The Worst and Best Creative Nonfiction from the South

How Charlie Daniels hurt my soul and Joni Tevis made it all better

As a student of writing, and as a Southern transplant, I try to keep an eye on new literature coming out of the South. Recently, I came across some of the best and worst collections of literary nonfiction I've read in quite a while, both from writers raised in the Carolinas.

Let's start with the worst: Growing Up Country. It's an anthology of short memoir pieces, compiled and edited by Charlie Daniels—yes, that Charlie Daniels, the one who sings "Devil went Down to Georgia." The contributors are mostly country music stars, including a few icons like Dolly Parton and Toby Keith as well as newer, lesser known musicians. There's also a short contribution from former president Jimmie Carter thrown in for good measure. Each piece (there are more than fifty contributors) is between one and three pages chronicling how each musician "grew up country." Nearly all of the contributors are also from the Southeast, and thus my ire.

Perhaps living in Minneapolis has made me overly sensitive about being a southerner. I'm originally from the foothills region of South Carolina—think Deliverance, but with more golf courses and less squealing—but despite the geographic location of my upbringing, I grew up with indoor plumbing, non-abusive parents, and a solid grasp of evolutionary theory. To read the contributions in this book, you'd think I'm an anomaly.

There's nothing in this book that I haven't heard before—and that's what bothers me. Growing Country repeats just about every stereotype I've ever heard regarding the South and rural life—over and over and over. I'll give a brief summary of Daniel's introduction: "Praise Jesus I was born to a poor, rural family of Southerners who taught me the dangers of new ideas and beat me everyday so I'd know wrong from right and that's why I'm making music today. Oh, and do you remember the Grand Ole' Opry? Boy, there sure ain't entertainment like that anymore! "

If Daniels were the only one expressing these sentiments, I could forgive this book. Unfortunately, I'd say the above summary could apply to almost every piece in the book. I flipped to Jimmie Carter's contribution, hoping to find something redeeming, but there just wasn't much there—his biographical notes took up more space than his two paragraph "essay."

Praise Jesus I checked this book out of the library instead of buying it.

There's still hope for the South, though. I recently had the pleasure reading The Wet Collection by Joni Tevis, a writer who brings something genuinely new to the craft of writing. And while I think it be disservice to classify Tevis as a "Southern Writer"—the settings and subjects of her work ranges around the world—I cannot help but draw pleasure from knowing that she comes from Easley, South Carolina, twenty minutes from my own hometown.

Perhaps what I love most about The Wet Collection is that I can't place it in any particular genre or style. The book is being marketed as "literary nonfiction," and I expected a collection of personal essays. But several of the pieces read more like short stories with fully developed characters. Others feel more like a series of related prose poems. And sometimes Tevis writes in forms I don't know how to describe: the image of a crumbling wall leads her into the mind of Oregon homesteader in the mid nineteenth century, then back to the present, and then suddenly Tevis is wearing a Beaver suit and wandering around a National Park, greeting campers and desperately missing her fiancé. And somehow, this all makes sense to me. I'm with her every step of the way.

Tevis does work with traditional forms in this book—memoir, lyric essay, literary journalism—but she never simplifies her subjects. "Building a Funeral" is a fairly straightforward personal essay about Tevis's experiences selling funeral plots, but the tone manages to be both humorous and heartbreaking. "Jeremiad of a Bad Drought Year" begins as a lyric essay on the Appalachian landscape, but as Tevis interweaves stories from the Bible and her own life, the piece becomes a meditation on the sacred properties of water. Tevis is constantly juxtaposing unusual narratives and images, and the result is always surprising—and beautiful.

Tevis knows something about growing up country—this book addresses, among many things, farming, family heritage, working-class life, and religion. But Tevis never falls back on stereotypes or clichés. Good books, books like The Wet Collection, challenge our preconceived ideas about the world and help us to think and feel in new ways.

If you want to meet Tevis or pick up a copy of The Wet Collection, the launch party for the book is this Thursday, October 25th at the Open Book, 7 pm. I'll see you there.

Sugar Sugar

Author Steve Almond read last Thursday, October 11th at the Minneapolis Central Library as part of their “Talk of the Stacks” series. Almond was on tour promoting his newest collection of essays (Not that You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions and hoping to unload a few more copies of his last book Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America.

The atmosphere was warm and playful, even when addressing sensitive emotional and political topics, much like Almond’s writing in general, and especially his new essay collection. There were bowls of sweets strategically placed around, and Almond wore a candy necklace wrapped around his wrist. Promotional gimmick? Perhaps. But with the progression of the night it began to look more like metaphor. Almond was sweetening weighty issues - like individual moral responsibility - providing an appetizing package for bitter (but essential) public medicine.

