A Word on Words; 0855; Lee Smith

a word and words of progress in the world of books and their authors tonight lisa smith talks about fair and tenderly your host for a word on words mr john c compiler publisher of the tennessean an editorial director of usa today the latest film once again welcome to a word on words i guess that's a day is certainly smith we welcome two weren't words you must be delighted about the success of parent and the ladies i know i am on fire somewhat surprised because in many ways it's the most regional book one could ever write and critically the first sections of it are really very heavy hand now i can also from the point in the town and founded the line and they have raised as many writers as i am it's a it's a it's an interesting i i would call of an interesting phenomenon because of because it does seem to me

that thirty two unique art form the way you've written this book be what you've done really taken your build his career and applied it to a fictional person and then mayor a letter writer and the latter makes her the story and does not admit it is not a novel nutritional sense there is not nothing that their stands outside the letters hour and my guess would have been that the critics were put that down as being too unconventional and somewhat off the wall and but you did and i think that tone it up near an oral history may have sort of appeared and possibly for the year i'm an hour sitting

and i'd be really interested in lang the character stake in our history tried and in that tried to make it right it as if it was spoken but in versailles tried to ride it as if it were the letters of a man and that's what i was in a way you create it roll who is a first and a fascinating personality and to write out of the heart of the appalachian region which is country you know so well it was difficult for me at times to keep up with the wooden shoes correspondent i would find myself slipping back i mean there a memory of that l i knew whoever was because the end i knew so it was seven ian but it did but their with slams world wondered now where an arrow across the starting

out with four wry and allied has won the house how common that is among among readers but also i wonder whether a good serve at it is interesting that but the critics and got by that send me i guess the test is if you never now that it's good enough to pull you back in a meeting earlier two ways to go at that point clothes put aside or you go back and find out yeah that's where i ran into that person and so you can so you carry our talk a little bit about her work she come from a marine wife where you walk out in any art now is that this yards a lingering war and what happens a lot of times when some i gather oliver payment will come you now and they'll sell off everything else and sigh i was at this on this lady had down and her granddaughters where they

are and there were seven eight nine years now and tupperware they were still in our step and one of things i was down i could have a word they were selling a box containing our letters betsy had ever with a drag if turner how lifetime and nobody in the family was in salem the letters adds could not blow it and south come are up and ask that the waking and rate of understanding that since his youth lives and abdullah mohamed osman the hallway again raiding and and there were many of the letters taylor says there's total it then recite them and that we're not a literary at saint i were not even particularly well written but by the time i got through reading and i just now i can name our story of the sisters i'm much more unilateral and they their homes because even when they would be clear breaks between letter source and then they would go into one ham

and had just got really interested in the idea of somebody who would be a natural artist up a natural born writer but that pregnant early and didn't have an education and now they instantly that was her follow a writer with his that i feel really strongly about lining any why i wanted to write a book that would be about writing i have published the end it would just be about writing and what that names in that kind of communication and sadat from basie disc box of letters well speaking of answers speaking of letters and how families react to them reminds me a lot as i was reading very recently a team of davy crockett well they're fascinating but before his family terminal the archives les very crudely in a gross offense against the history and

literature scissors excised all the words you know he was a he was a tough thing backwoodsman and an end you really lose some of the characters and all of them until they'll lot about is a family name but and but you know in these letters grammar are you kept cheering the accents adam and grammar and the bad grammar in a lovely day a widely inside that if you go to the true to the culture of the region that warmth that she would have been a person who knew i read write and could even be eloquent oh they'll when i added

in a man that she was a person who was a natural artist and that she was very very talented and had that wonderful kind of sensibility but she didn't because of the circumstances of her life allowing always that that santa belly had rammed would be her letters and say totally that that's true of a lot of women politically a lot of women are in the earlier part of this century in siam i mean they were the ones that were about you now because the audience of called here the ones that wrote letters the ones they kept the records the ones that wrote the ninth in the family now more than you know did cross stated into how that kind of guy and i think there's a howl other way of thinking about our when we think about women fell i was really trying to kind of like a five minute there women why an airline has sunk and that it's important for the wider not a prophet writer is someone who is why not someone is faint promise and you know the other thing that the get lunch or is it long before women took the

rap for being part of them as moon are benefiting from the flintstones when there were strong exactly a very staunch lately stalin and in a way i think one of the reasons i actually thriving ally and there are lots of reasons why we write what we write and i think for some other sometimes we write a character this were a role model for us you know i had actors miami rally the really really strong one and they were viable third this way ever comes up and you know a man im living in the middle ages fell on my fab there's a holiday if that inhabit that as well actually i was trying to have a mother was that he was lying about ten ounces time today create semi they can tag it whenever i was an email how automated be watching that book which was a man from ice and while on the land and so and it's the major theme tonight is will find the kurds and time

