A Word on Words; 3701; Rick Bragg

fb liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers literature ideas for more than three decades this is word on words john dunne sit ins are welcome to word on words our guest today is pulitzer prize winning journalist reprise his previous books include the bestselling all over but the shouting and a movement here today to talk about the third in a series of print a frog around rick welcome to warden warden of search my pleasure great to have you talked about this third in

the cycle and i guess the circle is now on broken i have i'm fascinated by all your books and for one reason or you can write an ad youre writing things and it makes my heart sing when i get caught up in that cadence and rude bro along and i have to i just have to tell you of what my wife says when she finished this book and began to read the acknowledgment and she said my gosh i thought was fiction but a lot of what a man who knows he was to board for that you know this mr

duvall yes sir and frames man murray shortage i'm going to lose time there's no talk about that did you know when you began with all the job that you go him out because he had been out of your life for so long and that you have to come get him later on in it it begins good will of the both there wasn't much good to remember an all over but the shouting you know and it stayed that way all my life i'd go back home and my mind and gilkey was the blunt instrument that i used to pound out the store mom i'll get an idea nona that was was on true but ah that's all there was and that's all i remember it is not that i was selective about what i put in there that's all i remember about it and the deal is

mabel let me over my lifetime that town not until not till i got one mile well that's what you say in the book you say you got a boy married woman and up to broadway now how about that whole crop and you say somewhere i think you mentioned she had to write what i notice vaclav this is about a religious jew we return to the berlin wall we head to the cause what i wanted to do with this book was to find people who would be people who would be in their seventies and eighties now they would say something good about my dad and only took five years but i think

it was a pretty easy reporting process i walked up to him and said tell me one good story about my daddy now finding them sometimes and sometimes i'd say that also have one and sometimes i'd say you need to turn left there at the filling station and go up that mountain oh so and so you need a pen and i've found people to say something good about it but theres they would tell me a story that made me smile there'd always be a great sadness and texture because that wasn't the man that we had you know that was in our yard at that was there for you and all the stuff on the boy k people place to break them to smile i hope an hour and it really sets for people told well you live with the portland ore band and you've created an in and you created down on paper or i am sure is a beautiful forty year low how does

he left the overflow temperature as your parents he must've been a good look and it as you look back on that moment dark as you say somewhere the mud of an indian family gets a picture and you think of them as a young man when he first met marty called omar napa and their issues and in all her beauty and she loved his hair care and she's written by him as he was her and you know now when you re create and when you look back on the money they get great ago and he's making these promises to love how wonderful that life is going a bit we're surprise when you found people who told you about how we want our surprise because we were my dad's worst moment you know and all these people have these great memories of you know him as a saw honorable stand at this fire you know alice is

this man who stop them from doing stupid things this this kind of bright and shining but why you know who who had everything the world live for imagination and we have a sense of humor i mean you know we have a sense to him and actually it's easy to see is la mama said yes he liked she she liked his hair but she loved his teeth he had the best seats you never sang girls are locked up i thought about the story as it unfolded and i think i don't believe i don't believe i've been down this road before it was rick men ms artis i have ever written i think i

wanted to be and i think that readers wanted to be very packed i think they want me to say well i'm healed now jambalaya bobby green and the rest my life but it's not that way now is a well i can get my mama back those years it laundry machine you know drag me on a cotton sack those are not southern miss them and those are things that cost her on to step in and ended the things she had to do to keep us alive on so i'll never forgive him for that but now when i reach back in there and you do a lot with a boy but now when i reach back in my memory and cities just won't run back out again there's something that makes me grin and smile and tells a war that's why that way cause my daddy did that an arm and also found something else out there was

work everything and i needed to find out whether or not he was war and it never told me there and i needed to know they're in the book dancers foreclosure does you know others that scene early on where and i guess there was unhappiness in the house will only ongoing basis but there comes a moment when because you know i'm never going to much older men it's gonna take you away from and we take a walk down the taxi cabs that he was off that portugal shot that bridge and take you worry that and i wondered about that memory that is almost the only one you had before you went around looking for investigating that and what you make of that well i think it that the reason is that it did it became so prominent in the

book is mom mom what's it and telling me about that incident and you know it's in the back and here's some make little hazy part of your mind cheese why so many memories of my bed they come from her and my brother you know i was older than a bit later there said the cause all he was really trying to do was take a walk with his son sholem some cat but the night before he had been drop in writing and say well august of attack them all down there and drown a minestrone and i ran all remember unpunished ford for those words went and smashed me out his arms in and took me back and punished him and as i say in the book it was worth telling because he was innocent and i wanted to begin the book with the time that that he was innocent and now it was it was it took me