Curiously, this approach marks a sharp contrast to Almond’s inspirational figure, the late Kurt Vonnegut, who Almond describes as having a rough and unflinching honesty about the state of the world, in the image of a prophet “howling in [a] hole” (40). He explains:

We don’t mind watching guys like Jon Stewart josh around about that silly war in Iraq, or global warming. But when someone actually points out that our species is goose-stepping toward extinction – without a comfortable laugh line at the end – things get uncomfortable. (26)

And here was an evening determinably comfortable. Laughter abounds as Almond recounts his decision to resign from Boston College by open letter upon hearing about BC’s decision to invite Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to speak at commencement. Almond read a few well-chosen pieces of hatemail he received in the media frenzy, and his creative responses, which were - quite frankly - hysterical.

The same tone is evident in Almond’s three-part essay “The Failed Prophecy of Kurt Vonnegut (and How it Saved My Life)” where he embarrassingly recounts his youthful infatuation with Vonnegut. This love affair produces one crappy undergraduate thesis and sows the seeds of a future creative writer. In the essay Almond is able to track down a copy of said undergraduate thesis:

…which included the proofreading marks of my college pal James Shiffer, who, perhaps not coincidentally, no longer speaks to me. The last page bore a circular stamp at the bottom right. I initially took this to be some sort of academic notarization before coming to recognize it as a large, oddly filigreed coffee stain. (16)

But the atmosphere became decidedly less comfortable when during the Q&A James Shiffer himself raised his hand and stated that he was not aware he and Almond weren’t on speaking terms. Almond handled it as gracefully as he could, even after Shiffer added that – in terms of hatemail – Shiffer had letters from Almond that were comparable to the ones just recently read. The exact relationship between these two men was never clarified, it is possible that Shiffer served in some official capacity at Wesleyan University and was responsible for giving feedback on Almond’s thesis. What did come across clearly was the tension, and it raises interesting questions for other writers.

Why might Almond have slightly exaggerated the rift? In his “Author’s Note” Almond states that the content of his book is “radically subjective, whacked by memory, but true.” Maybe this is all that was happening: memory bias. But exaggerations also make for a better story, a brief moment that is more evocative, more funny. It is condensed, and as such can often produce a more meaningful truth, something that readers can grasp onto and feel. Every writer knows this.

Yet, how necessary was it to mention this man by name? Not very. So why did Almond do it? Probably because he was still under the influence of that old youthful hurt, and currently under the influence of the soap box of personal essay, and he just couldn’t resist. Who wouldn’t have done the same?

I wonder if there’s a problem with this form: creative non-fiction. Because far too often discussions around essay and memoir writing devolve exactly like this – what is really true? Who is being implicated? And not about the work as art. Futhermore, it’s telling that despite all of Almond’s efforts to sweeten his messages, they still came out a little sour. Perhaps fiction is what gave Vonnegut the ability to portray that rough honesty without the sugar, a greater truth. Personally, I attended the reading because I enjoy Almond’s short stories. If he writes in fiction again I will be first in line to buy a copy.

cited: Almond, Steve. (Not that You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions. New York: Random House, 2007.

The pens we love:

I wrote this entry with my current favorite pen. You have these pens, too, I know this: the only pen you can possibly write with at any given point; the only way, sometimes, you can write at all. For me, this favorite pen fluctuates.

As an undergrad, I only wrote in pencil—mostly, with this bad boy:


Not only was it aesthetically pleasing, it had a side-clicky! So when you erased, you didn't accidentally pump out more lead. Erasing, to me, was important: I couldn’t abide scribblings-out. I would still be writing with this kind of pencil, except, I can't find them for sale anywhere, and I have discovered pens. I still have compulsions about scribbling out mistakes, however, so, when I have time, I draw boxes over the mistakes and color them in.

My favorite pens are generally ones that make me write neatly. I can't, for whatever reason, write neatly with gel-based pens, or roller-ball filled-with-a-well-of-ink pens. I generally do better with Bics or those skinny blue Paper Mate pens I keep stealing I mean borrowing from the copy room. This is to say that I normally do better with pens that are cheap or free. I do especially well—as we will see—with pens that come free. These pens either come in the mail, or with a conference registration, or from stealing, or as a gift. I wonder if novelty correlates directly with a psychological impulse to print clearly. I wonder if being cheap also correlates directly with a psychological impulse to print neatly. Cheap, in concordance with my upbringing, = good. Good, in concordance with my third grade teacher, = nice handwriting. So, by the universally-accepted transitive property, cheap = good handwriting.

