Rhythm and Books

Friday at Book Expo

Book Expo America, the publishing industry's largest trade show, opened today in L.A.  Acres and acres of books and book people.  Stepping onto the show floor is like leaping into a raging river.  You swim from log to log, just hoping you don't go over the falls.  We talked to authors and publishers, most of whom were spreading the word about their fall releases, and here are some of the highlights from today:

* Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist and author of The World is Flat, gave the convention's keynote address to a large crowd, discussing his September release Hot, Flat and Crowded. Friedman is widely respected for his ability to translate complex, world-changing trends into digestible ideas and keywords, as he did in The World is Flat, which explores the rise of the new working class in India and China (hence the raised, or flattened, global playing field).  He promises more of the same in his new work, which warns of the current convergence of three factors:  the rise of the developing world, climate change, and population overcrowding.  America, he posits, must be at the forefront of solving the looming crisis that awaits at this convergence if it hopes to retain its power and influence in the world.  Few analysts have the authority and popularity of Friedman, and he definitely knows it.  He was almost presidential as he described our current predicament and offered his solution as a challenge to America.  But it's almost certain this book will be widely read and discussed, and hopefully heeded.

* We were pleased to run into Tim Winton, one of Australia's most revered writers.  His novel Cloud Street may be the national book of Australia, and The Riders is one of our favorite recommendations for trip reading.  Tim came to America on book tour several years ago and spent some time in Mississippi.  We were glad to show him around, taking him deep into the countryside, feeding him barbeque and catfish, and introducing him to Larry Brown, the late and great north Mississippi writer, at a bonfire in Taylor.  For such a big-shot in Australia, Tim is one of the most humble, down-to-earth guys you'd care to meet.  It was good to catch up and have him sign a copy of his new novel, Breath.  We read an early copy a few weeks ago and were fairly blown away.  We'd never thought much about surfing until reading this novel, set in Western Australia and following two teenagers being pushed to extremes by their surfing mentor.  This is a superbly written, visceral novel with heart-pounding surf scenes and sophisticated character relationships.  We were all ready to put it in the hands of every kid who came into the store this summer until the end took a strange turn into some kinky sex, but hey, they'll probably love it even more.  We'll read anything Tim Winton writes.

* Since we're partial to Australians, we stopped to say hello to a kindly writer named David Francis, whose novel Stray Dog Winter comes out in October with our friends at West Coast publishing house Macadam/Cage.  The book is an unusual Cold War-era thriller with overtones of Graham Greene.  Sonny Brewer, the writer, bookseller and all-around good bookman was there and gave David's book a hearty endorsement, then gave us a few sample chapters from the eagerly awaited new novel from William Gay this fall.  It's called The Lost Country, and William has spent years writing it.  It's inspired by his travels across the country during his military days.  We greedily lapped up the teaser and are happy to report that William continues to perfect his craft.  Over the years we've seen him compared to Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner, but that should all end with this book.  He's laid claim to his own style of storytelling and prose, which is greatly influenced by the rhythms of the Tennessee hills where he lives.  Here we have flawlessly flawed characters — the unlikable are likable and the good guys aren't so great.  We can't wait to see more.

The Given Day ... and Night

After some book duties here in Los Angeles, we ventured into West Hollywood for a cocktail party honoring Dennis Lehane at the Mondrian Hotel skybar.  There we met some fellow Mississippi independent booksellers, Cody from Square Books and John from Lemuria, to catch up and congratulate Dennis on his new novel, The Given Day, due this fall.  His publisher, HarperCollins, had asked us here to celebrate the book's release and to express their enthusiasm for this book.  Though it's a hefty epic, we managed to read half of it before arriving.

In this book, Lehane steps away from the thriller genre, making the leap to a full-fledged literary novel with this post-World War I, Boston-based tale that explores a particularly American brand of xenophobia and social unrest through the stories of two families.  Though it's not a mystery novel, Lehane has forsaken none of the gritty suspense, sense of place, and first-rate storytelling that have made his other books (Mystic River, Shutter Island, Gone Baby Gone) bestsellers.

