A Word on Words; 0752; Dr. Herschel Gower

A word on words, a program delving into the word, a word, a word, a word, a word, a word, a word of books and their authors. Tonight, Dr. Herschel Gower talks about faces in a Nashville arcade. Your host, where a word on words, Mr. John Sigenthaler, publisher of the Tennessean. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Once again, welcome to a word on words. Our guest tonight is an author. He's a teacher of writing. He's a critic. He's a biographer. He's a novelist, and most of all, he's no friend. Herschel Gower. Welcome to a word on words. Hello, John.

It's glad to have you here. Thank you very much. The book faces in a Nashville arcade. It's a book that has a lot of nostalgia for me as an individual, and I suppose that when you put the name of a city on a title of a book, immediately there are concerns that it'll be a story with too much local focus. I find in this case that culture is universal, and I'll be very much surprised if there are any readers of this book who find too much local focus. Me granted, Nashville is an international name and an international city in terms of its musical background. But you've taken us back here to Clark Templeton to a time when the country was struggling to get out of the depression.

You've taken this young man, created this personality. You've put him into an awful lot of scenes that I recognize because the names are changed but not that much, but beyond that, I think that there are towns across this country, particularly across the South, where the names on institutions may be different. But what goes on is very close to the scenes you detail in this book. Talk a little bit about your own concerns about that. Well just to follow up on what you said, I do think that that Southern has a sense of place, you do a wealthy with whom I'm not comparing myself, wrote an essay with that very title, a sense of place, and we do have a kind of concreteness you see in our relationship to place.

And I think this is fine, and sometimes you're quite right, it does not go beyond local color. But finally, once we establish that sense of place in an awful, in a story, then we can move on to move on to the general and use the place as a point of departure for something else, something important. And of course, as you know, what I have tried to do here is reconcile opposites in the life of this 17-year-old boy. He is confronted all day long by certain forces, in the city of Nashville. Now one force that's very strong in his life is the classical. He goes to an academy, say on Davis Academy. He studies classics, he studies Latin, he studies geometry, he rides streetcar, he passes the Parthenon every day.

And there is that image, you see, of classical symmetry, balance, order, and the figures they are on the pediment of Parthenon, a smooth and clean and beautiful, but the people who get on the streetcar, the people he encounters in his daily perigrenations around Nashville are quite different. And they are gothic, they are grotesque, some are. And so what do you do to try to reconcile the opposites, the Greek ideal, the abstract they are represented by the Parthenon? And then the faces he sees in the arcade, which he likens to a gothic cathedral. So he's 17, he's been started taking place in 36 hours, and he sees a lot of grotesque in this city, and he doesn't like it, and we don't like it at 17.

We want things to be ideal and beautiful, and certainly abstract. We want to build the kind of world that we want to build. Well we've got to face the fact that there are two different worlds, there's the world of ideal and the world of reality, and I was able to take that second image out of the cathedral at Shark, and show that here was the gothic mind, the medieval mind, the medieval, the generous medieval Christian mind, representing the world as it really is, and the gargoyles, the misshapen figures there. So he has come to terms, and as story ends, well I won't give it away, but he's on the way.

Yes. Let me ask about the structure. Three days in life of a young man, well actually from Friday noon until Saturday midnight. What you really do, you take him through a sequence of events, but it is an effect of focus on a whole life within the framework of morning, afternoon, evening, morning. You really sort of, you really share the personality, the family, the interpersonal relationships, but most of all you let us look inside the searching and the searching-minded conflict of a young person who's trying to go beyond himself. What he asked you to say, the headmaster says to him, you see, when he feigns illness

there, and he says, I'm ill, I guess I've grown up too fast, the headmaster says, well Clark sometimes, you boys are so anxious to grow up that you overdo it. And I think that's what he's doing, he's virtually, he's trying to grow up, he's trying to find values, and the world is very confusing, and he is very critical. This boy is not always likeable. Oh no, that's exactly right. And young people can be extremely critical of their societies, their families, their families. Their families, yeah. I mean, he doesn't really like some of what he sees very close to him, right, absolutely. And this is all part of the reconciliation, you see, of opposites. He and his father are quite opposite. Yeah, well, I don't really get much of a feeling of that reconciliation to all the very end, almost a postscript, huh? Where you say, well, my father was not really the failure that he thought he was. Well, now that's the daughter.

