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Author Q & A with Chris Cander

On January 27, 2019

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger (January 27). Click here to read this interview on the Clarion-Ledger’s website

For those of us who continue to promise ourselves we’re finally going to make a clean sweep and part with material objects we’ve long held onto for their sentimental value–but from which we really draw little joy–Chris Cander starts 2019 with The Weight of a Piano (Knopf), a gentle push to examine when it’s time to let go.

In this fictional tale, two women–years and miles apart–unknowingly share such an attachment to the same antique German-made Blüthner piano. The novel “plays out” the story of how the women came to love the same lovingly handcrafted piano while in the midst of very different relationships and life circumstances–and why examining what your heart is really telling you is what matters most.

The author of the previous novels Whisper Hollow and 11 Stories, Cander has also dedicated her talents to encourage children to discover the power of reading and writing, through her work as a writer-in-residence for the Houston-based Writers in the Schools program, and her support of Little Free Libraries in her area. She also writes children’s books and screenplays.

A member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, the Author’s Guild, the Writers’ League of Texas, PEN, and MENSA, Candor lives with her husband and children in Houston, Texas.

The plot of The Weight of a Piano is filled with nuances that point to the eventual and unexpected fate of a piano, which has a long and interesting history. Did the idea for this story come from your own musical interests or talents?

Actually, the idea of centering the story on a piano didn’t come from a musical perspective at all. Not long after I lost both my grandmothers, I overheard a woman talking about finally letting go of a piano her father had given her when she was a child. She’d been taking lessons for a few months when he suddenly died, and afterward, it became a symbol of her grief–and of him. She didn’t play it, but also couldn’t get rid of it. It struck me how heavy certain possessions with provenance can be, and I knew then that I wanted to unpack that idea in a novel.

The title of the book is a clever take on the actual heaviness of a piano as measured in pounds, contrasted with the emotional weight, which the characters find themselves bearing. How did you come up with this theme?

Chris Cander

I can remember when I was in college, and everything I owned fit into my car. Now I look around my house and wonder, how did I end up with all this stuff? In addition to the typical possessions of an American family of four, I’ve inherited treasures from a large number of artists and collectors: the cedar chest my grandfather made, the chair that had belonged to my mother-in-law, artwork painted by friends, trinkets given to me by my children, and much, much more.

It can be both a blessing and a burden to own so much. It’s one thing to keep an out-of-style heirloom quilt or a broken watch that belonged to a grandparent, but it was fascinating to me to imagine what it would be like to carry an unwanted, 560-pound object through life. How does that kind of albatross affect someone? And what will she do to get out from underneath it?

There are many hints in the book of the meaning of the piano to its former and present owners. What does this story say for all of us about the meaning we place on objects?

You’ve heard the adage: “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” I’m fascinated by the different relationships we can have to things. From the minimalist movement to hoarding and everything in between, we–and here I’m speaking of a certain swath of contemporary American culture–seem particularly concerned with what and how much we own. Does it spark joy? has become an easy qualifier for what we decide to keep.

But some objects come into our lives freighted by so much more than joy. The stories that come with them–including the ones we tell ourselves–can trick us into thinking something ordinary is extraordinary, imbued with a sentimental value far greater than its actual worth. We all react to these physical things differently.

Tell me about your writing process. Do you create much of the plot first, and then develop the characters, or is it always different?

Typically, ideas are carried into my imagination on the shoulders of their protagonists, though as I mentioned, this novel was inspired by an event–that of a girl being given a piano by her father, who then dies shortly thereafter. But even the most compelling events don’t carry a story forward; it’s how the people who endure these events react to them, revealing their unique qualities and, hopefully, something about human nature in general.

Do you have another book in the works yet?

Happily, yes. I’m about halfway through a novel titled Zephyr, which explores the unseen forces that affect and connect us all.

Chris Cander will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, January 30, at 5:00 p.m. to sign copies of The Weight of a Piano. She will be in conversation with Knopf editor Gary Fisketjon at 5:30 p.m. The Weight of a Piano is Lemuria’s January 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Fiction.

The Timelessness of Classical Music in Chris Cander’s ‘The Weight of a Piano’

By Former Lemurians

On January 22, 2019

In Fiction

by Julia Blakeney

Chris Cander’s book, The Weight of a Piano, is ultimately about the relationship several people have with a single, beloved object: an antique, all-black, upright Blüthner piano. The book begins by describing how this particular piano was conceived of and built, which was incredibly cool to read. Cander imagines this process and executes it wonderfully, with the creator, Julius Blüthner, heading out into the forests of Romania himself to hand-select the trees that will be cut down and used for his unique instruments.

a 1924 Blüthner piano

This novel is also about the connection made, through the piano, between two women. Clara, who owns the piano after Katya is forced to give it up, has no idea who the previous owner is and discovers over the course of a few days why the piano is so special to Katya, and how she is connected to her.

The connection and the way it plays out are well-done, but what really interested me about this book when I first picked it up was the music. Classical music is often seen by those who play it and appreciate it as a language of its own, one that defies normal verbal or written description. I think that Cander does a great job of describing classical music in a way that anyone can understand, often by describing Katya’s feelings toward the piano and the music.

The Weight of a Piano surprised me in the amount of technical detail Cander used when describing musical technique and the titular piano. It is so easy to see Katya’s love of music throughout the novel, which is portrayed by Cander’s poetic description of the piano and the music played on it. I was easily able to relate to Katya and the way music brings her joy and conveys her feelings, as well as the way music connects characters to one another, even across time, because I often feel this way about classical music. As a classical musician, it also felt extra special to be able to understand Katya’s emotional connection to the piano and the music she plays on it.

In this beautifully written novel, Cander explores how an object can connect people across generations, bringing them together for better or for worse. I was enraptured by this novel from start to finish and I enjoyed every minute of reading it.

Below is a YouTube playlist for all the classical pieces mentioned in the book:

Author Q & A with Preston Lauterbach

By Guest Author

On January 13, 2019

In Civil Rights, Southern History

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (January 13)

Former Memphis resident and popular historian Preston Lauterbach puts a new focus on that city’s Civil Rights-era story–including that of critical events that led to the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.–in his newest book, Bluff City: The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers.

Although Withers’ story has been relatively little-known since he made his mark on photojournalism covering some significant events of that time, the bigger picture of his life included his secret undercover work for the FBI at the same time.

While describing the emotions and culture of Memphis during the 1950s and 60s, Lauterbach explains the complicated life that Withers led, and why his dual roles as journalist and spy were not necessarily a betrayal of his beliefs at the time.
Lauterbach’s narrative brings both questions and answers to the ways in which everyday citizens navigated the reality of a new era–sometimes through divergent and challenging paths.

