A Word on Words; 3712; Frank Durham

fb liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers literature ideas for more than three decades this is word on words johnson hello i am dancing in the once again welcome to word on words our guest again this week to find her after a career as a professor of physics at tulane university fight turned a creative writing here again today to talk about his first novel cane version frank welcome wanted in the world where it's great to have you back and i

guess i guess for you as you might've missed the last week we should bring them up to date on what we are and this is a book that links ancient past with a contemporary prison i mean we begin with cain himself and murders of brought us an in genesis is condemned for ever to wrongly earth orbit or say overseas eternity and that was the condemnation that was and you take that little bit and now we are in contemporary louisiana is relieve who probably live older than me and two young women on genesis of there with her and they are in the care of a bright sensitive loving young woman named lindy who's had a tough life on a long

and she's trying to get along and she thinks these women's somewhat they say over these is delusional and it comes down another big begin to think twenty when she showed it gets on the bay are maybe nine years old maybe slightly overall for lenny life is the story itself the fall is dying and evolve our season has shrunk in louisiana and she has a mother who ran off with a man on a motorcycle when she was very young sunshine and she's struggling with as she has a husband who is a minister who was on thursday and comes to divorce from him

on to sign those one from the past one rooted in the present and you bring them together and makes the work so congratulations to you again this week as i said last week i'm just going to grab my interest pulled me into it sometimes against my will help me there it in lightened me in ways her it entertained me in other ways and you are first time although i want to ask you among about your writing i send you have to give your writing things aren't ordering this program about the soul of that writing some some sentences and paragraphs and really that unless the really the report on the talk about the art of writing the creative fiction

or do you think that if you come from well at a much lower level criminal everyone there a professor right along even in the running wilson's like papers and they're not interested in science history and and related topics sorted some a couple books and in the bubble and physics one of the differences and i just decided i was going to try to do the workshops and over a sufficient untimely really really work and it then you use it then you think you know what's going to happen in the first summer springs out of who knows where it and you're off does such a long time for many other animals have written word that can write for fourteen hours away but that that does come from who knows where your experience that yourself or you think you go out on that chapter

preventer i mean it's that the process takes hours for overthrowing the process takes over share with our new is what the process produces and i'm learning to put this in context this one read the full a song that signs them and taunting pastor for the patio where gigantic banana leaves or clapping hands the sharp older of nutmeg and easier and then when the men strung under the point or whatever had gotten in his eyes in the lead stayed inside the room in the wrong good there were stone as always covers pulled up to his neck henie did watching what i was proved the room was rick rectangular sienna gave with no priceless isn't only dusty brocade drapes a window frames that one they'll build a wall that sets the

scene the scene that occurs later in that book as mindy remembers her presence in that room at that time at that really vulgar time bomb know where does that come from well i flew for summer of this year was there was it wasn't entirely tragic but it was that was deliberately haven't so i mean this happened she had this governor did what he did and along jefferson lived it at the movies so the commander here in houston and coming anyway but then it adds much better talent as supplements she's remembered trying to make sense of that conservative and so the mixture of direct memories and awareness that she's messing with memories is says is what i think makes that scanners saying work the metaphor tomorrow's this is no no unless i try living your honesty

and less funding and traumatized mccain canine store and when the levee with them out there in the book one name of baylor became living on the city and less time getting into a lot less memory as much be managed rove's lot of vanishes out there in the press over as you would steer par inch of mixed grains and done i'm pleased with that allowed in hearing myself i find the form of their lives i mean you know the new game and we never know and now began as a gondola i mean where does that come from alaska that question isn't over yet another characteristic of the vitriol around theirs or relatives that after a lot of the last one another villain you know that that happens when

you came to feel pain in the us well and the worst of the most difficult and dangerous in ann arbor important stories that were there that are worried that when things really go there the tornado and an hour to get into that road ahead to a vote on the brown for the moment though luke final thing for hours every day for a couple months those of control moments of working in a consistent look at that at it and to resume where i have been and there was an upper hand in some kind of external help which was brahms a wonderful record for the people and then but that but generally speaking it was a lot more pedestrian than this write it was seven sayings and knowing that there were the musical background perhaps that it's an explanation you unusual in the end and wanting to give you very reasons the

