A Word on Words; 0826; Gregory Mcdonald

round delving into the world of books and their authors tonight gregory mcdonald talks about exits and entrances your host for word on words mr jon seaton dollar publisher of the tennessean and editorial director of usa today once again welcomes the world works singing we're going to talk to author writer and author of many books somebody who has been on this program before and the literary life gregory mcgough welcome toward award and it's a great way to be or even john it's great that daddy had a talk about exits and entrances which happens to be the opposite of the way that most people say it was a book of stories i guess you know you'd call a book is it fair to call a book of short stories although there isn't a volunteer i i i have the conceit that is it's a book that maybe isn't a

technological advance advance into technical writing it's there's a section of it which could be taken as a play here says a forgery there's a novel that there is a short story that it's something i'm showing off a little bit were trying to like you're entirely self i am i don't know that embody two and has been able to call for a total change of faces a writer with sochi i don't mean it's easy greg mcdonald and i congratulate you on that i mean if a well known movie star were sitting where you are i mean that they will immediately say fudge most of our viewers will recognize your faces place really created like but but that chevy chase has now made him famous all around the world

right a major issue or rich or what but let's get to the exit sentences because since medieval town in maine and there is a theme that runs through this book it's the only thread the tires the stories together except for an occasional reference by one character who met somebody in another sign look right that the scene john and the judges really is the theme of the seven ages of man with it is the final logically the first book of attack forty four books which i'm calling maybe as a joke time squared in which i am i am playing with the concept of time anybody who has any

brains that this part of the century is of course concerned with space and i being a slow boil in the class after they with time instead and the concept of the whole farm works is that their perception of truth of the world of ourselves changes depending upon how old we are and where we are in this century the first ariz the first story in intelligence and anderson starts with a martyr in the georgia parents of assault in the early part of the century as a young couple and their attitudes regarding a very hopeful america very hopeful future come out to see you again at the end of their careers when he's retiring and the country's changed considerably and they have gone through maturity and there is you know other thing i know i was

you played it you played a year the needle game was there i thought because her father my father was a man who for his age was tired of it all seemed to be tied to one out to judge a number that conversation in which she was talking to a man young men with your husband explaining to him that her follow this distinguished judge knew what was to wear a shiny suit he was a self made man who had never gone to law school that's trying to judge and that was not uncommon and they are early days of this country to find a judge who had never gone to a law school who had read lol or even in the early days of this century it go was it was was not this find goes because many people who had studied

all in all this is before tenth century a joint venture well into their in their later years when i went from the first story to the second it was difficult for a moment for me to make the transition because i asked myself someone who is this other names were there but they were calling each other mom and pop and as you know just felt a bit like they'd always liked to be called mom and pop meant romance in a way and write all and you also have the young men older and now it's nineteen forty reporting that although he was the first machinist of a car actually designed it and then the basic work of that he was passed over by graduate engineers because he had no education the country had changed that much and within the span of his life so it's a the book then continues to the point of view and

maltreated youngster who escapes into his imagination let's talk about because he is for me the most fascinating character you've created and yet without any doubt i mean i don't know how many other boys they dreamed to the extent that you're young man daydreams but for my part i did you do i can remember for daydreams of mourning which is so for the end i mean he was and he was a military leaders as a pilot i mean how much do you attribute the dating service abrasive feelings that too is a month on false entirely and of course his failures dooms so forth

is it's a there's a certain point in your life when you're very young when you don't understand what reality is new having learned the details of daily living in which you can escape the fantasy and it is your protection that's your shield we can have a teacher who turned to do to maybe you view and you can completely explode this and one of the fantasies about being the great boxer made public whenever and a chorus really volatile violence and your loneliness through the big game i think that's fairly typical of an unhappy child well i'm sorry i confess i get it soon after that was a while ago the annapolis my parents had a lovely relationship so it was not there but that didn't happen and something just ten or twelve years old and not being in control and not you know being a victim of all circumstances trouble economically over the truth i do and i wonder if i wonder daydreaming

in that question is his moral it is more common for young boys and girls i don't know i don't know but it is the fantasy life and you know you have to give it up as you get older as you realize that you'd be an eleven year old what was going on absolutely right and then of course in the next story of quicken or you see the young soldier of war who was not an awkward oral his views then dressed up in prescott is bringing into a war situation a tremendous amount of religious baggage and moral by good his followers of offending of preachers of well he does make a point just for that

