A Word on Words; 3814; Kaylie Jones

fb liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers their ideas for more than three decades this is word on words with john's law welcome once again to a word on words my guest today is kaylie jones board and the literary royalty who follows the award winning novelist james jones best known for from here to eternity and the

thin red line a competition on arrival of the soldiers go no priors celeste ascending souza planes and speak now katie rights was remarkable compassion and inside is a day to talk with me but laws my mother never taught me a meme or davy welcome words it's one of i have you here to talk about a book the altria candidly at times is painful to re can be reactive how i wish the world painful to read i mean i'm glad that there are humorous parts in the book and i i guess i didn't pull any punches when i wrote it i thought that it would be better not to and that if i was going to be honest that i would try to tell the truth as best as i could and i know there are some things that are very hard in there but i ultimately think it's a hopeful book i don't think it's a tragedy with no hope then it will having said

that let me ask you a ma lasted to get what you're writing it because i got a laugh at least once a chapter well see that's good eye i laughed a lot when i wrote it and it's surprising because at first i didn't know how i was going and how i was going to find my way into portraying my mother's character what which are you're in a very rounded way not only one way not only the way i started as the worlds are as my fathers are in my brother's sar and her friends and i finally figured out if i inserted her stories before each chapter that that use the river would get a better sense of her that if i tried to describe her stories you're just as she told them that that i decided to do is put in a short anecdote i laughed my head off writing them remembering how hysterical those events were but other things in the book made me laugh it really surprise me for example my my first marriage which was a terrible fiasco that lasted six months

i resisted writing it or to write it and i stayed away from it i didn't wanna write it and then finally i said to my husband i have to i have to sit down and do this and i laughed so much writing that it really surprised me i guess tragedy turns to comedy with a not enough time i think you know my husband's a new offering about america you said this was the worst thing that ever happened to you and i was howling with laughter as i was writing it so i guess that there are more than a few funny passages in the book that does have at least one chapter let me take you to a scene that you've picked which is not for nickel a minute touches the heart and makes one wonder it is a day when your mahler his soul beauford delaney well art it is a day on i guess for new at a

party after the opening of the fall is your mother and to my job all those usual mass of all flew to totally up the actor and so you say the area for months the authorities and at the moment has to be a totally new way yeah it's tethered think about it than to write it i think i remove myself enough when i was actually writing those scenes as if our writing a novel and just pretend that i was writing a novel and i try to write with a certain degree of distance and objectivity when that happened it was absolutely horrendous but also she she was very angry and end she was very drunk and become a nation was not good and at the time when that happened i i relief i think for the first time fell this just

phenomenal hatred and anger toward her which i hadn't really in any way come to terms with before that are in any way in any conscious way but it took me a long time so after that really you look at that it was very difficult it seems today the problem was yeah the prom was definitely in a big way because most of her life the problem with blue solo it's late in life that it then it really comes from a long relationship we zoom in it seems to me in the most painful why but early on a la saving friends would tell you your mother sows are beautiful your mother sows are wonderfully a lot of riders on your accomplishments and still you're

having these exchanges whether the money from childhood on their own very very how to deal with them and she is that there is almost a litany of criticism said one point in the book where it's almost everywhere becomes our mouth and he's clearly he had great love for you but clearly it came out as something close to better days lie yes that's true and i don't know if it's love honestly i don't know and i think this is something that it's a palliative in a lot of cases my brother up and says to me she really did love you should just in her show and another friend of hers and said that to me but i do i dont care doesn't make sense because it doesn't i don't care if you are there that he doesn't it doesn't play into the equation as it played out and what i wanted to portray was that was that

when she talked to me that when said those things to me i believe what she was saying that's where the books called lies my mother never told me because if you believe it's only saying that that's not wise and a thousand ip it's clear that she owned jamie the roller in great affection yes she was very different with him very different with him then a kind of joking back and forth big big gamble they play cards they were very they had a very different kinds relationship and she never that side of her was reserved for me and for perhaps a few other people who didn't tell me this until after she passed away who didn't tell me you know your mother was like that with me too until after she passed away so i thought i was the only one i'll ask about vengeance you know i am of an age when i remember well we was and how his books new right in the stomach and while it in right in the heart nobody wrote were more patients

perception bout the great forward to even james jones he was he was an icon he is an iconic figure in literary history i'm talking about the man with your father and he was a really nice man that's the the thing that i think people describe as code brawling kind of guy by the time i was a little girl he'd brought themself out pretty much he he was much quieter by the time i was ten he had congestive heart failure and he had to cut back a lot on his partying and on his sermon on late goings on so he'd it was a much quieter person much more of an older person when i during my my formative years kenya earlier james jones and he was a kid dedicated worker he went up to his office every

morning at about six thirty job was a job you in everyday upstairs and he worked until lunch really came home to me went back upstairs again he did that every day except sunday and we thought this was extraordinary that he did this without anybody making deliberate telling me how to go you know and he he worked up wait until his death he was very weak he was very very thin and i think he waited and thirty pounds or something at the end and he had elevator chairs put in our house in long island we'd taken up two flights of stairs to his office and he worked all day until he no longer could work it was taken to the hospital and in the hospital right to the end he was working on a whistle his last novel which you can get to finish and he spoke into tape recorder is ali was worried about was getting the end right before he passed away he died four chapters for me and so he never actually finished its notorious us together again that he was in dedicated worker at the written word imagination it was extremely

