One Mississippi

“I once saw a crow smoke a cigarette,” he said, because that’s what came to him. “It took a long, slow drag and then held it. Its eyes narrowed but did not close. Then it blew woozy rings of smoke, one after another, and the woozy rings became links of a chain and the chain stretched up beyond where I could see, and back down to the crow’s neck. I counted one Mississippi, two Mississippi. I got to about a dozen Mississippis, then the crow closed its eyes and flew away. Broke the chain, it did. It was the most amazing thing. I’ve seen truth and beauty and purported religious miracles, I once saw a man play 'He Stopped Loving Her Today' on egg beaters, but I never saw anything like that. Nope, I never did not.”

-- from "The Very Last Night"

Songs of joy, with ghosts and smoking guns

Coffee. Writing. Josh Ritter singing, "There’s no ghosts in the graveyard / That’s not where they live / They float in between of / What is and what if." It's been a good year for music, already. They're all good, like I like to say, if you listen hard. There's Josh Ritter's "The Beast in Its Tracks," a divorce album, I'm told. Sounds like one, somber as it is. It doesn't dance taps on tables, like "The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter," doesn't take life by the scruff of a bottleneck and make tall-tale brags, such as, "My orchestra is gigantic / This thing could sink the Titanic." But it's a beautiful record, and the words, Lord. The kid -- well, he's no kid; he's old enough to be making divorce albums worthy of (hell, I'll say it) "Blood on the Tracks" -- has still got it, sad and all though he may be...

But I will not chase your shadow
as you go from room to room
Dropping handkerchiefs and daggers
smoking guns and other clues

Late in the album, though, there's a song called "Joy," of all things, and in my favorite lines, our man sings,

Joy to the city
The heatwave and all
To the lion of the evening
with the storm in its paw

Joy to the many
Joy to the few
Joy to you baby
Joy to me too
tonight

I know, I know. It's more like he's singing, "God help us," as if joy were up high on a shelf we can't quite reach -- or back in the past, where we can't go and fetch it. But joy to us, anyway. Joy, still and all.

Iron & Wine sings about joy, too, on his new record, "Ghost on Ghost." Likewise, it's that complicated joy, elusive joy -- joy with wings and a skittish nature.

Deep inside the heart of this crazy mess
I'm only calm when I get lost within your wilderness
Born crooked as a creek bed and come to confess
That you've been bringing me
Joy

As usual, our man Sam Beam sings poetry you can't always make sense of -- it's a gift, well used. And, as usual, he's got great song titles -- "Low Light Buddy of Mine," "Grace for Saints and Ramblers" -- you want to steal and study, buy drinks and write stories for. It's a hell of an album, with lines like "there's new fruit humming in the old fruit tree," which is a hell of a way to put it (whatever "it" is).

Anyway, some of my favorite records of the year, so far ...

"The Beast in Its Tracks," Josh Ritter
"Ghost on Ghost," Iron & Wine
"American Kid," Patty Griffin
"The Low Highway," Steve Earle
"Gulf Coast Museum," Shinyribs
"Honky Tonk," Son Volt
"White Buffalo," Jimbo Mathus and the Tri State Coalition
"Electric," Richard Thompson
"Push the Sky Away," Nick Cave the the Bad Seeds

Eudora Welty, lead guitar (More songs of serious daring)

The land was perfectly flat and level but it shimmered like the wing of a lighted dragonfly. It seemed strummed, as though it were an instrument and something had touched it.

-- from "Delta Wedding," Eudora Welty



A Friday playlist ...

1. "Skinny Woman," R.L. Burnside
2. "Everybody Thinks You're An Angel," Mose Allison
3. "Whiskey Girl," Gillian Welch
4-5. "Blue Streak Mama" and "Firecracker," Frazey Ford
6. "La La Blues," Pokey LaFarge and the South City Three
7. "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," Bob Dylan
8. "Little Red Rooster," Rolling Stones with Tom Waits
9. "Move Over Mama," Justin Townes Earle
10. "Delta Mama Blues," Townes Van Zandt
11-12. "Jackson" and "2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten," Lucinda Williams
13-14. "Grace for Saints and Ramblers" and "Low Light Buddy of Mine," Iron & Wine
15. "When the Roses Bloom Again," Billy Bragg & Wilco

Look homeward, books

OK, I admit I stopped by the main branch of the Memphis library the other day to see if they had a copy of "Long Gone Daddies." Yes, it's true, I wanted to see it on the fiction shelves, near the end of the alphabetical line, roughly between Eudora Welty and Thomas Wolfe. I was sorely disappointed (hey, Memphis library system, how about a little love for a local boy!), but on the way out, I stopped in the used-book store there. I picked up a 1951 Modern Library hardback edition of "Absalom, Absalom!" for $3. I know, I know: hot damn. Then, I found an old Welty and an old Wolfe, as if somehow the Memphis library gods were making up for the snub. I have resisted, so far, the urge to place them on a shelf at home, with the local boy's humble tale in between.

