- But no, I don't think of myself as a spokesman for Black people.

In fact, I don't think of myself as a Black writer, but I'm not gonna argue that point.

That is I'm trying to compete with the people who've done best with the short story form.

(calm concert band music) (music intensifies) - Hello, I'm Tom Wolfe, and in just a moment, we're gonna be looking in on the University of South Carolina Writer's Workshop.

The guest today is a writer who's something of an anomaly in that he is a short story writer who is not simply waiting around for that big score called the novel.

He's a short story writer who is very much dedicated to the short story as a form.

He happens to be one of the best short story writers in the country, James Alan McPherson.

1978, he won the Pulitzer Prize for two collections of short stories, "Elbow Room" and "Hue and Cry."

And McPherson is also a short story writer who is interested in the traditions of the short story, which after all, is perhaps the great unique American form, and also in the importance of folklore in the short story.

And I think that what you will notice most as we watch this workshop is, is how much the students and James Alan McPherson are caught up in the, with a fascination in the idea of the role of folklore in writing fiction.

- So you worked on a train, and then used that money to finish Harvard Law School, right?

- No, I used it to go through college.

- Which college, this is- - Morris Brown.

- [Bill] Morris Brown.

And then you went to Harvard without interruptions at all or you- - No interruptions.

- [Bill] And you finished there in three years, right?

- Yeah.

- [Bill] And then you decided... How'd you decide at that point that you didn't wanna be a lawyer?

Or was it that clear cut a deal?

- I don't think it was clear cut.

I think... I had the choice of deciding between one state and another, and I didn't like what I was then able to do with law.

That is the options were either go into a firm and play ball in hopes that you would become eligible to be taken in or go into poverty law.

- [Bill] Poverty law?

- You know, public defender.

- Public defender type stuff.

- Yeah.

The strange thing about Harvard is that there are three or four different Harvards.

One is the college and another is the law school, another is the business school.

But the college was founded or supported by the people who had what they construed to be a moral mission, and they thought they could take over the world and save the world if they had enough time.

Now, the law students don't get any sense of that because they're someplace else.

Neither do the business students.

But if you had contact with... I worked in a settlement house with people who had gone through Harvard College, and they had a sense of mission, not that I have, but I think I began to be aware of that there was something more going on than just becoming professional.

I don't regret not following through.

I think I'm closer to what the college represented.

In fact, my old law professor told me when I saw him about four years ago, Manny Paul Floyd, he said, "You've gone beyond the law."

And I don't know if I have or not, but I knew that the traditional conception of the lawyer is not a technician, but a counselor, a wise man like Solomon in the Bible.

That's the real lawyer.

- [Student 1] Mr.

Fox said that by the time you came to Iowa, he couldn't help you with your writing.

You already wrote well.

When did you start writing?

At what point in your life, when you were very young, or when you were in college or law school?

- [James] I guess when I was very young.

I used to play hooky from school and I'd go to the public library and I'd read.

There was a huge, big popular novel called "Anthony Adverse" by Harvey Allen.

1,045 pages.

- [Bill] He's from Charleston, isn't he?

- I don't know.

- [Bill] I think he was.

- But I figured if I could do that many pages, then I would've accomplished something because I used to read every day and I finished it.

Then I began reading Maupassant and Bosack, just popular novels.

- [Student 1] Were you writing then too, or- - [James] Well, trying to imitate certain things, not very effectively.

We all do that, I suppose.

- [Student 2] How much of your writing is based on folklore?

- [James] Hopefully more and more will be.

(class chuckles) Thank you for asking me that.

When I began writing, I was aware that you could write about what happened to you, or you could write about the present moment in terms of an accumulation of stories, memories.

That is you could put what you had experienced into a context, and that context was to be found in folklore, I discovered later.

That story you mentioned about the road, the railroad, well, I made it up, but I made it up out of about a thousand stories I'd picked up from waiters, and they in turn picked those stories up from other waiters.

You see, there was a folk tradition intact that stretched back to the early stages of railroading, at least on that line, and I was the beneficiary of all those stories.

So I was able to define the people the way they defined themselves, because I had those stories in my head.