imaginative and he was a lot of fun to be around and i really loved him he was very kind to me and we had attention from him i had a lot of attention from him i think considering that at that time i think most foreigners that generation probably were not that involved in their children's upbringing the way that fathers today are i think you know you live in those early in those early days of your life and a royalist party partners are not surprising is the new compilation writer of the surveillance of your own right b the daughter of james jones but to operate to have to be a child and moving about us in our house and in the houses of others bill styron and iran show an norman mailer and like the listing going on and then and then his novels become great movies and you're interacting with the celebrities in the stage

and screen your mother's and beautiful woman your father is a desert he's somebody that that really it seems to me we was some a magnet for the literary hillary graves of the times especially in paris because they then opens the one type of situation especially on sundays and and any good week really everybody knew he was there and that he worked at home and that there were that there were kids there and there was a housekeeper there and people would come and ring bow and they figure out where it was and they'd come and ring the bell and so i mean he met people like that writers would just so up and on sunday nights there have a kind of open house and a lot of people would come from all over all over the world but a lot of americans who are in town would come they'd know that he would it was an open house and they were invited and we bat this was a great deal of fun and i think because they were are there were a lot of americans in paris at that time there were a whole lot of writers living there full time when

they were bitter when charlotte decade in paris have the time or really see an apartment palestinian they live mostly posters but he had a little pat in paris or they would come and they would be around up periodically and it was the whole person you crowd all soldier who was and they were cars around the same time little bit earlier but enter into the sixties for sure you know they had this this kind of openness that i didn't realize of course i mean i knew they were well known people because my mother said they're well known people that a famous writer that famous actors but it wasn't until i went to college and i saw the names of all the reading lists twenty century american literature that i said mary mccarthy and james baldwin and during war on the most of the young lions are one shot me it was it was actually and it was it was amazing because by that time to some of them already gone and i couldn't ask the questions that i wish i'd asked was younger because i didn't really start reading reading those kinds of books and told after my father passed away and by then the salon thing

about him since he was sick the last few years it wasn't quite the rise of the writers brian that the ride is a night in paris in long island it wasn't quite an extent and so that they were quieter dollars in choir friends around until me interview that your recollection and and do you think they fed off each other and the writers of the writer boasts a real stars in their own right now big big ally and silent tears and i can imagine that you know it's been sitting there just it was just a drinking in the exchanges as they talk about their books have that gritty work of others and they could be tough minded they could be funny they could be mean i guess the most gentle one of the book is your father's words to use use very near the end i will do it

usually you could he said so much you know you have the stepmother from drinking so much is the concept of not drinking was still not even a thought night a possibility in that vocabulary didn't exist and then when i came to learn much later in life is that there is no so much if you're an alcoholic there is you either drink or you don't and then there is no having a little while and you say something like whoa i know and i must go back maybe it one drink among totally unrealistic the un she was home in accra yeah she was smart and she was very well read as very very very funny very funny and they want their demeanor was shot was one of her very close as friends and when he died there was a great great loss to her by the time he was living on long island also in south hampton and that was a terrible terrible was because he really was like a a brother figure to her some

you really kind of took over a lot of ways and advisory was there for her she's a great reader sheets around my father's work before anybody else and as she read all my work and she could take him yes you did as is often write a lot of stories going to jump out of a manuscript and you don't write it will if it is or you know yeah i was the thin red line it was the first hundred pages or so of the first draft of the thin red line and it was too technical she said it's all about a language in its it's very removed and outs of the omniscient narrator was way too on their sending a way to distance to tell them that he threw the fireplace start over but it was the right thing because it's a i love that novel it's an absolute brilliant novel and i think you've got the right voice after that so says she was right in a real country regionally as she did for those who just two years i'm talking with kaylie jones about her latest book was my mother never taught me and no more kaylie jones the daughter of the great writer james jones

the beginning chapter and by reciting a five story most of them very funny stories bun from your memory of your mother left when a great raconteur and again and again again i found i would be in the middle of a chapter and i'd go back and get another lab freedom the same story identified the story about them that involves a call come from lauren bacall don't a clean line to juggle a relationship of frank sinatra and whatever you do whatever you get rewritten as you live there and widowed ready to just die from jane doe about the furniture a field so they have to for god sakes don't bleep frank sinatra at and you can get here because they led us like a

line from a moment and of course that was the punch line of the sinatra later cohn yes of course to say how how blatter even though he thought she was losing her mind because she just couldn't sleep and you and me to come visit me to come up and he didn't know what was going on and you know that that story has passed on since then that was nineteen seventy seven and every window hears that story now from that battle gang of my mother's every time a husband dies at stories told and passed on there is a story about the details about her literature and the second character is worried about her wealth and there is the scene in which in order had the moms and their up and around to talk about that story but it's a fascinating and i go to a live now seeing