The sacred muck (More songs about Memphis, great lost city of sound)

We’re going to Memphis, the sacred muck, the shining jewel of all sad backwaters. We’re going to Memphis, great lost city of sound. You can walk on whiskey, in Memphis. You can bang your blue guitar.

“Your guitar,” says the city on the bluff to the pilgrim at the banks of the big river, “is it blue?”

Pilgrim says, “Oh, it’s sad as can be.”

-- "Long Gone Daddies" (John F. Blair, Publisher)

Talking with the audience, Greil Marcus contrasts what he perceives as the blankness of Los Angeles with a city like Memphis which is at first glance ugly, but exudes obsession, fetishism and eccentricity. Driving through Memphis reveals countless signs of craziness; it is full of crazy people and proud of it.

-- from the Southern California Institute of Architecture website

Well, c'mon boys, let me tell you the news
Memphis women don't wear no shoes

-- "Kassie Jones Part 1," Sid Selvidge

A Friday playlist (for Sid Selvidge, 1943-2013) ...

1. "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again," Bob Dylan
2. "I'm Going to Memphis," Johnny Cash
3. "Night Train to Memphis," Roy Acuff
4. "Memphis," Chuck Berry
5. "Memphis Beat," Jerry Lee Lewis
6. "Memphis Rounders Blues," Frank Stokes
7. "Memphis Shakedown," Memphis Jug Band
8. "Memphis Flu," Elder Curry & Congregation
9. "Memphis Moon," Magnolia Electric Co.
10. "Down in Memphis," Booker T. Jones
11. "The Singing Bridge of Memphis, Tennessee," John Fahey
12-13. "That's How I Got to Memphis" and "Kassie Jones Part 1," Sid Selvidge
14. "I've Been to Memphis," Lyle Lovett
15. "Going Back to Memphis," The Band

Billy Heavens and the Whiskey Heiress (Small-Batch Fiction No. 61)

They met in an East Texas honky tonk called the Train of Love.

That was the story, that day of make-believe. Lucy Miles said she was a whiskey heiress and Billy Heavens might have said something about robbing banks. They danced and they drank, and the boy fell hard, he fell deep, and falling was like flying, after the rut he’d been in, and so he went with that. He plunged and he plummeted and didn’t ever think it was something he ought not do, no sir, not even when she began using the word spree as a verb.

-- from "The Very Last Night"

The Silver Flask (Small-Batch Fiction No. 92)

Nowhere man
And the whiskey girl
They loaded up for a weekend
in the underworld

-- "Whiskey Girl," Gillian Welch

They were outside of town, some ways off the main road. Billy laid on the hood beside her, watching the summer heat and three church crosses on the far side of the gravel lane they’d wandered down. There was no church, just some rubble where the church used to be, and the crosses, listing somewhat to the north, the two shorter ones flanking the taller of them and following its lead. Lucy paged through the newspaper out of Jackson for some mention of them and Billy sat there wondering what crosses do, with no church left to front for.

“What do you think happened to that church?” he said, but Lucy didn’t seem to hear, or didn’t seem to want to. She sat forward on the hood, sipping whiskey from a scuffed silver flask and paging through that newspaper out of Jackson for some mention of them. She was rifling through it, though she needn’t have.

“I ain’t feeling wanted,” Lucy said in that low, soft, lilting voice of hers.

Billy sidled up to one of her good sides.

“I want you,” he said.

-- from "The Very Last Night of Boys and Girls"

Saints, ramblers, and rakes who reek (More songs about grace and wander)

Malcolm made it a home a couple of months later. He reeked of the road and its splendors. He was tired but had a new batch of songs. He’d sit on the porch of the small house in the evenings of the next few weeks and play them.

Sara asked if he was done with the road.

“Now, honey babe.”

“Don’t honey babe me.”

He picked at the guitar, played a bluesy note and then another, a string of them, a procession.

