Alec Clayton Yesterday I finished what I think was the third (can’t keep count) complete rewrite, start to finish, of my new novel Teacher. With deep thanks to Brynn Garman, Rin Westcott, Steve Tarry, Cameron Combs, Bryan Willis, Mian Carvan, Margaret Culbertson, Brady Olson, SJ Boyle, Nancy Sigafoos, Diane Sawyer, Don Orr Martin, Megan Kruse, Bev Sykes, … Read more
Our first independent publishing venture after leaving New York and Everything for Everybody, decades before Mud Flat Press, was first a newspaper, Persons, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and then a statewide literary and arts quarterly, Mississippi arts & Letters, which won us a certain amount of notoriety. but was a financial flop. It lasted only a … Read more
Many people who were not alive at the time can hardly envision the casual racism, misogyny and classism that was alive and well in the 1940s and 1950s. The television series “Mad Men” gave a bit of a hint, but from what little I can remember—I was a child at the time—it was the everydayness … Read more
Over the past week or so I have been typing into my computer, word-for-word, the manuscript of a novel written in the early 1950s. It is tedious work but worth the effort because it’s a damn fine novel. It is set in 1942, and the narrator and all the characters use language and express commonly … Read more
I never knew my uncle James Robert Peery, or if I ever did meet him I was too young to remember. He died when I was 11 years old, and for reasons I never knew, our branch of the family seldom visited his branch of the family. Nevertheless, he was my hero when I was … Read more
I have posted announcements of the upcoming publication of my book What the Heck is a Frame-Pedestal Aesthetic? on this blog and on my personal writing blog and on Facebook. The book is an updated version of my graduate thesis written in 1970. I had to manually type the 50-something pages and then add a … Read more
I was finishing up my senior year in college in Mississippi and going to graduate school at East Tennessee State University. It was the late 1960s. There was an explosion of new and different art schools-movements-events that in many ways ended what art critics and historians had been presenting as an orderly, chronological evolution of … Read more
I got too much stuff on the grill. Hamburgers, hot dogs, barbecue chicken, corn on the cob, veggie burgers. Everything cooking at once. Uh oh, the hot dogs are about to burn. Gotta get them off the grill. Oops, chicken needs more sauce. Hey, ya’ll better get your buns and spread you some mayo and … Read more
People ask me what my books are about. I’ll be damned if I can give a clear and definitive answer. I’ve written a book of art criticism, As If Art Matters: Modern and Post Modern Art – Reviews and Commentary. That one’s easy. The subtitle tells what it’s about. There are essays such as “The … Read more
I don’t know who first used the term Grit Lit, but I like to think it was Barry Hannah, a great grit-lit novelist and short story writer who used the term in reference to Larry Brown, another great novelist and short story writer. Both Hannah and Brown lived in Oxford, Mississippi, and both died young. … Read more