A Word on Words; 0882; Terry Kay

to the world of books and their other tonight terry k talks about your host for a word and words mr johnson publisher of the tennessean an editorial director usa today art the city i guess this very gay an author you've had now won four for office for political and i'm a winning screenplay for this is just wanted to find out and to dance with a white goatee is well reviewed widely acclaimed and there is certain that convoy they say you are if not the new voter id had never seen such regulation from people i know i'm thinking i've been called a typist too many times and that's a problem now you're right you're right you write with skill and sensitivity what a story where did it

come from i mean here you got so lance and be going through what we're all going to go through the fourth lucky guess it were lucky which is aging mean it is earned somewhere there is a blur but called it a rite of passage a national implications and a lot of this this is a it's taken really from the experience of my father had fallen in the death of my mother my father was a remarkable man and he really did keep journals he was a very bright and sensitive man i'm from a large family they were twelve members of the family and i wanted to do the story i wanted to this fateful as i possibly could examine quora and a large yes yes no it's real <unk> used the name of my father and my mother and my sisters and brothers sepp but it was so personally i could write it was through partially is that i spend more time weeping and being sad than i did right and i read somewhere that that was a doctor was indeed why don't all why don't like

dog that had this happened meet italy after my mother died just don't appear is strange hannah circumstances know the dogs would bark around and did nobody saw it for long times of my father he kept claiming the dog was there and was emaciated and sick unable to be killed or this time he's walking worms and walkers and couldn't do it himself and tried to get the songs and will become a hundred and five but that eventually sold adored the fact of the matter is the dog stayed with him for eight years ago prior to his death just before he died when my sisters moved back into the house to care for him because he was very ill and need it with a dog left arm none of us ever touch that animal and eight eunice you saw we saw yes of course and that the title didn't tell the white house one fact that that would go outside in the yard with his walker and we would have to watch windows and he would call this northern half chess and the dog would rise up and puts paul is up on the idea of her walker and my

father would move it and he would laugh and say she's dancing when she's danced with me the us the timing for them for the wonderful but just before he died the last time i had a chance to visit with them we were talking and he started talking about his wife called whitey bulger whitey and he looked at me he said son you know you know what why don't walk mr jamal jamal she was about to watch over nearly any a black girl yeah the navy as a waffle are coming nissan has a sense of love that i know you've told me that story this of this as of this was based on the two or three of the black women that i knew in the community they absolutely loved who love my family and an end i remember that there was an intensity and it was

i remember the day my mother died when that didn't really care came into the house pushing aside children and grandchildren and that that beautiful embrace of my father and just wailing and you say i'm here i'm here and there was a great moment for me to witness that relationship and that that that kind of response we've said wait a minute this is more precious to me in a way my father's feeling than even those of my children and grandchildren because here was a relationship that was that was a beautiful relationship of love that character myself i enjoyed writing it she yeah she says she thinks is some mythical about this is how the asian silently singing well i tend to think so myself and i will as i was writing that book how to represent that you know you can do it you could be absurd with it and be silly but i wanted to do it very simply very straightforward as much as possible of course putting a dramatic passages because it it is fiction or i guess the best form besides

faction fidel in fact makes you know how are the you said fiction is fiction this might be an author's note about their mate marian anderson summing up with fictional fiction and none of this is fiction but i take it that everything you as anomalous see hear think experience is grist for the writers of shot that you know i was talking to a college and how have you come do this come up with ideas and that and they were talking about these grand ideas i have is very large audiences are no no no you should understand to me at least the writing of fiction is to take a fragmented exploded and in all its glory but justified to start with but that's what i really difficult to in this book as to pay for the five murdered this really spirited of all because that was mysterious you say when it when you when you first introduce us as readers the light bulb and that it is a real i mean i could reach

out and touch your heart or about leaving me but then when i hear members of the family talk of course i am no it yet until mom and i'm not i'm not very gray and was moving fast on that time when i maybe lebanon and saying a white doctor but you know it is sin of gun i'm sure that white dome appears just at the core of disappear well it then i think i didn't really think so much about that when i started the book but the fact that it really happen that way in really realize that really did happen in action and fashion it did happen that way and i wanted to be somewhat faithful a bit as i've as i

continued to write i realize that was an advantage to this hole this time the issue of appearing right after the death of the of coral and write believe in right before the depth of sam that to happen in our family and it was a very very significant thing to me the dollar i did not think of it as a symbol when i was writing so much but since the book has been out enough talk to some of my friends and some other people about it that beginning to see as symbolism in that goal that i as a writer did not say and actually didn't intend but my my feeling i suppose is the same as most writers of the reader sees symbolism in the band and can explain to you the writer than you won't have enough sense to accept it and say yes that's what i intended it also amazon it's interesting as ever go into because siam is a person

