In my previous blog post, I raved about Karen Russell’s short story collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. Since then I’ve received an advance copy of her new novel Swamplandia! which centers on a family from one of the St. Lucy’s stories.

Set in the swamplands of Florida, Russell’s novel focuses on the Bigtree family:  owners of the theme park Swamplandia!, faux Native-Americans, and alligator wrestlers.  The narration oscillates between the youngest Bigtree child Ava and her older brother Kiwi, and it explores the heartache of losing Hilola Bigtree, wife, mother, and alligator-wrestler extraordinaire, to cancer.

In addition to their grief, the family must cope with the loss of interest in Floridian swampland culture and history—essentially the Bigtree way of life and source of pride.  Tourists stop coming to see the Bigtrees wrestle their Seths (the Bigtree name for all of their alligators), preferring a new corporate-owned theme park called the World of Darkness in which you can go through a simulated water-park version of “hell.”  The World of Darkness becomes a hell for poor Kiwi Bigtree as he joins forces with his family’s enemy to send money home.  He suffers through bad food, poor living arrangements, shady co-workers, and a cruel boss for his minuscule paycheck.  Meanwhile back in the swamps, his sisters Ossie and Ava venture to their own version of hell through Ossie’s spiritualist ventures and dates with the dead.

I was touched by this quirky family’s heartache and how each of them copes with their hardships.  You will be too.  I urge you to grab a copy of this book when it’s released in February.  Bonus: Karen Russell will be here signing Swamplandia! on March 25, 2011.  So get it, read it, then discuss it with Karen Russell herself!

Read Zita’s take on Swamplandia! here.  -Kaycie

“Here’s the juice children: If you want to be a writer, if you want to create a Persona and a body of work that is woven in the golden thread of Truth, then you must, before anything else, go out into the world and do some serious looking around . . . [A writer] must listen to the way people talk, and watch what they do, and in the process get his hands dirty, get his heart broken, sin a little or a lot, get shot at maybe, find himself afraid, and come to know what being lonely and tired and angry really means. He must learn that passion, if it is real, has consequences, and one of them may well be the grave. There is no other route to being an artist, here endeth the lesson.” (16-17)

“For once, I was encouraged in my flight by a wise, if contentious, comrade: the switchman Frank Smith, who knew things deeply, and felt them deeply; whose mind seemed to have opened like a lotus flower since I had been away.”

“One night, Frank drew his pistol from his back pocket–it was a Colt Peacemaker .22, which he still owns and still threatens me with from time to time–and drew the hammer back. Time for you to go to college my man, he said. College or death: not even The Old Man had couched it in those terms. So it was that I loaded up my red Volkswagen²¹ and went of to Academia, this time with the intention of learning and not amounting . . .”

“At my beloved University of Mississippi, I came to learn that ideas were important, but they meant nothing, were mere empty utterances, without experience to shape them and make connections among them. Existentialism, nihilism, Augustian grace, negative space, surrealism: when I met them in college, I recognized them as old friends. I had already met them out at sea, or on the railroads in perilous dark.” (41-42)

Howard’s essay, “Railroad As Art,” is excerpted from Sonny Brewer’s Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit. Howard is the author of three critically acclaimed novels on the civil war: The Black Flower (1997), winning an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a New York Times Notable book; The Year of Jubilo (2000); and The Judas Field (2006). Pelican Road (2008) is a departure from the American civil war era and takes on a subject near to the author’s heart: the railroad.

Sonny Brewer will be signing Don’t Quit Your Day Job at 5:o0 tonight. The collection includes essays from John Grisham, Pat Conroy, Suzanne Hudson, Brad Watson, Steve Yarbrough, Tom Franklin, Rick Bragg, and many more.

Read excerpts from John Grisham, Pat Conroy.

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by Kelly Pickerill

Maggie triumphantly paraded her latest review acquisition at the desk last week: she got a copy of Mark Dunn’s new book, Under the Harrow. After she read aloud to us the description (it sounds great: some sort of social experiment where orphans are left to create their own society when the only books available to them are an encyclopedia, a bible, and a complete set of the novels of Charles Dickens), she turned to me and asked, “You’ve read Ella Minnow Pea, right?” I had to admit I hadn’t. “I’ve always meant to,” I said. I know it seems like I say that a lot. But as Mark just hinted at a few entries down, the list of books that we readers and (maybe more so) booksellers want to read is so long, and our stacks can get quite high, and there are always those books that get passed over time and again, waiting to catch our eye and interest when the time is right. Apparently, the time was right for Ella Minnow Pea; the book made it into my carry on for Thanksgiving vacation and I read it in a day.

