A Word on Words; 4120; Frye Gaillard

set the national public television has stood in the way of celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades but this is a word on words welcome once again to a war on words my guest today is an old friend frank he's a writer in residence of universes out alabama author of more than twenty books including greater freedom out of them are in the movement and change america it won lillian smith award for nonfiction is in a day to talk about the books that mattered there really is no more series often deeply personal essays the limo more history critical analysis and followers of

harper lee and find probably more and many many others living too long i think it's my outlet in the fourth time which had been in this a long time so four years now i think that's fabulous panel you have another boat and amir it really that let's talk about the other books that mattered because you know their love to periodically go through these exercises maybe it's a dinner party or doctor born in people's upon what the greatest books ever written but an audit in the top channel i'll write it about twenty five bestseller this is these are books that mattered personally to detroit i think it's fair at the reading what is it about say books that's really what motivated i think that's right i mean i don't know what the tenor

twenty five books are best books ever written or you know i've never even engage much in that exercise its ratings always been so personal and but i have thought a lot about the books that have mattered to me in that have kind of shake my whole life and liberty in many ways the person i have caused me to think about the things that i thought about over the years and and reflect on and other people have written books like this pack on rodeo just came out with one gun fact his came out while driving this one it was a horrifying process and that was the interesting thing shere khan was a great writer i think the interesting part of a book like this is it's your own individual of thoughts about what mattered most to you seems to me as i go

through it didn't surprise me that southern writers have failed bulger attention more than others and it does seem to me that what he loved fiction and praise fiction and then you articulate about some great fiction writers much of what has attracted used the non fiction non fiction about your own region i think that's true but you know i started out reading great fiction about this region with the harper lee yes to kill a mockingbird or whatever but i also read fairly early on lily and smith's killers of the drinking yes and i thought that's such an actor first novel it was written in nineteen forty nine and a book by a white southern woman taking on segregation head on and so just the bravery of that book was impressed me

at first the other that was absolutely stunning beauty of williams' best prose this or someone who wrote a nonfiction and yet it was like poetry or something you know it was just gorgeous writing and i started thinking about southern writing and how beautiful some of it is kind of after reading lillian smith and then moving from there of robert penn warren or whatever so yeah i've always love southern writers and and a lot of southern nonfiction i notice that you know and he said there is a list and then there's a topless and then there's no ensler that's right and i was taught and producer here in beauty as we were thinking about your coming and i went through the list and i said if i include

his second choice is right i had more than a third of those orders were in world wars the lowest levels of prior year's surprise me because but just to read was to reminisce about their coming in on our side in heaven you had died but but the memory of those who died to come alive when you read in which you call this this beautiful prose yeah i don't know if you were a quarter of the people you're thinking about that you had on the film the dam was here is you know ride ride you know twenty one books and right we had a more than half the time or halberstam is one of the people that i write about in a chapter of about literary journalism about the literal the literature of the literal truth really a minute people

like halberstam or poor tom wolf or where your king those were my journalistic heroes when i was getting out of college they were in their prime and halberstam was the one that i admired the most of what he was doing was most like what i wanted to do it seemed to me that he had an incredible gift of taking political stories political realities weather's the vietnam war or the presidential election of nineteen sixty eight a race issue or whatever it might be and giving them a face and humanizing him in a way that made them more accessible you know he was so he was you could tell from his writing and then later having the opportunity to meet him i didn't know him well it did but i did know him a little you know he was tough minded and big hearted you know i thought those two things as an actor his

work reflected that he did it i think came through in his work and you know the best and the brightest is one of the seminal books of the times i mean it entered that phrase entered the lexicon because of love of halberstam how write our names and it remains notice that i think remain frozen guide don't want to know me well the best the brightest yet a siren and then there is followers human subject errors as the rest of us don't imaginary ok ing and then he was that is one that i'd like to narrow king later life ashe if he were here he would clearly on shias knows chain smoker and they're so jane drinker another bizarre enjoyed every minute but i really you know i don't know i am a bit of a sea of osha the

new one year at the end of it i asked him if he would come down and dump if not we'll ride and he said well on that i get some i did drive me and he did and he came in his carrying is no job you have you know his breathing like the smoking ad taken so but after he was as broad and as funny and as outrageous and as bordelon of st joe's they bodies of that long as public television program and you forget when you talk to him on the heart and so i was writing i mean that was one of the things that i write about in this book is as his book the old man and lesser mortals which was a compilation of his harper's oracle's but the title story was a story about his father ann and i still think it may be the most beautiful piece of magazine journalism that i've ever written it opens with a scene of his father and

