Treat and Retreat (were sitting in a boat?)

by Joshilyn Jackson

Last weekend I went on RETREAT with my church ladies up to the actual woods, and fittingly, the theme was A TABLE IN THE WILDERNESS. We left on Friday, and a good thing, too; I was feeling all spiritually clogged and barn sour and hatefully weepy and SO SO SO SORRY FOR MYSELF. I think it was sticking out EVERYWHERE.

My best friend is being eaten by her children’s SPRING activity flood (as am I, best beloveds, as are all parents) and so we hadn’t talked in a couple of weeks. She called me and said , “WOW I CAN TELL FROM THE WORDS AROUND THE EDGES OF YOUR BLOG THAT YOU ARE ONE RUSH HOUR TRAFFIC AFTERNOON AWAY FROM HEADING UP TO THE TOP OF A WATER TOWER WITH AN OUZI! WHAT GIVES?”

And I was all, “OH! ‘Scuse me! Is my mental illness showing? Here, let me just tug my skirt down…” And so I tried, but I fast realized I didn’t have NEAR enough cloth. I would have needed a hoop skirt to rival Scarlet O’Hara’s at the BBQ to hide all of the FROTHY layers of lacey mental illness I’d wrapped around myself. “WAHHHHH I am a big fat hateful selfish cannibalistic failure of a human being with BAD HAIR WAHHHHH! Who is a sad! Sad! Panda? WHO? MEMEMEMMEME.” Like that.

So I headed off to a an electronics-free woodland spot with a labyrinth and hiking trails down by the Chattahoochee River, and spent three days pretty much alternately marching around in the weeds and praying, and now I feel----retreated. Which is to say “significantly less crazy, with a firmer grasp on my actual priorities.”

The day before I left I thought, “I will go on my Table in the Wilderness retreat in the spirit of BABY BIRD! I will hunker down in a nest and scream and peep with an ENORMOUS OPEN BEAK and be stuffed with the worms of calmness and the worms of happiness and I will be given all good worms! ALL GOOD WORMS FOR ME!”

SO I went, and that first day, I was very weepy and stompy, and I missed my beautiful Television, and I missed my patient and beautiful husband, and I thought to myself, THIS IS USELESS! Where are my good worms??? I AM HOOTING AND PEEPING! I DEMAND THE GOOD WORMS! I came out here to the wilderness to find a TABLE in it. A BANQUET of sanity and grace spread just for me, and instead I found a table spread with ACTUAL WORMS, and NOT the kind that secretly mean peace, the damp squirmy kind…and here, you see, my baby bird and table in the wilderness metaphors met up and began breeding indiscriminately and had to be abandoned.

So Saturday morning I got up at 6 and put on my tennis shoes and went stomping down the trails with a map, like a moron. Because when it comes to choosing the correct fork while out hiking, a map is USELESS to me. I do not SPEAK map. I might as well take a bag of chicken bones and rattle them together and toss them to the earth and then see how they mystically fall to decide directions. Chicken bones, a map, magic 8 ball… same, same, all same.

But I took a map, and I headed into the woods.

You should know I am not a very WORDSWORTHian type person. I know some people look at a sunset or a mountain or some flowers and they go OH! THE BEAUTY OF THE ERF! OHOHOH! And their eyes get misty and they wander off refreshed. Me? I say, “Dude. It’s a tree with some blooms on it, and come Autumn that tree is going to poop it all off and I will have to RAKE. Bleh.”

But I AM an endorphin person. Hard physical work clears my head and makes me cheerful. SO! Armed with my map and a near psychotic level of optimism regarding my ability to use said map, I marked out a three mile course for myself. Then I put my head down and put my back into it. I am sure there were lots of breathtaking natural vistas along the way, but the trail was hilly and root-infested; I kept my gaze trained directly on the next piece of dirt my feet had to navigate so I could go fast without falling onto my face and breaking it. I moved from a trot to a satisfying canter, tearing along like a little steam engine, puff!puff!puff! very earnest.

