A Word on Words; 2707; Lee Smith

so you know once again welcome to world words lee's summit that's a that's a name that is well known to many of you who watched this program shoes one of the nation's largest english writer of great writer of fiction award winning nine i am also accurate it was a welcome to work worked at a nice to have you talk about news of the spirit news of the spirit book of reform compelling for a short short list thirty year it was the christmas letters that lovely little book i have additional characters room and the christmas letters i've got is talk from the prisons and before we talk about news in the spirit of it i did a rested where the idea of creating letters that trace their generation came from each christmas that would be a letter a recipe

an unflattering thing to me was how me and the generational evolution family went from some growth partly due to show the trailer park lower class south to suburban success soon and play here and then he had an open and very short lived in from the latest of the year of the women in the family or where the idea come from one matt damon fouls rick griffith letters and i said a mile and i had long wanted to write a book that would be in the form of christmas letters because i think it's really interesting what is not told in the christmas letters is always just as important as what is top and then when my

mother dragged see where armed militia everything else all these recipes he was the moment for instance he went back grandmothers booker breadth of faith and the mothers are boxes of press a faith in our country that that that was another why a key detail the story of women's lives going for a tory center rises and sought out a coyote right along awhile marble in the form of christmas letters starring in nineteen forty four with party ticket so many of them are without fighting in more awards it was in the bill kurtis went far south born and then going to the first town mary i can open it think the feminine than me right in their use i knew the married right that's right and that whole thing with the reason the tibetans given any old

ad if that makes sense i made it and the recipe i thought that what they tell these women's last though is a grandmother had its read the paper found by some type of making great it was part of an adam i think it does this proverbs twenty puree my mother's read the faith i would ask you would say things like could mean for a guy you now an imam at all the story of my dinner i say to me everything i used when i got married a mechanic had a good head to weigh in it in my friends that well i don't think all the slender robert redford so store that's right and that and now you know a minute we're going to buy it and

fall out with the other banks you know and that i really a lot of fun he uses their noses here in the out in hardback now out in paper by going to put the covers iran the most remarkable these lessons are barred from him and so i had the same luck by the diversity of the stories are really isn't that this is going to allow and it maybe any one of the stories is southern cross it had been an nfl only now are not one not the one up for miles natalie frankly i come from a real storytelling tradition the real storytelling panda family and a muslim as joyful most of my novels today there is not anything intellectual that goes on when i think about writing hymn it's more like a reset

me realize that will trigger it demand there will babies boys they just kind of starts in my hand ham more like transcribing them alive and then it keeps going and keep going that's not an outside inside that night and early in one of those could be in one album mighty near was one of the wild at that lab i'm with has a role or a story of a rail by the time was one on work selling cross would have you had expanded most orbit was there to be expanding yeah well i mean the babar stories i mean i could have lived a long time stories all reflect the the families of authors sometimes i think that's the critical items in a cell and i can say you know if a writer from south but bob was

when your family was a big liar well we all what happens again in a family of storytelling democrats why you know right into my property and women started going up my grandbaby and without waste get birds you now and so on and i just heard more stories than you can imagine and eye while i'm a storyteller standbys gamblers i would get their mouth and out on the porch and they're now with harvard lab partner health online and identifying and that this is for the land that why i grew up and read that story the other stories those i'd be at the bat that girl because after college and wants to be a writer that may you know i had no idea i had no doubt of the value that they were on they really just really you know you really don't need baba i mean to get along but as anybody man and at all and then suddenly just explodes obama is

is this wonderful smart record guy and the first thing on obama's he's a dartmouth an end and everybody is so taken by next thing i know he's in prison and the light yellow line but every guy she was so smart and present i am at ease out and he's back in the story and then returned as a real symbol of the darkness but i you know any girl still they would make up an attractive brother in order to enhance their popularity with their girlfriends you know what the scale and so that what happens of course in the story and i guess the other thing i was trying to talk about is mennonites around the basin anne marie howe made of course the girl in the story his was not idle her ambition was going nowhere better creation of bob up with barry think

