A Word on Words; 3734; Squire Babcock

no no no liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers literature ideas for more than three decades this is word on words welcome once again to award or my guest today is robin squires take a long and fascinating braddock an enormous service in jail on heroin possession conviction <unk> lived quite a variety of jobs ballroom dance instructor farmland blues ramos all the labels at the age of thirty committed himself to writing and teaching least partly associate professor murray state university here today to talk about his book the king again and

welcome to world words for you know i as i read an induction i thought you know these vendors have our there's talk about your life and your own party is it's somewhere in the words i know but the gang at dana creates a counter what are character calvin turtle is and what a life where they come from good question because i think the first in on the surface out of local news well to do lobel kentucky in the seventies but i like country club upper middle class so i'm you know i think it also comes from an era the book is set in nineteen seventy two primarily and that era is one that i'm very interested in because so much was going on that never what i think the country was in the throes of the

unprecedented affluence and power around the world there was also vietnam in full horrible flour there was what was called now or than the sexual revolution there was watergate there was a feminist movement all this was going on you know and israel today two young i am a civil rights movement and so the powerful moment i think in our history and common comes of that era as well as from a specific place you putting into a family to say that is dysfunctional is maybe to solve the thing he owned and he hasn't we get a sense that reason rarely on that he has some emotional problems you say you go through this period where

the mother and father move i guess since question well at joe moore my love the job but he's gotten that that bond between love and hate and i'm sure they're questions in his mind about in his mind about what we love that ad and soulful no doubt i think that they are products of the air out of the time of their own time of the incredible change going on as well these parents are sort of clueless how to deal with the world they're in the world that they have married together and entered together because of all the change and i think that they're not untypical of parents and their circumstances you know plenty of money and pretty much how deep questions or confusion about how to live a life in the world that they have sort of entered as adults so is his sister jewel guys decide oh

yes and somewhere in that somewhere in that emotional distress and he blames them for and that haunts and really give this problem isn't a couple grains and you can tell he is haunted then now he's a young adults here and there the traffic accident then his card number of his parents' car but i as a car crashes into a bear no question those did you do it then some ways humans and so when you talk about how you create as character how you get inside is in and what goes on when youre

writing this book you think about pulling us readers you want us to get inside this confused his head how do you do it and you do it so well because you you got me you grab me and pull me and i'm suffering with him well i think i think it's first an unconscious process me now the question how do you do it implies a conscious manipulation but i think at first it's an unconscious process for example that accident scene with the flaming car and so forth is a scene that simply came out of me one day in front of the typewriter in a way that i had not anticipated and i didn't understand its connection to a larger story for a long time and so there was something about that scene from inside i'm a mind conscious my you know my dream state and that you know was was clamoring

to get out of me so wrote that there are other scenes in the same way where you do you imagine your way into this character's life and then you know the events happen their catalogs to some extent by what happened in real life i was living in massachusetts and i drove around the corner and then into orbit close to my house i lived in the woods one night and there was a car in for me and i use that image but i brought it back to awards and so i had no idea what was going on with this car and it turned out some i had set it on fire a collecting insurance but i do get counted and then evolves i think ultimately you become conscious of its connection to story and you build a narrative and you know and who is this character when this happens and in fact it didn't happen until later on in the process of the book that i understood that he was at least more involved in that accident than

simply passively following his parents you know in my mind still is not quite clear whether he might be a bomb there is an ideology and maybe a knock yes they're fighting you know they're fighting men and he wants to stop that yes i think he's i think he has competing forces in him he wants his parents' old bethany was to get rid of them so then let's talk about the family fortune because it's it's interesting and it's interesting in this is a family that makes playing cards yes and those not rich underdog richmond gave a rich rich yes and then ill wilson plays rich where they go from running this expedition send them and his father has grown is that a member of the un and his father were quite successful

right so we'll then collins billy that only does the twenty one problem isn't only twenty right now there's a knock on the door as a policeman then when you're under arrest and i didn't know what was going to happen i went through my mind the same thing you just put our viewers through he's not real i'm not really sure the reader whether he did it on purpose or whether it was an accident or well it with something and twenty deaths then bodies under us one of his father's always going so the word on how much did you have to get inside the administration justice and cromwell actually actions to write this i do so i had to do some research on on kentucky law typically around the world and the and the you know only the automobile accident it's fairly standard stuff had found out what would he would be charged with and

now you know it takes so within the police officer has to show up at the hearing or the you know it's the charges thrown out in this police officer doesn't show up so gardner says it will fix it there is a hint of the universe calvin little bit but result of not their know this return is a business the georgians and triple a lot of the prominent of the tories the center of ramadan the bucket meyer news runnin the government it is it is and i think that he is representative of days of ownership class you know wants to keep control of this this empire the calendar sort of inadvertently with a lawyer for the voluntary employee for the company and it is a night at the guardian ad litem he is indeed much

