RedPubPod #054 Jim Haughey, The Broken Season

[00:00:02] What you want, when you want it, where you want it. This is The MESH. This is RedPubPod. RedPubPod. A podcast. RedPubPod. From RedHawk Publications. RedPubPod. Welcome to RedPubPod. I'm Richard Eller and with me today is a stellar group to talk about an

[00:00:29] exceptional book. We have Jane St. Clair, our editor extraordinaire, which by the way, congratulations on a recent winning of a prize out on the West Coast. Oh, thank you, Richard. I appreciate that. You're certainly welcome. And the author of today's book, Jim Haughey, who wrote The Broken Season. Welcome, Jim. Thank you. And as well, we have an extraordinary editor

[00:00:53] that has joined us for today. I'd like to welcome Tom Brash. Thank you. Glad to be here. So let's get this party started. Jim, tell us about your background. Where do you come from? How does all this kind of come together in this book? Well, pretty much a transatlantic experience. My parents emigrated to America in like 1960, early 60, to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. And I was born

[00:01:22] there, Pittsfield, but I only lived there for about eight months. Mom had postpartum depression and very homesick. So mom and dad moved back to where I grew up, Lurgan, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. And in the early mid-70s, I started running because I was a very bad soccer player. And I got a scholarship offered to a school I'd never heard of called Clemson. And in fact, I got a letter of intent

[00:01:51] sent to me and it was an envelope embossed with a tiger paw on it. And I thought it was some kind of wildlife refuge who were soliciting for money from America. Well, it was. It's South Carolina. It was South Carolina. I went to my high school library to look up an Atlas map to find Clemson on the map. They weren't on the map that we had. The only town that was in the area was Greenville. So that night, my dad and I were watching a BBC documentary on American football coaches.

[00:02:18] And this particular episode was about Woody Hayes from Ohio State. So as we're watching it, they showed footage from the Gator Bowl from 1977. And the scene that they showed was Woody running on the field and punching a player on the opposing team. And that player, of course, was a Clemson player. And I tell friends, that's how I ended up choosing to go to Clemson. Because we were beating

[00:02:42] people and we're making them angry. So that's my recruiting spiel, pretty much. That's how I ended up coming back to America. Nobody would have ever thought that that incident would have been a recruiting poster. No, Woody Hayes was a chief recruiter for me when I look back now. Only for Woody, I would probably not have ended up back in the United States. Okay. And so from there, what happened? Well, went to Clemson four years, competed for the university track cross country team. And then

[00:03:11] after that, I had a very traumatic year with a roommate in graduate school. His name, I think it's Rash, I can't remember the first name. Yes. Who introduced me to pinto beans and cornbread. Cornbread. There's a story there quickly about the cornbread. One night, I was very hungry in the flat, to the apartment, went to the refrigerator and saw what I thought was a cake in the fridge,

[00:03:39] took it out, took a bite of it. It was like licking a salt lick. And I thought, these people don't even know how to make sponge cake. So Tom had to tell me that, no, that's cornbread. It's not, you know, it's not dessert. Now, Tom, is that your recollection of this? That's exactly what happened. Okay. All right. Good. But he got me back. He fed me a dish called champ, which is potatoes, mashed potatoes.

[00:04:06] And that's it. It's just a plate full of mashed potatoes with butter at the bottom. And I said, Jim, where's the rest of the meal? He said, that's it. It's actually famine meal. I mean, that's what the famine survivors survived on. And I'm surprised they survived. Yeah. But anyway. You can mix parsley with it or, in some cases, nettles. Jim was a very good roommate.

[00:04:34] So after a year with Tom, I was already engaged at this point to Laurie. And we got married in 1985. And I was still in grad school. Finished my master's by 1988. And then started teaching and realized very quickly that if I wanted to get a full-time teaching job, I would have to go on and do the old PhD. So I went to the University of South Carolina while I was also teaching at the same time and graduated from there in 1996.

[00:05:05] And had a few teaching jobs. I went for a year. I was at Francis Marion University in Florence, Southern Wesleyan University in Central South Carolina. And then, of course, where I currently teach, Anderson. Been there for 26 years. So this year will be the 40th year of teaching. I started in the fall of 86 as a Clemson teaching assistant. So I figure 40 years might be a good number to pack it in. Wow.

[00:05:33] I think maybe this might be my last year in the classroom. So hopefully anyway. Now, you teach English, right? Teach English. I'm sort of hybrid. I teach half-time. And then the other half-time, I get to do all the jobs that the dean doesn't want to do. So which usually means I have to do all the annual reviews. He's the head of the English department. Well, just go ahead and say it, Jim. Oh, okay. You're the head of the English department. I was the head of the English department.

