February 29, 2012 The first words William Gay ever said to me occurred inside the public library in Nashville, at the annual Southern Festival of Books. I stood uneasily near the beer station—scared, really—and William sidled up and said, “Tommy Franklin says you’ll help me beat up ____,” a writer who’d reamed William’s fine novel Provinces of Night in a book review. I had just met Tom Franklin and didn’t recall ever saying I’d help anyone fight a critic, but I said, “Okay,” and started laughing.
Read moreFour Visions of William
At conferences and festivals, I liked to think of William Gay as Home Base in a strange childhood game of tag; we could always find each other and lose all the discomfort of trying to remain cordial to strangers
