TRYING

When I started the ToFGT blog, it was my absolute intention to post every week. One of the reasons I had for starting the site, after all, was to give myself a self-imposed writing deadline with no room for excuses for not exercising writing muscles. Alas, my day job has kept me away. Though I offer no excuse, I take a small amount of comfort in the fact that my day job does involve books--reading books, talking about books, being surrounded by books and by people who write and read and teach books. So, at least there is that. Mostly, though, I take comfort in the fact that I have also been kept away by my other writing. I have had a good streak going lately of working the fiction writing muscles in what time I have had available to write at all. It is highly important to me that I make progress on that front. More on that . . . someday.

For now, I do have a couple of things on my mind this week highly relevant to the literary world that I wish to share with you.

One of my favorite books from this year, discussed in a post entitled DAWN, is Amor Towles' Rules of Civility. It is a fine New York novel and a fine gathering of words into sentences from a first-time author who, fascinatingly enough, has a day job that is distinctly unliterary. For this reason, I am amazed as much by the fact that he wrote a book as by the actual book itself. And, I admire him greatly for his commitment and plan for getting a novel written and then for seeing that plan through. What he produced was a pleasure to read. goodreads.com recently hosted a live chat with Towles about his work and it was a tremendous opportunity to hear a writer answer questions about his book and discuss his craft. I hope you will read the book, but definitely take a few moments to watch the chat here.

Also, I am excited to have lying on the top of my t0-be-read pile the newest novel from Ivan Doig, called The Bartender's Tale. This one is on loan from our local library, so I am worried about getting it read in time, especially since I am at this point only about a sixth of the way through the big Hemingway biography I am reading. I have discussed Wendell Berry in great depth here as one of my favorite authors. Doig, for me, ranks just as highly. Berry, early in his career, was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and Doig has been called a successor to Wallace Stegner, whose long life and career were highly influential for not only  subsequent generations of so-called Western writers, but also for writing in general and for land-use policy and environmental issues. I look forward to sharing much more about this latest book and about the Stegner line of authors in a forthcoming post.

AMBITION

I must face it. I cannot possibly read all the books I wish to in my lifetime. There is something a little sad about that--in many ways, I am aware. Nevertheless, I doggedly continue building the reading list. I keep piling the books in my floor and by my bedside. It is almost like a promise to them. I will get to you. I swear. Please do not take it personally. All that said, though, sometimes ambition will overtake me and I will attempt to multitask. You and I have heard plenty by now about the supposed fact that multitasking simply does not work. Our brains, from what we are told by people smarter than I am, are not wired to absolutely focus on more than one thing at a time. Thus, we may think we are paying adequate enough attention to the conversation, the email, the road, when in all actuality one or another of those things is being completely ignored, even if only in bursts of a few seconds.

In spite of the scientific evidence, however, I persist. I will try and read two, perhaps even three, books at a time. Okay, I will tell myself, this is the primary book, to be read during my serious and devoted reading time--before bed. This other one and maybe that one, too, I can carry with me during the day and sneak bits of it down when I have a moment. You know, at lunch, in waiting rooms, while the pasta boils, at red lights. Sometimes it works. Most of the time it does not. One of two things invariably happens. I enjoy both or all of the books immensely and it takes me twice as long to finish them. Or, I key in on my favorite of the bunch and leave the others languishing, giving them not nearly enough of their due, and end up forced to abandon them.

