A Word on Words; 3822; Madison Smart Bell

fb liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades this is word on words with john's mom dancing at all welcome once again to award on words or less madison smartt bell to join us again this week the author of thirteen fourteen previous books of fiction including soldiers join him in both and he'd back today to talk about devil to dream that a powerful novel about nathan bedford forrest the most reviled celebrated legendary of a civil war general that you are

madison think well we discussed that for enough to say oh nationalist revolutionary there is a running tradition here bust is there is a if there is a fugitive legacy all awful long would save you are today the modern and let now the fugitive poets for the ports along little controversy only one great writers are concerned now i think it's a great complement they were either fees of agrarian riders were were my models growing up in particular abdul i will hire and how to

say no i think there's that and then there's also the unusual facts for somebody of my generation that i grew up on a working farm that was fairly small small enough that i did it a fair amount of farm work myself as a child and through house two so i had an experience that was the experience of that movement was in the nineteen thirties trying to preserve with without success but that shaped my consciousness in a way that can lead me into the subject devil named because it is the dome nathan bedford forrest as we said last week best known and most despised for fort pillow and a plan before that the fact that he was a slave trader on and you know like i'm a little

research has some people you read the book feel that idea is at the center of the book and that was the protagonist but about my feelings about him are really are common next day i had some conflict in writing a book about naturally that successfully the conflicts that soulful think of flicked a historical moments i was raised to hire this person and he was greatly admired them here was my injury while in the end while it's wonderful book better prices for a company which has but for treatment of force was not really an object of one lionel felt the forest to the one the war for the south and that the south should have won that war ii i don't think hardly anybody believes part to them

anymore but on the view a farce it replaced that is built on a cast in the constellation three things it reprehensible that the us unless way is life threatening for toe and his association with the kkk and i'd actually like to say something about about the years of history with the clarinet for everyone billy city founded this isn't actually true role of the differences academic he was invited to assume leadership by his former artillery commander john morton during reconstruction when the clay was transforming itself from a bunch of random practice into a terrorist resistance organization ah with two girls on wine pressed a festival the other not one goal was to recover civil rights for former confederates were stated at the time have and the other was to

ensure white supremacy and the sad part glenda reconstruction them ahmad has nothing to do very little to do with other organizations complicate care ku klux klan that the crop up in the twentieth century that are just in our hate groups fascist acres pure and simple reconstruction plan i think it's rather more like to the plo or something like that they're a terrorist organization resisting what they and most of the people are self at the time considered to be military occupation by hostile power after you finish was no i have to take a right as a novelist license with his wife and reduce as we said last week only that proclamation

evolution has come up and it's all his conscience others in character after you take us through his his courtship his marriages warriors set the end you give us say a factual chronology of his life including mclean years well i've done that in the end and the novel's metaphysician revelations first understood it for myself so i can keep track of events and i do that for that reason it's time to and secondly because it does allow the reader to distinguish fact for official you say you did it first as are as i'm as a writer i feel that was important especially in this book with his cousin fantastic elements to it so the reader to go to the gun violence and its illicit this actually happened in

things that are not are not in the chronology are probably made up of a writer i tried to write just attacks a sort of afterward and fellow started to see instead but it does allow me to the kkk is what does have to be the first people think win win win for its name was brought up in early twenty first century and so that allowed me to the states and facts about that and those facts include that way voting rights did return to former confederates the klan was disbanded in broken up on forest order proudly and it completely disappeared for forty years after that forrestal was rather more energetic and working for racial reconciliation a deal a couple of things that were significant

more southern than another other four we didn't talk last week about fort pillow and your caliber bow is as far as i know and i know a little about it it's a really great deal with sexual and bazan charm of comes in early and bull says the major in charge there have been other than an influx of black troops set for below what the veterans other is a gunboat a listen to this lovely firing into confirmed arrives it comes on the bill comes along with in both there's groupon away the store worker

you know is this fictional version of their reviews for june cohen says his conscience show almost as its conscience it's going on down there that killing people it's turned into runnings about in your mother's love it has a seminal moment in the novel follows who abandon of the noble for four people talk about hollywood about creating that balance in which is so crucial to his life's inevitable well for pillows the middle of that that for instance a revolver for between being a slave trader in the head of the kkk but carson wentz understood now is is that black troops were massacred during an engagement sell weed because they were black and