grandchildren in a family picnic in the kids chasing fireflies in the summer dusk in and larry king says to his father let me tell you about william faulkner visa free schrader of the soil and good bourbon and he once wrote that that that a mule work for you ten years patiently for the chance to kick he wants america where it hangs follow lesson says that former fellow sure notice new and it's just this perfect setup for this tender hearted story about the generations not understanding each other and trying to reach across that golf do to each other and i've read that story a nineteen seventy one and just thought this is amazing in and then i met a kenyan hard drinking a night at the cellar door

listening room in washington making a very very special songs i was there and that unnerved him you can imagine making a very larry ok well i imagine it but it but realistically why does allow the law done the air there was bizarre it was really fun and the other author editor who jumps off the page to interview the band and whenever you think about it with more is in juarez he also was here under the local marcus dupree the football or recording market still is and about what aereo but it was not just his ability to express oneself as a writer it was his keen insight in to the art of writing that made it possible for him to put together a foreign corporation they'll vote on that state of great writers

and only larry king and david halberstam and martial arts radio you know and then that that book just came it was something to look forward to every month to see which of the authors rather hear there in that month it really is true that when one of things i try to talk about is that when people talk about the new journalism more journalism as a form of literature or whatever they often talk about jon who come all four hunter s thompson orchestra of those flamboyant guys and they were they were good to me in beijing they had to credible talent but i don't think they had the heart that willie morris head at harper's i mean it made that was what was most inspiring from those times in the sixties was that harper's contrary of people that march of put together and i just thought

you know norman mailer whole issue of harper's armies of the night it will inspire and a huge chunk of the confessions of nat turner appeared in harper's at that time a build more years for a whole issue co listening to america in which he reflected on how the veneer of civility have been stripped away and maybe we don't normally think of the nearest been very important but more years argue that was the wee wee but we ran the chance of coming apart as a country because we we wouldn't be civil to each other was a very profound the center on i tried to get those aren't to come after the confessions an icon of that very early in the life of the reason we're less show and couldn't

get in and it was a two later he came later he came in and iran a book he wrote about his own personal depression ends in iran says it was a moving this law side he i got to talk to him again brock why he long and andy discuss the book on a concert on that turner and then he thought very eloquently and then and in some ways so lightheartedly about his depression and about its trump overcome but again it's the solar i have that i think makes the difference for those who just tuning in on top of riders about the about the books that mattered the readers no more unscripted him back to talk about that as two to a story in the book that you and i about a moment and not in your interest to live and

build that we shared you showed the moment when you tell a beautifully but i and i think our readers might enjoy having you just because you write so well yourself and you recount that story with such will this recollection is your remember very well you and i were involved together in bringing robert kennedy to to nashville and to vanderbilt i was a student vanderbilt and a new workplace friend of robert kennedy's hear the impact program that beer right and so we were honored to have to have robert kennedy come and i write about it in the context of having read david halberstam's book unfinished odyssey of robert kennedy and i think it'll be self explanatory from their affect them in place as it happened i'd met robert kennedy some two weeks before the death of dr king he had come to nashville on a campaign stop analysis didn't host that night

introducing him to the crowd of eleven thousand people on the drive from the airport to vanderbilt university i shared the backseat with kennedy and john lennon the astronauts turned ohio politician well in the front seat were three local democrats these were prominent men in the party eager to tell kennedy what he should and shouldn't say this is a campus audience they declared so talk about the vietnam war as much as you want but it's also the south so go easy on poverty and ray ace kennedy listen briefly then turned to me a mass without warning what you think i should say i hesitated and told him that i thought we should talk about the war but also about poverty and injustice at home i said it was true that in the south the subjects were hard but that that was all the more reason to discuss them thank you said kennedy with what i thought was a trace of a smile that's what i'll do a decade after all the ruling hope of

that spraying in kennedy's own death at the hands of still another assassin i met david halberstam at a party a manhattan book signing for a mutual friend and after it was over i told him how much i admired his work not only the best and the brightest us senate but his earlier lesser known book about kennedy i told him of my own encounter with the candidate didn't have genuine and unaffected he had seemed high how he revelled or so i thought and rejecting the political advice of the pros halberstam listen to the story with interest or lease with kindness for the role of the mentor came to him easily i think you should write it he said when i finally did i tried to make it to the bar after all had been set very high very handy good do it extremely well i am i think once again the two things about this story the first it is so well was that

saul alvarez them yet but it is so bobby kennedy is so like and to listen to the bros and then turn to a statement teasing your own band the universe inside and what you think so you know i am an end and then without really putting down those balls fellow know that they should listen as well about being candid about their region that it was it was an amazing moment to me i mean he knew what he was going in sight already you know but i mean if he was it he was not going to ignore those issues he never did but at the same time just two to have held turn to me out of the blue a mouse astonished and but you know i thought well yes i should answer you