that our fellow with wonder why we have that being aligned right now that you think what an inventive mind that she has an out and the lice just pop out of indonesian a problem in bubble she just as a crutch up liens on that's right and everything on it is as long as she is she as she possibly could i see in the jugular well what i have but you know where a word a lot of where i wouldn't win the stores like that government and there is some cost to create ingenious and being able to spend it on like that one on now i think in terms of the writer's willing like up a while they become really and it has to be reported before i was making it just get really good at it had a

landing in this detail from this person and this from this arson and this from this are slim and canada putting them together so it's a lie more like a hunter gatherer rosen will and i'm a man marries than armed a lot of that and non college experience other things are either story that hart from other people i have been if the one who get to that idea because i am and white women's college where he would just go really did mike up with this or is this going to be really nice and the house catches up with the faster and that it matters where i got the idea and romance that i can't you know when you take on credit like an echo of the well is that we don't think that oh you know the other thing i notice is that you have this knack of dropping phrases and lines on your reader

so it gets their attention the horse eight category for example and that's just one of the many examples like i could use was that comfort i think it's just like flannery o'connor in her wonderful collection of letters regard to writing at one point has a habit of maine he says if your writing if you're an act of writing in you know when you're a liar or without mccarthy you just kind of write and it's just sort of the way you start going through the world less than and sort of taking now that i get and i remember somebody talking about girls go see as the dead girl's gone girl skills then within that well in the fifties and it fell into a horrible sight category and it just like a man alive meaning here and then you're writing twenty years later it in about ten years and found our that be live bombs i mean in our mind a lot

of getting out by nearly dies in the lab bottomless world top with the world at your father alone i mean i fell out back in a time when that was not permissible in their own right than they are got to lie down a geographical people which he described first that's that i made you out late and eventually by dave clark the night they did not i mean this little girl a bike in the last since doubt lots of are bleached out their riot since the little room runs much and he knew as much alike scout she kept emotional prosecutor announced that you're think it's an asset and she knows that you are a murderer and an l

and then sadat than sit and sciences and now another in to discuss around if i can't act like i'm mad at anything that isn't sort of the terrible barton acknowledges they're applying to a non person or if you're a burden and you know in multiple us talk about her beautiful stunning stunning young beauty who looks like a perfect match with like me out of perfect well yeah i think god has crowned the winning of the parents of the wedding it's the parlance is that in many ways it was the part that made that the father hanna i will dark streak i think the real intellectual stir again when this artist comes from out of town to settle up our own father's estate after his death he just immediately is drawn to harm their money once said that the only barely could plot that makes him a one of a man's somebody takes a trip and the other one is a stranger

i was try and all sorts of things than you know develop rap decide this law policy is to some degree autobiographical the guts out of the father never had the area my mom were married or it began years nevertheless he did it one point have a nervous break the edges of more revenues than store and was in the hospital and the doctor prescribed a geographical cure and when he got out the hospital we all went what are the geographical we're going to use every three months and we second about her tale that was occupied not the entire plant the uprising there yeah yeah

yeah yeah yeah but i'm going to ask you there was one from my mother was fascinated allies with the last of the stars they've won every nail you had a subscription to the national enquirer not well known and i get that that it is our headline help me via the three some easy to use all that live in the gulf got out was a sort of a little bit without funny because the mom admits

that of course when we're in this month there with gregory peck in a now dani carter and thereby every night i am the best part was that this was before you'd bouncing around this line item veto and i and i'm every night tiny cars delhi is that story true that you're using their incomes unfortunately gently was there in the little and when i am in the car and i wouldn't overlook that and my mom on a webcam from car window and if they can read the next night we thank our happen in a month a minute numbers i said he would thank god bless him and ali inimitable and how would i know women looked at cary grant art and shiver just the way your mother was chivalric filmmakers but i'm so surprised i got the feeling that he remembered seeing jerry ray is a as

a sort of seedy figure really not really not really tell me about a lot is with the drawing of them my tail i think the idea that was that this person's body was truth you know and then i thought well that that's that's not know that's the us post or the truth in and in fact when you do it's where then those fall or a fine and a second life that's the fictional job it and now that you are you have are looking down one day one evening car pulls up on its up river gets a ride begin russell

