Must the Novelist Crusade?

I'm off to Canterbury Woods for day two of a four-day residency. More on this wonderful school soon. I want to leave you today with some thoughts from Eudora Welty's essay "Must the Novelist Crusade?"

I re-read it this morning, as I'm working with some folks at Georgia State University on wrapping up an interview I did with the Eudora Welty Society about how I came to know and love Eudora Welty's work and how I eventually named a character in THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS after her. The interview will appear in the next Eudora Welty Newsletter -- I'll let you know about it when it appears.

But in the meantime, I received a query from Dr. Pearl McHaney about one of my answers-to-hard-questions:

"Is the essay you mention reading and using as a model during the discussion of civil rights and Freedom Summer the essay 'Must the Novelist Crusade?'"

Yes, it is, Dr. McHaney.

The entire essay can be found here. It's good for me to read it again as I embark on a novel that takes place in 1962. I don't want to crusade. I want to tell a good story. Here are a couple of plum bits for me to remember:

"Writing fiction is an interior affair. Novels and stories always will be put down little by little out of personal feeling and personal beliefs arrived at alone and at firsthand over a period of time as time is needed. To go outside and beat the drum is only to interrupt, interrupt, and so finally to forget and to lose. Fiction has, and must keep, a private address. For life is lived in a private place; where it means anything is inside the mind and heart. Fiction has always shown life where it is lived, and good fiction, or so I have faith, will continue to do this."

And one more passage I love:

"Indeed, great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean. A good novel of any year can initiate us into our own new experience."

Catching Up

First of all, thanks so much for your mail. My email inbox overfloweth... thanks for the votes of confidence about this blog, about continuing it, and thanks for all the kind words about all kinds of things. I wish I were better at responding to every note. I have taken to saying that I correspond with my heart. I do. Hope you can feel it.

I want to catch you up on many things, but before I do, I want to give a shout-out to my friends in Southern California, who are battling fires everywhere. I was just in Southern California on tour and saw how beautiful was that land -- scroll down to see some photos. Now I'm concerned about my Harcourt friends, my Writers House friends, and my bookseller, teacher, student, reader, and librarian friends... heck, I'm concerned about everyone in Southern California. I'm sending hope, strength, and love.

This week I'm teaching (and learning) personal narrative writing -- to 4th-graders and their teachers -- in the Highland Park area of Dallas, in public schools. Here's an article by Jonathan Kozol that echoes so much about what I believe and teach... Kozol gives the Opening Gala speech on Thursday, November 15 at NCTE in NYC. Oh, how I'd love to hear him speak. I am working at NCTE, but I don't arrive until Friday. Maybe I'll see some of you on Saturday... (Kathleen?).

Peg Bracken died today. She wrote the I HATE TO COOK BOOK in 1960, when I was 7 years old. My mother was nothing like Peg Bracken, who was three years ahead of the curve started by Betty Friedan when she wrote THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE. My mother was not impressed by Betty Friedan or those who came along with her, but I remember reading Peg Bracken's book as a young mother in 1975 and laughing at her way of debunking the '50s ideal of womanhood:

Start cooking those noodles, first dropping a bouillon cube into the noodle water. Brown the garlic, onion and crumbled beef in the oil. Add the flour, salt, paprika and mushrooms, stir, and let it cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink.

I also loved at that time Phyllis Theroux, Patricia Leimbach, Erma Bombeck and Jean Kerr, all of whom idealized living at home with children and loving the pitfalls of motherhood. I aspired to that life -- longed for it. I especially loved Kerr's PLEASE DON'T EAT THE DAISIES. She made me laugh. I had never heard of Joan Didion or Ellen Goodman, but I would know them soon enough, and I would be heavily influenced by them as well.

But at the time, it was 1975, I was only 22-years-old and I already had two kids, was working full time as a single parent, and believed -- still! -- in the romantic notion of being able to stay home and be a full-time mom (was also influenced by Betty MacDonald's THE EGG AND I -- she of the MRS. PIGGLE-WIGGLE FAME!) and be totally fulfilled by this herculean calling, was convinced it was the only life I wanted, at 22... and didn't yet know that I would be granted this life only at a great cost... but more on this later -- because I also want to say that, that life, once I got it, was also so very satisfying to me.

