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Archive for February, 2012|Monthly archive page

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Allen Mendenhall Interviews Julie Cantrell

In Arts & Letters, Book Reviews, Creative Writing, Fiction, Humanities, Literature, News and Current Events, Novels, Southern Literary Review, The South, Writing on February 29, 2012 at 6:10 am

Julie Cantrell was editor-in-chief of the Southern Literary Review.  She teaches English as a second language to elementary school students and is a freelance writer who has published two children’s books. Julie and her family run Valley House Farm in Mississippi.  Her first novel, Into the Free, was released by David C. Cook in 2012.

 

Julie, so glad to be doing this interview.  First of all, congratulations on the publication of Into the Free, which, at the moment, is number 23 on the Amazon Kindle bestseller list.  What does it feel like to have completed your first novel?

It’s amazing! The entire journey has been joyful for me, but to see it reach readers across the world is incredible. Having it become a bestseller is simply surreal. I admit I’m a bit numb watching it climb the charts, and I keep thinking it will end in a few minutes – a strange little bubble of joy that is about to pop. For that reason, I’ve been doing the happy dance nonstop and am just going to enjoy the fun while it lasts.

The main character of the book is Millie Reynolds.  How did you come up with Millie?  Did you know what she would be like—her personality, her attitudes, her struggles—before you started writing, or did she sort of come to you as you worked?

Well, to be honest, I never intended to write from a child’s point of view. I originally set out to write about the “Gypsy Queen,” but it just wasn’t the voice I heard. Then I saw a scene of a poor, depressed woman standing on a porch watching the Travelers leave town. She wanted to leave with them, but she was too afraid to take the first step. So I sat down to write her story, but it wasn’t her voice I heard either. Instead, Millie sat in her tree and told me her story. I know it sounds kooky, but I guess I just have a very vivid imagination. I’m happy to introduce Millie to readers, and I hope they love her as much as I do.

You once told me that you had two kids, four cows, three goats (two of which were then due with babies that you’d have to bottle feed), two dogs, two cats (one stray that arrived pregnant), a horse that likes a lot of attention, a flock of hens, a newly arrived carton of chicks, a husband, and a full-time job as a speech therapist.  How did you ever manage to finish writing Into the Free? 

It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? In fact, we’ve grown bigger since then! I still work in an elementary school, but now I teach English as a Second Language, so I was able to reduce my hours to part-time this year. With a full-time farm, a teaching job (which is never really part-time, as any teacher will tell you), two kids, a wonderful hubby, freelance gigs, and an active community life, we stay very busy. I usually write between the hours of 3 am and 5 am, when the rest of the world is sleeping. I just love it more than sleep.

Tell us a little about your choice of setting for the novel?

I am a southern girl, through and through. I spent my childhood in Louisiana before leaving the south after graduate school. I loved living in various states across the country, but our family relocated to Mississippi seven years ago, returning to our southern roots. I find this state incredibly rich with everything needed to whip up a story. I never considered setting it anywhere other than Mississippi. However, I like to mix things up a bit, so let’s see where the sequel takes us.

Any advice for aspiring novelists who might come across this interview?

Yes. I say, Go for it! If writing is what you love, be willing to make sacrifices to keep that in your life. Only you know what you were born to do, and only you know how to live the life that makes you happy. Life is short. Choose wisely.

Thank you, Julie.  This has been a great interview.  I’m thrilled to see the success of Into the Free, and I would encourage readers of this site to purchase a copy right away. 

Thank you, Allen. I am honored to be interviewed here on a site I have always loved. You’ve done a fabulous job with Southern Literary Review, and I know your readers all agree. Kudos!

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10 Literary Lawyers We Wish Were Real

In Arts & Letters, Fiction, Film, Humanities, Law, Law-and-Literature, Television, Wallace Stevens on February 22, 2012 at 8:10 am

Allen Mendenhall

A reader of this site has emailed me to point out a post at Criminaljusticedegreesguide.com.  The post, available here, is titled, “10 Literary Lawyers We Wish Were Real.”  Here’s the list:

1.  Atticus Finch

2.  Rudy Baylor

3.  Perry Mason

4.  Portia as Balthazar

5.  Joel Litvinoff

6.  Horace Rumpole

7.  The Man of Law

8.  Wallace Stevens (a strange selection indeed, since Stevens was real, but the author has put an interesting twist on Stevens)

9.  Henry Drummond

10.  Jake Brigance

Readers should view the article to see why the (unnamed) author believes that these figures “should be real.”