This happened to me recently with a new book that I was genuinely excited about, Ramona Ausubel's No One Is Here Except All of Us. It is a strange book, not quite fantasy, but definitely fantastical in a way that reminds me of Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale. It is about memory and imagination and so many other things and is the story of an isolated Romanian town which decides to begin the world completely anew when they realize what is coming as World War Two and the Holocaust begin to unfold around them. I expected it to be strange in a good way. And, I really did give it an honest effort, lasting through more than one hundred pages. Which brings me to a troubling question. How much reading is sufficient enough to give a book a fair chance? I was ready to give up all hope on this one after about ten pages, but that did not seem nearly enough. Then, of course, every page turned after that became all the more tedious. In the midst of this internal debate I overheard a staff member in our local library talking with another patron. His opinion as a reader is one that I trust and I heard him say in discussing a book he did not enjoy, "Why waste time on a bad book? There are too many good ones to get to." That remark tipped the scale for me and, after one more valiant effort, I closed the cover without marking the page. I did so with a heavy heart, because I have the smallest inkling of the hard work and sweat that go into creating a story. Ausubel's novel is obviously not a bad book. It just did not appeal to me, but I could not help but feel some guilt for not finishing what she must have given so much of herself to.

What is keeping my attention, on the other hand, is the second book of a five-volume biography of my old friend, Ernest Hemingway, by Michael S. Reynolds. It is utterly fascinating. This second book is Hemingway: The Paris Years. With five volumes, Reynolds is exhaustive to say the least. While not a daily chronicle, it comes close. Yet, Reynolds is one of those gifted biographers who can be meticulous while at the same time writing in a way that is as compelling as good fiction. And, it is this particular volume that follows Hemingway through his 20's as he served what amounted to his apprenticeship as a writer, honing his skill and craft on stories and then working through his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, which, of course, changed both the course of his life and the literary world forever. I already have the final two volumes in the stacks. I may be busy for a while.

FICTION

I read the following in a New Yorker blog last week by Keith Ridgway and have been chewing on it since. Here is a link to the complete post.

"And I mean that--everything is fiction. When you tell yourself the story of your life, the story of your day, you edit and rewrite and weave a narrative out of a collection of random experiences and events. Your conversations are fiction. Your friends and loved ones--they are characters you have created. And your arguments with them are like meetings with an editor--please, they beseech you, you beseech them, rewrite me. You have a perception of the way things are, and you impose it on your memory, and in this way you think, in the same way that I think, that you are living something that is describable. When of course, what we actually live, what we actually experience--with our senses and our nerves--is a vast, absurd, beautiful, ridiculous chaos."

"So I love hearing from people who have no time for fiction. Who read only biographies and popular science. I love hearing about the death of the novel. I love getting lectures about the triviality of making things up. As if that wasn't what all of us do, all day long, all life long. Fiction gives us everything. It gives us our memories, our understanding, our insight, our lives. We use it to invent ourselves and others. We use it to feel change and sadness and hope and love and to tell each other about ourselves. And we all, it turns out, know how to do it."

I must say, the first part throws me a bit. If we admit Ridgway's contention as truth, and I really see no escape from doing so, what does that say about our lives? Our relationships? Is part of our deception, rather our storytelling, a false conviction that our lives are and can even possibly be built upon honesty--honesty with ourselves and honesty with those whom we love and call friends? Perhaps he is not positing so spectacular a theory. After all, the post is about writing and the fact that he is not completely sure from where his writing comes. I am sure he did not intend to send me on some sort of metaphysical quest. But, that paragraph in particular leaves me wondering. It is difficult enough to find meaning in the drudgery of the day-to-day. If you stop and ask yourself why am I here, you may actually find yourself paralyzed by the fact that the question cannot truly be answered. After all, is it not the question from which all human endeavor began and for which we still seek an answer? Some among us believe they have answered that question. But, if Ridgway is correct, and I contend he is, then those things upon which our faiths are built are merely creations of our minds, the selves we constantly rewrite in order to suit our needs and desires.

Perhaps, though, there is something to be found in the usage in the preceding sentence of that one little word, merely. For as much as I have been chewing on the first paragraph, I am struck more profoundly by the second. That particular part of the post is in keeping with the spirit and ongoing discussion here on my own blog--intended first and foremost to be a celebration of the literary life. So, maybe the selves we have created are not mere creations in the least. They are, instead, THE creations. All that we know. All that we are. All that we wish to be.