So that to me is folklore, railroad folklore.

Then I became conscious of the possibility of this and I began to actively read Negro folklore to see what I could find.

Now, I don't mean to praise the folk, that is say the folk memory is more accurate than anything else, but at least in Negro folklore, it does project characters and it does pass on a bit of wisdom.

Once upon a time is really saying one time something happened that, if you look at it in light of these present circumstances, might prove be in instructive.

A folk tale is like a precedent in law.

That is it points to some wisdom that was derived at a certain point and passed on.

- [Bill] Tell 'em about the thing we talked about last night with the woman on the wheel and the fella throwing a knife.

Is that Maupassant?

- Yeah.

- This is a neat little thing.

- I was talking about reading Maupassant's collected works, looking for something to steal, and I ran across a story called "The Artist's Wife," and it's an anecdote about a narrator going to a fair, a circus, and seeing a fellow, a knife thrower who throws knives at his wife while she's on one of these revolving wheels.

And she's chained to the wheel, and he throws the knives all around her neck, all around her neck, and so close that the knives almost touch her skin.

Plus he does this while blindfolded.

But other people think he's got a trick because she's so confident.

Each time he throws a knife at her, she smiles and jeers at him.

So after a while, the narrator approaches him and says, "What's your trick?"

He says, "There's no trick, there's no trick.

I'm just good at what I do."

And he says, "What is this thing with your wife?

Why does she feel a necessity to jeer at you?"

He said, "Well, years ago, she was unfaithful to me, and by all rights, I should be able to kill her, and the court will let me off.

And I wanna do it, but each time the thought comes into my mind, it doesn't get to my hand when I throw the knife.

I can't help but do what it's supposed to do.

And she knows this, that's why she laughs at me."

But it's the idea of an artist, a conman artist who's so good, that is so proud of what he does, that his whole existence is geared towards that, and he just can't do it the wrong way.

He just can't.

Even though his heart wants him to do it, he just can't do it.

I guess he's become mechanized in that respect.

- [Student 3] And do you teach writing now?

Is that or do you teach- - [James] Yeah, off and on at Virginia.

- Yeah, I just wondered how you felt like being a student at the Iowa workshop, like Bill has said, that he wasn't really able to teach you that much 'cause you're so good.

What do you think of that experience of writers in a writer's workshop like that, what you do learn and what you can teach as a teacher?

- That's a good question.

- Yeah.

(chuckles) Well.

You can't teach so much as you can give people access to each other.

I was talking about the old "Spirit of the Times" last night, about a newspaper in the 19th century published out of New York called "The Spirit of the Times," something comparable to what "Esquire" was in barbershop quarters.

But frontier, very literate frontier lawyers say in Arkansas or Tennessee, the Carolinas maybe, this is what used to call the old southeast, the old southwest that is, the area that we now call the south.

These lawyers, gentlemen farmers used to go around and collect stories from the rustics, from the backwoods people.

And a man in Arkansas would send one in to "The Spirit of The Times," and it would be printed.

And the subscribers would read it, and somebody in Tennessee would say, "Aha, I know one better than that," and he would write his version of that same story, but using his environment and his people.

What you had was a situation very close to a jazz combo, a jazz orchestration, that is individual risk on themes.

But at the same time, there's an integrative process.

And each man, once he knows this basic theme, has the ability, has a chance to take it apart on his own.

I think that's what a writing workshop provides, that opportunity for interaction, for exchanges between imaginations formed in different areas of the country.

And it helps produce better rounded people.

As far as teaching techniques is concerned, I think you can get that reading on your own or having somebody to talk with you about it who actually does it.

But I think there's a danger of a creative writing degree becoming a ripoff once it becomes institutionalized.

And people say, "Well, I'm getting my PhD in creative writing."

You can't get a PhD in creative writing.

It has its drawbacks, I would say.

I was grateful to be at Iowa because I, I had come from a culture dominated by lawyers, and I was able to meet people who were also writing, and it helped in that respect.

Does that answer your question?

- [Student 3] Yeah.

- Yes?

- [Student 4] Offhand, what percentage of your stories would you say are purely autobiographical or pure fiction or just a collection of others' experiences?

