The September 15, 2022 episode of the new podcast “27 Views of Chapel Hill” features an interview with me and readings from my short story, Muslims in the Cul-de-sac, which originally was published in the collection Love is Like Water and was republished in the anthology 27 Views of Chapel Hill.
On Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify and here: http://www.enopublishers.org/27-views
Remembering Michael Malone: in spite, or perhaps because, of his acclaimed success as a novelist and screenwriter, he was the easiest and least ego-invested of writers to edit, as I can testify as the editor for his essays in both Mothers and Strangers and the South Writ Large Anthology. As I quoted in the Acknowledgments to Mothers and Strangers, Michael called me a “horse whisperer for writers,” but that was just typical of his generosity; no one was less in need of a whisperer than Michael Malone. He shone equally as a reader. Here he is reading from his essay in the book, nearly a year ago, on September 20, 2021.
I’m especially proud of our newest issue of South Writ Large Magazine, of which I am one of four editor/founders. It features, among other articles, one I curated: the synergy of an exceptional essay by Jill McCorkle and splendid photographs by Tom Rankin.
When I was reading these classics, however, was in the sixties, the decade of Nasser’s pro-Soviet years, and I disassociated the Russians in the books from the real live Russians who roamed the streets of Cairo, representating as they did the “Socialist” system in the name of which my family had been stripped of its estates and possessions. But my own bias apart, in general they were not liked by Egyptians of all classes. I remember one afternoon coming upon our maid standing behind the window watching a young Russian across the street sitting on his balcony under the broiling summer sun, stripped to the waist, his skin strawberry-red and peeling, sweating and fanning himself with a newspaper.
“Doesn’t he have enough sense to get out of the sun at midday?” She shook her head. “Someone should warn him. He’s some mother’s son, after all, even if he’s Russian.” Then she sighed and drew the shutters closed. No one regretted the Russians when Sadat booted them unceremoniously out in the early seventies.
Later I read Turgenev and Chekhov, but only dipped in and out of Tolstoy. I have yet to finish War and Peace.
Now though, rereading Turgenev, I am struck by turns of expression that did not arrest my thought before. For instance, a landowner’s estate was not expressed in terms of acreage, but by the number of “souls” he owned, that is serfs. One book I found invaluable in putting Russian literature of the 19th century in context is Amanda Brickell Bellows’s American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post Emancipation Imagination. She highlights the progressive landlords like Turgenev, but also the apologists for serfdom, as evidenced in the fictional and artistic representations of the period. As she pointed out to me—Amanda is a friend and fellow editor—when I mentioned the reference to “souls”, in the American context the word “souls” could not have been used for enslaved people as their possession of souls was controversial. Truly fascinating.
Variety is the spice of reading: always keep several books going at once, depending on one’s mood. Two authored by friends: Maureen Quilligan’s history of Renaissance queens and Redge Hanes’s novel of human trafficking. Turgenev, because a classic is always worth revisiting. And a contemporary French novelist, Nelly Alard, because variety…
The alleged motive for Shinzo Abe’s assassination and the Potala Palace, the legendary winter palace of the Dalai Lamas in Lhasa, Tibet. What’s the connection? Bear with me. Ten years or so ago, I visited Tibet, and climbed to the top of the Potala Palace, taking two hours to climb the thousand steps to the top and twenty minutes to walk down—it’s that steep. Our guide throughout our stay in Tibet, a young native Tibetan, was, like all his ethnic countrymen, resentful of the Han Chinese who dominated the economy and looked down on the native population. But surprisingly, he did not attribute the backwardness of the region solely to the Chinese government’s promotion of the Han majority over the Tibetan minority. He attributed it partly to the legendary spirituality of the Tibetan Buddhists, so admired and exoticized by the West, that led them to donate their earthly wealth to the temple rather than focus on the education and advancement of their people. His own mother, according to our young guide, gave whatever she was able to save to buy gold leaf to gild the statues of the temple, while he and his siblings went without.
Fast forward to three days ago, when a gunman shot down Shinzo Abe, the former Japanese Prime Minister, because, he alleged, Abe had ties to a particular sect, the Unification Church, to which the assassin’s mother had belonged and given donations and went bankrupt. This motive initially seemed far fetched to me but then I remembered our young Tibetan guide and his resentment of his mother’s devotion to her temple at the expense of the future of her children.
It’s exciting indeed to see our South Writ Large Anthology finally in print and on bookshelves wherever books are sold! Twenty-six splendid pieces selected to represent the hundreds of essays and art contributed by well over a hundred writers and artists featured over eleven years of quarterly publishing. Lavishly illustrated, it includes an Introduction by novelist Michael Malone. It has been seven years in the making, a labor of love on the part of all concerned, from contributors to editors, and all proceeds go to benefit the UNC Center for the Study of the American South. Our launch date is May 18th at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill. In addition to two of the anthology editors, Robin Muira and myself, several of the contributors will be reading excerpts from their pieces in the anthology, including NYT best-selling novelist Jill McCorkle and legendary Southern Cooking Chef and cookbook author Bill Smith. If you’re anywhere in the vicinity, as they say here in the South, y’all come on down!
Druscilla French’s Divining Women, the most recent in her Wheel of the Year series, takes place at a time of year when the harsh Colorado winter begins almost imperceptibly to turn the corner to Spring. The extended family at the heart of the novel, related by blood or friendship or need, struggle separately and together with their own demons and challenges, from matriarch grandmother Cate to implacable justice-seeking lawyer Mattie to gifted, brave but often ignored granddaughter Chrysaor. This youngest is the emotional locus of the story, heartbreaking in her valiant efforts to hold the family together and carry burdens far beyond her years. In keeping with the wheel of the year theme, the ending, without give away too much, closes on a note of plenty, a presage of the Spring that follows the barrenness of Winter.
The writing is elegant and evocative throughout, and a palimpsest of sorts reminds the reader of the earlier two novels in the series, although this third book very much stands alone. By the time the last page is turned, the reader is left looking forward to following the fortunes of the family in the next book in the series.
Review
“In Marse: A Psychological Portrait of the Southern Slave Master, H.D. Kirkpatrick brings his near forty years of forensic psychology practice to bear on a highly disturbing but fascinating topic, the legacy of which, although reaching back to the 17thC, still plagues us today. Kirkpatrick dissects a mindset that could encompass referring to enslaved dependents as “family,” and yet sell members of that “family” for profit or punishment, cruelly separating them from their real family, their parents or spouses. Perhaps hardest for some of us to imagine today is that a slaveholder might make slaves of his own flesh and blood, the children he fathers on an enslaved woman. And yet, these acts, unimaginable, indefensible and inexcusable as they seem to us today, routinely took place, for centuries. How did “Marse” justify them to himself and to the planter class to which he belonged? For Kirkpatrick, who discovered as recently as 2014 that some of his own ancestors were slaveholders, the answers are essential. Marse is a necessary book, dense, meticulously researched, sourced, annotated and illustrated. It makes for compelling reading. Highly recommended.”