Preston Lauterbach

A former visiting scholar at Rhodes College and a Virginia Humanities Fellow, Lauterbach earned an MFA in Southern Studies from the University at Mississippi in 2003. He calls his time at Ole Miss “by far the most important educational experience to building my career, figuring out what I’m interested in, and learning how to listen, find sources, and tell a story.”

Lauterbach’s previous books include The Chitlin’ Circuit, a Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe book of the year; and Beale Street Dynasty. Today he calls the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia home.

I’ll start with asking the same question you began with on the flap of your book Bluff City: The Secret Life of Ernest Withers: Who was Ernest Withers?

He’s best known as a photojournalist of the civil rights movement. He worked freelance for the largest African-American newspapers, chiefly the Chicago Defender. He ended up covering the major stories in the South from the Emmett Till murder trial and Montgomery Bus Boycott in the mid-1950s, through the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis.

One of the major episodes of Withers’ career took place in Jackson. He covered the funeral of Medgar Evers in 1963. During the disturbance that broke out on Farish Street, after the funeral, Withers was beaten and arrested. He had been taking pictures of the clash between police and mourners. A police officer confiscated his film and destroyed it. He pursued a First Amendment case against the Jackson police, seemingly with tacit encouragement from the Kennedy White house, but the FBI seems to have quashed it.

How did Withers and his story come to your attention, and why did you decide to write a book about it?

I was working on a book about the history of Beale Street in Memphis when the news came out about Withers having worked for the FBI during his years covering the (civil rights) movement. The Withers studio was located on Beale during the 1950s and ’60s, and he’d been a cop on the Beale Street beat in the ’40s. He’d seen everyone from Elvis to Dr. King come through Beale, and so he emerged as the most compelling character to tell the story through.

Every book I’ve done starts off one way and ends up going in all sorts of different directions once I get going, so this one isn’t strictly about Beale, but I can’t ask for a more colorful setting or more compelling cast of characters.

What are some events or themes that Withers’ body of photojournalistic work is best known for?

His work hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, and the National Civil Rights Museum. Withers boarded one of the first integrated city buses in Montgomery and photographed a young Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to make King an icon.

Withers also took some tremendous photographs of Elvis Presley. There’s still some debate about whether Elvis was racist. Withers said, emphatically, no. Withers tailed Elvis on Beale Street during the singer’s earliest days and observed how Elvis interacted with African-American people. Withers came away impressed with the respect and humility Presley carried himself with. This character trait really shows up in Withers’ pictures of Elvis with B.B. King. And by the way, it was a highly risky PR move for Elvis to pose with an African-American man on equal terms in 1956, when challenges to segregation were causing major turmoil in this country.

Do you believe Withers felt “compromised” working in his dual roles as a photojournalist and an informant for the FBI? His was a complicated situation.

I don’t believe that he felt compromised. One of the challenges of this story is seeing past the shocking headline that this civil rights icon secretly worked for the hated J. Edgar Hoover, and reading the facts.

Many of Withers’ case files have become available, thanks to Memphis reporter Marc Perrusquia, who broke the story and had the documents declassified. To me, it becomes clear that Withers had a rapport with his FBI handler, and through their relationship, Withers acted as a mediator or translator, in many cases, for the Beale Street community. He explained to the Bureau what groups like the Nation of Islam–a target of Hoover–were really up to, and successfully kept the heat off. Withers was an NAACP lifetime member and came from a long line of military veterans, and so he was against the presence of Communists in the movement, which aligned with the FBI reasons for investigating civil rights groups.

He acted also as a threat gauge, judging the likelihood of groups to engage in violence. But, you can’t get involved with the Hoover FBI without getting wrapped up in some fishy stuff, and Withers certainly did.

Explain Withers’ role in the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike and demonstration in spring 1968, and how that day’s activities compelled Martin Luther King, Jr., to return to Memphis a week later, where he was assassinated.

Withers took one of his most famous pictures on March 28, 1968, the I AM A MAN photo, that shows the striking sanitation workers displaying signs with that iconic slogan. He helped make those signs, by providing the lumber for signposts. Those posts became weapons during the march that King led that day in Memphis, in the hands of a lot of younger demonstrators.

King had never led a march that turned violent from within. He vowed to change his schedule and return to Memphis to prove that a peaceful demonstration could be held there. He needed this both for the strike and his own reputation. No one at the time knew that Withers was on the Bureau payroll, and so his involvement with the photo props that became riot weapons has eluded attention until now.

Ultimately, how do you look back on Withers’ life and career, and why do you call him a “flawed hero’?

He had a talent for getting himself into very sticky situations. Both his time as a police officer and a state liquor board member were scandal-shortened. He’s got cojones. That makes him a highly interesting figure, but also prone to trouble. His heroism is a bigger part of his life, having braved the South in the 1950s and ’60s, to show America what was happening down here. He was beaten, arrested, and threatened with death for doing his job, and he did it anyway.

What can we all learn from the tangled and intriguing story of this African American man who had a birds-eye view of some of the nation’s biggest news stories, and who some apparently viewed as a traitor on both sides?

If we’re to really get something out of history, and I think this applies to the present as well, we can’t oversimplify our understandings of each other and say, well he’s black, therefore he can only be pro-civil rights in this one acceptable manner or else he’s a scoundrel. There are good, important people who are torn between opposing forces, or, in courageously attempting to bring those forces nearer together, they risk their livelihoods, reputations, and lives. And, we can’t judge a person’s role in history entirely on what we know now.

You have authored two previous books (Beale Street Dynasty and The Chitlin’ Circuit) that are also in the narrative or historic journalism genre. What drew you to this type of writing, and do you have another book project on the horizon at this time?

I love research most of all, but research itself doesn’t pay, so writing narrative history emerged as the best way to fund my research habit. It’s still costly, but I have something to show for it.

My next project is either top secret, or I haven’t figured out yet what to do. I have a Withers figure in my life, alluded to in the introduction to Bluff City. My grandfather was involved with intelligence. He was the person I admire most and pattern myself after, and yet he’s also the biggest mystery in my life. I’ve reached a point where I need to and want to answer my questions about his role in history, and I have some ideas about where to look.

Preston Lauterbach will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, January 16, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and read from Bluff City. Bluff City is Lemuria’s January 2019 selection for our First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

Appalachian Asphyxiation: ‘Sugar Run’ by Mesha Maren

By Former Lemurians

On January 8, 2019

In Southern Fiction

by Julia Blakeney

I picked up Mesha Maren’s debut novel Sugar Run just as I was finishing a semester-long study of Cormac McCarthy’s work. McCarthy’s Appalachian novels are some of the most wonderfully written books I have read in a long time. Once the class was over, though, I really felt like I wasn’t done with this niche genre of fiction. So, I started looking for similar novels, set in Appalachia, to read to fill the gap. Luckily, Sugar Run jumped out at me from a stack of advance readers.

