Brit Graham

Complacency, she’s a tricky beast. She sneaks. She is like the speckled frog plopped into the dark teakettle set to boil. She lies and she waits, she lulls you into an uncertain sense of security. She makes you feel good. She is my enemy to productivity. We don’t realize how comfortable we become sitting on our overstuffed purple couches, fuzzy Jack-Skellington-socked feet propped up on our lime green ottomans with cinnamon spiced tea in our favorite chipped mugs. We hardly feel her quadrupled-jointed fingers hooking themselves around our writing and jerking us left and then down.

I cannot say what, precisely, untethers me from my coma-like stupor. It always seems to accompany travel, like an errant stowaway tucked into the tiniest corner of luggage. There is no other perspective like the type belonging to open sky, cities crippled in her wake. Displacement. The sort shakes the mind’s closet, rattles those dust-riddled thoughts loose.

You see, the muse, she gets bored, tired of the same old hat. She needs to go on a walk-about every now and again. No matter how much I read, or have that feeling in the pit of my gut about something brewing, something maturing, something is going on writing wise that which my conscious is not privy. And then she has to run amok for a few days before she parts those white filmy curtains and says, look here.

It’s like those burbling basaltic hot spots in the pacific. They move, flit along a course, for the most part we are unable to see. A path of destruction, a path of new life. There is always a burst of written work whenever the scenery shifts slantwise. It pours out, not always glistening, not always clear. But the root of something fresh is always buried beneath. The best thing of all, is the consistent change. The ever shifting place, that stays rooted just where it has always been.

My creative thesis consisted of so much nautical imagery, that I started to believe I was destined for the coast. This was the result of a two month stint of South Floridian living. Currently I reside in the landlocked state of South Dakota, where it’s negative ten before the wind chill, the streets are littered with ice and what are attempting to be slush piles, are in fact not slush piles because they’ve not been given the opportunity to slush thoroughly. I fell in love with her in the summer. South Dakota has more lakes and sloughs than one would anticipate, and the sky should be considered a celestial body itself. The stars breed in the sky like rabbits out here, overhead so thick it looks more like salt and pepper than a black abyss pinpricked with careless constellations and light.

More and more I find myself writing in attempts to unearth answers, to widen my perception of a thing deemed impossible to decipher. Scrawling it out on a napkin at the local Irish pub, or etching it along lined pages tucked in the coffee shop across the street, writing enables me to flush out every angle, every shadowed nook and cranny, and it brings about the gift of reflection and time. It slows down the thought process enough so that one can fully observe the layered surroundings, the issues at hand, the people connected to it all. To put it simply, it seems as if suddenly and inconsequentially there is so much to write about.

Living as a hermit in South Dakota, partly due to the cold, mostly due to the gray permeating even one’s good socks, it’s easy to lose a self in one’s self. It’s easy to forget about the rest of the world. And with no less than a cattle prod-like insistence shoving me out my 70s orange door I’ve come to beautiful south Florida. A witness to its glory of crumbling asphalt bleached and cracked gray, and the aged blood-tinged rust that seems to underlie ever metal thing in the area. And I have found a solution to my problem, and perhaps I’ve identified a problem for you, and unearthed just one possible solution.

For now Brit Graham traverses the tundra that is South Dakota, while tripping over things while stargazing in the all too brief summer months. She is the crux of an ongoing love affair between the Pacific and Atlantic. She managed to pry an MFA in Poetry from the grasp of Converse College. You can read her poetry things in publications like Devilfish Review, The Night Owl, RealSouth Magazine, and The OWL.

Interview by Eric Wallace

In early 2007, associate professor and official overseer of Lynchburg College’s department of graduate studies in English, Casey Clabough, made what he has categorized as a bizarre and high risk gamble. Fascinated—perhaps even obsessed!—with the migration of his ancestors (a troupe of hardy Germanic pioneers who, swearing off the domesticity of Virginia’s tidewater region, cut out for the Smoky Mountains in the late 1700s), Clabough decided to follow in their footsteps, to seek out—if there was such a thing to be found—the “spiritual resonances” of their 500-plus-mile trek through the ancient, mythic hills of Appalachia.

