Southern Festival of Books

Oct. 12-14 at War Memorial Auditorium, Nashville Public Library, and Legislative Plaza

For information, visit www.tn-humanities.org/sfbmain.htm

For a propitious 13th time, the Southern Festival of Books returns to downtown Nashville over the weekend of Oct. 12 to 14. Propitious because in a climate of unaccustomed and frightening turbulence, the festival represents a gesture of reassuring normalcy.

And yet the festival is not entirely insulated from the world’s troublesome reverberations itself. At the 11th hour, the festival’s organizers at Humanities Tennessee were informed that some of their venue—three session rooms in the State Capitol building—would be denied to them this year in recognition of potential threats to public security. However, the use of Legislative Plaza, the War Memorial Auditorium, and hearing rooms in the Legislative Office Building remains unaffected by this closure. Moreover, an impromptu resort to shuttle diplomacy has secured a welcome by the new Nashville Public Library for most of the displaced events; and by this happy accident, the festival may well be better off for the change.

Now, at the 11th hour and a half, comes word that perhaps a dozen or more authors—so far—are reversing decisions to attend. “Due to the events of Sept. 11,” says the festival’s Web site (www.tn-humanities.org/ sfbmain.htm), “several authors have been forced to cancel planned tours.” This still leaves more than 200 authors, poets, songwriters, and book illustrators to constitute one of the largest guest lists in the festival’s history. So there is every reason to believe that the 2001 Southern Festival of Books will be as widely attended and as richly rewarding as ever.

At the same time, it will be difficult this year for the reflective festival-goer not to call into question some of the assumptions underlying the present state of our literary preoccupations. At this time of our lives, in the life of our nation and our world, what is the contemporary writer’s obligation? Is it enough to entertain, divert, explain, educate, describe, prescribe, proscribe? If statesmen build nations, if soldiers defend them, if agriculturalists produce foodstuffs, if industrialists create industries, if philanthropists ease woes or beautify communities, what do writers do? And under what obligation are readers, in turn, to see that writers are not let off the hook?

The savage rents in the fabric of our complacency these last few weeks expose these questions to view, but the questions themselves aren’t new. Indeed, the history of the Southern Festival of Books quietly dramatizes the evolution of at least one aspect of our assumptions about literature. From a book festival celebrating Southernness and sense of place in 1986, this annual gathering of books and the bookish has matured into an interactive publishers’ clearinghouse with a Southern mailing address. Many writers arrive here as celebrities on a Grand Tour—sometimes, it may seem, for just bothering to finish their books. Too often, what certain writers have to say, and how well they do so, are beside the point. In this artificial climate, literature comes to resemble a hothouse flower. The book becomes an emblem of a writer’s personal, even therapeutic, self-fulfillment on the one hand, a publisher’s widget on the other.

Some voices are demanding more. A controversial Reader’s Manifesto in the July/August Atlantic Monthly chastens the dismal tendency toward writerly writing of vacuous intent. The Wall Street Journal editorializes about terrorists’ assaults on our shared and binding culture: “Suddenly the ways of talking about our collective experience that we’ve been used to...seem trivial, irrelevant.” Our writers represent a priesthood of sorts for our culture, our readers their congregation. Over one brilliant October weekend in Nashville, a book festival is as good a place as any for both parties to reexamine their respective obligations to one another.

—Marc K. Stengel

All events subject to change.

Picks written by Diann Blakely, Lacey Galbraith, Beverly Keel, Angela Messina, Margaret Renkl, Angela Wibking, and Ron Wynn.

Friday, Oct. 12

Vernon Jordan Jordan was a vital participant during a critical phase of the civil rights movement in America. A former president of the Urban League and adviser to President Clinton, he looks back at his life in Vernon Can Read! A Memoir, in which he discusses his struggles to overcome economic and educational disadvantages in his youth, and his battles on the civil rights frontline of the ’70s and ’80s. Noon-1 p.m., NPL, Auditorium.

—R.W.

Carole Bucy and Carol Kaplan Bucy, associate professor of history at Volunteer State Community College, and Kaplan, a member of the staff at the Nashville Room at the Ben West Public Library, had talked about writing a history of Davidson County’s oldest public cemetery for years. So two years ago they decided to dig into the Nashville City Cemetery, so to speak. The result is The Nashville City Cemetery: History Carved in Stone, a 90-page paperback, the sales of which benefit the restoration of the cemetery itself. While Bucy and Kaplan’s book is illustrated, there’s more history than photographs. “There are a lot of well-known people in the book,” Bucy says. “But there’s even more about the lives of everyday people—the epidemics that wiped out families, the mothers who died in childbirth. The book is really a history of the city itself, from its beginnings through the Civil War.” 1-3 p.m., NPL, Conference Room 1A.

—A.W.