I admire those women who, in a time in which many women believed they needed to follow the status quo of being "only good housewives" and no more, told us that there was depth and breadth to that choice, and that there was also depth and breadth and meaning in incorporating and moving beyond that choice.

Judy Blume was one of those pioneers. How exciting that she declares herself re-energized at age 70 and is publishing new work! I hope to be publishing good work at age 70. I came late to the idea that I could be a good mother and good writer, both.

I don't think I told you that I got sick at Southern Festival of Books. (Here's part of the group that came to hear me read on Saturday, Oct. 13 -- I was thrilled to see baseball players!) It was a great festival, as always, and I got to present this year in the Old Senate Chambers at the War Memorial Plaza, which was a great venue full of character.

Here are some folks from Vanderbilt University in my session... I was so pleased to see them! I have a special place in my heart for Vanderbilt. They know how to admit it when they've been short-sighted. They expelled one of their students, James Lawson, in 1960 -- he was teaching peaceful, non-violent resistance techniques to Diane Nash, James Bevel and more, he was advocating the integration of lunch counters and more -- and came back to right that wrong. Lawson became a minister, a lightening rod, and a peacemaker for civil rights, and he was instrumentally important in keeping the peace during the Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike of 1968. Lawson is one of my heroes, and a hero of Vanderbilt's as well... they recently hosted James Lawson as a visiting professor -- more of one of my heroes later. He is one of the peaceful revolutionaries who raised his voice -- and continues to raise his voice -- in a time of great change.

My host at Southern Festival was Gail Vinett, who works for Ingram Book Distributors. Gail and I met at Southern Festival 2 years ago and feel instantly in like during the LITTLE BIRD tour at Southern Festival. When Gail heard I was going to introduce ALL-STARS at Southern Festival, she brought this photograph of her grandfather (he's on the right with the bat) and his All-Star team of only 9 players, to show all of us that it's perfectly possible (or was) to have an All-Stars team made up of 8 players as happens in THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS.

Gail was great, the crowd was great, and if I hadn't been sick the day before, I would have been much more animated.





I did well on Friday at Central Middle School in Murfreesboro with Helen Hemphill (new book: RUNAROUND) and D. Ann Love (new book: PICTURE PERFECT), but knew I was getting sick on the way back to Nashville. Exhaustion. Too much touring and traveling was catching up with me.

It was the seeing-stars, tossing-lunch exhaustion. I excused myself from the evening activities and slept, and I was okay, although more subdued than usual, for my Saturday session in the Old Senate Chambers, which went well.

Here's David Gibson, "an old Winona boy" (Mississippi), who gifted me with speeches (on CD) by Willie Morris. Thanks, David. And thanks so much, Gail, thank you to Emily Masters who organizes the children's programming for Southern Festival, and a big thank-you to Humanties Tennessee, who manages to find the funding each year (thank you, funders!) to pull together this fabulous festival.

I came home from Southern Festival with just a couple of days before going to the Georgia COMO conference on beautiful Jekyll Island, where the trees all look like this:

I spent a day here, right on the beach -- here's librarian Trish Vlastnik (left) and Lea Ann Kelly (right), chairperson of this year's conference for Georgia school, public, and institutional librarians. What a great conference -- over 900 librarians! (Do you like my new red glasses? I do -- I can see!)










I returned home to pumpkins and candlesticks ($2.00!) I bought at Value Village...


...and to three days of eating miso soup and spinach salad and sleeping well in my own bed with my own husband.

And now, here I am in Dallas, having left my new husband behind yet one more time, having a blast in Dallas schools, and yet longing for the routines of fall and family. I'll be home on Friday night. Out again the following Thursday, to Austin. This is fall travel. Somehow, on this trip, I'm actually putting words to paper as well, writing the next story. More on this later, too.