As the sun fell over the Hollywood Hill, we jumped onto Sunset and headed to Jar for some fine dining.  A few weeks ago we met Suzanne Tracht, the executive chef and owner, who was in Greenwood to celebrate the release of Martha Foose's Screen Doors and Sweet Tea.  She invited us to stop by her chophouse any time we were in L.A., so here we were, surprised to find a menu with some heavy Southern influence.  We had a lovely lobster tomato soup, a plate of crab deviled eggs, and squash blossoms to begin, then loaded up on the famous braised meats.  The signature dish, pot roast, nearly brought one of our party to tears.  Not since her grandmother's kitchen had she eaten such a delectable roast.  Another declared the Coq au Vin the best he'd ever tasted.  If you're ever in L.A. and in search of meat, come to Jar.  The service is impeccable, the dining room stylish and the food outstanding.

We'll recharge our batteries and give you more photos today....

Air-Tested

Appropriate, we think, that the disgruntled bookseller who took issue with Jonathan Miles' conspicuously timed publication of his novel Dear American Airlines chose to read the novel on our flight to Los Angeles.  (For those who have yet to read their correspondence, go here and here.)  The novel poses as an angry letter to American Airlines from one Bennie Ford, stranded air passenger and absent father trying to make good by attending his estranged daughter's wedding.  (In Los Angeles, oddly enough.)  "Who would want to read a novel-length tirade against an airline?" complained our sour staffer.  Well, we're proud to say that now he, like the rest of us, have embraced this fantastic book by an adventurous journalist, formerly of Oxford, Mississippi.

The novel is the perfect length for a cross-country flight, and though it begins as a screed, it develops into a moving and hilarious account of Bennie's life.  He is a man of many mistakes but endears himself to the reader through his good humor and the vivid, comical details he uses to relate his memories and observations.  Mr. Miles' prose is smart and playful, and this short, swift book never falls slack.  Quite an achievement.  Even our staffer gave begrudging praise, calling Mr. Miles a cheery cross between Jim Harrison and Richard Ford.  As we smiled knowingly, who should deliver a copy of today's interview with Mr. Miles in USA Today but none other than Richard Howorth, proprietor of Square Books in Oxford and mayor of said town.  He shared our flight in route to the same trade show and was enjoying an advanced copy of Philip Roth's forthcoming novel.

Safely on the ground in L.A. we proceeded to the car rental agency and sidled up to none other than Richard Dreyfuss — star of such classic films as Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and, one of our favorites, What About Bob — wearing a fine white linen suit.  We only hope he received as nice a car as our blue Mustang, in which we promptly sped away. 

More to come....

Trodding 'The Road' Lightly

In preparing for our L.A. excursion, we were considering films made from great books.  We were particularly nervous to hear that one of our favorite novels in recent years, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, was in production as a feature film slated for release later this year.  As we all know, the Coen Brothers made an unusually fine adaptation of McCarthy's No Country for Old Men last year, and now movie producers are scrambling to forge their own glory.  It's a task not to be taken lightly, and while we can't abide a mediocre adaptation of a great book, we can't fault an honest filmmaker for trying.

The Road seems like a particularly difficult book to bring to the multiplex.  No Country was a cinematic novel, written almost in shorthand compared to the lyrical style of McCarthy's previous books, and some readers cynically decided the great novelist had written this straight for the screen.  Yet the Coen Brothers perfectly captured the tone of the book, which, while arguably lesser McCarthy, was still McCarthy.  On the other hand, The Road, is, in our estimation, one of the best novels the author has ever written, and while extremely visual, the subject matter — a father (Viggo Mortensen in the movie) and his young son (an unknown Australian actor) wander through a barren American landscape after an unspecified worldwide disaster — has a weight and intensity that does not easily lend itself to an afternoon's entertainment.  Nevertheless, it brought us hope to read this account of the film's production in the New York Times.

As for additional McCarthy adaptations, apparently there is an indie film version of Outer Dark in post-production, and Ridley Scott (Gladiator, Blade Runner) is attached to direct Blood Meridian, another stand-out in the author's tremendous oeuvre, from a script by Oscar-winner William Monahan (The Departed). 

And speaking of great books about large-scale disasters and their potentially dubious film adaptations, you should, if you haven't already, get your hands on a copy of Blindness by Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago before the film arrives this fall.  It seems unlikely that even so talented a director as Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardener) will be able to match Saramago's artistry, but it may at least bring new readers to this major work of contemporary literature, which is set in an unnamed city after an outbreak of blindness.

