Honest-to-By-God Writin'

Bryan said he's loan me his copy of The Prince of Frogtown when I get to Minneapolis Sunday. I meant to take him up on it. I meant to wait. I did. But Bragg's words called to me, whispered from the aisles of B&N so loud, I couldn't do anything but follow them to the cash register like the cat followed the snake charmer's flute music in the old Tom and Jerry cartoons.

In my own defense, let me say that I need to own this book. For me, a Bragg book is like a how-to manual. When my own writing gets stuck or I lose the voice in my head, anything the man has written will jump start me. His people choked on cotton dust in mills, mine on coal dust in mines, but love for them and their history is a cable that transfers energy from his work to mine.

Bragg is a master of the specific, and so his stories are universal. My daddy did not drink and never got so much as a traffic ticket that I remember growing up, but Bragg's stories of his father on a chain gang rattle inside my bones until I can feel the town's eyes burn his back worse than the Alabama summer sun. When he lists the toys lost between the cushions of a sofa, my own children dance behind my eyes, playing with those same silly things. And when he writes of his fear for a boy too soft for the world he knows, my own fears bobble in my blood, tiny icebergs calving from an ancient glacier.

Anyone can describe a brother as driving like a little old lady. Bragg says of his brother's driving, "...most people who drive like him are wearing pillbox hats and pearls." Describing the last year his father lived with them, he says, "It was the year I realized TV preachers' rants on hell were all wrong, that the devil lives in Alabama, and swims in a Mason jar."

Maybe you need to have known people who drank from Mason jars to properly appreciate that sentence, but I did and I do.

Yes, I loved The Prince of Frogtown. Bragg's reporting is slightly less transparent than in previous books, but he was constructing his father's story almost entirely from the memories of others. And after a few chapters, I did scout all the way to the end, reading every one of The Boy stories before going back to read straight through. But those are minor quibbles.

When I first read All Over But the Shoutin I could no longer tell anyone I was a writer, even though that was my official job title at the time. It just didn't seem right to use the same word to describe Bragg and me. It feels different now, though. Reading The Prince of Frogtown sends me back to the stories of my own family with new eyes. It makes me promise myself to write every day, to learn more, to get better. I'll never be Rick Bragg, but I can be me, the best and bravest ways I know how.

Prince of Frogtown

Bryan e-mailed yesterday with exciting news: Rick Bragg has a new book out and B. had one in his hot little hands. Oh joy.

Later in the afternoon, B called to read me a few passages. Discovering new books is one of the great joys of our long friendship. We used to sit in coffee shops and book stores, reading aloud from time to time. Now we have to do that by phone, but it works. When I moved to Missouri, we sorted out our libraries and returned carloads of books to one another.

Oh, but I'm writing about Bragg's new book. Where was I? Ah...at the part where I say Rick Bragg is one of my favorite writers and his first memoir, All Over But the Shoutin' is one of my all-time favorite books. His sentences are so lush you want to set up a tent and camp in them for the weekend. To thoroughly mix my metaphors, his words paint pictures you could hang in a museum.

Bragg's approach to memoir is the antithesis of narcissistic. He doesn't focus exclusively on his own life. In fact, he's kind of a supporting player in most stories, not present at all in many. His books are portraits of others—his mother, his grandfather and now his father—and he's a necessary part of the picture. In Prince of Frogtown,his stepson joins the rogue's gallery.

I haven't read the whole book yet, only the introduction. With a holiday weekend ahead of us, it feels like I've got a safari planned, one where I'll ride out into another life to see exotic creatures in their own habitat.

Will send word back.

Practically Perfect

I am having a practically perfect evening: wearing ultra-comfy pjs, curled into my favorite chair, a red leather recliner. Above me, the ceiling fan stirs the cool evening air and outside, the midnight blue sky embraces india-ink outlines of trees circling the pond. Josh Radin sings to me from the iPod (thanks, Jess).

Best of all, I'm diving into a new book, practically perfect in every way, by Jennifer Niesslein. I'm only on page 17, but I'm in LOVE with this woman's voice. She's absolutely fearless about revealing her flawed human self and reading along feels like listening to your best friend telling stories. (Well, it feels like that to me. But I'm lucky. My best friends are really, really good storytellers.)

Check out Jennifer's blog or her magazine Brain, Child.

Back to the book now. More soon.