and service on the tennis seems review repeated that they were enough ministers around through and study the text without knowing the texture of existence there for devising the border go to war ii you know the chaplain i thought was compelling personality human figure and a truly humane thing what courage it must take to knit that no longer have the answers understanding that and says are cliches i wonder though on whether it's a disservice to young soldiers and battle risking his life but you don't have any answers i don't know if it's at the service he

was an honest minister at that point having seen a nervous young soldiers going into battle to not lie and he deserves respect to that point and of course the the idea of the story is that that band goes through the battle which is terrible and those think some interesting things through those and in the end story writes to his follow this family the poignant message given to another chat you say god suffers gods of compression compassion god such as i am by the way you're right and i'm wrong compassion and sizes well i'm showing off on your way out the day of the

day of the president's sat next year the holiday challenge whether i had read her book and to live through two or that i would know it well i just have to ask you a couple things same important to me and first of all and the initial fence friend pledge main family is well from fletcher i do miss well from flint this is very much a mystical more than anybody but they're in on foot puts the stories told in the same publisher the spring out these books is bringing out the nine flexible touch books in three trilogy use such chronicles is simultaneously when i get there i cannot possibly imagine how the same publisher would do they mean these books are

so much out of character of flesh and i mean so removed from the character fledge that a publisher who so fletcher as resonant as an attractive commercial venture and publishers are in business to make money must have had a real vision and to be able to adapt to the change base in great gulps i think that you have a vision and of course you know i'm fifty one now and i think one the reasons for doing this with the floods books is so that people will see it as one great big novel one is at seven hundred and fifty thousand were just at this point something couples comparable to a baby and i'm being really considered here tom jones or joseph sanders it's a bit of big

picture a small unlike any other mystery series of one of the swan he received which has its own beginning its own little it's on an arm of the ministries within sustained really by solving the characters within the ending of course with the character reflected in the last four pledged to in which you finally get to know something of his parentage and his moral commitment i am but you know john at the first book i wrote was more in this plane than an industry running scared and so that i don't really think that i am i'm shifting gears toward anything new and really going back home in my writing that i've been working on this book because of tensions as for thirty five years i was one of those teenagers who at the age of sixteen or so was able to actually conceived of such a thing of writing about time and

people in time as i grew older and the sections here have been written twelve fifteen sometimes twenty times tom so that they have the spontaneity of near the time of life in which i wrote them and a roof and i hope the increasing skills but it is interesting that that the year that that the revisiting occurred in a new setting at the time you gave a pledge he really moved into a rural scene jewell farm well everything was conscious intentional the world to live which was published last october which is the last story in this chronology that the first book published i'm not sure that was a wise idea but i'm not sure either but it's the theme of exits and everything but what was the book that i was going to write if i

succeeded in getting to be fifty and at a track of all of these characters all of these years and so you know the time came through to bring this thing home and as you'll see in the next book really players you see these people as young struggling people in boston new york and paris and early sixties and the the lead character in in the world to audit of mcfarland is very definitely yearning for the columbia falls which he season it's tuesday and tuesdays saying oh that'll be in trouble we're which was to stage an atonement begins saying right here next to an inconsistent am prescott so they're seeing them fondly on the on the farm and in tennessee is appropriate that's where i was going and mentally and physically

by one of you know janet is you all know it from this but if you read your last quote the world to otherworldly rat line which isn't the last book for your read this book he would know that she turned out to be a solo i thought you knew him and then trust that turned out to be a an all out more about them just like him a lot more understanding what you've been through you on letting you say that

because even my agent when he first read the world to one segment i really won't take this man by the shoulders and shake him and said no because we are and i'm so get going and i think that as you read griffin coroners as you remember players you'll see much better word tennis coming from and what he has done and become to survive with fear and trembling you had misgivings i think he had misgivings about your project after world who i was there you know darn well but i don't want the chair with my face i was so rattled i think it was an impressive to me coming down to tell us all about a new i just kind of applied those doubts even after thirty five years of planning this project and after we writing popular novels into you were famous

