{"id":36086,"date":"2008-02-23T12:46:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-23T20:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=36086"},"modified":"2025-02-18T09:34:14","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T17:34:14","slug":"issue-64-a-conversation-with-mark-childress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/issue-64-a-conversation-with-mark-childress\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue 64: A Conversation with Mark Childress"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Issue<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Found in\u00a0Willow Springs\u00a0<\/em>64<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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February 23, 2008<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Rachel Kartz and Neal Peters<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A CONVERSATION WITH MARK CHILDRESS<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n
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\"Mark<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Photo Credit: alabamanewscenter.com<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Born in Monroeville, Alabama, <\/strong>Mark Childress comes from a southern family and grew up in Ohio, Indiana, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama. Though he continues to move every four or five years, it is because he writes about the South, Childress says, that he is identified as a southern writer and often placed alongside Harper Lee, Flannery O\u2019Connor, and Truman Capote. \u201cOn the one hand, it\u2019s a kind of ghettoization,\u201d he says. \u201cOn the other hand, it\u2019s a really nice ghetto.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Childress is the author of six novels, including Tender<\/em>, a Literary Guild selection; Crazy in Alabama<\/em>, published in eleven languages and named the [London] Spectator\u2019s<\/em> \u201cBook of the Year\u201d (1993); and his most recent, One Mississippi<\/em>, of which Ann Lamott says, \u201cMark Childress is at the top of his form.\u201d He has also written three children\u2019s picture books, and his articles and reviews appear in the New York Times<\/em>, the Los Angeles Times<\/em>, the Times of London<\/em>, and the San Francisco Chronicle<\/em>, among other national and international publications. His awards include the Thomas Wolfe Award, the University of Alabama\u2019s Distinguished Alumni Award, and the Alabama Library Association\u2019s Writer of the Year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After graduating from the University of Alabama, Childress worked as a journalist for ten years, until he eventually decided to focus all of his time on his own writing. He currently calls New York City home, where he is working on his seventh novel. We talked with him over coffee at Caf\u00e9 Dolce in Spokane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rachel Kartz<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Mississippi takes place in the South, in the seventies, and explores the heightened racial conflict caused by the desegregation of public schools. In an earlier interview, you said you were in the South at this time but weren\u2019t old enough to participate. Were you worried, when writing One Mississippi<\/em> or Crazy in Alabama<\/em>, about getting it right or possibly offending somebody with your take on these things?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark Childress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, because what I\u2019m trying to write is fiction. So I felt like as long as I was true to the spirit of the time and what happened then, and as long as I was honest in the way that fiction is honest, it\u2019d be fine. It\u2019s hard to say that a pack of lies, which is what a novel is, can be honest. But I truly believe that, in a lot of ways, fiction is more true than nonfiction because you can get inside people\u2019s heads and tell what they really think. You can\u2019t do that in nonfiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a journalist I used to be frustrated that I couldn\u2019t get people to say what their motivation was for something, even when I knew what their motivation was. People protect themselves. Novelists go right through that, to the heart of what characters really think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certain people criticized Crazy in Alabama<\/em> because there\u2019s a theory in civil rights literature that white people have to be the hero, that black people should never be the hero of their own narrative. This is the self-justified southern white way of saying, \u201cWe were really the good people.\u201d I could never consider for a moment that Peejoe was the hero of the book. In fact, there\u2019s a point where Peejoe says, \u201cI\u2019m not the hero.