Clyde Edgerton: The Bible Salesman
Book Club Discussion
August 19, 2009. Clyde Edgerton sheds some light on his novel,
The Bible Salesman.
Book Club Discussion: Interview with Clyde Edgerton
You
are very knowledgeable about the Bible. Were you raised in a religious household?
I
was raised in a fairly strict Southern Baptist fundamentalist environment—no drinking alcohol, not much cursing, weekly church attendance including
Sunday School where there was a good bit of Bible study.
Book Club Discussion: Interview with Clyde Edgerton
Where
did the idea for this story originate?
Two
writers, William Gay and Tom Franklin, asked me to write a story that would be a tribute to Flannery O'Connor—for a volume they were putting together—so
I picked two of my favorite characters from her stories. I made my Bible salesman (see her Good Country People) and my criminal (hers was
The Misfit in A Good Man is Hard to Find) different from hers, but both were crooked. (I was worried that people might think I was trying
to steal her characters so I explained that each of my characters had met her characters, so that I wouldn't be seen as a literary thief.) After
writing the story, I started on a novel with the same characters and changed the character of my Bible salesman, making him more gullible.
Book Club Discussion: Interview with Clyde Edgerton
Was
Henry so gullible because of the loss of his father? Give us your perspective on his character.
In
order to make the novel more interesting than it would have been otherwise, I saw that I needed to make Henry more innocent than he'd been in the
short story. I think of him more as "innocent" than as "gullible" though both terms fit. He was raised in a sheltered environment by a protective
aunt.
Why
did Preston Clearwater do what he did to Blinky?
Well,
there was a safe full of money that was supposed to go to Blinky, and Clearwater wanted it. Also, there was some submerged resentment there against
Blinky. Clearwater had watched Blinky move upward through the ranks of crime faster than Clearwater had risen.
Book Club Discussion: Interview with Clyde Edgerton
What
were Mrs. Albright and Yancy's significance to the story?
Mrs.
Albright offered me an opportunity to have her cats talk, and Yancy was one of the handicapped people in some ways similar to handicapped people
who were part of my neighborhood when I was growing up. His condition represented a certain mystery and presented some confusion about why God,
in Henry's view, might make somebody handicapped.
Book Club Discussion: Interview with Clyde Edgerton
Your
decision to become a writer was not spontaneous. Can you tell us a little bit about your personal journey down this path?
I
was an only child with twenty-three aunts and uncles. I heard a lot of good talk, which I unconsciously stored away, and when I heard Eudora Welty
read her famous short story Why I Live at the P.O on PBS on May 14th, 1978, I wrote in my journal, "Tomorrow I will start writing fiction
seriously." And I did. Before then I'd written one short story that seemed successful to me.
Book Club Discussion: Interview with Clyde Edgerton
Can
you tell us anything about your current writing projects?
I'm
writing book reviews for Garden & Gun magazine. I'm writing a novel about a rock and roll band, 1963, and I'm considering writing a novel
about a book club that reads my novel The Bible Salesman and my novel Raney. There are people in the book club from both the north
and the south and they have a ferocious argument about certain scenes. The book club breaks up into two feuding book clubs who then write their
own books about the other book club.
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