Essays

February 29, 2012 I once asked William Gay what it was like to be a famous author in a small town like Hohenwald. Did his neighbors come around at odd hours, bug him for autographs? He said, “This woman asked if I had someone who helped me with my writing. I said, ‘What do you mean by that?’ And she said, ‘Well, I knew your family a long time, and they’re not that smart. I knew you when you were younger, and you’re not that smart. I was wondering if you had somebody who took out the little words and put in the big words.’”

February 29,2012 When I first read William Gay’s writing in the pages of The Oxford American about ten years ago, it was like I’d won some kind of lottery. I mean this. It was like first reading Faulkner or O’Connor or Welty or Roth or Virginia Woolf, even. There was a wholeheartedness on the page—an urgency and a hard-won authority, like lemons in frothy water. And there was an outright courage, too—a plucky refusal to flinch. Even where you could hear the McCarthy and the Faulkner—just a little bit, just here and there—there was something other there, something fully warranted and actual, hilarious and heartbreaking. Whatever-it-was was dangerous, too, it seemed like, and a bit fatal.

February 29, 2012 I first heard of William Gay during a phone conversation with Tom Franklin. “Have you heard of this guy?” Tom said. “He’s really good.” I had not. I got a copy of The Long Home as soon as I could, read it, and said to myself: Damn right, this man is the real thing.

February 29, 2102 William never turned down an invitation to visit my classes at Middle Tennessee State University. While uncomfortable before large crowds at readings, he seemed to relish the opportunity to talk with students about his work and creative process, and had a way about him that put them at ease and made them feel their questions were important, that their opinions about his stories and novels mattered. For most of them, William was the first flesh-and-bone writer they’d ever met, and the experience was profound and memorable.

I had the opportunity just over a year ago to interview William Gay for the Tennessee Literary Project. Near the end of the conversation, William said, “Writing should feel like it’s about something bigger than it is.” I have mulled over these words time and again. With William, it wasn’t only the work but the writer himself who seemed to be about something “bigger.”

February 29, 2012 I met William Gay during a reading of The Long Home in 2000, and we became very close friends. As a literary demi-god, he often seemed not quite of this world, and yet the complexity and genius of his work matched equally who he was as a man. Because he was quiet and often introverted, I wrote a list of little-known (and a few widely-known) facts I learned about him to share with those who would like to have known the man behind those glorious books.