[00:06:01] Actually, I'm no longer, but I'm the associate dean. So I get, like I said, to kick you upstairs. Yeah. I got a promotion, but... I didn't know that. But it means more dirty work, right? It means more dirty work. And to be honest with you, the only reason why I took it is I wouldn't have to grade so much. So I get to teach less. Okay. Okay. So when did you find time to write? Well, COVID actually was the time.

[00:06:27] This book, this idea of the book goes back at least 25 years. When I first found out about Stump House Mountain Tunnel, I remember Laurie and I went up there for a little drive and we saw this sign saying something about Irish immigrants had built this tunnel. And, you know, when you come to South Carolina, especially where I'm from, you think, well, I might be the first Irish person ever here. Then you discover that there were hundreds of them here, you know, back in the 1850s.

[00:06:56] So that sort of piqued my interest and started reading a little bit about it. And most of the things I read about it were really just about the railroad history. There weren't, there wasn't much about the actual people who built the place. So COVID pretty much, I had, I guess, done as much research as I possibly could because the research trail ran dry.

[00:07:22] And I did get an early essay article out of it for the South Carolina Historical Association. But initially, I had planned to actually write a history book about the place. But unfortunately, my biggest source was this circuit writing priest called Jeremiah O'Connell, who had gone to Stump House Mountain Tunnel in the 1850s to really, you know, be a sort of a priest to the immigrants.

[00:07:51] And he went up also with the intent of trying to close down all. He called them grog shops, groggeries, bars. So he wrote a book called Catholicity in the Carolinas in Georgia. It's a kind of a very dry kind of Victorian read. He's very self-promoting. He talks about himself as almost being this sort of missionary that's going to go in and turn this sort of religious wasteland into a Catholic enclave.

[00:08:20] So I thought, well, maybe he kept a lot of records about the people that he tended to, that he sort of officiated with. So I wrote to Belmont Abbey because I discovered that's where he's buried. The monks there brought him in and gave him a little home to live in to see out his days. So unfortunately, the trail ran down when I discovered that the cabin of the house that he lived in burned down in like 1893. So all of his records, everything went with it.

[00:08:47] So at that point, I reached the crossroads of thinking, okay, I've got enough to write an essay. I don't have anywhere near enough to write a historical book about it. So the next step was, well, why don't I just mix stuff up? So that's what COVID, I thought, okay, I've got a murder story here. I can begin with it and then the rest of it, I'll just let it go and drip feed in the history as I go along.

[00:09:12] And I went to the South Carolina Historical Archives in Columbia where I found the journal sessions records of the murder story that the story is based on from 1858. And in the archives, all it does is really give you the sort of session notes for each day the court met. So it lists all the Irish characters who were arrested and ultimately convicted of this murder.

[00:09:40] And according to some of the sources, the murder occurred when a group of Georgians came up led by a man called Smith. And according to some of the sources, they attacked a little St. Patrick's church that was built on top of Stump House Mountain. And apparently the Irish miners didn't take too well to that. A brawl occurred and this man, Smith, was killed. So, of course, the Irish miners were brought up on charges of murder.

[00:10:09] And in the court proceedings, it's really interesting to read because when you go from one page to the next of who is being brought up on charges, the spellings of their names change. So the court stenographer clearly had a hard time understanding the thick Irish brogue. So you have the same person, but with different phonetic spellings from one record to the next.

[00:10:36] So long story short, these men were convicted of murder, sentenced to death. But with the Civil War looming, for some reason, the governor decided to commute the sentences. So they never actually were executed. Some of them had to serve a certain period of time. The others, the record runs dry. They probably just left the area completely. So that's why I came up with the idea of having a murder story in which a young man has been

[00:11:01] convicted of murder and a priest is being sent to hear his confession. So from there, I just fictionalized the rest of it. Okay. Now, Tom, as an old college roommate, when did you first get wind that he was writing a novel? They contacted me. He contacted me about possibly editing it. And I did not know he was writing a novel prior to that. Okay. Yeah.

[00:11:29] I was going to ask Jim if he could maybe speak briefly about the influence of Clemson's English masters on him, because I think we were very lucky to have attended Clemson University when they had a master's degree that required extensive reading.

[00:11:52] In fact, the reading list we had for our orals was the University of Georgia's doctoral reading list. And I was just wondering if Jim could talk a little bit about the impact that had on him in his writing. Yeah, I'd be glad to. The MA oral reading list that Tom's referring to is quite extensive. That's the point of being almost completely intimidating, going all the way from pre-Beowulf up to the late 20th century.

[00:12:23] You had to face a committee of faculty who were seasoned academicians and teachers, great teachers, who would sit there and interrogate you for how long they wanted to see if you knew the answers to all these sometimes obscure questions. Each had a different speciality. But looking back, I think the preparation I had just to be a writer really was someone in those classes and those hallways. They were a great faculty.