and life and sort of sand county well it's completely different from may but there is a way to reassess the most autobiographical but as per family autobiographical in some way that i cannot he says only a few months ago just to point to the third string and you said so long ago about playing a person who while writing got pregnant early which reminded me of that let him which oddly row first of all tales many of dollars to worry about line is leaving and then shortly thereafter about the discovery of her pregnancy and you know we hear a lot in the family of conversations that belong to date about abortion we hear it's a

this young woman not well screw a not very was in ways the world really was so illustrative before she knew it and we can prove that but we're reminded that in that if your were to i'm reminded by the road that if you are screen from knowledge and not told of the facts of life that were quite obvious a cap on and indeed in her case a doctor said get up there and i kept his curtain let me take a look and to a lonely office and another strong woman so the immersion room said know where that scene come from oh that again i was writing about women and critically women in the man's where i'm from and so often we have been prisoners denied or fate or what kind of family

i had to take care of it take care of a caravan of biology and i just i had non several well i grew up with several laurels that i thought were really really small are an indian they were pregnant and they were married and it made an impression on they said the particular as particulars of the slain or imaginary map laid off and i just wanted to show now it's possible even signed for somebody to they come i fully realize are some familiar a strong lead even in the traditional allows them to become the next to be a really strong they do i think it's really hard to write a book as if china to sow a problem about trying to write a book about somebody who is a fully realized person a successful parts of the person within wanna be like the nights are facing conflict and we usually write about people who aren't more at odds with what you say that that we run up the

new young women used a really smart how i thought well who were prisoners of other cultured in a way i think that the many critics today say it's impossible that a child who is a prisoner of the ghetto would not know about pregnancy or know someone all are unfair and there's some return since their own mothers that world now on the lowland that is a candidate now and it's male enhancement talent she created the doctors saw them all was all knowing personality that i'm not an answer to the situation you know to fit into any situation now it only thing about this today for a saving about leaving the doctor is a lawsuit that's right but my guess is that in appalachian the doctor still maintains some of

that randall wise man to the extent that there are still partisan appalachian that nearly a still it was so little respect to send some rules of power i'm a fair and that foreigners are really a part of culture isn't changing is that fair well there's a lot of there's a lot of that that sunshine say that like brice tend to go right to discriminate to what you were just sign right now arrived at mt this fighter from the can again every wake and i haven't heard people at the spillway us protests think i have family life course which included information about martin trial and so on and i mean so bad and haven't and everywhere else that this is where they made him as an extent they're protecting the five the ryan harrison and it you know they fell wells and

polanski is back partially because of geography that's one reason has a mine intact settled iceland in tight calls or anything me why moore show with it backward or are disenfranchised and the deep sorrow but there's not like a romance as rice or some you know when people got in there but it's very easy to say some of that with suspenders you know on his corn cob pipe on the porch and did if a human family how as a key figure and i'm going to say it's in the country because it's been slow wave at just to say s s pot characters to say this is key to say yes it's funny and not to say assess as needy as we are visible college on some small book called stinking creek well you know the scene in there when the television crews are rumbling through the countryside end and all of sudden one new york accountant says

ankara says to the cameraman from the truck he looks down the seas three four children playing and begin with the pigskin he says stop quick get new show that party ship and you know and and you know and there isn't so so that that portrayal of the i think that was found lowndes way of saying this is a new york sees abject poverty and it's really strong vision of exploitation as opposed to addressing a serious problem ryan weldon and more stereotyped than the bait or just thrown in with them and we have problems are completely the other thing about appalachian it strikes me as being important is that because

of overwhelming majority population being white it does strike me that that the mountains and been unless subjected saw racial strife that has existed elsewhere i'm not shy right yeah no i liked it i don't know that the what would you say then about the mean there aren't there are moments in in and it rose correspondence oh when i wondered about about that and what would you say there is less racism novelist in one eye not necessarily our interests and also when you're right at the bottom of a vacancy get it out of their incredible poverty i sat there is the mayor of this town where they're black people and they're worse off their way are so when the nightmare giants an eight hundred year

nigger jokes but i never saw black guys and then saigon the car grab the richmond with our family and our sky or nabokov that allison is a rose letters and it's not overstated representative the real life and yes they are one as wife of the mayor but it it's very abstract things about coming out of one of the way that they're somebody's love or the name and start to type in that surrounds you do as it is just not mild sell out like you would find in miami on edge ignited a terror group of people rise of them now they move remove were around you move your insurer for not to the big city to city year and then two for now

