A Word on Words; 2225; Glasgow Phillips

a word and words the program delving into the world of books and their other this week glasgow phillips talks about tuscaloosa jaros for or downwards mr john singing dollar chairman of the freedom from first amendment center at vanderbilt university ron johnson the welcome once again for word on words i guess and it is a new author glasgow phillips welcome to world word security first book tuscaloosa mr i mean i was an eyesore from california don't write a book about the most elusive well i begin to have trouble about it i know you say in the book is not in the air and the other parties is not really tuscaloosa that nobody there was it wasn't about me you have a new and tuscaloosa that's true of course that's true but on a site that said it down there because i have a family history down there and odd places interested me in certain ways author gonna my mother's from down there and her family is a lot of her family still lives down there and i thought of a good place

to set a book so i could try our new novel the vigorous a store you know you're not selling by air by residents of our upbringing had been back there from time and visit with family but it does seem to me in a sense a classic southern all i mean if you take the story itself so far in iran oh right way and eight has been a lot of tensions in the southern all i think it has a certain south on a plantation like setting rome but what what i was really trying to do is on their instrument and southern voice and it is a long tradition of that kind of writing shows not too difficult to think that that myself into on a web enabled the proposed ban on a change it a little bit so it's not just an imitation

that year i don't know you know even oj show that they i mean it's it's a story that is in a real sense of made for this time i don't know how i am i don't really know how a book that deals in a lesbian of directly as this we're in the middle of twenty years or more coming out now is that smart on his new blood the acceptance of it in a world where there is a gay community and where homosexuality out bashing is reality where defense a gay lifestyle is reality doesn't mean that the that this book comes up a fascinating time already is long overdue that those that those

on even that those were no longer are issues in our society so i'd like to see is moving past that but that that was a it was interesting to me to be older set a book home in the south and in this kind of manner until some issues that probably one of them though of as directly twenty or thirty years ago so freedom that i've been given by god and what i have you know nothing and give away well i think it's right now if you look if you just think about having said that classic solos not months it's a classic about perceived so livestock i would have to do with a black woman and white won both with children both with husbands running off together their life of their own and the

liver and in the process now i'm sure that must happen and my guess is it happened not with much frequency by you know there've always been very little scandals in every dear little closet in southern writers of claymore those most sure i'm not sure that they were right about it but the boat when people about the decades others with them on but what then you take gun the son of a white woman and it's his life i don't i wanted a lot of comparisons but kept reading about billy mitchell allegedly involving golf the overture i mean sounds are a splendid in for some years on sherri's ban on every young writer admits that surround moon i love those books was gonna unarmed my characters as a typical alienated youth and i think

home and the catcher in the rye jd salinger connoisseur of a paradigm for what that got a person's like and it's been real hard to get away from that site that point that there really identify where that most younger home so yeah you see aspects of billy mitchell go through all share innovative a hard time relating to anyone that they come into contact with mom i mean that's that's that that's the central thing about both of those characters are going i thought i thought though you go through was really put down and what we think of as a normal society people of that generation were thought of as a as a society in which you would not unusual to ring of charge over and then ignore the stress and strain and and and and divergent influences that mold in their personalities your character of course is not a normal situation and all i'm

in the dirty little secret is whispered over town for his father was a doctor who ran the hospital well known person around typically place cause with sheriff minnesota power figure is a fire for those women become become heroes for a veritable come all people to learn that the they're dead and story which is that we find out early celtic american home but ong they become heroes for him someone as example you can follow so that he can so he can take a step from where it is right now at the beginning the store so they can move out and so that's a little bit of a shift maybe elizabeth issued an awful lot of ships i mean i'm a new shift gears as quickly as ree dolly were living alone in the book and i'm falling at the on to the relationship between billy and the show one where the patient was

and i find it all the sudden i'm back with his wishes his mother her friend and they're fleeing for his father fleas father and i and you know i can remember exactly where the book i knew that he was pursuing red because it the first couple times you just visit them and that car there are many do you have in going and riding in writing a book like this it would seem to me possible for either to bring the narrative one from billie is president contemporary surrounding the tension and stress that he's feeling just get along every day is the grounds to chief groundskeeper at all is awesome cause he's not actually grounds groundskeeper a lifetime rare laden's chief at the

square but you know and go along with that narrative and an interview and you're taking us of all there and some leave you up was another saying you walk was in an automobile right oh that's not a disconcerting i do that all at maybe five or six places throughout the book there are two stories one of them takes place about twenty years before the main action of the book and so the main character billy is kind of imagining kind of recalling what was going on and people if it succeeds i'm a hopeless to stars pro one another in certain ways and no the final acts of the women on give billy some inspiration to have his life in an income a way still given inspiration live his life and they've gone away and i'm not sure whether virginia's crazy enough wow who knows what you think that's a hard call that i guess i would have to make every sucker for the two of us were to make what