for whom as you read along you must have respect other is about him a dignity and a year and he is a self possessed human being is yes on the other hand there was something tragic alysia about the way children feel about talk about sam feet after chorus of islam it is and that that i that the issue of aging did become an important thing for me in the writing of this book because i realize as i watch as i worked on it we depend on big issues not just the issue of my father of my mother the partial experiences i've had this must be a mission would mean many many people millions of people what is the dignity that is demanded of that

that person that's getting up into his eighties at five and realizes that he is indeed the final rites of passage i hope that people who read this book so yeah from that point of view also not just as a story but have a certain empathy for that aging process and four the dignity that needs to be maintained by those people who are aging but as children it was also awfully hard to say when do we stay close and we back away how we read that and i think a lot of children do have the difficulty that allowed to have to be don't care that you might say now living in this case our health or even that neeley is a black woman is a tie and they sort of thought catalyst oh yes for reality for relationships that cheat in a real sense as a bridge between generations

even though she's part of an older a lot older them are against reaching our cell that you never think about it is a train there is an age listeners very much about or very much so very much so i made i would present this character's one who really do have afforded within the family particularly with the daughters solace that she had boston from the tiny children another adult for their own children she still tossing on the bill runs out household and she is still real for that's exactly what it takes the place of the authority of the missing mother fans i have but i wanted a lot of a certain degree of when does this ever going to inform the children would never ransom that's the beauty of it it doesn't pass as long as an authority figures there they are going to respond to that and i think there's a certain degree of dignity and that and i think it's true i think it used to be to at least historically used to be true that that you did have that respect and i want these children to show the truth there's you know a

i guess those of us who always summer look upon our literature with a great sense of pride that feeling that there is about a special quality are special qualities that among those special qualities there is that ability to do with meth right to tolerate another worker that which is metaphysical even to enjoy it and to equate misery out to you in the context of a single story and not feel anything except real as i don't mean to be talking in circles and i understand with reporter about and i do do that rather than buy out that is not the southern i don't think the conservative circles

to cuba but this book in a very real sense is is in that line of the richard seems to me that is so so characteristic we saw the isi that i thought it after i put it down and then i said aging is not a southern right aging is a universal rite of passage and this white dog does not belong to those of us of this region but terry k uniquely gave it was not say that by way of suggesting that is despite the universality of the event it is a real sense of silenced or how you react that well i really do believe this about saddam ordered to you know we yeah we have fun with that term they were in new york talking to new york publishers southern literature means one thing ever and south

pole and the southerners solidity means another thing basically ugly there are four basic kind of traits that belonged to southern literature to hope for in this book and those four things to me or this family and place very important what we call oral history but i think that will not take a political gossip because i think most of southern literature comes out of gossip it's not they are sitting up and you know that they're doing that photo of someone singing once upon a time this happened in your family but they're either that the mother saying did you hear about cousin so and so when the bio community we're really talking about one particular family are very important and the other thing that i think is truly influential and maybe in many ways the most influential thing especially for the laws would welcome also and then and those tiny isolated communities religion i think i agree with all four loathing and and i would have to add that in a woolen and every one of those

four pieces of the of the mosaic abuse of care is an ability to the inescapable the inescapable reality right there's no question about it and then and so i am is part of a religious experience so if our family it is it is if you buy very nature at its place that's true and i retired i am and the right and all of those characteristics are a pro this book which is not to say that similar items on the region my not experiences but does in a really be of the world saw what i think so i don't mind it i would like before people didn't read anything that i write and say this is a book about anywhere but i am a southern i would not live

anywhere but the south made their chores many many years ago i love the literature the south and i'm a southern writer i have many of my friends are contemporaries who don't like to call themselves southern writers and they don't they just let you know how much are we losing a lot were losing a lot i think so much of the reference points that we've had in the past were losing the rule south where so much of this literature developed began with this is being lost to some degree it has taken him organize the stores are moving into the citizen and at the end of the suburbs and i'm not sure we'll ever hold that character that has had in the past but there are things that we have not touching you just mention one how many white southern writers have really written about race new novel was some talk about maybe we don't have them i think it's a wonderful thing that i think is the thing that is going to be explored and the next several years nothing to be revealing we've had we've had wonderful material out of black writers about the race

relationships in the south are raised relationships that related not only to the south but for the entire country and the southern white writers and to have been afraid of that topic that we have been here but they were going to get back to that we're going to examine with a degree of honesty that is also we can say we can write from our perspective we can do it and i think it needs bees to be done for a balance of sorts as necessary to that i think there's another great southern thing that we have not looked at well and that's the beauty of decentralization of that unit system we grew up in i don't know about your background i grew up in a small small farming community on a defined forty acre farm these were our boundaries and they were very very certain boundaries when we got outside those boundaries we felt like we were sort of comfortable and now those boundaries we need to centralize have consolidated the school

systems we are communities that don't have the same indigenous personality and culture that they had one time i think that is a very very important thing and one that will be examined maybe is being wiring in some years back got john edwards and wrote a book called americanization of dixie for some fun with the idea to vacation in america and i know that had to do with what's happening to our cooking now what's happening to our quality live with that and to our environment he didn't say exactly those terms but in effect a small robot lawyers assigned schwalbe it's over los angeles and he wasn't here a decade ago the state assigned traffic jams that her in manhattan in the morning now i'm running in the morning and that was a decade ago that he wrote he wrote that ants which which i think makes this all literature