So, I suppose this essay/post has done, thus far, what essays are supposed to do: it has taught me something. I love cheap—even free!—pens. I love pens that make me print well. When I print well, I love writing. Therefore, again, calling upon geometry's transitive property, and if/then conditionals (thanks, Ms. Lougheed, for teaching me how to do proofs), if I love cheap pens, then I love writing.

Cheap pens are especially nice in another way: I always lose them. They are nice because I can replace them easily. (Key into copy room; steal pen.) I lose them because I put them in my pants pocket, and, being a girl, my pants pockets are very shallow. They fall out a lot. This is annoying. I wish I could wear shirts with front pockets deep enough to store pens. This essay/post is also confirming something I suspected but never actually, truly believed: I am a Nerd. However, pens:

A few months ago, I had to take a Dostoevsky midterm. In keeping with the Dostoevskian tradition, I knew that this midterm was going to be long, long, long, and handwritten. So I needed my pen. I had to write my midterm with that pen. Had to. Had to even more because I couldn’t find it. Anywhere. I looked everywhere. Missed one bus because of it. Not on desk, not on windowsill, not in bathroom, on table, on futon. Second bus, gone. On coffeemaker, on cat or plant or floor. Beneath bed nor futon nor table, nor cat nor plant nor etc. I railed my fist, and left to catch third bus, inferior pen in hand. Ah, it hurt.

As I was running toward the last bus that would get me to the midterm on time, my hand brushed against something long and hard jutting out of my pocket. No, writers! Do not go there! For indeed I am a girl, and, besides, the geometry of it actually impossible. It was my pen! With me all along. But it failed me on my Dostoevsky midterm—no, I did just fine, but my printing not very neat. It—the pen—fell out of my favor.

Next to cycle into my favor was my Pilot Easy Touch Medium Point. Easy touch, indeed. I have always loved RSVP pens, but I also have always lost their caps. I will not have a bald-looking pen. This Pilot Easy Touch had the easy touch of an RSVP pen but not the easy loss of their caps: it was a clicker pen. This, too, was its downfall: I couldn't stop myself from compulsively clicking it—often in time to some song I have stuck in my head. Clicking is bad enough; clicking to a beat by someone who is intrinsically beatless is horrific. Apologies to classmates who may have had to experience this.

The Pilot Easy Touches held me over for a while. Then, one day, I was sitting at my desk, looking for something with which to write. I have packed and moved this coffee can of truly terribly utensils with me five times in the past four years. Five times. And I still haven't learned to throw out a molded, plastic julienned French Fry pen, which I bartered for in a sixth-grade Odyssey of the Mind competition. It doesn't write anymore, but know this: if the thing still wrote, it would never leave my hand. So, due to the unfortunate fact that the julienned French Fry pen was drier than the Mojave, I latched onto another, equally distinctive pen.

So: the pen. Right now: my love. Simply: As an undergrad, I worked in a writing center, called, because we accepted money from a corporation, The Meijer Center for Writing and Michigan Authors. I was a Lead Consultant, which meant that I met in weekly meetings with the director of the Center and other Lead consultants. To bring seriousness and levity to our meetings, one of the Leads bought us these:



Now that I've rediscovered it, I can't stop using it. I think I have lost all credibility as a writer—should I have presumed to own any in the first place. However, on the plus side, now, I now have a combination writing utensil/cat toy. Lucy and Bill are thrilled.

Pencil it in

Literary events in the Twin Cities area
(free unless otherwise indicated)

Wednesday October 10:

Daniel James Brown, author of Under A Flaming Sky. University of Minnesota Bookstore, 2:00 p.m.

Rebecca Haile, author of the memoir Held at a Distance. Amazon Bookstore, 7:00 p.m.

Nancy Horan, author of the Frank Lloyd Wright biography Loving Frank. The Loft Literary Center, 7:00 p.m.

Nancy Marie Brown, author of The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman. University of Minnesota Bookstore, 7:00 p.m.

Thursday October 11:

Cartoonist John Porcellino. Big Brain Comics, 5:00 p.m.

Steve Almond, author of (Not That You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions. Minneapolis Central Library, 7:00 p.m.

Friday October 12:

Cartoonist Jerry Van Amerongen. Magers & Quinn, 7:30 p.m.

Saturday October 13:

The Twin Cities Book Festival. Minneapolis Community & Technical College, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Sunday October 14:

Chuck Brown, author of Barn Dance. Nina's Coffee Cafe, 2:00 p.m.

