Tell us about your new collection of stories, which have been written over an extended period of time. Is there a theme that runs through the collection as a whole?<\/p>\n
Most of the stories take place in or around Belladonna–a gated community in upstate South\u00a0Carolina that you won\u2019t find on any map. Although I don\u2019t consider Faulkner a major influence\u00a0on my writing, his creation of an imaginary South in which he follows families through time\u00a0appeals to me. (Think Yoknapatawpha County with security gates, McMansions, and a golf\u00a0course.) If I had to come up with a single theme for the book, it might be this: Can money\u00a0buy\u2014or at least rent\u2014happiness, and if so, under what circumstances, and at what spiritual\u00a0cost?<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve included a link to one of the stories in the collection, \u201cSpeed Dating,\u201d which is a first-person account of a man who speed dates as a hobby. We\u2019re interested in what inspired that\u00a0story.<\/p>\n
I wrote the initial draft in the summer of 2001, when speed dating was just beginning to\u00a0become popular in America. Like many of my other stories, it began as a goofy social satire and\u00a0morphed into something more serious as I imagined the main character more deeply. When I\u00a0revised the story for the book manuscript over a decade later, I brought it in line with my\u00a0evolving Belladonna mythology. (Ted and his final date eventually get married and move toBelladonna, where they collaborate on a semi-autobiographical self-help book.)<\/p>\n
You retired in 2015 after teaching at Furman for 38 years. Have you been able to devote\u00a0more of your time to writing now that you\u2019re no longer in the classroom?<\/p>\n
Yes. I\u2019m currently working on three book-length manuscripts (a collection of poems and two\u00a0more collections of Belladonna stories). Although I still get my \u201cteaching fix\u201d from occasional\u00a0readings, workshops, and guest lectures, I\u2019m enjoying a more relaxed schedule that includes\u00a0gardening and traveling with my wife, Barbara. I\u2019m not sure the general public realizes how\u00a0much time Furman faculty spend on their teaching.<\/p>\n
Finally, if we asked you what five books of fiction should be required reading, what would\u00a0they be and why?<\/p>\n
Except in the context of a particular course, I don\u2019t really believe in required reading. If you\u00a0read for pleasure, read the authors you most enjoy. If you\u2019re seriously interested in writing,\u00a0though, I think you\u2019re obliged to read widely in your chosen genre and to look for kindred\u00a0spirits\u2014folks whose work you admire and whose example can help you develop your own\u00a0imagination. As a writer of short fiction, I\u2019ve found the following five authors especially helpful:\u00a0F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Cheever, Flannery O\u2019Connor, Eudora Welty, and James McConkey (my\u00a0mentor at Cornell in the 1970s).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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