Beacuse his point is absolutely clear to me and voices well what I myself feel about fiction--that it gives us everything. We all know how to do it because it is essential to our own understanding of ourselves, whether we care to admit so or not, and it is absolutely essential to an understanding and insight of others.

NEW YORK

"On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy."

"A block or two west of the new City of Man in Turtle Bay there is an old willow tree that presides over an interior garden. It is a battered tree, long suffering and much climbed, held together by strands of wire but beloved of those who know it. In a way it symbolizes the city: life under difficulties, growth against odds, sap-rise in the midst of concrete, and the steady reaching for the sun. Whenever I look at it nowadays, and feel the cold shadow of the planes, I think: 'This must be saved, this particular thing, this very tree.' If it were to go, all would go -- this city, this mischievous and marvelous monument which not to look upon would be like death."

Opening and closing lines from Here is New York, by E.B. White

Last week I got to pretend I was E.B. White. And I learned something about him I did not know: people who knew him called him Andy. I tromped all over and up and down the island of Manhattan for five busy days. I have long been a fan of New York, as I have written here, and this was not my first visit. However, it was for me the best so far. I recently accepted a job offer from a publishing company, a real one of the old ilk, based on Fifth Avenue, and I was in the city for a week to work. Each morning I rose in my midtown hotel, got in a run, and grabbed coffee and a bagel and a Times on my way up 40th Street to the office. Joining the steady stream of moving people going about their business not once failed to energize me. I was living off too little sleep, but I was wide awake each day, especially in the mornings. There is something about being in the city that enlivens me. I savor the sounds and the smells and the heat of the place. It is something like electricity.

Of course, I ran. The first run took me toward downtown on Lexington, through Gramercy Park and a bit past 14th Street, looping over to 1st Avenue and back up past the United Nations building. The second run was in the other direction, up 5th Avenue for a ways, cutting into Central Park around 96th. I am not a big fan of running in the park early in the morning. Everyone runs in the park in the early morning. It is a bit like being in one of those crowded marathon events. People are everywhere and navigating through the foot and bike traffic is worse than dashing through New York intersections in the paths of oncoming cabs. So, I cut through the park to say I had run there and came out on Central Park West and headed back toward midtown, running around Columbus Circle and following 6th Avenue to end the loop. The third and last run of the week took me down 5th Avenue, hanging a right on 14th to follow it over to 10th Avenue where it got a little gritty as I entered the Meatpacking District. I ran under the High Line through Chelsea up 10th and got waylaid by the traffic coming into the city from the Lincoln Tunnel as I tried to head back east on 40th.

The sun rises earlier in New York than in southwest Virginia, given its eastward geography, and I took advantage of the extra time on my runs. New York, of course, seems to always be alive and humming, no matter the hour. But, there is a sense around the early dawn hours of an old man stretching and yawning himself awake. Traffic is a little thinner, storefronts are gated, and things are beginning again. There are stacks of newspapers on corners still in twine and here and there men with hoses spraying down the sidewalks and every few minutes another cluster of commuters emerging from the subway stations as if the world were being repopulated.

I was feeling quite literary all week, owing in no small part to the nature of my new job. I also made my first visit to the Algonquin Hotel and had a drink in the bar. And while the room that hosted "The Vicious Circle," a well-known group of writers and critics who luncheoned daily at a round table throughout the 1920's, is no longer there, I did feel some sort of communion with them and took pleasure in sitting back and imagining the likes of Dorothy Parker and Harold Ross and others as they held court. On every visit to New York I carve out an hour or more to jostle my way about the stacks in the Strand Book Store and many times I have ended up frustrated by my visit. There is simply an overwhelming amount of books to be seen there and, of course, a smelly and loud crowd of freaks and hipsters to wade through. I usually have no direction to my roaming, but this time I went in armed with a list and came out with quite the haul. Yes, this from a man who has previously written here that he buys few books. But, we all need to celebrate every now and again, right? I wanted New York books and I wanted them from my favorite New York bookstore. I looked specifically for the E.B. White book, which is actually a reprint of an essay he had published in a magazine in 1949. I urge you to find and read it, no matter your own feelings about the city. His lean and sparse and efficient prose is an education in itself and it is an elegantly simple and timeless homage to a place. Also in my bag were two of Marilynne Robinson's books, which I have decided I should absolutely own, Home and Gilead, Pete Hamill's own tribute to New York, Downtown: My Manhattan, a new collection of pieces about Central Park called, aptly, Central Park: An Anthology, edited by Andrew Blauner, a copy of Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic for my wife and a book for our daughter, Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman. Let us see if she actually reads it.