A MIRACLE began to happen. Every time I STOPPED and checked the map, I was WHERE THE MAP SAID I SHOULD BE. It was BIZARRE! When the map said I would come to the river, I would come to the river. When the map said I would see the fork leading to the tent campgrounds, LO! There was a fork that led to the tent campgrounds. When the map said the labyrinth would be coming up on my left, THERE IT WAS! MAGICALLY ON THE LEFT! As if the WHOLE labyrinth had grown centipede feet and creeped from where it USUALLY sat to wherever I was inevitably lost and plopped down just as I came around the corner as a gift to me.

THE GOOD WORMS! THE GOOD WORMS ON MY TABLE IN THE WILDERNESS! I crowed to myself, going even FASTER and taking up my mis-mated metaphors again in the fervent heat of my delight.

And the whole thing was so VERY miraculous that I assumed it was Good Worms, and trusted it and put my head down, and stomped on trusting it, so that when I got to my last HALF mile, I came BACK to the same little rotty-looking plank bridge over a creek THREE times before I realized I was absolutely and hopelessly and finally rightly and justifiably Lost. As usual.

I became very bitter. The THEME was a TABLE in the wilderness, not LOST LIKE A MORON IN THE WILDERNESS. Yet there I was, a sad excuse for a metaphorical tribe of Isreal in my Nikes, NO MORE than half a mile from breakfast, but not getting any breakfast, but instead curling round and round the same criss-crossy tracks. I started to HATE that rotty bridge. I decided NO MATTER WHAT I would NOT come back to it. SO I began to choose only the left hand forks, winding myself farther and farther into the moist greenery.

All at once, I saw movement out of the corner of my eyes. The track had wound around to skirt a small clearing, like a mini-meadow, and IN IT, four little deer were eating breakfast. They had all put their heads up at once. And their tails. People think deer have little short tails, liked a dog’s tail that has been docked, but it isn’t so. The have long tails that are furry on two sides and when they lift them and they OPEN like big custodian mops. You can tell when the deer is Thinking Something by watchign the tails. All four stared at me, tails perked.

They were quizzical. They were GROUP thinking, and I could practically hear it: “Do you eat deer? Or are you just one of those TRAIL WALKING THINGS we see? Because if you EAT DEER please to tell us so we can bound away with our MOP TAILS UP? Yes? Yes? No? Okay!” Then three of them put their heads and tails back down and began grazing, with the closest one left to watch me and make POSITIVE SURE I was not secretly a deer eater. The breakfasting three kept glancing at the WATCHING deer to see if it was time to bound, but it never was, as I only stood there, gaping at them.

It is true I do not care for sunsets or mountain views, but I have a weird affinity for animals. I don’t mean I am some sort of DEER WHISPERER with a magic connection. I am never going to be a GUEST LOON on Psychic Pet Detective. My friend SARA is like that---everywhere she goes, animals fall in LOVE with her. She practically has little birds hurl themselves through her window glass so they can help her make the BED, for the love of Pete --- and I envy that. I WISH I had that. But I don’t have it.

What I have is a heart that answers the sight of something wild existing in its place. I thrill to it like some people thrill to the music (yawn) or sunsets (COMA yawn). I once hiked 5 miles up a mountain and then slogged another mile down through a muddy creek, peeping under every rock I could find to see this little native-to-Georgia rare red salamander. And then I saw him! I gently lifted rock number umpty-hundred-and-three and there, THERE at last, there he was. I saw him for at least THREE nanoseconds before he went OH HOLY CRAP! and goozled sideways and then whipped away so fast my eyes could not follow him. I set the rock back down and slogged my way back down the creek to the trail and hiked home, completely happy. And that was for a two inch slightly slimy object with no visible eyelids.

So I was beside myself over the little deer. The trail took me around the mini-meadow in a circle and I walked it, and all the way, the deer watched me. They were BROADWAY deer, very choreographed. As I circled and the watcher deer got farther from me, they would swap out, so it was always the CLOSEST who put her pretty head and her mop tail up in case I sprouted fangs and leapt at them. And the former watcher deer would fold her tail down and drop her head and keep breakfasting. It was utterly charming.

