An hour with Tom Averill LQ

major ryan and this is katy are for sensation fifty guard there and keep your commentator tanya guevara was honored this weekend by the national cowboy and western heritage museum in oklahoma city they've named his latest book road the outstanding western novel of the year set in eighteen twenty five it's the story of a young man robert johnson who flees his home state of tennessee on horseback it's based on an old jimmy driftwood folk ballad called tennessee stud in a minute we'll talk to tom ever about his novel road but first if you're not familiar with the ginger of song let's get in the mood by giving a listen it's performed here by the nitty gritty dirt band featuring the likes of the news

it's b it's b all right

stephanie all right the panel

the fbi and that was the point that's tennessee's dead performed by the nitty gritty dirt band and featuring doc watson it's the basis for timetables latest novel road published by the university of new mexico

press road was just named the outstanding novel of the year by the national cowboy and western heritage museum in oklahoma city tom welcome back nice to be here thanks for having me so you start with this great jimmy driftwood ballot about the tennessee stud where did you go from there it all started thirty eight years ago at the walnut valley bluegrass festival in in winfield kansas i went there like the third year that was in existence is it just celebrated its fortieth year last september and there i heard doc watson and merle saying tennessee stud for the first time it ever heard the song and doc watson was it was a great has a great version of that song and i fell in love with it and i was a little bluegrass band called the rock island line played around in lawrence with my brother rick atkinson increasing linen and geoff garin are on the

base in which we had these gigs and we learn the song together and then i sang it and then i could play that was in the band and i thought it would be a great lullaby when i had my daughter in nineteen eighty two is to sing it to her over and over again and at night was a long and rhythmic and only one murder toward the heavens and it seemed like an appropriate enough and then and then in nineteen ninety seven when my son was born many years later lullaby time again and i found myself sitting in the dark singing a song how many thousands of times i've sung the song but it's always intrigued me was critical lines have me some trouble with my sweetheart paul where the tennessee spill into green eyes turning blue as he was dreaming of his sweetheart to anchor some of them you can just talk often quick narrative or two to

rhyme and you know when we are unique but i give me what is the story behind this song that we want to what is actually going on between real people and so that's when i decided at some point it really got it just engaged citizen of fictional up and not tried it tell jimmy different story as he told so well in tennessee stud the just what my version of that if i could write my version of it so that's what i tried to do and it wasn't interesting there was an intriguing excursion in my writing life because i had i had to do all the trouble it was a bass that the statement that the song starts in tennessee drifted on down into arkansas law that no man's land cross river called the rio grande and so literally i got research grants from from washburn university small research clinton and made trips to to tennessee to arkansas to the jimmy

driftwood archives in conway searching for more material behind a song and i had this eureka moment where i found this paragraph which i reprinted in the preface of the book and that all this does is going to myanmar doesn't it anymore really what nfl the same paragraph on the back of an album cover so that anybody could see this the same thing i traveled to conley to see but when i was in conway as penny mind and have there jamie proved was so prolific both as a songwriter and a poet i read and read and read and read to me directly and copy down lines and tried tried to get his spirit in his language into the book as much as possible and and then of course went down into the no man's land into texas san antonio down to laredo visited living history farm visited racetracks that training corps

training facility a near laredo texas so funny this is because this guy who trained thoroughbred it agreed to let me come there and i call him when i arrived in laredo one afternoon and it was about three o'clock and he said well you can't get here or emotional thing that didn't quite make it but for cause i haven't checked into the motel and he said no no no no not today four in the morning going over the scores insulting the fifth his authority over a hundred degrees at laredo in this is in may so i showed up in the dark at four in the morning or four thirty in the morning there were run in the store brand horses others on this bureaucrat and and some and they're running they the usual counterclockwise that americans and then some of their own caucus cause they ship them to england