This novel certainly gave me what I was looking for. With a fantastically driven plot, compelling prose, and beautiful descriptions of that unique, rural, mountainous region of West Virginia, this novel was really hard to put down. I found myself carving time to read this novel into every moment of my day, something I haven’t done with a novel (one not for school) in a long time.

One of the most compelling things about this book was the charged atmosphere in which the protagonist Jodi McCarty finds herself once she returns to her hometown after 18 years in prison. One of her brothers has resorted to selling drugs to make ends meet. He asks Jodi to hide drugs for him–first bribing her with money, then using blackmail to force her to do so. Jodi herself has trouble finding work, since no one wants to hire a convicted felon. She has no money to buy back her grandmother’s land that was sold out from under her while she was in prison. An oil company is also fracking on the mountain, which pollutes the water and drives people away. All of this is a recipe for disaster for Jodi as she struggles to acclimate to life outside of prison.

As Maren alternates between Jodi’s life before and after prison, I became engrossed in her story. I looked forward to reading each new chapter and uncovering each new discovery in Jodi’s and other characters’ pasts that Maren has to share with me. I loved this book from beginning to end: from Jodi’s determination to make a life for herself and save her family land from fracking, to the secrets Maren reveals at a slow pace, this novel is raw and compelling, as well as an interesting representation of how the working class struggles to make a living in the early 2000s in West Virginia.

Mesha Maren will be at Lemuria on Tuesday, January 15, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and read from Sugar Run.

Author Q & A with Mesha Maren

By Guest Author

On January 6, 2019

In Southern Fiction

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (January 6)

West Virginia native and resident Mesha Maren explores the questions and the difficulties of coming home again–and the fear of not fitting in anymore despite the strong pull of the land itself–in her debut novel, Sugar Run (Algonquin Books).

The novel tracks the stories of main character Jodi’s life through two time frames–as a 17-year-old in 1988-1989, when she landed in a Georgia prison for killing her girlfriend; and the “present” year of 2007, which finds Jodi, now 35, being newly released from prison and eager to get on with her life. It soon becomes complicated, though, by acquaintances old and new who have their own problems to settle.

Maren is the recipient of several writing fellowships and grants, including the 2014 Jean Ritchie Fellowship in Appalachian Writing and the 2015 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize. She is the 2018-2019 Kenan Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is a National Endowment of the Arts Writing Fellow at the Beckley Federal Correctional Institution in West Virginia.

Her short stories and essays have appeared in Tin House, the Oxford American, Hobart, Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial and other publications.

You’ve said that you started writing seriously in 2007 when you realized you “had stories to tell.” Tell me about the kinds of stories you believed should be told.

I don’t believe that there are any particular stories that “should” be told, like in a social novel kind of way, I think that I just come from a community and a family that trained me to have a good ear for great stories and to enjoy telling them.

Mesha Maren

When I was growing up, I was always hearing stories from my neighbors and my dad. My dad is not from West Virginia. He moved to Greenbrier County in 1979, but he has a huge respect for the people who came before him in this place and he always impressed upon me how important it was to know the story of the place, the people who walked across this field and over the cliff to work in the quarry and then back home again with 50-pound sacks of chicken feed on their shoulders, men who were killed young and mostly outlived by strong women who kept their stories going. These stories don’t very often make it out into the world, though–they are not represented very well in mass consumed books.

There is a thing that happens in all forms of art, I guess, but it particularly happens in writing about Appalachia, where the stories get diluted to please the lowest common denominator. It’s like adding corn syrup to food–you sweeten it up and smooth it out so that it appeals to the masses and you end up with something sweet and quaint with all the fangs taken out, a little bit like how the minstrel shows worked in the early 19th century: you show people what you think they want to see, to entertain them and show them that you are harmless and funny.

I guess that even though I don’t believe that there are any particular stories that “should” be told more than other stories, I do believe there is a way to tell a story that is real and right. I’ve never wanted to write something that people could passively consume–I want you to feel uncomfortable.

You have said that Jodi, around which Sugar Run revolves, “took up residence” in your head. Tell me about that.

I started to become infatuated with Jodi McCarty in about 2010. And it was really that, an infatuation, like I would daydream about her all the time and when I tried to put her down I just couldn’t. In writing Sugar Run, I was really teaching myself how to write. It was the first big writing project I ever undertook, and it was hard, and I doubted myself a lot. I doubted if I could really write a novel, much less this novel, but Jodi wouldn’t let me alone. There were multiple times when I wanted to give up on Sugar Run and I’d say, ‘I’m done’ and throw the pages in a drawer, but Jodi haunted me–it felt like I had slighted a friend or partner.

Finally, I made a pact with Jodi, I told her I would do my damnedest to write a good novel, find an agent and a publisher, but if I tried my best and nothing came of it, no one picked up the novel, then I’d get to be free and work on writing something else.

Your childhood experiences of your father taking you with him at an early age to counsel incarcerated women in your home state of West Virginia obviously influenced much of the plot around which Sugar Run is based. Tell me about those visits, and the impression they made on you.

My dad worked for a nonprofit and he would go in to the prison in Alderson to see the women who had not been visited by friends or family for over a year. I would often come along with him. As a kid, I was most impressed by the fact that I got to eat whatever kind of candy I wanted from the vending machines, but yeah, I think seeing those women, hearing them talk about their lives, it left an impression on me that was part of what maybe inspired Sugar Run, although I never really thought about that until after I’d written the novel.

All of the main characters in Sugar Run are facing their own kinds of struggles, including poverty, violence, pervasive fear, substance abuse and other addictions. The fact that they are all headed to West Virginia, a state with its own difficulties, compounds the suffering. Was it was hard for you to find spots of redemption for these characters in the end?

I honestly think that everyone, everywhere, not just in West Virginia, is probably closer to the edge than we ever let ourselves believe, closer to making a few “bad” decisions and seeing everything fall apart around us. The thing is that a lot of folks have a stronger safety net and, really, that comes down to money. If you come from a family with more money and you slip up, it’s easier to get back on track but if you live in a rural place and have few resources the fall is much more steep. Trying to find work after prison is really…hard for anybody, but of course, it is even harder when you live in a rural place.

In a lot of ways West Virginia has always been and will always be both the balm and the sting–it is not an easy place to live and never has been, both because of the economy but also just the natural geography, but that is also what makes it one of the most beautiful places in the world and it brings folks closer together. I’ve never known community like the communities in West Virginia, the way that people band together to care for each other–it doesn’t happen like that in other places.

The book actually tracks two alternating story lines of Jodi’s life, interdependent on each other. Tell me about your decision to tell these plots using this technique.