As I recovered from stuffing myself with stuffing, Dunn swept me up into his “Novel in Letters” which features a fictional island people who revere a man named Nollop, the supposed author of the pangram sentence (one that uses every letter in an alphabet) “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” When the story opens, the “Z” in the phrase has just fallen off the statue of the island’s namesake, and the leaders of the community believe it’s a sign: no more Zs may be spoken or written. As other letters fall from the monument, more letters (and thus more words) are stricken from the islanders’ (and the book’s) vocabulary, until Ella decides that disaster is definitely imminent if something isn’t done. The best part about reading this book was getting a sense of the tedious work it must have been for Dunn to write during increasingly restrictive conditions. Dunn goes 165 pages, letters steadily dropping out of use, until he cannot write any word that contains B, C, D, F, J, K, Q, U, V, or Z, before he allows the characters to communicate using homophones and misspellings (“ph” for “f”). Prior to that point, Dunn just masterfully avoids words, which in most cases is undetectable. Brilliant. Or should I say, more acceptably to Nollop, astonishing.

I’m glad the stars aligned or the fates conspired or simply that two events — the arrival of a new book combined with my pushy coworker’s insistence (love you, Maggie) — coincided to put Dunn’s book in my path. Now I can’t wait to read his new one.

Larry in the Square at Oxford; Photo by Hubert Worley

Larry Brown wrote a most earnest essay on his aspirations to be a writer. I am not sure if it has been published before, but Sonny Brewer has included in his new book, Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Aspiring Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit.

Reading Larry Brown’s essay, I got all teary eyed and it reminded me of why I love to read so much. The essay should be read in its entirety in one sitting, but enjoy this excerpt from a much loved writer whose impact on southern literature will not be forgotten.

“It took me a long time to understand what literature was, and why it was so hard to write, and what it could do to you once you understood it. For me, very simply it meant that I could meet people on the page who were as real as the people I knew in my life. They were real people, as far as I was concerned, not just characters. Even though they were only words on paper , they were as real to me as my wife and children. And when I saw that, it was like a curtain fell away from my eyes. I saw that the greatest rewards could be had from the printed page came from literature, and that to be able to write it was the highest form of writing.”

“All of my work comes out of Mississippi, out of the dirt roads and the woods and the fields I drive my truck by. The people who live in this land are the people I’ve known best throughout my life, and together with the country we live in, they form a vast well that will never run dry.” (57)

Editor Sonny Brewer will have a signing and reading for Don’t Quit Your Day Job on Wednesday, December 1st.

Click here to read an excerpt from Pat Conroy. And here to read one from John Grisham.

See a complete list of Larry Brown’s work on our website.

Like most of us, John Grisham bumbled around a lot until he found his niche in the world. Not like most us, he became the best-selling author we know today. His essay gives us a glimpse into this young-hearted journey.

“My career sputtered along with little to add to the resume. Retail caught my attention, primarily because it was indoors, clean, air-conditioned, much softer than, say, asphalt or plumbing, and I applied for a job at a Sears store in the mall. The only opening was in men’s underwear, and since I was in college and needed the money, I reluctantly hired on. It was humiliating . . . I tried to quit but they gave me a raise. Evidently, the position was difficult to fill. I asked to be transferred to toys, then to appliances, but they said no and gave me another raise. (These were not big pay hikes, mind you.) I became abrupt with customers, and I am compelled to say here that Sears had the nicest customers in the world. But I didn’t care. I was rude and surly and was written up on a occasion by the ‘shoppers,’ spies hired by Sears to buy things and fill out reports. One of these ‘shoppers’ asked if he could try on a pair of boxers. I said no, said it was obvious to me that the boxers in question were much too small for his rather ample rear-end. I handed him a pair of XLs, said I was sure they would fit fine, and he didn’t need to be trying on our brand new underwear. He took offense. I got written up, but they still wouldn’t transfer me. I asked for lawn care. No. I finally quit when a customer with obvious hygienic deficiencies insisted on returning a three-pack of low-cut briefs. Other minimum wage paid jobs came and went, none as exciting as selling underwear.” (109-110)

Editor Sonny Brewer will have a signing and reading for Don’t Quit Your Day Job on Wednesday, December 1st.

Read an excerpt from an essay by Pat Conroy.

Signed copies of John Grisham’s new novel, The Confession, are available!