metaphor is why didn't the memories of ex husband's flatten like clowns carbon italian teams that swung around and then there and then there is this you would think a person would finally run out of talk ruth to the contrary was on track to wring a hundred cents from a life's conversation now i mean he is a metaphor has run all through this book and they jump off the page that have people who are really young like three writing that is different than for and it's a vessel owned a compelling pain and then there is and this this is then didn't

rain to at all about the flow of being the grateful and the air was up and down in the ocean trying to cement with the stuff today it put you there and it's it's this sort of writing that i think makes this book remarkably different my garden has died lindy says without telling me to buy again wright is the facility to do that i think that this only sets them aside and your background as a physicist a day believe it came from their own because of all arts experience it come from a life experience about uncomfortable writing workshops you attended all only probably well you've said they helped

direct it do your thing that's missing in most popular fiction today i mean there is a plot there was a theme for some time some part a second thing and perhaps in some cases a third but you know it's it is basically dial long conversation tied together by paragraphs that are spare and devoid oh metaphors that view of relevance to the story and when it is that about it's it's it's because of that that i asked you to come back for a second week so we could talk about your ability to write to start writing dr discover you have a fun when you sit down to write how do you

write you write by hand processor or processor and an under a lot of rewriting and it's i'm not one of those four second wedding pay for various gangs that control over the shoulder with an apparently not a really a good habit like for a parent to make some sense performer to the next then you said last week that the lottery writing involved but at the same time you said though with the polish a chapter before you move on there are limitless for starring in switzerland although every prisoners to work in his or her own the actual one now at the they're remembering alan maxims about exactly what you have to do them they only applied of people and their work for my case the latest take it slows work for me take it slow was there ever come a time when you

sit down and work words don't come to be processed there was something called no nothing no the promises being distracted by life itself instance some got their current time goes by we were occupied with something else and that wants to get yourself to sit down than something that is going to happen or sensing something good is going to happen which means do you want something that you didn't expect something that was like ok this law's person on an element that until i divert it's like it was waiting to be set in motion new insurance really a character who gave it away for you it came was very right now that that the sending packages mixed up ringo starr's beginning of right now go back to

the biblical proportion and two and of the things century encounter and that against what is really like those those hard to manage to do prison and then the difference between him as president the person who's pursuing an indenture softened backwards and then in the central as in that that when that didn't happen and i had a worm or a what keynes reaction a bit of that is very different from having his fingers his own philosophical self and it led to get away from the times go places you don't expect you know the things you didn't anticipate she would do in utah about originally certainly should get out there but the problem has been schools could leave there's a long road to sing i hadn't thought about mama see if

they would be there must be a place in the world for ordinary people not just these oil with a method for ordinary citizens have some there was a meaning to it we talked last week about eve still live with these two younger or old women older by far than like maybe centuries in them and they were so on there comes a moment after katie holmes celeste and wounded ultimately the child dies enjoy this one and then many in the presence of stone and certainly there's nothing more religious theme about that

minister of the gospel style but but there comes a moment when they confront gay and she in stone keeps trying to say you know put a knife to turn you in and again keep here not hearing him are responding more to and so and she is saying don't listen to you don't talk just don't talk to me he wants to get locked up and want to give yourself up i wanna find out what happened to an end and that is the butt did you know that was going to come a moment at the outset did you know that was going to come a moment when cain and landing will have this confrontation and and that he was fine and so first trapped and then because they cannot digest gate and neither and weather them from and what point does a writer of great fiction confront scenes that he had never

imagined and then how do you deal with well the character witnesses that was pretty early on and then that long target and in that case the same sort of helped get along that's an abandoned gas pipeline station worst were there are these buildings and all this equipment it's a dangerous place to go inside the darkened sarkozy arc and so i think it drew depended on the fact that that that's a kind of place where confrontations might happen that would take away from everything but the congregation has toxic waste filled barrels i think though and got it til this moment that probably took the setting is probably what made it work out that way on the once it's happened you think yes that's what concept that's what happens what would and the fraud in implications of cain's relationship with eu