These two parts of the story, 1988-89 and 2007, came to me in very different colors and textures–like they were always distinctly different but of course part of the same story. I think that’s why I ended up writing the 1988-89 sections in present tense because I needed them to feel different and in a certain way almost more immediate and tangible to Jodi than her present 2007 reality–they’re like a picture show she has watched a million times during her years in Jaxton prison.

Sugar Run is your first novel. Did it surprise you that your manuscript was sold on the first round of publisher bids? Tell me about that experience.

Yeah, it did kind of surprise me–I mean Sugar Run is essentially a novel about a convict lesbian living on a mountain in West Virginia–not the kind of story you think of having huge mass appeal, and I think that a lot of New York publishers didn’t know what to do with it. There wasn’t a neat little box they could fit it in, they weren’t at all sure how they would market it.

So, Algonquin is the perfect home, you know, it just makes complete and total sense that Sugar Run is being published by a publishing house that started out being housed in a woodshed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Algonquin began the year before I was born in Louis Rubin’s woodshed and one of the first people they published was Larry Brown, a firefighter who started writing fiction in his spare time. So yeah, Algonquin feels like the perfect home for me and Sugar Run.

What’s next? Do you have another book idea in the works yet?

Yes, I just finished a second draft of my new novel, Perpetual West. This new novel is about Mexican professional wrestling. The story follows Alex, a sociology student who was born in Mexico, but adopted and raised by a white couple in West Virginia, and his wife Elana, who move to the U.S.-Mexico border where Alex is writing his thesis on lucha libre.

It’s been a real fun novel to write and I got to go do research in Juárez and Mexico City, and I took wrestling lessons, too. I was terrible at it though, so I guess I’ll stick with writing.

Mesha Maren will be at Lemuria on Tuesday, January 15, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and read from Sugar Run.

Author Q & A with Kiese Laymon

By Guest Author

On December 2, 2018

In Biography/Memoir

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (December 2)

Growing up in Jackson, Kiese Laymon learned early on that he would have to learn how to fight many battles, as he experienced the weight of emotional pain, violence, racism, addictions, confusion–and a lifetime struggle with the bathroom scales.

His new book, Heavy: An American Memoir (Scribner) is, literally, a long letter written directly to his mother, as he works through the complexity of his disordered childhood and its continued effects on his life today. The result is a deeply personal, and open, cry for answers as to why theirs was such a difficult relationship even as she unfailingly reassured him of her love.

A single mother who has little money but big expectations for her son, she was determined for her son, she was determined Laymon would get a good education and, in the process, develop a toughness she believed would prepare him for dealing with the curves she was certain white society would throw at him.

The book is a 2018 Kirkus Award Finalist and is shortlisted for the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Nonfiction.

Kiese Laymon

Other books Laymon has authored include the novel Long Division and a collection of essays titled How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. His essays, stories, and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Esquire, McSweeney’s, PEN Journal, Oxford American, Ebony, Travel and Leisure, the Best American series, Paris Review, and many other publications. Another novel, And So On, is due out in 2019.

Laymon is now the Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing and English at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. He previously served as an associate professor of English and Africana studies at Vassar College in New York.

Heavy: An American Memoir is a commanding title for a record of one’s life at your age. Describe how the title explains and describes your life, and why you wanted to share your personal story with the world.

The book is really about words and “heavy” is one of the most elastic words we have. It means so much. Sometimes it means intellectual depth. Sometimes it means a lot of weight.

You had a difficult childhood, growing up with a driven, abusive mother who tangled up love with frequent mistreatment–and yet, she was the one who introduced you to books and who demanded a very strict writing discipline from you. Tell me about how writing this book has been a way to sort through the confusion of those years and beyond.

The book was exactly a means of working through things I never worked through. To really remember, I needed to write to my mother since she was my first teacher and the first person to read the sentences I wrote as a child.

You write that, for generations, your family has kept secrets about abusiveness, addictions, issues with weight, and other struggles. Has your relationship with your mother improved over the years?

My mother and I are talking about things we avoided for decades. Every day is work, but we are up for it.

The entire book is written in a technique that directly addresses your mother personally, from start to finish. Why did you decide to frame the book using this unique writing style?

Again, I wanted to write a memoir that I’d never seen. I’d seen people address their children, but I’d never read an entire memoir written to one’s mother. I had to write this book to my mother if I was going to do the memoir justice.

Explain why you skipped your own high school graduation.

I wasn’t a fan of Gov. Kirk Fordice, and he was scheduled to be our graduation speaker. So, I told my friends I was skipping.

That was part of it. The other part was that I was really embarrassed for graduating close to the bottom of my class.

What is your message in this book to the white community, and is it only directed at Mississippians?

I think black Mississippians have spent lifetimes sending messages to the white community. I’m not sure I have anything more impactful to say to white folks than Faulkner, Welty, Wright, Hamer, Morrison, or Baldwin already said.

I wish they’d listen to the lessons writers and freedom fighters have been trying to send them for generations. I really wish they would listen.

You state in your book that if you ever had a child, you would want to raise him or her in Mississippi. After everything you’ve lived through here, why would you say that?

I came back to Mississippi, the culturally richest place in the world, and I needed to be closer to a lot of the people and spirits that ironically gave me a chance to leave.

Is there a new writing project in the works for you at this time, and, if so, can you share any information about it here?

I’m working on a new novel called And So On. I’m so happy to be back in Mississippi working with young writers who will become the future of American literature.

Kiese Laymon will be at Lemuria on Saturday, December 8, at 12:00 p.m. to sign copies of Heavy. Signed copies are available at our online store.

Author Q & A with Frank LaRue Owen

By Guest Author

On November 27, 2018

In Poetry, Zen

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (November 25)

Frank LaRue Owen’s interest in poetry began to develop in his teens, and his journey to become a poet in his own right has developed alongside his spiritual growth, through years of thoughtful studies of Asian spiritual practice.

His first book of poetry, The School of Soft-Attention, was named the winner of the Homebound Publications Poetry Prize in 2017.

The book puts into words Owen’s reflections on key influences on his life, including the Ch’an/Daoist hermit-poetic tradition, Zen meditation, eco-psychology, and a practice he calls “pure land dreaming.” Shaped by Owen’s diversity of cultural experiences and the depth of his spiritual training, his poems encourage readers to “turn to a new way of seeing, a new way of paying attention to the life within and around us.”

A strategist with a metro area marketing-creative firm, Owen has also completed a second book of poetry, The Temple of Warm Harmony, set to release in fall 2019.

Please tell me about your background and how your many opportunities to experience a variety of cultures in many places has helped shape your life today.

I hail from a family with long-standing roots in Mississippi and East Texas. We’ve been educators, ministers, counselors, attorneys, oilmen, cowboys, poets, and artists.

