Hotty Toddy

I am in Mississippi, which is a complete sentence. I am here on a writing retreat. I don’t get much time to read and write in between publishing newsletters and teaching and managing money, so I thought it would be a good idea to unplug and go somewhere where I won’t be bothered.

I chose Oxford, Mississippi, because it was the hometown of my favorite writer, Barry Hannah, who passed away about ten years ago. I thought I might bump into his ghost. Since I have been here, I actually met some folks who knew Hannah. They said he liked to party, and he liked to fish, and was prone to bouts of melancholy. To understand Oxford is to understand his essence. It is a quaint Southern town like a lot of quaint Southern towns, except that it is adjacent—literally a stone’s throw from the University of Mississippi campus. Even after graduation, there are still students prowling. There are restaurants and bars and three outlets of the same bookstore, Square Books, from which I purchased a copy of a collection of interviews with Barry Hannah. Yes, I am aware that Faulkner is also from Oxford, and probably better known. And yes, I am aware that Hannah grew up in Merdian, MS, before becoming a professor at Ole Miss. I know all of these things.

I am staying in an Airbnb, a two-bedroom condo, about a mile from the center of town. Every morning I wake at six, roll around in bed for fifteen minutes, take a shower, and head into town to bust into Heartbreak Coffee at 7am when it opens. I occupy a table in the corner and write for 3-4 hours. I go back to my condo for lunch, then go back to Heartbreak Coffee to work in the afternoon. The kids who work at the coffeeshop know me by now, but they are not sure what to make of the guy wearing all black with gray hair down to his shoulders and copious tattoos. I stick out like a neon sign in a blackout down here. But I have been writing a lot. I wrote 8,000 words yesterday, and 6,700 words today. I finished The Awesome Portfolio today, and have moved on to my new novel, for which I am using the working title Inflation Fighter. I doubt my future output will exceed the first two days—I write finance much faster than I write fiction.

You have probably heard all the Mississippi jokes by now. Why does a duck fly upside down over Mississippi? Becuase there is nothing worth shitting on. Mississippi is last in life expectancy and economic growth and first in addiction and infant mortality. I actually am not sure of these statistics, but Mississippi is notorious for being ranked 50th in everything, so it is probably true. Nonetheless, Oxford is very civilized, and I have also been to Jackson, at least the nice part, and that was civilized, but I suspect that I have been to the nice parts of Mississippi and there are places that are not so civilized. It is $3.50 for a cup of coffee, and the stupid computer asks you for a tip while you are standing up, just like any other asshole coffeeshop in the world. There is a certain aesthetic here—flower-print dresses for the girls, bright pastels for the guys. Like I said, neon sign in a blackout. There are a lot of churches, which is true of anywhere in the South. There are also social ills, drugs, and it is amazing how drugs find their way into small towns everywhere. I have seen more than a few obviously gay and lesbian people, and they are tolerated, if not embraced, which does not fit with the Deep South stereotype. It is amazing how progressive values have found their way into small towns everywhere.

Admittedly, I was putting a lot of pressure on myself coming down here on a writing sabbatical. I have seven days to write. I have finished The Awesome Portfolio, but if I don’t take a good chunk out of Inflation Fighter, the sabbatical will have been a waste. Perhaps not a total waste, though—I haven’t taken a vacation in ages, and even a little down time will refocus the mind. I have also been reading like mad, getting through the latest issue of Granta and a 700-page short story collection that I picked up in Connecticut. When I got here, I went to the gas station to buy some Zyn (the one thing I forgot), and then went to Kroger (which surpasses any grocery store I have ever seen) to get food for the week. I got boneless wings, heat-and-eat butter chicken, and chicken alfredo that you put in the oven, along with pasta salad and potato salad. I took a break from the storebought food and went out to dinner early Sunday afternoon, and had the best shrimp and grits I have ever had in my life. I ordered it with etouffe, which is a cajun seasoning. I am still thinking about that fucking shrimp and grits.

I am a little old to be staring at co-eds, but I will tell you that the women here are stunning. When I moved to South Carolina 15 years ago, I thought I would see some Southern belles. But Myrtle Beach has ugly women, worse that Southeastern Connecticut, where I grew up. Scotch-Irish descent, five-foot-three, 180-pound wombats, smokers, all of them, with Salt Life stickers on their cars, and a cigarette hanging out the window. Even the Hooters girls are terrible in Myrtle Beach. I’m not lecherous, but if I were, Heartbreak Coffee in Oxford would be the place to go. Runway models walking in and out of there all day. Goddesses. I haven’t been in such a target-rich environment since I visited my friend Kyle’s high school in Alexandria, Virginia in 1990. Their boyfriends are standard-issue Southern lads, with blue button-downs and pink shorts and leather loafers, carbon copies of themselves. I’m sure they like to fish, too, and I’m sure they like raising hell with a few beers in them, or in the bleachers at an Ole Miss baseball game. I’ve adapted well to South Carolina lowcountry culture over time, but this Mississippi rebel thing is a different animal altogether. As they say, there’s The South, and then there’s The Deep South.

Still, in Oxford, you’re only an hour away from civilization—Memphis, Tennessee. You’re closer to Memphis than you are to Jackson. You can be at a Grizzlies game in an hour, though I get the distinct impression that not too many people make the trip. The small town life suits them. It suited Barry Hannah, too, who made his existence here, and later in life, went to literary conferences and told everyone to find Jesus. When I first heard that story, I thought it wasn’t real, but now that I’ve been here for 72 hours, I get it. This is a different world, cut off from the universe, strangely disconnected in the age of the internet. It’s not a time warp—there are fancy iPhones and fancy cars and fancy stores, but it’s the values that are a relic of a bygone age. I haven’t looked at an electoral map, but I would I would guess that Oxford, in spite of being a college town, went for Trump in the last three elections. It’s not a question of ideology, it’s a matter of culture.

Barry Hannah was a fixture in Oxford, doing book signings off and on at Square books, teaching his classes, fishing, partying. Oh, to have been one of his students. Barry died in 2010, shortly after his last novel, Yonder Stands Your Orphan was published, before the whole world went fucking batshit crazy woke. Hannah, for sure, would have been the first literary figure to be canceled, in the first clip of the M16, dropping n-words like double cheeseburgers, glorifying straight sex—Junot Diaz would have had nothing on him. It’s good that he didn’t live to see this. He has been my greatest literary influence. If you read my short story collection Night Moves, the story “Disaffected” has his fingerprints all over it. I felt like I needed to make this literary pilgrimage, to close the loop from when I first read “Testimony of Pilot” in college, with tears streaming down my face. Square Books has a Barry Hannah shelf in their store. He deserves more than that and then some.

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Don’t fucking forget to pre-order the e-book of RULE 62, coming out June 24th. Think of it as Barry Hannah with a conscience.