about six months to writers the page and it was hard you know in rediscovering in the surface five point the fraud was the place go up for him and again his parents' two and in delving into your father took him back to them to another note to the paternal grandparents it also question marks i'm sure how i was alone isn't it only was is a mill village health anna i discovered i'd always known him that were tough guy been knocked in the dirt about fuel over the years but i always knew there were tough in had this memory of my father and his brothers on their mind and make our dark knight you know they were only instead of heaven so words ahead tarrant and they drank liquor

in about a five gallon keg and you do you do beyond the race or they're out of business in our listeners too easy to get the idea that they're that i wanted to show the culture that he was from an interview can work in a cotton mill on commission do anything on the planet you know and now these are tough and it is just mention that the un and the there are vivid scenes in the book on and one that jumped off the page be with the one arm and transporting them another one i can you imagine volunteer shot down

by a cop then becomes a legend absalom absalom it's soundly they settled there i mean the work was wow you know there were you know a second and the work with our job they gave their fingers hands and arms to the machines like a treaty and it filled her lungs for cotton fiber in their men walk around my hometown right now that will look you run the eye with great pride say i got seventy percent lung capacity still is though that we're victory and i guess it is an arm yemen's those machines would kill yet they were salvation my were survival and is only thing my daddy was afraid of the mill then he was afraid in the middle he went to korea so it would have been yeah well you know they're the year that's the other aspect that whole idea of wearing the uniform that game boy the story of discovery by absalom absalom will they

do more war to what was one of our favorite stories about amazon's work and that's what they gave you started your window if your son was was gone to war and every house had a straw and if your house didn't have a store then there's greater i you know i'm a fan of audio my dad's era happened to be at the end of the korean war i guess that's how those boys if they did escape it's how they escaped let's talk about beyond the discovery the board how much their own the woman said she had children and she had one that was young enough to be a son and interesting he's not the ideal boy you really hoped a son would

be i'm not even sure what i thought that you know an audio boy it would be a bit and the mistake i made was in not been smart enough to know that he was a little boy you know he was just a little boy and that little boys you know they say their prayers and made mr munson and awe and problem i get her and you know when i was his age just one and pick i was clean and none of the tracks a bulldozer for the show and the show as most of them every year billionaire oilman up and do it all at an nsa only boy truly the only boy i knew i'd held maybe three babies in my lifetime anna and i get this poll who's got a great heart and gentle nature in time to the sport and of course on ruining how alanna may seem to faze didn't

making a bigger an uneven than a you know i am an almost that there is his mom would catch me teach me how to draw upon each you know the headline that and adds another lovely thing to know he wanted no he walked up to me and he said don't you join a magnificent know i know i should have told him about martin luther king jr i know i should have told them about and audie i know of what i should have done that you are doing the things i'm supposed to do this and always come that easy for me and i am i said make a fierce dan colen it here one time and i said yeah cause every time irvin points on average my nose my started warren is hard to say and i shared that goal of wisdom with him and his mom caucus and it came up and she just he asked him you know pretty women have this he adds to the only inside that they're also warning and stately

unison no they are in and she woke up and hits the man and she said you're twelve yet walk through twelve and i walked away thinking it's pretty good in it is well a man body you know what that what was happening was i was too ignorant to realize that he was just a little more and i wanted to her enough i wanted to hurry him up to the big boys but boys don't mangy number boys dont depend on me than it terrifies me to have somebody to pin columbia just in and thought was really right about his new book the prince of fraud down and put a fraud count is your papa many rediscovered and then you found he was last a long time and now as you say you feel better about fining him but don't necessarily make you feel that much better about him you know uk fix everything you

just can't you know i'm on us a tenable that i can't i can make him go pay all those lott bills in this time i can't dig a man thin and haven't said everything right give my mother back all those years she lost can't can make him go by my brother simon other bulk where i can do those things but what you do have is what you do have is a chain of memories that given eu walk this great gift by people who thought that he was a final or thought he was a fine man a fine young man and man that's you know that's what's up what issue is most troubling about the writing process and how you do it does as