Yes. Now, yes. Allison, right? Allison. Allison, the daughter you see of this man, at the very end, Clark says to himself as he goes back home, you know, there's something very funny about my father, and about my father's way of looking at the world. And you know, there may be something very funny about Clark Tim. That's exactly right. And you know, that's the, and that, and in that moment that you get the feeling that the reconciliation is taking place, that he is finally able to look not just outwardly, but inwardly toward himself. There is about this book, and I don't want to, I mean, it's a fun book to read. I mean, it's really, every, I don't know how young women grow up, but I do know something about the struggles of young man growing up, but I think young men have a tough, tough

time. 17 years old, I can remember my own childhood, and going through this book, I found myself sort of bouncing my head off, offcatcher in the rye from time to time. And not only anybody ever had a catcher in the rye, it sounds this book, we didn't think about his own, own youth, and it's impossible to read this for, for a person of my generation to read this book, and not go through some of that same compressing, how did I react? What did I say? Was I that critical? Was I that nervous? Was I that introverted? Was I that unable to really see the world insecure? Incitotally insecure, and Clark is my God, he's insecure, but there are times, you know, when you think he's got it all together. I mean, you're right there with him, you just think he's, well, he's coming, it's going to be all right, you know, and then just like that, you're deep in trouble again.

Now, I guess the question is how does, there's all, so while there is a real world there and a real life there, and a real personality there, there's also a metaphysical aspect of the book, and I don't want to say anything that frightens anybody from reading it because but I don't think they will, there's almost a surrealist backdrop for the book. You may not even be aware of, but you may, I'd like to know what you are. John, good critics tell authors a great deal than what they've done, and I can't think that I had any surrealist intentions at the time. Of course, I will say this, that this book is in one sense a kind of dialogue between fundamental Protestantism, he's a Baptist, and then something larger and metaphysical.

I will say that at the time I was writing this book, I was thinking about a very serious change in my church affiliation, and maybe all of this is in the background. I did make a change, and maybe this book reflects that dialogue that I was having with myself at that time. Well, I once heard a great lawyer say everything in human life is grist from my mill once I'm there in the courtroom before that jury, everything that I've ever experienced, everything I've ever known, everything I've ever drawn on, I have to put together when I stand before the jury, and I have to evaluate how one experience will affect one member of the jury, another will affect another member of the jury.

I have to weigh that against the totality of that jury experience, and it seems to me that a writer, particularly a writer who is also a teacher of writing, has a special burden in considering what is grist for the mill, and I suppose that there is so much of experience, not just your own, but the experiences of people you have known that becomes grist for the Clark Templeton mill. Let me make a correction on one point. I teach fiction, but not the writing effects. I teach introductory co-workers. Let me say, let me say it this way, there are people who take fiction, who go into the study of that, dedicated to learning for the purpose of writing. You teach in a school which has a great tradition and a school that has produced some great

English department at Vanderbilt, is a department that has produced really some first rate of writing. Writers of fiction, and I think anybody who thinks about that department, and those of you who have been in it for years, really relates to it. Not just because you talk about other writers, you draw a wealthy and folk and others, but because many of the students who go in there come out, dedicated to writing, and so I don't want to be technical about it, but it would seem to me that it would seem to me that in thinking about what goes into the making of a great writer, it's inevitable you have to be very careful in writing fiction yourself, you have to make sure that what you have said about the writing of fiction is something you live with as you begin to

