A Word on Words; 0919; Josephine Humphreys

<unk> ooh la la or downwards a program building into the world of books and their authors this week josephine humphreys talks about the firemen surveyor your host for or downwards mr john sigg and publisher of the fantasy pages once again for words rod tonight to have a distinguished novelist with a surge of humphreys welcome to world war and a nice to have you to

talk about this new book a violent flare fireman's there is so is served in a setting that's familiar to them sometimes is the case novelist write about what they know best friends and you you love you cast this story the backdrop of arcane which is not unusual for the charleston but a hurricane is an end the year and the physical debris leaves rose tore know it's our a country and what happened to me was that i had finished first draft of his novel in september at noon and one day work up to find the whole my whole setting destroyed by hurricane hugo and the book takes place and how poems would just lose their onset center austin

and then that did the community of the outcomes had been enormous level that this particular storm and record of life as it was i did it to make sense to me to go ahead with a book set in a place that there really at that point seemed to me no longer existed so i took the year rewriting the book i am re setting it in post hurricane our palms and down it actually if there was if there's any good to me from hurricane hugo it was what if a us a gift that he gave to the book because oh what i had before was a story about a man who are suddenly decides to re evaluate and change his life far rather vague reasons and are the heart and it's in a very specific occasion to do this and and makes that city

as well as well to say actually happened the logical after the storm did step back and look at their lives and say man movies and what i want the relief well or women it could have that dramatic an impact a lawyer as you woke up later and funds not just his surroundings realizes i guess life is in chaos this album that i do something about share what the isi is not sure but he knows he has and it is a fascinating fascinating person outfit and so what happens to down from where was that dave when he knew that that there was a change affecting him not just isn't now

and what takes into where you're leading with it's a series of very human experiences mean it's it's a it's almost every man i mean he is a midlife crisis and was a force stronger didn't really understand it he's got the father was having problems money's got a road so they just like to say get rid of and then he's got them even the memories of the trial ultimately billion that we use create a major problem to two women or a man as i was in a manger for us those two men and a woman might read

but aren't there some scenes that that i wondered about the man scenes of their bodies lie overuse on the golf course or what isn't warner janet well i you know he's first off he's been awful and he's sixty six salem the reason i'm asking is it and i don't think i've ever been on a golf course my whole life so i'm writing these golf seen in golf it's a sort of minor same and that's where i felt an arm well i wanted to write a critical conversation they had and she sewed says to luke at the idea

at the end of it and i am and my question was while the park was and i said well obviously she plays golf and she knows that there's a chance to chat with a round proceeds of that was a nice twist that luis was a far better golfer than he did and the setting so have shows are off to one of her physical advantage and i like you know something that the golf course that's magical an appealing says smyth green oasis of the plants so i've always serves have been attracted to that image but at the same time that the un the game never sensed seem to work anyway and the kind of life that he's been leading it was to get there so it was

the tourists are dual purpose and cheese and golfers is going on also of fame era native country sides have transformed into golf world and there's a golf course everywhere on the coasts and chairman and obviously it's an artificial an artificial natural wellness that we counting as his life was lovely and real as his life was unreal and he was looking for a rather wear and he was not going to file that course with her and good that's a mournful and it's not on that course he has to change course and low forties and pop up in the office is not alone then i'm sure that he has all our videos to

do a lot and i'll save my novels and they're sad and sort of secondary cast by characters that town that that actually a as i look back on that and the novel stand as characters appear to me more in a far more interesting than and the main characters in the stories and albert is one and one day as characters are unsure other writers fearlessly t had minor characters do you you hate to and keeping the background like that and they are very interesting and fascinating in themselves and you hope one day maybe they will step forward in and have a whole but it's those that beat the lovely because it really is a he is for suckers on it it is run a volunteer fireman because it's the thing to do on our palms on because he

thought that was a way to serve the public are is a cozy the county was always the same fire engines for almost an hour yeah i think at the idea of serving the public is part of what he sees as them beyond that the allure of the hero image he would like to be heroic it is a volunteer fire department is something that he can actually think that if there's a path towards heroism and actually you know there's that there's nothing wrong with that as a path towards her reason that it's not exactly where it's not quite as serious and noble and gray and that's driving laws as we talk about the let's talk about the title the fires fair is an actual event in the book on community event that there is so absurd traditional community celebration