and that i had something i wanted and he shows up in in the inner lot of ads on that and then but she comes back to show before but now it is really as she comes back and tries to fall soon as the entire farm is very hard to farm i am eighteen he died saturday with the man's it's almost impossible to michael leavitt i can still tough and one thing that struck me about her was that when she moved she was still a great deal of simon reflected in the letters about our move but then after a while and it's that that the harder for the place became first was full and then almost regretful of time when she first learned to the company translates as did everybody when

they first met to the country and this is why he defines with the house in the house you'd get financed with money it was actually square in it a furnace with paper money thing now and the campy story now anyone don't have enough power bills run up on email and initially course they can stand the tiny get israel is right now my aunt you know i use a human rights and our lives then there's the whole history of the event and you know a novelist had not supposed to pray satellite later you're gay and ran and then daffy of a strong lambastes on the myth but i try not to let a tie covered the book and so that's why pilot informed from a defined a real strong always like having is that it will pay attention to the character needed to flip him and others that all the debt holders of the whole love the issue of people having me on

having me and the lab from buyer but others say robbery more predominant way of life appalachian than anywhere else in this country and that has resulted in more out migration glacier then they're not a world and again that's reflected in it rose letters m a where they goes as is what aig i think that's exactly right and i'd been one who's been one rob reich of the music that music is really sort of as often as not the music of in the appalachian ian now inside an urban detroit detroit city is there is part of that and that i always remember johnny cash was on this program the novel after after men in white his last book was out and i was talking to him about his childhood and iris arkansas does

not play to buy land hard and happily town was a devotee a town that had become something close to it so i really you know i really feel that that that they're all flawed people now are second third generation away from appalachian who relate to and he wrote what she says is there i mean really heavily and moving toward the end of her life you know you we would take her from from my job for nearly two to pretty late by that time she's got different people to correspond with to report to do on and i found myself particularly late in the book wishing that i could read the letters that

must've been flowing back now iran as they announced in twenty eleven ha ha ha ha ha ah legal hurdle of the letters to the lenders to gm added that and it would be at the dinner and was it ever a world with every man's grip what were they ever part of those working man's group i have for all while a warrant and then i just realized that it was taken over to set in a stand that was clearly than they are but this is the first time this has happened today with hiv that i've heard other writers my well the characters and family when i was whine the va began before this that he had taken off a semester from teaching to write about that to sort of said as donna wright made images this was it was like notice that than a nanny would write it away mike white monopolies i wanna know why letter that when they can irrigate you decide that

their wealth on this so she did get away from sailing and takes a heavy israeli allison anderman of all this as the first man i have this right now i can you might get out of this but you're at your next book is already in the works now to come in and february and it's a collection of stories and as ray eddy it's kind of a departure there are stories of the contemporary sad and want to embrace their contemporary you mean deeper after that more like miles or phrase barb that's not k and i felt is a button publicly as my eye and then i'm a network it's me a man bag levy the eclipse me on monday at navy leslie honey like the cover i want to come and the reason i ask is

because so many authors i know don't they say well it took away from me and imagining do have a wonderful actor and i can really get their legit different than the fat thin slice knowing that like it's kind of the main heads the failing of the book learning about buttons or competence and utilities you're in those decisions solely office and that'll fall and then what about the solace of the salute but short stories is complete what's next writing one liners working on math denser it is eerily given a mandate which brings me to another question and that is i mean i hear an awful lot of illiteracy simulators see a television or even in the younger generation they don't read they don't write they don't care and you're teaching creative writing a generation must be terribly frustrating prosper what

our eyes as faith they do some hamilton raiders their passionate raiders and the convention about writing in a good writers out like we're talking them as the overall broad spectrum of kids have grown up in front of the tv you know i ask where like on the cell phones of television and i think that is the problem is the inability to deal with a major edit than one flickering on he's going to defend just as good as i am or warm and there were while it and i in fact i can say people so why can't the number of young writers that i come across europe is really interesting i went and i handed them for the gerson an arm of the stamina to spyware that are not aware that weeks they've been in for yet isn't that bad there's plenty of town there's just as much as there ever was a matter of the reading public at the hall hands

become more letter and that i mean an average freshman clients and a large study of ardsley athletes freshman at a large state university and says that i will know i have at any given clients kids at night willie high on their man college sports are now carrying it on their anglers who were incapable of rating because they were incapable of raving bomb anything that requires a society interns because they used a situation where a thankless job and thirty minutes and of course they're not the ones that go on this show up in their rhetoric by the filly eight uprising but it's really interesting to just try to get underway and i liked it i'm ready you know cause we all like to express their sales in particular nineties i mean we have them mystified that we don't allow at least near author of fair and tender layered has been our guest

on a word on words featuring john siegel this program was produced in studios of wbez and television nashville tenn you know