and france to have to raise your pants on it and they go in a different direction or so in the train horses to be savvy in both tragedy just fascinating and the way they take care of those horses and the beauty of those horses are just amazing to me so i had lots of a fine gesture researching the book the landscapes of the book very different places each each time that i made a trip and then had so much fun just learning about the world of age and twenty five the world of horses listening to version after version of the song because if you if you go on youtube even then you can listen to jimmy drifters singing you can listen to dark watch johnny cash are low guthrie nitty gritty dirt band ramblin jack elliott build barwick inaugurate the number of artists who have done this song even the chieftains because it's so much a different person lend your storytelling well you know it's

like hearing a poem read by different people each person has a slightly different interpretation maybe maybe one of them has that you know i know your brother the looker paul has real macho kind of think another is really my focus on worker wrote about the nfl and the girl to call jeremy has this longing for this girl with the golden hair very different from this macho ride into town and then the girl was like ok now the secondary business and and so i would sort of listen to look to that as a way of figuring out how i was going to the plot because each song interpreter just slightly different even that last and there never was a horse like the tennessee stud and so some people say that as though there never was a horse that is as mythological horse this is an impossible horses says this is the idea of a horse and then some

of them some of them just to say it like him union they broke them all animated shorts this was the best worst ever so there's these different ways an interpreter in that night that tiny use that to give me license to to make the study in mind now a little larger than life more understanding of where and smart sometimes martin them he texted her and i want my main character be someone had a lot to learn from the very beginning in his horse helps him and joe his beloved helped helped him and his travel experiences helped him turn to learn who your zoning wants and how to get it in a smart way let's go back in without divulging too much of the plot gets a little thumbnail sketch of where the stories start sin and weary doesn't their will is it interesting was a poet people always say i'm from

you know you know we give away the plot well the plot anybody can know the plot or who listens to the song right they know as much as i started with anyways so you you know there's a love story you know that it's it is a story of adventure in which in which young man is forced to leave his home for a make him around a nine month period because because i assumed that if two young people have that something might happen that requires nine months of gestation to have to figure out an is intellectual so you get this young man who is uprooted by this trouble that he has with his sweetheart brothers and paul and really really without his consent without his desire and he's ripped away from what he's built in his own life and he's a fugitive for around nine months and ashes were taken a leave of absence from his left and learn the same thing that a young person would learn if they went to europe for nine months are in or just just decided to travel for nine months who am i and

what i really wanted in life in each blue character nietzsche situation brings him closer to his sense of what he really wants and who he really is and he becomes i think i'm a better manned by taking this is kind of a forced to leave and answers so it's an adventure story a coming of age and so isn't coming to maturity morgan coming of age he's already of age and then it's the love story in the notes that other story american settlement in other this desire to to move into new territory and make a new life and that's really what the song is about to end the story behind the song is that this is the story of jimmy drift woods wives grandfather's grandfather joe goes way back in time to to have had a horse and had trouble with sweetener called anew to become a very prominent citizen in arkansas she had this moment in american

history when the mississippi river is kind of this this fault line between settlers face an unsettled states and territories in arkansas still a territory and it reminded me a lot since i'm interested in kansas of the way which the missouri river was a kind of fault line between the settled states an ambulance and there's always this is an interesting tension goes along between territories in several places so it's also a story of a settlement and one when robert johnson name i give to my character when he's out in the unsettling places that he he he says that his experience in the west is that half the people in coach go to the west to settle in the other half we'll never set on so so some people are going there to make it fit for civilization and some people who are there not fit for civilization see this real tension between freedom

in order and you know self self proclaimed justice versus legal justice all these kinds of things that were that were typical of frontiers and i was interesting exploring that too so the plot is is it's basically in this song anybody can anybody can access the plot is in it it makes it a fine writing experiment because you don't wanna do what someone thinks you're gonna do even though you have to do what the song tells you you have to do so there's this tension and my writing and calculations i would never choose the first thing that came to my mind is i think all that's what someone expects me to do with this particular scene so i know issues the second or third kind of thing and then sometimes i would just begun there's the line that i quoted earlier lot right back across arkansas

a look your brother now walker pole well the expectation there i think that i have for myself when i first wrote the book was that he would he would go in sort of in our season and then the blazing you know i will watch law and that kind of thing and maybe like a showdown be my chance to write or cliched western showdown who the links you know back i think and then midway through right now that that would show that you've learned anything from his experiences out was and then i started looking at the word what walker brother and i will rip off and it spelled differently in different versions of the song sometimes as debbie h u p p e d walked like you woke up on some centers that might look like a sound you might make the age of opiate walker brothers i will reply and you walked and walked me something entirely different from what