-- "Long Gone Daddies" (John F. Blair, Publisher)

With the saints and ramblers, movie star handlers
High above the aviary, underneath the cemetery
And we never wondered why, 'cause the sun was in our eyes

-- "Grace for Saints and Ramblers," Iron and Wine

A Friday playlist (partial) ...

1. "I Am a Rake and Rambling Boy," John Fahey
2. "Lost Highway," The Replacements
3. "Long Lonely Ride," Deadstring Brothers
4. "Down the Road Pt II," Steve Earle
5. "Grace for Saints and Ramblers," Iron and Wine
6. "Wandering Star," Lucero
7. "Heartbreak on the 101," Band of Horses
8. "Goodbye Babylon," Black Keys
9-10. "Let's Ride" and "Last Words of Midnight Clyde," Blue Mountain
11. "Long White Cadillac," The Blasters
12-13. "Stop Breaking Down" and "There's No Home for You Here," White Stripes
14. "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone," Mose Allison
15. "Medley: By the Side of the River and I Come, I Come," John Fahey

Roll over Kerouac and tell Woody Guthrie the news

-- "Down the Road Pt II," Steve Earle

A little bit of soul

When you become a member of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, your membership card comes in a little yellow envelope with the famous Stax Records snapping-finger logo stamped upon it. It's a small thing, really, and will not, as such, make you any more soulful than you were before receiving said envelope. You'll not be able to sing like Mavis Staples or play guitar like Steve Cropper. Your morning-shower version of "These Arms of Mine" or "Who's Making Love" will sound no better. You'll not possess, suddenly, the gravitas to sing, as Albert King does in "Born Under a Bad Sign":

You know wine and woman, is all I crave
A big-leg woman gonna carry me, to my grave

And when you die, God bless you, your obituary in The New York Times will not remark upon your "wardrobe of hot pants, boots and capes, all in wild colors," as with Rufus Thomas.

But it is a cool, little thing, that envelope. And the card inside grants you admission to the museum, where you can gaze upon the glory of Stax, and listen to some of the most sublime songs anybody ever cut. This is something. This is enough.

The King Edward Sessions (The Mississippi Sheiks sing songs of dark wisdom for these modern times)

When the train comes flyin’ past
The walls shake and the floorboard squeaks
You be sittin’ on top of the world, girl
Like the Mississippi Sheiks

-- "Train Yard," Ray Wylie Hubbard

"I can't be good, baby / honey, because the world's gone wrong." Still waiting for that Mississippi Sheiks reunion tour.

-- tweet by @jerryleesnopes

The picture is of the King Edward Hotel in Jackson, Miss., refurbished to earlier splendor and a good place to stay when you find yourself in the capital city of the Magnolia State. I like to think the ghosts of the Mississippi Sheiks are about the place. They recorded there -- so, from what I read, did the Memphis bluesman Robert Wilkins, country great Uncle Dave Macon, and some others with names like Kid Stormy Weather and the Mississippi Moaner. The Sheiks played shows there, too, and I can imagine they brought the place down.

Ah, love those Mississippi Sheiks. Best American band, ever? I say yes. They had it all -- wit and swing and chops to spare; lyrics shot through with dark wisdom and wry asides. And the songs -- "Sitting on Top of the World," "The World is Going Wrong" and "He Calls That Religion," which begins:

Well, the preacher used to preach
To try to stay atoned
But now he's preachin'
Just to buy jellyroll

Well, he calls that religion
Yes, he calls that religion
Well, he calls that religion
But I know he's goin' to hell when he dies

What a mighty band. Muddy Waters said he walked ten miles just to hear them play. Bob Dylan, in his liner notes to "World Gone Wrong," wrote: " ... the Mississippi Sheiks, a little known de facto group whom in their former glory must've been something to behold. rebellion against routine seems to be their strong theme. all their songs are raw to the bone & are faultlessly made for these modern times (the New Dark Ages) nothing effete about the Mississippi Sheiks."

Long Gone Daddies in Little Rock

So, I'm at the Arkansas Literary Festival this weekend, spreading the word on "Long Gone Daddies." My session is 2:30 p.m. Saturday, the "Wild and Long Gone" panel discussion with Mary Stewart Atwell, author of the novel "Wild Girls," at the Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center.