Jill McCorkle Following in the foot steps of Lee Smith and Bobbie Ann Mason, McCorkle offers her view of the world—one that is clearly feminist and certainly Southern. Her recent works Final Vinyl Days and Creatures of Habit offer raw glimpses into sundry characters, which are assuredly connected, though not obviously so. McCorkle is an excellent reader, and her humor translates well in her recitations. One of the highlights of the festival two years ago, she captivated the audience with her slight Carolina lilt and her devilish wit. 2:30-4 p.m., WMA.

—A.M.

Lee Smith I once heard of a respected English professor falling in love with Ivy Rowe—Smith’s spirited protagonist in her novel Fair and Tender Ladies. He just couldn’t stop thinking about her, and I don’t really blame him. Smith writes characters that stick with you, their voices and their stories ringing true. Her new book, Sitting on the Courthouse Square, should provide more of the same. Arrive early for her two readings, as Smith fans tend to be not only devoted but numerous as well. 2:30-4 p.m., WMA; also Sat., Oct. 13, 3-4:30 p.m., WMA.

—L.G.

Dr. Mark Bauerlein Bauerlein is much better known for his works on literary criticism, but his new Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906 looks back to an early, pivotal event that shattered the early progress the city had made in race relations. He also examines the Georgia gubernatorial campaign that preceded the riot, indicting white politicians of the era for their role in triggering a frenzy via overt claims of mass rapes by African Americans. 3-4 p.m., NPL, Conference Room 1B.

—R.W.

Mark Jarman Nashvillians familiar with Jarman’s work know about his tangle with not only God, but also John Donne and Gerard Manley Hopkins, in his “Unholy Sonnets,” poems collected both in a book by that title and in Questions for Ecclesiastes. His tangle with other aspects of his art, the essays and reviews in his just-published The Secret of Poetry, gives us a poet/reader’s mind at work. Jarman’s newest tangle with some of life’s largest questions, not to mention St. Paul, is richly evident in Epistles. This manuscript of prose poems, whose subjects range from parenthood to social compassion to our city’s 1998 tornado, at times seem spookily prescient of Sept. 11. Indeed, the endless drone of TV commentators might have been well-broken with poems like these, giving all of us better words for our experiences of grief, love, terror, comfort, and hopes for peace. 3-4:30 p.m., NPL, Conference Room 1A.

—D.B.

Pamela Duncan A protégé of Lee Smith, Duncan published her first novel, Moon Women, last summer. Much of Smith’s take on Southern women—particularly the mountain version of noble Southern womanhood—animates Duncan’s new book as well. But Duncan does more than copycat a beloved teacher; her take on the intersection of generations, on what gets said that shouldn’t in families, and what gets buried in the past is all her own. The plot of this book is wobbly, but the inimitable characters are strong and won’t quit talking, even after you shut the book. 3:30-5 p.m., Rooms 12 and 14, Legislative Plaza; also Sun., Oct. 14, 2-3 p.m., Room 16.

—M.R.

Saturday, Oct. 13

Neal Bowers A Clarksville native who grew up to be a diabetic university professor in Iowa, Bowers gives his home town a working-over in Loose Ends, his new novel about a diabetic university professor from Iowa who comes home for his mother’s Clarksville funeral. Enmeshed in a mess of mortality and despair, Bowers’ protagonist takes a while to realize he’s enmeshed in decidedly less-usual questions of mortality—how, really, did old Mama die, and why were there condoms in her oddly mobile purse?—at the same time. The book’s got some original insider-turned-outsider-looking-in observations about small-town life, and the writer’s a real poet. 9:30-11 a.m., Rooms 12 and 14, Legislative Plaza.

—M.R.

Walter G. Knestrick No one knows Red Grooms like Knestrick, author of Red Grooms: The Graphic Work, a definitive overview of Groom’s print works. A successful Nashville contractor/engineer, he has been collecting Grooms’ works for decades—and has been one of the artist’s best friends for over 50 years. As an adult, Knestrick became a passionate collector of Grooms’ print and graphic works and it is that expertise, paired with Knestrick’s personal perspective on the artist, that elevates this book above the usual coffee table fare. The color illustrations of Grooms’ works are superb, of course, but it’s Knestrick’s introduction, which details his friendship and recounts his own history as an art collector, that gives the book the feeling of a memoir. 10-11 a.m., NPL, Conference Room 1A.

—A.W.

Alice Randall Onetime country songwriter and long time essayist and novelist Randall started a firestorm with her satire/parody The Wind Done Gone. A book designed to poke fun at the mores and attitudes expressed in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, Randall’s book elicited charges of plagiarism by Mitchell’s estate, which tried to block publication of the book through legal proceedings. Since then, Randall has even journeyed to the Mitchell museum in Atlanta and defiantly read from her book. She rightfully skewers characters and images that were already overblown. The Wind Done Gone has saucy, frequently hilarious sentiments—and far more good-natured humor and irony than its target. 11 a.m.-noon, NPL, Auditorium.