I'm going to be keeping a close eye on the Southern California fires while waiting for friends to continue to check in, and I'll share with you my week in Dallas schools as well. I've been hired to teach writing workshops -- how does that work and what does that mean? Go back and read the Jonathan Kozol article. I want to be part of the revolution in education. At least I will raise my voice. I am in good company.

Did You Get the Number of that Truck?

Flat as a piece of shirt cardboard, that's how I've been, but I'm recovering -- have recovered -- and I'm on the way to Dallas, Texas this afternoon, where I'll work in Dallas schools all week. Yesterday Jim and I bought local honey, pumpkins, apples, tomatoes, and boiled peanuts (and that beautiful pink pitcher in the background) at a street fair in Loganville, where we stopped on the way home from a signing at the brand-new indie, The Man in the Moon Bookshoppe in Monroe, Georgia.
I'd driven to Monroe by myself, had a fabulous time with owner Vicki Worsham (who used to work for B&N and then Chapter 11 Bookstores in Atlanta) and her able assistant Allison (left), who teaches at the University of Georgia in Athens.

Customers drifted in and out of the downtown shop while I was there, but we had only one customer looking for a Deborah Wiles book, and that was at the end of our hour together. "Our downtown is being revitalized," said Vicki. "I wish you could have been here last week when 2500 people were here for Monroe Days." I was in Nashville last weekend. And I have learned that a booksigning is not about the number of people who show up the day of the signing. It's about creating a relationship with a bookseller, which is something I dearly love to do. I especially love to support brand-new independent bookstores. Man in the Moon opened its doors eight months ago.

It did my heart good to see members of the Wright Family asking for THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS specifically because they'd loved LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER so much, and because a friend loved ALL-STARS so much she'd given Mrs. Wright a copy of Whitman's LEAVES OF GRASS. Connection, connection, connection. I'm so glad I went to Man in the Moon.

It was such a beautiful fall day -- a wondrously beautiful day -- and I loved being out in it. I took my time driving home (Monroe is about an hour east of where I live in Atlanta) and stopped in Between, Georgia, ha!, at the Between Nursery, where I bought rosemary and creeping fig for the house. I kill houseplants, but I'm determined to try again. Then I stopped at a flea market, where I found this chair (Cleebo has found the chair, too). I've been slowly renovating my house, corner by corner, and finding a treasure or two to put in the new rooms.

I couldn't fit the chair in my car, so I called Jim to see if he might be able to come get it this week while I'm in Dallas. "I can come right now!" he said. And did. What a sweetheart.

My $45 fan-back chair has found a home, and Jim and I found a street fair on the way home, where we bought Nu-Grape and walked in the sunshine for an hour.



We went to supper with friends, then friends came over to make music. Here's Dan on trombone and Jerry on trumpet.

Laurie on washboard:










Jim on tambourine:










The big finale:


Then we all collapsed in laughter. What a cacaphony of sound! What music! I'm grateful for good friends.

Over the past ten days I've also been to Nashville for Southern Festival of Books and to Jekyll Island, Georgia to speak at the COMO conference. I met up with old friends, made new friends, found good books, good food, good times, and I'll share it with you -- I took lots of photos. But let me finish with home, since that seems to be so on my mind right now, as it always is when I'm about to leave it. I'll start another post about travels.

Here's a picture of the far end of the kitchen, where the washer and dryer used to be. We moved them downstairs and have created a pantry here (or Jim Williams has).
You can see the creeping fig here -- hope I don't kill it -- and the yellow boots I bought in Maine years ago when I waded in Rachel Carson's salt pond.

One day I want to write about Rachel Carson. She believed so deeply in the interconnectedness of all things. She wrote: "If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength."

Yes.

Packing for Possibilities

It's not over-packing; it's packing for possibilities. My friend Deborah Hopkinson writes: "Be prepared for the weather in the Pacific Northwest!" So I try to do that. Friend Jane Kurtz writes, "Agree that it makes travel SO much easier if one only takes a carry-on bag." Right. Don't I know it. Still -- living out of a carry-on bag for twelve days on the road, I don't know. But I'm determined. I've sent Sweetheart Jim to the store for safety pins (don't ask), those travel-sized plastic containers (mine are full of who-knows-what -- must label next time), AA batteries, and quart-sized Ziploc bags (mine has finally worn out). I've paid my estimated taxes. Sigh. I'm as ready as I'm going to be.

