Thank you. Uh huh. Mhm. What did
you do to be put in? Today we are here for the Visible
Scholarship Initiative in March. Now we want to hear from
author Jeff Mann, Associate Professor of English and his latest
book, Purgatory that stand in your way. You want to
hear more about the stories behind the book, the
book itself and some of Professor Man's related work over
to. Mhm. Okay. Yeah, thank you
. I really appreciate it. The trend is up
a little bit. We've got noise that way and
noise that way, but create our little bubble of
discourse here. So yeah, thanks very much.
I appreciate the library hosting these events. Uh Leslie
also organizing them and apologize for dropping the ball for
about six weeks there. But we do think about
it and they got it fixed. When I talked
about these sessions. I think about the sessions,
I was making a connection in the ways that the
library isn't connecting base for scholarship in a research process
, but also the production, the outcomes, the
books not up here. I think that's believable the
whole reason for doing this. And we talked about
the library as a space in which we do our
scholarship. So whenever I think about that of course
think about libraries I've heard operation. Um and particularly
in this case the library which some of you have
probably been, I haven't been to it, it's
right behind you. You ever scenario shuts of the
U. S. Capitol from the mall side Library
Congresses building and back with the green dome which you
can actually come from the green donors over the recent
, quite spectacular. Uh And there are two ways
to get into the Library of Congress to get the
Library of Congress on the Metro. The fastest ways
to get off the C Street station, which takes
you right in the back entrance of Wonder Congress,
which is which is more it's efficient, but it's
boring. The other way to go on the metro
is to get off at the Navy Memorial or station
and actually walk up to Capitol Hill and get my
bread. Congress that way was sort of more inspiring
. Sorry, aesthetically pleasing. Um well, what
it does is it takes you right across the part
of the Supreme Court and often when I go to
live here, congressman go that way, it's relatively
early in the morning and so nothing is happening in
the Supreme Court, but there you are. You
see the whole vista in front of the building and
so on. And I guess this week in particular
, uh, seeing the images of the people coming
in Washington Supreme Court deliberations on both the Defense of
Marriage Act and also the legalization of the american California
, other places including he was very evocative for me
to see people camping out on their on the space
that I associate with point to live, because that's
the way I go to get there. So I'm
especially pleased this little week in which we are recognizing
just man scholars, but his novel, you know
, at the same time that the Supreme Court in
some ways astonishingly has finally come around to deal with
these issues. So I'm really pleased that we can
make this connection and at this point, alternative,
Jack, thank you. Yeah, no Science is
this loud enough because I couldn't hear it. All
right there. So, yeah, okay, All
right. I got up this morning and I had
some notes and then I thought a much better writer
then I am a speaker. So I wrote a
little talk, but hopefully it won't be too stiff
and boring. Yeah. And we'll take terribly long
. I promise. Um, the folks who invited
me to do this and I much appreciate this.
This is a real treat. I was saying earlier
that the posters are laminated and that impressed me quite
a bit actually. I got them in my mailbox
yesterday and I said, well, these are frame
a bill for my ego. So thank you for
the invitation. And the pretty posters, uh,
these folks also were kind enough to send me a
few talking points. So I'm going to just follow
those as most of, you know, we're in
the middle of the sesquicentennial. That's the word I'd
never heard before of the American Civil War 2011 2015
, 150 years. That sounds like a long time
. People, people often wonder why so many southerners
remain passionately interested in that conflict after so many years
. Shelby Foote, the great historian, says southerners
are very strange about that war. Talk about an
understatement. Mm. My partner john, for instance
, a yankee, that's the word, that the
wild word. I don't use too often anymore around
him. A yankee whose family hails from massachusetts is
indifferent to civil war history only his immense patience has
allowed me to drag him to a slew of battlefields
. Gettysburg, fredericksburg, Newmarket, malvern Hill and
Petersburg to name only a few few autumns ago,
even accompanied me to a battle reenactment in the freezing
october rain. It's cedar creek where wounded soldiers fell
in wet grass on cold earth and lay there as
the battle raged around them, probably contracting bad colds
and pneumonia in the process. I was worried about
them. Honestly. I grew up in the mountains
of Western Virginia, Covington and southern West Virginia Hinton
john spent most of his youth in Daytona beach florida
. The war doesn't haunt him the way it does
me. Probably because y'all one sometimes grouse, y'all
can afford to forget. I wonder sometimes what would
have happened if we'd met in another life on a
battlefield. A man from New England, A man
from Virginia, he's bigger, but I'm meaner.