I was grateful to a very good friend who knows the city better than anyone else for his recommendation of my now new favorite New York bookstore, Book Culture, near Columbia University. I visited there finally on my last and only unencumbered night in the city. As soon as my meetings were over, I raced to the hotel, changed, and headed down to Grand Central where I hopped the shuttle to Times Square and caught the 1 train uptown to 110th. I browsed Book Culture for a long while and then happened upon the the stairs that lead up to the real treasure trove above, where, of course, I browsed even longer and came away with a volume I have long been on the lookout for, Writing New York, an unprecedented anthology of writing about the city that is organized chronologically. It contains hundreds of pieces, beginning with Washington Irving in the earliest days of the 19th century and ending with an excerpt from Don DeLillo's Falling Man,  published in 2007. I then strolled down Amsterdam and over to Broadway and happened on a quiet little sushi place where I sat anonymously in a corner while a storm blew through. As the downpour began to wane, I ambled a few more blocks south and hitched a ride again on the 1 train, this time headed downtown. I took the Staten Island Ferry in the rain, standing on the back and taking in the skyline as it stood aflame over the choppy waters of the harbor. Back on Manhattan, I meandered up and around Wall Street for the hell of it before finally taking the subway back to Grand Central, treating myself to a late night snack of gelato before returning to my hotel.

It was the kind of night to savor in the city, including traversing nearly the entire length of Manhattan, eating a quiet meal, browsing row after row of bookshelves, and simply watching. I feel like a different person there. While sitting in that sushi place I read from the Writing New York anthology Walt Whitman's Crossing Brooklyn Ferry and was struck, as I had also been while reading the E.B. White essay, by his voicing of the same feelings that being in and among the city stirred up in my own gut. Whitman and White both, even one hundred years removed from one another, write of the connection through the long span of time of the city's existence between all the souls who have been moved by that place. That same electricity shrouded by anonymity that I feel there is something that has been felt countless times before by millions of people drawn to New York for whatever the reason may be. Whitman speaks directly to his readers, asking what distance of time may separate them and anticipating that, no matter what that distance may be, they will know exactly what he has known.

What is it then between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

Whatever it is, it avails not--distance avails not, and place avails not,
I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,
I too walk'd the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around it,
I too felt the curious abrupt questions stir within me,
In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me,
In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me . . . 

THINKING

I had been holding off on reading Marilynne Robinson's When I Was a Child I Read Books because I knew it would require more of me than others. In short, I knew it would be work. I do not say that in a negative way. I mean it in that I knew her writing would require me to bring a little more of myself to it, a little more attention and willingness to fully engage. Robinson assumes her reader is a bit more responsible in this way. I will propose that if there is a preeminent thinker and writer walking among us today, in much the same vein as a Thoreau or a Whitman or an Emerson, it is Marilynne Robinson. Make of that claim whatever you may, but I feel safe in saying that not only is her prose some of the most lyrical and poetic that you may find in the published world, but her words also challenge and push the reader to consider questions of a more literate and scholarly bent than most other writers.