What follows is a discussion inspired by The Warrior’s Path, the hybridized travelogue x memoir x historical exegesis Clabough penned about that adventure.

I entered the world in Richmond, VA but my family moved to Appomattox when I was very young and I grew up there, which is largely what my recent memoir, SCHOOLED, is about. My mother was a research scientist—one of the few women in the field then—at MCV, but she wanted me raised away from there. Incidentally, I think my best piece of prose writing to date—“The Skeleton Woman”—is about she and I. However, the dominant cultural influence in my family came from my father’s people, who had lived in the Smoky Mountains for nearly two centuries. They were displaced to a Virginia farm when the park was created and so I grew up surrounded by Appalachian culture in piedmont Virginia, close to the Blue Ridge but still piedmont southern. To sum up, the country South of Appomattox didn’t seem alien to most of what my Smokies kin talked about, although there were some major differences.  Obviously, I have a farm now in Appomattox, but the mountains still call to me and I’ve spent a lot of time in them—I feel most at home among mountains. As far as belonging, I don’t think I really belong anywhere, so I try to make the best of wherever I happen to find myself. I’m one of those people who doesn’t romanticize places since life remains life wherever one goes.

In an interview with Oxford American, you described yourself as an obscure writer whose work would probably be more-or-less forgotten after you died. In that same segment, you stated you had something of an epiphany that led you to accepting/adapting this mentality. Could you elaborate?

Well, I don’t know that there’s anything very profound about it, although I do know writers who maintain that is their position but still network and operate their asses off at conferences and residencies [laughs]. I think the body of someone’s work tells the truth of the matter. Take my scholarly books, for example. I would have written them all about big, dominant canonical writers and used the theoretical flavors of the day if I had wanted to try to become a big-shot scholar. Right now I’m working on the October essay for the Hollins Critic. It’s entitled “The Best Appalachian Writer You Likely Never Heard Tell Of.” So, yes, I’m attracted to good writers who just do or did their thing. I’ve also found they’re the most useful writers to talk to since it’s all about the writing and topics like literary politics and gossip never seem to come up.

As a guy making a living in academia, how do you navigate that differential between scholar and artist? Is there any distinction for you between those two?

I think it harkens back to the last question. I am what I am and do what I do. In terms of myself, I don’t think about genre divisions or that there’s even a schism between teaching and writing—to me it’s all the same. But it does seem to surprise some people when I suddenly generate a biography or a novel or a creative writing textbook or a book of poems in another language. It’s like they’re thinking, “Wait, you’re supposed to be just a critic. Get back over there” [Laughs]. I mean, I’m not even just a writer; I have many other interests, passions, and avenues of expression, If various people choose to take the writings of Casey Clabough and the person behind that particular name as the same thing, then that’s their problem.

You’re a rather prolific writer. How do you move from the realms of inchoate idea, conceptualization, work-in-progress, to realized manuscript? What does that process look like for you?

At this point in my career it’s pretty much defined by the next publishing deadline: that’s the project I need to work on. I have to be very organized, too, due to my current lifestyle. I mean, winter doesn’t wait for your woodpile to get large enough; spring doesn’t wait on the plow; etc. And then there’s the academic schedule in which I love interacting with the students, but find many other time-consuming aspects distasteful or even pointless. But going back to your question, I guess my process is a big chaotic mess (notes scribbled in a meeting, some snatches of typing here and there) that I then have to organize. So I would say organization and discipline are key. I am proud of the fact that, in so far as I can recall, I’ve never missed a deadline.

You’ve said that in hopes of making it a more sellable thing, your publishers wanted you to commercialize The Warrior’s Path. Can you talk a bit about the line between making something more widely available and compromising the integrity of the work itself?