I wonder who would have survived the war. Doesn't
feel that far away to me. Perhaps due to
my family history. My paternal grandmother, pauline,
feral man, white. She had lots of husbands
, nanny as I called her, whom I adored
. Well, her mother's father, Isaac Green Carden
was a confederate soldier in the civil war Nanny's son
. My father Perryman turned 92 this month. He's
often told me a story from his childhood Having lunch
with Isaac Green Carden. When the Old Gentleman was
approaching 90 years old, daddy remembers feeling anxiety.
Is his great grandfather reflected with palsy tried to ladle
out the soup and cut the pie with shaking hands
. Old age wasn't so bad, said the old
veteran except it had become hard to make water.
It took me a while to figure out what that
meant. I do now. Great Great Great Great
grandfather Carden is buried in our family cemetery near Forest
Hill. West Virginia. The very same place where
I'm 10 ma is just to be entered. Yeah
, few months ago I finally tracked down a regimental
history. Yeah. Show and tell hard to find
. That tells me where he fought. Lowry's bronze
and chapman's batteries of Virginia artillery. He's listed on
the roster. So are his two brothers John and
Alan. They all survived the war and returned home
, part of Monroe County that became Summers County a
few years after the war. In 1871. As
it card married three times outliving two wives. He
became a deputy sheriff of the county. And if
you go to the Summers County courthouse, you can
see him riveting eyes, long beard in photographs of
Civil War veterans reunions. I've discovered while reading this
book, but I've visited many of the battlefields whereas
it called Card and saw action scary Creek where there
is the scary free will baptist church. Believe it
or not, my response to that is, isn't
it always scary free will, uh, scary Creek
, Lewisburg, Lynchburg kearns town and the aforementioned cedar
creek with all the pneumonia patients and a thoroughly unexpected
surprise. When I drive route 11 north, which
used to be in Civil War times, the valley
turnpike from my president home in pulaski Virginia to Virginia
tech. I pass thorn spring road, look for
the cougar express cherished nails and the corner reflections.
Beauty salon, where it turns out Thorn Springs Road
, not the beauty salon. My ancestor wintered with
the other men of Lowry's battery in 1862 and 63
. At night. I sleep only a few miles
from where he slept that winter And I can hear
the sound of the passing train as he no doubt
did running along the tracks of the Virginia and Tennessee
railroad torn up by Union troops at Dublin Virginia in
May 1864 after the Battle of Cloyd's mountain. So
, the process of writing and editing the book,
It began as a short story in the summer of
2008, a call for submissions for an anthology of
gay military Erotica. Special forces raid. I thought
I might be interesting to do something very if you
had done before. Queer. The Civil War gripping
fiction is about conflict. So how about a love
affair between soldiers on opposite sides? That would be
bound to create a lot of drama. Like many
writing projects that took on a life of its own
became a novella. Then a huge novel that steve
Berman, the publisher of lengthy press encouraged me to
break up into a novel and a sequel. Big
books are hard to price competitively, he said.
And besides people love Sequels. If you drive north
on I-81 through the hordes of trucks just after you
drive over the James River near Buchanan and body to
County. Look to your left. That prominent mountain
has caught my many times and I decided to set
some of the novels action there. To my delight
. It turned out to be called purgatory mountain.