to calvin chagrin he becomes he becomes the solo whole nemesis of calvin because he's he's that generation and he and calvin wants control of the world you know as a new generation's do but he's got to contend with the law and may be some other forces the sort of generational four seven even the american capitalistic system and then calvin finds out of their nursery thousands of becoming this this competition and california are coming yes that's one element of this that any layoffs better and the economy there is in fact some sort of going on inside the company and he gradually get his arms around all this wonderful afternoon law is unclear one thing to do well palin's there is and isn't as an air of trouble economic times richard nixon was president he instituted a price for he's in lower wage and price for reasons oh for his comfort

of course the workers the people making that the cards unfortunately repay in a price for or for the bad economic times and so that's another thing that calvin and collins generation inherited which is you know a system where in the have and have nots are going farther and farther apart and you know everybody knows that struggle so cowan at his tender age of twenty has to have to deal with the you know workers drill workers people not surprising to me a story about a new story about the south that there would not be a racial component vendors store and it comes about a couple lawyers tell me about the scene in the black church in which she in effect loses money mr longman i mean money is do mormons of nickname

was good morning of ammonia and over short and he loved her and he also lost kenny who is why in awe and who is the doro floated the meat on a minute almost a new movie on this inverted that the women that who find plastic well the character but not whether that the burden of the great things it is a great read of funny i think i don't words no i got no idea i know it was unclear that would be it would take me away from but runs into an african american judge and he resists warren goes with cowen and give them six

months to put it back and and he starts he has a tough time with relationships or do anything that he does he does he's clueless how to make relationships go corsi had no no miles from his parents' and that's part of what the novel's about you know that that what has passed two columns eric collins generation is so it's kind of a whole new set of rules and challenges in expectation yes i think you mean stanfill charlie stanfill as the choir but stand for is is trying to get this guardianship approved and i really like it but of the first black judge in little as the ones before whom this case comes in and he resists he you know he's a little bit more so circumspect he still was give this boycott and show what he's doing and so forth i think the judge china gets it you know kind of sees that this is a power grab and not really a legitimate loyal and shawls and

clearer mind picture of the facts just joining us i'm talking with two of them talk about his book or the kinetic enough let's talk for mona body well being as a fictional tale in in in the prairie mississippi delta prairie area of arkansas and i think we have to think of it in several ways we're and it's famous for the duck hunting down there and in fact that area of arkansas is famous for its the cunning and for the fact that the flatness for the fields of rice and soybeans that attracted ducks and so forth and and again as a small camp where outside of which there happens to be a hunting preserve which calvin thinks of as the greatest hunting place in the universe so ann and his father were in and his grandfather's cronies were able to

buy this place and to kind of keep their own for you know for years and years now calvin this is an inheritance and there's a conflict with a caretaker the caretaker are abutting strife is the arkansas nemesis you know and he's this powerful man this excellent hunter this kind of outdoorsman almost almost a larger than life character who lives right on the o wilson plays amanda is resentful of the rich folks from mobile on this place and really kind of exists in the plate in a way carlos the place on his teenage years also it is also i think a representative of of a different layer of calvin i see i see the low section of the book is a kind of conscious representation of has a fierce reality and bitchiness kind of the unconscious part of governor he goes down there the book climaxes very journeys to be back and to

soar workout the challenges them their time and i and it you know i see that is deserved almost a typical mythical journey the journey to herald the unconscious or and in fact dean has a is a take on on the old hebrew term for hell which is the hand germs and so it's a kind of a mythical jury to herald the derby the the hell of his unconscious you know all that stuff that he inherited both on the surface and underneath the service he has to contend with them if that's where money comes in money is very seductive and very dangerous at the same time you know it is kind of the way the unconscious works at a lawyer prior figure an injunction for comparable rondo and what calvin turtle wants to do this and that is on his own company one is false promises right now the difficult just trying to bring back some of the business insider make it competitive and he was

quite successful in and knows what he's going to end and done but for you to be successful he has to convince the judge that term but calvin is not confident that he is incompetent right and he makes that allegation in cork counting goes out on his own france's own lawyer phil guggenheim video you did get back to live in their fill and stuff and then i sell them are filled open it's over we want and body wellness by getting a psychiatrist that nancy stringer in where he come from wealthy she you know she is the psychologist for cowens

