June 27, 2012 Two years ago, at 9:30 on Thanksgiving morning, my best friend’s husband was shot to death in his home. My friend had spent the previous evening watching classic movies late into the night and was still sleeping when she heard two shots. She remembers praying, as she wrapped a robe around her, slid into her slippers, and ran down the hallway, that she had heard only the sound of slamming doors.
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.
April 6, 2012 For a book lover, working in the downtown library’s used-book shop, surrounded by books and other book lovers, is the ultimate volunteer gig. Working there is always fun, and not just because of the books but also because of the people who drop in, because of the snippets of stories they tease us with. As a writer, I find it as rich as a candy store.
March 2, 2012 Based solely on the many thousands of words written about William’s pre-writing career as a carpenter one might come to believe that he was some kind of working-class savant, a Rain Man of Letters; that an infinite number of drywall hangers had banged on an infinite number of typewriters until one of them accidentally typed The Long Home.
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.