[00:12:54] Most of them, of course, if not all of them, were essentially writers also. But I remember one of them, Mark Stedman, who's a very good writer in his own right, who once said that he wasn't a writer who teaches. He was a teacher who writes. And that all stuck with me as sort of a motivating quote that I wasn't someone who retreated some

[00:13:19] lonely garret somewhere and played that stereotypical role of the mad writer in the attic. The tortured writer. Yeah, that never occurred. I was someone who daily went to classroom, taught, prepped, graded, and wrote in my spare time. And Tom's right, the preparation I had, I've never taken a creative writing course.

[00:13:43] Most of what I've learned, if not all of what I've learned, is from listening to teacher practitioners who have taught me. And Tom also taught me many things that I think you pick up by reading great reading, great writing. And a series of osmosis, I guess, occurs and you absorb it and you're not even aware you're absorbing at the time. You know, like how do you write dialogue?

[00:14:09] I mean, I remember reading some of these how-to books, but getting depressed because it was almost like analysis paralysis. You're afraid to write anything because you're afraid of getting it wrong right from the very beginning. So I quickly learned, you know, the old sort of, you know, middle school thing about having a sloppy copy and just going back to it and just constantly chiseling away at it. And that's something Tom certainly taught me. You know, good writing is good rewriting. In fact, writing is rewriting.

[00:14:39] If you're not rewriting, you're not writing. So those Clemson days, yes, it was a really thorough grounding in what grading writing is, but with an understanding that it's a craft and it's something you have to constantly work at. And it's not something that comes easy. Some of the quotes that I picked up along the way were, you know, from great writers that we read. One of my favorite ones is from Flaubert.

[00:15:09] He said, prose is like hair, it shines with a combing. And that resonated. That's nice. Yeah. That one definitely resonated constantly with me. And another one was the, this is actually from a South Carolina writer who I heard recently, Brett Lott. He said, Brett Lott said, write what you don't know about what you already know. So I said, okay, I already know something.

[00:15:38] So let me see if I can find out more about what I already know. So just these little sort of, you know, quotes that, you know, I didn't stick them on a wall and stare at them all the time because I probably wouldn't have written anything. You just sort of internalize them and they make you, you know, face that horrible experience every day of looking at either a blank page or a blank screen and having to start somewhere.

[00:16:04] I know Ron, Tom's brother, has talked about how running has been a kind of, I guess, attendant skill set. Because in running, it's you. It's you only. Yeah, you have a team, but they can't help. And you, you know, that old quote from that Clint Eastwood movie, you know, endeavor to persevere. Runners have to endeavor to persevere, so do writers.

[00:16:33] So I think it's something that you sort of pick up along the way. It's just, yeah, you just face it every day. That discipline of going back and no matter how much criticism you get, you just keep, you know, slugging along. Because if you can't take rejection in this, you're in trouble. And I think running trains you to take rejection because, you know, you don't win too many races. You learn to deal with failure and you just keep getting back up off the floor.

[00:17:02] And I think that's a skill set that athletics and writing have taught me, so. Yeah, and as one of his editors, one of the best things about working with Jim was that he was very open to what essentially is coaching, you know, in a way, in a sense. You know, I felt at liberty to do some things with Jim that I wouldn't have done with any

[00:17:30] other writer because I knew him personally and also because he's so literate and so well-read. And, you know, I knew that I could use certain language with him and make certain suggestions and he would know exactly what I was talking about. So last night I went back through my copy and looked at some things that I'd marked and looked at the book to see if they ended up in the book.

[00:17:59] And that was, it was encouraging to see that he had, you know, taken some of those suggestions. And as I always tell my writers with whom I work, that it's just a conversation. You know, we're just having a conversation and that's what it was. We just were conversing about his book. But he was very open to my suggestions. But I must say it was a very easy book to edit because it was wonderfully written and a pleasure to work with.

[00:18:27] You know, it's just always fun when you're working with someone who's that accomplished, especially for a first novel. Oh, yeah. I was just really taken with your language. I love words. I love poetry. And reading your descriptions, I mean, and thank you for the education on guns and pistols. And muskets. And Irishman and guns. No, truly.

[00:18:56] I mean, it was, you know, I looked up a lot of different things. But I just wrote down a few things that when I was reading it that stayed with me, just the music and the phrases. Like, they carried brown best smooth borders, or one-inch hemp and hard lay, middens of broken bottles, plug hats and hooper swans, carns. You know, these are beautiful.

[00:19:25] And I just wondered what a snaffle bit is because I was looking for that and I couldn't find it. But it's the sort of bit that the horse goes around the horse's mouth. Got it. Okay. And, yeah, I had to do some research on equestrianism. Right. To make sure that I didn't have the horsey set coming after me and telling me that's the wrong saddle. I mean, that's the problem with writing historical fiction, as you know. Absolutely, yeah.