After I completed my circuit, I followed a random path leading away from the meadow and within two minutes I started to smell bacon and within five minutes the trail dumped me out of the woods directly behind the building where they served breakfast. By then I wasn’t baby bird anymore, and I didn’t need to scream or peep or demand or even to be fed. I had been fed already, in some lost way, and it held. It held me all weekend, and it is holding still. That day I went inside and I had eggs and I had peace. The end.

I say 'the end' because I do not have a pithy thing to say to tie it all together. All I have to tell you is that I saw some deer, and for me, it was a gift. Then I went to have breakfast, and I had eggs, and I had peace. Any other ending would only prove that eggs may taste great with cheese, but catharsis? Not so much.

Bestselling novelist Joshilyn Jackson lives in Powder Springs, Georgia with her husband, two kids, a dog, a scurrilous kitten, and a twenty-two pound Main Coon cat named Franz Schubert. Both her SIBA award winning first novel, gods in Alabama, and her second novel, Between, Georgia, were chosen as the #1 BookSense picks for the month of their release. Her third novel, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, which People Magazine calls “a treat” and Entertainment Weekly gave an A-, released in March of 2008.

Why amazon.com keeps me up at night

Ad Hudler writes: Fellow author Kristy Kiernan’s hilarious essay about readers’ reviews on amazon.com this month (on this blogspot) got me thinking about amazon in general … and how I wish it didn’t even exist.

1. Amazon makes me fat. Yes, I had to make that move from 34 to 36 earlier this year, and it’s because I no longer must burn the calories needed for twice-weekly trips to the bookstore. In the pre-amazon days I would burn calories by showering and getting dressed (okay, so yes, I do write in my underwear quite often). With amazon, I no longer have to crawl into my truck and negotiate my way through traffic, neurons firing and calories burning. I no longer get those two to three minutes of cardio, walking from truck into store and then THREE minutes more, walking back. My God, come to think of it, one trip to the bookstore EASILY burns off the two or three cocktails I enjoy the night before. (Okay: Four.)

2. Amazon wastes my time. My productivity would surge by 23-percent if it weren’t for amazon. Any author who says “Oh, I never look at the Amazon sales rankings,” is a BIG FAT LIAR!! This is the truth: We spend HOURS watching those numbers! Because publishers are so bad at sharing sales figures with their authors, we rely on amazon to give us a feeling for how our books are doing. When I have a new release, I swear I check amazon twenty times a day, maybe more. The better your number, the better your mood, especially when you’re a mid-list author such as myself. After the first six months or so, if I can stay in the top 3,000 I feel like one of the popular kids in high school. If I dip into the five-figure numbers – and I sure as hell have … plenty of times … I feel more like Napoleon Dynamite. Each time I log on to my computer I go to amazon: Do they like me more today? Oh, they LOVE me! ... Oh, they HATE me!!! Why don’t they like me more? What’s wrong with me? They just don’t “get” me. Maybe I don’t “get” them. Was my grandma lying to me when she said I was the best writer in the WORLD? Surely not! … Grandma? … Grandma!!?

3. Amazon makes me poor. When your sales numbers start to slow down, you start to experiment. Okay, what happens if I buy one copy? How much will my sales rank go up? (Click!) Okay, but what if I buy four copies? (Click!”) OMG: My ranking just SOARED. Okay, then, what happens when I buy SIXTEEN copies? And THIRTY-SIX! You get the picture. A great day comes when some book club in Wisconsin orders books all at the same time! I imagine those novels fluttering around the town like dandelion seeds blowing in the wind, being shared and passed from reader to reader, doing the Johnny Appleseed thing with the name of Ad Hudler. Oh, it will be such a bounteous spring! … Or: You might find out that it was only your mom buying Christmas gifts for her friends. Sigh…

4. Amazon hurts my feelings. Yep, just as Kristy implied in her blog entry, there are people out there who depend on criticizing others to make themselves feel good. A reviewer named Gina D. Pearcy said this about my novel, “Southern Living”: “I found his portrayal of Southerners to be incredibly insulting. In fact, I found the entire book poorly written and not at all in the league of Fannie Flagg which the cover brags.” Author’s note to Gina: Guess we know what part of the country you live in, don’t we? Well guess what? So do I!!! And the Atlanta newspaper called the novel “wonderfully, horrifyingly accurate.” So if you don’t like the content then YOU’D BEST LOOK IN A MIRROR AND CALL YOUR SHRINK!!!!!!!!!! Did you miss that lesson in eighth-grade English that dealt with IRONY? And who taught you how to use commas, huh?!?! Go back to grade school! I’d sure like to see YOU write AN ENTIRE FRICKIN’ NOVEL!!!“

Okay, I’m being ugly now …. BUT SO ARE YOU, GINA!!!!!! NAH-NAH-NAH, SO THERE!!