\u201d His telling on the stand that the sheriff killed the boy is the one heroic thing he does, but it happens very late in the book. So, I didn\u2019t set him up as a hero. I wanted a character that white people would be sympathetic to, a character that approached the racial conflict\u2014see, to my mind, the sheriff is a human too. And he\u2019s dealing with the forces of history pushing in the direction that he had to go. And I wanted to present the racial question in all of its subtlety. It\u2019s not black and white. It\u2019s all shades of gray. Just like every question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kartz<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How much research do you conduct when writing about historical facts or people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Childress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It depends. Tender<\/em> was very much a novel of Elvis Presley. So, before writing that book, before I wrote one word of it, I read every book ever written about him, listened to every piece of music he ever made, which is a lot. I went to Graceland and worked as a tour guide. I toured all the homes where he lived, tracked down the addresses just to see what the settings were like. Then I started writing the book and I threw some of that away, changed things as I wanted to, because I wrote it as a novel. So, for that book, the research was critical. But I haven\u2019t done research like that for any other book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With V for Victor<\/em>, I did go back and do a little research. Usually, I\u2019ll write a first draft and look at the history of it and see what I need to check. Then I go back and maybe do some research, and change it on a subsequent draft. I don\u2019t tend to do that much. One Mississippi<\/em> was a different set of circumstances and actions, but a setting very much like the high school that I attended. I knew exactly what that library looked like, what the hallways smelled like, and what the cafeteria looked like. That\u2019s pretty much just lifted from my life\u2014the setting\u2014though all the events are fictional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neal Peters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When writing about politically volatile material, like Peejoe\u2019s experience in Crazy in Alabama<\/em>, do you have a message you\u2019re trying to deliver?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Childress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it was Louis B. Mayer who said, \u201cIf you want to send a message, send a telegram.\u201d I really don\u2019t think of my books as having messages when I\u2019m writing them. When I go back and look at a book, I can say, \u201cOkay, I suppose you could draw the lesson of A or B.\u201d But when I\u2019m writing a book, I\u2019m actually just in the act of figuring out what happens, what people are going to do, and what they say, and trying to make it as interesting and dramatic as I can. It doesn\u2019t mean that you shouldn\u2019t stop and think if you\u2019re sending the right message, but I think those reflections, like whether or not I was excusing white guilt, those are all things that arrive after you\u2019ve published the book\u2013\u2013those are critical reactions to the book. It\u2019s not your concern when you\u2019re writing it. You\u2019re just trying to be true to the book\u2019s internal rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within Peejoe\u2019s world, he doesn\u2019t think of himself as a hero. The civil rights movement is set up as a story of villains and heroes. And there\u2019s no room for gray areas\u2014the media doesn\u2019t describe gray areas\u2014you\u2019re either good or you\u2019re bad. And so they<\/em> chose which side he would be on. To me, one of the most interesting characters in that book is Uncle Dove. He\u2019s much more like most people were in the South. He knows that racism and segregation are wrong, but he thinks it\u2019s just too big for one man to change and it\u2019s never going to change, so you have to kind of go with the flow and be kind to people as far as you can. And that explains what a lot of white southerners went through at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing a lot of people miss, that I tried to explore in that book, is how close black and white people were before integration. Almost all white households had a black person working in the household. Even relatively poor families would have \u201chelp,\u201d so the contact was a lot closer than it is now. In some ways, our society down there was more integrated than it is now. Not the public accommodations, not the pools and the restaurants and things like that, but everybody was in contact with everybody else. On a person-to-person basis, there wasn\u2019t a lot of hatred. But there was a lot of interest on the white side of perpetuating the system that kept black people down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crazy in Alabama<\/em> is written in varied points of view. Chapters alternate between Peejoe\u2019s first-person point of view and Lucille\u2019s third- person. Can you talk about the opportunities and limitations of using multiple points of view?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Childress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing I liked about opposing those points of view was that I wanted the story to have kind of a dark side and a light side and to go back and forth between the two. At times, Peejoe\u2019s becomes the light story and Lucille\u2019s becomes the dark story\u2014they change places a few times. But I like a sense in the book that, Oh man, that was a heavy scene and Taylor\u2019s dead, and that\u2019s terrible, or, Okay we can relax because Lucille\u2019s having a good time in Vegas. I like books that make you cry and laugh and that go back and forth between those extremes. I love John Irving\u2019s books because he always does that. At the happiest moment in the book, you\u2019re almost dreading what\u2019s going to happen next, because you know it\u2019s not all going to turn out to be so happy. And that\u2019s so much more like real life than a story that\u2019s all dark, or a story that\u2019s