In advance of the festival, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette sent me a quiz to see what I knew about Arkansas. You've got to love a quiz where one of the answers is "Woo, pig. Sooiee!" They also asked if I'd spent any time in the Natural State and what impressions I had. I suppose the whole exercise presumed Arkansas was a foreign land to most of the festival authors. But living in Memphis, hell, Arkansas is just a skip away. I'm a fan of the place. Here's what I wrote back:

I've lived in Memphis for 25 years, so I've spent quite a bit of time in Arkansas and I'm a fan of the state for many of the same reasons I'm a fan of Mississippi and Tennessee -- the musical and literary history, the whole rich culture of the place, the feel of it. It's the land of Johnny Cash, Levon Helm, and Charles Portis -- how can you not like that? And it's Sonny Boy Williamson's old stomping grounds, right? ... There are some sections of my novel, "Long Gone Daddies," set in Arkansas, as the band makes its way to Memphis. ... My wife and I spent a wonderful weekend in Little Rock last summer, stayed in the River Market district, visited the Clinton museum, ate Doe's tamales, and found a great bookstore that was affiliated with the library. Good times. ... In my "day job" as a newspaperman, I've covered a few University of Arkansas football games, both in Little Rock and Fayetteville -- and spent some fun days at Oaklawn. ... Most of my visits to Arkansas these days are to the greyhound track in West Memphis. My wife and I have adopted a couple of retired racers (Lance and Popular) and we make it over to the track to watch races and also because the adoption kennel is there and we're active in the adoption program. ... I'm a fan of your state and look forward to visiting.

The way that she could sing (Happy Birthday, Bessie Smith)

Check all your razors and your guns
We gonna be rasslin' when the wagon comes

-- "Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer," Bessie Smith

Now in my day I've made some foolish moves
But back then, I didn't worry 'bout a thing
And now again I still wonder to myself
Was it her sweet love or the way that she could sing?

-- "Bessie Smith," The Band

Make like smoke (More songs about getting gone, and taking the long way home)

Money's just something you throw
off the back of a train
I got a head full of lightning
a hat full of rain

I know that I said
I'd never do it again
I love you pretty baby but
I always take the long way home

-- "Long Way Home," Tom Waits

My daddy would take off rambling, chasing skirt and song, drinking whatever. Whiskey was his choice, but he’d drink transmission fluid and run on that awhile. He’d find some new place all lush with song and then, just like that, he’d make like smoke. But he’d always come home, with that Cassandra guitar and the clothes on his back and next to nothing in his pockets, singing some sad tune. Ma would take him back. He was winning, in his way. So there’d be domestic bliss and a shut bedroom door for a few days, and late at night, he’d sit out on the front stoop with me and tell stories. He’d show me chords on the old Cass guitar. He was the damnedest player I’d seen, though I hadn’t seen much. I was a kid. I wondered why my daddy wasn’t famous, playing guitar like he did. I asked him. He looked funny at me. It was like he was an outlaw and I’d asked why he wasn’t locked up.

-- from "Long Gone Daddies," John F. Blair, Publisher

A Friday playlist (partial) ...

1. "Ain't Got No Home," The Band
2. "Better Place to Stop," The Damn Quails
3. "Down the Highway," Son Volt
4. "Metal Firecracker," Lucinda Williams
5. "V-8 Ford Blues," Mose Allison
6. "Slick Crown Vic," John Hammond
7-9. "I'm a Long Gone Daddy," "Long Gone Lonesome Blues," and "I Saw the Light," Hank Williams
10. "Bring It On Home," Sonny Boy Williamson
11-12. "Long Way Home" and "Come On Up to the House," Tom Waits
13. "Home Sweet Home," Jim Dickinson

Well, the moon is broken
And the sky is cracked
Come on up to the house

-- "Come On Up to the House," Tom Waits

Sad songs, y'all

I keep singin' them sad, sad songs, y'all
Sad songs is all I know

-- "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)," Otis Redding

Patsy Cline, Patsy Cline
Have you met Otis?
Have you sung ‘These Arms of Mine’?

-- from "Long Gone Daddies," John F. Blair, Publisher

Happy, sad, damned, and damned good (More songs about songs)

There were songs about every moving thing. Songs about fast trains and big rivers. Songs about songs. Sad songs, too, about love and last call. He played them all for me. Bad things happened, in those songs. Love went south and turned dark: Knives were unsheathed and shown to fair maiden skin; the skin did not flinch, but it bled when cut. There were shootings and drownings. There was rain by the torrent, high water everywhere. The world would come just shy of ending, and most always there was a woman, a wife, back home. Sometimes there would even be a song about her, but only sometimes.