But I need not try and convince you. Despite recent events, trust that her reception of the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for her novel, Gilead, is indicative enough of her skill and competence. Having been a fan of her fiction for a long time now, When I Was a Child, is the first of her nonfiction I have delved into, mostly for the reasons above. Within the first paragraph I was questioning my own reading comprehension level and, as with her novels, it was handy to have a dictionary nearby. This is an essay collection of weighty material, covering a wide range of questions, but, like all of Robinson's work, at least for me, most of it seems to return to a central theme of the nature of the Divine and of our relationship to God and to the world. One thing I love about her fiction is that she has a particular artistry when it comes to the making of metaphor and this gift is equally apparent here. Her words read almost like a prayer, with a rhythm and a fluidity that calms, while at the same time challenging some of  your most basic ideas and deeply held beliefs. Her work is rife with passages like the two I will share below that exude the very concept of grace, pointing out all that is wrong about the world and the ways in which we fall short, while at the same time celebrating those things as part of what makes us more fully human.

All of the pieces in the collection are exceptional, but two that particularly stand out for me are the title essay, which discusses her roots in the American West, and one called Imagination and Community, which has much to say about writing itself,  so I feel quite compelled to share from it with you.

"Presence is a great mystery, and presence in absence, which Jesus promised and has epitomized, is, at a human scale, a great reality for all of us in the course of ordinary life.
I am persuaded for the moment that this is in fact the basis of community. I would say, for the moment, that community, at least community larger than the immediate family, consists very largely of imaginative love for people we do not know or whom we know very slightly. This thesis may be influenced by the fact that I have spent literal years of my life lovingly absorbed in the thoughts and perceptions of -- who knows it better than I? -- people who do not exist. And, just as writers are engrossed in the making of them, readers are profoundly moved and also influenced by the nonexistent, that great clan whose numbers increase prodigiously with every publishing season. I think fiction may be, whatever else, an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification."

This passage struck me because it follows lines of thought found in some previous discussion here about fiction and its importance in increasing our ability to empathize with and understand those around and apart from us -- key, as Robinson postulates, to our ability to both define and fully participate in the act of community.

Then there is this, which I believe may serve as the very essence of what I wish for this blog to be, a celebration of reading and of books.  

"I remember once, as a child, walking into a library, looking around at the books, and thinking, I could do that. In fact I didn't do it until I was well into my thirties, but the affinity I felt with books as such preserved in me the secret knowledge that I was a writer when any dispassionate appraisal of my life would have dismissed the notion entirely. So I belong to the community of the written word in several ways. First, books have taught me most of what I know, and they have trained my attention and my imagination. Second, they gave me a sense of the possible, which is the great -- and too often, when it is ungenerous, the great disservice -- a community performs for its members. Third, they embodied richness and refinement of language, and the artful use of language in the service of the imagination. Fourth, they gave me and still give me courage. Sometimes, when I have spent days in my study dreaming a world while the world itself shines outside my windows, forgetting to call my mother because one of my nonbeings has come up with a thought that interests me, I think, this is a very odd way to spend a life. But I have my library all around me, my cloud of witnesses to the strangeness and brilliance of human experience, who have helped me to my deepest enjoyments of it. Every writer I know, when asked how to become a writer, responds with one word: Read. Excellent advice, for a great many reasons, a few of which I have suggested here."

CONTINUING TO DISCUSS THE MEANING OF SUCCESS: AN INTERVIEW WITH AMY CLARK

One of the most meaningful and memorable courses I took as a student at Emory & Henry College was a class called Appalachian Political Economy. One of our earlier assignments for the class was to spend some time looking through a number of books of photography from the Appalachian region and to then write about our thoughts and reactions in preparation for a class discussion. I remember finding it difficult to come to grips with the fact that I felt both a connection to the people and places in the photographs but also a sense that they did not portray a fully accurate view of the region. The pictures were nearly all of sad and shabby looking people and their homes, of run-down barns and empty small towns, and of damage accumulated from mining and other industrial operations. These were people and places I had known and seen first-hand, and I did find it of utmost importance that they had been chronicled. At the same time, though, I wrote in response that I saw myself as every bit as Appalachian as the people in the photographs, but there was no one coming to take artful pictures of me hanging out in my air conditioned apartment, drinking my imported beer after a tough day of discussing the likes of political economy. In other words, the pictures showed central and significant elements of life in the region, but they did not, by any means, show a fully informed viewpoint.

