Books: A Southern Train of Thought

When I moved to Chapel Hill, I heard that everyone here has an M.D. or a Ph.D. James Taylor’s neighbor told me this town was once known as Pill Hill. Forget doctors; I’m starting to think you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a writer.

I live in the land of the southern writer. I’ve seen Daniel Wallace at the Y. I’ve attended cocktail parties where Fred Chappell sipped juleps. I’ve even spotted songwriter Tift Merritt looking all rough and tumble in her jeans with Zeke at her side at the Saturday morning market.

I didn’t know much about southern literature until setting foot on the campus of the University of North Carolina, where I’ve acquired a taste for it at the annual Thomas Wolfe lecture. I fell in love with Ellen Gilchrist one year at the lecture after hearing her read from her story that begins “It was the summer of the broad jump pit." Another year, my friend Garrison Somers, the editor of The Blotter (the South’s free literary magazine), and I fell under the spell of Fred Chappell.

Hearing a writer read his stories has a certain pull for me. I’m growing addicted to it, much in the way I grew addicted to hearing a songwriter sing his songs in Texas.

Last night caught me a bit by surprise. Excuse my ignorance but I had no idea who Louis D. Rubin was until yesterday. He came to my attention as I supped alone at my dining room table and took a few minutes to ponder an e from Flyleaf Books. A reading by an esteemed writer and editor who had taught many students over the years--I’m in, I thought.

Twenty minutes later I was sitting in the community room of Flyleaf Books, listening to a spectacled southern gentleman talk as he gestured with his right hand.

He read a passage from a time in his life after he had graduated from JHU but before he went back to the campus as a professor. Can you imagine returning to Charleston and seeing the train that always piqued your curiosity, then buying a ticket to ride to the end of the line just to see where it goes?

That concept makes me think of some of the trains I missed and some of the trains I rode, and I am speaking figuratively, to be certain.

I woke this morning earlier than usual, reeling from a dream about my extended southern family preparing to board the Canadian National Railway, and twitching to write about my own American childhood. Then as I stood in the early morning light near the window, far off a train’s whistle blew.

Who is this man Rubin and what has he stirred in me? I turned on the computer and answered both questions. He is none other than the cofounder of Algonquin Books (Water for Elephants) and professor of Annie Dillard.

Something has happened in the world this night
Of rare consequence for some time to come,
Whether or not it alters the final sum.

“Passage” Fred Chappell