 

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On Ugliness

In Arts & Letters, Creative Writing, Essays, Writing on February 21, 2012 at 8:18 pm

Allen Mendenhall

The following essay originally appeared here at The Legendary (July 2010).

I am, at this writing, looking over a spider’s corpse, the little thing having spooked me into murder. It hurried across my papers at an alarming speed for so small a creature and then halted suddenly when I flinched and pushed my chair back from the desk. At this the miniature monster reared himself aloft, his front legs and chelicerae raised and ready for attack, his size strangely exaggerated. “This is ugly,” I gasped to no one in particular.

I’ve heard that spiders have thousands of eyes so it’s no wonder that the thing supposed me threatening. Heck, I was threatening, whether I was one or a thousand. I reached for my newspaper and, foregoing reflection, swatted the brittle beast over and over until its yellow guts, an oozy snot-like substance, spattered all over an otherwise unblemished copy of Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain. “Ugh,” I sighed, relieved and rubbing my sticky hands together, “that was ugly.”

Sometimes I short-circuit reflection, especially when, as then, an unusual thing startles me or otherwise makes me want to tell somebody something. What do I mean? I’m not sure exactly. I think I mean to say I’m a talker. It’s a terrible habit, this talking. And a nervous one too. Although Freud might disagree, today’s psychologists suggest that babble is a sign of egomania or a warped sense of prerogative. Folks back home simply refer to this as “diarrhea of the mouth.”

What a yucky, demented feeling I get when at dinner parties people glance around the room while I’m talking to them. They’re hoping, I know, that somebody will pass by and relieve them of their duties. “Oh, say, have you met Jonathan?” they’ll interject, grabbing poor Jonathan by the arm and stationing him in front of me. “Jonathan also went to law school. Y’all have something in common.”

I might have been relating the story of my religious conversion or of my struggle with cancer but my now-retreating listener wouldn’t even know. Why? Because I’ve chattered him out of caring. Now I’m standing there staring at an obviously uncomfortable Jonathan whose eyes scan the room for the nearest and next substitute. He seems ugly to me, and I to him. Read the rest of this entry »

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Bogus on Buckley

In America, American History, Arts & Letters, Book Reviews, Communism, Conservatism, Historicism, History, Humanities, Libertarianism, Politics, Writing on February 9, 2012 at 8:34 am

Allen Mendenhall

It was customary practice in my family to gather at my grandparents’ house for Sunday dinner after church.  Loyal to our Southern traditions, we would, after eating, divide company: men into the living room, women into the kitchen or den.  My brother and I, still children, would sit silently, for the most part, while my grandfather, father and uncles bandied about the names of politicians and discussed the day’s sermon or newspaper headlines. 

I first learned of William F. Buckley Jr. during these Sunday afternoons, as he was often the topic of conversation.  I was too young to know much, but young enough to learn a lot quickly, so I began to follow this man, this Buckley, to the extent that I could, from those days until the day that he died in February 2008.  

Overcommitted to supposedly universal political ideals and to the spread of American liberal democracy throughout the world, Buckley was not my kind of conservative.  He could be tactless and cruel, as when he violated the ancient maxim de mortuis nil nisi bonum (“Of the dead, speak no evil”) in an obituary to Murray Rothbard wherein he wrote that “Rothbard had defective judgment” and “couldn’t handle moral priorities.”  Buckley then trumpeted some unflattering anecdotes about Rothbard before likening Rothbard to David Koresh. 

Despite such tantrums and vendettas, I always liked Buckley.  Something in the way he conducted himself—his showy decorum, flaunted manners and sophisticated rhetoric—appealed to me.

Carl T. Bogus, an American law professor and author of the biography Buckley, seems to share my qualified respect for Buckley, despite disagreeing with Buckley on important political and theoretical issues.  “I should tell the reader up front,” Bogus warns, “that I am a liberal and thus critical—in some instances, highly critical—of Buckley’s ideology.”  Yet, adds Bogus, “I admire William F. Buckley Jr. enormously.”     

Unlike bobble-headed television personalities and think tank sycophants, Bogus does justice to his subject, treating Buckley’s ideas evenhandedly on the grounds that he (Bogus) is “disheartened by the present state of partisan animosity,” one solution to which, he says, “is to take opposing ideas seriously.”  Bogus not only takes Buckley’s ideas seriously, but credits them for changing America’s political realities.    Read the rest of this entry »