know and so it was a it is a great moment for me is one of course i'll never forget for them rest of my life can go through all of the office you write about is it possible to take one of two with three that really had the most impact you know had its hard but but maybe possible all the king's men remains my favorite book there are passages in there that i read and re read again and again and again and you can see as you read them the robert penn warren was a poet you know this is a guy who won the pill a surprise three times twice for poetry and once for all the king's men and the poetry of his produce to the cadence of the writing subtle use of the liberation and rhyme sometimes it's invisible to the eye but your ear hears it as you read through the sentences of that is this amazing to me a

paragraph repair but then there's this book that has so many layers you know he he creates the character of willie stark basing it all and the real life character of huey long year alone food is a way to preserve i mean we sort of when when that name comes up we have a vague association of a southern demagogue but this was a fascinating character who you know was a left wing some southern absolutely a challenge to try writing from the left and mit and robert penn warren who was teaching at lsu during those days i saw that and so the tragedy of huey long not only that you got assassinated but that the good he might do as a politician was compromised and maybe even overshadowed by his lust for power that was so intense that that huey long used to sit on the

sidelines until she football games and send in place when he was governor of louisiana and the coaches knew the veteran huey long's place you know so there was this incredibly flawed giant oven historical figure robert penn warren makes him a central character really not even the central character in the book that's jack burden the narrator is restored and so that the literary achievement there that every time i read the book and i probably wrote it though sometimes i just say something else you know every time i'm just in and all of it you know later he writes a place to come to light and part of a place come to the settlements that period than a bill but then the robert redford and sydney pollack the sadness of the new movie the intern into a contract and then came to vanderbilt at his suggestion tucson to meet with faculty members who are

still around who remember the days that you do poets but then there's always redford and paul krugman and they meet with our plan and you know and it was and it was in britain rate and then me with nobody was for somalis to johnson who's going to show up and the other thing is that with the sci fi movie was going into the fall until pollock as you remember was just more burden for the us in the sack of thousands bags of leaves a lot of that one to change the end of the movie that tell the story and only because it reflects in iraq and warn isn't that the money back i wrote it unless the well one of just a dozen or so affected to just take the chip back which they did right now once one story which is not a toll says that two years

later on were pretty calm in bailout loans at what woman do this actually the second effect that i tell the story to you know warn storm it was a the poet and shoot the years ago and was on a world words this hour puppet mia her life and then she remembered she had heard the story of an idea from oregon earlier falling it really could and i don't think you could do this but no we knew without knowing more in major fourth know i had to me that was just on the mud and the most important you know i do think that that's it truly great writing continuous you know it end this book with a writing about the author siena jeter naslund and he had her on the show know i haven't been on one but i've read an end and you're right she belongs in the balkans and blog on the show a kemp's wife i think is just as one of the great

novels in maritime domain here which what she does they are appreciate sheba she creates the wife of a have been in moby dick there is a reference to him as having a wife yes but it's a it's a memoir is really this very brief a and anne in her novel again she takes a cab as a major one of the great characters in american fiction she even enlarges him in her novel while remaining true to the presentation of him by herman melville but he becomes a secondary character to the wife and they have to live and it's a novel that just probes the human condition with his much depth and beauty is as as any that have reardon a long time in an m and also write about geraldine brooks yes the year of wonders year of wonders is about a plague village in england and sixteen sixty six where the people literally historical event where they decided not to flee

from the plague and risk breaking into the countryside and she explores this in a novel it was interesting to me and beginning in recruiters as irene books a matter of historical events like that so often grab the attention of great writer an it's not history its historical all right what the writer of talent makes it makes his critical eye right by retelling the myriad building another part that's a love story gaps great tragedy right so i'm going to take effect in and teach with the us without intending to teach really yep i think so it's really storytelling and that's what the your book is all about the art of storytelling know i think that's that's really true

you know that if it did john steinbeck's grapes of wrath are all right about that far from at it and i didn't know the history of the gospel in the way that steinbeck wrote an annuity happen there'd been an environmental catastrophe coinciding with an economic catastrophe and and but what i've learned about the new deal is a bunch of letters here acronyms and then i'm here stamberg takes that tragic historical time and gives it a face and yet writes a lot of pure history of the butchery that exactly are inadmissible without much are inexplicably you know i don't know i am what i am starting to go to world and to the will a starting to run will drive that has not ever happened before and sixty five you know maybe i'm entitled solo and i'll be waiting on they go back

again i will if you will thanks so much for overcoming things like a heavier to all of you for watching and dancing and the love your own words keep ringing he's big