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After completing his freshmen year at The Citadel, Pat Conroy goes back to spend the summer with his family. A summer of work is on the horizon for him and his mother has some ideas about that. She introduced him to Father Stewart in Omaha. Enjoy this excerpt from Conroy’s essay entitled “Deacon Summer”:

“‘I’m the pastor of Holy Family Parish on Izard Street, located in the center of the ghetto. We’ve been trying to do outreach programs that will meet the needs of the our parishioners . . . I can give you free room and board. I can’t say the work won’t be dangerous but it will be satisfying. I have three young men from the seminary who’ll be spending their Deacon Summers at my parish. Two nuns will be doing social work. I can offer you a strong sense of community and can assure you that you’ll be doing work that will make the Near North Side a better place. We can offer you . . .'” (61-62)

“I interrupted him saying, ‘I can’t take a salary, Father. Father I come from the weirdest family on earth, and my father won’t let any of us have a paying job.'”

“‘That’s what your mother said. I find it strange. May I ask why?'”

“‘It’s a long story, but father’s something of an asshole, Father. Pardon my French,’ I said. ‘The Depression made him weird.'”

“‘Then consider yourself hired, Mr. Conroy,’ Father Stewart said.” (62)

. . .

“By July I had nearly completed my census of the whole parish when I knocked on the door of Yunca Matkovich. Many of the neighbors had warned me about approaching Yunca, using words like addled, schizophrenic, and crazy as hell to describe her. Though I had come accustomed to people answering the door with revolvers in their hands, I had never encountered anyone like Yunca Matkovich . . .” (67)

“‘May I come in and ask you some questions? I’m taking a census for the Holy Family Church.'”

“‘Please sit down in my living room.'”

“When I sat down in an armchair, roaches scattered across the floor, and I had to compose myself to keep myself from gagging. She had been born in Poland, she told me, then filled out the details of a most unlucky life. Six months ago she had gone completely blind. She’d never seen a doctor because she couldn’t afford one since someone had begun stealing her social security checks. I tried to turn on a lamp  but there was no electricity . . . Opening the door off the kitchen, I saw the outline of the sink and a commode in the lightless room . . . I looked at the black walls, aware only of a secret abhorrence of something staring back at me. I felt a movement in the impenetrable blackness of those walls; then slowly as my eyes adjusted, I processed the scene with a horror coming over me that I’d never felt before when I realized that I was looking not at a color, but a billion-footed colony of roaches . . .”  (68-69)

I enjoyed this essay so much so I am not going to tell you what happens. The rest is up to you. Editor Sonny Brewer will be having a signing and reading for Don’t Quit Your Day Job on Wednesday, December 1st.

Although Pat Conroy will be not be visiting Lemuria for his new book, My Reading Life, we do have signed copies available. Click here to read more about Conroy’s reading memoir.

Click here for other blogs written for Don’t Quit Your Day Job

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That’s Santa Sonny Brewer with John Evans when he came to Lemuria last year.

Below you will find a letter Sonny wrote to accompany his new book, Don’t Quit Your Day Job. After some conversation between Sonny and John–filled with a wonderful misunderstanding about the book–Sonny decided to collect stories from writers about the day jobs they quit. I loved the letter Sonny wrote so much that I decided to share it with you here. Don’t let the seriousness of the letter fool you. Sonny is always up to something–as writers often are when there is no 9 to 5 job. Last December Sonny was Santa. I wonder what he’ll be up to this December when he comes to Lemuria?

Dear Booklover,

P. J. O’Rourke said, “Creative writing teachers should be purged until every last instructor who has uttered the words ‘Write what you know’ is confined to a labor camp . . . The blind guy with the funny little harp who composed the Iliad, how much combat do you think he saw?

Like O’Roarke, William Faulkner had his own take on the Other Commandment for writers, the one that goes, “Thou shalt not quit thy day job.” Faulkner, who won the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature, had, twenty-five years before, worked at the post office in his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi.

Mister Faulkner was known to say, “One of the saddest things is that the only thing a man can do for eight hours, is work. You can’t eat for eight hours, nor drink for eight hours a day, nor make love for eight hours a day.”

He must have been determined to give something else (writing, we may assume, perhaps a glass of whiskey on the side) a whirl when he tendered his resignation to the postmaster. “I reckon I’ll be at the beck and call of folks with money all my life,” he said, “but thank God I won’t ever have to be at the beck and call of every son of a bitch who’s got two cents to buy a stamp.”

The authors in this book have tried their hands at some of the same jobs you have held, or still keep. They’ve worked on the railroad, busted rocks with a sledgehammer, fought fires, wiped tables, soldiered and carpentered and spied, delivered pizzas, lacquered boat paddles, counted heads for the church, sold underwear, and, yes, delivered the mail. They’ve driven garbage trucks.

And, like Williams Faulkner, they have quit those jobs.

And like Faulkner they write. They tell good tales. If you wonder what work preceded their efforts to produce a great pile of books, if you would like to know how they made the transition to, as William Gay said, “clocking in at the culture factory,” then this is the book you’ve been waiting for.

