Chapter 16 - Part 489

The Myth of the Drywall Hanger

William Gay did not climb down from his ladder and, having never read a book, decide he was going to write one

By Tony Earley | March 2, 2012

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.

Feeling a Sacred Trust

Novelist and activist Silas House talks with novelist and activist Barbara Kingsolver about the need to end mountaintop-removal mining—and preserve the mountains they love

By Silas House | March 1, 2012

March 1, 2012 Silas House, the former writer-in-residence at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee, has long been an activist on behalf of Appalachian environmental causes. Today he talks with novelist Barbara Kingsolver about a benefit appearance she’s making in Knoxville next week to support the Scenic Vistas Protection Act, a bill proposed by the Lindquist Environmental Appalachian Fellowship (LEAF), that would protect ridges above 2,000 feet from being removed by surface coal mining. Barbara Kingsolver and Kathy Mattea present “A View from the Mountaintop” at the Bijou Theatre in Knoxville on March 11. Click here for event details and here for more information, including videos, about mountain-top removal mining.

Celebrating William Gay

A host of novelists, poets, teachers, and editors from around the country recall the genius of William Gay

February 29, 2012

February 29, 2012 William Gay’s death last week of heart failure sent tremors through the community of writers and readers in Tennessee and beyond, people who loved him as a friend and as a writer. We have asked some of those who knew Gay, in ways large and small, to send us their stories. They come from New York City and from Wyoming, from Maine and from Virginia, and, of course, they come from Tennessee. Together, we hope their recollections present a portrait of a man who will be greatly missed.

Book Excerpt: The Lost Country

In Memphis, Tennessee, in April 1952, and the characters in this forthcoming novel by William Gay are stunned by brightness of the sun

By William Gay | February 29, 2012

February 29, 2012 The court had awarded her custody of the motorcycle, they were going this day to get it. Edgewater was sitting on the curb drinking orange juice from a cardboard carton when the white Ford convertible came around the corner. A Crown Victoria with the top down though the day was cool and Edgewater had been sitting in the sun for such heat as there was. The car was towing what he judged to be a horse trailer.

Saying Something Deeper

William Gay didn’t care about the trivial, either in life or in art

By Steve Yarbrough | February 29, 2012

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.

Four 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

By George Singleton | February 29, 2012

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.

The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History

By Allen Boyer and Mark Nicholls
Routledge
340 pages
$180

The book “explores the reasons why treason coalesced around specific offences agreed by both the monarch and the wider political nation, why it became an essential instrument of enforcement in high politics, and why, over the past three hundred years, it has gradually fallen into disuse while remaining on the statute book.”

~the publisher