Last year (2023), SoLit hosted the SouthWord Literary Festival here in Chattanooga, a reboot of sorts, as the festival had been an ongoing event until the universe applied the brakes of a global pandemic to it, like it did to all things. I love literary festivals and, for this one, I was lucky enough not only to be an attender but to be a moderator for a couple of the panels upon which a number of literary luminaries were scheduled to sit. One of these was the novelist Richard Bausch. His accolades alone merit their own substack entry. I’d recently read his 2008 novel Peace, one of the best novels I’ve ever read, and certainly one of the most important American novels ever written.
Excited is not the correct term for how I felt in regard to meeting Bausch, but it is the polite term, the professional one, and one with just enough of an intrinsic dusting of understatement so that you know, without me having to actually say it, that what I actually felt was. I dunno. Gag-ga eyes.
For at least a little while, I kept things pretty professional like yeah I hang out with one of America’s best writers like all the time like I do that like it’s normal like sigh is it Tuesday again ho hum what’s good for lunch…but in relatively not-too-long, it was pretty much all, “Thank you for your work, Mr. Bausch, can I take a picture with you (see above), will you please sign my book…'“ Etc. All the fanboy things you say, that you mean from the pit of your heart, but sound, upon pronunciation, as hollow as a bone left in the sun for the summer.
I think it was just after he’d signed my copy of Peace (that I know I found at McKay’s, which means one of y’all turned it in, which means you don’t know what you’re doing, but which also means it’s mine now. So, I guess, thanks.) where I started in with the, “thankyouthankyouthankyou’s” and he looked at me and said, “Hey. From one writer to another.”
Even though by then, I’d had a few semesters under my belt teaching fiction writing, had earned some nice accolades for my own stuff, and had published a few collections of original short stories, I didn’t, at least in the presence of writers who meant something to me, really consider myself a real writer. Until Bausch, with those few words, took me seriously. There are some real Iron John/Robert Bly undertones to all of that, but my lame summary: It meant a lot. A lot, a lot. I still think about what he said and will, of course, always think about it.
And then we jumped into the Washington Commanders, his favorite football team, who’d be their starting QB, what kind of season they’d have overall, and how, from any angle you looked at it, the Commanders’ upcoming season probably wouldn’t amount to much.
“You are a writer and it’s a big deal to be a writer. You’ve permanently crossed the line between ‘Whatever you were before you were a writer if such a ‘before’ even existed which it probably didn’t,’ and ‘Writer.’ And now that you don’t have to keep convincing yourself of a truth you already were as certain of as you are as certain that gravity is on duty today…Well, look. Sometimes, let’s talk about other things.
That sounds like an incredible experience, so cool you met him and had a heart to heart talk.