I want to collect stories, like possibilities, on the road. Show me where you work, where you play, where you eat, where you shop. Here's where I buy my stunning wardrobe (and, according to some who shall remain nameless, it shows - ha!).


And here's where I buy fresh tomatoes:






Here's where Jim and I often eat on a Sunday evening -- we love the folks at Soul Veg, and the food is great, too. Jim is doing the obligatory "stand in front of the sign" pose.











I pined for this house in Kirkwood when I first moved to Atlanta. Isn't it gorgeous? It was in disrepair, but I was drawn to it like a moth to a porch light, I couldn't explain it. I felt the possibilities. Not long ago my friend Stoney told me that this was the old Dollar Funeral Home -- no wonder! I can just see Comfort Snowberger upstairs, in her closet, with Dismay, Funeral Dog Extraordinaire in EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS, can't you? Dollar Funeral Home. Judge Hatchett has bought this home (yes, that Judge Hatchett) and is restoring it, readying it for all kinds of possibilities. I bought a little house in the little woods that suits me and my family. We're creating a new life there, a life full of... you know.

What about you? Where do you shop, eat, work, play? What will I learn about you on this tour? What will I discover?

Possibilities. It used to be just-about all I had. When I was a young adult with two small children, on my own, possibilities were precious. We walked to the library each week, and we'd tote home books to read together -- they were full of possibilities. We took with us what I called "possible bags" (I may owe this phrase to Marguerite Kelly -- I studied her book THE MOTHER'S ALMANAC obsessively, trying to learn how to parent.)

We'd meander to the library, our possible bags clutched in our fists. "Look at this rock! It's so beautiful! A whole acorn! This leaf has four colors in it! Look, a stick bug! A roly-poly! A DIME!" Life was a mess of possibilities on those walks, and we collected our treasures, taking the time to look, to listen, to be. We had the time. And we had possibilities.

In THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS, life is a mess of possibilities, too. Will the boys get to play in the one big baseball game of the year? Will House's elbow hold out so he can pitch? Will Honey get to tap dance? Will Frances ruin everything with another interpretive dance? Will an old man's secrets -- and benevolence -- be discovered? Will another old man's sacrifice bring everyone together? Possibly, possibly, possibly. What a beautiful word.

I've got a suitcase packed with possibilities. Can't wait to see y'all at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hey there, Carol Moyer, Trish, Diana, Rosemary, Nancy -- I'll be there soon --

A Visit to Dodo's House

My childhood Mississippi friend Pam Evans (Howell) and I had grits and omelets for breakfast on Friday morning and then tootled together to the Eudora Welty House on Pinehurst Street in Jackson, Mississippi. Eudora moved into this house with her parents when she was 16. She would write her fiction here, in the upstairs bedroom, where her office looked out of the three windows on the left.

Books were everywhere: stacked on tables, spilling over on sofas, tucked into plum reading nooks -- books. Eudora Welty worked upstairs in her office -- which was also her bedroom -- where she had a commanding view of the street below and Belhaven College directly across the street. She often read in her favorite living room chair, where she could see who might be coming up the walk. Folks would knock on the door and ask Eudora to sign a book for them, which she would graciously do.

She traveled, she gardened with her mother Chestina, she kept up a correspondence that filled boxes, file cabinets, closets, bureaus, and this secretary. (You can see the electric typewriter near the window. Eudora never quite got used to it. According to one of the excellent tour guides, she thought the hum it made was telling her to hurry up and write.) What I loved about the desk were the small notebooks that dotted it -- notebooks Eudora carried with her to record the smallest of details. She collected names in her notebooks, and would often write "REAL" beside them so she wouldn't use someone's actual name in a story.

When her brother Walter died young, Eudora became even closer to his two children, her nieces.

"She even drove car pools," said niece Mary Alice White. Mary Alice now takes good care of visitors when they arrive at the Welty home. She told me that her sister had trouble pronouncing "Eudora" when she was young, and the word came out "Dodo." So Eudora Welty became Dodo to the two girls. "For years we received cards and letters signed 'Aunt Dodo,'" said Mary Alice.