all comedy. I kind of like that, giving the reader that sucker-punch, where it\u2019s like I\u2019m distracting the reader with something funny and then snap, something tragic happens. It happens that way in life. I like those contradictions and complexities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I get older my writing tends more toward linguistic simplicity, but more complexity of the narrative, if that makes sense. I think my style has become plainer on the page, and that\u2019s been an intentional thing I\u2019ve worked toward. A World Made of Fire<\/em> is written in iambic pentameter\u2014it\u2019s extremely layered, there\u2019s a lot of difficult dialect in it, and it\u2019s a very challenging, \u201cliterary\u201d kind of novel. At the time, I thought that was sort of the mark of art\u2014to make something challenging and difficult and dense and layered and all that. I began to realize\u2014and a lot of writers have written on this\u2014that the harder thing to write is the simple sentence that expresses complexity. Or a story that\u2019s accessible to a general reader yet has every layer of meaning of a literary novel. To me, that\u2019s a bigger challenge, so it\u2019s the kind of thing I like to take on because it\u2019s the kind of book I like to read. You know, where the narrative grabs you and pulls you through. Dickens is somebody we study, but he\u2019s also incredibly enjoyable to read. That\u2019s the dividing line between the kind of books I like and the kind of books I don\u2019t like\u2014a book with a narrative that hooks me and drags me through it, and at the end, I go, Wow, I didn\u2019t know that was going to happen. I love that effect in a book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kartz<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s the difference between genre and literary fiction?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Childress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It keeps changing every year. When I was in college, it was the time of the metafictionalists and experimentalists, and Barth and Barthelme and Gass were the heroes of the teachers I had. Vonnegut. And these people were writing anti-novels and were all about subverting the form, changing the form, doing experiments and things like that. I didn\u2019t respond to those kinds of writers. I read them and did my papers and discussed them, but I always preferred strong narrative. I was an addict for Dickens and books that have things that happen in them and things that change and people who are different by the end. It\u2019s a strong narrative that draws me through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s why I was so turned on by the Latin Americans. I discovered Marquez and Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes and all these great writers who were just as besotted with narrative as I was. Some of those books brought narrative back into fashion in North America. You can almost trace it. After One Hundred Years of Solitude<\/em>, Mark Helprin wrote Winter\u2019s Tale<\/em>\u2014which was a huge hit and was sort of a literary fabulist novel, a magic-realist novel set in New York\u2014that sort of opened a lot of people\u2019s eyes. They said, \u201cOh my God, we don\u2019t have to write pinched little exercises in mental masturbation\u201d\u2014which is what some of that metafiction was to me. You can read every word of a Gass book and by the end of it, you may have learned something, but you haven\u2019t felt anything. I like fiction that makes you feel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said though, the whole idea of genre, I mean, the idea of a \u201cliterary detective novel\u201d didn\u2019t exist twenty-five years ago. But even the great masters used to write them. Conrad wrote them. Twain wrote his. We got very uptight in the sixties and seventies about, you know, this is art, and this is commerce. And a book can\u2019t be good if it\u2019s popular. That\u2019s as much crap as saying a book can\u2019t be good if it\u2019s unpopular. Popularity is no determinant of quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also has a lot to do with shifting fashions. Narrative was not in style twenty-five years ago, and now it is. Now, oftentimes, you have books that have very strong narratives and are extremely popular. These two things used to be, could be, synonymous. But there was a kind of anti-commerce movement in the art. You know, Let\u2019s throw out anyone who\u2019s popular. And I\u2019m glad to be part of the wave that\u2019s brought it back the other way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you think literary fashion will change in the near future?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Childress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have no idea. Everyone in publishing has been predicting the end of publishing since I entered it twenty-five years ago, yet there are a lot more books being published and sold now than there were then. Everyone thought that the death of the independent bookstore would kill fiction and literature in America. The opposite has actually been true. I hate it as much as anybody\u2013\u2013the death of the little independent bookstores in New York where I live. Now, all we have in our neighborhood is a Barnes & Noble. But on the other hand, in a typical small city in Alabama, there are now two Barnes & Noble stores with more books than that city had access to before. In a lot of small towns around the country, that\u2019s replicated. In a Barnes & Noble, you have over five hundred thousand titles for sale. Before, maybe you had a mom and pop shop with six thousand titles. I\u2019m sorry for ma and pa, but the people of that city now have an excellent bookstore. I kind of see it as a two-edged sword.