That may be an unanswerable question, since there are writers who can cut loose with what they take to be all their artistic chaos and the end result is perfect for a trade publisher. In other words, their product just happens to naturally resemble whatever is “hot” or considered good literary work at a given point in time. Other writers deliberately, even cynically, “chase the monster,” as it’s called, with the aid of their agent, editor, and writer friends. In the grand scheme of things, though, when you read literary history, you come across all kinds of now-canonical writers who published with small presses or even not at all. And then there are the names next to Pulitzer prizes that no one reads or even recognizes anymore. Here’s an example: Some writers I know consider Moby Dick the greatest American novel ever written, but if you read the initial reviews of that book you’ll find them quite mixed. And then consider Melville’s career: It was one long, slow downward slide. The early novels—not Moby Dick—sold best and then down went his sales until no publisher would have him. Not a coffin to be found in that whirlpool [Laughs].

The whole road-hiking trip that comprised / led to your writing The Warrior’s Path seemed, to me, an insane idea. How did you arrive at wanting to do that book?

It coalesced gradually. As I child I spent long hours alone in the woods and I also had a love of maps. One day, while looking at a county topography map, I discovered the same large creek that ran through my farm was also the small creek that I played in at a friend’s house some ten miles distant. So naturally I decided to follow the creek to my friend, but also discovered a great many things along the way. When I finally got to his house people kind of freaked out. Did your mom drop you off? How did you get here without a car or a road? I still have an image in my head of my buddy’s panicked mom running to the phone [Laughs].

Anyway, with that book, I already knew I had the physical ability to accomplish the goal, barring an accident—and I did underestimate the danger. And then there were the spiritual and intellectual catalysts: Following in my ancestors’ footsteps and comparing what I saw to 1700s accounts of the same places. So many people followed that route, I thought it would might be appealing to others to know something about it, then and now.

Was writing The Warrior’s Path in any way cathartic for you? Do you think making the journey changed you in anyway? Has it (the trip, those reflections and thoughts) stuck with you? Do you ever think about it now, in the present? I think what I’m wanting to know is if this was just an open/close art/scholarly project or one of those I’m-driven-to-and-have-to-do-this kind of somethings that really fundamentally alters who/what you are as a human-being.

I think the answer to those first two questions is in the affirmative and then negative for the next two. For one thing, I’ve kept on writing and thus lived in different worlds, real and imagined, as vividly as when I wrote about the summer I hiked Athowominee. And then there’s the ever-present world of the real: I had a serious bout with illness a few years ago that nearly killed me. So I had to get self-recalibrated, so to speak. And then various things, good and bad, many of us go through. Anyway, no, I don’t think about that book very much, though I have been working on a sequel of sorts: It follows the life of one of my Smoky Mountain relatives—a great uncle. He interacted with bootleggers and the Overhill Cherokee, fought in World War I, and lost his land to the park. He lost the world as he knew it and, I also believe, himself. That happens to people, you know.

On top of all the other engagements and responsibilities you maintain, you live on, and run, a farm. Why?

Farming, at least to this point, has been synonymous with being. I cursed it as a child when my father would wake me before light from downstairs with lines of Smoky Mountain spang and I’d have to get up to do chores before school. At one point I swore it off in all earnestness. But then I found in college and graduate school that I really missed it. I think different people have their different connections. I’ve had urban-based house guests who have been so genuinely disturbed by the lack of sound and artificial light on my farm that they couldn’t sleep. One might argue their connection to their environment is equally strong and formative, even though it is much more shaped by human influence. I mean, my city instincts are terrible: I get lost easily, move at the wrong times in lines, etc. So I don’t know.

At various points you’ve talked about trying to help students, sometimes to your detriment. You wrote a book about teaching, and I was wondering if you might share a couple of stories, horrific and successful alike?

Well, I guess I’d say read SCHOOLED if you’re interested in that dynamic. I will say I don’t help people in the academic arena as much as I used to since it is so easy for a helpful intention to get misinterpreted or intentionally twisted by malicious people into something bad. So these days I prefer more community-based forms of help, whether it’s doing a free workshop at a library or using the chainsaw to help people clean up after a storm. I do still read lots of manuscripts folks send me, both those of friends and people I don’t know.