Too often, important work related to the Appalachian region focuses on the negative issues and questions we face, and rightfully so, but it rarely talks about the area in the context of larger and wider ranging issues of culture and class. Everyone has heard and likely laughed at the stereotypes of mountain culture, but those of us who know and love this place understand that there is a larger story to share, one that mirrors the American story in which people dream and work hard and succeed and build meaningful lives.

Amy Clark, who is also a product of these mountains, has recently published a book that speaks to this larger story. She is the author of Success in Hill Country, and I had the good fortune recently of meeting her and of hearing her speak about her book. I am thrilled that Amy has been gracious enough to allow me to interview her for my blog. Her answers to a number of my questions follow. Please make a point to visit Amy's website, to read her book, and to visit her own blog, The Gathering Place. Amy Clark is a native of Jonesville, Virginia in far southwestern Lee County, has been a columnist for the Bristol Herald Courier, is an award-winning writer, and is the founding director of the Appalachian Writing Project, which supports rural teachers in their research, writing, and teaching of writing. She teaches at the University of Virginia's College at Wise and makes her home in Big Stone Gap, Virginia.

I am so pleased and grateful that she has agreed to let me welcome her as a guest here.

ToFGT: Talk a bit about the book and your reasons for writing it. I am especially curious to know how you came up with your list of people to profile.

AC: The book idea came about several years ago when Don Green, the executive director of the Napoleon Hill Foundation, asked me if I would be interested in doing a book with the NHF. We talked about the idea of profiling successful people from central Appalachia, which is counter to mainstream media's definition of the region. We both made lists of people we wanted to include and the list narrowed after several conversations, as well as availability.

ToFGT: How is success defined for the purposes of your book? Does success have a different meaning or definition for people in the Appalachian region than for people in other parts of the country?

AC: I believe it does, but the book is probably governed more by Napoleon Hill's definition based on his seventeen principles. And while he uses words like "wealth" and "riches" he doesn't mean them in the literal sense. He says very clearly in his writing that wealth is a by-product of success. He believed that success comes in achieving individualized goals and feeling a sense of peace about what you're doing with your life. Most of the people profiled in the book have achieved wealth and/or fame at some point in their lives, but that was never their intended outcome. It was a natural extension of the work they did--work they love.

No one can say anything is certain for everyone in a particular group, but how someone defines success can be determined by their circumstances, and certainly in parts of Appalachia there are people with greater obstacles to overcome than others. Someone who may be striving to start a small business in a dwindling town, for example, or fighting for equality or clean water will define success differently than the person who doesn't face those kinds of challenges.

ToFGT: Do you think there are particular challenges and barriers to success for people in the region? Are these challenges different from anywhere else?

AC: I think central Appalachia in particular has come a long way in terms of breaking down barriers. Higher education is much more accessible for people in our particular part of the region; I'm thinking about Grundy's law schools and medical schools, for example. But everything comes with a price. I'm talking about the ever-present issue of change--when to acknowledge that change must happen and how to do it in a way that doesn't destroy what makes the region unique and beautiful. I recently heard Ron Eller, an Appalachian historian at the University of Kentucky, talk about the problems that come from trying to bring urban models to chiefly rural areas and why it won't work much of the time. He cited so many empty shells of strip malls that sit atop flattened mountains and problems with school consolidation in towns where the school is the community's anchor. I'm not saying that these kinds of changes are always negative, but I do think people jump too hastily into thinking that a new Wal-Mart or a bigger school is going to solve all their problems.

The point I'm making here is that to be from this region sometimes means understanding who you are in terms of your connection to it . . . figuring out your identity. And for those of us who embrace an Appalachian identity (one that is directly tied to place and for me, the mountains) any kind of change that erases culture and presents new problems is troubling.

