Guess who showed up to speak at the Last Tuesday of the Month Book Club this week? Of course, it was Jack Pendarvis, the author of March's featured book, Your Body is Changing. (The author is photographed here by renowned Delta photographer Langdon Clay.) The LTMBC reads a different contemporary Southern author each month, and we enjoy helping them lure the author in to speak to the group when possible.
Jack expressed slight apprehension in speaking to the group after we told him how the club took issue with some of the Southern themes in Dennis McFarland's provocative Letter From Point Clear. The group met with McFarland the day after their meeting and showed him great respect and kindness with their criticisms. While polite, this is a group of seasoned readers who are forthright with their literary opinions, and Jack was right to be nervous.
Luckily the club members enjoyed Your Body is Changing, and they especially loved Jack, who regaled them with tales of the writer's life, living, as he does and has been mentioned here, right across the street from William Faulkner's place in Oxford. After some prompting from the group, Jack revealed some of the inspirations for his stories, among them Woody Allen, Conan O'Brien, and "The Gilmore Girls." When asked to read a section from the title novella, Jack demurred, hesitant to utter profanity in mixed company, but he was assured by the club that they could not be offended, that they had, in fact, heard it all, though one member confessed to being at first put-off by the book's ribaldry, but once inoculated, could enjoy it guilt-free. (Later, this member told us that reading Jack's book, while different from the books she normally enjoys, was refreshing because it made her feel like she was in high school again.) So modest was Jack that he advised the group against reading his forthcoming novel, Awesome, the unlikely story of a sexy, cool giant for whom nothing goes wrong. On this matter only, we must strongly disagree.