Amazon used to allow authors to respond to reviews. I guess it’s a good thing they don’t do that anymore.

Note to readers: Please don’t write anything in a review that you wouldn’t say to the writer’s face. It’s just common courtesy. Please. Or, better yet, let us take a turn to judge YOU THE SELF-APPOINTED CRITIC on something important to you. Maybe one of your kids has multiple piercings and a tattoo on her forehead. Geez, maybe she has SELF-ESTEEM issues because YOU REALLY STINK AS A PARENT!!! AND, WHILE WE'RE AT IT, HOW CLEAN IS YOUR REFRIGERATOR, GINA? HUH!?!?!

Oops, doing it again.

Before I close, I leave with this confession: Sometimes, after I get a one-star review, which is not very often, I log on under a nom de plume and post an absolutely brilliant FIVE STAR review of my own book … just to make things right again.

Ad Hudler’s most recent novel, “Man of the House,” will be published this fall by Random House.

I NEEDED AN EPIDURAL TO BIRTH THIS LATEST BOOK
By Susan Reinhardt

On April 29 I gave birth to a new book, “Dishing with the Kitchen Virgin,” Kensington, NYC. Some say it’s my funniest to date. So why isn’t it selling?
Why didn’t my publicist nab one single media spot or even a radio station in Iran or Japan?
“Why aren’t you out celebrating?” a friend and fellow author asked.
“Because so far, my publicist hasn’t landed one interview, not even with a rinky-dink, bum-blank channel in North Dakota.”
Such is the state of publishing in which some struggling authors find themselves balking and squirming. You cut the proverbial vein, pour everything you have into your book, then no one hears about it. Sure, I had my poor old preacher dad send out an e-mail blast to his friends, and I did the same, however didn’t know how to use the BCC, so I’m certain I pissed a bunch of people off, and now they’ll never buy the book.
On the bright side, “Dishing With the Kitchen Virgin,” at least made it onto bookshelves. Wherein lies another problem. Which authors get the tables out front, and who gets stuck, spine outward, on the shelves?
That’s sort of a no-brainer. Many of the wonderful writers on this blog never encounter such madness. And I’m happy for them. Really. I’m not green with envy, just yellow with book-selling jaundice.
But why should we complain? Thousands want to become writers, and actually finish manuscripts that never see the light of New York or even Flag Pond, Tenn. They may self-publish and encounter an entirely new set of frustrations. Most have to fight bookstores to even allow their precious works into the establishments where careers are made – or tank.
The upside of this is we write because we love it. We have to do it. It’s like purging our souls of words that build up until they become toppling towers. We do it to entertain, and not gain fame. Though, that would be nice. Not the fame part, but a bit of money so one doesn’t have to shop at Go Grocery every week instead of a chain supermarket.
My friends, the non-writing ones, think just because I’ve published four books I must be rich. It’s a myth people have. They don’t understand the agent takes a cut, the publisher, the distributor, the bookstores, and by the time the money rolls around to the author, it’s enough to buy a Coke. Not a beer. Unless you like PBR or Colt 45.
Enough whining. Now, for my neurotic side. I’m doing that awful thing authors do. Clicking on Amazon 100 times a day to check my sinking ratings. It’s crazy. It can drive one to the cuckoo farm. “Stop it,” I tell myself. “Your kids need a meal. The laundry is dirty enough to walk right out of the house and into the road.”
Then reverse the thought plays a game of justification. “OK, you can check six times daily.”
So that’s what I’m doing. Six times. So far, even though the book has been out less than six days, I’m not loving what I’m seeing.
But you know what? I’m loving what I’m doing and pray I’m selling enough my agent and publisher will buy my new offering, “Single, Screwed and Half-Unglued.”