i think that's true actually americans say this letter that's not the only thing that's true that the arm what west tennessee at the time they become kind of like the balkans in the late twentieth century arab sentiments were were very divided between north and south and become a lawless place there were really regular armies tear there were a lot of atrocities going on a lot of violence against women fort pillow was considered by confederate seventy five thousand entries region to be a town of robbers roost bradford who's the commander until deliverance was actually a local person the very unpopular and and then cruz comes in with about two hundred french black federal troops now far as sudan and this raises for our few weeks fighting there for

engagements and raising men from the country and see well what was that he was taking in these partisan fighters aren't there a lot of personal resentment yeah one of these units first to certainly never shown the fight also induce reserves and perceptions to wear on victories without a fight when the church he would be at all these tricks for making is forcing larger than it was that to do today he summoned a fort occupied the black troops to surrender to avoid the infusion of blood which was the term report back in those days forrest forrest was among the oscar fan domenico in there to ali well he actually didn't have the force to do that so he and his men have been face down by day by a black fighting force for the first time ever and you can imagine that they were probably

but happy that the air force also got a horse side out from under him while he was written ordering early in the data and and that always made him or a kill somebody period which he often so that was his moment on the day four kilo mr bruce fein the major bond he was he was the commander of the black church he was killed last night very early but that for some reason bradford decided to continue to issue a communications under those named believed in outright bradford cellulose into mania but when he arrived at this left bradford with most of his forest these black troops or even really know and who have no particular is no trust them are they negotiate for several hours then for us was sending the same message we need to units of surrender and strike your flag or i'll be obliged to come there to you know and eight when do

it and so far as i think felt i cannot let this i can't let the bluff because again to have to take this fight so they storm that they target who believe there is a young this rough hewn character was language that is inevitable he speaks when even angrier with curse words that i said leslie because we talk about those i sometimes on the vocal to follow as he indicates they hear your version of it is up this is as magnetic i kept going back and it back to him and reading it again ito the captain that young captain hears went on to the set and he just unload spencer is almost

booming alberti and threats and danger and then it comes out in beautiful prose the captain lee writes it and presents it well it's hard to get comedy out of fort pillow that i really like that moment and i think it's it's affectively true for us that i was very plain spoken in usa where he and he could read and write psalm nine are now brilliantly that the there's some internet communications of innocent survivor the spellings couple of the grammar and certain that he had in his retinue a captain anderson who translated a lot of his correspondence up i translated back up for those you just joining us i'm talking again this week with madison smartt bell about his new book the devil's dream that devils train you write this book you talk about

style you write this book in a way that the issue of flashbacks and flesh for was at one moment of an aging forty or fifty four in the moment a minute in sixty four with his brothers at one moment and his brothers and then one of the neil is a lot of us if any briefly but his sister but not again marianne is married to men and there is a courtship for was talking about talk to me about that style of the outset he'd gotten away as a reader as i went on it began to flow and with david exciting and at that point the

chronology occasionally became important thing and if you're going to have very convenient options when you say out of the writer it was convenient to meet it you typically get a list now i'm in a little flash gordon well my motive for doing this was that was just practical i didn't want this book to swell up to a thousand pages and then it can have on that but i do want to cover for us the house price of his career through the warrant in some places lower court before some awesome listener that was just right episode that i thought were most important protestant and figure out how to assemble a letter and then it seemed to me that doing an outcry logical order would let me organize these episodes fanatically terms of

juxtaposition what comes after a while and an accurate donald miller they're certified but he's portrayed in probably a dozen or more different battles and went as certain way are our archive same amino i wanted that one of my devices for the book was yours climate in the war that he had had twenty nine hours a set out from under him and kill somebody in hand and again charlie manuel into a sought after and one that'll end of the episode where incentive mr where where he continues a charge for some twenty minutes ii with his finger stuck in the jaguars i have is already yours shot bleeding to death or said this is true so i thought that's my moment this is like the essential