[00:19:50] I was going to have to make sure there's not too many anachronisms or any, if you can get away with it. But, yeah, that was something that definitely had to research, try to make sure it's period appropriate. Or, in this case, just horse appropriate. But there's just so much texture in your writing that, I haven't even gotten to the characters, but I love the way that they're nuanced and they start off.

[00:20:17] You're already, there's the first description of him referring to himself as like, he knew, okay, so there's kind of the call to action, right, where they're going to go and find this accused. Really, he's a boy, right? How old is he? I imagine he was around 18 or so. Yeah, I figured. He's just, you know. Yeah.

[00:20:45] And then he's, Donnelly's describing himself and he's like, but it's in third person, but Donnelly slipped it back into the sheath. And then he goes, what would the condemned man's parents think? They had reached out to Sweeney, the priest, and written a letter, please go and read this boy his last rites. And Donnelly's musing and he's like, what would the condemned man's parents think, he

[00:21:12] wondered, if they knew their son was to be attended by a grave robbing priest and an army deserter? It's like, how to set a hook, right? I mean, these are characters. And then I find out later that each of them has a perfect reason for doing what they did. It was nuanced and human and understandable, but it was such a great way to start things

[00:21:37] rolling because I knew I was, I mean, you're just very, you have a lot of layers and textures in your writing. And I trusted your voice instantly. And the language, Jim, is what I would call the language of the common. And to play off of what you were talking about, because I also marked some of these words, like

[00:22:05] plug hats, barrel of redhead, wagtails, which, you know, these are phrases and words that are inherently poetic and resonate. And I wondered, I wanted to ask you, I mean, is this, are these words and phrases you picked up as you did your research and you said, oh yeah, I want to use that, I want to use that, that sound, I like the sound of that. Is that sort of how that works? Sure.

[00:22:35] The research, I mean, probably, I'm making up a statistic here, but let's say three quarters or 75% of the research was very interesting stuff, but I knew it was instantly. It wasn't really disposable because it really wasn't relevant to what I was trying to do. But all these little discoveries, like the word wagtail, you know, finding out that that was obviously historically, you know, relevant to the time period, you're like, oh goody, I'll have to make sure that shows up somewhere in the book.

[00:23:04] I remember a few years ago, I was listening to a podcast, it was a 2014 podcaster, they did a, in Dublin they did a celebration of the centenary publication of Dubliners, and one of the writers mentioned that the poet Auden, when he was reading a book in the marginalia, or in the margin of the, of a passage that he liked, he would write G-O-T-S. And I thought, well, what does that mean?

[00:23:32] It meant good enough to steal. So I was having a lot of these G-O-T-S moments as I was, you know, going through the research, good enough to steal. So yeah, those, those are, that's evidence, yes, of where I got things, I can't let this go, I've got to keep, I've got to keep this and make sure I work it in some way. Some things I couldn't work in, which I really liked, but they just didn't work.

[00:23:59] Or the, I mean, one of the great things about Tom's editing is he kept preaching momentum, momentum. This book was about, I think, 12 to 14,000 words longer. Wow. But he came in with the chainsaw, and I agree with it, but you know how it is, you love the writing, you love the digressions, but at the same time, well, where's the story? Can we get back to the main highway here? Because we're down some side road, and I don't know where we're heading.

[00:24:25] And so Tom's constant vigilance about momentum was, was something that I definitely had to roll with. And I think it worked, obviously. Another thing that he, he pointed out, you know, trying to avoid being over elaborate, you know, you don't need to tell them everything, let the reader, you know, fill in the blanks, let them intuit. Implication is good, not explication.

[00:24:55] Is that a problem with writers, that you think? Yes. They over explain and go into too many digressions and that kind of thing? Much more so than the opposite. And what I always tell the writers within my work is that that's great for your early drafts. You want to get all that down. That's your material.

[00:25:16] And the, you know, the, what my, the metaphor that my brother Ron uses is it's like Michelangelo before this block of marble. And he, inside that is David, you know. Somewhere, yeah. Somewhere in there is David. And you start with your big tools and you start knocking out the big chunks. And as you move towards the actual figure, you get your finer tools.

[00:25:45] And that's just drafting. And that's what I tell writers. And I think that's one of the mistakes that writers make, beginning writers, is they don't realize how much hard work goes into it and how much drafting you have to do because you're slowly moving towards, you know, the goal is to have a book such as Jim's, which is very tight.