you're going to go with the guys in the fish workers when you call somebody out he most of the medieval version of a definition that work when you call somebody else it's a whole different manners now swede that's what he ends up doing and he's ready to fight but he he goes into call thing called these people out and sort of call the whole soon oreo out here this is who i am this is what i want this is what i have this is what you know and it's it becomes and a more like a negotiation then they enter a macho grabbing something that that i deserve two other just take my cues from some time from researching one word and does make decisions as i was writing along so was a lot of a lot of fun as a writer is a beatles became an exercise in him working with in unknown structure

but but making sure that the reader never knew what was going to happen it probably forces you as a writer to be creative in very structured way it's in a way that your other reading perhaps doesn't have that kind of limitations when you're writing what will you call a pro flow of partridges just moving forward none of its own time and energy you have that excitement and discovery but when we're writing with an unknown structure excitement for a different you're right the excitement have to do with how you can make something happen to steal steal match all of the rules that are there for you but but still have it be completely surprising to yourself and to ensure the reader a thing you must be like a poet's feel like when they're working within a poetic form you have to you have to be even more perfect within that that form because everybody knows what for me was to have if you are if you get the wrong number of syllables a wrong number of actions iran germany

everybody knows that if there's a list of his called a soft lights up for an ersatz was be writing my version of tennessee stud and so it has to fill the requirements but it also has to be my version of tennessee stud that thomas obviously a lot about horse culture i use the four horsemen i owned a horse for three years when i was in graduate school and i've always loved horses that particular horse was was a real fun horse it his name was cock peaceful a couple birds when i first got him and he was a little stallion and he was part morgan in part chaplain odd combination chili heads of the features of the morgue and hoarse but he was a small horse like a shetland pony that horse could chop suey jumping horse and that horse could jump a five foot fence even though i was taller than he was soaked it was music

made him or stand and he's going on a time when i first joined in running away he's analyst tell people that the horsch taught me the landscape of the kids live about selfless that has about ten miles back and that was back when none couldn't reservoir was just starting to be built so it was condemned land all mechanism that wasn't flooded two we could ride back in those trails and and really on those roads if forever never encounter much automobile traffic and with my horse i spent one no one tone with late fall on your late late summer it did pearson integrated humanities program that was going on at that time had some and has interesting experiment where they want to send some for some people at the marysville to working farm and the revenues horses and i'm chacon betty fredrickson had moved up their

narrative in k u students in that program they're still living and farming up in marysville so three of us decided best way to get horses up to marysville from largely dried them soar so we took a hundred and fifty mile horseback trip from lawrence kansas to marysville three up three of us are little portion and two other horses and a youngster named roger williams and there's a young woman named eva carneiro and i later got married and and i was set off we had about ten twenty bucks in our pockets don't people are some big roles and just to face it laundered a lot of people would feed as for me to stop a restaurant people let us sleep in her barn for pastures overnight and we had such a wonderful five days on the road

about thirty miles a day and got to know those warships pretty darn pretty darn well still the feel of a horse i think i have a pretty good sense of i also that went to the farm of jim hall i knew had teachers in emporia state and pennies a horseman a cattle guy and and that he took my son and i are on horses and with it as i was first trying to write books and he really helped me out just remind me of all the parts of the horse and what all the parts of the saddle aren't and and this is karen reviving mime my memory of an almost thirty some years before when i was more intimate with all along attack and all that kind of stuff so so that was interesting in on that trip that we took that was so much fun week we had two things happened to us that we maybe should have predicted maybe known one thing that happened to us is that we never spent and nine nobody would take our money people fed