and serves me in the essay i'm sarah final gathering of kansas when i'm and yet in the phrase itself she took on a much more significance than just an advance maybe because it's a ring a bell and nine the event of vanity fair so that the human celebration a community event our comes to stand for these kinds of things were people get together and you can sense that there's something more to life than just their single store is there is there is a community common purpose here and this as i love those i love little failures or county fairs and desires i am

their real life the committee but the abstract they're not very real mean they are they are and their artificial happenings allow live with the purpose or an aunt and really i think again norman mix a mix metaphors too much but that the river is something he said that general sense that fair shot of serves as a part of the backdrop of his experiences following these crisis he's going through it as we call a mid life lesson i think of it as as midlife crisis that i actually dont like that term i guess because of the voice can only had no one and i think that our lives are our phone face times when when we can choose a different course when we came home and change what within the forensic setting ideally it's done get it out on how many of the crises is so

apparent set ablaze an adelaide like not do it again let me take an so that comes resolving this fall and his father is frightened to death that is most of the year that is that is that robs mothers can come from fall then he's had this conversation with her about and he's tellin rahm that announcer what she say erin run the answer's really inconclusive now on you when you talk to her he can't escape responsibility for the burdens that arm inherited are created and this is another word that doesn't come from a toilet you know i it's a it's almost impossible to answer that question that it

the true answer is that i sat there and and i overheard those two fictional characters talking to each other and that's that appears to name it when i write is saying here a write down and just listening who says not true there's no i'm talking it's coming out of my head and i guess if i had to track deanna where i got the notion of how to a young man i talked to his father it would have to be firm from actually stopping of the year suffer in reading or from movies all of these things are where we get our nation since it's not i'm neither a young man nor no man taken from my my experience i was saying yesterday the seventh us more books that i am i don't think that the differences between men and women are so great that we can't possibly imagine the experience of the other

gender and with the senate hearings right now we are on occasion been told that that we cannot possibly imagine what the other gender thinks on this particular armed and of course i know that the tree rings are doing anything bad in this case i think that we can see through the barriers and understand what another human beings on vision of the world or understanding of something might be i don't think those differences between men and women question of vivid is because of this as i read the conversations not this conversation with all accounts ancient it seemed to me there is running a reality the swamp i get the sense that

robs and builds i get the sense of his ambivalence even though he doesn't state courts on the stage i get it in and they are in a golf course country club their environment i get here with his falling i get it again when he's talking to billy about honoring them if you really really want i did i think he did an endive not a mean he is a romantic comedy he likes the idea of kind of being given to disco and yet he's also not create a fully grown up person still has said he's not quite ready for know are at least in his announcement he's

been so ambulances exactly the right person well i we ever know i mean and when when people get engaged to answers and people are absolutely certain it's right thing to do you bet i am i remember reading in in my sophomore psychology class at duke that the reason that we have big elaborate weddings with lots of advance preparation and air service are locks people into to that wedding you get engaged and then your mother buys her dress and the invitations go i n and it becomes difficult for you to back yet there's reason for that and that is people actually get scared it's a mixed up so i don't think it's odd that he that he's hesitant to make that commitment i think many people would be don't think of him as being on a unique kind of man i kind of like wine temperatures and reuse you mentioned do you

dedicated liberal but he was my teacher and i was i would bet that you have to teach there but i would say that his work i don't find much of a character of his work and you know he's a great writer greg ryan lived there is hardly over and he's almost metaphysical in much of what he writes an as martin read and what i think i learned from him aside from the fact that they're on a singer in his class loved him gone i seek that he taught us starting to look it at life as if it were in history and that writing is the thing you do in our team get out some of this news does not and it's been him because that may not be possible but to try accused and just look and i remember him also saying that he wrote from

fiction often paints while he that he thought of his stories and his novels as those mirrors and so i'm also as gifts and he ripped at specific people or so that and the notion of a novel as a as a gift or something you write for someone else it's a very interesting thing his appeal goes beyond his noted writers bozell story as do that marvelous original he's fired larry hammond i think and then i thought a little freer than that to summon onto and got to know absolutely love being on medication and those those five justices to listen to the current woes lowest teacher on an ounce drop by the facts that