[00:26:10] And I use that word a lot when I edit, tighten this up, you know, whether that's in syntax or a scene or whatever, just tighten it up. And this book, it ends up, I mean, it's got, it does have momentum. It starts, it goes, the story continues, and it's just got this inevitable momentum, which, you know, towards the end, which we won't discuss.

[00:26:39] But, yeah, that's a real issue for beginning writers. I think the mistake some writers think is that they look at it and think it's easy. And that's something that Ron, my brother, preaches to him that, no, this is not easy. You know, it takes a lot of hard work. And you got to do draft after draft and keep working on it. And the good thing, again, with working with Jim is that he was open to all the suggestions. And I appreciated that as I worked with it.

[00:27:09] So one thing I was going to ask him, a question, Jim, to get into some specific aspects of the book, is the use of a lyric opening, which is something that, I just reread Cormac McCarthy's book, The Passenger. And if you've read that, he has that highly lyrical opening with, that just is a page long, but is incredible. And it's just poetry. It's just poetry.

[00:27:40] And I think about Ron's book, Saints of the River. He does the same thing. You know, he has a lyrical opening, and that sort of sets the tone for the rest of the book. And you have this. And I think you did an excellent job with it. Could you talk a little bit about the decision to do that, the writing of that? Why did you choose to start your book that way? I think the book began with an image of a, well, without doing much of a spoiler here,

[00:28:06] but of a man being dragged up a mountainside and being surrounded by these, you know, masked assailants. And I tried to think, well, you know, not that I could imagine what was going through his mind, but knowing that his end is near. And his senses are heightened by the surroundings. The fear has heightened his awareness of nature around him,

[00:28:35] whether it's a broad-winged hawk flying in the sky or a lumbering turtle looking for slugs. And then I tried to imagine the notion that he is literally about to not only physically disappear, but any memory of him will disappear in this opening scene. So in some ways it's a flashback, but it's also a flash forward, because the point, again, was to try to create some suspense as to what's happening to this man and why, and who are these people.

[00:29:02] And again, we don't know exactly what happens to this guy now, do we? Okay. Yeah, we'll keep that ambiguous. Yes. But yeah, that's very impressive. So you approach that almost like writing a poem, I assume. Sort of, but I never really thought of it. In fact, that's the first time I've heard of it being described as lyrical. Or it's highly lyrical. I was mostly trying to simply introduce a conflict,

[00:29:29] because, you know, the writers I admire, and of course McCarthy is obviously one of them, Ron, obviously. I think it was, is it McCarthy that once said that, you know, books are made out of other books? And I think anybody looking at this book will correctly see resonances of other writers. And to me that's, you know, I'm honest with it, that's a form of adulation for what they've done and what I've tried to do in my own sort of little sober

[00:29:58] and not so maybe successful way. But yeah, I wanted to begin with not only a hook, but something that did look both directions, flashback, flash forward, and create that sort of questioning in the reader to get them to turn the page. Because at the end of the day, that's what it's all about, isn't it? You can go in with these highfalutin notions that I'm going to write this great literary fiction piece,

[00:30:25] but one of the things I quickly learned is how to get them to read, how to get them to turn the page, and that was the goal, really. If the lyrical part happened, that's great, but it wasn't something I went in with, you know, this notion that I'm going to write something lyrical. I mean, I can't. It's like the recent Northern Irish poet Michael Longley, who passed away last year, said that, you know, he's always been asked, you know, where do poetry, where do poems come from?

[00:30:52] And he said, if I knew where they come from, I'd go there. So it's the same thing about lyrical passages. If I knew where they come from, I'd go there more frequently, but I don't know. But that's momentum, right? To drive the story, to get the page to turn, to get the reader further and deeper into the story. Right, right. And that's one way to do it, certainly, is to open it up with something that's very intense,

[00:31:19] and then get into your story, which is obviously what Cormac McCarthy did brilliantly in The Passenger, I think. That beautiful passage about the death, which is the saddest thing I've ever read, to tell you the truth. But there are other passages that are very lyrical. Page 19, for example.

[00:31:50] And while you're looking for that, let me just say that our sponsor is Tasteful Beans, and we thank them for sponsoring this podcast. And I should say also that I think we've gotten this far in the podcast, in RedPubPod, without even naming the title of this book, which is The Broken Season. Any clues that you intended to give the reader by titling it that way? Well, the little inscription at the beginning of the book from Job.

[00:32:19] Years ago, I was at a mass service, and the priest was talking about the broken world, and he quoted this inscription, or this quote from the Bible, and it stuck with me. I wrote it down. And I kept thinking, eventually, I think I'll make this a title of something. So, you know, obviously when you read the book, you realize that there's a lot of things broken in this story.