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, the cell phone novel is coming from Japan. Have you heard of this? This is the rage now\u2013\u2013they sell millions. They\u2019re written to be read on cell phones. The modern generation\u2013\u2013the ADD, caffeinated generation\u2013\u2013will they have the attention span to read an eight hundred page novel? Seems to me enough of them will. Look at the list of bestselling literary fiction, fantastic books that are selling widely today. Everyone\u2019s worried about the death of the physical book with these e-readers and Kindles from Amazon. I still say that until you can go to sleep on the thing, throw it across the room in a fit of rage, or tear a page out to write a grocery list, then regular books are going to survive. I still like to physically hold a book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In your opinion, who is the best writer, or what is the best work of fiction, in the last twenty-five years?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Childress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, wow, that\u2019s an impossible question because literature is not a beauty contest. There\u2019s not one person whose vision is better than everyone else\u2019s. There\u2019s a tendency, especially in America, to try to single out what\u2019s the \u201cbest.\u201d I have particular writers and particular genres that I go to over and over again. But I don\u2019t rank them that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s very easy for me to say To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em> is my favorite book because I was born in that town and it gives people something to talk about. But To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em> was really my favorite book when I was thirteen or ten when I read it first. I haven\u2019t read it in a long time so it\u2019s not currently my favorite book. But, that said, I currently have a particular obsession with Latin American writers. I think Gabriel Garcia Marquez is probably one of the great writers of our time. One Hundred Years of Solitude<\/em> is a seminal book for me that I go back to over and over again. You see Marquez\u2019s footprints all over Gone for Good<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Usually, frankly, when I\u2019m writing fiction, which is most of the time, I don\u2019t read much fiction, because I tend to mimic what I read in my writing. I like to hear the way things sound. So if I\u2019m reading a book by Jayne Anne Phillips, then the next page I write is somehow going to sound like Jayne Anne Phillips. Usually when I\u2019m trying to write fiction, I read nonfiction or history or current events, then I save up novels. Then, when I\u2019m in between writing, I\u2019ll read a whole bunch of them at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kartz<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You were talking last night about Crazy in Alabama<\/em> being a historical novel. What\u2019s your definition of a historical novel?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Childress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A historical novel is a novel that takes place in the past, in which the fact that it takes place in the past is somehow central to it. I was telling the anecdote about the movie executive who said, \u201cYeah, I know it\u2019s a civil rights story, but does it have to be period? Couldn\u2019t we move it to today?\u201d Because that would\u2019ve cut the budget. And no, it couldn\u2019t. Because the central concern of Crazy in Alabama<\/em> is desegregation and the moment when desegregation actually happened in the little towns. When I wrote that book, I felt that there hadn\u2019t been a novel that dealt specifically with that moment. Everyone thinks To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em> is a civil rights novel, but it\u2019s a novel about the thirties, way before the civil rights movement started, and at the end of the book, black people are no better off than they were at the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was a kid, that was that moment of demarcation. I remember very specifically coming back to the town where my grandmother\u2019s house was. The year before we had swum all summer in the brand new swimming pool that had just been built. We came back the next year and they had filled it with blacktop. There was the diving board and the ladders that we used to get into the water and, one year after they built it, they had filled it with blacktop rather than let black people swim in it. I was seven years old that summer and that had a mighty big impression on me. It still doesn\u2019t make any sense to me. That story was repeated all over the South that summer, because the public accommodations law was passed. Swimming pools were ruled public accommodations, so instead of letting black people swim, they just closed the pools. As a matter of fact, when we were scouting for the movie, we saw ten or fifteen pools that were still relics of that time. No one had ever swum in them again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You move around a lot, never staying in one place for more than a few years, and yet, in some of your books\u2014especially Crazy in Alabama<\/em>\u2014you explore social complexities against a backdrop of strong community ties. Do you, as a transient citizen, ever feel isolated from the communities you live in?