us really well and we never slept outdoors people took us into their homes and they fed us we have a shower every night to bed every night and the second thing was that we knew someone that they knew between the three of us and whoever and wherever we stop and talk to people we knew someone that they knew and so that we reduce just like we were on our own and all we were part of a community seven degrees of separation kind of thing that could happen and so we really have a marvelous time people really identified with us and i think that's part of it what people are interested in in this novel rhode island that just connects with an older time analysts had the totally different time in american history and when we have three students are taking a trip up to marry to have a state on a working farm and work with

horses goes back to the traditional agricultural past plus i we joked you know they knew we were going to take the tv you can do to get away so we were not threatening to people at all and people really admired that was a time when people of iffy about young people on what was going on with young people in and they'd leave they were they were in my ring us there from being on horseback you for trying out this trip that they want help assad on our journey which is not always true in robert johnson's case where everybody's on horseback and everybody is equally oh potentially friend or our foe we you know i think there was one thing that was really interesting is easy on this journey that he's on he encounters all kinds of different people in different from them different cultures and every single one of them is potentially a

friend or a foe he has to learn how to read personalities pretty quickly and and people read him pretty quickly and usually people read him on the verge of beating be maybe a little of that was a little stubborn at first but also a person who's not going to be harmful to them and i wanted that to be true all the way through the book that this this is a young man who the who is really trying hard to think about what he's doing and he's got pretty good impulses all the way all the way through the book so he hasn't had any odd but wrote a passage an area at one point where he's remembering when his mother seven and his mother said there are two kinds of people in the world are people who help their people who hurt and she said i tell you it's not because you know i want you to

toot toot toot toot yeah once you your personal health wealth want you know that you know that's just the way it is in egypt you always being helped can sometimes you read her and andy's future looks at the world and that's fairly simple way that is not meant to be simple assignment to be some wisdom about about the world and he asked it helps him to judge people and then i think people judge him as a person who's going to be more helpful than that and he's course the victim he's the wrong party and so that that helps some people understand two years and they tend to tend to trust him and you really take us phone from small a small town in rural tennessee lives outside this small he's never seen a building as big as a mission that he runs across in san antonio for example he's never seen horses like the spaniards have down in mexico he's easy an unfamiliar with the

french settlement in the french attitude it's going on you're around pine bluff arkansas and that character ball is is an actual historical character who did start pine bluff and who was part call upon an ang part french and a negotiated some of the land trees that started arkansas home it's on its way to being a territory and so on so it's a lot of historical research that i did for i try to weave into their way out being encyclopedic just that was just the world of the time and he's so you're exposed to bunch of different kinds of people much different kinds of culture more than one language englert a little bit of spanish when he's done in mexico because of pretty much has to to get along and so for that that was off part of the part of the mix is an interesting time period in american history where'd you know so so much of that in me

i have an average russian be born on at the time of the louis there at the time of the the louisiana purchase and so this is just a brand new territory and then this is all in that unsettled time in texas where texas is really spain know it's mexico know it's taken you know either way it goes you know six flags over texas the drought there's an amusement park made for some amusing history is due to really seek all the takeovers in and a lot of the people who were at the alamo and involved in text merely texas history were all from tennessee i think right write in the book that the young woman says well my uncle says a texas is not an outpost of tennessee and destroy davy crockett jim louis and almost even often all those people were from tennessee initially and i didn't know much about that part of american history at before i started as

this book and started thinking oh what is eighteen twenty five and then when i went to san antonio just as a basis for getting a sense of that landscape iran into those spanish missions the alamo that everybody knows about was the only one that wasn't finished there were four others that were completely finished in which in which the unit spanish church and you know and these outposts and were converting native americans up there all along the river and so there were numerous string of of five of the east and once i saw some of them they're all part of a national park service they're just gorgeous and just amazing outside always going to end up in all of these missions that was there during an eighteen twenty five and the right of the transition time just about ready to kick the spaniards out just about ready for that whole area it to completely change politically in the old spanish culture and withdrew back into back into

mexico i decided i've thought about having an ending the national great time in san antonio visiting conditions fire rips period of time to set this up with novel in the past tense from this that you can share with us i have several so when i read from the book it into to water read passages that speak more true character then to plot because the plot is pretty well pretty well known but one of the important things that happened over and over again as he has to cross rivers and water and rivers is very important all the way through the book and then and there's a passage that first time swimming the mississippi river and if i can read a little from that that passage that begins a little bit of insight into at him and his character in his personality he's he's made it to memphis and he's