I spent my formative years in Atlanta and Jackson, with my last year of high school spent in Chapel Hill, N.C., where I was introduced to writing through a creative writing class. That high school teacher sent me to a writer’s conference at University of North Carolina at Winston-Salem. I’ve been writing, in one form or another, ever since.

My moving around so much is largely due to my academic journey and my cultural and spiritual explorations. I spent three years in northern Wisconsin at a small environmental college called Northland College where I had an opportunity to study Asian religions, anthropology, psychology, writing, as well as environmental studies at the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute, named for Sigurd Olson, who lived from 1899 to 1982, and was a renowned author, wilderness defender, and teacher.

I attended graduate school at Naropa University in Boulder, Colo., North America’s first accredited Buddhist university, which houses not only a graduate school in mindfulness-based counseling psychology, which I graduated from, but also the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, also known as the MFA in Writing and Poetics, founded by the late Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, and other poets of note, including one of my poetic mentors, the late Jack Collom.

The School of Soft-Attention, your debut book of poetry, was named the 2017 winner of the Homebound Publications Poetry Prize. Did this honor surprise you?

It was a total surprise to win. Poetry had always been more of a personal exploration, an extension of spiritual practice, and not something I sought to formally publish. I created and maintained some online poetry blogs starting around 2000, but never thought it would lead to actual publishing. In 2016, with a lot of encouragement from various quarters, I gathered up what I considered my best work and entered it in the Homebound Publications Poetry Prize for review.
I still consider myself a ‘work-in-progress’ as a poet, so it was unexpected. But it has resulted in a wonderful publishing relationship with Homebound, which is continuing beyond The School of Soft-Attention.

Which came first–the discovery of your talent for writing poetry, or your serious interest in Eastern philosophies?

I dabbled in poetry as an art form in my teen years, and even read some of the poems of Japan’s greatest poets at that time. But I never really developed it. My involvement with Asian spiritual practice really came first, initially through my study of the Japanese martial art of Aikido starting in 1989, and then study of Zen meditation shortly after. I studied Chinese and Japanese religions academically in my undergraduate years with Thomas Kasulis, a scholar of Asian religions, but quickly realized my interest was that of practitioner and not limited to the academic.

Tell me about your journey with doña Río: who was she, and what did she teach you about life, spirituality, and, ultimately, poetry?

Her name was Darion Gracen, a psychologist, wilderness guide, and practitioner-teacher of Ch’an, or Zen, meditation. She was known by many names, “doña Río” among them, and she served as a mentor to many. Initially, I met Darion in an academic setting, but eventually I studied with her in other contexts. She would host circles of people in the mountains of Colorado where we studied an array of subjects with her rooted in meditative awareness in the natural world. Later, after she moved to the Santa Fe, New Mexico, area, I continued studying with her one-on-one for another decade. She embodied a kind of “curriculum” that combined silent illumination, or meditation from the Ch’an or Zen tradition, the practice of dreamwork, a spiritual approach to experiences in the natural world, and poetics as way to process experiences with all of the above.

Ultimately, what I learned from her was how to make one’s heart-mind an ally, how to attend to the creative process, and how one’s essential connection to the Dao, or, the sacred, transcends conditions.

You dedicate this book to Río and to your parents. Please tell me about your parents and their influence on the direction of your life and poetry.

Although rooted in the social justice tradition of United Methodism, my parents have always been very supportive of my journey of cultural investigation and spiritual inquiry, even if this took me into traditions other than their own.

In large part, I attribute to my parents my curiosity about life, my creativity, my love of nature and history, my ability to ascertain value in the world’s cultures and wisdom traditions, and my open mind. Each in their own way has been shaped by Jungian thought and a love of nature. My father continues to study Jungian psychology and the work of a Jungian named James Hollis. My mother–an artist herself–also taught me from a very young age to consult the Chinese I Ching, or “Book of Changes,” and to pay close attention to dreams as a source of life guidance and wisdom, which dovetailed nicely with my studies later in life.

Explain the term soft-attention, and its meaning in your poetry.

There is a dynamic contrast between urban modernity, with its high-velocity pace and incessant barrage of information and bad news that assaults the senses, and the natural world, which has a slower rhythm and a healing power that restores balance in a person, body and mind. The latter isn’t just a quaint idea. As clearly demonstrated in a book titled Forest Bathing by Dr. Qing Li, it is verified by vast studies by medical science.

As I say in one of my poems, it’s possible to “get too much of the world on you.” When this happens, we may find our consciousness becoming harsh, hardened, disfigured. Too much time lived in such a state is detrimental to our health, both physically and psychologically. So, the turn of phrase, “the school of soft-attention,” is a poetic way of referring to the natural world, what we call “the realm of mountains, forests, and rivers” in Daoist and Zen traditions. Time spent in this “school” invites, invokes, instills a very different quality of consciousness, one characterized by a “soft-attention.” From my point of view as a poet, poetry is about observation and perception. For me, the craft of writing poetry has become inseparable from this “soft-attention.” I essentially can’t write unless I’ve entered that level of awareness.

What do you mean when you describe yourself as a hermit-poet?

In a nutshell, it’s a solitary leaning. I require a lot of solitude, for spiritual practice, artistic practice, landscape practice. From the point of view of Buddhist practice, there are various accepted ways or paths e.g. monastic, lay-householder, etc. Though they may have had earlier training in a community context, hermits go their own way and walk a solitary path in this regard. It was the same with my teacher.

The hermit-poet is something of an archetype in the contemplative and literary traditions of China and Japan. A hermit-poet is someone who has placed contemplative practice and artistic life at the center of their existence. When most Westerners hear the word “hermit” they automatically think “recluse” or “misanthrope.” The terms are not synonymous in the Asian contemplative or literary traditions. A recluse is one who leaves the world behind, never to return. Not so with hermits in Daoist and Zen tradition, who remain in contact with society. In fact, there is an old saying from China that goes ‘the small hermit lives in the mountains; the great or accomplished hermit lives down in the town.’

Many of your poems in this book speak of the ordinary–the everyday things of life. In what ways can readers apply some of the lessons of your poetry to their own lives?

My poetry is not for everyone. There are large swaths of people in modern life–“modernistas,” my late teacher would say–who are content with their compartmentalized life, and with the distractions mainstream culture feeds them. They go to a job; they chase money, perceived social status, wealth, or fame; they go home at the end of the day and spend their nights in a TV-saturated trance.

My poetry deals with other points of focus. The mystery of dreams. The inner life. The non-obvious qualities of the places where we live. Though there are letters strung together into lines, and those lines form what appear to be “poems” on the page, I’m not certain if what I write constitutes poetry. They are snapshots of moments from the flow of existence that issue an invitation to the reader–to ponder the true nature of their life, the life of the soul.