and they pop up all over the place as i go along and this is a long time before freud ever thought about the relationship going the boys and their moms and mothers and their sons but it's they're intentional accidental oh maybe you don't acknowledge now that they're there well i will acknowledge another just thought of that because whenever i hear so and preach about about the first to jefferson of johnson's no reason to think about another really important role for you given obscurity <unk> is awake and we set about really true what you have to do after their are ejected from the garden and my reasons a dozen so says the man was from in the garden and that has moved outside and she continues to feed the family

doesn't say that didn't happen so he didn't just want to displace his father damien n out but i hadn't thought of it in those psychological principle from another metaphor did you know at the outset and certainly knew that lindy with banana joe marriage but did you know at the outset that they would be that these different there and the question is it that the first bite did you know she witnessed edition what is true is that that show is capable of dangerous behavior ha ha ha it is yuan like dangerous into this is interested in that situation with her perhaps it's heavily infected ex husband but the us to choose a she was a strong that we see of dollars and her will all all age are not very strong and as a young woman she was very strongly to it you can stuff

came from philly able issues from trying to reverse with all this time and so yes i knew the newest rotten you are a fan of the study the alliance's my god i guess it's a tithe other people are extremely engaged with each other then you know that conversation way and then in terms of jealousy envy than their cases bitterness that that their engagement is for control your passion and not in ireland they wouldn't because i wouldn't i wouldn't occur limited to southern lebanon for hillary to know that there that this is capable of a lot of a mistrial after all but you were you didn't know you were going to throw it in the shower and then as they say the day and of the sack with now i would like for you to read for

us just a bit and we talk in advance about those little of that age when to set the same and then read this is toward the end of the epilogue the less of king's body monologues the spiral of many years but that war led to the gulf coast and finding venues will vote on it and a stolen a big fancy ocean going on which is and isn't this memory this once a sailor in a rather and it is a recent fort bliss not name but the forties is about to the atlantic and just doesn't come on his addressing that grimace and brother brother abel has to deal with the fact that i was never really the enemy there and and so it was always so that europe asia the tune of seven we

kind of flip it on the foot for my fingers the last drops of label of it i must understand how two such different persons as he and i sprang up and more hassle family true that an animal has no duty to itself and therefore cannot fail it's time a man may fail and no it's freckled mother cannot get enough are planning another returning from within her body within her body like was able with in our body accept that although it has caused more pain in that ever i did her and damn demands a sigh or a wife a husband that follows those at the naval and i shared equally all the qualities of the venality we're twins so much for the point where it was you know a man has himself and no one else there will be someone says light enough one parent suffices for the law wife had her will to dominate until the care it served less free airtime that she readily passed a hearse on the cold brutal resolve it was like and he was not

only a son can be a mother's son or he may be a father son duo not the boat like a crop in and cultivated fields all such reasoning is overgrown by nfl's is to do with the feeder thousand troops it is just as well for i have grown tired of teaching so wishing to teach mother of failing to teach at a table and shaking my thoughts are no fit listener there some other yet i must harvested determination the newborn or c resemble the true parent one that there was a newborn it is not even a proposition says newborns have no trace of the room one reason ellison has a child to which version of an ever changing parent this much i know they're set an impasse all utility and heroes incompetent unable if ever proof was needed that a woman can carry other than herself offer they will fight and maybe my mother's son my mother

leaves on i am nothing of my father had him though and memory mit faces and our bodies like enough there stands a proposition of one outcome i am he'd say it that way why then are we a strange because we're like no to prove that we are like requires more subtlety that i can marshal lawyers of fodder for not reasonable conclusion the demand for various options that argument i'm stuck consistency can only be found in simplicity and simplicity like silence does not exist it is the same conundrum that drove me fran it with the ground and it's unreliable and his tears and the sports i have no brothers there's a certain i am no man so when i get me my mother she will tell me if i am hers as you're welcome you had a long way to get

inside is it hard and white that i said we had just a minute left that's when one of over heavy and i think our viewers who wants the show with regularity know let me this is an exceptional book an exceptional interview they don't do it again is there another book well miles is not very good at this point in our hope of to the morgue in the second novel quite different it's about not about was women are there would be was remembered about him guys who think they're know what they're doing and really mostly know so it's like another simon not like not like a big way well i hope to finish it and when you do i want to come back we've run out of time frank thank you for being here to share cane version and thank all of you for watching one more time on the single word on words keep reading