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Childress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Absolutely. And I think in some way that may be why I move\u2014to become a stranger again. That\u2019s very much following the pattern that my family had when I grew up. My father had a job that transferred us every few years. It was like being in the army. We hated it as children, because we always had to leave our friends, and we were always the new guys in school, and just when things would be going good, you\u2019d pick up and move and have to start all over again. But then, as adults, the three of us brothers have continued to move. Four or five years into a place and we say, \u201cWell, I feel a little itchy now, it\u2019s time to move on.\u201d I think also that estrangement from the community is sort of what you seek as a writer. When you go to a place for the first time, you see things that people who have been living there for twenty years don\u2019t see. It\u2019s all new to you, the smells and the sounds and the kind of food and the way people talk. I still remember when I first moved to New York. It all seemed very powerful and exhausting and loud and busy and crowded. And now it\u2019s just home. Trying to sleep without sirens going and garbage trucks at four in the morning, I\u2019m like, I need some noise, it\u2019s too quiet. When I start feeling too much at home in a place, then it\u2019s time for me to leave. I think as I get older maybe that\u2019s going to settle down. But, I don\u2019t know, I haven\u2019t seen much indication of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kartz<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though you keep moving, most of your books take place in the South. And you identify yourself as a southern writer\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Childress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t identify myself as that, but everyone identifies me as that because most of the books I\u2019ve written take place in the South. I come from a southern family. I\u2019ve said being southern is like a virus\u2013\u2013you carry it with you wherever you go. Just because you\u2019re in Indiana doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re not southern; it just means you go to the black side of town to find turnip greens. We carried our little southern household wherever we went, anywhere in the country. If I were from Kansas I\u2019d probably be writing obsessively about Kansas. I wrote Gone for Good<\/em>, which has nothing to do with the South, but its hero is a southerner, from Alabama and Louisiana. I just think of it as my country\u2013\u2013my people\u2014and that\u2019s who I write about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Actually, when I started, except for Truman Capote and Harper Lee, there really weren\u2019t many fiction writers from Alabama. And now there are several really good younger writers coming up from there. I don\u2019t think I had any effect on that, it\u2019s just a generational thing. Living through the civil rights movement had a big impact not just on me but on the generation after me, the people who were younger than I was when it was going on. It continues to resonate. In the beginning, I felt like I was writing about a part of the country that no one else was writing about, because Truman Capote wasn\u2019t writing about it anymore, and Harper Lee wasn\u2019t. So I felt like it was my little territory. Now there are conferences on Alabama writing. That\u2019s weird. That\u2019s a new development in the last twenty-five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does it mean to be a southern writer now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Childress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of times it means there\u2019s a separate section in the bookstore, where they kind of ghettoize you\u2014put you over to the side. African- American and gay and southern writing, these are ghettoized sometimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the reason a lot of writers resist the label. If you come from the South, which is the most distinctive part of the country, you know you\u2019re different. And the literature of the South is a different set of books than the literature of New York or California. But it\u2019s kind of funny that nobody has conferences on midwestern writing and, in the South, there\u2019s a conference every week on the question of, \u201cAre we becoming too much like the rest of the country?\u201d On the one hand, it\u2019s a kind of ghettoization. On the other hand, it\u2019s a really nice ghetto. Faulkner\u2019s there, Harper Lee\u2019s there, Flannery O\u2019Connor\u2019s there, Eudora Welty is there. Toni Morrison I count as a southern writer. Alice Walker\u2019s there, Zora Neal Hurston. So, if you\u2019re going to put me in a ghetto, I\u2019ll take that ghetto. And I understand. Our culture\u2019s all about subdividing us into little groups and trying to find which niche we fit in. Nobody ever considered Hemingway a Michigan writer, but if he were publishing now, he\u2019d be considered some kind of provincial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kartz<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You completed your undergraduate degree at the University of Alabama, but you didn\u2019t pursue an MFA. Can you talk about the benefits and the drawbacks of not being in an MFA program?