—R.W.

George Singleton Except for the fact that he’s been writing for most of his 40-plus years, it would make perfect sense to call George Singleton the most original voice Southern literature has produced so far this century. The stories in his first collection, These People Are Us, are about regular people, at least theoretically—Singleton says he gets his inspiration from his neighbors in Dacusville, S.C.—but the kinds of observations they make, the kinds of situations they find themselves in, and the ways they attempt to resolve their difficulties are all like nothing anybody but George Singleton has ever seen before or tried to imagine. In a story called “Dialectic, Abrasions, the Backs of Heads Again,” one character asks another: “Hey, Tina.... If you had two urethras, would you have to pee twice, or half as much?” And in the title story, a husband taking the At-Home Marriage Repair Test, which his wife has ordered from a television ad, observes: “My problem cropped up right at Question 1, so we pretty much had me figured out. Question 1 was ‘At any time in your life did a family member do anything that drew attention to you in such a way that the entire community in which you lived would later think of you as a leper, loser, heathen or un-American?’ ” Hilarious, outlandish, but in the end emotionally haunting, Singleton’s stories are the real thing. Watch him. 11 a.m.-noon, Room 29, Legislative Plaza; also Sat., Oct. 13, 3-4:30 p.m., War Memorial Auditorium.

—M.R.

Karen Essex L.A.-based novelist and screenwriter Essex is currently adapting her novel Kleopatra for a Warner Bros. film, and is also writing the movie version of Anne Rice’s The Mummy, or Ramses of the Damned for James Cameron’s company. She spent five years researching and writing Kleopatra (her second book), during which time she lived here. While in Nashville, she taught a popular writing workshop at Vanderbilt University’s Women’s Center. Noon-1:30 p.m., Room 30.

—B.K.

John Egerton Egerton has spent his entire prize-winning career looking critically at the best and worst effects of regionalism in the South. In Nashville: An American Self-Portrait, which he edited with E. Thomas Wood, Egerton brings together the finest journalists and writers in Nashville, as well as some illustrious national visitors, to look at a year in the life of this city. From the Titans’ failed Super Bowl bid to Al Gore’s failed presidential campaign, Nashville truly came into the national spotlight during 2000, and Egerton’s new book captures in words and pictures the best and the worst of that remarkable year and ponders on what it means for the future. 12:30-2 p.m., WMA.

—M.R.

Roy Blount Jr. Probably the funniest man to ever graduate from Vanderbilt University. Oh sure, he’s got a master’s degree from Harvard too, but this Georgia native is definitely Southern to the core. He’s also a sportswriter, poet, performer, lecturer, and dramatist. 1-2 p.m., NPL, Auditorium.

—B.K.

Hal Crowther It’s possible to love and hate Crowther simultaneously, to marvel at one extraordinarily trenchant sentence and wince at the very next blustery one, to copy out a witty paragraph for forwarding and hurl the book across the room before you’ve finished the essay it came from. A syndicated columnist in the alternative press and a regular essayist for The Oxford American, Crowther holds forth on all subjects Southern, both high- and low-brow. Unimpressed with the language of political correctness and the often blindly ideological thinking behind it, he writes at times like a pop-culture crank, but his opinions are invariably well informed, and he shoots straight. 2-3 p.m., NPL, Conference Room 1B.

—M.R.

Bruce Feiler Feiler is the author of the best-seller, Walking The Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses, which was recently spotted under the arm of Sen. Hillary Clinton. Entertainment Weekly named it a recommended reading after the Sept. 11 tragedy. Although Feiler now lives in New York, he lived in Nashville in the mid-’90s while working on his book Dreaming Out Loud: Garth Brooks, Wynonna Judd, Wade Hayes, and the Changing Face of Nashville. 2-3 p.m., Room 16, Legislative Plaza.

—B.K.

Elizabeth Spencer Regal and well-read, and a literary powerhouse, Spencer has been writing subtle, vibrant fiction for more than 40 years. She is a master of the craft—on a par with Eudora Welty and Peter Taylor. Recently, The Modern Library published The Southern Woman: New and Selected Fiction, a collection of some of her greatest works, along with six new pieces. With an impressive range, she writes stories set in the Agrarian South, the American North, and Italy after World War II. 2-3 p.m., Rooms 12 and 14, Legislative Plaza.

—L.G.

Minton Sparks It’s not a book, but the new spoken-word CD by Nashvillian Minton Sparks is definitely a celebration of language—both the kind actual people actually speak, and the gorgeous kind that resonates in carefully crafted writing. Middlin’ Sisters captures the true voices of Sparks’ outrageous array of aunts and great-aunts and grandmothers in all their country authenticity, but these aren’t local or even regional poems in the end. Underneath the dialect and behind the idiosyncratic tales, there’s a kind of longing that’s universally human. 3-4:30 p.m., Cafe Stage, Capitol Blvd.