ToFGT: Were there particular keys or reasons for success that were cited consistently over the course of your conversations with different people? In other words, is there something distinctive about the culture of the region and of the mountains that contributed to the success of a number of the people in your book?

AC: That was one of the questions I had going into this book. For most of the people I interviewed, the answer came down to particular values, stories and dialects passed down like heirlooms and a strong work ethic.

ToFGT: Along the same lines, do you see the region overall as somehow distinct and different from other parts of America? If so, how? I personally sometimes have a hard time reconciling my disdain for the negative stereotypes about Appalachia with the fact that I do believe there are particular characteristics about mountain culture that set it apart.

AC: I absolutely see our region as distinct. Our mountains, for example, are the oldest in the United States and our culture has arisen as a result of the customs and ways of life brought by those who migrated here and rose to the challenge of living a rural mountain life. Our dialects are distinctive, with artifacts that date back to the Middle Ages. (We do share some dialect features with other parts of the country, but we still have distinctive speech patterns that mark us as being from these mountains.) Everything that makes our culture what it is--our music, foods, traditions--arises from something that no other part of the country can claim. And I think this age of sweeping standardization and sameness threatens that. I understand that we have to be forward-thinking in the wake of changing technologies and economies and so forth, but that doesn't mean we have to strive to look like or develop suburbs to survive.

ToFGT: Many people in the Appalachian region think that in order to achieve success they must leave the mountains. What is your response to that and what would you say to someone who thinks they cannot carve out a productive and successful life here in the region?

AC: It depends on what you want to do in life. If you want to be a foreign diplomat, then yes, you'll have to leave the region. If someone says they cannot be productive or successful in general, I believe they're focusing on empty storefronts, the unemployment rate, their cousin with the drug addiction. But if you travel enough or even live away from the region for a while you realize those same issues are everywhere in this country. You can't escape them; you just learn to be a part of the solution in your own region and community and build from there.

ToFGT: Who are your own heroes and inspirations from the region and why? What about favorite regional and Appalachian writers?

AC: I see a hero in every person who fights for justice in Appalachia, which continues to be exploited. It's so hard--particularly in small communities where everybody's families have known each other for generations--to fight for what you believe if it goes against popular opinion. I'm inspired by the writers, musicians, and artists of all kinds who keep our culture alive in their work. I see heroes in my own family--my parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles--who have worked so hard all their lives to have what they have, who taught me not to make excuses or complain but just put my head down and move forward.

So many people say this and I'm going to be one more: Lee Smith was the first Appalachian writer who really made me proud of my heritage. Since then, I've enjoyed getting to know many others through workshops and conferences. In terms of craft, right now I think Ron Rash is one of the best writers out there.

ToFGT: It is always a pleasure to meet and hear from a published author. Do you have advice or tips for any budding writers? What are the challenges you have faced in becoming a published author?

AC: As tempting as it is, don't isolate yourself. Not everyone is a fan of writer's groups, but at least get involved in writing workshops or festivals where you'll find a community of people who are like-minded. It's especially hard to write when you are only surrounded by people who don't understand why you love it or what it takes to complete a piece of work.

Two of my favorite events are the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival at Lincoln Memorial University (founded by Appalachian author Silas House, a wonderful writer who works hard for Appalachian people) and the Appalachian Writer's Workshop at Hindman Settlement School in Kentucky. Lee Smith encouraged me to get involved there and it made a big difference in my confidence and craft. You also meet people with connections who can help with publication.

ToFGT: Please also share a bit about your upcoming book, Talking Appalachian. Your website also says you are working on a young adult novel. Will we see it coming out soon as well?

AC: Talking Appalachian is a book I co-authored and co-edited with Nancy Hayward, my mentor from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. It's going to be the only book out there that blends sociolinguistic research with essay, fiction and poetry about Appalachian dialects. For me, the book is a response to every misinformed person who talks about our dialects as examples of bad or incorrect English. The articles have been written by people who are the most recognized in the fields of sociolinguistics and Appalachian literature, and we've worked hard to make it readable and approachable for everyone, no matter what line of work you're in or where you're from. I hope it answers questions and challenges assumptions about the mountain speech and encourages people not to change their dialects but use them to teach others about Appalachian culture.