In the end, I would be gratified if one or two of the poems stirred people to be a bit more awake to the passage of their life and to ask a few deeper questions about what matters most.

What role does music play in your life and in your writing?

Alongside time in nature, music is a key part of my life and poetry. Music figures heavily in my creative process of writing and other art-making. Likewise, when I publish poems on my website, purelandpoetry.com, each poem is presented with a specific image and soundscape, usually from the archives of ambient musicians to whom I’m connected like Forrest Fang, Roy Mattson, Steve Roach, or Byron Metcalf. Sometimes their music feels like an extension of a poem. Sometimes a poem feels like an extension of their music.

Tell me about your next book coming up.

The next book, being released in fall 2019 is entitled The Temple of Warm Harmony. In some sense, it is a continuation of the thread or emphasis of The School of Soft-Attention. However, I do take up some new themes and orientations. The Temple of Warm Harmony is divided into three sections: The World of Red Dust, Heartbreak and Armoring, and Entering the Temple of Warm Harmony.

We are living in tumultuous times, culturally, socially, and environmentally. The concept of “the world of red dust” comes from a very ancient Chinese Daoist and Ch’an, or Zen, poetic understanding of a world that has fallen out of balance. The poems in the next collection explore some of these aspects of imbalance, disharmony, and realignment with what is known in the traditions as The Way.

Frank LaRue Owen will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, November 28, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and read from The School of Soft-Attention.

Author Q & A with Glennray Tutor

By Guest Author

On November 18, 2018

In Art/Photography

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (November 18)

Oxfords’s Glennray Tutor–who has been cited as not only one of the world’s top hyperrealist artists, but also one of the three who actually began the movement–shares his visionary style developed over more than three decades in his debut album, Portals.

Tutor has expanded the definition of visual art through works that seem to defy the viewer’s imagination with his meticulous technique that blends bright colors with razor-sharp detail and a large measure of metaphor.

Working with still life materials of everyday life, Tutor transforms marbles, comic books, glass jars, retro dinner plates, toys, fireworks, and soft drink bottles into artifacts filled with deeper meanings than meet the eye. Outdoors, he presents nostalgic, barren landscapes filled with abandoned trucks, isolated buildings, roadside signs, filling stations, vending machines and period outdoor furniture, to name a few, with the same intense examination.

Credited as being “the first artist to merge Pop Art with metaphor,” Tutor’s paintings have appeared on TV programs (including Seinfeld) and movies (among them, The Blind Side), as well as record albums, book covers and magazines.

Glennray Tutor

Growing up in southeast Missouri as the only child of native Mississippi parents, Tutor earned a bachelor’s degree in Art and English, followed by an MFA in Painting, at the University of Mississippi. During his career, his art has been included in many group and solo exhibitions, and today his work is shown in numerous public and private museum collections around the world.

Tutor’s schedule of appearances in the Jackson area for Portals, published by Yoknapatawpha Press, includes the following:

Nov. 28 – Fischer Galleries, Jackson, 6 – 9 p.m.
Dec. 4 – Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, 4 – 9 p.m.
Dec. 5 – Lemuria Books, Jackson, 5 p.m.

In your book you explain how that, as a child, you enjoyed looking at things (ordinary objects, the stars at night, pretty much everything) and state that “To me, physical objects are portals to a fuller, deeper realization of the world around me.” You later describe how your paintings are made up of different kinds of portals. Please explain this further.

My paintings consist of contemporary objects used metaphorically. The paintings are my arrangement of matter to form an interplay of the visual, emotional, and intellectual. When I say there are “portals” in my paintings, I’m saying that there are layers or dimensions or rooms beyond what a viewer first encounters. It’s sort of like the Chinese Box idea. But the portals contained in a painting of mine are all of equal importance. A viewer can explore these different portals as he desires. Of course, how far into the portals one goes is dependent on the viewer’s perceptive abilities, and intelligence.

For example, my firework series. What the viewer first sees is an arrangement of common fireworks. But let’s look into a further portal in the paintings. The fireworks are metaphors. They are objects like ourselves. They have their existence in the shapes and colors they contain. And they, like ourselves, are going to change. We will change from life to whatever comes next. The fireworks will change into star-backed splendor. Hopefully, we too will achieve such an exalted metamorphosis.

Now, let’s go deeper, into another portal. Looking at the arrangement of the objects one must contemplate whether they have been purposely arranged, or have they arrived at their positions accidentally? Here I’m presenting the ideas of order and happenstance. In our existence was everything set at the instant of the Big Bang? Or is everything happening randomly?

Another portal: the ideas of peace and conflict. One person might use a firework to make a beautiful entertainment. Another person might choose to aim the firework at another person and use it as a weapon. A comment on good versus evil? Responsibility versus recklessness? Yes; both. And I could go on and on. But maybe I’ve illustrated my point.

Describe how you were always absolutely certain that you were born an artist.

I’ve always had a complete sense of self, and how the physical elements around me affect that self. A person knows things about oneself, such as knowing if one likes a particular color or not, or a piece of music, etc. Most people—usually in their 20s —choose a career, usually related to what they like and what they are competent at. I never had that experience.

You state in the book that you’ve “always been able to find treasure” every time you’ve gone looking for it–and “in what generally is thought of as the most unlikely of places.” How do you define “treasure,” and in what ways have you felt it has not been difficult for you to find?

I define “treasure” as something that evokes wonder. This treasure can come to me through any of my senses. It has never been difficult for me to find because my senses, especially my sense of sight, are very acute.

Your artwork is classified as “Hyperrealist,” and you are listed among the top 50 Hyperrealists in the world. Define Hyperrealist art, and why you believe it has become so popular with art lovers today.

The list of the top 50 Hyperrealist artists was compiled earlier this year by Didi Menendez for an article in the magazine Poets and Artists. She is one of the most prominent art arbitrators in the world today; she is a curator, writer, editor, publisher. There are many writings on Hyperrealism and Photorealism–which I am also considered to be a part of–that have appeared in the past 35 years, in which I am included.

One of the more authoritative and beautifully done books presenting and explaining Hyperrealism is Juxtapoz: Hyperreal, edited by Evan Pricco. In this book each artist has a short essay in which he or she describes what they are doing with their art. In this book I’m presented as one of the top 30 Hyperrealists in the world today. Also in this book I am credited as one among three artists who actually began the Hyperrealist movement.

A Hyperrealist painting or a Photorealist painting are paintings that are so technically refined and painted with such clarity that they look more like photographs than paintings. What distinguishes a Photorealist painting from a Hyperrealist painting is that a Hyperrealist painting is dealing with more than simply the physical subject matter it depicts. A Hyperrealist painting is also making a social statement, a statement about a cultural issue, or it is commenting on a moral or ethical issue. Or, as in my case, I’m using objects metaphorically to express my feelings and thoughts about various aspects of reality that intrigue me.

