A Word on Words; 3115; Lee Smith

on guns in the once again welcome to word on words lisa mrs back we'll probably see a nice nice to have you back it's my city back to talk about the last girl here and now and you should be having to me to talk about this book you really go on social issues i have i feel very fortunate and around the light because this is a story that had been planted trying to figure out how to write for thirty five years practically and then fly around their hands and then we you know in your hand that why you know how many times over thirty years of office and over word has an idea like this come from and this time i know that's the lesson you hear you tell me about that trip you took with your friends from how long island college nineteen sixties you know and so since nineteen sixty six that i do have in germany as

well with a kind of trippy ways that are you know a rap free app from paducah kentucky and a new orleans inspired that huckleberry and everything about the way the american literature quiet smugglers truman and armed it was a wonderful trip and it's the kind of trick that frankly was more of a grand adventure than anything else you know a main and you can really make fiction out of just adventure and main because plot is not story you know just a string of events doesn't like for real face in may for facing you gotta have meaning and significance and understand the impact that's intensive care upon people in how people are changed her town now these events and that kind of thing and some nights taken made thirty years this is the longest of any but that ever rented to be thinking about you know you give us just a taste of mark twain

from his comments on the river warm and the new deal as a little clipping from the year your fictional worlds made their first trip doesn't outright all the new star was terrific most interesting to me that well you don't know how much any similarities well i will use this nice material from their own real trip down the river as i possibly could and that would mean the real trick we actually had fifteen girls from holland college we got on the rape in paducah kentucky with the retired riverboat captain gordon is the rage in the states they said i will take the girls down the robot because i won the summit we were crying and and sad because we didn't have you

know we made the us army corps of engineers very wisely is the law right now is that we were at seventeen years old he lives from the retirement home in his wife's that ended his camera he was wonderful so it's pretty much it's pretty much as you are at that and i was that was keeping a log the early internet and sow i did have all is definitely things that american made a pact with begin our back and land a bunch but aoun clippings to draw on and as you all along it was a news story when it landed in sarajevo it was not what we expected we had not it would be pastoral and quiet and instead the river was really dirty man critically gamble of the larger cities in every we react my dad did that a tale by mark and you're the way i was away at and it was not it was hard work it was wonderful that was not likely an area for so you think that story is no more create a novel than a local cholesterol lowering

good and the women they were made the trip in a larger group and now i'm going out of rome and the name of their lives and i'm wondering for them back then as big a comeback with a purpose of sprinkling the issues the navy nurse thought about before but i i am fascinated by and they aren't and the diversity in their lives it is you dig in a file members of any class they're from mary scott which sounds a lot like like islands the mayor i think it's only to insulate and on their separate ways and and they come together and they're both likable and not likeable a you know the moments one i feel empathy for low moments for cash i guess i feel sympathy for them

as usual in a confused live in and then love and then there are moments wow like much at all and anna for example and it is a romance novelist and it is a romance novel about i've always been fascinated with the genre fiction with the conventions of the romance novel and i want this book to be in some ways john about the notions of romance that girls are spent and critically worse been fanned in the generation that i come from and then the bookie of the way as we really were you know where parents were expecting us to grow up and be like their mothers but in nineteen fifty six the fifties had not yet happened in world colleges they wrap the country not only in the south bay except for you know the occasional folk singing boyfriend from amherst there's a lady who would show up but we were graduating

as sort of women are less pre feminist girl saturday night at frank then as in a romance a minute they you know where parents just hope we would marry destroyed mr wright immediately joined the country club had to do it and that would be at and that didn't really happen to any women on the right well i imagine they're often the forces that henry often the fourth use of it mr yunus iran you know he goes to somebody i am in that very way that's right i'm a viewer while iranian oil that marriage coming to say i opt very little morgan for that's right on the other hand jean now there is some money and she really likes now an iranian accordingly with tickets had ostensibly has everything appear to have stepped from the pages of southern living is actually in love with a fat eccentric forth that's exactly right and then learn to labor roger riley that ali is that they do not make that

a troubled relationship now he hears is florida's she says gurley one point i thought you were gay you know everybody thinks that it really works and why but he's he deliver their ultimatums a really are stunning now more and we are just our own that you know have a train to her staff which is not something to compete they do it you can hear it yeah and yet in a wider she does me cry say about love and courting grassley the crazy a little vermont became ever manage he doesn't seem to have a moral center art and it's this is very contagious it's very confused but i think it's a very confusing world out there having me c reilly until i think this incident by intense and you do now and south that's where then this

is where the flapper is reviews her own post and she's got our own president she meets kenneth pretty early on graduate student from where you and say no and can us wants to be a writer was an ambition no date that's right soon as we navigated around second guess a publisher to publish before he doesn't you know like oh man like that allah an hour now and in fact i had a pretty devil caught and pretty tragic life and it's ironic that say who is alone in the world now having you know that love a pro life does not and she keeps churning out there is you know endless romances when she has no romance and then there is that same