Now it's off to Los Angeles....

Always Eating Our Words

We were wiped out over the holiday weekend, recuperating from two weeks of hard-and-heavy book events and gearing up for our trip to the West Coast for Book Expo America, the publishing industry's biggest trade show.  But before we go all Hollywood on you, we wanted to mention two great events last week.

The first was with Tony Horwitz on Wednesday.  Tony, we learned, lived in Mississippi many years ago, and it was a mix of that strange, interesting, foreign locale and excruciating boredom that really got his creative juices flowing.  (That, as much as anything, may be a suitable answer to the eternal question, Why does Mississippi produce so many writers?)  He caught the writing bug here and went on to a prestigious career in journalism, leading him to a Pulitzer Prize and a best-selling book on Civil War re-enactors, Confederates in the Attic.  Many years and words later, he finds himself back in Greenwood, where he last visited 25 years ago.  He was quite taken with all that's going on here, and after a stroll around the downtown, he was glad to take a seat as the guest of honor at our author luncheon in the Alluvian Hotel's fourth-floor Terrace Room.  There we engaged in one of the liveliest conversations among the author and attendees that we've ever had.  The lunch, prepared by chef Jeffrey Bates, was stupendous, with a rich and authentic gumbo, an unusual and wonderful crawfish Caesar salad, and a vanilla cheesecake.  Tony spoke of his wide and treacherous travels, then regaled us all with the story of his new book, A Voyage Long and Strange, and how it all came about.  Everyone in attendance could hardly wait to dig into the book after his colorful anecdotes and affable spirit, and we can't say enough about how much we enjoyed this book, as well as our visit with Mr. Horwitz.

By all accounts on his USA Today blog, he enjoyed us too, giving his Mississippi jaunt a generous report.  We're glad to have provided an easy-going respite from the daily grind of the book tour.  Great Mississippi independent bookstores such as Square Books and Lemuria have developed a reputation for this sort of treatment, and we're following their lead. 

With a similar hunger, we hosted on Thursday evening Mr. Robert St. John, an exuberant Mississippi chef and restaurateur, with a cook-out to showcase his most recent cookbook, New South Grilling.  The great thing about living in Greenwood is that when you want to host a cookout for a prominent chef, you call Viking Range and they send down a deluxe model to your doorstep.  St. John brought his sous chef Jeremy along to grill up some tuna skewers and bacon cheeseburger pizzas while he signed books.  Viking's Bob Gregory dropped off a cooler full of beer leftover from the previous weekend's Memphis in May barbecue competition, and we had a real cook-out going on.  (Thanks also to the Greenwood police, who were perfectly content to let us cook in the street.)

The next day we took Robert to Hoover's Country Kitchen, still one of the Delta's best-kept secrets, and Ms. Hoover laid some fried chicken, fried catfish and peach cake on us that made everyone want to roll home and take a nap.  If you bring your book to Greenwood, you better bring your appetite too.

Jonathan Miles Fires Back!

For those who have witnessed the contentious debate between a certain paranoid staff member and Jonathan Miles, author of the hot new novel Dear American Airlines, you'll be familiar with our blogger's accusations and the author's claim of innocence.  The most recent allegations cast against the author involve his publicity photo, at left.  Click on the photo to enlarge it and you will find that he's sitting on a Leflore County, Mississippi license plate — a gesture our staffer found to be a subtle yet devastating slight.  Mr. Miles, ever the gentleman, sent us this rebuttal:

Dear Mr. Staff:

Yours is the first (and, I trust, the last) bit of correspondence, related to the book, to include the phrase "there between your legs." But let me allay your insecurities by stating that I know of few places better to happily rest one's rump — aside from my beloved former barstool at the City Grocery bar in Oxford — than Leflore County, Mississippi. So trust me when I say I meant no disrespect by situating my bottom thereon. Just the opposite. This is in fact how I show my love to my children — I sit on them. I look forward to seeing you in Greenwood on June 3rd, as does my misunderstood ass.

Jonny

P.S. Yes, audio cassette. And eight-track, too, of course — read by Charles Grodin, natch. In fact, one online bookseller is suggesting the eight-track of Peter Frampton's album "Frampton Comes Alive" as "Better Together" with Dear American Airlines. I couldn't agree more.