stayed there for a brief time with men in harlem and then he is being pursued by a bounty hunter because he's been falsely accused of all of the murder celeste the trouble with a sweetheart brother and paul and a barrier runs across yemen and challenges his horse to race and and johnson wins just barely but the bounty hunter swears chipped cup you know that you'll get his revenge and so if so i'm for jobs realizes he has to swim the mississippi has to swim at that night and hiram asked him to decide to swim a box over full of supplies and this county has to do with a subplot of what's going on a cross between settlements and settlements and projecting with with african americans in and if there's a nice hint all the way through the hiring is involved somehow in helping the slaves escape into its territory where they can't be as easily pursued so he's carrying a box then swimming in a cross along with his

portion in yemen there it goes like this if he was in the middle of the mississippi injury behind him crossing they were into something new on a bank of the river in front of him are behind he was unsure of dog howl or wasn't a wolf the box pulled itself out of the swath of moonlight into darkness it became the shadow of a box rectangular the same size as a baby coughing they had laid james into just such a box a boy not even two years old when robert was five his brother had crawled walk talk fever and cough himself to death robert watch his mother swat old jameson in all she lay him in the box his father had fashioned the old man had nailed it shut just as hiram had nailed this

box robert remembers his mother's extravagance of tears how she could not leave the hump of earth after the burial and his father's anger first nothing that robert's mother until he demanded she leaves the grave and get inside and cook life goes on god took what he wanted i don't like it no more than you do he spat on the ground and went inside he stood at the one small window of their cabin that looked out to where his wife lay on the ground next to the disturbed earth he cursed god he cursed her he cursed robert when ef from brad finely he took down his bible and read all night he read all night robert's mother lay outside as though she wanted to enter the earth with her child and robert's father burned once buttering candle after another and robert he went to his small room in the rafters of the cabin and imagined he was a bird fly away and he was god's sparrow the

one he'd looked after then robert slept healing and then all the next day and then the next evening his mother came inside called him down and they ate at supper she said i don't believe god takes what he wants i believe he receives what we're able to give him she never spoke of james again when she died thirteen years later they opened another hole in the ground next to james roberts father said god takes what he wants robert to not correct in the stir drifted with the box in the darkness johnson was pulled from his reverie by boat so small he'd not seen it riding the current a deep voice out of there and bring in around the lantern sputtered light source alright another voice writer too laughter oh i asked dubois why johnson called shalom in my weight archangel at night as the second voice the bow came closer

time when faster than me said johnson that a box as the second voice call from jim johnson my baby boy died before i could get to the doctor sorry to hear it said the deep voice your arkansas are trying to be said johnson i just wanna be home will be much longer said the deep voice the boat moved into the stronger current followed the river southwest much rice said johnson the force the current lessened he mounted the star and his grandson horse's head sunni whisper saying so there's a little bit of memories there and one of the things i found early on in the writing of the book is that if you've got a single character and his horse and there are on the road together what's going to happen they can't talk to each of his souped up mr and think of the time for talking on and so

besides running into occasional characters there that there has to be a lot of the engagement fueled by the anticipation of the future and the memory of the past and so the future and the past become almost characters in the book robert remembering moments with his dead mother along with his brother were with his father or when he first met this term aunt and then there's all this anticipation about when he does finally get back and he becomes obsessed with because he's illiterate which is another subplot in the book he becomes obsessed with being able to write letters to joe then some even though she might not get them but then he started and composing and just in his head and that was a kind of literary device that i used that seemed to meet him has to strike own mostly with the character himself who has to live in this moment where you

he's a youth is not connected to anything mix except his own sense of self as a few as a fugitive as it as lee's invasion no man's and he said you know that he wanted to be the no man is he doesn't want somebody to be following him and he doesn't wanna meet somebody who my i bring him in or something but no man's land you are the no ma'am you're pretty your pretty lonely so what you have you have memory in the past and the future when the president is is just limbo for you we're almost like if you were sick or something you know and you are taken out of circulation so the past and the future become big character isn't there in the book i'm visiting with tom ever all washburn university writer in residence and author of the road tom you've also got some big news involving your previous book talked about that when lynn university new mexico press sick excepted road and were going to publish and i i asked if they ever did