Yeah, I probably gasped with delight when I found
that out. So it became a presence in the
book and then it's titled unexpected discoveries during the process
of writing. First of all. And this wasn't
really surprised. There's almost no evidence of same sex
love. During the Civil War. I found a
handful of pages about improper and indecent sodomy and thomas
. Lowry's entertaining the story the soldiers wouldn't tell sex
in the civil war along with references to walt Whitman
and the conjectures about Abraham Lincoln's relationship with Joshua speed
. Apparently men love one another in ancient Greece and
ancient Rome And in other eras and certainly today,
but homosexuality seems not to have existed in the Union
or the Confederacy between 1861 and 1865. This lack
of information and needless to say only made me more
eager to imagine the lives of men loving men in
that point in history. Secondly, I learned something
I didn't know about the valley of Virginia. What
most of us think of as that truck infested 81
corridor purgatory is very violent in spots. Drew the
Yankee prisoner of war is beaten and humiliated with this
suspicious regularity. I thought that the hateful treatment of
an enemy would make sense after so many years of
loss, deprivation and war. But then I found
an even clearer motivation for the rubber rebel soldiers sadism
towards their captive. In my reading, I discovered
how much destruction union generals, David Hunter and Philip
Sheridan had wreaked in the valley of Virginia. What
folks called the breadbasket of the confederacy In the summer
and fall of 1860. For the year before my
novel opens houses and farms were burnt, livestock killed
. The Virginia Military Institute put to the torch that
seems sufficient motive to make a prisoner a literal literal
whipping post, ulysses? S Grant told Sheridan to
destroy the valley so completely that quote crows flying over
it for the balance of the season would have to
carry their provider unquote. And so Sheridan did I
did you get something like that broader research agenda?
I've been writing many poems about the Civil war.
Have over 100. Published 11. Uh, quite
a few of them based on travels allowed by the
Jerome Niles Deans Faculty Research Award, which was very
much appreciated. I've also published a novella called Camp
Allegheny, which is set at a camp between Pocahontas
county Virginia in highland county Virginia, Oklahoma's county west
Virginia, Roncalli Virginia in the summer of 1861 62
. And I'm hoping to write a novel about those
characters, these characters. This is the last month
of the war, so I can't really deal with
them much past the sequel. But the characters in
that novella, that's the beginning of the war,
so hopefully I'll be able to do something with them
. I have written the sequel to purgatory, I
figure I'll call it salvation because that's what you get
if you survive purgatory supposedly it details the hero's exploits
as they try to get to west Virginia through the
mountains though the first novel was almost devoid of female
characters, the notable exception being Miss Pearl, a
Lexington prostitute who smuggled contraband and comestibles inside a specially
constructed hoop skirt which is based on historic reality in
the sequel. There are several eccentric and entertaining female
characters including a gun toting black lesbian and a Shakespeare
quoting blue stocking, which is one of those great
19th century words for ladies who read too much,
like many of you. Right? Yes. Um
I also managed to work Isaac kardon my ancestor into
the sequel near the end. So there you go
. Do you have any questions? Surely a few
Or the cookies. Just so bewitching that Yes ma'am
I mean I know this hasn't been very part of
fun thing to do because you're a writer who's done
so much publishing come to expect surprises. Um One
of the, one of the most amusing things,
there is a character called Rufus who is the cook
of this little crew of confederates and he is foul
mouthed, I don't like myself outside of these contexts
And um I needed to do research to see just
what he would have said in 1865. Mhm And
I'm glad to say that I had a lot of
leeway so that was fun. Yeah a lot of
what? Right. Yeah. Actually managed to get
Rufus a happy ending. Uh I was determined to
give a happy ending to these two and I did
so after a while man, hey, I was
wondering since you've done so much trouble for these works
to make. Yeah. Right now. Right.
History. Oh ah No. But I have thought
about writing creative nonfiction. I write fiction creative nonfiction
and poetry. And I figure if I'm gonna do
this much research, I'm going to get as much
out of it as I can. I'm still reading
civil war history. I started in 2008 and you
if you ask me about contemporary poetry, I know
almost nothing about it. And I'm the M.
F. A. Director. I rely on my
colleagues. My colleagues know a lot more because I'm
selfish and I'm too busy reading Civil War history.
But I've written tons of poems, written fiction.
I think I'll probably write some that would be as
close as I would get creative nonfiction because I do
publish in that genre. Good question. Yeah.
The history was, did they have matches? What
did they eat? What was in those tents?