Susan Reinhardt is author of “Not Tonight Honey, Wait Til I’m a Size 6,” “Don’t Sleep with a Bubba,” and “Dishing with the Kitchen Virgin,” her latest. She’s a columnist, has a radio show once a week and eats food with bad expiration dates to save money.
She is also a mother who is trying to learn to cook.

One Star?! Say It Ain't So! by Kristy Kiernan

I've spent way too much time online this week, what with all the hilarity over Amazon One-Star Reviews. I was first alerted to this by the fabulous J.D. Rhoades (Dusty to his friends, but I'm pretty sure nobody who's ever met Dusty wasn't able to call him friend in about 1.2 seconds [which also happens to be the time it takes to open a beer; total coincidence, I'm sure]) in his post titled My God! It's Full of Suck! 

Now, a lot has been written about the whole Debra McGillivray thing, and if you want to take days out of your life that you will never get back, well, go ahead and follow all those links in his post. But what the fine John Scalzi finally reduces it all down to is a challenge to acknowledge your one-star Amazon reviews, and then get past them.

So. I've received two one-star reviews for Catching Genius. I know! Crazy right? I mean, I was pretty sure that Catching Genius was going to save contemporary American fiction, and the fact that these readers were unable to see my brilliance was devastating. The first:

4 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

 Weak Main Character/Unrealistic, July 24, 2007

By #GIJANE "Loves Labs & cooking." (Nottingham, PA) - See all my reviews

I don't understand how any woman could enjoy this book. The main character allows her husband to repeatedly cheat on her and she does nothing until he basically flaunts it! I also find it hard to believe that a few weeks of vacation would change a lifetime of problems and resentments among family members.

  

OUCH! Really? Not ANY woman? Wow, I mean, that's bad. That is really, really bad! GIJANE really hates me! She loves labs and cooking, but clearly hates me. Or, my book anyway, which really IS me, right? Maybe not. Anyway, one of the big things that McGillivray was lambasted for was for supposedly tracking down the reviewer who slammed her, noting that she knew her name, her kid's names, her granny's name, and so forth.

So, uh, full disclosure. I've always felt that if I could just understand my detractors then I could live with their dislike of me/my book. And so, in the spirit of trying to understand who GIJANE is, I do admit that I checked out her Wishlist. I didn't look at the Wishlist in order to harass her, or to try to get my friends to harass her, or to publicly threaten (no matter how thinly) her, her kids, or her granny. I didn't even vote her review unhelpful.

I just had to know a little more about this person who hated my book so much that she couldn't understand how ANY woman could enjoy it. And, frankly, what I learned made me feel much, much better. I learned that she gave The Departed a two-star review. Had I rated that movie I'd have given it a twenty-two star review. She also wishes she had a metal detector, and Timecop, and she likes Shania Twain and thrillers, but doesn't like anything sad (though she gave that classic of uplifting stories, The Lovely Bones, FIVE stars!). 

Anyone who actually knows me is cracking up right now. GIJANE and I are not soul mates. My God, of course she doesn't like my book! We couldn't possibly be less alike! Hey, I'm good with ole GIJANE, though I admit I still take exception to her assertion that things got all worked out in a few weeks. And those few weeks weren't no vacation, but I digress…I'm not mad, I don't hate her, don't even dislike her, and I have, mostly, forgotten about that review.  I'm not sending the flying monkeys, we just have very, very different tastes.

One-Star Review, Take Two:

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

 drawn out and tiresome, January 14, 2008

By #J. Mogol - See all my reviews

I couldn't wait for this book to end. It was too long and had too many plots. It was too loosely woven for me to enjoy. I was surprised to see so many positive reports, but I didn't have too much positive to say.

Oh, J.Mogol, it hurts, it hurts. Couldn't WAIT for it to end? Yowza! Why didn't you stop reading? I'd have been okay with that! Honestly, in a totally non-snarky, no hard feelings way. Too long, too many plots, hmmm, again, I'd kind of like to disagree with those. I was pretty sure it was ONE plot, but okay, let's see where J. is coming from. 

Wishlist!