I’m sort of into tracing literary heritage. Could you name me a list of, say, your top-ten most beloved books and authors? The game-changers in both your literary world, and your life.

How about this instead: My forthcoming Hollins Critic essay is about a writer named Naton Leslie. I think everyone should read his book of short stories, Marconi’s Dream. It won the George Garrett Fiction Prize after being rejected by nearly a hundred publishers. It’s out of print now and no one ever bothered to review it. It’s a good book.

About the Author

Casey Clabough is the author of the novel Confederado, the travel memoir The Warrior’s Path: Reflections Along an Ancient Route, the memoir SCHOOLED: Life Lessons of a Professor, a biography of legendary southern writer George Garrett, five scholarly books on southern and Appalachian literature, an edited collection of women’s Civil War writing, and a creative writing textbook. His work has appeared in over a hundred anthologies and magazines, including Creative Nonfiction, the Sewanee Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and the Fall 2012 issue of South85 Journal. Clabough’s awards include the Bangladesh International Literary Award, an artist’s fellowship from the Brazilian Government, and several U.S.-based fellowships. He lives on a farm in Appomattox County, Virginia and teaches at Lynchburg College.

About the Interviewer

Eric J. Wallace is a freelance writer based out of Staunton, Virginia. His work has been featured in The Atlantic Monthly, All About Beer Magazine, Canoe & Kayak, Post Road Literary Journal, and he is a regular contributor to Blue Ridge Outdoors. For more info., select publication history, newsletters, and inquiries, visit www.ericjwallace.com.

Photo Credits: Annie Laura, 621studios.com.

Jeffrey R. Schrecongost

I was assembling my ENGL 112 course syllabus the other day, and, in reviewing Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” I was reminded that an argument for Bartleby as antiestablishment hero is not indefensible. The harmless, if not initially loveable, chap is curiously comedic in his hell-bent defiance and awkward introversion and can ultimately be viewed as a martyr for individuality. Conversely, an interpretation of Bartleby as individual-to-a-fault can be successfully supported as well.

Bartleby’s refusal to exist productively within society is neither admirably rebellious nor practical. By ‘preferring’ to do nothing, Bartleby makes no statement of consequence, advances no cause, and effects no societal change. Indeed, Bartleby’s lone achievement is dying a disconsolate, friendless death on his own terms. Honor in that particular venture is elusive at best.

After close consideration of both possible interpretations, one must conclude that Bartleby’s efforts to live his life based on personal preference alone results not in hedonistic bliss and spiritual enlightenment, but, rather, aborted dreams and retarded potential.

The “pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn” Bartleby is the quintessential social outcast by choice. Aloof, with nothing “ordinarily human about him,” Bartleby charms the reader with his idiosyncrasies. His famously repeated response, “‘I would prefer not to,’” is an expression of personal freedom many readers wish they had the fortitude to express themselves.

This is why we cheer Bartleby on as he continues to refuse to work. He acts according to his choices. This is appealing, for most of us possess a deep psychological desire to be completely free and to live strictly by our personally defined norms and laws. By ignoring the norms of his society, by challenging the authority of ‘the man,’ Bartleby is an underdog, a radical, a martyr. But is his cause worth his sacrifice?

An opposing interpretation suggests Bartleby’s is a misguided conception of individual freedom that, when acted upon with zeal, results in “miserable friendlessness and loneliness […] [and] solitude” and a senselessly squandered capacity for personal growth. Bartleby’s image as proto-hippie hero tarnishes as his lack of self-discipline becomes more apparent. Initially pitiful, he becomes repulsive. His insistence upon alienating himself from would-be comrades leads both the narrator and the reader to accept Bartleby’s soul as one that cannot be reached.

Why is Bartleby’s soul unreachable? Because he has subscribed to the notion that being “a man of preferences [rather] than assumptions” is somehow desirable. He has, at some debatable point in his life, determined that egomania and self-imposed exile from society are ‘preferred’ conditions. His ‘conscientious’ decision to remain in the office building is absurd in its futility. When his death finally comes, it means nothing to anyone save for the narrator (though the narrator’s reliability can be challenged – itself a topic worthy of future exploration). Bartleby is not a champion of individuality. He is merely an “intolerable incubus” wallowing in a cesspool of effete self-pity. Bartleby says, “‘I know where I am.’” Indeed. I suppose one must at least acknowledge his honesty.

