JOURNAL ENTRY #46
July 31, 2009
Hank Klibanoff visited St Simons Island a few days ago. Hank and Gene Roberts collaborated on the 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner, The Race Beat. The subtitle is: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation. He drew a substantial crowd, took us back to the fifties and sixties, described the courage of individual Southern editors like Hodding Carter, Jr. of the Delta Democrat Times, and the inclination of most to support the segregationists or simply stay away from the fire. He left us very quiet at the end.
I knew a young woman, Joyce Barrett of Fellowship Farm in the Philadelphia area, who participated in the marches and demonstrations during the period. I never knew anyone more courageous than she was. I was an English teacher at the time, and she came to talk to, and inspire, my classes.
I can also recall visiting one of the radio stations with her. I sat quietly at her side while she was interviewed by the host. At one point, during a commercial break, she made for a washroom, and the host told me he’d be back in a minute. He got delayed, and I found myself in front of a live mike, alone, with the guy behind the glass telling me to just say something. Keep it going until ‘Hal’ gets back. Right. What‘s my name again?
I’m halfway through The Race Beat. It’s a powerhouse.
There’s finally a title for the 2010 Alex Benedict novel. And maybe a lesson for anyone trying to come up with a title for a piece of fiction using boats, starships, or other vehicles that traditionally get names. The novel deals with an explorer who spent a lifetime looking for signs of another civilization, found nothing, and eventually retired. And died. Thirty years later, there’s evidence that he did indeed find something. But against all common sense, he seems to have kept it quiet. We were talking about the long frustrating pursuit of a title at lunch one day, and a friend suggested the book be named after the explorer’s starship. At that point, it didn’t have a name. Which made it easy. Find a noun with some kick, with a connection, and go with it. At this point in human history, in the twelfth millennium, we’ve only discovered one race of aliens. The explorer believes that finding another will cause a major upset in social perspective, which assumes we and the other race, the Mutes, are effectively alone.
Galileo upset the culture of his time when he looked through a telescope and discovered that Jupiter had four moons. The names of three of the moons don’t have much panache, but one does. So the title becomes Callisto.
I answered some questions for Tim O’Shea earlier this week. The interview has been posted, and a link is available on the Events and Publications page.
We’ll be traveling to South Jersey next month for a wedding. To help pass the time, I bought a few of my favorite old radio shows. The set I was especially happy to get is a Jean Shepherd collection. Unfortunately, today most people only know of Shepherd through his connection with the film A Christmas Story. The reality is that he did a radio show for WOR in New York in the fifties and sixties that was brilliant. And I was not surprised, when we listened to the first disk recently, to discover that he holds up perfectly. He’s everything I remember, and I wish he were still around.