The Professor Tells His Story

It’s quite possible we’ve never had a guest on Cover to Cover quite as comfortable in the talk studio as this week’s guest, longtime Atlanta Braves broadcaster Pete Van Wieren. In 2008, Pete retired from a distinguished career of 33 years with Atlanta’s Major League Baseball club. His new memoir, Of Mikes and Men, is chock full of anecdotes about the club and insights into the mind of the team’s scholarly voice.

Obviously, the natural appeal here is to Braves’ fans, of which there should be no shortage. The team’s radio network is reportedly the largest radio network of any sports franchise in the United States, and Van Wieren and his longtime broadcast partner, Skip Carey, hold a special place in the hearts of many of those fans.

Van Wieren talks about Caray’s declining health and how it affected his work in his final broadcasts before he passed away suddenly in 2008. He also talks about his early days knocking around with a rock band at Cornell University, the lean years broadcasting minor league games, the elation when he got the call to Atlanta, the sudden death of baseball’s first African-American general manager, hustling out of downtown Los Angeles during the Rodney King riots, Ted Turner’s one-game stint in the dugout as manager, and much more.

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The Kingpin and his Cohorts

In 2006 journalist Mara Shalhoup wrote an award-winning series of articles on a shadowy organization calling itself The Black Mafia Family for Creative Loafing, Atlanta’s leading alt-weekly. Publicly, the members of BMF claimed to be operators and employees of a hip-hop record label, but the street cred they boasted of seemed more authentic than the boasts of the myriad studio gangsters filling CD bins with rote claims of murder and debauchery. Indeed, the initiated knew all along that BMF was no imposter; it was an organization that authorities think may have been responsible for the majority of cocaine movement into Atlanta for the first few years of the past decade.

Since then, Shalhoup has been named Editor-in-Chief at Creative Loafing, and has finished a book on the notorious crime family. It’s called BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family, and it’s available now from St. Martin’s Press. Demetrius ‘Big Meech’ Flenory was the unquestioned head of the family, and is the mysterious and charismatic center of the book. It opens with Shalhoup’s first-person account of her interview with Meech and concludes with his inevitable sentencing. The takeaway: crime doesn’t pay, but it certainly yields interesting stories.

The character list of this particular interesting story goes far beyond the boss. Also appearing in roles of various import are bodyguards and relatives of Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, Charles Barkley, Bobby Brown, rappers Young Jeezy and Gucci Mane, Jacob “The Jeweler” Arapo, former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, and Franklin’s wayward son-in-law, Tremayne “Kiki” Graham, in addition to the various lieutenants, henchmen and adversaries of BMF.

Shalhoup is a thorough journalist with roots firmly in crime reporting. That’s how this book reads, mostly, as a journalistic account, with the occasional scene-setting flourish. The reader is left to his her own to decide who the real bad guys are, and who may have been just a product of the streets without a real chance to break from the cycle of poverty and crime endemic to inner-city life.

BMF is an important book for our region, because it tells a story about who we are in the South, even if it’s a story we may not all want to acknowledge. Shalhoup’s the perfect person for the job – young, savvy, skeptical, and very much a fan of Atlanta’s particular breed of hip-hop music.

By the way...if you're in the Athens area, Shalhuop will be reading from BMF and signing copies at Cine downtown at 7 PM on Wednesday, March 17. For those of you closer to Atlanta, she'll be doing the same at Borders in Buckhead on Friday, March 19 at 7:30. Get wise and get your copy.

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Lift Every Voice and Sing

The writer Charles Johnson once wrote that his forbear James Weldon Johnson (no relation) had a life story that read like “the biography of two or three men.” Indeed, the earlier Johnson was an activist, attorney, administrator, educator, songwriter, poet, politician, ambassador and novelist. Perhaps Johnson is best known for penning the lyrics to “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which the NAACP has adopted as its anthem. Every so often we dedicate an episode of Cover to Cover to an important Southern writer outside of the contemporary realm. James Weldon Johnson is just such a writer, and we are delighted to turn our focus toward his work this Sunday evening.