yeah and thus i can't tell her she already knew and when you're already knew he was little and the people i think that's the moment where everybody in it i mean at that house and every day after that they'll everybody's look at the window and everybody say that they don't want the accent is about favorites you now the kind of secrets that we have some of them eventually necessary here is a problem in the moments when eyer and also critically within and life you know how will carry thick woods with a long and i know that part of the main what did you know when the he had some real experience like the ones that mean in florida with nathan the gang in anyone of figure what how might that interests story what can be the conflict and so that sort of made out you know the parents and the conflict that that had to be without for the trip to florida if there is a stand up at any world when you i fill you talked about the

breakdown and you know a million votes that there was a lot of it when an empire that now after an affair would sing a minute break down three wood would be that big event that perhaps cause suddenly started a family in the lodge a lot about that well i don't know if we want to or not act that there's certain things that happen again they are so important to you are so compelling and that was a period in my life i was thirteen when all this happened that when my dad did have a right and we did take this sort of trip to florida to like him feel better and help the family sort of get back together and combative in the hospital for a year and from a writing this story was a lie lee coming to terms with that i mean i think writing is you you ride for publication but it's also

appealing if it's a way of understanding what happened to you i mean i write a lot of stuff that's not amen intended for public eyes in a way leading unexamined life i guess to use them rise from an ice managers to it to try to understand you know what happened to them and what it may have been i don't know i don't know i waited thirty years ago that isn't how i thought i would do and just briefly the song crossroad though they were covering that story among the women has been in our in the caravan and we were in this our own native canada are restaurants and a lot of people from yachts work and then ian and they were based or a cat that looked like developers from atlanta to know what the culture and with this

movement who was solely be a final thought she spent i see some beautiful french actress i could figure ways to stand with these guys and then there was a moment when i had walked up toward the bar seven enacting care of her i asked ed have anywhere from a half that way you know lottery market that balances united now that girl would have gotten the company a bus got there what was going to happen on that yacht and i just couldn't let a landslide as cannon madame well mario story of a girl from hasn't kentucky got real guts in it saying that polygamy she thought the guy with the american brand and alito makes a

move longer than it as though to make america wings and links that other which is now says rally across the harbor the process of writing was the movement from the right in fact as a journalist writing fiction difficult with that whatsoever and i was actually writing fiction our life on tour and then you have them and that would be it may yet make that began a road map and then for the nose right i tried i had to try to make a distinction and the station and it was i would write fiction first with one hand and i would write a nonfiction or step on the typewriter or the cable

and then i could keep it kind of strike that i was elevated you didn't like a corporation for and then they do for you when you you know when you talk about writing fiction clearly part of the work involved creating new characters from real life and you've as you've told us some of the ball and then giving them of the indian low voice and i have to believe that two cents since that voice mean so much to the roma character i have difficulties of the giggle in writing dialogue dialogue where occasionally you don't say come a quote why charlie said why how and where they can just making our family now hound of commons is it to define different

voices when you cry so where they can work and i don't mean as the main thing enacted they get strapped a better story an actress i will is this about a girl and if it out that the bell prison i can make it out but unless i can actually hear the voices at a certain point i went ahead to abandon idea if it's a good idea why when asked or riding where i just really made the years and i am telling me this story and made it here as the bell of personnel have i would talk nba now there's something that maybe hear that some us like and that is the voice of a character sometimes it seems to be the voice of the story is that out but unless i hear it it right it charges of eli just whoa whoa whoa i meant that as de la plante of mind gets you down if they that they're gonna date that's richer when that happens in the school store i can screw it up yeah i get scared and terribly or they can i get better and there's a story and they are nine the happy memories your bat with one

another every store i'm a bat at a lady full of you know full of gumption and ridden urban grid today within an all peoples hama while repeat of that bike and outsource them anti and she does get that wheelchair going and runs away i'm going to try are you it writer's block ever and that's what lenny o'connor cal has habit of being hand for amber writing you know people will now work on for ever writing place than i will because the piper and stick it in a nice season you know i just our lives have banks that are there that i can go back dave and so i come here and it will trigger something

again i mean i'm scared of writers walk of course and so i think it's one reason that iconic eight minutes on iran the huge paolo different story than my riding given point it's like the image that i had i had never been to the third parent i bet daily habits and boys he's the lobbyist we have got a sledgehammer and their little hands of banks that will happen at the new buying and anger that's out there that story's it's like they keep up an epic thing ric you know like as i know you know my dad at some point it will come to the beach