A Word on Words; 3411; Bobbie Ann Mason

wow wow wow one johnson you know once again welcome to world words i guess body and mason best selling author with an atomic romance that's the latest book i mean having sex and the environment of a nuclear facility that you could call it a hot romance well yes and maybe that combination is the essence of the book is full of opposites and opposites attract i guess well opposites attract these youths now clearly track they're attracted a job now and it's read futrell not read for trout known spiritual its huge read read future

rises and he makes that distinction that lets all across the tracks to stage i think some of the peoples and for trial and he but he is very proud to say that in the future his father he worked at a nuclear facility and atomic they survey the process of atomic fuel for nuclear reactors on and on in the past during the cold war they processed it for an atomic fuel for nuclear bombs and his father had died a horrible death yeah i chemical accident and down back when reagan was really young so i never really knew his father and i'm the plant has changed its processing method so ray doesn't feel and his mother didn't feel that there was any real danger for ray to work their

rape carries on that legacy of pride in his work and his father ado here is an interesting first up if she is interested in signs she is a student an once a master's degree or in molecular biology so human help cure that now he's <unk> is is here and he's and she's attracted him as he is to her where does it come from to write about them as a threat nuclear material can make waste processing of versailles time that julius a biologist and readers this atomic worker and as a biologist is very well aware of what an radiation continue to sell so that that's an opposition there and she's skeptical about this work aren't and that

this romance evolved from aren't the only the initial inspiration was based on a piece i wrote for the new yorker in early two thousand ion about radioactive contamination at such a place in kentucky and i'm in it was very much disturbed by this it was near my hometown my sister had worked there i hadn't really realized that there was radioactivity they are what they did and down so i took that really personally and then i wondered well what would it be like to work for what would it be like for a man like read my character too go to work there and be what's called a cell rat working inside these enclosures that her dusty and dark and hot maybe hundred and fifty degrees and with the risk of contamination and with

contamination in them implant all around as he discovers belatedly and so i just got going on that you and i find it very hard to write nonfiction so it was very liberating to think of this in terms of the effect on people for the imagination so i could how much and how much research did you have to get into it you know i need to find out something about plutonium and and what it does to the system and to put it in context it's a sonata right is everyday subject is you know and down on me i didn't know what was unable to go inside this plant and you know do work for a day and i had some good sources who told me a lot about what it was like

i had done this piece for the new yorker so i had already talked to people that has followed up and being arm and done so far is extending that and other research about how the uranium processing works in food know what and the dangers are our business this place has a very low level contaminated compared to a lot of the really big spots in america like hanford washington and rocky flats colorado which are on what where they produce plutonium and i am so so that this is that it's like oak ridge and on an island i wanted to or not to pinpoint this particular place that i knew something about because there are other places with

contamination so i divorced or truman sending that and target and affection an iron ore us without plutonium there's an excellent book around that solitary and that i mean well some called the plutonium file which is full of horror stories about what time can do you i also spent a lot of time trying to figure out how much radioactivity is in announcing the plutonium or how much would kill you and it turns out to be a surprisingly small amount reading a divorced in as a wife two grown children in doors in nashville the economy isn't necessarily on some north carolina

doing very well not much a relationship there nor with his ex wife but there is a very close relationship with his mother move freely mariners daily mr mccourt they tell us about where margaret came from where it came from our own well i saw where she was going says public came from my own mother but i made a very different from my mother i'm well there really is faced with what to do about his mother as she's getting older and she has a light stroke and andy he can take herself sunny ade a's talks big he says all i can take care of you you can come live with me but ah that's in that notion dies associate jazz vigor what he would feed her

it out anyway are that harper her purpose in the book is is it to make that led to the cold war and the time when those plants were on a crane dunk for the defense industry so that they can produce the bombs and our own everybody was proud to work there and reads another kept that pride even though her husband died there and some people who work there then didn't really ask questions and and one third of the managers didn't have time to think about cleaning up the front yard so they just let the toxic waste though and so routes mother is there is a link to that because she's been living a pretend world and read read himself is to use the popular words in denial on he does one think about the reverence and so on it did it it takes a while