—M.R.

Josephine Humphreys Humphreys’ debut novel, Dreams of Sleep, won the 1985 Ernest Hemingway Award for first fiction, and her second book, Rich in Love, was made into a motion picture. Humphreys’ style is both beautiful and haunting, and her work is some of the best being done today. 4:30-5:30 p.m., WMA.

—L.G.

Diane McWhorter Journalist McWhorter’s essays and articles on race, culture, and politics have appeared in The New York Times and on the op-ed page of USA Today. But nothing she previously wrote compares in scope, importance, or impact to her current Carry Me Home. In this brilliantly written, meticulously researched work, McWhorter explores the links between big business and racism that were responsible for the state-sanctioned segregation that ruled her hometown of Birmingham, Ala., prior to the civil rights movement. While she writes with passion and poignancy about the 1963 church bombing that killed four girls, her prose proves even more provocative and personal when tracing her own family’s history and involvement. She adds an insight and personal touch seldom found in political or historical studies. 4:30-5:30 p.m., WMA.

—R.W.

Ray Winbush Author and Fisk professor Winbush has helped reinvigorate the university’s historic Race Relations Institute. He has also ruffled feathers with his uncompromising, frank commentaries and his writings about race, society, culture, politics, and justice. His new book, The Warrior Method: A Program for Rearing Healthy Black Boys, works the same themes as the writings of fellow author Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu in urging African American parents to not neglect history and heritage when raising male children. 4:30-5:30 p.m., NPL, Conference Room 1A.

—R.W.

Sunday, Oct. 14

Robert Benson Spirituality and the process of writing have been Benson’s principal subjects, but he turns to sports in The Game: One Man, Nine Innings, A Love Affair With Baseball. His book is somewhat similar to those penned by Roger Angell and statistics freak Bill James, in that he uses the sport as a metaphor to explain everything from language to philosophy. Non-baseball addicts may find much of this a stretch, but those of us who have agonized over the repeated failures of teams like the Atlanta Braves or Boston Red Sox understand exactly what Benson is saying. Noon-1 p.m., Room 29, Legislative Plaza.

—R.W.

Jim Sherraden, Elek Horvath, and Paul Kingsbury Hatch Show Print, Nashville’s legendary letterpress operation, has been creating posters for Grand Ole Opry stars, minstrel shows, circuses, and other entertainment concerns for more than 100 years. Along the way, the business became part of entertainment history, one that store manager Jim Sherraden, Hatch employee Elek Horvath, and country music scholar Paul Kingsbury have lovingly documented in Hatch Show Print: The History of a Great American Poster Shop. Both an engrossing look at the business of promotional poster printing since Hatch’s founding in 1879 and the evolution of leisure diversions in America, the book is handsomely illustrated with posters and handbills. Noon-1 p.m., NPL, Conference Room 1A.

—A.W.

Tony Earley The Vanderbilt English professor, dubbed one of the nation’s best writers by The New Yorker, is the author of Jim the Boy, Here We Are in Paradise, and Somehow Form a Family. 1-2 p.m., NPL, Auditorium.

—B.K.

Dr. Kenneth Brigham Brigham is director of the Center for Lung Research at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Although he has penned hundreds of medical articles, he became a book author almost by accident. After being diagnosed with prostate cancer, he started a private journal as an outlet for his feelings. After he conquered cancer, he decided to publish the journal in book form. Hard Bargain: Life Lessons From Prostate Cancer...A Love Story is published by Harpeth House Publishing. 2-3:30 p.m., Room 29, Legislative Plaza.

—B.K.

Garrison Keillor Keillor has made an entire career of being from a small town in Minnesota, but as his fans all over the South will attest, there’s not a nickel’s worth of difference, really, between Lake Wobegon, Minn., and Bucksnort, Tenn., if what you’re talking about is how people in little towns treat each other, watch over (and simply watch) each other, and talk about each other. And, as Keillor’s new book, Lake Wobegon Summer, 1956, makes clear, coming of age under the stifling influence of evangelical religion in a town where not nearly enough is happening, and where what you most want is outstandingly out of reach—well, it’s just the same down here as it is up there. 2-3 p.m., WMA.

—M.R.

Bill Brown A passionate English teacher and poet-in-residence at Hume-Fogg Academic High School, Brown defies the adage that those who can, do, while those who can’t, teach. It’s true that few brilliant teachers have enough energy and imagination and empathy left over for their own creative work, but Bill Brown does. In spades. He reads from his new collection of poems, The Gods of Little Pleasures. 3-4:30 p.m., Rooms 12 and 14, Legislative Plaza.

—M.R.