For that purpose we welcome to the show Dr. Rudolph P. Byrd. In addition to serving as the Goodrich C. White Professor of American Studies at Emory University, Dr. Byrd is also the driving force behind the James Weldon Johnson Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies at Emory. Essentially, the JWJI is an administrative outlet promoting scholarship and research. Dr. Byrd has written and edited many books, including The Essential Writings of James Weldon Johnson, which was published by Random House in late 2008.

Dr. Byrd is the perfect man to lead the JWJI and to write about Johnson. His own scholarship pushes and promotes literature into the realms of social and economic justice, breathing new life into both celebrated and forgotten texts.

For more on the James Weldon Johnson Institute at Emory University, please visit its website at: http://www.jamesweldonjohnson.emory.edu/

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How is this night different from All Other Nights?

Considering she’s already published three novels, it might surprise you to hear that Dara Horn is in her (very) early thirties. Perhaps even more surprising is that she has also earned a PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard University. Add to that she’s raising three children, and well, you’ll just have to take my word that she’s a remarkable woman.

I can also attest that at least the latest of those three novels is a remarkable book. You might recognize All Other Nights from many of the ubiquitous year-end “Best Of…” lists. It certainly deserves to be there. The story follows Jacob Rappaport, a Union spy, through his travails from New Orleans to Richmond during the Civil War. Along the way he meets a whittling girl, a fetching pickpocket, a bloodthirsty Southern Belle and a child that speaks in palindromes…and that’s just in one family.

Some characters are actual historical figures. Perhaps the most enthralling of these is Judah Benjamin, Secretary of the State for the Confederacy. Horn brought a Confederate two-dollar bill to the interview, which features Benjamin’s profile, and we talked about Benjamin’s important but precarious place in the ill-fated Confederate nation. He was Jewish, and partly because of this, he drew the ire of both Northerners and Southerners. Of course, the idea of a man who was very much a minority holding high office in the CSA is rife for all sorts of literary exploration involving allegiance, identity and motivation. Horn does a remarkable job with this exploration by subsuming the discourse into a very captivating story line involving all sorts of espionage and intrigue.

Dara Horn’s work at Harvard focused on Hebrew and Yiddish literature, so she brings a wealth of understanding to the complexity of this subject. It’s a complexity germane to Southern literature and culture, I think, because it implores us to examine, through storytelling, who we are and why our history is important to us. And most of all, it’s a wonderful read.

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Campfires and Conundrums

This week we welcome back Philip Lee Williams to Cover to Cover. We’ll be talking about his latest book, The Campfire Boys. It’s a wonderful comedic novel about reluctant rebels during the American Civil War who moonlight as entertainers for their fellow soldiers. The Celebrated Blackshear Brothers are three siblings who honed their musical talents and their knack for comedic sketches by performing for the gentry of their well-to-do Southern town as youngsters. The town is modeled after Williams’ hometown, Madison, Georgia.

What Williams accomplishes in this novel is a seamless meld of sometimes opposing forces—historical fact with contemporary commentary, warm emotion with calloused characters, horrific battlefields with witty quips—all within the lives of Confederate soldiers who abhor the institution of slavery. It all works because Williams never compromises his role as a storyteller in order to make a point.

It was an absolute delight to talk with Philip Lee Williams. Like him, I am also from Madison, and I’ve followed his career for some time now. Not only is he a wonderful writer, he’s also an incredibly insightful man with a passion for the arts. I’ve interviewed Williams twice now and each time I’ve come away thinking I’ve just learned something invaluable about what it means to be a writer in the South.

In addition to the new book, we’ll also talk about Williams’ selection to the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. That honor was announced earlier this year and in my opinion they couldn’t have picked a more fitting inductee.

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All Roads Lead to Rome (For the Georgia Literary Festival)

It’s been a good year for Raymond Atkins. After longing to be an author for much of his life, he finally published his first book in 2008. It was called The Front Porch Prophet, and won him recognition from readers as well as from the Georgia Writers Association. We were glad to have him on the show last year, and we’re even happier that we could welcome him back as he promotes his sophomore effort Sorrow Wood.