[00:32:48] But yeah, that's where the origin of that came from. Okay. Jim, I was wondering if you could read a paragraph that I found especially, we were talking about the language, the lyricism of the language, and when I was looking back over it, and if you wouldn't mind reading the part, I'd just... Yeah, I'd be glad to. This is from page 19. It's the scene where Donnelly is waiting for Sweeney to come back

[00:33:17] to the cabin where they're living. And the passage goes like this. Donnelly stepped out onto the back stoop and peered up at the night sky. A full moon, the stars celestial lanterns. But what use in such an immensity of darkness? His memory drifted back to that moonlit night by the Tesh. The empty meal sack at the foot of the grave spread out like a picnic blanket, the soil moist and easy to turn.

[00:33:47] Madame Le Cousin wrapped in her winding sheet, her flaccid skin white as talk, her hands clasped tightly and fingers swollen. Donnelly's knife cleanly cut her wedding ring finger. They planned upon the ring to a druggist in New Iberia to provide for the orphans after the storm. Yellow fever was expected, as was malaria. So there was a special need for quinine. And you talked about how some of this,

[00:34:17] obviously some of this is going to be subconscious, but what you probably didn't know that there are 26 S sounds in that one passage that he just read. And there are 8D sounds. And then when you think about stoop, moon, and relationship between those two words, cleanly cut, which to me is onomatopoetic, and then ring finger.

[00:34:45] It's amazing to look in one paragraph and see how unified that is and how compact it is, yet lyrical. And I think that goes to what Jim was talking about. I doubt that he was conscious of the fact that he was doing that. But, of course, that's also related to talent, which is, I mean, you either, sometimes you just have a knack for language or you don't. And I think Jim clearly has a knack for language

[00:35:16] because that's a brilliant passage, I think. It's beautiful, and it, too, gives this whole sense of why these flawed people in the very first page, third page, right? It's like they're flawed, whatever, but it's like, oh, it's a payoff, too, right? So that you see why this guy would go robbing graves. I'm putting air quotes around that,

[00:35:43] but for orphans, and it's just, it's so well put, you know? And it's almost made me think of Da Vinci, to going to the graves to find the bodies to paint his beautiful journals and all the things. It's like it's for a bigger purpose going on. And, you know, Tom, I so agree with you about your suggestion before we sat down here. Where you're like, you need to read your book

[00:36:10] when it becomes an audio book. Because your reading voice is, it's perfect for this, you know? Thank you. Yeah, it's musical. It's musical without trying to be, you know? It brings quite a lot of authenticity to the whole story, if you think about it. Yeah, it is, right? Yeah, and one technical point, another technical point I'd like to discuss with Jim, or hear him talk about, is how he treated his dialogue,

[00:36:41] which using M-dashes instead of quotation marks, which I like. I much, I thought that was, I much prefer that. I think it's cleaner on the page, it reads better, and it works in a way, and it works in a way subconsciously that I still can't fully enunciate. I'm not sure exactly what it does. If you talk about that decision, Jim.

[00:37:11] Yeah, the using of the M-dash wasn't really a conscious choice initially, but probably just imitation of other writers. I mean, probably, we were talking maybe Joyce here and McCarthy, and I just like it. To me, it seemed like a cleaner sort of entree into the actual speech pattern. I've never been a huge fan of quotation marks, because they look like some kind of, I don't know, hieroglyphics on the page to me that sort of give you this artificial

[00:37:41] sort of notice that, okay, now we're going to hear someone speak, but I know it's a personal preference. I have used quotation marks, obviously, and other little squibs I've written, but for this case, I really wanted that, I thought it was more of a sense of immediacy without some kind of road sign, although it is a road sign, but the dash seemed to have that kind of sort of, like I said, cleaner, more concise entry point

[00:38:10] into a verbal exchange. For me, it does look cleaner on the page. It doesn't mean I'll never use quotation marks, but I think for this story especially, especially with Dolly and Sweeney being these two sort of characters who are constantly bantering back and forth, the dash seemed to make that more immediate to me, whereas the quotation marks seemed more formal kind of indicator of speech,

[00:38:40] and I didn't want that. I wanted these two guys to be, you know, we, Northern Ireland, where I'm from, we call it slagging, where you banter back and forth and give each other grief, and I wanted these two to sound like an old married couple almost that have been together so long that they don't even think about what they're saying anymore. It's just this sort of, you know, patois between them. So to me, the dash seemed to be a better way to sort of express that kind of friendship. Fringeing is a wise choice.