Explain why metaphor is such an important element in your work.

Using metaphor is the only way I know to fully present the ideas that I want to examine in my artwork.

There is a lot of nostalgia represented in your work. Can you speak to that?

This may come as a surprise, but I’m not concerned at all with nostalgia. The world of childhood and the world of adulthood interest me greatly–their similarities and their differences. I’ll use a metaphor to describe this. I’m standing on a shore, which society terms “adulthood;” but the ocean, which we’ll call “childhood,” laps on the shore, wave after wave. For me, it’s difficult to distinguish one from the other.

Throughout the entire book there is an ongoing interview with you, conducted by your son, artist and curator Zach Tutor, and it sheds much light on you and your work. Tell me about how this idea came about. It reads like something the two of you greatly enjoyed doing together!

In the book, I wanted to give the reader a start on understanding what I’m doing with my art. I wanted this to be informative, but also entertaining. My son, Zach, knows as much about art as anyone I’ve known. Having grown up in my studio and through his observations and our discussions, he knows more about me as an artist than anyone else. It occurred to me shortly after I had begun putting the book together that for the text a conversation between the two of us might be the best way accomplish these aims.

You share with readers that it was at age 15 that you discovered that adulthood is simply a “fabrication,” after you sold your entire collection of comic books so you could buy your girlfriend some perfume–and she broke up with you a week later! Why did this lead to your conclusion about adulthood, and how does it affect your art?

That incident is only one among many that influenced my decision regarding adulthood. Look around. Can you find any so-called “adults” anywhere?

Why did it bother you so much, at age 18, to finally see original artwork in a museum and realize that visual brushstrokes were routinely apparent to the viewer in most of the artwork?

I’ll give you two analogies. I don’t want to see how a magician constructs his magic trick. I want to feel the wonder of the “magical” act. If I know how he does it, his performance doesn’t work for me. The same with a pianist. I don’t want to hear all the wrong notes he made while he practiced for the recital. I want to only hear the performance played with perfection. And so it is, for me, with painting. If a viewer, when looking at a painting, must contend with how the painting was technically constructed, with brushstrokes on textured canvas for example, it distracts, to say the least, from his experience of the art itself. When viewing a painting of mine, I want the viewer to experience the art I’m presenting, and nothing else.

Explain your advice to young artists and why you make this suggestion.

If an artist can’t express his own individual ideas then that artist shouldn’t be wasting his time and others’ with his efforts. There is no reason for one artist to re-do some other artist’s expression. But if you do have something artistically fresh to say, then go ahead and get to it.

Glennray Tutor will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, December 5, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss Portals.

Author Q & A with Leif Enger

By Guest Author

On November 11, 2018

In Fiction

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (November 11)

A decade after his successes with Peace Live a River and So Brave, Young, and Handsome, New York Times bestselling author Leif Enger offers his third novel, Virgil Wander with a twist.

The award-winning novelist’s portrayal of a good-natured man whose hopes and dreams are literally forgotten when his memory is wiped out after “his Pontiac flies off a bridge into the icy depths of Lake Superior” is at once contemplative and relatable.

Emerging alive but with language and memory deficits, main character Virgil Wander has no choice but to build a new life amid the trappings of his former one. Set in fictitious Greenstone, Minnesota, his town is struggling to revive itself after years of deterioration. Supporting characters rally to the cause as they deal with their own struggles.

The author’s hometown of Osakis, Minnesota (population 1,700), proved to be the perfect springboard for a young person with hopes of someday writing fiction, and Enger’s time came after working as a reporter and producer for Minnesota’s Public Radio.

Enger’s debut novel Peace Like a River won the Independent Publisher Book Award and was a Los Angeles Times and Time Magazine pick as one of their Best Books of the Year; and So Brave, Young, and Handsome was a national bestseller.

He and his family live in Minnesota.

The front flap of your book describes Virgil Wander as a “journey into the heart and heartache of an ‘often overlooked’ upper Midwest.” Explain what that means.

I’m not sure overlooked is the right word–“oversimplified” might be closer to the truth. Though often credited with timeless moral sensibilities, moderation, and a crackerjack work ethic, Midwesterners are as complicated and devious as anyone else.

That said, I suspect neither of the above–being overlooked or oversimplified–is much on our minds. Everyone wants respect, but there’s an enormous freedom in being off the radar. There’s still high value on self-sufficiency and almost everyone would rather give help than receive it. Of course, there’s plenty to complain about in places like Greenstone–high unemployment, clouds of mosquitoes, the tiresome March climate–but I’ve never heard anyone gripe about being ignored by Anderson Cooper.

I read about your hometown of Osakis and see that it has a population of 1,700 people. How did this influence your interest in writing?

Leif Enger

Growing up in Osakis was advantage in lots of ways. I had teachers throughout grade and high school who made me feel capable and encouraged my writing–not because I had some precocious gift, but because I liked words, especially funny ones, and because I wasn’t intimidated by essay questions. I think they just appreciated that I did the assignments, and they themselves didn’t think of writing as something exotic but as an everyday skill that could be useful in anyone’s life. They also knew that for me, it was never going to be math!

And there was a sense of relaxed-ness in that time and place about academics, sports, social events, and extra-curriculars, that allowed a kid–at least a lucky kid, with careful loving parents–to grow up slowly, without constant supervision. We went outside a lot because it was interesting out there. The news was not yet swamped with abductions and school shootings. We bumped into things but were mostly unhurt, and while we all hoped vaguely for eventual success, I don’t remember any outrageous expectations or pressure to produce. Of course, it’s also possible that with greater pressure I’d have produced more than three novels in 18 years. I guess we’ll never know.

Briefly, tell us about Virgil Wander. What inspired this hapless yet hopeful character and his story?

A certain kind of outsized American ambition is so celebrated, and its heroes so ubiquitous–the bold deal-making businessman with his strong handshake and empty sockets, the congressman who encountered Ayn Rand and never got over it, the 70-year-old with sculpted abs and restored sex drive–that it’s basically a cartoon. Whoever draws Tony Robbins is hilarious. I have no problem with this distortion until it’s held up as ideal, which it always is. Most of us are fairly pleased to get the kids through school, pay off the house, and act decently to our wives or husbands–maybe some days we even get the 10,000 steps that reassure us we’re doing all right.

So, writing Virgil was a matter of looking at my own easygoing ambitions and translating them into a context I’ve always sort of envied, namely running a slump-shouldered movie house in a stark little town on the edge of the inland sea. That’s a reality I can understand, and its modesty also allows for an element of magic that probably wouldn’t work otherwise. Magic only works when it’s badly needed, and I’ve never written a character who needed it more than Virgil.