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Childress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The community I got into was journalism. I went to work for newspapers and magazines right out of school. For the next ten or twelve years, while I was writing my fiction at home, I was very much in a writing community\u2014it was just a different kind of writing that we were doing. I feel like I wrote a million words for newspapers before I ever published a word of fiction. And I think each sentence I wrote\u2014even if it was about a Gardendale city council meeting\u2014was teaching me how to write. I do believe that writing is a combination of gift and craft, but I feel like practice makes you better. I think that I was a much better writer after ten years of working on deadlines and having to pump out whatever the editors told me to go cover that day. It took the ego out of the writing. You can\u2019t have ego about your writing in a newspaper. You have a deadline. If you don\u2019t turn the story in on time, you get fired. And that\u2019s really motivating\u2014to learn to sit in the chair and write.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think sometimes in academia, inspiration is overplayed\u2013\u2013that we have to find that moment for the muse to strike us. Well, bullshit. If you wait for the muse to strike you in the publishing business, you\u2019re fired. Just because you\u2019re a writer doesn\u2019t mean you don\u2019t have a certain duty to do your work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The one thing about MFA programs, and that I regret I didn\u2019t do, is read a lot. I mean I was reading, of course, all the time, but not in the way you do for school. When not in school, you tend to read more of what you like and you don\u2019t always take on things that challenge you or that you feel are good for you. I needed to pay the bills some way and I thought that being a working writer was probably going to help me as much as doing fiction workshops. I had done four years of them at Alabama and they were great, but I kind of felt I had gotten all the juice out of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kartz<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You said in an interview that often your characters are much more in control of the story than you are. Nabokov said, \u201cThat trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand; it is as old as quills. My characters are galley slaves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Childress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Laughs.] Good for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kartz<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you reconcile these two statements?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Childress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I didn\u2019t make the Nabokov statement, so I don\u2019t have to reconcile that. [Laughs.] He\u2019s a hero of mine, and a brilliant writer, and I will guarantee you that when he started Lolita<\/em> he didn\u2019t know everything that was going to happen. Now, he would tell you that he made that happen and that he told those characters what to do. But I\u2019d bet that, at some point, those characters became alive in his mind and were speaking dialogue to him\u2013\u2013because that\u2019s what they do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you really know a character, you know how he or she would say everything they might want to say. It\u2019s kind of a semantic argument to say the characters did it. Of course, the characters are creations of your mind, so actually, your mind did it. I think it\u2019s just a question of imagination. If you imagine the people to be real and you imagine them for long enough\u2013\u2013an intense enough period of time\u2013\u2013you come to know those imaginary people as real. And then they start doing things that you didn\u2019t necessarily tell them to do. Now you have to give them permission to do those things. Maybe that\u2019s what Nabokov was saying: they\u2019re his galley slaves. If they took him in a direction he didn\u2019t want to go, he would stop, go back and cut what he had just written and go off in another direction. So he\u2019s definitely the captain of the ship, but I think those galley slaves sometimes grabbed hold of the rudder and steered him in a direction he didn\u2019t think he was going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kartz<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regarding \u201cGood Country People,\u201d Flannery O\u2019Connor said that when the wooden leg was stolen, she hadn\u2019t known the character was going to do that, but in the end it was inevitable. Do you align more with that statement?