Monday October 15:

David Sedaris. State Theatre, 8:00 p.m. $35-40

Ritual, Aesthetics, and Dislocation: Some Tips

A seemingly banal action can put you in a sort of trance state, allowing your unconscious creativity to float to the surface. I copy a favorite poem out by hand. I enter the poem in ways I couldn’t have anticipated, and nuances are revealed to me that were unavailable before, no matter how many times I’ve read the poem. Being in concert with a piece of writing and its author in this way can lead one’s own creative imagination to unlock in ways that were previously unavailable. When I was coming into my own as an aesthetician and an attentive, concentrated writer, I developed many aesthetic and creative rituals that served to prepare me for the experience of writing, prepare me for the Muse, and put me into a world of heightened sensory experience, which for me is an invitation to concentration and creativity. My favorite activity is to go through a letter of my dictionary and make a list of all my favorite beautiful words, for later inspirational reference to use in poems or writing. I also make an obsessive practice of looking words up for their varieties of meaning, which almost always opens up interesting territory for a piece of writing. For awhile, I made a point to brew a specific tea (jasmine, which I call “garden tea”) to smell and drink as I wrote, which always leant a certain aesthetic quality to the writing, then—light, airy, beautiful, ephemeral. I get Bosc pears from the grocery store every week because they’re so lovely to look at, just looking at them makes me want to write, and because the word “bosc” is one of the most beautiful words ever. This doesn’t mean I write anything about bosc pears, per se, but just having one on my desk infuses some quality into the writing, which can happen when the writer is attentive to the workings of the subconscious and the environment’s effects on that. Because I find the word “kale” so beautiful, I started eating kale, first spending long minutes at the grocery store looking at it, terrified, until I finally had the courage to bring it home and eat it. This was necessary for me, because I wanted to be able to use the word if I chose, and use it to its most textured capacities. But this kind of ritual is necessary for me, even if I hadn’t wanted to use the word in a poem—it’s the conscious, conscientious attempt to make myself of the world, to be a participant in natural wonder, to be, in a word, an artist. When I am feeling particularly bereft of aesthetic inspiration, I always turn to Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons. I believe Stein to be our foremost Western aesthetician, and she always proves inspirational for me. Fanny Howe advocates another style of concentrating, another way to structure the lived life in writing, an aesthetics of bewilderment. This seems particularly useful to those of us who write from the perspective of child narrators, or who want to express in their writing a deep awe, pain, or confusion at the state of the world. She sees bewilderment as a way of entering the work. Bewilderment as a poetics and a politics. She attempts to write characters “who remain as uncertain in the end as they were at the beginning. Bewilderment does not necessarily mean that you want to be located or described. It can mean that you want to be known as Unlocatable and Hidden. Instead, weakness, fluidity, concealment, and solitude assume their place in a kind of dream world, where the sleeping witness finally feels safe enough to lie down in mystery.” Welcome to the term, and to dislocation!

Pencil it in

Upcoming events in the Twin Cities area

Tuesday October 2

Abigail Thomas, author of the bracing new memoir Three Dog Life, appears at the U of M Bookstore, 300 Washington Ave SE Mpls. 2:00 pm. FREE

Local humorist Kevin Kling reads from his new memoir, The Dog Says How at the Fitzgerald Theatre, 10 E Exchange St, Saint Paul. 7:30 pm. $15

New author Rattawut Lapcharoensap reads his short fiction at the University of Minnesota, Walter Library, 117 Pleasant St SE Mpls. 7:30 pm. FREE

Wednesday October 3

Authors and scholars John Wright and Arnold Rampersad discuss the life and work of Ralph Ellison in A Dialogue In Black & Blue at the U of M Library, 222 21st Ave S Mpls, 7:30 pm.

Poets Deborah Keenan, Jim Cihlar, and William Reichard discuss their work at Nina's Coffee Cafe, 165 N Western Ave, Saint Paul, 7:00 pm. FREE

Michael Perry discusses Truck: A Love Story. U of M Bookstore, 2 pm and Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave S Mpls, 7:30 pm. BOTH FREE

Thursday October 4

Walter Jacobs discusses his memoir Ghostbox at the U of M Bookstore, 7:00 pm, FREE

Friday October 5

Poet Linda Back McKay reads from her collection The Cockeyed Precision of Time: New and Selected Poems. Amazon Bookstore, 4755 Chicago Ave S, Mpls, 7:00 pm. FREE

Saturday October 6

Chris Finan discusses his book Palmer Raids the PATRIOT Act as part of Banned Books Week at Magers & Quinn Booksellers, FREE

Phil Martin discusses his New Writer's Handbook 2007: A Practical Anthology of Best Advice for Your Craft and Your Career. Magers & Quinn, 6:30 pm, FREE

Sunday October 7

The U of M's own Patricia Hampl, accompanied by pianist Dan Chouinard, reads from her brand new memoir, The Florist's Daughter, at the Fitzgerald Theatre. 7:30 pm. $15