The Dragging Grains: Influences on Southernmost

Today I am doing the thirteenth stop on a book tour that is going to end up going to twenty different cities and two countries. Along the way I have often been asked about the influences on this book.  Since most of you out there won't be at my readings on this tour I wanted to share some of the pieces of art that inspired and informed me during the eight or nine years that I was working on Southernmost.

One of the major themes of Southernmost is belief--finding it, losing it, desiring it.  The main character, Asher Sharp, struggles with doubt and even losing his faith over the course of the book.  I don't think it gives too much away, however, to tell you that he also has an epiphany in which he realizes that he loves not only everyone he knows, but even the strangers around him.  This scene is directly inspired by an epiphany that was experienced by Thomas Merton at the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville.  The entire theology of the book is very influenced by Merton's ideas of God, belief, and worship.  The Kentucky monk was famously ecumenical and his writings and teachings have had a tremendous impact on the world. You can read his own words about his epiphany at this link.  Merton shows up in the book, too, when Asher receives a mysterious postcard that mentions him.  

There is also a reference to Merton throughout the book in that he was someone who often talked and wrote about the idea of holiness existing in everything.  He popularized the saying "Everything that is, is holy."  Before him James Agee often riffed on this same way of thinking, particularly in his masterful nonfiction book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.  But before either Agee or Merton, the brilliant poet and artist William Blake wrote "For everything that lives is holy.  Life delights in life."

Asher is also led to the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop as he evolves.  While writing the book, I read a lot of artists who had Key West connections, as Bishop did, but the poem that struck me the most was "Sandpiper".  Its themes are so important to Southernmost and the poem could very well be the mantra of one of the characters in the book--Asher's brother, Luke.  Also, the cover of Southernmost contains a reference to this poem in the form of the bird playing in the surf.  Here's the poem:

The roaring alongside he takes for granted,

and that every so often the world is bound to shake.

he runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,

in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.

The beach hisses like fat.  On his left, a sheet

of interrupting water comes and goes

and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.

He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.

--Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them,

where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains

rapidly backwards and downwards. As he runs,

he stares at the dragging grains.

The world is a mist.  And then the world is

minute and vast and clear.  The tide

is higher or lower.  He couldn't tell you which.

His beak is focused; he is preoccupied,

looking for something, something, something.

Poor bird, he is obsessed!

The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray,

mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.

While working on the book I was particularly interested in stories about people of faith who were struggling with doubt or their own humanity.  I somehow found Ingmar Bergman's amazingly beautiful 1962 film Winter Light, which explores the spiritual crisis of a priest who fears that God has become silent.  The film not only helped me to work my way through presenting a character who was dealing with a similar existential crisis but also helped me to think about the tone of the book and how to keep theme consistent while also evolving. You can watch the film here:         

While most people would count Their Eyes Were Watching God as their favorite novel by Zora Neale Hurston, mine by her is Jonah's Gourd Vine, her 1934 debut that is about a preacher who struggles to rectify his love for God and for preaching with his overwhelming sexual desires.  It is also a book, like all of Hurston's work, rich in sense of place and sensuality found in everything:  the weather, food, language, etc.   

Another novel that had some influence on me during the writing of this novel was Abide With Me by Elizabeth Strout, mostly because her novel deals with a pastor who is struggling with his congregation.  It's one of my favorite novels--definitely my favorite by her--although it is likely her least read book.  

I should say here that when I'm working on a book, other books are probably the forms of art that have the least influence on me as I'm always trying to write something completely new and something completely my own.  But sometimes there are books that display such perfect craft that they help me to figure out how to overcome some thematic obstacle.  These two books did that for me with Southernmost.  

As always for me, music plays a huge role in this novel.  Music is probably the art form that has the biggest influence on my writing.  I use it to develop my characters and to set the tone for my scenes.  I almost always write with music playing.  The main artists whom I was listening to on repeat were My Morning Jacket, Jim James, Joni Mitchell, Patty Griffin, Tom Petty, Daniel Martin Moore, and Joan Shelley.  There are two soundtracks for the book available on Spotify.  Follow them and occasionally I'll add other songs that had significant influence on the book.  

When I'm working on a book, I seek out different kinds of art to help me along but also it feels to me as if the world is often presenting me with books, music, photographs, films, or other forms that speak to the novel at hand.  I surround myself with as much art as I can when I'm working on a novel.  I am usually spending years and years with a book so I need all the help I can get.  Other forms of art supply it for me.