writers are inspired sometimes by mentos once or another booth and listened to books and listened to the appreciation of the major british and start an appreciation of writing and still a spouse can be so dramatically in their in their philosophies of life so it's i often think that your writing style something that art is like your fingerprint on that you can do much to change it when you know obviously you can try to try to alter it in some ways but i think it's more a more perhaps it's not a technique that you've learned it's more a reflection of the way your brain your particular brain puts words together in hacking and how language comes filters they are imagination and reaches the page so on and endo and i like your writer's are the ones who do

have their hands down and hand them and find easy to tap into a lot of people have to spend a good bit of time and finding it with their own style is wow that that's a completely different difficult than i was when i started writing when i started seriously writing presides fitzsimmons telling graduates coup and i learned the critical essays and fiction yesterday's would not advancing why you can you can tell and it's during that well honestly on storytelling is is give in somewhat i mean it's a gift that people like rowe price can help develop as terrorism i think that genetic or some reason why i get up

but i think basically it has to be there for a formal mentor to strike sparked a long time many writers need mentors because so there's simply not very many writers and you know i grew up in a tomb where i didn't know english i don't think there were any certainty knowing and them you know if you if you look and you see what people do you maybe you could be a doctor it can be a lawyer nominee could sell real estate those were about the only three jobs that exist in charleston was going on so when you first meet year hear your first flesh and blood real writer it's it's it's a rare a currency you're likely to have now want and that it's exciting and if you observe secretly thought about doing it yourself it's

very encouraging to meet somebody he gets hit and they're in a fat person tells you that you could get an idea fits in well another scene a moment of extreme difficulty is talking with billy louise goal is she there and his answer is the word for the selection of the words hamsters on through lowered the correct correct i mean could that i can say look anyway two he's got one one woman on the fun any evidence that is exactly right he doesn't want the one that's there to know what the conversations it doesn't that's right and what we certainly learned is that luis has been gone through

crisis overall and has finally come to a resolution reading right robinson manages is so long dream tends to be a chain of winning the ways has been the love of his life he says but that actually he has been fairly comfortable in this long hair but they padded playing golf and talking and rob not having a real responsibility towards her and then he jokes with her about there they're great live are when she's family and as make up her mind to that sheen should that she does love and that she does want to be with him scares him to death and it is finally sent him he realizes he does now that he no longer works

yeah let's see that's the ultimately i'm one of the things that has interested main fiction writer mostly that family soon i've been very interested in long term relationships between parents and children between husbands and wives between friends and i think that when we think of marriage or parenthood we envision a sort of small framework and we see a certain thing we see at a static and i'm more interested in seeing what happens over a period of many years and how those relationships change and how they're not they're never static really even from day to day they they change and down to the us which makes

novel is taking a look at one of those are several of those relationships and data and they and they always surprise me to be writing about a long marriage that i think is going to break out and in my first book dreams of sleep that's what i'm thinking and then to my surprise as people come back it's interesting how many times authors tally was the character the story to the lion's daughter alanna miguel the outlines of that son who i was writing about that's the way it turned out that fact a metaphor that writers love and before i was writing when i hear people say that made me angry because it's clearly so untrue and it seemed unfair writers to try to make us readers believe this hotline show combat the fact is that that's exactly what it feels like when you're writing and i finish

and i think the reason is that we write from the subconscious the same place that we've dreamed for and so to us it does seem that way they're saying that the characters are under their own power in controlling their own lives and he doesn't feel that way to the right right and then something may be wrong and i think that's how it should be writing another low yes well i've been sidetracked little bit that i have sarin and know that i my second novel which is being filmed now so the aisle are came on and go over to say what's this whole thing hasn't as yet that they started well the father of the family is being played by albert finney in another by jill craig her and the other were about how growers are you if the film turns on the show

but from what i've seen of the filming so far i think i must've like he is novelist to ever have an authentic know the director's acclaimed genius it's bruce beresford an australian director to director driving miss daisy josephine humphreys author of the firemen spare as ben our guest of the word n word your host is ben johnson thought this program was produced in the studios of wbez in nashville