Sonny Brewer, Editor

Fairhope, Alabama

Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit is available now. You can reserve a signed copy online or call the bookstore 800/601.366.7619. On December 1st, Sonny will be signing and reading from his book. Don’t Quit Your Day Job is also the December selection for our First Editions Club.

Stay tuned for excerpts from the anthology between now and December 1st.

Click here for other blogs written for Don’t Quit Your Day Job

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Since Lemuria has selected all four of Tom Franklin’s published works for our First Editions Club, I asked John how this all came about.

John first met Tom Franklin in the early 90s when he was traveling from his hometown in Alabama to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he was working on an MFA in fiction at the University of  Arkansas. Tom would always stop at Lemuria and talk to John about books and reading.

Before you know it, school was finished, it was 1999, and Tom’s first book Poachers was on the shelf. Not only did the staff at Lemuria admire this collection of short stories and the title novella, “Poachers,” so did Richard Ford, Rick Bass, and Barry Hannah. Comparisons were made to James Dickey and soon the Edgar Allen Poe Award for the Best Mystery Story was awarded to the title novella, “Poachers.”

By 2003, readers were enjoying the grizzly tale of Hell at the Breech which is based on the events surrounding an 1897 murder near Franklin’s hometown. After reading the gun-slinging tale of Smonk in 2006, John remarked: “Not since Hannah’s Tennis Handsome has Southern fiction been so shocked. Nasty, bloody, violent, and just damn good–lean, mean writing with missiles flying off the pages.”

Tom Franklin now lives with his wife, the poet Beth Ann Fennelly, in Oxford, Mississippi, teaching for the University of Mississippi’s creative writing program. Although Tom is an Alabama native, he has taken a key role in carrying on the tradition of great Mississippi writers. We’d like to say he is one of our own.

Tom and his wife have two children, but John remembers when there was just the first baby, memorable because Tom and Beth Anne brought a baby bed and placed it in our fine first editions room. I guess that’s one of the beautiful places you get to sleep when both of your parents are writers!

Crooked Letter Crooked Letter is published by William Morrow and Company with an initial print run of 35,000.

back in december of 2007 i read an awesome little book of short stories titled st. lucy’s home for girls raised by wolves.

about a week ago when our random house reps were here for a sales call they met with all of us lemurians to share their big upcoming titles.  one that i had my eye on was karen russell’s new novel, swamplandia!

i started reading swamplandia! a few days ago and am quite impressed.  the story is based around a alligator wrestling family with its own island park in florida.  the main character, ava is the youngest of three children.  when the main attraction of the park, ava’s alligator wrestling mother, dies suddenly the park takes a turn for the worse.  with no tourists to keep the park open the father takes long trips to the main land, the older sister becomes a spiritist and starts communicating with ghosts and the brother runs away to try to make money to keep the park out of debt.

and that’s all i’m going to tell you.  you’re going to have to wait until february (when the book comes out) to find out what happens.

by Zita

Y’all remember Robert, he used to work at Lemuria.  I think he goes by Bobby now but I still call him Robert.  I guess it’s a reverse nickname.  Well anyway, Robert works for LSU Press and he stopped by the bookstore and told me that Josh Russell, author of Yellow Jack, had a new novel coming out.  I told him he must send me one immediately.  My Bright Midnight arrived shortly thereafter on my doorstep.  I was off this past weekend and decided that it would be the perfect book to read.  I was correct!!!

Russell returns to New Orleans in My Bright Midnight albeit 100 years later and while mosquitoes are still bothersome, rations on butter and sugar and no Mardi Gras are what plagues New Orleans during World War II.  Walter Schmidt immigrated to the United States from Germany 20 years ago and is as happy as an American can be.  He loves baseball, pulp novels, gangster movies, enjoys a Jax Beer from time to time and likes his job at the bakery.  He has a wife, Nadine, who is still a little hung up on her deceased husband so much so that she talked him into buying a house on the same street as Bobby’s (no relation to Robert)  family.  He has a best friend, Sammy,who is loud and obnoxious but he introduced Walter to Nadine so he puts up with him.  Then one day, Walter comes home early and finds Nadine and Sammy in bed together and his world is basically turned upside down!!  Walter wanting to hurt Sammy accepts the $1000.00 he offers as an apology for sleeping with Nadine.  It all backfires in Walter’s face because the money puts them all in more danger than he could have imagined.

Josh Russell is an author that many of my customers come in and say “You know that guy who wrote Yellow Jack?  Has he come out with another book?  He needs to hurry up!”  Well now I can answer with ” As a matter of fact he has! My Bright Midnight and it was worth the wait!!!

Thanks Robert for remembering your friend the bookseller!!!