mean you're i mean you created this you created this character and you were up in this hospital where she has been federal and incarcerate incarcerated and she's looking for a way out what bothered me throughout was was whether she was being unfair to our young hero sure whether she was manipulated and will the sex had become such a powerful magnet auch audio it can be that way but on over and as we get back to it but the right but it is fascinating how with really the bell the town pleading with him too stay with her best a weathered pleasure to take it to the great ball

well beyond her father's newspaper as a journalist i mean it's a land of milk and funny right there just to sit and there's the genie up there and then upstairs room only seven out the window in other avenues as grace sexual relationship their own there's i guess there's an appeal in the mystery to billy he wants to he wants to try something know and leave home the tried and true way and the internet get outside of of of the identity of its been kind of constructive for him on by his birth and his upbringing and he wants to get out and try something else which show things and write them out of virginia's crazy enough that it's a dvd to like you know and he still hurt by mike i think whoa was interesting for me you're out was to try and establish a character that was sympathetic but had

bomb had problems with the way he perceived other people the character imposes his own definition of what people are on their money when he needs them to toss them is a cure this way this is where you are and then but i tried to as the book went through i try to have them turn on him at different junctures and straighten them out on how long or whether not yet the writer to define who they were and so virginia and nigel his friend are the two and it's your character's that mom had put it forcefully question his right to define everyone i thought for a moment that at the end that i would say that that billy was about a friend or nigel or nigel was to believe that truth is on recovery and every thought that i think by nigel was his good friend been one to call his brother been one athlete with his past his own bad for the wannabe link by the fact that it was an adult mother

who ran away when we believe what he did not want to be known as billy rather it the billy couldn't grow up couldn't get over that right but it didn't seem to me that that the night joe out of his way i don't really like the palaces he did he kind of put some on the right track thirty and so on and it proved that there are relatively few characters in this book and it's a it's a it's a book that really deals with an aloof crucial brief period in the time of this young man when he's going through an enormous intellectual emotional crisis bunn and it's impossible to typecast some of the characters you put a welcoming his grandpa for pop up furniture hair weaving a pop up or a big family and you know i've known some good old mariner is he a composite of several people you know

share her no not exactly that definition for people my life of the old alike that unknown it does it just end dozen other thing that i enjoyed during was working on this summer curators you could say our types and one where another of of typical characters in southern fiction of the powerful father on wild mother with the secret passed on that is a huge assortment of young man a long question and you know the structure of our society and his relationships with other people on that but no the pleasure was in trying to trying to twist those a little bit and on not to make fun of other southern fiction of all because that's that's my favorite thing to read but to on you know to see if i could do something a little bit different not you know not quite as serious as i think a lot of the work has been for me how you and me you cast the grandfather as the son of an aging

guerilla war although so for vocal flourishes all abed rather than all the sudden when billy lapses into bad grammar his grandfather was older model of correction says that was a double negative share now there are moments like that that has been just operator and make you smile oh laugh and then you realize that there is a bit of a put on in the omen too sure but i think that's that there's a light on you know i'm no expert on south you know my family's been here my father's from their formal motion tuscaloosa i spent some time down here but on a line from your book that i think that that's something that really is going on we speak with people and they take on them the manner of their region but for their own reasons i think at different times of those you know those puzzle maybe it's a quick and easy laugh for me to put in there but i think there's a

reality i think a lot of times people are now speaking from where they really are and so i that's rather humor comes from the same where people are really standing there i had in this is is you know some adventure he you relate which was difficult to get through me health at work with e use only because there's so much scar tissue round his psyche that he's able to deal with a bizarre things in an almost routine way its first mate now in the process you get a really good nigel is a good friend of me when it comes down to leave the bell tuscaloosa ball is his good friend know strangely old tires has long she has her own jack arun and the couple is a different and sure i got the grandfather figure was gray it on

both my grandfathers pass on that my fondest memories over there and there were some other older people over the other related to me so those nice to have a character like that and they kind of provide again it's kind of a cliche but you know something i want that on donald a figure that could provide some love from your errand be interesting if and government is on their air when those deep trouble share even the trouble created by a pop those son really is father the naacp and when the police were after her region where and pop and in that his duty in an employer share his you know i think for him blood is thicker than now i mean the law and all the signs are thinking us that bailey as possibly on the right track

where his own son is maybe on the wrong track and following things in the wrong hands so the sonic incision standbys grandson you think pop will knows this song's terrible oh no i maybe it and there's a lot of things are left ambiguous in the book and i guess those are for i mean i have my opinion are used to them but i realize there's there's no definitive answer one where another in the book so on maybe i'll get my answer but i think almost everyone pretty much understands what happened on and they've been willing to maintain silence about it you know ask for years well i think that soviet jews politically sullivan ages and not that large do have the ability to sort of pull the zipper over the whole social structure and contain

the most evil happening occurred in paris dominant figures in the community were disgraceful harris as ross perot said crazy at the attic probably not the best metaphor for politics but not a bad one for some fish so that so that they sewed the seeds of the problems exist and evan went down those that exist here but nobody talks about globally everybody was right i mean it's another it's another old story bar near her i think maybe also it's another it's another convention i think of southern fact fiction that there's a big secure enough they won't talk about but you know let's speed as it was there that there comes a moment in the book when when virginia tells alicia got to say that one year date is on tour with her and to i'm pregnant and the way she handles the way you you create her dial of the