reprints of books i knew that they that they did ask him if he might be interested in secrets of the tool cafe which was what two thousand and one novel that came out from blue and books a division of penguin putnam and it had been out of print for gold for four five years it had it was bob's into thousand one had a nice life and in lawrence here it was the re across lawrence won one spring we had a really good time with it and at that time i'm sure but you know you're thousand do not keep books in print or have generally end and so i asked of new mexico that might be interesting because two faa does have southwestern food in it and some of the book is set in albuquerque where the presses iran to cafes is nearing dear to my heart because it involves that another particular line of research i got really interested in that was the food

and the food that was in the western hemisphere and then in the new world before contact with europeans who its indigenous pre colombian food cooked in new mexico style in researching of food and also riding riding them the book jensen has another central topic to write about food robert crow sees the good that the guy who owns a burger stand along with the simon bateson and you've been a restaurant or and to be cannon and lawrence for a long time once once said you're trying to do the same thing i'm kind of doing the opposite he said you're trying to write about food in a way that makes people want to taste it and i want to create fruit that case so good people or write about is the same thing only really different in that the notion of

words that language and tastes and what what the sensuality what what language can do to create the sensuality of snow and placed his is important into a cafe for congratulations on a very productive two thousand twelve you know i'm really excited about it is is it's been really nice has really nice experiences out on the road with rode r o d and in the hope that some good experiences again re engaging took a cafe next time thank you for coming in today thank you for having me i really appreciate it any day

many businesses niko the kid

anyway and that's the tennessee stud performed by the chieftains tennessee stud was the inspiration for tom april's newest book

road published by the university of new mexico press road was just awarded the outstanding western novel of the year by the national cowboy and western heritage museum in oklahoma city kansas public radio has a copy of road to give away thanks to the generosity of the university of new mexico press if you'd like a chance to win road go to our website k pr that kay you that edu and click on ticket giveaways at the left hand side of your screen while you're there you can also help keep programs like a pr present on the air plans online or by calling eight eighty eight five seven seven five to six eight thats triple h k p r k and you and now for a journey of a very different sort through time history and genre laptops quarterly is a publication of essays fiction nonfiction our work photographs poetry each addition built around a single topic like

sports money or crime to paraphrase the radio program this american life each quarter you take a theme bring your reader stories and essays about that theme louis lap and is the editor and publisher of weapons quarterly it's the great books make topical it's to bring to the microphone and the president voices of the past so that my contributors are along the lines of the city is julius caesar juvenile charles dickens elizabeth the first edith wharton mark twain and so on that it comes across a distance of three thousand years and it brings to writers not only from the west but also from the chinese and islamic civilization is all of them focused within the perimeter of the topic with republicans

money will war the environment medicine education we talking about the publication of these two hundred and twenty four pages perfect spy in wide margins handsome illustrations from great painters sculptors photographers no advertising and eighty percent of the text of the voices in time and then at the end there are maybe five or six episodes from contemporary authors or so dealing with the same theme in and bringing the perspective of the president on the wisdom and the experience of the past and i have to say it is a beautiful publication it's a beautiful thing to behold it's on rips some shows paper is in the age of the internet and kind of throw away medium it's really it's really something of substance visual eat

intellectually and are tackling yes it doesn't object and it's meant to be kept and put out it'll stand on my shelf and the issue that we did for example on monday two years ago is as good today as it was two years ago because once again i am drawing on writers whose work house passed the test of time and if it can stand up for five hundred years ago and certainly standup for another two and weak also so a korean in box set so you can make a handsome give him a handsome presence on a bookshelf i would pick up on that point do you just made about you have contributors from throughout the ages and i think that's one of the things that really caught my attention immediately about it was the juxtaposition