Um The very first book that I read was Tiffany
Trent. Ex colleague of mine bought me a little
book called something like southern corn bread and yankee coffee
. So I'm big into food and I was interesting
to read what they ate. And uh these boys
are starving. I'll tell you have some nasty stuff
. Um you'll meet anyone. Yeah, anybody else
? Hey, there are television shows that are accused
of having no characters of color. And so their
next season, they introduced people of color. I'm
doing that. Women. Yeah. Well my um
my in laws are biracial or my my in laws
are black and my nephew is biracial. And a
lesbian friend of mine has helped My sister raised my
nephew who's apparently so much like me that my partner
takes me to walmart and takes me through the toy
section. Because what I will like he will like
superheroes and dinosaurs. Uh so this character in the
second book is sort of a combination of lori and
feral. Yes. I have a barrel nephew.
It's an irish name. It's F. E.
R. E. L. L. Yes.
Yes. Right. Exactly. Women. What an
exciting. Right. Yeah. No, no.
I just thought it would be fun. I like
women. You know that a lot of you know
that someone else. Uh huh. Yeah. The
M. F. A. Application process. Yeah
. Once that's done um more poems probably. Yeah
. I've managed to get one short story written this
semester agreed joe esca it's his fault. We've been
buddies for 20 years and he asked me to be
the director. Yeah, So it's his fault,
Right? No, it's a good position. I'm
glad I'm not completely incompetent at it. And he's
one of the reasons I'm not, that's joe scalar
is my assistant who has saved my mm. Anyway
, name to talk about. Sure, yeah,
I'm actually teaching a grade class in it now.
Oh, a memoir. Personal essay, which for
instance, I have a somewhat controversial published personal essay
about my lust for tim McGraw, right? The
country music star. Um, so I'm dealing with
country music and stars and how they function that normal
people's lives, but from every personal point of view
. So that's a personal essay. Um, that's
what created on fiction is also literary journalism, which
is where you you're pretty much not a big part
of the writing yourself as a character, but you're
personally observing something out there in the world, the
way journalists do. It's just that creative nonfiction uses
poetry and fiction techniques like dialogue and imagery and seen
and setting and all that too. Kind of jazz
up talking about real life. So that's what creative
nonfiction is. Good question. Or literary nonfiction.
Some people call it supposedly it's the hot new genre
, anybody else. Yeah. Some people call it
a narrative nonfiction for sure. On the other hand
, there is some kinds of creative nonfiction called lyric
essays which are actually more like prose poems. They're
very, very concise, intense language. Uh so
it it created a fiction ranges I think, between
lengthy narrative pieces and little tight lyric pieces. Yeah
, someone else. Yes, sir. Well,
I'm primarily a poet except for anybody to buy anything
that I've published um is a surprise and it's for
a gay book from a relatively small LGBT independent press
. It's it's one of the best sellers which absolutely
stuns me. Um, I have gotten royalty checks
from publishers for poetry books. I kept one of
them because it's more useful as a conversation piece.
I think it was 56 cents. Uh, so
it's done well really? Uh oh, it's been
controversial. Some people have said it's too violent,
some people says it's too sexy and I expected all
that one person on amazon refers to it as vow
. And I was delighted at the extremity of that
adjective and have been joking about that ever since my
publisher, I'm a polite southerner. So as much
as I want to tear someone a new one,
I generally don't. But my publisher is not uh
restricted by those mores and he has occasionally savaged people
online, which gives me great pleasure. So,
uh, sit back and what it's like, the
romans and the christians and the lines. It's it's
quite entertaining. Uh anybody else? All right we're
done. Is it in our bookstore? I don't
know. Does anybody know? Yeah there are.
Yeah I think so. I just wondered if it
would be nice to be here. True that's unfortunately
there's no independent bookstores left so certainly no LGBT independent
bookstore. Well one or two go to philadelphia.
There's one left. One of those odd dinosaurs left
. Yes anybody else know? Okay well thank you
. I'm actually curious to see what books they have
up here. I haven't got a chance to look
at this display so uh but Robertson's books you see
that? Well that's that's wildly but there should be
a few up there. Dr Robertson's his books were
a great deal of used to me. All right
well thank you. I appreciate you all coming get
to the cookies. Thanks