words come out of her mouth you make me think at times that maybe she belongs in that hospital for us or insane but again there are there she speaks with harney a man judgement and doug and almost the show there are times when she almost takes on the role of the mother he says something like this shyness is often mistaken for arrogance she says dover tree and eighty and then those words cohen out of her house mrs thomas staunchly yeah it was it was over and he gave me an inside to have as it did topple that i hadn't had before i would make a vague on intelligence and mental illness can often economy and often often loses in the same person so on his moments of clarity and moments of carving its own it's conner do let me ask you something and maybe i

can get the camera to come and close all on that cover the camera one would come in close on that that are now what he's a good car so that car alarm but the czar that's michael froman this you know right there next to me just be you know unlike anyone say look at a couple of the stress to recover so were real i am really happy you think that i did it the says something about oh sure you know i mean that was normal in this new law when i was a tiny island thinking about what my book will look like in and the cover of my book long before i ever started writing a book you know i have to have something to go home and not something about that this wasn't this was a little kid you know i came up with something on much much different than i could picture but i love what they've done with the typewriter keys in the cause these great

year parra what this program's about is not just the story itself but also how writers come to write your and the painful process that sometimes involved in that and sometimes not men and ben jenkins whose first book called first big hit was called some of the senate you are one day our only that he spent two weeks on the beach in honolulu and wrote some of the year you weren't around at their laws now on to figure out that were bought clothes on here something like calm here with brakes on longbrake are i worked my second semester of my verses from a senior in college a palace of characters introduced i was a voice that i can live with for a couple hundred pages and then after that i flaws with the next semester just working on the book it appears it is going to

grow and then a graduate from school and spent a few weeks on the country here of us and was used natural my dad bomb and worked on in the evenings i write those sections the six country in her memory sections or oppose them and so at about two am nine months but altogether by fed actually work assembly room but i think i really wanted and what to do with the land they were then on world my father but i did my father in this go and without tommy is sent off to a couple of writers that we both know that day that he knows i really admire you know so was younger and dom they're really encouraging so those those that that may need take the next step and keep working on it and on the senate to a few houses and guts and very polite letters on sanger you know there were rare post as many difficult boy on and on then a friend of mine jazz edwards who was all my classmates at school were best friends great guy

on was work in opposing us moreland sagan a call thomas a manuscript over and he'd see if he could get some i take a look at it and they did but the moon will sell thus we just we disappointingly gotten those women and how i knew i could only really because i wasn't i wasn't necessarily planning to get it published was hoping to but i wasn't counting on it but then by that time those actually sending in the hopes of time to come up a little bit so we're getting one rejection marriages martin a ragtime you know about the grounds bounce and some more overt and now if they get one lie can do with the images were caught and snobbery in our levees at you a couple of pages and this is not quite yeah that's right as warfare has remarkable aspect of aol ninety one pages in length which i find interesting because as you know and waller has written two best sellers the first

christmas encounter at the roof and you have the new york times bestseller list there are two books no larger list of top and senate and it appears to me that this movement toward a short novel maybe a day or maybe it's a reflection of the heart of a new young boy it's an attention deficit disorder that i see you know for two hundred pages book america when you could read a couple other books and then of course you go to that for me off that's interesting because it was definitely not a deliberate move on the part of the publisher or myself i've my first manuscript that i sent the middle of london thirty pages and on yet all i think that's right a million and sixty but on and eric there one morning when the senate was he when this one hand they're open for a fatter book that might be taken a lot more seriously on post and i was going through out over the move

on the use of a mouse and ed sullivan twenty bucks i tell you all right yeah it's on my skinny book people start with veteran armored well i are indian and more we'll all pay because it's a big store and then it ended and a good story sounds correct us also could be sure that it will focus on the solid crimson not coming in a pretty girl on a great range and they really are now as more of a good job of promoting oh i'm sure that to the best of their ability that they've tried to get behind it another thought it had some hard times recently so they have been able to put everything into it that that they would have maybe a different synagogue is you are competing with that house with other writers from that house to better distinguish river station they got it

right oh sequel on what you know maybe maybe something like that mesa been dealing with their child that so i started dollar billion didn't write that so i started out to write stories set in the present about someone ill be his age and then i said it back i just moved back a generation i was we were my characters come from somewhere back and establish them and that allowed me to not not promote personally she is so much into the story and just remix something up entirely but it bogged down and you know that's how well would you won't which he considers another book the final assault for sure i've been considering i have two or three real short relying on outlines for art the next novel on a right on a right now that run around trying to work done by real hard time settling down some of the sunsets and time on and the forces of today it in our tents and socialize much rather buy it's painful it's not terrible but i mean it's been

working out the hour glasgow phillips author of tuscaloosa has been our guest on a word and words ghost and then john see in color chairman of the freedom forum's first amendment center at vanderbilt university this program was produced in the studios of wbez in nashville