*

So there you have it.  Here's hoping we can put this nastiness behind us and all just enjoy Mr. Miles' fine book.  Nevertheless, we're taking necessary precautions to protect the author against protesters when he visits Greenwood and Turnrow on Tuesday, June 3.  The event will also feature a musical performance by Claire Holley, a talented singer-songwriter, who has been invited to lend an atmosphere of peace and tranquility to the proceedings.

Read the exciting conclusion here.

A Weekend of New South Grilling

Nothing heralds the arrival of summer like a good barbecue.  In anticipation of Thursday's event with popular Mississippi chef Robert St. John, we boned up on our grilling during a weekend-long session with his new book, New South Grilling.  The book is aimed at seasoned barbecuers hoping to add some spice to their backyard feasts, and though we are by no means experts, we've grilled our share.  Still, the book posed a fair challenge.  We drained an entire propane tank, came close to a kitchen fire only once, and had some great meals.  Here's how it went:

Friday night: Grilled Fish Tacos with Three Sauces
We fell in love with fish tacos after visiting the West Coast.  You don't find them much in the South, so we make them at home all the time.  The key components are a firm white fish, red cabbage and a cream sauce, which really distinguishes the dish and makes it singular.  St. John's recipe calls for mahimahi, which arrives at our local, land-locked supermarket only rarely.  No luck this time, so we settled for a nice Gulf fish, tilapia, and wouldn't you know it — China farm-raised.  We live 4-5 hours from the Gulf but can only get China-grown fish.  (Except for Mississippi-raised catfish, which, incidentally, works in fish tacos only if fried.)  The unique features of this recipe were the pineapple pico de gallo and the avocado mayonnaise, a real winner.  This one is recommended for the mayo and especially for those who've never prepared fish tacos at home.  An easy, essential staple.

Saturday lunch:  Chicken Tacos
Anxious to revisit the avocado mayonnaise, we split the leftover fish and grilled some chicken with St. John's poultry seasoning, then wrapped them in corn tortillas for a variation on the fish tacos.  For drinks, we wanted to make the Crescent City Grill Southern Sunset but couldn't get our hands on fresh raspberries, and though frozen may substitute, we opted instead for the Julia's Julep, a take on the classic Southern cocktail from St. John's pal and Delta girl Julia Reed.

Saturday night:  Key Lime Grilled Shrimp with Pecan-spiked Rice
This one took some serious prep.  We selected it because St. John calls it the best shrimp recipe in the book and because we love key limes.  We were also interested in trying his no-stick grilling marinade on the shrimp.  The real surprise of the dish was the pecan rice, which was cooked perfectly, if we do say so, and the flavors were tremendous.  This is a dish you could serve in place of stuffing at Thanksgiving and you'd get no complaints.  On top of the rice went the shrimp, which we overcooked a tad (they're tricky on the grill) and a Key Lime Beurre Blanc that was ladled over the whole dish.  Each element was so distinct and flavorful that we enjoyed them more separately than together.  All in all, though, we were impressed that we'd pulled this one off, and very pleased that we had a rice dish to add to our permanent repertoire.

Sunday "dinner":  Whole Roasted Citrus Chicken with Grilled Sweet Potatoes and Stuffed Tomatoes
When Alton Brown was here last month, he was asked if he referred to the noon meal as lunch or dinner.  It's a tricky distinction, especially in the South, and Mr. Brown said that it depends:  if you were grabbing a quick bite with office buddies, it was lunch.  But if you were having a huge family-style meal after church, it constituted a dinner.  That's what we had Sunday.  Family came over, we all pitched in and worked out this "second-best" chicken dish from the book (the first is Mr. St. John's Yardbird with Barley and Hops Enema, a beer-can chicken recipe which someone said sounded "unappetizing" ... until you've tried it, we're certain), along with some terrific side items.  The whole chicken went into a citrus and sugar brine overnight, then was stuffed with oranges, lemons, limes, onions, garlic and fresh thyme.  It sat on the grill obediently for an hour as we rustled up the sliced sweet potatoes, slathered in butter and brown sugar, and tomatoes stuffed with pesto made from homegrown basil, onions, shallots, and Italian breadcrumbs.  Everything was a hit, especially the chicken, again cooked to perfection, and bearing a unique, sweet flavor.  The potatoes were a hit with the kids, as was the promise of Grilled Bananas Foster.  If you've never prepared this flaming dish, don't try this one ... at least not with company waiting.  We ran through a sack of brown sugar and wasted much good rum, nearly starting a stovetop fire in the process.  Luckily, bananas, ice cream and caramel sauce satisfied the kids, and another round of juleps on the sideporch made a nice respite as the kitchen aired out. 