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Childress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my experience of writing, yes. But of course, I\u2019m not Nabokov, so I can\u2019t know what was going on in his head and the psychological somersaults he flipped to achieve what he put onto the page. But that sensation of Flannery\u2019s is, to me, the sensation that I want\u2013\u2013that sensation when I come to a moment in the story where something happens that I didn\u2019t expect\u2026 and it seems perfect. That, to me, is the unconscious working through fiction. Some part of you prepared for that moment, but to the conscious part of your mind, it was not what you thought was going to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In One Mississippi<\/em>, I was about 180 pages into the first draft when I realized what was going to happen at the end. I\u2019d had no idea. But when I went back and looked at the beginning, all the clues were already there. From the very first time you meet Tim, there\u2019s something unsettling about him, something dark. I don\u2019t know why I put that in there, but when I realized what was going to happen I stopped for about a month and said, I don\u2019t want to write a book that ends with a school shooting. That was not what I had started to write. But that was what the characters did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know if Flannery\u2019s right or if Vlad is right, I just know that at that point, as hard as I tried to steer the galley slaves in another direction, they wanted to go where they wanted to go and I followed them. It\u2019s a glorious moment when you\u2019re writing a book and you reach that point where you feel like it\u2019s telling you what\u2019s going to happen. The story begins to write itself. That\u2019s the moment where the writing becomes fun\u2014instead of gutting it out to see what the hell you\u2019re trying to do, which is what most of it\u2019s like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kartz<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only two homosexuals in the novel\u2013\u2013Tim and Eddie\u2013\u2013kill themselves. Are you worried about the commentary this is making on homosexuality or homosexuality in the \u201970s?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Childress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were a couple others in there but you never quite realized who they were. For instance, if you read very carefully, the note that Tim left\u2013\u2013it turns out that the guy he was at the rest stop with was Red. And there are a couple of other closeted characters that you have to go back and find for yourself. I understand that Tim and Eddie both commit suicide, and, I guess, in a way that\u2019s a commentary on just how \u201cnonexistent\u201d homosexuality was in Mississippi in the 1970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a wonderful memoir by Kevin Sessums, called Mississippi Sissy<\/em>. He grew up the sissiest kid in some little Mississippi town. He went and had this whole gay life in Jackson in the \u201970s, in the period of One Mississippi<\/em>. I lived in Jackson in the \u201970s, and, A: I didn\u2019t know I was gay, B: I didn\u2019t know any gay people, and C: I didn\u2019t know there was a gay bar in Jackson, and I lived there. It was so completely closeted that unless you took that step you had no idea those people existed. It was a really different society, and I\u2019ve read statistics that say, to this day, 30 to 40 percent of teenage suicides are closet homosexuals who can\u2019t admit that they\u2019re gay. And that\u2019s now\u2013\u2013when it\u2019s so open. I didn\u2019t set out or plan for those boys to meet that fate, but I think it was\u2026 God, if I tried to be out, in high school, in Mississippi? I probably would be dead in some way. I\u2019d have either gotten killed or I\u2019d have killed myself if I wasn\u2019t able to pass as a \u201cstraight kid.\u201d Some kids were just too sissy they couldn\u2019t pass. A lot of them killed themselves or moved away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve definitely chosen, as an adult, to live in places that are a lot friendlier than that. I moved out of Alabama in 1987, and I\u2019ve never lived there since, because I like to live in a freer place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim, in One Mississippi<\/em>, probably didn\u2019t even know he was gay. Until, at some point, he had to admit to himself that A: he was, and B: he wasn\u2019t going to change. I think that\u2019s when he decided he\u2019d just rather die. I hate the choice he made for himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone says you can\u2019t connect the gay experience with feminism, with civil rights, but it\u2019s all the same thing\u2014it\u2019s all oppression and repression. I mean, you can\u2019t pretend not to be a black person. That\u2019s the only difference\u2013\u2013everyone knows you are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crazy in Alabama<\/em> later became a movie, for which you also wrote the screenplay. When you write a screenplay, what do you give up and what do you gain?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Childress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a whole different medium and it was hard to learn how to do it. The studio sent me a box of scripts and the books they were based on. I spent two months reading the books and then the scripts. Some of them were great movies and some of them were really pulpy. I mean, how do you turn a Tom Clancy novel into The Hunt for Red October<\/em>? I realized that the main thing you lose is like two-thirds of the story. Because if a movie\u2019s as long as a novel, it\u2019s going to be ten hours long. The first thing you start to think about is what to get rid of, what to throw out. And this is the reason that the book is almost always better than the movie\u2014because the book is usually simply more than the movie. It\u2019s more detailed, with more incidents\u2013\u2013more complex, more subtle. If you made One Mississippi<\/em> into a movie that had every flip and turn of the story, the thing would be twelve hours long and nobody would watch it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the first thing you have to do is stop being a novelist and become a screenwriter, which means