it you're writing saves when i get caught in your room visits amaze like a preacher in a bottle you gets me any at me in their hand and i wonder how wonder how you put those words and phrases and sentences and graphs together to make and say well i got lucky now was born at the knee of the best storytellers on the planet the people that those of the appalachians and people will fight you over this the arch will fight you if you say that they are not the best storytellers black folks in orland some staple terry that they are the best storytellers people in the delta lt a veil but i know for a fact that the story tellers on the planet are the people in the foothills my uncle's could tell you a story about and always calm a tree in alan

blinder kennedy asleep and i was a little boy we would be attacked it will only go fishing or crop efficient so we would we would go spend the night with my aunts and uncles and the men would sit up and dry and they would tell stories about about about fistfights and i can make you hear the change or atlanta in the pocket of the deputy as he chased them down or a mallet or number of analysts the color and was also the line with ma ma ma if you ask her and ms bragg did she tell the truth simple question my mom will say why yes she did she will say hon she's telling god sanction and i wonder when you talk softly and offline and then they answer is just that everybody of that generation and in their place and that place and now part of it is is his place is just this is the one place on earth to all those cultures and languages come together but a big

part of its clients is writing you a job as well always joke and say that i don't i really love ryan now why haven't written and i'm sure i'm not the first ones i stole that from somebody sort of felt bad but when you're right in the storytelling of someone for instance and also named jack andrews told me a lot of great stories about my bed and he was describing them away and honor in a field and they were let in the congo and they had done that three miles an hour on court made liz lemon feel and this kite go and go and go and one out of sight and global oil comes up and says what i'll do and my dad he tells him after mike himself for the law says more efficient imagine happening is doing this and it goes into nothing and mobley says for a while and my daddy says for

the man in the moon and now i'm you know mud at hand that lightly but i know because as jack now baby here announced on in those lines people didn't talk an op ed people who think they've done up at people who think that you know had been locked in one quarter for too long i don't understand that this is a security education is sure sure the imagery of the time for mullet yeah maya my grandfather on my mama so i used to tell stories about that they'd make up on fairy tales and i would be they remember one night till called crippled parts of which was about an opossum that leads all the animals of the forest to safety i'll do a flutter in office parks rec you remember what it was about but the line which was beautiful and the

storytelling was in hair to use one of those forty dollar words it just you know it was in the way that the liquor was an i'm an actor you know to snuff was an arm in an email that the salt pork was and is as much a part of ominous is any other site and when using our ideal really get good morning afternoon light when as a whole i think sometimes they entered or tell you when it's going to flow in our in our love but i think for the books i wrote mom best late night it was quiet song no way late night and also when you run them a figure out about darkness the hard to do that when the sun's they'd known him but i i'm one of those guesses sits down in and writes eighteen hours or do yes sir i'll write a

lot talking feel my my feet sometimes hand and then i get out and take a walk around our arrival but while i drive big stretches it seems like i can't get anything done in short stretches bennett mama wife diana was to do you know is about ready to leave me because i lose myself in and that work in and it's hard to explain why you have to lay with you to have to wrestle with achieving it to hammer out its throw them used to me has never been some delicate ariel sign that floated an on the one that i'm landed on the shoulder whispered words and here it's always windy in uganda in a panic to the ground with your boot on a snack in and keep its aaron and rightly the kinky fast then you have some days he added some ways it sounds like the phrases are there and the language is there because i think that that says that is much a part of the

mob blood is was mom people's blood the organization knows a rubber stopper out what i think his arm or does it go how does it fit what was a timeline and nonfiction you got to get all that fear and i think in that in a novel you could or so i think i'll make it the middle of the afternoon i think i'll make it on tuesday while it's harder to do when you when you gotta go where somebody's got a column outside now was this a weekend in our planet than men was it not a little falls or was it was it yeah look great falls for you like at the end when it's done the us government a look at the problem or well i've been really lucky that i've had some great booker rich my editor on this book would jordan have one

can often and it was her idea to to use the swim chapters of the boy the two outlets so that was my ideas my fact i wish i could look really work or that was her idea because what i'd originally planned to do was to have a big long kind of introduction about the common a baton that be an impetus for writing the book about my father and then lose myself and monday and then at the end of the book come back to the boy with another long certain amount about all that and she looked at it and said this gives your place this is just wonderful stuff and this gives you a place to to breathe in a neck n n n n i think maybe to smile so unity have more we know you got the boy in the boy is so is constantly doing things that the marvel a new word and so we

you know spread it out around the book and saying to work with kids can you believe i have our black and i really can't great heavenly or lesser than it's great having all of you here and jon sit in over a word on words he flees fb