Thoreauvian philosophy holds that enlightenment and personal fulfillment can be achieved via the marriage of individual freedom and moral responsibility. Melville’s Bartleby, by denouncing sociocultural integration, by being an individual stubbornly defiant and self-destructive to the end, and, thus, ignoring his own moral responsibilities, is guilty of perhaps the greatest crime of all: a wasted life. Indeed, his is the fate of a dead letter in reverse: the flame of promise extinguished.

Jeffrey R. Schrecongost received his M.F.A. from Converse College and currently teaches English at Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana and Spartanburg Community College. His fiction has appeared in Blood Lotus, BlazeVOX, and Gadfly. He lives in Muncie, IN, with his loyal Golden Retriever, Molly.

Our Fall / Winter 2014 issue is up and ready for viewing!

Creative Work

We are pleased to present work by the following contributors:

• Artwork – Eleanor Leonne Bennett
• Fiction – Jonathan Danielson, Rachel Moore, Frank Scozzari
• Non-Fiction – Matt Muilenburg, Sam Slaughter, Richard Tillinghast
• Poetry – Trish Falin, Ann Herlong-Bodman, Amaris Feland Ketcham, Daniel James Sundahl, Pia Taavila-Borsheim, Allison Thorpe, Donald C. Welch III

Reviews

Wondering what to read over the holiday?  Check out our reviews of these books:

•  Where You Can Find Me by Sheri Joseph (Fiction)
•  Margaret Fuller by Megan Marshall (Non-Fiction)
•  Postage Due by Julie Marie Wade (Poetry)
•  We Come Elemental by Tamiko Beyer (Poetry)

Special Thanks

South85 Journal is published by the Converse College Low-Residency MFA program.  Thank you to our staff of volunteers who put countless hours into making this issue happen.  We hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as we enjoyed putting it together!

Jim Ross

I was recently in the audience of three successful authors from my alma mater. The first went to grad school in architecture, ended up becoming editor in chief responsible for selling the brand for of a major national publication, and recently became Chancellor at a University. The second dabbled in short stories, planned to author his first novel, but then won a fellowship in screenplay writing, so instead he wrote his first screenplay. He turned that into a successful film, and he now teaches screenplay writing at a major university and is in demand in Hollywood. The third was a failed stockbroker who was never able to figure out Wall Street’s formula. So, he decided instead to analyze his favorite thriller novels to figure out the formula underpinning them, began writing his own thriller novels, and has published ten, including a few best sellers.

When it was time for the Q&A, I ran to the microphone to be the first of several to ask, “How do I get published?” I explained I’d had a successful career based on the ability to get research projects funded and professional articles published, but I needed an alternative plan to submitting articles scattershot to many of the hundreds of literary journals across the country run largely by MFA students. Isn’t there a better way?

The Chancellor said to convene focus groups of my target audience.

The short story writer who morphed into a screenplay writer said he thought I should stick with my plan. “That’s what I did, and so did my idol, George Stephens. You need to pay your dues. But you also should go to conferences and join a writer’s group so you can meet people who are trying to do things like what you’re trying to do so you can get ideas from each other.”

Looking bored, the thriller writer said, “Talk to my agent.”

At the reception afterwards, I cornered the Chancellor, and told him his answer made no sense for my situation.  I’m sure focus groups helped him better understand his audience as editor of a major magazine; for me to accomplish the same result, I’d have to conduct focus groups of journal reviewers.

He agreed and said, “What I should have said was, you learned in your career that you rarely got anything funded when the client didn’t already want to fund you before you wrote your proposal. That’s where you want to end up with your writing. Focus on making connections. Network. Get to know people so they want you and you don’t have to run after them.”