you start looking for what you\u2019re going to throw away. I had too many characters and too many stories going off in different directions. Then I had to look for the action that could be told in pictures. At the same time, as you\u2019re losing a whole lot of story and you\u2019re losing a whole lot of words, you\u2019re gaining pictures. And so you can tell the whole story in a series of pictures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s this scene in Crazy in Alabama<\/em> I was proud of because I wrote it on the set like two days before we shot it. We were trying to look for a way to do that police riot at the swimming pool. A riot, by its very nature, is scattered. Something\u2019s happening over here, and something over there. What is a visual image that could take us throughout it? And I came on the idea of focusing on the little brother of Taylor. You see him first. He\u2019s watching the riot, then he climbs into the swimming pool and stretches out\u2013\u2013the riot\u2019s going on all around him. He\u2019s just lying there, like Jesus lying in the water looking up. It said so much about the nobility of the soul of the people who were doing the protesting, and the evil going on around them. If you tried to describe that in a novel, it wouldn\u2019t work. The words would just be spattering all around it. It\u2019s such a simple image, that, to me, was the best moment of the movie because it was a visual distillation with no dialogue that in the book is seven pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve read many film scripts, but they seem flat and the dialogue is very short. That\u2019s because the actors and the set and the music and all this other stuff is added in to make it rich and full. That\u2019s the hardest thing\u2013\u2013to try to keep all that richness off the page of the script because that just distracts the director; he doesn\u2019t need to know all that. He needs to know where they stand and what they say, and he\u2019ll figure out the rest of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019re both intriguing forms. I prefer the novel, because I get to be the director and the producer and the casting director; I don\u2019t have to consult with anybody, and nobody can come in and cut my novel without my permission, or buy my characters. In a movie contract, they buy the right to your characters from now until the end of time\u2014it\u2019s stated\u2014in any medium now existing or yet to be invented throughout the universe. And so I called my agent, and said, \u201cI want Saturn. They can have all the other eight planets, but I\u2019m hanging onto the Saturn rights.\u201d He said, \u201cThat\u2019s a deal killer.\u201d I said, \u201cOkay then forget it.\u201d It\u2019s ridiculous. They own your characters. So if they wanted to turn around and do \u201cCrazy in Alabama 2,\u201d and have Lucille become a black woman who moves to Detroit and works with Diana Ross\u2014they have the perfect legal right to do it. In the novel world they can\u2019t do that. I\u2019m the author and I control it absolutely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kartz<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You said once that when you\u2019re writing novels, it\u2019s like you\u2019re seeing a film in your head\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Childress<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re all poisoned by movies and television; we\u2019ve had them since birth. I do tend to see scenes visually, and to see things in my mind, and then describe what I\u2019m seeing in the scene. You have to use language that suggests all the senses. Not just what you see and hear, which is all a movie can do. In the book you can talk about how things taste, and how they smell and how they felt, and the temperature and all those things that are not accessible to a moviemaker. In the book, you can look at Lucille, and you can have your own picture in your mind of who she is. In a movie, it\u2019s Melanie Griffith. So if you don\u2019t like Melanie Griffith, you don\u2019t like the movie. A book is a more universal thing, because your mind takes the place of all those other people that work on the movie. It fills in those gaps for you. That\u2019s why one of the most exciting things to me is when a high school kid comes up and says, \u201cGod, it\u2019s just like you\u2019re a spy in our high school. That\u2019s just what it\u2019s like at our high school.\u201d And then a seventy-year-old woman says, \u201cWow, that\u2019s just like what it was like for me when I was in high school.\u201d And you realize their experiences were completely different, but they projected their experiences onto yours and that\u2019s got meaning that works for them. That\u2019s the thing about fiction. That\u2019s what fiction can do. I love that part.<\/p>\n\n

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Born in Monroeville, Alabama, Mark Childress comes from a southern family and grew up in Ohio, Indiana, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama. Though he continues to move every four or five years, it is because he writes about the South, Childress says, that he is identified as a southern writer and often placed alongside Harper Lee, Flannery … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9086,"featured_media":2322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36086"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36742,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36086\/revisions\/36742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}