-- from "Long Gone Daddies"

A Friday-night playlist:

1. "Singer of Songs," Johnny Cash
2. "Old Soul Song (For the New World Order)," Bright Eyes
3. "Everybody Knows (The River Song)," O.V. Wright
4. "Happy Song (Dum-Dum-De-De-De-Dum-Dum)," Otis Redding
5. "Old Sad Songs," Lucero
6. "Righteous, Ragged Songs," Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires
7. "A Damn Good Country Song," Jerry Lee Lewis
8. "Song to Woody," Bob Dylan
9. "Funeral Song for Mississippi John Hurt," John Fahey
10. "Redemption Song," Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros
11. "The Turkish Song of the Damned," The Pogues
12. "The Rooster Song," Fats Domino
13. "The Cricket Song," Petunia & the Vipers
14. "Play a Train Song," Todd Snider
15. "Calamity Song," The Decemberists
16. "September Song," Django Reinhardt
17. "Wolves (Song of the Shepherd's Dog)," Iron & Wine
18. "A Song For You," Gram Parsons
19. "One Little Song," Gillian Welch
20. "Wrote a Song for Everyone," Mavis Staples

So if you don’t like this side of me
flip me over

-- "Untitled Song No. 45," Long Gone Daddies

No, I don't smoke, but I'm trying to start

Well, I'm sitting here wondering
would a matchbox hold my clothes?

-- "Matchbox," Blind Lemon Jefferson, Carl Perkins, Albert King, Ike Turner, Leadbelly, and some others

To my collection of small things I hold dear, but for which I have no real use at the moment, I add these cool matchbooks. I picked them up last week at Off Square Books down in Oxford, Miss. I don't smoke, but lots of characters in my stories do. In my novel "The Very Last Night," the girl Lucy Miles says to the boy Billy Heavens, "Cigarettes are just props, anyhow. Boys smoke ’em because it makes ’em look cool. Girls smoke ’em because it makes ’em look sexy. Grownups, they just need something to do with their hands." I couldn't say, myself; I'm not in the habit of arguing with Lucy Miles any more than I am of stepping in the path of afternoon trains. Anyway, I just had to have those matchbooks -- a tiny version of "The Sound And The Fury" and "The Violent Bear it Away," only filled with matches 'stead of those matchless words. I'll put them with my guitar slide. I don't play guitar, either, but I'm trying to start. Like Billy Heavens, I could use some bad habits.

Down from the mountain: Notes from Thacker Mountain Radio

I think on some level I wrote a novel all steeped in music, drunk on the stuff, so I could get to read from it on Thacker Mountain Radio, pretty much the coolest gig going for for a music-obsessed writer. So last night it happened. Good times, wonderful people. They made me feel like I'd written a dozen books and even sold a few. The house band (I want a house band!), The Yalobushwhackers, played Hank's "I'm A Long Gone Daddy," and I had a great, long, preshow conversation backstage with Petunia (that's him in the picture above; I know, he could play a young Gaunt in the movie version of "Long Gone Daddies"). We talked about Charlie Feathers, one of my favorite underrated legends of the early Sun Records days. Petunia, a Canadian singer who yodels and whose songs evoke Jimmie Rodgers and namecheck Tom Waits, is my new fave, instant friend, and a serious talent. He's got a flair and presence and his voice can do more things at once than some entire bands. And for a guy who describes his music as "Tom Waits meets Elvis at Woody Guthrie’s hobo junction," he's dead serious about it. He was grilling me on Charlie Feathers, wanting facts he thought that I, as a 25-year Memphian, ought to know. Later, when I told him how much I enjoyed talking about the old would-be rockabilly king, he seemed surprised that I didn't have such conversations all the time down here. I said actually that Charlie's name didn't come up a lot. He looked at me, like, really? ... So, anyway, I'm telling you: Petunia. Great stuff. Long Gone Daddies-approved.

So the show went on, and there was music, and there was some reading about music -- that was me -- and there was some more music. It went on for an hour, in this cool, old book store called Off Square. It could have been decades ago, before cell phones or blogs or tweets. Charlie Feathers might have been alive and well. He might have wandered in and taken the stage, broken into "Defrost Your Heart" or "One Hand Loose." Yodeling might have been in fashion. I'd have liked that. I'd have liked it just fine. But the hour passed, as hours do. The crowd filed out into the Oxford night. Cell phones, no doubt, were fired back up. Tweets were tweeted. The modern world was rejoined, in progress.