Aha! She wishes she could own CDs by Taylor Hicks and Clay Aiken, as well as the DVD Aladdin (Disney Special Platinum Edition). See? Now I don't feel so bad! We're simply not compatible in any way, shape, or form.

I'd be willing to bet that GIJANE and J.Mogul are lovely people. I bet they love their families (and/or labs) and are loved in return. Do I wish they'd liked my book? Of course I do. Do I wish they'd been slightly more kind in their comments? Of course I do. 

But I got into this knowing full well that not everyone was going to like what I do. I hope more do than don't. Writers I revere have one-star reviews. Writers I can't stand have five-star reviews. We all have different tastes, and thank goodness. What a boring world it would be if we all liked the same thing.

I'm over it. After all, Matters of Faith will be out in August, and I have new things to obsess over, new one-star reviews to dread, and hopefully a lot of five-star reviews to make me feel better about it.

Up for the challenge? Blog about your One-Star Reviews and then leave the link in the comments. Or don't. Because I completely respect  your right to do, and like, you know, whatever you want. But if you leave mean comments, well, just hope I don't find YOUR Wishlist!

Kristy Kiernan writes from south Florida. She also can't get the image uploader to work correctly, so the cool One-Star Review image isn't here. Neither is her picture, nor either of her book covers. But I assure you, she does exist, as do her books. After all, they're ON AMAZON!

Help wanted: champion. Flexible hours, low pay, big returns.

Everyone should have a champion—someone who can help you professionally and who makes a point of doing just that. Vouches for you, opens the door.

When it comes to the writing life, which is both so disconnected from the (mind-numbingly boring) routines of the 9-5 world, and which also seems so dependent on subjective judgments of who’s good and who knows who, we can all use a champion.

So I thought I’d talk about one of mine.

My good friend, mentor and lunch buddy Marianne Gingher (who is also the author of an award-winning novel and short story collection, memoirs, and a forthcoming essay collection about the writing life) decided that I was the one to cover for her when she took sabbatical this spring from UNC Chapel Hill, where she has previously served as the creative writing director and where people seem to get really excited during ACC basketball, though this was a close-but-not-quite year.

With so little to keep me busy these days—two kids, writing, book promotion, various freelance projects, and helping my husband out with his software design business—I naturally wasn’t worried at all about teaching two intro fiction courses at UNC Chapel Hill an hour’s commute away.

I did the math. Two classes a week, 28 classes, 56 hours in the car. I was planning to get through an audio book or few. But I didn’t listen to even one. Why? Because I could sit in silence for an hour in the car. Silence. For an hour, each way. Did I mention kids? On Highway 54, which winds through farmland, I drove past a house that looked close to collapse yet someone had taken the time to paint the window frames a bright pink. This was the way I felt—listing, yet still flecked with color here and there, holding up in spite of the inevitable weight of things.

On Tuesday and Thursday mornings this spring, I navigated my car into some new world, completely different from the one I normally inhabit. I parked in a lot and took a bus to campus. The driver called a greeting to the students as they boarded. Some of them mumbled a response. Many didn’t, but the bus driver persisted, morning after morning. Sometimes I wanted to stand up and say, “Hey, someone said good morning to you! Don’t you know that’s a gift?”
But they didn’t, because they don’t know what it’s like to disappear yet. Most of them have come from homes where their every move was monitored, as mine was. They want to disappear! They haven’t encountered the deep disinterest of the world beyond campus. (Not to say that the world’s deep disinterest doesn’t yield some good material.)

But this was why I was worried, actually, about teaching college students. Not because of the commute, or how I would fit the work into my life. I mean, I love teaching. But would I jive with these people, who maybe didn’t understand how hungry you have to be?
Of course, they surprised me. Many, many of them had both talent and the will to work. Sometimes I saw the glimmer in a line (that bright defiant paint); sometimes it was an understanding of story which I wish I’d possessed then—and which I was thrilled to encounter. Nothing better than reading an assignment that turned into a story that makes you want to know what happens next.

I thought I would plow through audio books in my car and secretly hate my students. I guess I believed I’d already collapsed, given in.

But Marianne Gingher expected something else from me, which is what a champion is supposed to do.