The back cover of Sorrow Wood brands the book as a murder mystery, though it reads much more like a congenial love story. Reva and Wendell Blackmon are the principals here, and Reva believes they have been lovers for many, many lifetimes. The book gives us glimpses into many of those lifetimes, taking the longest look at the late 20^th Century edition. Atkins names the muse for this love story in our interview, even after mentioning on air that he is going to be in a load of trouble at home.

Atkins has also been busy lately planning to welcome literary lovers from around the south to his hometown of Rome, GA. Rome is the site of this year’s Georgia Literary Festival. (The folks at the Georgia Center for the Book put this on each year, and it moves around the state.) So please visit Rome for this fun and free event. I can almost promise you that one of your favorite Georgia authors will be there. You can find more details at: http://www.georgiacenterforthebook.org/Georgia-Literary-Festival/index.php.

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Back to the Future (And to Wilcox County)

We featured James Braziel on Cover to Cover about eighteen months ago when we switched to the new format. We talked about his elegiac debut novel Birmingham, 35 Miles. He’s recently published a follow-up novel, Snakeskin Road, and we thought it would be nice to do a follow-up interview, of sorts.

Again, the setting is the near future wasteland of the U.S., roughly forty years after an environmental disaster brought about by the nation’s consumptive tendencies. The ozone layer has been ripped asunder and the inhabitants of the scorched earth fight for survival in what becomes a morbidly self-serving world. Mat Harrison was the hero of Birmingham, 25 Miles, but he didn’t survive for the sequel.

Instead, for most of Snakeskin, we follow his widow, Jennifer, and her reluctant charge, Mazy, as they try to make their way northward to the city-state of Chicago, where Jennifer’s mother lives and where life may or may not be more manageable. Braziel uses his future world as a canvas upon which to blend the hues of a handful of timely concerns, including human trafficking, the perils of dogmatic religious pursuit, and xenophobia. But chief among his foci is of course our stewardship of our natural resources.

Despite the poignant attention given the subject in each of the novels, I don’t think it really occurred to me until reading Braziel’s Southverve blog how much of a sacred space he gives to the environment in his life and in his writing. So maybe I should just direct you here: www.jamesbraziel.com/press.

But really, I want to direct you to his fine sophomore effort, Snakeskin Road, and to Cover to Cover this Sunday on the GPB Radio network. Remember, we’re on at 6 PM in the Athens area and at 8 PM in most other parts of the state. Please join us. (Oh, and if you’re from Wilcox County, where Braziel grew up, make doubly sure to tune in. During the interview James wondered aloud if anyone there read his books!)

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For Independence Day - The American Dream Run Wild

Nearly a year after the triumphant release of his lauded fourth novel we are excited to present an in-depth interview with Ron Rash. Serena (Ecco/Harper Collins) is Rash’s period piece that is just as much a place piece, this period and place being Appalachia during the Great Depression. Rash is the Pariss Distinguished Professor in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University, and if that moniker doesn’t signal his grasp of the region strongly enough the first few pages of Serena will.

Serena is the bride of George Pemberton, a young lumber baron from New England, and this is the story of her Machiavellian pursuit for power. As austere as Pemberton can be, he is the softie in the relationship as Serena lies, cheats, murders and mutilates her way along a course that would make Lady MacBeth blush. Rash plays up parallels to the Scottish Play throughout the novel to the point that when a clairvoyant portends of Pemberton’s death you may as well go ahead and begin thinking of creative ways by which the vision might be fulfilled.

Not that this book isn’t gripping—quite the contrary. This is a rare novel that manages to be a literary feat while also playing out as a bona fide page turner. Rash talks about this duality on this week’s show. He also talks a good deal about the disappearing wilderness in Appalachia, a central aspect of this novel. He notes the irony inherent in locals that participate in industries such as timber and mining: “The very thing that makes them special is the thing they’re destroying.”

Despite ample success with this and earlier works, Ron Rash isn’t a very public figure. He is soft-spoken and deferential. But this week he opens up a bit as he chats about the region that is not less a part of him than he is of it.

As you’re traveling home from holiday destinations we hope you’ll tune in the Cover to Cover on GPB Radio. Catch us at 8 PM in most parts of the state and at 6 PM on WUGA 91.7FM in the Athens area. Enjoy!