virginia who has been a permanent resident of a mental institution and the elemental institution whoa she's basically disabled mentally disabled and damaged him rami verjuice verges great she's finding you know cackling sharp waited you know a woman tough minded and now she's part of calvin's one accounts touch points and dr strand is her longtime shrink so i'm callin needs to go see a shrink in order to be a judge to competent that's who he thinks so he ends up talking with dr schram and dr strayer and pushes him in ways that he doesn't really want to go but i don't really understand count pills she helped me billy the back are used for that you hopefully understand joe and confusion by having her talk to and i think i am aware that

there are some revelations available and what dr strand is doing with calvin there yes they say yes and what you expect us about those dryers i am you know and it's it's not as issues of all the lawyers they will right barbara but he uses her funding for food that accountant competent that's right although when the heirs rather bizarre the book just to change a pleasure but every chapter in as wade in the heart in a bombing or a cotton on and sometimes those those cards some laws what's in the chapter i don't get it every time but i went back and looked and the we're getting over their design come from well the playing cards came

the family owned company the family owns the company and calvin from an early age adopts the game of solitaire condo possible to win but he adopts this and he did it he spends a lot of time almost meditatively playing klondike e eh even from the ages of seven i think he played klondike and become the cover religion for him and on top of that he invents paid they chant when he gets in trouble is getting beat up at school or he's in other times of trouble his check goes sparklers invaders from prison puppy toes into the free party or government is straight out of one dyke and the nicknames these are his father's nicknames for the suit sparkling diamonds campers are hard supported those clubs bigger states and so there's that natural you know suit symbol for gretchen and i see each one of the sections of the book there's sort of a

new hand of solitude the new hand of conduct and so but that the decision in the design of it was not to be quite as conscious has to try to hook up a spade with the scene and lead to know that their connection that lead to know that butt the dea the design was to simply to alternate sued symbol always through and to frame the opening page of each of each section as a playing card make it look like you know the ends of a playing card just to emphasize the calvin play solitaire all the time you can sort of as soon as you read the book calvin is you know playing solitaire behind this offstage pretty much the whole idea the settlement all cause worth of pennies parents this and he wrote was in a double blind all that wrong ha ha ha ha ha you know what it makes me laugh when i say that makes me

laugh because he's you know it's not the georges a benign characters bolivian and he's a kind of benign hapless yes isn't about hapless drunk on the golf course and out it does make me laugh hit there's a sadness to him to do i think that he has a kind of bewildered by the world he lived in and so forth and you know and and so he's got to sedate himself pretty heavily on the golf course johnny johnny johnny tomatoes are lots of johnny's that the world i write about a country club lobel is more or less my world that i grew up in and i grew up in an east global and belong to the country club and we had a maid or two and there were african american and other families did it was what people did in the south dakota town when calvin want to know more about john areas that home with you yes i want to go right but he does go run he meets the family by some happily song year turns out her son

in law while and one of the workers laid over that one i have tested it did you know how you windows store for the juno know gonna be something close to a happy ending not for the longest time i played around with different endings one dummy ended up in virginia's neighbor in the mental institution and then alec that didn't feel right you know so much like holden caulfield may be here and and there were a number of different variations but it ultimately came down to remain and outside the church women start before goes like in church they reconciled within a day you know i was going to yes yes although i'm suspicious about what happens now i assume that he's reconciled with her temporarily but i don't trust it one now that raises a question about whether when i was i think we will have one of the things in publishing this novel has taught

me is that there's more to write readers have asked me what that what is the next aversion and so i think there will be i haven't started working on a nonfiction book right now of essays about my experience in ending in the world we have about a minute have learned to tell me about the most of this of this book you know well i'm i'm fascinated with with life that sounds kind of silly but i'm fascinated with life as it seems to be for me and many other people where we live in in a place between conflicting forces you know one part of this was to be so was another part of us wants to be you know barbaric and i have i have a thirteen year old daughter who has down syndrome and when she was born she she produces the emmy amazing conflicting forces are one

part of me wanted to shut her out of my life because this was something i could not deal with and didn't want to very selfishly in another part of me so was part of me wanted to commit myself to take in character in being her best and i could not let that way ultimately found that i wrote about it in an essay called the land between lakes which is taken from a place now earlier beautiful area that states and the legitimacy of kentucky here between two pounded rivers create lakes and the metaphor is that place between the likes of feeling and the essays and i'm writing letters about gender identity i grew up with a man who was sort of an alpha male morton decided to change the genders at the age of forty three and so there's that another era accounted for way to get that metaphor you know this land between gender urges of gender identity gender they know aspects so there's a series of essays one or two i'm sorry out there that land twin lakes has been published but then that's when we ran out of time

thanks for being here thanks for liking a good enough so thank you so much for having me here thanks audie for watching and dancing and all of your own words he leads it fb