I love this story. I shared with Mary Alice that in THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS, there is a six-year-old girl named Honey, who calls her dog -- a loveable old pug -- "YouDoggie" throughout the book. Honey hears the name that way, even though her brother, House, tells her that the dog's name is.... Eudora. Eudora Welty. YouDoggie, Aunt Dodo, Eudora.

Welty's home has been preserved with the same furniture, books (in all the same haphazard places), photographs, hairbrushes, china! It's intact and looks the way Welty left it, thanks to the family's bequests and the hard work of many, many volunteers.

The gardens are being restored to their Chestina Welty glory-days as well. I found my favorites, zinnias, nodding their old heads in the September morning. Friend Pam told Mary Alice that she'd see about coming to volunteer and cut back the roses. Moonflowers (another favorite) climbed a trellis near the house and a cold frame stood ready for this coming spring.

Welty had a wide and varied life outside the south. She traveled extensively, loved her friends lavishly, and supported emerging writers ardently (including dear friend Reynolds Price, whose work I so admire -- read his book A WHOLE NEW LIFE to start, and then move on to his fiction). She wrote reviews, articles, essays and fiction -- my favorite fiction is DELTA WEDDING followed closely by THE PONDER HEART, which makes me laugh. I also love the short stories "Why I Live at the P.O." and "Powerhouse," which was written after Eudora saw Fats Waller play.

She was a courageous writer as well. On the night Medgar Evers was assassinated in Jackson (see previous post on this), Eudora sat down and wrote in a white heat, "Where is the Voice Coming From?" It was written in the voice of the person who killed Evers, although no one had yet been apprehended for the crime. It is a powerful indictment of racism in the deep south.

You can read more about Eudora Welty in Suzanne Marr's wonderful biography. Here's chapter one. You'll see that Welty was something of a renaissance woman, although I doubt she'd claim that word. She was anything but a provincial southern lady who sat in her home making up provencial southern stories. She had a vision.

If you've read ONE WRITER'S BEGINNINGS by Welty, you'll know this house on Congress Street, where Eudora was born and grew up... where she started out, a stone's throw from the state capitol building, with a cow in the back yard. Here's a wonderful review of that book. You can hear Eudora read her work here. Eudora was a photographer as well. You can see some of her Depression-era photographs of people all over the state of Mississippi here.

Eudora Welty started out on Congress Street. Debbie Edwards (moi) started out here, with these folks, and I am glad to call them family. Both my parents died in 2003 (part of the genesis of EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS) but my father's sister keeps me in her heart, as does the rest of my Mississippi family. Here is Aunt Beth, the girl who raised chickens in Louin, Mississippi, just as Ruby Lavender raises chickens in LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER. Uncle Jim still plants peppers and tomatoes from seed in his Brandon, Mississippi back yard every summer.
I'd asked for tomato sandwiches for lunch, and that's what I got! "The last tomatoes of the season," said Uncle Jim. Aunt Beth gifted me with her treasured 1915 copy of LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY (I will take good care of it, I promise). After lunch, Cousin Carol and I sat with Aunt Beth and looked at a notebook full of old photographs and clippings (many of them obituaries -- Comfort Snowberger would have loved this!)

Aunt Beth read out loud some of the research she'd copied on the Edwards family tree. We got to laughing so hard we couldn't stop. Here's one snippet from "Memoirs of Mississippi" found in the Neshoba County Library in Philadelphia, MS:

"Records show that James Madison Edwards, merchant and farmer, Shuqualak, Mississippi, is related to some of the best old families in Mississippi. He is a man whose enterprise, energy, and business sagacity place him among the state's most progressive citizens, destined to be long felt as a factor in all that constitutes the solid development of her grand possibilities."

Through our laughter, Carol managed to croak out, "Whose opinion is that?" and we laughed until we cried.

Mississippi. Such a land of contrasts. I love it and think of it the way Welty did: "Place conspires with the artist. We are surrounded by our own story, we live and move in it. It is through place that we put out roots."