Sunday night:  Chicken Pesto Quesadillas
Dinner would have carried us over into evening just fine, but we weren't yet deflated, even after the bananas foster incident.  So we used the remaining pesto and uncooked chicken for these delightful, simple quesadillas.  With some leftover sweet potatoes and pecan rice (a recipe all the in-laws took home) on the side, it made a perfect late dinner.  The pesto will freeze, so here's another keeper.

How nice to come home on Monday evening and have a fridge full of leftovers.  There are enough variations left — grilled fish with the Key Lime Beurre Blanc, tomatoes stuffed with shrimp and parmesan, and citrus chicken sandwiches with avocado mayonnaise — to last well into the week, and we hadn't even ventured deep into the cookbook.  We're still looking forward to the Grilled Crawfish Pizza, the Black and Blue Burgers with Jalapeno Chips, Grouper with Black Bean/Corn/Tomato Salsa, Grilled Potato Salad, and Marinated Cedar-Plank Salmon ... and maybe that yardbird too, just as soon as we get the propane refilled.

Until then, we'll eat with Robert St. John in front of the store this Thursday evening, May 22, at 5:30 p.m. when he stops in to grill and sign copies of the new cookbook.  Place your order here.

United States of Absurdity

Tony Horwitz is a travel writer like no other, a man with boundless curiosity, who, in  A Voyage Long and Strange, reveals how the idea for his new book came during an unexpected visit to Plymouth, Massachusetts.  He came upon the historic site of Plymouth Rock and found the actual rock surprisingly unremarkable in size, more "like a fossilized potato" than the iconic rock of his imagination.  A park ranger shared some of the hilarious remarks made by tourists, revealing a deep and widespread ignorance about America's discovery.  Horwitz thought it was all pretty funny until he considered the gaps in his own knowledge.  What had occurred between Christopher Columbus' great discovery in 1492 and the Pilgrim's famed landing of 1620?  "Expensively educated at a private school and university — a history major, no less! — I'd matriculated to middle age with a third-grader's grasp of early America," he writes.

As he did in his earlier books, such popular titles as Confederates in the Attic and Blue Latitudes, Horwitz embarked on a quest to educate himself on these matters, tracing America's early history not through musty textbooks alone but where he seems most comfortable — on the road, observing these famous locations as they exist today.

America's story goes back a thousand years ago when the Vikings sailed from Scandinavia over to Greenland and all along the eastern Canadian coastline, almost to present-day Maine.  Alternating between history and travelogue, Horwitz  distills the Norse adventures into a brisk narrative and relates his own adventures in present-day Newfoundland, where he visits a tribe of Native Americans, descendants of those who ran the Norsemen off the continent, and is nearly flayed in a traditional sweat lodge, enduring extreme heat in a ritual of physical and spiritual purification.

Jump ahead nearly 500 years and you have Christopher Columbus.  In mountains of research, Horwitz finds a figure obscured by conflicting histories, and plenty to suggest that our grade-school impressions of him are inaccurate.  For starters, there was no dispute between Columbus and the Spanish throne about the roundness of the earth, only about how much ocean lay between Europe and Asia.  "The sea can be crossed in a few days with a fair wind," Columbus wrote in one of many curious journal entries.  Horwitz sees the explorer as more of a Don Quixote figure than a hero, which is entirely plausible from the accounts of his frequent misadventures in the New World.  "Columbus changed the world not because he was right," says Horwitz, "but because he was so stubbornly wrong."

All along his travels, following in the footsteps of the mostly Spanish explorers who trod deep into the North American interior, from Mexico to Kansas and Florida to California, Horwitz depicts a nation's discovery built upon a series of failures and foolish aspirations.  Here are men whose names you may remember from history books — Ponce de Léon, De Vaca, Coronado and De Soto — but whose explorations and characters have rarely been given such exuberant treatment.  Largely barbarians driven by a quest for fame and riches, their journeys are similar — lured from destination to destination by rumors of golden cities, and misled by natives who most often paid with their lives — and from his research Horwitz shares the most colorful observations and hilarious quotations from the archivists who documented these impossible quests.  It all makes for a very lively and entertaining history lesson.