for his mother to finally be able to talk about what happened he has so he gets it from julia now regular basis and she does worry about the dangers you were around him and she's non violent version doesn't like they're warren and he has guns and barry gottlieb so you created conflicted relations in more ways than one but they aren't that long yeah they did they love each other enrollments attracted to each other and they can keep splitting up in it i have a feeling she's just really trying to consider whether she wants to get involved with someone who has run these long term are of song and so you might end up taking care of him or something so

she sees sun keeps her distance a lot but sometimes reasons i guess has a relationship with herb it's also so from flirting with what the parents really has been the dangers of the best for them but he comes gradually making war ii about himself little bit little bit more violently he goes through his mother's that scene she's in assisted living place on the film so say the bank and is not very sunny button and she says even gotten a never neverland but i'm worried about you and then for the first the idea soon she tells him about the current news for the year and so that is what time i'll end the realization of how much as mother at kent was caring about him and worrying about him

that that sentiment action he's he's a bit of a procrastinator and nineteen he well he's a stargazer hugh hewitt much prefers to let the picture of the hubble telescope and just imagining himself wondering out there in his little read moby oh yeah and it hasn't won think about the atomic level or the subatomic can do is the one who's trying to turn his head i'm back down to in the other direction to the microcosmic into the subatomic to string theory but that's his that's the then they get along by joking about all that stuff and she she challenges him to to understand string theory and so he's trying hard to understand it and his buddy says she's going to give you a quiz i'll tell you when you say hello to write this one part of what programs about is

a lot of joy while iran and sometimes another publishes actor maria you're touching on the subject here that has had some controversy over a half century piano you think about that all when union weighed in to a strain that is not only are laden with the with danger but also perhaps punishing danger i don't know i don't think that grass the full extent of the subject or i didn't see it as an issue or controversial issue exactly i mean i can as i got deeper and deeper into it i realized that it was a deep subject and i'm far reaching subject and there it was their main subject of the twentieth century and still is an ex this and

i realize that i was writing that i'm trying to find a tone for this world of anxiety we live in an hour wait we live in this world of indeterminate say it's very edgy in we don't know how we're going to end up and i tried to write what i call of romantic comedy set against this this very uncertain world and on i think the simple image for me as the sole song from arkansas called dancing in the dark and i think that's just a wonderful way of summing up that dark world we live in but the way we keep dancing the way the life force just and keeps us moving and i hope that's what saves growth we're now in the midst of another low prices and energy or is just around the corner the movement back toward nuclear yeah sure well bahrain for

those bureau the justinian were talking to bobby lee mason body and mason bestselling author as you although both of the program by the amazing about her new book on a comic romance of the novel and and bobby lee about and so it's twenty years of in country a publisher has just produced this paperback and so i caught the twentieth anniversary the two invasion of this country now halt but it's in a series of on out from harper perennial with the reader's guide material in the back so so this book has taught a lot of high schools and college so i hope that you visited in country yes i think what i hope that teachers are adults and make the connection between the

material in that book and the present war because here is the effect of the vietnam war family and on a young girl whose father was killed there before she was born so it's requested understand what happened to him and when our iraq and an end that book will resonate with mothers and fathers and wives sisters and brothers insisted husbands and wives are back to an atomic romance but lately julia leaves don't tell the ending of this is a recipe that had been in all of the evidence i'm not but there was a happy ending or a set and they knew how to read by mason booker became your face

but she does leave and she looked back to chicago ah well see has some business to tend to and then she doesn't get perhaps so we get the message the government here so when you so this would you know if you believe in no i didn't i don't know why i thought i'd never know the ending and then after well we're going to go to chicago but i didn't know how to skin and up and that was a surprise well caucus of monroeville in it but i went out but there was a scene where he's in chicago and you know and say you know i am not only believes that the goal of the park like ariana hotel an alien i can and julian and he's looking for and

i thought that i thought that what he really think it was a real magnet cinemark chicago and that affection for the full moon love god and made him go seek what i would've thought you never talk about how you made it possible for a stranger in a strange land to fund his one true love me that's now where she was the phone number for lumber and also the hbo you say no what if you say what place did you go to in n word actually like to a cat let live their message to send and he thought to attack the messages that you never answer so he just taller left a message where tb so what she be there was a business in which you do there the selective