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Happy Birthday, Eudora!

Some authors manage to exist on the periphery for all of us; I mean we know their name and know that they are important, but we haven’t quite gotten around to actually reading their work. For me, Eudora Welty has been one such author for quite a while now. Thankfully, that Dark Age is over.

Welty is a masterful writer perhaps best known for her short stories “A Worn Path” and Why I Live at the P.O.” She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1973 for the short meditative novel, The Optimist’s Daughter, which came late in her career.

I mentioned Dr. Pearl McHaney in this blog before, but to refresh, she is a Welty scholar and professor at Georgia State University. Dr. McHaney recently gave a series of free public lectures at the Decatur Library, and she joins us this Sunday on Cover to Cover to talk about Welty. Dr. McHaney visited with Welty a few times at her home in Jackson, and has edited several volumes of Welty’s fiction, as well as public letters and literary criticism from the Belle of Belhaven.

Fresh of the presses at the University Press of Mississippi come two new edited volumes, Occasions: Selected Writings and Eudora Welty as Photographer. Both books are edited by Dr. McHaney, and the titles pretty well sum up the contents. Welty was not a WPA photographer (though she wanted to be), but her photographic work is very much identified with those proletariat pictures of the dusty south (and dusty New York). Occasions is a sizeable collection for Welty enthusiasts who want to delve deeper into the life of the woman who is perhaps as mysterious as she was charming.

We welcome Dr. McHaney to the show this Sunday, April 12 on the eve of what would be Welty’s 100th birthday. We talk about Dr. McHaney’s meetings with her beloved subject, the author’s strident support of the artists she loved, and of course, Welty’s inimitable writing.

And for those of you Welty fans near the Atlanta area, Dr. McHaney will dish the details on a birthday party downtown. It will be Monday evening at the Rialto on the campus of GSU and will feature dramatic readings from Tom Key and Brenda Bynum as well as champagne, coconut cake and the launch of The Eudora Welty Review, an annual publication that Dr. McHaney will edit. The event begins at 6 PM, but if you can make it down to GSU by 4:30, you can hear a free lecture by Dr. Daniele Pitavy-Souques, Profesor Emerita, at the University of Burgundy.

Hope to see you there!

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Prophetizing from the Front Porch

This week on Cover to Cover, Jesse Freeman sits down with Rome, Georgia writer Raymond Atkins about his book The Front Porch Prophet.

What do a trigger-happy bootlegger with pancreatic cancer, an alcoholic helicopter pilot who is afraid to fly, and a dead guy with his feet in a camp stove have in common? What are the similarities between a fire department that cannot put out fires, a policeman who has a historic cabin fall on him from out of the sky, and an entire family dedicated to a variety of deceased authors? Where can you find a war hero named Termite with a long knife stuck in his liver, a cook named Hoghead who makes the world’s worst coffee, and a supervisor named Pillsbury who nearly gets hung by his employees?

Find out the answers to these questions and how the small town of Sequoyah, GA helped shape the book, this week on Cover to Cover. Airing Sunday at 8PM on YOUR Georgia Public Broadcasting.

Tony Earley on Cover to Cover

Jesse Freeman weighs on in his interview with Tony Earley, which airs Sunday night at 8pm on Cover To Cover--

The Blue Star is a sequel you can enjoy without having read its predecessor. However, if you consider yourself a lover of great contemporary fiction, you’ve probably already read Jim the Boy. Book two in this presumed trilogy places Jim in his senior year of high school in the Western North Carolina town of Aliceville. More to the point, it places our wide-eyed protagonist on the precipice of love, war and tragedy.

Tony Earley joins us to talk about Jim and his other wonderful characters that bring to life the Greatest Generation. He talks about the importance of his influences (Wila Cather!) and his own experience as a child in Appalachia. You’ll find Tony as humble as the avuncular Glass brothers (Jim’s surrogate fathers) and as witty as Dennis Deane (Jim’s loose-lipped running partner). Tony approaches an interview thoughtfully and we think you’ll appreciate the contemplative way he looks back at his works just as you will enjoy the earnestness of the works themselves.