Essays

April 19, 2012 In my book The Family Fang, one of the main characters listens to a tape recording of his father saying this line: “We live on the edge…a shantytown filled with gold-seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.” It serves as inspiration for the character, Buster, a writer, to begin a new novel. It’s a weird line, a wonderful line, and it’s a line I did not write.

February 29, 2012 Every conversation I ever had with William Gay was intense, in the same way that the stories in his brilliant collection I Hate to See that Evening Sun Go Down are intense. He once called me in California to discuss marriage, and the conversation lasted three hours.

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.

February 29, 2012 William Gay was quiet, shy. He spoke in a whispery murmur that still carried that Old South weight in it. Almost a rasp, the singing the wind might use after a few belts of Jack Daniels. I asked him how he was. He told me he was scared to death.