produce fiction. Well, tell you the truth, you see if you teach fiction, not creative writing, but if you teach fiction, I was put off for the first 25 years in my teaching career you see by how great folk it was, by these other people, and I had no intention to ever to write it off, literary criticism years, biography years, short story editing, edited Miller and Holmes, The Hokes Done Gone, but I didn't, I wasn't sure that I could even write dialogue, you see, but this child of mine asked me a question which triggered this fiction, and so I went over to my office one day in library, my carol study, and there was a legal size sheet of paper, and I said, you know, I'm going to write something for Allison about writing streetcars because I grew up in the streetcar generation, and that's how it got started,

and I got this boy on the streetcar, and he met these grotesque people, and I got him to the Vondome Theatre, and he would not let go of me, I had to do it. You know again, those names ring bells, as I go through that book, a name will jump out at me, at times it almost got in my way of reading, because many of the images of 1937 are in my mind, not long ago John Edgerton was here, and he was talking about a book he'd written about an old old man, he took the old man back to his place of birth, and the landscape had been destroyed, and he said, the only place it now exists is in my mind, there's many different scenes in this book, and the path in on is still there, the streetcars are not, but you can envision where the streetcars, where the streetcars were, but so many landmarks have now been destroyed, and a few of them are there, and a few of them will

be remembered, and even though you have to translate this name to that name, it's still there, and so while you've given your daughter and her generation something of a gift, you've also created an hour of nostalgia for another generation, for older generations, who remember how it was, claimants, and the arcade, and the arcade's changed over the years, you know, it's not the way it was, the mayor of Bell buckle Tennessee, his father had a store in the arcade, his name is trouble, and his father had a music store there, and the mayor bell buckle Tennessee relates to this book in the same way that I do, because there are, it's a trip. Well, you're very kind indeed, I do think that sometimes the reader, who is so familiar with these places, is distracted, and he goes down his own limber lane

when a certain place, you see a certain character is mentioned, and that may be a hazard, Charlie Scriden, a third, read this book, and he read the manuscript, and he wrote me a lot of which was very funny, he said, it brings up memories of Nashville in 1937, very strongly, and I've never even been to Nashville then or now. Well, now that's what, at the outset I said, that there was universal culture that I think emerges from the book. Let me ask about in the structure of it, the letters, the letter at the outset, the letter at the end. You jump there, there is a time frame jump there that is important, and I think that the story could have existed without that, but on the

other hand, you added a dimension, particularly at the end. I'm glad he said that. I tell you that you're worried about it. I felt that it ought to have some sort of preamble, some sort of frame. Now, I'm not alone in this because Joe's Conrad in his Marlowe stories has the older man, Marlowe, after he's an older man, go back and tell a story, youth, for example, and he says, this is the way it was. This is the way it was when we were young. We sailed the ships, we went to the far east, et cetera, and he's telling this story, you see now, but he's telling you about a later

time. Now, that is a kind of envelope technique that I felt for two reasons. I'd like to bring it up to date, you see, not let it be just Clark Templeton, but Clark Templeton looking back and writing himself, you see, and he apparently wrote it in 72th, that then. Then another thing, and this may be a little bit sneaky, when the point of view becomes a little bit non-17-year-old boy, then I can excuse it, you see, by an old man. The other thing is that I wanted about, did it ever concern you that by using identifiable names, sometimes not even in translation, Allison being the best example, but somebody would read, for example, her letter at the end would put the microscope on Herschel

and say, my God, oh, Herschel's telling me about Herschel here. I think you take that, you run that risk, certainly, as a matter of fact, the letter at the end says that he was killed in a crash in 1975. Yes. I believe. Well, I know, but that, you know, so you camouflaged yourself. That's Ken Fleisch. Andrew Lidle, who's good friend of mine, says that all writing is autobiographical. I know. I know exactly. That's right. He said it sitting right where you are. I'll tell you. He says that whatever you put is part of you into the book. So the lawyer is grist for the mill. That's right. Absolutely. So take it and leave it. It can be autobiographical to a certain point. Now it's autobiographical in one sense.