[00:39:10] Wise choice. So how did you balance the humor that we get in the novel, primarily from the banter or the slagging? How did you, did you consciously go back and say, okay, I have to be careful here that I don't get too much of this in here because this is, again, we're back to momentum, right? If you have these characters over here giving each other grief, yeah, that's funny, it's entertaining,

[00:39:40] and it may be, you think, oh man, that's really good stuff, but I've got to think about the novel as a whole, right? Yep. Yeah, I had to scale it back initially because it was becoming a kind of riotous road show between the two of them. Like Bob Hope and Crosby. Yeah. Just firing zingers back and forth at each other, but part of it was just, you know, I'm from obviously Northern Ireland, Ulster, and it was Ulster memory

[00:40:08] of hearing these characters in my head, you know, in bars and taverns and, you know, in fields because I was a cross-country runner and hearing people talk that overheard speech where they would basically, you know, shift gears between something very serious to something, you know, obviously kidding each other, joking. sarcasm, which I think is a particular, you know, feature of the Northern Irish character that you don't take each other too seriously.

[00:40:38] But you're right in terms of trying to modify it so that it kept pace with the story so that it wasn't simply a complete distraction. But I think, you know, these two men are from the north of Ireland so obviously that's sort of embedded in their character that they can sort of shift back and forth like putting on a pair of comfortable slippers without feeling there's got to be some kind of, you know, verbal sort of agreement that now we're going to talk about something seriously. The two sort of are coterminous almost. But I had to,

[00:41:08] yeah, definitely make sure that it didn't become simply a comic road show between these two. There was a banter going on but at the same time they had serious things to talk about. But I think there's one scene in the book where one of them gets tired of the other ones kidding and tells them to knock it off because you can only go so far with that even with, you know, their understanding of each other. I think early in the book I did point out or try to make it known that when they talk to each other privately they slip back into

[00:41:38] their old country accents, speech rhythms. But when they're surrounded by Americans they tend to step out of that kind of speech. And I do that myself. Because when I go home I quickly slip back into the local vernacular because if I don't they give me grief, oh here's the yank back because everybody over there thinks you're a yank no matter what part of the United States you're from even if you are from the South. So it was trying to modulate that intimacy between them

[00:42:07] where they use their old country speech patterns and then when they talk to other people they sort of slip out of it again. That's a very natural fit. You and I have discussed this at length about Southern literature and Irish literature and you talk about Cormac McCarthy who has these stretches of these you know characters sitting at a bar or eating and it's incredibly funny and then he comes out

[00:42:37] of that scene and goes into something very Faulkner same thing he's got these people bantering you know these jokes going back and forth so you and I have talked at length about the link between Southern literature and Irish literature is that something you can talk about a little bit and yeah I mean I'm no expert on Southern literature obviously I haven't taught it in years I did take a couple of grad school classes and of course read a lot

[00:43:05] you know a good bit about Southern literature but I think there are I mean obviously scholars have written about it much more you know felicitously than I will ever write but part of it I think the connection the connective tissue is they see the universal in the regional it's not just they're not just writing about something that's akin to where they grew up but there's something universal that other people from other places can read and understand and appreciate

[00:43:35] and empathize and identify with I think in the Northern Irish character given our troubled history and the South's troubled history you see these overlaps you know between you know dealing with defeat and loss and tribal animosity and grievance that has sort of you know been passed on from one generation to the next one of my favorite Northern Irish historians who passed away about a year or two ago his name was Eamon Phoenix but he had this great quote

[00:44:05] he said that we have a common history but not a common memory and to me I think that's applicable to the South as well because you know that obviously the Civil War constantly gets reinterpreted depending on your politics the lost cause mythology in Ireland it's the same thing where we glorify past defeats or victories to prop up some you know contemporary ideological you know position so I clearly saw that

[00:44:35] connection between the South and the Irish connection but getting back to the language I think that love of lyricism that love of character I mean this you can't read Southern literature without constantly coming up against character and it's the same with the Irish I remember reading an old commentary on Irish short stories and one of the people who was responding to the stories said that

[00:45:04] he wanted the stories to have some sort of marvel in them now he didn't define what marvel was but something had to happen that resonated and that you couldn't forget I know that some Irish writers have talked about Chekhov that there's a turning point in a Chekhov story when you get to the end it almost like reintroduces another possible story the same thing with Flounder O'Connor when you join Flounder O'Connor short story it's like you're putting your head

[00:45:34] out of some sort of a confessional box and you can sort of hear the past but you can also see the future and you get that little sort of glimpse into it and I think that's what Southern writers and Irish writers are very good at doing is that constant sort of implication of the past and the present and possibly the future but without being too obviously explicit about it I think that understatement

[00:46:04] is a powerful tool that writers from both places certainly share something I've come to appreciate because Tom knows obviously when I read American literature it's Southern writers that I always sort of gravitate toward anyway not that I haven't read outside the region but that's my personal preference and he's already mentioned a few of them I could go on your door wealthy of course Walker Percy I mean the list goes on all great writers that have

[00:46:34] sort of again sort of subconsciously inherited appreciation for what great writing is and great conflict is and they're talking to