his story twice in two different versions ones a story my mother told which he would see didn't tell a lot of it turns out that story was reserved for a very few people like my cousin didn't know that story and my mother wrote a version of that story in this novel that she wrote it was but it was quite a different version of this and then some would somebody else in her family actually told me another version of that story so there's there are several versions of that very story but as my mother told him as you recall that my grandfather was was ahead you know he was a gangster that they were after is money and i don't know what he was into that i know was i knew it was good lighting and that was numbers rackets that's what i you know and when he died the fbi came knocking and mighty my grandmother rap bansal and her insights and said to my mother wrapped them in your clothes and then and then later trips into another woody talking about that never happened as if you were afraid to be completely made it up dr emily both are looking for a little bit was no money no money i guess i needed money

that marty for guessing it together to fix that she was going to be a model and that story that she was sober she were very resigned my godmother says it's not true and i thought years as a well it's been teasing that don't see the conspirator in a couple different yet on the waterfront sees it in a couple of the are things she did and she also died a friendship with the director and she had chosen you but children very very well see a long term friendship with him say yes she was involved in that picture there's no question but did she actually almost at that part of my godmother she says no it's it that's she exaggerated that but i don't want change the story because that's how she told the story and then i was every time i tried to read peter's stories as she told them i'm not editorializing it is a great story great stories or or i'm in this job and this is

an unfair question that perhaps this book therapy for you i don't think there is such a thing for writers i i don't think it's cathartic and eyed susan g reilly says that you know what is catharsis isn't catharsis that you know i thank god i had no i had agreed to her was before she passed away about a year and a half before she passed away when i realize that she was drinking again i really great i went to bed and i just actually gave up and that's when it really let go and a lot of ways i let go of hope in dirt in the relationship even into possibly recovery and his lego to by the time she died and i was shell shocked and really shot up to the point where i felt nothing at all and writing the book i was not as hard as living through what i lived through with with this experience with her and i tried to be honest i try to tell the story as best i could and it turns out there are a lot more people than you would think after hoover had these really difficult

relationships of alcoholic parents i don't think there is anybody who has a college prep will relate to this book i don't think there is an alcoholic in this country who won't understand this book her anger at the end the shocking yes it's horrendous i i have it on tape believe it or not because my lawyer made me take these messages and i couldn't so my husband take them and i never saw him as pale and as horrified as i did when you take those messages and my diary which we heard a few of them when she would call and scream into the machine and it was it was beyond horror and what i don't understand is why they allowed her to make those calls you know she had people living in our house who were feeding her blues and handing her the phone and she couldn't dial from practically at that point said this people were hopping her duties things she loved her daughter yeah surrender in your granola berkeley a

lovely note at the end of the book after birders touching guess so you know you're a successful although they only need to write this book unless you really feel that it helps i feel i really needed to write this book and you know i needed to read this book it's the emails i get and that message is again facebook and on my website where people went through the same thing and you say you love me i got an email from a twenty five year old guy who said i start drinking because of this book i think he saved my life because it does like that that he was ready but this is what's been happening i've got an outpouring to people that i don't even know who say you told the story and i lived through and it doesn't matter if they lived in a trailer park are on fifth avenue it doesn't make a difference

dave isay you when i closed the book i thought how tough it must have been for her to write it to live it to live and no fun i thought to write it to write it was easy compared to write it was a relief in the sense that i felt like as sandra them if the person is screaming out this prophecy doom and everybody walks or years and they threw her out does anyone here at the un here to raise their fall that's it felt like i was i kept saying this is serious was going to die and this is terrible and and nobody wanted to hear at an and i was accused of stealing i was accused of being this evil horrible person by her and by her arthritis and the money in you in your mind stay exactly and an end to for me to just sit down and

say for the record i'm a tell my version of the story now i work for my daughter i wrote it for my daughters when i first sat down a writer directors and when my daughter when she gets older to see what i went through and how my side of the story runs well i think that you know will come to love the book book causes a message of love to her you know i don't try to take her away from my mother for a long long time i i wanted that really since it was larry and you're taking your door but this year despite the fact the us that she is feeling hatred for you and the thing it was then is it worth it to have my daughter hear those things is it worth continuing her relationship with my mother or or do i have to protect myself and my relationship with my daughter because of my mother saying those things in this little girl's eight years old we shouldn't think of these of these things that my mother sang and finally i had to take her away from that craziness and and she

suffered from that my daughter suffered from now and so the life that i had to do if this is a powerful story tall with great passion and i think with great love a great love for her for a person who i would say you didn't deserve it and that's a hard thing for me to say but now you've written that we have about a minute left the time has flown by you or i don't know where those genetic what's left to live two i did one is a novel which is hard to talk about because i'm planning an appetite also like to write a non fiction book about my teaching experiences which is there and finding hope and finding grace in his life has been so much for me about teaching and my students and my interactions with them and also how to write how to write a novel and how it taught people to write novels on my strings and gone on to publish and often had bigger successes than their

teacher i i wanna write about writing well it's great if you can talk with me and thought this both say it's a book a freshman power and foolish because i don't you can buy i would like to thank you so much thank you and thank all of you for watching and dancing at the local warlords keep reading