Thank you to Pam Evans and Cousin Carol (the pretty cousin) for driving me all over the place, and thanks to the wonderful staff at the Welty House for making us feel like family.

Got home very late on Friday (thunderstorms dotted the air) and slept. Took two naps on Saturday. It's Sunday morning now, and I'm feeling rested and ready for tomorrow -- Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina. I hope you've rested some this weekend and are ready for twelve straight days on the road with me! I don't know this new territory -- I will need to learn a new, west-coast geography. I hope you'll help me! Here we go --

The Only Way Out is Through - Shirley Jackson and the Book Tour

I've been thinking of Shirley Jackson this morning. Maybe you know of her through her short story "The Lottery" or her novels THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE or WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE. I didn't read "The Lottery" until I was well into my adulthood and have never read the novels. I came to Shirley Jackson through two of her books of collected magazine pieces: RAISING DEMONS and LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES, hilarious accounts of raising her four children with her husband, critic and Bennington professor, Stanley Hyman, in the 1940s and '50s in rural Vermont. Above is a photo of their children taken by Lloyd Studio during a 1952 photo shoot for SAVAGES.

In the midst of piles of dishes, broken refrigerators, constant mayhem and dishevelment in an ancient 21-room house; in the days that were laced with Sally's imaginary friend Mrs. Ellinoy, Janney's raucous overnight birthday parties, Laurie's fervent trumpet playing, and little Barry's turn as "Mr. Beekman," Shirley Jackson managed to write both memoir and fiction while sardonically and efficiently dealing with her husband's overzealous students and the school-mom populace which seemed to roil with its rules of propriety, all the while fending off a very real sense that she was not doing a good job at any of these endeavors, that she had never been pretty-enough or interesting-enough or just-plain-good-enough, AND while battling increasing difficulties with alcohol and prescription meds.

I can relate.

Surprised? Me, too. I don't have the same life history as Shirley Jackson, but I did (it seems so long ago) raise four kids while trying to write and be a PTA Mom, soccer parent, choir director, Brownie leader, child nurturer, good wife (what does that mean?), daily cook, seasonal gardener/canner/freezer, freelance editor, and did I say writer? Who was this person? I know so well the feelings of trying to raise a family and loving it, while knowing that there is something else you feel called to do as well, and trying to make time for it outside the social graces, while the swirl of community or family (and this may be mostly in your head) says, "not good enough" the way Shirley Jackson thought it did.

And what if you're not good enough? -- Oh, I know that feeling, not only with my writing, but with my parenting, my "fitting in" to the family I grew up within, the marriage I chose in my twenties, the marriage that I fell into by accident at 18, and more. I think of Jackson often because of a biography about her I love written by Judy Oppenheimer: PRIVATE DEMONS. It's a generous, poignant look at a gifted, tortured soul.

I tend to believe that we all have -- or have had -- our private demons. They don't have to be the deepest, darkest secrets the world has ever known. Maybe they are just the things that consistently trip us up as we try to live our lives... maybe that's the "not good enough." And maybe, if we are lucky, we learn to make friends with those demons. I wonder if we can ever banish them. Perhaps what we can do is learn to understand them and live peaceably with them.

Shirley Jackson died wrestling her demons in 1965. Her children were still young. She was 45 years old. She wanted to be true to herself and her stories, and she was afraid of the spotlight. Sort of like me. Her husband said after her death, "She consistently refused to be interviewed, to explain or promote her work in any fashion, or to take public stands and be the pundit of the Sunday supplements." I wonder what she would have made of going on book tour? I wonder, if she had been able to make peace with her demons, if a book tour might have alternately thrilled and petrified her? Sort of like me.

THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS book tour dates are listed to the left of this blog. Y'all come see me in September if you can... I know to my bones it's going to be wonderful -- I know it! I'm excited about the possibilities, and I'm looking forward to all the folks I'll meet. I'll take photos, I'll write about each day and I hope that you'll write me back -- I'll bring you along with me. I hope you'll come.. I'll need all the demon-bashing support I can get.