Damn, but it was sweet while it lasted.

Live: Long Gone Daddies play Thacker Mountain Radio tonight

Musicians are cooler than writers. We know this. Musicians play gigs. Writers give readings. The distinctions cannot be understated. Gigs draw larger crowds and incite more raucous behavior, because, well, there is music; there also is more drinking, there is dancing or something approximating dancing, maybe a light show and other props (bands have budgets). There will be an encore, or three. Someone will proclaim the night epic. Lives very well may be changed, even without the help of chemicals. Someone will go home and start a band. This is a good thing. We always are in need of a good band.

The reading is a whole different animal. It is middle and oddly public act between two solitary ones (writing and reading). It is a thing to get through, often times. I think it says a lot about the act of public reading that the best advice I've heard, and the best I could give, is this: Don't go on too long. You would not say this to Springsteen.

And yet: I've got a reading tonight, and I can actually say I'm happy to recommend it -- Thacker Mountain Radio. It's live radio, in a cool bookstore (Off Square, in Oxford, Miss.) and there'll be a good, lively crowd, and there'll be good, live music -- the show is about three-quarters music to a quarter reading, so I think we'll all be able to get through it and have a good time. I'm thrilled to be on the bill with a bunch of musicians, to share a stage with them, and to take my book to such a famed literary town. Shame the Long Gone Daddies aren't a real band and can't play a song or two.

So, anyway, come down and see the show, if you can, listen if you can't. And if you otherwise need to reach me between 6 and 7 tonight, don't bother calling. See, I've got a gig.

DETAILS:
What: Thacker Mountain Radio, a live radio show
When: 6-7 tonight
Where: Off Square Books, downtown Oxford, Miss.
Who: I'll be reading from "Long Gone Daddies." Musicians include fiddler Lisa Lambert, bluegrass band Magnolia Drive, and a singer-songwriter named Petunia who yodels and whose voice is said to range from "the classic country twang of Hank Williams to the rough, raucous energy of Tom Waits." (Ed. note: Hot damn!)
Where you can hear it: Live on Rebel Radio 92.1 FM.
When it's re-broadcast: TBA on Mississippi Public Broadcasting

I'm just a cowboy singin'
and I'm tryin' all I can
to wake the spirit and the soul
and to place it in your hand
I'll take the Holy Bible
and make you all liable
to sing in every church
and every bar in every land

-- "Mercy," Petunia

A pilgrim in Yoknapatawpha County

I didn't bring whiskey or flowers or a copy of "Long Gone Daddies" to Faulkner's grave. I sure as hell didn't bring a bottle of cheap wine or empty my pockets of change. I just brought myself. I stood and took some pictures, and then I sat by my lonesome and thought about what a wonder he was -- thought about true American originals, about how it's not just a matter of talent and ambition and gumption, wild-hair style, a ruthless sense of creativity, and utter contempt for what others (critics and common man, alike) think, that it's all of that, all at once. They are the rarest of creatures. So we get one Faulkner, we get one Dylan, to last us for all our days. I don't know about you, but it seems like a fair deal to me.

Buzzards and ghosts in Yoknapatawpha County

You know that if I were reincarnated, I'd want to come back a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger and he eats what he wants.

-- William Faulkner, interviewed by The Paris Review

Last post, I wrote about writing to writers -- in that case, the late Larry Brown -- and how they'll write back, show you their scars, encourage you, prod you on, etc. But if I'd been writing a generation earlier, I wouldn't have written to Faulkner. He's my favorite, the best, the ideal. But I'd have let him be. I sure as hell wouldn't have trudged up the steps of Rowan Oak and knocked on his door, bold as all that. I might have driven down from Memphis and spied him across the square in Oxford, and then skulked back home, but that's about it. That would have been enough. Mostly, I'd have done what I do now: Read the books and scratch my head in wonder- and puzzlement.

It's all in the books. There was nothing to explain. Or rather, nothing that he cared to explain. I respect that. Best, I guess, that he lived in one generation and I write in another -- so I can read all those staggering words he wrote and scrawl down my own, and I can drive down from Memphis to Oxford, trudge up the steps of Rowan Oak and walk inside without even having to knock. I can pay $5 for the tour and pretty much have my run of the place. I mind my manners, though. I tread lightly, inside the house and outside on the grounds, so as not to disturb what ghosts and buzzards might be about the old place.