The plot you weave is filled with colorful characters with whom Virgil connects as he struggles to literally “find himself” after his near-death experience of plunging into Lake Superior. Each of these characters supply subplots of hurts and hopes all their own. Together, they hope to reclaim and revive their “hard luck” town. In what ways does this narrative reflect stories of the “forgotten Midwest”?

No matter where you are, difficult times present a temptation toward nostalgia–to reclaim a remembered golden age by trying to re-establish formulas for success that worked once years ago. But shifts in demographics and technology doom the nostalgic impulse, and what’s happening in Greenstone is a result of that tension playing itself out over the decades. Jerry Fandeen, the former blasting engineer, deals with it by reaching back into the past, which can only end in despair; meanwhile his wife, Ann, has an entirely different response and spins out any number of creative and sometimes ludicrous ideas for an energized and dynamic future.

Most of the characters in the book are struggling to release their history and find a way forward. So are may of us in real life, and not just in the Midwest, anywhere livelihoods have been derailed by supply-chain disruptions or accidents of policy or just plain apathy. What seems hopeful to me is how hard people are willing to work for even small improvement in their lives, and their neighbors’ lives. At one point, Virgil remarks: “We all dream of finding, but what’s wrong with looking?” That’s a modest sort of optimism, which to me is the best kind, because it feels sustainable.

What has your writing success with your previous books (Peace Like a River and So Brave, Young, and Handsome), as well as your collaborations with your brother Lin Enger, taught you about writing–and about life?

Any regular writing discipline teaches you first to pay attention–to physical details, the colors and textures around you, the bird calls, squealing fan belts, burning muscles on an uphill walk, what E.B. White called “the smell of manure and the glory of everything.” That would be enough of a benefit, but then language itself has a way of tantalizing you along with new and ever more evocative words, rhythms, new ways of clarifying things said a thousand times before, as anything worth saying has been.

When Lin and I were writing crime novels together, he said the object of writing was clarity, “the opposite of showing off,” and that the goal of a novel was for the reader to forget he was reading.

I’m not wise enough to know how that relates to life itself, but I think it makes for a good book.

Tell me about the appearance of Minnesota native Bob Dylan in this story–are you a fan?

I came to Dylan pretty late, and I am not by any stretch a Dylanologist or obsessive fan, but I love how his songs seem to come up from the ground, how you know them by their mood, they have a kind of weather about them, a compact but powerful storm system. Listening to Dylan always makes me feel sad, but somehow prepared, ready to bear up under whatever is coming; I also love how he keeps writing good songs after so many years, an inherently hopeful thing to do. Because of these things, and because Greenstone would be practically in his backyard, I tried to conjure him in a way that would seem real and useful, and maybe a little bit funny.

I assume you love baseball, as a player is included in this book and was in previous works of yours. Is that a passion for you?

It’s the prettiest game, to me. Dad was a terrific pitcher, as was his brother Clarence, and their dad as well, Buck Enger. Clarence, in fact, was the model for Alec Sandstrom–according to Dad, Clarence was the one with the real velocity, but little control. In fact, Dad said, when Clarence pitched, it was not uncommon for opposing players to refuse to bat. They’d bench themselves first. Batting helmets didn’t exist in those days.

Do you have other writing projects out there on the horizon that you can tell us about?

I have a couple of novels in mind and am making notes for them, but would rather not say anything more–I’m a little superstitious about that.

Leif Enger will be at the Eudora Welty House on Thursday, November 15, at 5:00 to sign and read from Virgil Wander. Virgil Wander is Lemuria’s December 2018 selection for its First Editions Club for Fiction.

He Dreamed a Dream: ‘Congratulations, Who Are You Again?’ by Harrison Scott Key

By Former Lemurians

On November 8, 2018

In Biography/Memoir, Humor

by Andrew Hedglin

The first book that I fell in love with after I started working at Lemuria was Harrison Scott Key’s The World’s Largest Man, a memoir Key had written about his father. In addition to it simply being hilarious, it helped me contextualize the travails I’ve encountered when trying to write about my own family.

Key has returned with a metatextual sequel called Congratulations, Who Are You Again?, large parts of which detail the process of writing the first book. When Kelly, our store’s manager, first explained this concept to me, I was a little worried. Not because I thought the book wouldn’t be good (which it is, very good). But because I was worried that having to read another book first, in order to enjoy this one, seemed like a high barrier for entry. As in, the audience would naturally be a smaller piece of the initial audience.

But that’s not really true. What Key points out, early and often, is that this is not a book about his previous book. It’s about dreams.

The reason people could relate to his father-memoir is not that they knew Key’s own father personally, but that most people have had a father or father figure in their life. A story can hold up a mirror to our own experience.

Now, I’m a bookseller, and I love all the inside-baseball stuff here about how a book is made: the talk about the early morning coffee house writing, the publisher bids, the advance, the author tour, the Terry Gross king-making. I will personally treasure and adore for years to come a particularly exquisite and profane paragraph about the bookstore’s view of author events. Book people and wannabe writers will find lots here to enjoy.

But dreams come in all shapes and sizes. They have different rewards and consequences. What’s interesting here is how Key’s original dream was just to make people laugh, and it took him a while to figure out that writing a book was the method he would use to achieve that. When he fist made decisions to make this goal come true, he was thrust into roles such as acting, academia, and even fund-raising.

On the other side of having written his book, he has to deal with success. Which suddenly seems important, but was not part of the original plan to begin with. Where Key ends up, as with his last book, is surrounded by his wife and daughters (hilariously given the nicknames Stargoat, Beetle, and Effbomb here for their protection). I don’t think this is designed, but it’s not a coincidence, either. I imagine that for most of us, our loved ones have a way of ending up at into the center of our dreams.

So, if you have any kind of dream, I think this book is worth reading. Even if you’re not familiar with Key’s own dream, he’s got an amusing way of explaining it and casting that reflection back onto us, the readers.

Harrison Scott Key will be at Lemuria on Friday, November 9, at 5:00 to sign and read from Congratulations, Who Are You Again?

Tag: Author Event (Page 7 of 15)

Author Q & A with Chris Cander

The Timelessness of Classical Music in Chris Cander’s ‘The Weight of a Piano’

Author Q & A with Preston Lauterbach

Appalachian Asphyxiation: ‘Sugar Run’ by Mesha Maren

Author Q & A with Mesha Maren

Author Q & A with Kiese Laymon

Author Q & A with Frank LaRue Owen

Author Q & A with Glennray Tutor

Author Q & A with Leif Enger

He Dreamed a Dream: ‘Congratulations, Who Are You Again?’ by Harrison Scott Key

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