Carved in Stone

by Gary Fearon, Creative Director, Southern Writers Magazine


While visiting favorite relatives in North Carolina this weekend, I joined them for an excursion to historic downtown Hendersonville, where their fine arts festival, Art on Main, was in full swing. We strolled the streets, encountering metal workers, portrait painters, authors, blacksmiths, and apple-flavored ice cream, though my favorite discovery was an enormous general store called Mast, a multi-story warehouse of curiosities which was like a Farmer's Almanac come to life.  Their candy department alone was a treasure trove of forgotten and obscure confections.

Taking a break from all our walking, we soon camped out on park benches next to a city building.  As I toothfully worked on my first-ever Big Hunk (a taffy-like creation of honey-flavored nougat) I couldn't help but notice a concrete memorial right in front of me, honoring Vietnam veterans. It caught my eye because of its unique shape (that of the Vietnam coast itself) and also because at the very bottom was carved "Designed by Jerry Gordon, 1947-1995".

I thought it was ironic that someone who took the time to design this tribute has himself been immortalized, to the point where his name will also be seen in this spot for generations to come.

It brought to mind that you and I will someday leave behind a legacy of our own. The question is, what will that legacy be? As writers, we may hope it will be in the form of a bestseller that's still available fifty years from now.

(clockwise from top: Poe, Hemingway, Twain and Seuss respected in their respective stomping grounds)

The great authors who came before us are not only remembered via the printed page, but were found worthy of their own memorials. The homes of Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost are popular Gracelands in their own right. Walt Whitman and Kurt Vonnegut have libraries named after them. A wax figure of Mark Twain can be posed with in more than one American city, as well as in Canada.

These beloved writers became beloved by leaving a legacy of literature that captured the times as well as  the hearts of their readers. The book you're working on right now may well become the masterpiece that defines 2013 to a generation to come.  A lofty suggestion, perhaps, but it's unlikely that Nathaniel Hawthorne ever imagined that his likeness would grace the place he used to embrace.

 

Our literary efforts may or may not earn us a concrete memorial or a statue in our local park, but it's something to strive for.  Next time you're thinking that writing is a monumental task, celebrate the fact that it actually could be.

Personally, I'd be happy if they'd just name a candy bar after me.  I like to think they already have.

An Author to Love

by Lucy Merrill

Who doesn’t love a love story? Even guys who demand car chases and explosions in their reading and cinematic excursions like a bit of romantic byplay in the mix. Love has explosive possibilities of its own, amply displayed in works from Anna Karenina to Fatal Attraction.

There’s a lot of comedy potential in the perilous course of true love, too, and most lovers of love stories enjoy a good laugh as much as a good cry. If you do, let me introduce you to one of my favorite authors, the great humor writer, P.G. Wodehouse.

Wodehouse, known as “Plum” to friends and family, published a mountain of novels, short stories, plays, and even song lyrics. While he wrote from the early days of the 20^th century to his death in the 1970s, his characters live in a world stuck in time, where it is always 1912, or maybe 1925. It’s so hard to tell.

Whenever they are set, Wodehouse plots are rarely lacking in romance. In fact, love makes the Wodehouse world go round, as his characters are constantly pursuing—or occasionally on the run from—tender entanglements.

Plum’s best-known character, Bertie Wooster, who had a complete life support system in his valet, Jeeves, was always finding himself engaged to one ghastly girl or another through no fault of his own. Getting unengaged to the one who read Nietzsche or the one with a laugh like a sergeant-major provided plenty of plot pitfalls.

Then there’s Bingo Little, who was, as Wodehouse puts it, “susceptible.” Poor Bingo fell in love with the merest flutter of a mascara’d eyelash. This landed him in all sorts of sticky situations, from getting sideways with bookies to giving revolutionary speeches under the cover of a fake mustache.

To describe a Wodehouse plot as stark and realistic would be trifling with the truth. They are wonderfully absurd. But the author’s wry and witty style provides real laughter and imbues the whole with good humor. His writing twinkles.

There’s a danger in throwing in a few examples about now. How to pick one or two? I’ll inevitably overlook a favorite. (This sort of narrator hand-wringing goes on a lot in Wodehouse stories.)

How about this description? “It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.” Or this: “It was a harsh, rasping voice, in its timbre not unlike a sawmill.” Or this: “Like so many substantial citizens of America, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag.”

Or perhaps this bit of plot exposition: “It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't.”

My Valentine’s Day recommendation—this year, have a little Plum with your champagne and chocolates.

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While an office drone by day, after 5 p.m. you'll find Lucy Merrill, freelance writer, blogger, and aspiring novelist, knee-deep in the writing life. Lucy lives in Birmingham, Ala., with a tolerant husband, who rolls his eyes at her only occasionally. She welcomes friends and followers on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.