The book is especially fun for anyone who enjoys poking holes in the conventional understanding of American history.  For instance, the first Europeans to settle on the U.S. mainland weren't British pilgrims in search of religious freedom, nor the Spanish at St. Augustine, the country's oldest founded city, but French Huguenots just north of there in present-day Jacksonville, Florida.  And then there's the contentious debate surrounding the true first Thanksgiving dinner, not actually turkey and maize at Plymouth but quite possibly garlicky salt pork, garbanzo beans and tortoise some fifty years earlier in the Florida swamps.

We see ourselves in these early travelers, and there's a certain comfort in seeing how well their absurdities mirror our own.  What's most unique, and most amusing, about this book is Horwitz' own parallel travels along the paths of the great explorers, revealing the modern-day inhabitants and what they make of their history.  In fact, one hilarious episode occurs in the Delta, as Horwitz hunts for the site of De Soto's famed crossing of the Mississippi River.  He asks a convenience store clerk where De Soto crossed, and she replies, "Say who? ... There's a few Mexicans at the trailer park. Could be he's there. Ask me, I'd take a gun." 

Even more surprising than Americans' mistaken impressions of their history is that the events of those earliest days still matter so dearly to some people.  In one New Mexico town, hard feelings still exist between natives and Spanish descendants.  A bronze statue of conquistador Don Juan de Oñate, infamous for cutting off the feet of his Indian captives so they couldn't escape, became the center of controversy when a local vandal cut off the statue's boot with a power grinder.

By putting a human face on this complicated history, and by involving the reader in his quest to make sense of it, Horwitz has created one of the most energized and entertaining history lessons we've read in a long time.  It's not textbook tidy, and it's certainly not boring.

You're invited to have lunch with Horwitz tomorrow (Weds. May 21) at our Turnrow on the Terrace author luncheon.  If you can't make it and would like us to get a copy signed, order it here.

A Memorable Double Feature

We're still reeling from our week of high literature, and we ended it with a memorable double feature.

On Thursday night, Ellen Gilchrist signed and read from her new novel, A Dangerous Age (signed copies available here).  Anyone who has read her work can imagine that she's a sharp wit and someone who speaks her mind.  Ms. Gilchrist has been writing for many years, touring and speaking at college campuses, and we hoped she wouldn't be too put out with touring by the time she came to Greenwood.  ("Greenwood!?  What the hell's in Greenwood?" we imagined her saying upon receiving her tour schedule.)  She admitted to us that she did, in fact, hate book tours, though she enjoyed visiting the stores and meeting people, and we think she may have been pleasantly surprised by what awaited her here. 

A nice crowd of 40 or 50 came out to meet Ms. Gilchrist and hear her speak.  She read from the opening of the new novel and had the crowd laughing, then roaring by the time she delivered off-the-cuff remarks.  Despite her insistence that she would not answer questions ("I've answered everything about my life I care to."), she took questions from the audience, as long as, she warned, we didn't ask questions like they ask in New York and California.  She loathes political correctness and judgment of her personal views.  Instead, the crowd asked her about her roots in Mississippi, and she delighted all with stories from her youth.  Though she was born in Delta, her family had a place called Hopedale on Steel Bayou, close to Greenville, even closer to Grace.  There was always family about — cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents.  "Children like to be around older people," she said.

Around the time of World War II, her father moved the family around the Midwest for his job, building airstrips for the nation's burgeoning air force.  They made it back to Mississippi quite often to visit family, sometimes spending whole summers or winters at Hopedale.  She considers herself a Mississippian still, though she has lived for a long time in Fayetteville, Arkansas.  "You know, Mississippi is really as special as we think it is," she said.  "It's the people."  This special quality is, in general, the kindness, politeness and devoted interest that the folks in attendance showed her, and to which she responded with generous wit and wisdom.

"Is this age more dangerous than the World War II era?" someone asked, the closest we came to politics.

"No," she replied, assuredly.  "We still live in paradise, compared to all the people who have ever lived at any time and anyplace else in this world."