that i wanted to make the book greatest of that of that far is charging all of his fingers in an early on in you in twenty years that i think you sort of a metaphor it seems to me as we go for a metaphor you know he was devil may care helmand to win this thing i mean it's only work for so it's never really done or do you think it's a source alive and charging the holding a finger in jordan or bagel and so if that's the condition of the war which essentially it was then at some point the thing is going to come out the horse was going to fall over and then they once and that's odd so that's kind of the money it's a moment before you're keeping this journal are alive just by the force you will really and ailes tried to make that moment stand out and embrace the whole world what's next for you do not it's well i have several

projects the one that's of interest and thus far the world is made book about a meeting of two people were and better known than the other the better known ones andrew jackson and long pants and woodward after the fact he has an encounter with a person variously known asylum a machete ready go and william weatherford about who was a chief of them the rest of course three quarters in and it there's a so the fast lane and they wear red eagle was to see if he was actually three quarters scottish and ancestry but since the creek in his work of matrilineal society he was culturally a hundred percent and in it he was the mastermind the leader of the four men's massacre which was ah sideshow to the war of eighteen twelve it but it gave provocation for jackson's campaign against the creeks and were

braley defeated that or shoot them to kill a lot of their leaders poet reading or the violin although us and as people were scattered and destroyed as an extraordinary thing which is to go out and shoot a deer throw on the back of the stores and just ride into jackson's scientists at a general jackson and now jackson's death jaques a continent and ready yourself and variously known as ready who were william webb well for now i hear it for me here and saxons bass and not an easily startled managers jaw just dropped when they sit well if you'd been brought to me in order to know what to do that's only going to the ten and they talk about this conversation comes in troops and ready to have rounded up to remain distant from other red states and they made a very big deal for himself ultimately but they were they were beaten and then jurors such as that that i can actually caught let it serve

to go i'll get the other one i don't know how to say anything about this it doesn't make any sense either to me so when you write is in a jam i'm not really an aside some parts of it are difficult i think are a lot more easily than i have that care facility was send words now so it's it's not laborious for me is these are really to get up in the morning that if i'm not traveling are infested with similar problem out about five days a week out first thing in the morning a work for nearly three hours the blue been in that cheer until the bubble burst so there comes a moment when you just don't come i came i came into work are considered a job outside an early in the morning i'll write late at night or i close the deal and to get my family you

just want to know well the fido like to be nice places to visit to slice of the powerful ottawa every sport that i think what most people call writer's block is not knowing how to do things and they speak no i didn't experience like that between the first and second novel where where with us mina miserable year being unable to get to do what i want to do and i finally had to understand except that i need to learn new skills it was i realized that i was able to start that i never forget their lesson that andrew aisle said something very valuable to me as an order to impose you put yourself apart from yourself and enter the imaginary world that i think the people would have writer's block somehow lose their ability to do that our bus would be practical for a lot of occupations but

i spent a lot of time in a dream world anyway i'm very comfortable or are having trouble getting there and forty hosts only wanted to vote for him the knowledge from the barbarian and create spencer and as i've mentioned him before in this program ten pages of a book there he writes to a formula that is the same formula saying it's a different mystery but the second but the same process and there are others who say you know i can't do anything to us burton movie i know i'm right well it's not a job for me it's an iowa where i live every morning in front of you hollywood used a well that is on our writers of francis a little bit differently and then

not another very different person from angelo norman mailer said souter always remembered that that has a difference with flavor novice writer and inexperienced riders the ability to work on a bad day a study into the work day ended well brad davis when it's not coming naturally found an art with a serious you know yourself to do something that i think is our writers who admire particular industry and for their progress and sent a top flight was like robert parker laura lippman someone other all that even if the books have accounting formula they tend to be fairly ingenious plotters then they are disciplined crass and what they mostly this craft and crafty can do on a bed that is it's like our country you know good days there they're completely eliminated by inspiration or in

fact where you have to be of the work on the eisenhower ticket you know finally whether jackson and the next warmest on video the broad but fifteen years come i'm planning on being here hoping he'll be here at all one is ward flies by when i'm with you thanks so much for coming out of no great pleasure thanks all of you for watching and dancing and all the word on words there's a burden