of pieces from two thousand years ago with something that was written five years ago and on the next page or will be something from twenty years ago and on the page after that something in eight hundred years ago and although you start each of you were entries with the data it's almost incidental i find myself diving into the pieces and feeling like they were contemporary even though i'd started out knowing that this particular piece was written in say the sixteen hundreds like why i think of that as a love of history and time as a continuum and i care in mind two quotations one from kyoto who said he who cannot drop three thousand years of living hand to miles and the other one for mark twain who says history doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes you know the point is that over their human journey of across the fight

and the frontiers of five women here we've learned to salvage the things that we find beautiful useful or cruel an accurate penetrating observations of human predicament don't go out of style and one allows the voices to be heard after so many years is the force of mind and the power of expression and that carries a cross the barriers of time each of your publications is based on a particular topic you mention a couple of top of the dome so far how do you go about picking the topic for this quarter but well we have a board of editorial advisors who include people like barbara ehrenreich and sean wilentz and eric foner historians an essayist and journalist and we keep in touch with the so far the

email and every so often we have a leading new york usually around a dinner table and we talk about possible ideas for a forthcoming issue is it's like a faculty meeting but very ill for more with the people around the table so just text i say well you can't possibly have an issue of money unless you put in washington irving's famous description of america in the eighteen twenty years when he's coining the phrase the almighty dollar and deploring speculation on wall street markets of the day and so on and the view begin to secure which subject will be rich enough to or they're not rich enough because all subjects are

an embarrassment of riches but that can be where the writing can be a sufficient variety over it's serious length of time with contributions again from the orient in the middle east as i say it's an embarrassment of riches and constantly surprised and delighted by the wonderful writing that i discover thought that i had read once happier we read again and universal text something can be have been around for four five hundred years but if you have never read it it is new to you or if you've never read it juxtaposed next to an essay or a piece of art or something that puts it in a totally different perspective that's right when you see it as a part of a whole instead of an island see

yesterdays it it can have more resonance in a ditch land so many newspapers and magazines are really struggling financially what can lead the faith did it take to set out on this particular path well in the first place to do it because it was something no love to do and i thought if i could do the senate so excited me more than they are saying it joining it would be this and then i saw there probably would be an audience not a mass market audiences corley is set up on the promise that they can break even at a circulation of roughly forty thousand soul of subscription or sixty dollars a year fifty dollars an issue in any bookstore and assuming the forty thousand was an excessively large number given month population of three hundred million in the united states and then secondly i began to notice the

coming back into onto the public stage history and its many different forms not only the movies that are made on historical scenes whether you're talking about scorsese or russell crowe or nicole kidman hughes you see the number of films at that house and historical background you also see that rising circulation an audience and waiting for the history channel you see the kind of a documentary and an hbo wants you with both recent history and sometimes history of the more distant past you have to remember that every summer of twenty five thousand people dressed up in costumes

the union blow the confederate gray re enact the battle of gettysburg and you see the crowds that go through williamsburg virginia through the knee a gilded age mansions in newport and so the interest in history is present in the society the reading of history and stick your stomach and gives them some kind of an anchor him sleep drift and gulf of of time that is constantly dissolving cicero they deployed he said not to know what happened before one was born as he is always to be a child if you perceive history fuzz balls day they're not natural resource the inheritance the treasure of the good to speak so that also as an applied

technology that is to say navigational lights flashing across the gulf of time tell us where we might be without that you do you have trouble but the invasion in the future because of future is just dissolving present far and so it it provides that kind of grounding and young people that are grateful for it's that reassurance that there is in fact nothing new under the sun that's true that is reassuring it also shows that you belong are part of a wider and broader cells again i'd been visiting with lewis lapham publisher

of lap and orderly an eclectic collection of essays photos fiction nonfiction and illustrations lewis i just wanted to mention my favorite weapons quarterly so far was your edition on crimes and punishment in which you find an excerpt from the bath a letter from malcolm x an excerpt from the confessions of st augustine as still far off from the movie butch cassidy and the sundance kid all within about a dozen pages lot of generator for them conversation that's louis lap and editor of weapons quarterly i'm j mcintyre kbr present is a production of kansas public radio