We'd barely swept up before Rick Bragg arrived the next day for a noon signing and reading.  Rick is one of the most easy-going, jovial souls we know.  It comes through in his work, which may explain why his readers feel almost like kin, and cannot help but smile and laugh in his presence. 

Still, he said, writing this book almost killed him.  The book is The Prince of Frogtown (signed copies available), and it's the third in a series of family memoirs.   "I hid behind my mama in the first two books," he admitted.  This one looks both at his father and at his stepson, and it's every bit as strong as the previous two books (All Over but the Shoutin' and Ava's Man), with tragedy, humor and a rich sense of the South during the 1950s.  (Read more at this previous post.)

It took him three books, Rick said, but he finally captured what the Bragg men were all about.  From a section about his grandparents in The Prince of Frogtown, he writes:

"There are some people in the world who are not necessarily good at life if you see it as a completed work, but who are excellent at it one daub of bright color at a time. Bob, when drinking, lived in the twitch. He might never be respectable, in a Methodist kind of way. But the way he saw it, and raised his sons to see it, he could be free as a bird on a bunk in the city jail, as long as he showed some guts and left some blood on the ground — his, or somebody's. Bob, with a bottle, would wreak mayhem in disproportion to his size, and go find his angel, to hear his story, and bind his wounds.

"He was kind to her, when sober, but would forget to be kind when he was not. She just took it, and walked miles to bail him out of jail with money she made in that stifling mill. People recall that his dark red hair went white early in his life, as if he wanted it that way, because she had loved it so.

"The nature of their story, really, is that you laugh at Bob and cry for her, for her goodness and long suffering. But it is the nature of men that it is easier for us to laugh at Bob than cry for Velma, which is why women loathe us so."

Rick read three short sections from the book, highlighting the ups and downs, taking the crowd from choked-up to howling with laughter.  He is exactly like his books, maybe even funnier.  When asked about his next book, he said it would be a novel, and that when pressed by his publisher to give a synopsis, he had to think fast.  "I tried to think of what made me happiest," he said.  "And it finally came to me ... midgets.  I'm not trying to be funny or politically incorrect.  I'm serious ... I love midgets."  Before they'd pay him, he said, the publisher wanted the opening line, which he vows to keep, no matter what the book turns out to be.  Here we unveil it, paraphrased:

The carnival owner hated midgets, because they were always getting drunk on a thimble full of bootleg liquor and falling off their Shetland ponies.

The working title of this future masterpiece:  Loose Women from Spartanburg.

And he says that next time he comes to Greenwood, it will be at night.

The Latest Outrage Committed by Mr. Jonathan Miles

Dear Mr. Miles:

Admittedly, we had begun to feel foolish for our April 10th letter to you, accusing you of risking the well-being of the U.S. airline industry by cooking up a publicity stunt for your novel, Dear American Airlines.  Your prompt response and assurance that American Airlines was solely responsible for its own mismanagement, followed by your publisher's invitation to send you to Greenwood on June 3 for a public signing and reading, made us feel that perhaps we'd been too swift in our denunciation.

And then we received your author photo.  Sure, at first we were surprised, having pictured you more sinister, perhaps with a Van Dyke beard and a monocle.  Maybe we were even impressed and a bit attracted by your boyish good looks.  It was only upon closer inspection that we realized we were correct in our original appraisal.

In the photo you are sitting atop a license plate-lined counter, similar to the one at Ajax Diner in Oxford, Mississippi, where rumor has it you've consumed many a chicken-fried steak.  There between your legs, in the symbolic position of vulnerability, is a license plate for our own Leflore County, Mississippi.  It's as if you are saying, "I sit on you!  I have conquered you!"

Call us paranoid, as others have before you, but the implication is clear, sir.  You are taking revenge for our previous comments.  It proves only that you will stoop, or squat, to any lengths to cover up the fact that you have engaged American Airlines in a cynical, multi-million dollar publicity scheme to launch your book onto the bestseller list ... and the fate of air travelers be damned!

We send you this only to say that we know what you're up to, and to provide fair warning for your slated appearance here.  We cannot be responsible for the uncontrolled ire of Leflore County residents when they discover they have been sat upon, symbolically or otherwise.

Sincerely,

Bookstore Staff

P.S.  We noticed that your book is available on audio cassette.  What's up with that?

Read the author's response here.