when october the other i am no more comes in the room and say banks and several moment that she'd made yummy that's right the scam was the airline pilot and bc right so what this romance novelist writes mr betts there something during the course of the novel them the way that i came to understand was writing the novel which is that with the conventions of romance fiction the book ends just at the point where finally after today tribulations the happy couple gets together in place the rising sun and then or whatever sunday of all time and actually that sound when the point where we'll live starts in and that's really where were the real thing to start there and we're going to reform and stews story phenomenon and then you create a character who has a tragic sacred

discovers it and on the river in benton i don't know how he kept while casey wesley saint sebald or has been at that and yeah yeah yeah yeah would you know be tempted just to toe first hour an hour and it happens they were thinking and allies stay there is really funny with the writing of this book john mccain's although it's not autobiographical in a way is the most parcel moment because there's a lot of may sort of be in each one and when i was writing it it with why i'm a writer so there was like i do now is like they just took over and i'm in that they see well when dante allen i mean and now you know gene that would let me just to mary aaronson it was a long road yeah we see france as soon as they're going down the river and for a while see and

she says he now she says she's had several husband's lots of children suki from kansas wants to keep something up reviving it and i want our lives already and so there's a whole lot going on with our other seized the most fully realized and most fulfilled missile failed in a certain way a very successful artists do three wow yeah that's exactly what it is don't vote you tuning into ungodly smith about her new book the last year olds a terrific story wonderful you're not unless the system to pursue that life for for a moment because how many women have gone through that experience that very experience and how many more every day worrying and so while about amanda well as cancer has become also

played as the land and within that there just hadn't checked that into history well i was just i don't know i don't see these as has happened i was writing and it's happened i really didn't know that was going to happen when i was writing it and i think it was just because a good friend of managers been diagnosed with breast cancer as have so many good friends of mine and i mean this is something that's you know that that that happens to us that i and i was really trying to write now my guest barry honestly about contemporary women's lives women's lives in the contemporary south although i could probably be anywhere and this is a custom in this is one thing you know that we have to deal with i was trying to write honestly about eighty today which is the big buzz that it's you now and send that and then he was writing these books like richard ford's independence day for instance about aging and the the midlife

problem for him and his wives until the ones store i'm matt and i think that the i think the new j courtney be okayed by yourself to leave the life and make so unhappy when you take katherine you've got this secret that's filmmaker very unhappy but lose as we said the most will fail it a condo the mood is successful but still struggling finding yourself in an elite area of the soul air a libertarian who were solo you have been for thirty five csa has won a math i regret gift because he taught so many of the cannon clare says this tooth take fifteen and the community college in places that where you know anybody write their own story and you had done a lot of letters that work and all that kind of thing and yet her

own story is no story at all because he was very mats traumatized as a girl my ass things that happened with her rent my man with a baby and she never has been able to iran to add to my copper mountain you know really roll up into things and are out on bail dr butler that there's a bay is all of division of vicariously baby's life there were the same size you say no matter where in babies cashmere sweater over for syria cause they reunited and i will write about friendship because it's so frightening away when you then age you know when you so young when you're a freshman or sophomore when you're in college it's everything you feel everything so much more deeply they need a letter because you're sort of a popular awesome you know under the lines like there and having taught

freshman term for so many years i kept thinking you know and do you read their purse the rise in the main things happened today and things can happen to people who were very and that informed the rest of their lives that you know for for good or ill then at and sciences and sugar alpert you know a lot of times people don't remember things that happened is i wanted to write about the mammary you now and how we are creates stories of their last we'll create narratives about what happened and about what the meaning of it really was and how it varies it's here are these women that were affected that baby and what happened why what happened on that trip and they all sort of had a different type of uruguay malloy was a form of civil disobedience the lobby of the body that's great

you know i read over the adults will belong to the body really has the vague that's right harriet and married in some ways unfulfilled in some ways that would be useful life in areas like watching is is our guest and range in the butt of all of them i think are ladies with really was sort of the sotomayor traumatic and it's actually really have to work right there so there's a great quote that somebody once said today that nearly two plots in the basement and the first one is somebody takes a trip like that i get when it's a stranger comes to tech why there isn't it takes

its rebellious area and a year that saw the lead on various threats that is to say it is they say is finally getting out from under ah the weight of the events that happened earlier in her life when she and it were france and so that's what's happening to her on this trip in you know in their purity of its really did the trip itself really does have an effect on harriet an earlier trip as us it was just the glorious adventure your debts it requires this other customer yeah now mr of course the people out with body bags and along the way but in but harriet the harriet knows the yolo let the island got a mission to fulfill there's going to come a moment when they got to spray baby sprinkle babies ashes over the river and they're common an enormous rifle and talk to me a little bit about baby well belly fat in it i think that we have are all now know maybe you now that is the fray