Writing is a lonely business. You need people to look out for you, and you need to do some looking out. Who else has shown me this? Julianna Baggott, Julie Funderburk, Lynn York, Andrea Selch, Mary Ellis Gibson, to name a very few. Dangerous territory, naming names, because of all those you might leave out—but the first two are enormously talented writers whom I was lucky to meet in grad school and the remaining three comprise the writing group that was willing to take me in nearly three years ago..

I’ve often thought it would be nice if we could have a system of sorts for writers. Apprentice, assistant, associate, senior, etc. Wouldn’t that be nice? Pay scales and health insurance and such? We could even go on strike occasionally and hit the beach!

But writers aren’t team players. We don’t go for hierarchy unless it's working in our favor. Nevertheless, we’ll just have to link arms where we can, look for the door, guide each other toward it.


Quinn Dalton is the author of a novel, High Strung, and two story collections, Bulletproof Girl and Stories from the Afterlife. Stories and essays have appeared in literary magazines such as One Story, Verb and Glimmer Train, and in anthologies such as New Stories from the South: The Year's Best. Dalton lives in Greensboro, NC.

Guest Blog: Bill Peach

Judging One's Cover by a Book

A recent poll by Associated Press/Ipsos found that one in four adults read no books in the past year. The books most often read were religious works and popular fiction. The poll did not indicate whether the same people read both. The poll found that people who do read average around seven books a year.

One would assume that a book of popular fiction should be read completely, front to back, and it would have a climax or some resolution at or near the end. Religion and philosophy offer more options.

I have stacks of partially read books with bookmarks marking my progress as of last sitting. Since I have not finished them, I do not know how they will end. These books have no plot, no suspense, no conclusion. To be honest, I am not certain if I read a complete book this year.

After the publication of Random Thoughts Left & Right, my wife told someone that I had finished my third book. Jokingly, the person expressed concern that I was a slow reader. Some of my partially read books have bookmarks in the first or second chapters. I am impressed when I watch a reader nearing the end of a novel of four hundred plus pages. Occasionally, I carry John Egerton's, Speak Now Against the Day, which he admits is too long at 704 pages but regrets that he left out two important chapters. More than likely, I will never finish that book but it continues to give me insight into an important period of Southern history.

I am neither voracious, avid, ravenous, nor insatiable. I am a slow reader. My passion is for learning, for which reading is a necessity. Reading takes us beyond our own introspective mischief and the triviality of casual conversation. Reading gives us exposure to persons who are more intelligent than our peers or us.

As a fashion accessory, a book serves a similar purpose as a laptop, Ipod nano, briefcase, bracelet, or dog. Last week, I initiated a conversation with a man carrying a biography of Albert Einstein. Validating my assumption that he was an academic, he turned out to be a university provost. Can you judge a man or woman by a book cover?

Do we choose our friends by the books they read? Do we make assumptions about intelligence, personality, moral values, religious and political preference by book titles? Yes, we do. Our associative conclusions may not always be accurate, depending on the reading diversity of that person. Titles by Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, Jim Wallis, George Lakoff, or Christopher Hitchens can be indicators of one's belief system. Books by Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, or Barack Obama may suggest common interest or potential confrontation. Do we feel compelled to give advice and comfort to anyone reading a self-help book? Do we enjoin conversation with readers of romance novels, cookbooks, pet grooming manuals, military history, computer tutorials, or economic forecasts?

One can't always know whether the reader would welcome conversation or prefer being left alone to read in privacy. Books serve both purposes. One can avoid unwelcome advances or boring conversation within the covers of a book. Other readers welcome the shared experience of having enjoyed the same book as a bond almost without equal.

I felt such a bond as I watched a young man reading his Bible in a restaurant. With a yellow highlighter, he carefully marked specific verses. I assumed he was preparing for a Bible study group or Sunday School class. Later, when I walked past his table, I was surprised that he had highlighted the entirety of two opened pages. I wondered if that was his bookmark, measuring his devotion to a book that he would eventually finish.
I sat down and opened The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, with its subjects listed alphabetically, and finished reading the extended definition of Aesthetics. I may not finish this one this year.