The publisher of a major university press was listening to our conversation. “I can tell you want you need to do. Everything you did your entire career. This is no different. You’re wasting your time with the hundreds of little lit magazines. It’s okay to send things to them, and to publish in them, but that can’t be your main focus. If you really want to get published in major journals, you need to show up in places where you can see and be seen and get to know how to get access.” Then he handed me his business card.

Nearly everyone else in the audience asked pretty much the same question, but they were all in the third decade of life, and I’m in my seventh. They got answers like, “Go home, move back in with your parents, and write screenplays in your bedroom.”

My takeaway was, I need to get out from behind the computer and go to more events, across town or across the country. I need to find a writer’s group focused on creative non-fiction. At the right moments, I need to be bold and walk up to the editor of a major magazine and say, “Can you read this?” as I did a couple years back, with a positive outcome. I need to create moments of connection and access.

In the meantime, I will continue following a systematic approach in submitting articles to the hundreds of literary journals out there just waiting to reject my stuff. Until people know me and are asking me to write a piece for them, trying to get published is just going to be a numbers game.

Jim Ross is on quest to resuscitate his long-neglected right brain. He spent his career of successfully overusing his left brain to publish in professional research and practitioner journals related to health. His hope is that, by doing things he loved in his 20s, like writing creatively, his right brain will start functioning again. As a result, he’s gotten several articles published in a variety of journals in the past three years.

Kathleen Nalley

You wrote. You edited. You rewrote. You submitted your manuscript. Finally, the acceptance letter arrived. You celebrated. You high-fived. You fist-bumped. Then, reality hit. You now must promote your work. Before you retreat under your bed in terror, before you have an anxiety attack over the awkwardness of writing and talking about yourself in third person, check out these 20 steps for easing your transition from introverted writer to marketing maniac.

1. Forget that fear is primal. Forget that even the wild, magnificent cheetah is vulnerable to fear. In fact, cheetahs face competition with other cheetahs every day, as well as predation from larger animals and persecution by mankind.
2. Compose a press release about your work. Include nice graphics. Be sure to include contact information.
3. Remember that you are as magnificent as the cheetah. You type fast. You write furiously.
4. Send the press release to local media. Be sure to look up specific names of contacts and address them personally.
5. Embrace your spots, although they may offend some and turn off others. Some folks like plain cats, and you can’t change that.
6. Send an email to every close contact announcing your new work.
7. Keep telling yourself that change can happen.
8. Post your news on Facebook and Twitter.
9. Do not equate your self-worth to the promotion process. Keep a healthy distance when you write about yourself in third person. Don’t let you get in the way of you. Or her.
10. Made a video interpretation of your work using animoto or some other free video creation service. People like pictures.
11. Tell yourself everything’s going to be okay.
12. Share photos of your cover design on Instagram. Remind yourself constantly that people like pictures.
13. Chant, “I can write solely for my own sake!” 20 times while looking in the mirror.
14. Create business cards and — big step alert! — actually list “writer” after your name.
15. If you’re feeling low, change something up. Leave the computer for a while. Get a haircut. Haircuts always make you feel better.
16. Chant, “I don’t need anyone’s approval. I’m a freaking cheetah! And I have great hair!”
17. Prepare your freezer with three tubs of Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream. Cherry Garcia™ and That’s My Jam™ soothe the savage beast.
18. Call local bookstores to book future readings.
19. Pat yourself on the back for putting yourself out there. It takes guts to do what you do. And it really takes guts to promote it.
20. Remember, like the cheetah, every facet of your anatomy has evolved: to ward off, to emerge, to fight. You got this.

Kathleen Nalley has been hustling to pre-sell her latest collection of poems, American Sycamore, from Finishing Line Press, before the November 28 deadline. #20 above features a line from the title poem of the collection (subtle, huh?). She is the author of Nesting Doll, winner of the S.C. Poetry Initiative Prize, has published in various journals, and was recently featured in The Bitter Southerner. She has an MFA from Converse College. No surprise: she wants you to reserve your copy of American Sycamore by visiting finishinglinepress.com, clicking on the “Preorder Forthcoming Titles” tab on the right, and scrolling down until you see American Sycamore.