with a way out as there and just for a moment saying that you're in this interview here in the daily jews in the back to the current and they're running and i thought about how it might be for a mother a son and divorce grown children a former wife with some knowledge of the mid eighties so not that i'm not bought it seems to tell us her own life she's done pretty much what she wanted to do she raised him some unconventional point where she took and there are these two women come together once the backseat of the car she must form of daily so there's a lawyer put herself in three positions of an automobile

and that sort of immediately it's just agree to loot and i'm i don't know i just i've i remember at that point they needed to be there and they needed to i needed to have a scene in which they go out to lunch and i does the fall of my intuition i guess and tried to make it light and made that very light that scene and the scene in the car and that lunch did you like oligarch reason as well i yeah there's things i don't like about read me to end and i feel more like jillian about some things some that maybe that was the challenge for me to take a guy who i didn't totally understand and try to figure out what lies see that way and an eid and i grew to really like him why do jeannie berlin the store owners reads for

in the towns on the fall a professor at duke and tell a funny story about race and humor ah well he doesn't grew and became more alive than and it was easier to stick with borel and invent a whole cast of characters that read hangs out with so that i think girls serves a very good function being a little wacko but very brilliant in a way and i again stereotype of just ordinary construction worker and armed end he is just weird things pop out of his mind they do i think that's right and that and it can be for their laughs oh yeah i think of the book is funny but it is a total annual human doesn't know either of you were but their characters you create do have a terrific left i

mean there are moments when when rhee even can laugh and self about the possibility that you'd really i am eyes i was joking about that are glowing and he teases about finding these huge praying mantis is the full at the plant every works that that's part of a deflection ii is always the flight eleven am so now cause you don't want things up your windows too serious no but it does take it seriously he's isn't working men he's proud of his work it helps to keep this plant safe and if it weren't for people like him it would be even worse he says to her what one point you know people who have to work together says get real credit and the city it these is so it can sound so that's that's hard for julia to figure out the sizzle of figuring out to do as a writer and i guess we'll reasons mean some people want the shows to find out how writers write what's your

body do its duty by the id do you diagrammed no no i'll wipe lot you know once you get going pretty far into it you can start to say all of this is the pattern this is where we're going and this is what needs to happen here but you have to let it happen and i'd i just don't see how you can plan under diagram because it'll never turn out the way they try too hard that's one nonfiction is hard for me i'm a fiction draws the part of the brain that and that just has to be loosened up in and so you can let these weird things come to you and see what you can do with them for example i had read so favre upon the dover beach for a while and then along into that i realize now that doesn't is their ponds they were on this global economy and then i looked through the book and google can was already embedded in the

book i mean and i didn't realize that it is plus hours so the writing comes out of the subconscious to a large extent and then once you see what you're doing then you can start to say but more and work with a more on but it's it said that to level process oh yeah there's and when that first conversation with girl i'm reid says going back to senator wherever you live but you know if we're trying our work yes it is near a specially when at the beginning when you don't know what you're doing it's like pulling teeth and hello you spend eight months of in awe of really writing maybe two or three hours rewriting i can do on their morning noon night live there or whether you need a late afternoon late afternoon want something to do with

metabolism well it's a early morning i hadn't worked with him in that don't think of dogs cats don't have things and chores and for you do you get going right away i'm into the juices from the mutual was bring our ripeness window i'm just a little round disc little of that until a better time he also away walk away start over now not usually if i'm committed to stick with it and rewriting is tougher than the region are now the original draft is the hardest had to really get at that and then to have some to work with and then at some point it's like sailing along and then the most exciting artist nearly final draft one year when everything is falling into place and you see what it's all about and it's getting more and more dimension and doodads it's exciting than

the editor at the publishing house ever find you what you've written you know i haven't had that experience they recommend changes sometimes dictated by sometimes sound about the next book oh i'm doing a book of short stories are collected from nineteen eighty onwards arcos nancy culpepper i've written a number of stories about her and a couple of news stories and that includes the novella spends plus line on which came out in eighty eight and so it always together some kind of narrative thanks marty four iraqi men and a comic romance and a lot in between a bigger new more to come with you all for joining us and johnson didn't offer world war you know