most infamous orders as it as salsa i mean why so were you having those doubts and well and i was warrior in security interest bubbling over i was thirty no not all of her in the calm i was having i was profoundly rattled i think four four three main reason is the first major online christian life was falling apart we're going to hear regarding the books and career is that i was quite sure that some critics are going to say that i would rather have fletcher what is this garbage it's not fletcher regular tally don't want and you very nicely to late sunday afternoon for

october eleventh that people will say that anybody uses that would be worth listening to what was a great option the second thing that worried me is that on the advice of language commissioner vigilance she suggest we published last clip first because it's the most contemporary and she thought the most success of that i'm not sure that was good advice and it struck me that the critics would see the world to it as being much to conclusive as a novel stating explicitly too many things that i think that i believe that i think the characters have come to believe without the the three books leading up to it and as you just said you didn't like or understand then empress got too much in a world to widen you what prompted his tail now you begin and it sounds so if we had published i think it's an intense at first then you would've come

along and for the world to act i think it really was my dream is that you really world to watch when you read these three books edison and his american heiress why sauce and then you go back into the world to work again and see a whole different but i really think thank you i think they have to do which reminds me and save my copy of a worldwide saw no you have to get your second one could sell a lie about i really have our i really felt that deeply wonder at it is if there was a there was criticism that i feared would mean that we were so it would've been from a critic who didn't understand where you were going with your work in ireland didn't appreciate the advice from the publisher or who thought that the publisher because you create a character in world to why so

many different characters but one pakistan's out my mind who knew it was sort of the father of the bride came to town courageously dying from aids in and gillette in until it was appropriate the rock concert that you creatively i fear that some critics might say oh commercialization not understanding where you're coming from and looks like red meat dollars taking a tennessee farmer to cram every possible conflict controversy and human emotion into a novel and that they ideally a single wanted to get into the john i think i think it kind of electrical outlets and publishers weekly said that they said it was a soap opera and i was very upset about it and then a friend again coming down saying what's wrong with that people love so

well i i have it again and i thought that everything that was in the air was part of a fascinating stories separate and apart from the rest of his body were good times square well it's a time when stallone teta talks about it is because the military is ethically and four and there will still be another year or two or three or four or five before people even those who are following the books in character series will really be able to put together and begin to have some critical judgment about and only then will i began to hear reliably estimate is that i've done you know i think because you created deflect the flesh or was it world series of highly popular and the very narrow commercial

books and because the movies were so widely viewed you probably as a writer had more feedback but you were then most offers almost fiction writers and absurd for sure what sort of feedback at getting on time squared along the feedback that i'm personally deficient time square and has been extraordinarily good liane near times review was short in action everyone very bad and i don't mind that review with women tonight you're going to rely on it for most of the big big deal review the los angeles times it was half a page was actually stunning and greatly appreciated and in the course of being right it being a very the highly praised book i agree with that completely share

the the year reid is atonement they find the characters than fascinating and there were no more about it about them they want to go back another passed to see not only were they came from from what the ideas are where they're coming from me they may love the idea of a world too wide of people who knew each other at the degree later did not violate come together in middle age with their children are there people who are all looking lay on all farm in tennessee and try to figure out the relationships as to who really love to even whose kid was whose twenty five years later regarding davidson entrances i'm fine and that people reacting very strongly to quicken coral the story of a boy at war who is bringing a moral and religious conscience

they are reacting very strongly to the last piece on so everything's which is the tale of the old man tom was thinking his story over with help from a third person telling the truth about the story along one man i know whom i respect very much indeed a long drive to take care of the home the linkedin and stopped several times and the owners tried to read again being so hard hit by it he said which pleases me very much there's no doubt that footage became a cult hero and that as the author of that series of books you became really a lyrical figuring out a following old books that they provide shelter

the russian to the newsstands at airports the selection of talk go after last time to leave you here if you would be if he would kill flesh my question this time is you are able to walk away from pledge i'm not sure you going to be able walk away from times square i'm not sure that that is possible for you to kill these people even if you wanted to nuno john the technology is contained there these four books and that's when a beautiful story i will continue them for its people again be the end of the idea it issue i'm sure tom and other way you know i didn't feel threatened and wisdom there was recently news do you understand these people macdonald author of

exits and entrances as ben our guest on the word un works featuring dancing involved in this program was produced in the studios of wbez and television nashville tennessee