[00:47:03] Harry Lime talks to I can't remember the main character's name but anyway he talks about the Swiss have had so many centuries of peace and what have they ever produced with the cuckoo clock now I don't want to offend any Swiss people but clearly the point being that great literature seems to come from places of great conflict and historical periods where you're having

[00:47:32] a change over as in the south you were moving from the agricultural times and more towards a mechanized world and you know same thing for the Italian Renaissance whenever you have these periods of great change and tension often you see great literature arise from that one thing too I was really impressed it's like it's

[00:48:01] so beautifully home this story that it feels like it's resonating to what we're going through now in a way with the greed relentless greed and it's like you can throw people right in front of that and they'll get mowed over and they'll have the grogs being the places where everybody else doesn't have to think about what's really going on and I just felt like it was a real parable for now in a way too really you know well let's

[00:48:31] see you know when you start reading obviously history you begin to see past this prologue I mean there's so much going on in this time period the 1850s that we're reliving today whether it's the issue of immigration or the issue of voters rights I mean this book takes place on the eve of the civil war so a lot of those tensions are unfortunately you know alive and well still to this day and I wasn't when I was writing the book I

[00:49:01] wasn't thinking oh yeah this will be a great parable for the present but it pretty much just happened because you know these characters living they're not living in a historical vacuum they're paying attention to what they're hearing about what's going on in America you know there's a scene where one they go to the jail and the guy's reading headlines from a newspaper and you realize that a lot of what they were reading about and discussing you know we're still reading about and discussing it's just maybe the people have changed

[00:49:31] but yeah I wasn't trying to write a politically topical novel but if it did happen it happened and you know again the more you read about your past history the more you realize that there's so many parts of our history that we've either never learned about or forgotten and you know these darker periods of history you know in Ireland of course we can't agree on history at all because we have different warring narratives about what happened in

[00:50:01] the past which we constantly dredge up to score points against each other so to me that seemed to be something that you know we're simply we're living through it again yeah on my way down here today on I-40 I saw a huge confederate flag and I thought goodness that's exactly what you're talking about you know I'm just thinking about as I drove by that what I thought about that

[00:50:31] as opposed to the person behind me you know I thought it was an outrage but that's just what I thought and there's some people who think it's wonderful yeah well in Northern Ireland of course we you know flags are contentious territory as well especially at this time of year in July because of the annual marches parading season of the Orange Order so of course you know Union Jacks Tricolors Ulster emblems Ulster flags you know we even contend over the same

[00:51:00] sort of iconography like the red hand of Ulster both sides claim it but for different political interpretations so again yeah it's a it's a territorial marking out you know again trying to implicate that my understanding of the past is the true narrative and yours is some kind of ideological make-believe yeah that's the way we are as humans isn't it yes it is yeah so

[00:51:30] going back to you know connection between the Irish and the south of course a lot of it for me is the topography of western Carolinas obviously we all know about the Scots-Irish settling these mountains and one of the things that I was drawn to was the topography that it reminded me of home now of course your mountains have trees on the marsh don't but it was the same kind of mountain fastnesses and were

[00:52:00] places where these little people could disappear into and have their own sort of culture that hadn't been sort of mainstreamed or merchandised by you know the greater wider world out there and one of my favorite quotes is a Blake quote that I came across when I was writing this the quote comes from one of his poems called Gnomic Verses he said great things are done when men and mountains meet

[00:52:30] this is not done by jostling in the street and that quote stuck with me but then I realized that these weren't great things that are being done when men and mountains meet in my book bad things are being done but to me landscape and destiny yes people have waxed on about that whole notion about how landscape determines character and I think maybe that mountain sort of mentality I mean I come from the shores of Loch Ness

[00:53:00] which is relatively flat but there are mountains not too far away you can see them constantly I think that notion of having mountains constantly within visual contact also creates a sense of character as well of having a refuge but also having a sense of being trapped and playing off on that and I think people from the western Carolinas certainly can identify with that especially well the book is called The Broken Season by Jim Hawley and we want to thank you for coming

[00:53:30] in today and giving us an understanding of what your world as a writer and what the world of the book was so thank you thank you Richard and thank you Tom thank you Tom and thank you Jane as well and Jane we only have one more chore to do the name of the podcast is Red Pub Pod can you say that Red Pub Pod Red Pub Pod there you go Jane Red Pub Pod and with that we end it thank you for joining us by the way

[00:53:59] get this book at RedHawkPublications.com or any other reputable bookstore that sells it and if they don't ask them why okay thanks for joining us we'll see you next time alright thank you thank you so much thank you for joining us for another episode of Red Pub Pod Red Pub Red Pub Red Pub Red Pub Pod a podcast from Red Hot Publications

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