The protagonist, Clark Templeton, has blonde hair and blue eyes. And Herschel Gower at age 17 did not like black hair and brown eyes. So, yes, that part is autobiographical. But I must say that the party for a line of love is all a fabrication. It is. Oh, it is. Yes. A man in there, the name of Tolover, I laughed, and I, you know, I laughed when you say that I'm going to have to say to those people who see this program and who listen to it. And who want to know why I laughed, and they're just going to have to buy the book because it's a shock-fuller humor too. They have funny, funny stories. Well, I'm glad you laugh. And one reason, you see, I came from Efzboro and my father was a good storyteller. And he was more in the oral tradition than in the written tradition.

And I've ended up in the written tradition, you see. But now, years later, I can appreciate his stories, John. And I do think it's wonderful to have been born out there on Mfzboro and things of the time frequently. But it was wonderful to be born in a community rather than a subdivision. And that was a community. They were extremely wealthy people, they were middle-class people, they were sharecroppers, they were all kinds, and everybody knew everybody else. I even remember Mrs. E. W. Cole, the grand old lady of Nashville Railroad. Cole, you see, up there, at Cole Mayor, Cole. And just barely remember, he died in 1925-26. And she was a very liberal-minded woman, and she came, had chauffeured a driver by, down the road.

So I couldn't resist, you see, trying to create some of these people. But most of them are fabrications, or else they're composites of people. And not any are exactly as I remember them, I've tried, I've exaggerated, I've lied. Do you worry at all now about your students, those who are going to come in, listen to you talk about fiction, great fiction? Do you worry at all about their reading this book and applying your standards to it? Do you worry that some might say, fell short, students can sometimes be critical and mean? Oh, yeah, it's quite. I don't think they'll be particularly mean to my face. There'll be critical behind my back, obviously. But there's great involved, and most of them are quite.

Right. I mean, as in the book, as in person, I'll show you a candidate as always. But I do have a, I do have, I mention that point, because the story you've written is a delicate one, I mean, to pull this off, it was necessary for you to risk an awful lot of self. I mean, you really had to put it on the line, I think. And you had to know that students, friends, colleagues, knowing what you teach, are going to judge this work critically. And more harshly than they would, a non-teacher of fiction. Yes. Well, that's quite true. But you know, when the time comes and you feel the absolutely compelled to lay your soul on the line, you do it.

And if what you end up with after five revisions seems reasonably satisfactory to you, then I can't worry. Well, as you know, I came into some of these revisions along the way. And I was perfectly happy with the manuscript long before you were. Well, you're very kind. You're very generous. I appreciate it. But always. I am sometimes not generous or kind at all. But in this case, it seemed to me that there was so much rich anecdotal material that was important for it to be put down. I guess I would worry that you might not persevere. Was there ever a tendency not to? Oh, I had very low moments about any future for this book, absolutely, and gave it up. And I remember writing in my diary, a big worshiper, about four years ago, I've been working on the manuscript, and this is it.

This is the final version, what it wasn't. I went through it in one more time. But you know, along the way, there were two people who had faith and who expressed that faith to me every time they saw me. And who helped as editors, helped me enormously, as editors. And I sometimes think, John, that we would get a lot better writing, more good writing. If we still had great editors like Max Wilperkin, yes, you see, because he brought Wolf out. You see, he cut Wolf down the sides. And there's a friend of mine in Severeville, Tennessee, Frank Weir, who used to work for the Metropolitan House, who went through this manuscript and said, no, no, yes, yes, no, no. And another friend, Dabney, Adam's heart, he teaches down at Georgia, Georgia State. She went through it.

And those two people kept me hanging on, when I thought there was no change. Dr. Herschel Gower, author of Faces in a Nashville Arcade, has been our guest on a word-on-words featuring John Seganthar. This program was produced in the studios of WDC and television, Nashville, Tennessee.