Bill Peach is a member of the Williamson County School Board and a member, Hall of Fame of Williamson County Council for the Written Word. He’s written three books:
To Think as a Pawn (a three-act play), The South Side of Boston (a memoir) and Random Thoughts Left & Right (collection of essays and short fiction).

Small Town Dying

By Michael Morris

Recently I traveled back home for the funeral of a close family friend. While the death was a shock, the way in which the community rallied around the family was not. As the south has changed and made way for residents beyond the Mason-Dixon Line, the one thing that has remained constant is how small towns unite around those who are grieving.

Within an hour of our friend’s passing, the citizens had sprung into action. Soon platters of fried chicken, bowls of casseroles and pans of pecan pie covered every square inch of the kitchen counter. Whatever the food item, every dish had one thing in common -- the adornment of masking tape with the owner’s name written in ink to ensure its proper return.

Watching the endless flow of townspeople enter the home to hug and cry with the family members, I suddenly felt great pride to be from this place. It’s in grief that the town shines the brightest. Silly disagreements or inconvenient slights are immediately tossed aside in favor of unconditional love and comfort.

During the visitation service the next day, those from various classes and races mingled in the funeral home to pay their respects. Of course every elected official in town made a stop too. If there is one thing that will cause a preacher or a local politician to lose his job, it’s the unpardonable sin of not appropriately acknowledging death.

Being away from my hometown for so long, I felt like an observer instead of a participant. I passed the time by looking through a scrapbook that the funeral home had placed on a coffee table in the lobby. The book contained thank you notes from family members who had hired the funeral home to assist in saying good-bye to loved ones. I was shocked to learn that some people I had known since childhood had passed away without my mama even calling to let me know. I was so wrapped up in reading the notes that I almost didn’t see one prominent elected official walk past.

She made her way to the elderly funeral home employee who was holding court in a winged back chair, thanking each visitor for stopping by. “Joe,” she said while using a remembrance card to fan herself. “Who else do ya’ll have down here that I need to know about?” Without getting up from the chair, the man pointed to a board that looked similar to ones I’ve seen at churches to record attendance. “What about Elmer Simpson’s sister? You seen her yet?” the man asked. The woman shook her head and said, “Oh gracious. Let me go.” And with that, she was off to comfort the next family and to certify her attendance by signing the guest register.

Friends of mine who live in different parts of the country are horrified when I tell them that in the world that I grew up in, making comments about the appearance of the dead is not only appropriate but also expected. My first real experience with this was twenty-five years ago when I accompanied my grandfather to a visitation service for a man whose family had once employed me.

My grandfather and I wove our way through the throng of mourners. When we reached the family, he leaned down so close to the open casket that I was scared he had lost his mind and was about to jump in. Then with all the enthusiasm he could muster he shouted, “Ohhh…don’t he look good. I tell you the truth, I hope they make me look this good when it comes my time.” Feeling my face grow red and wanting to melt into the floor, I nervously glanced at the man’s widow and daughter. I was certain that we would be thrown out and put on some sort of eternal list that would bar us from ever stepping foot inside the funeral home. But to my amazement, the widow and daughter offered broad smiles. The widow continuously thanked my grandfather and even gave an approving nod to the funeral director. It was then that I began to realize the complexities of ritual and the importance of having a good mortician. While I still can’t fully explain why we southerners continue to relish the pageantry of a funeral, I do understand that in an ever-changing world, the funeral speaks to our basic need to be part of a community and to cling to custom.

Driving home after the visitation service for my friend, I noticed several people I’d seen at the funeral home now walking along Main Street, eating ice cream and admiring storefront windows. Another group made their way into a café for supper. Death might be just another facet of life but in small towns across the south, death is turned into a full-blown social event. A southern death has its own set of rules to follow with penalties for those who don’t comply. If you still have doubt, then I have a list of defrocked ministers and former politicians you might want to call.

Michael Morris is a fifth generation native of Perry, Florida, a small town near Tallahassee. He is the author of the award-winning novel, A Place Called Wiregrass, and Slow Way Home, named one of the best novels of the year by the Atlanta Journal Constiution and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. http://www.michaelmorrisbooks.com/