The novel is a work in progress, so it won't be coming out anytime soon. I have two small children, so I have to write early in the morning or late at night. And I've learned to write for writing's sake and not be driven by the hope of publication. I learn so much in the act of writing, about myself, about whatever I'm researching, and about the craft, so I can honestly say I'm simply enjoying the process.

ORDINARY

As much as I love books, I am a voracious reader of nearly anything and everything within reach. I sometimes cannot help myself, though I have gotten better about avoiding the germ riddled magazines in doctors' offices. And, I still believe in newspapers. I grew up in a house that received a daily newspaper and, though I know it is a relatively small detail in the larger scheme of things, I think it made a difference. In part, it was the subtlety of it. No one told me I should read the newspaper; it was just there. So, I read it. My current local newspaper leaves much to be desired, but I cling to my subscription for both the news of local government and in hopes that our daughter will also take the same unspoken suggestion. I am finding more and more, however, that she defiantly refuses nearly everything I suggest she read, so I have resulted to simply hoping that the books and other readable materials lying around our house will someday, somehow strike her fancy. I will feign indifference, of course, while secretly sending out hopeful telepathic urgings of "Read it. Read it. You'll be better for it. Please."

My newspaper of choice is the New York Times. Forget, if you can for just a moment, what you think that says about me. The bottom line is there is simply no better newspaper for depth and breadth of coverage and for features that drill deeply into issues that would remain otherwise unconsidered. This week I read an article in the Times that stirred my mind and happens to strike me at a time when I am dealing with major decisions of a professional nature. The piece speaks both to issues I must confront with that decision and to issues that any parent should consider. By Alice Tugend, it is called Redefining Success and Celebrating the Ordinary and yes, I am telepathically sending you encouragement to read it.

What a concept, the idea that ordinary is completely acceptable and interesting, that every child does not have to be told that they are fantastically exceptional at every endeavor or that it is a waste of their time and effort if they are not. It is admittedly a difficult concept for Americans to wrap their minds around. Our culture is fixated on achieving and on besting everyone else. Do not get me wrong. I suffer from the same mindset, but I find a bit of common sense in Tugend's reminders to us that ordinary does not mean meaningless and that there is something to be said for a simple life of integrity. All this makes me think of the recent ballyhoo about the idea of "American exceptionalism." It is an idea I understand and appreciate completely. There is much to celebrate and to take pride in about America and the strive for exceptionalism is what has led our country to this place of global significance, political, economic, and otherwise. But, we are deceiving ourselves if we think we are or even should be masters of all that we survey, either as a country or as individuals.

We Americans are also deceived by a notion that ultimate success is reserved for the extroverted among us, those who are energized by constant engagement with the world and with other people. This is solidly refuted by Susan Cain in her book that I am currently reading, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking. Cain actually asserts that the words introvert and extrovert are misnomers in some sense, having taken upon connotations of negative and positive attributes. She gives compelling and physiological evidence for instead thinking of an introvert as someone who is highly sensitive to all manner of stimulation, light or sound, for instance. It is not that they are anti-social or reclusive; they simply appreciate a certain amount of time for solitude, and they also tend to function best and most creatively when given concentrated and focused time to work alone. The whole concept of working in teams or groups has changed the way schools organize classrooms and how corporations approach their own structure, workspaces and  project management. By citing numerous high level thinkers and innovators who have functioned this way, Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak, for instance, Cain makes the case that we are missing out on important contributions to our world by thinking of introversion only as a personality flaw that will hinder success. She asks us to rethink our reactions to introversion, realizing that it is a trait that is as powerful and as positive an attribute as we tend to think extroversion is.

Ordinary and introverted. Two things I am reconsidering myself of late.