and dale is wow billy is brilliantly with a dangerous and that gets us into trouble who does the things we would not ever bear today you and you always wonder lighter what happened to harper in our what happened to him and everybody remembers things like wow things they did are things they stay in or whatever and i think we all know somebody like and sometimes very difficult situations can they you know can be created only weekend in a lot of trouble with friends liked them but their charismatic toe and i've always want to write about that kind of a character but it was funny because because the ideas are being dead when the novel starts literally an active wanting her to stay an out was when there was sitting with the piano piper and our listener start writing balance which is something i have never and i realized that maybe the red beast oh yes that it believes that because they went and how it fit in beautifully to matters is that can stand by heart not that and you know about

our personality video was would miss i mean you could have created dialogue and there is some opportunity for that in the book but the owner a person out to shoot other was an nsa when they ever got families that so i saw his state her carrying out other thing came from him and a lot of heart from is his behavior he's now on letterhead to do with her mother and any nsa do come to understand one thing i was trying to do here today was to just knock down the ideas stereotypes that bank people really think in terms of stereotype when they think of southern women when they think of middle aged women and has won the site working he just god damn you know if you go below the surface you know there's all kinds of stuff is happening here through our pants a passion all kinds of bizarre all kinds of odd you know really deep and interesting thoughts and you know events are happening here and so i you know it's

about the one end of the stereotype with and they like or because it really recording company began i know all about it at sea without a noisy thanks but we never again you know we never know not a let's go back to connie rejection of what is it weather i mean first of all what is it about her that draws her to lose a likely no ma'am he says this is so i'm fulfilled in her marriage and this of course is the merits and allies trained at a visitor up grew up very poor and jermaine many an african had today an inmate into it does the mistress of a korean historical now and i'll miss yap and they were dying and the fed there's a cemetery next year where oliver north carolina and there's this huge monument in the actual cemetery and as always things of the man who is my name is on one side and then there's a little tiny plant

on the other side for is what gives her magnetic i think as she had done what she could right over there well part of what the program about is you know is how writers writing and where ideas come from and secondly there with where this idea came from and what back then and for a marvelous model it is for foreigners you know you teach and the new students know you're right what's your sense of the future of american fiction looking bird all we hear about the inability of young people to

do read to write to create that also here not long ago told me his students didn't read any more in the way that he had read as young man well i would have to agree with that for the ugandan majority of statism a man like me because i had more recently taught for the last fifteen years anyway in graduate creative writing program itself lasted is reid like crazy little town in there because that this is what they are passionate about that i think there's a huge paradox here because well we have more good riders more good young writers the marching to die than ever before because they can study writing in college they can get credit for it they have an opportunity you know they're encouraged to do a more resilient always terrific young riders and a declining number of readers and i just think people

as a whole not only people in school are yeah they're not reading i just i think they're watching tv at i think they're on the internet they're just you know kind of cruising the internet they're spending their time there when a whole lot of other things in there that a sitting down quietly and when your man down into a book a physical book that you're holding if i haven't that is disappearing is creating a kind of a jumping mandan people turn remain the army i don't think they can i mean that i have had it and i can have had several classes we just like the well again i'm in changer rating is it accuracy now they're not going to be idle that you know you made it you need to give them something store in it that i can really handle it and access the us one is where ideas come from the other side is where they go and if you look at publishing today

take yourself back now to that time you first on monday hot money and they knew how to smash it but how difficult would be to breakin and today is publishing world if you're not published well it's a very difficult much more difficult because fewer fiction titles are you a serious fixer are published an i think the main thing this being rented it is nonfiction and i we have a huge number of books being published all the time it's a medium or how to work with the parents in their calendars and their you know olive's there been serious fiction have fewer and fewer titles are being published an one recent trend that's kind of disturbing is that every man and they will find a book that they think is going on is all about marketing which didn't used to be a lot for me people were really looking for young writer with real literary

work that i could nurture alon and now things are business trip and marketing driven and they will find one but that they think they can do well where can give that up there a lot of money and consequently not be able to publish a certain number of other parts and on the same again at any given time and in the second novel is called published and the cove of an investment in the first one other span marketing money on hacking when in order to keep it alive and then the authors required to publish to write him a book a year well i like them and they like iraq but this this picking out a sort of picking out a few and paying a lot of money in promoting a lot of names that there are so many are really good first novels that are just not published and that's our internet start writing i mean every now and then that will be you know things will happen that the other

wonderful i've had several stints at their books published just in recent years to derail a cline but if there's some ad that you can't you know you just can't seem to have that happen i know you're working on a storage know come back when you threw a lot to all of you we've been watching and listening to lee smith talk about les girls her great new novel it's wonderful to have you at one o'clock and let them all of you we are announcing an over your own words he read