which makes this all literature the unique and distinctive it doesn't hearken back to the character of another day it is it is written in the now to be true it is influenced by time always we were talking about a man born in at ninety two minutes so its influence but all those those the environment and the culture that that they had experienced in their lifetimes would be different what was the reunion they wanted to go back to madison dna and ammunition and this was this was a fifty year fifty six and again that was everybody wants to go back to the korean but it was all about the alien the only pope south close quote of course i i yeah i know you've done a good youth thinking in some commentary on this phone ms hall love this whole question of thoughts

of soften his literature you don't you don't say a time when we won't be able to identify rioters with this region that over that question i don't know i think that i don't think we're going to become we will lose so totally those traits week we tend to think at times with loss that we were i was talking with a with a reporter for the boston globe not long ago was in atlanta to do a story on the rio olympics that in their lives and i mean i certainly was going to mean it amazes me that all are here in the city about the olympics is an epic rock no one is saying here could be a problem as a bow years it is a very strange thing about atlanta we

proclaim that we are an international city an issue with barnett wright we shorten proclaim that reason but there's something very southern about this behavior also if there's anything wrong with this issue of getting the olympics it's a closet somewhere that's a southern trade we don't talk about our mr garden tool as exactly than any other is because you know if there's a problem in sense unless i go to win and you know how were about them are about to end on the the other thing about the book that that is important is that the twice we are forced to confront this man again this is dealt with

more selling which does not mean more sensitively a second time i mean when he calls his daughter and he's talking with on the phone and he's also gotten a chorus i don't do this don't do this which is the us i have the feeling that the children were really ready for him to go where he went but that may mean that's not fair you know i think it is true and i think it's events that's a good observation i eyed go back to the experience of my own father's day and you know in the book i say that he had written his journal and he had bought i want to do like my wife ellen to die of a heart attack for what this sudden assault so the gun by quickly but he didn't he had cancer and he lingered in the wasted in the eighth inning hurt and then for that a hypodermic needle that would put him to sleep you hal i know that graham will grab anybody's benefit the cancer and in the deceased yes i'm in

you write powerful way of the experience of that scene that scene that was michael and i was under twelve children and the family and then my sisters and brothers would absolutely object of this statement and i don't blame them but at the twelve children of them might have been closer to my father than any of them because we hadn't really is almost have an agreement from many many years that we would be if ford indirectly and there were times when he would be in his and his advanced years he would decide he would do something he would have planted cotton crop blues eighty two years old and on a walker there you can do this you do the plowed up the other children would and wouldn't dare this place and with that but i talked to him a lot during that period of his death i didn't suffer the anguish that my sisters did with him always but we had some very honest discussions

and ice all that waste i saw that great dignity being eaten away wasn't just the flash and i do with the dignity of what to do with a private eye it was all those things that he always wanted to be and always had been because he wanted to work while i guess it's only natural in that in the end of the book there's the sun there is lewis told the white will be there the senator i would and when to bring about i worried about that particular passage and that seemed the war was and i suddenly taken something that is a delegate to begin with and made a melodrama and it was i wrote it and re wrote and rewrote it and re wrote and i always went back to the first time the first writer and then i turned it and i said this is it is either going to live or die on the sand are i now like that ending a lot and i do not think it's more dramatic i think its hopefully it's

going to show something poetic about the spirit of the fallen and what he felt and i didn't know any other way to do it and they might be a good idea for us not to tell readers worldwide no no that was mild some terrible yes i mean i really would be funny a be fun to do it but i but i think they'd be much more fun for them to run by the book read it and as governments elsewhere but by having but manning's cut you off and indeed only i interrupted you the end of the story as much as i interrupt the fall which i've which i really would would like to like pursue them the inability ie to have to deal with that loss of dignity says is a problem i think of the cycle

proper it is intensely personal for every for every family that loses a parent in advanced age it's interesting that won in your family and one in your book was close so many others at least in the mind of that but one thing that one person losing your life the other side of it of course is how all their father felt house until about going about the riot a pass it certainly was ready when the time came without any doubt he was at times seems to me he was hallucinating that he was it was a night and that was taken from the experience of my father my father used to tell us when we were very young i will live to be a hundred i will not die you have to be eighteen years old and i

remember him completely sane i'm not going to make it but it's all right i tried some have said something about this particular day that i hadn't thought of and i really didn't like you said terry when i read the book i thought about something it's never occurred to me before i've always said i did not want to live video i don't wanna be alone and then sell it as a great tragedy is a writer well you know not in it was cause i had not thought of that as as a possible impact of all that i think about i can't believe i feel that way myself and i'm not sure to have really learned something about lighting of the book and i've always been afraid of what you might add harry kane dance with a white dog has been our guest anna were downwards featuring john sicher

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