reader's Digest sent me one of those contracts for many times more money than I'd been paid for the whole essay for you. You know how they condense everything. Put it in there and you know it was a lot of money so I just signed and sent it back and I thought well the budget but you know people that whose opinion I really value probably won't see it. It's sort of an elitist perspective. Well 19 million people see it. But when they turn their fact checking department loose. I'll tell you how to turn they didn't they didn't fire and they did not find me telling any kind of law that mattered. And I was perfectly capable of saying somebody had an orange shirt when I couldn't remember when I was 5 years old and I don't know what

kind of surety you know but they call my dad and the first thing they ask him was Mr. Yarber Is it true that in the early 1960s you like to eat popcorn while watching Country music on TV. And my dad is just scared to death of lawyers and he figured he was talking to one. So he said no I'm not I'm. I cannot swear to that. He said name my son said that but he said I'll tell you something about my son he makes things up he made up whole books before you know so I wouldn't be a good historian it was a horrible journalist. Oh I should tell everybody by the way I met Richard Rich. No I did have to meet Richard about three weeks ago at a book signing. The 30000 troops sent in to Mississippi to integrate the University. We have one of them with us. So give him a hand. More than a fair amount of courage.

Right at the moment. I am reading an Italian novelist named Evan what's his last name Emma Niti. I'm an iti novel called I'm not scared. I just read a collection of stories that I liked a lot by a French writer Eric. Gosh his last name is Schmidt. You know I'm talking about SCO the most beautiful book in the world. It's published by Europe additions and it reminds me if I were trying to describe it I would say it's Kundera without the bitterness which is a lot a lot missing in can there. Those are two things I'm reading right now on John McGahern short stories because I'm teaching those next week. The title The night that JFK sent the troops into Mississippi he preempted regular programming and address the

country. And there's a passage in speech where he says if this insurrection is allowed to stand no judge can feel secure in his writ. No citizen can feel safe from his neighbors. And I sense one of the. One of the mine elements in the story is a conflict between neighbors and what neighbors do to one another that seem to me to address both the you know the public and private aspects that the novel explores. So I thought it was and who better to steal from than JFK. Well thank you for coming.