- In my last book, there's only about one story that I would consider autobiographical, the rest is made up, but made up from memory, my own, and from folk memory and from what I've read.

Hopefully I'll continue in that line.

- [Student 5] Is it true you spent just lots of nights at Iowa stuck in Bill's office writing all night long?

- [James] No.

(laughs) - Oh, we've been led astray folks.

- I think I told them you used my office as a place to write.

- No.

- It was McHale, wasn't it?

- It probably was.

What happened at Iowa was that it used to get so cold and so snowy that I wouldn't go home at night.

I wasn't married in those days, so I would sleep on the floor in the old Rhetoric building.

It was a good time.

There was a lot of energy flowing.

- In those two years, I was telling them last night, we had four writers that had novels published, and they're all... It was Tom McMenamin, Howard McMillan, Tom McHale and Jim McPherson.

We had four Mcs for whatever that's worth.

- I think the clan was rising.

- [Bill] McHale used my office, that's right, and I thought Jim did.

- [James] But you see, he just touched on a convention that's endemic in folklore, that is the story's out now.

- That's right.

- You can't change it, but you take an insignificant thing and you frame it in a story and pass it on.

And pretty soon, 10 years from now, people will be saying those four fellows who had last names beginning with Mc, all worked outta Bill Fox's office at Iowa in that great time.

They will.

- [Student] It's never split.

- [James] That's the way it works.

- [Bill] And three of the books were disasters.

They ought to be forgotten.

(chuckles) "Never Slept," that's one.

Some more questions out there.

- [Student 5] When were you sure that you- - Use that mic, honey.

- [Student 5] Okay, when were you sure that you were going to become a writer?

- [James] You're never sure.

Right now, I don't know if I'm a writer.

I'm just as insecure about it as anybody else.

You never know, and that's the hell of it.

It's an attempt to muster enough courage now and then to get something on paper.

But you never know what it is.

It's the most difficult, not job, but attempt at work there is, I think.

You don't get paid.

You're mean to people around you.

(class chuckles) It's difficult, and you never know.

You become a writer when you become institutionalized, that is when you start joining clubs and going to meetings like to PEN Club, that kind of stuff.

But these people's presence is, they're not writers because after a while, it becomes easier to sit around pontificating than it is to go off into a room and try to get your work done.

I'm feeling pretty good now looking at people looking at me and expecting me to say something profound knowing that I have nothing profound to say.

But that's the way it is.

And after a while, you become a presence, and then you begin going to writer's conferences and drinking too much and you lose, I think you lose something.

But you gotta do it at some point because you can't write all your life.

It's a battle all the time.

- [Student 5] Do you have a daily writing schedule?

- [James] No.

I've never been able to keep a daily writing schedule.

See, I don't worry about it anymore.

- [Student 5] Or what brings you to the blank page?

- [James] I don't know.

I don't know.

And I haven't been close to a blank page enough in the last year or so.

I've been teaching a lot.

I'm not trying to avoid answering, it's just that I don't know.

- [Bill] You have any comments on Afro-American studies?

- In what respect?

- Do you like it or dislike it or think it's a good thing or a poor thing or just where it came from and where it's going and when it's gonna all end?

- Well, I think it's a valuable discipline, but for scholars.

That is I think that a lot of this country's history has been lost because people ignored those aspects of the history that related to Black people.

So it's necessary to get that into the books, but get it in in a way that allows the Black American experience to relate to the so-called white American experience.

And then you find you don't have a black and white, two different experiences, you have the same experience.

For example, that book on railroads I did, it wasn't about my experiences on the train.

I read a book by a man named Leo Marx called "The Machine in the Garden."

It's an attempt to talk about the ways in which, in this country, technology tended to discourage the creation of high levels of art.

That is the technology was so threatening that artists tended to retreat from it.

And if they did approach it, it was as if it were a threat.

And I said, "Well, that may be true, but what about all the folklore my people made out of the railroad?"

That is what about all the stories about knives and guns and things that I know?

That's technology.

That's not a nuclear reactor.

But at the same time, there was an opportunity to write a book or attempt to write a book in which I could bring the two together and say, "Well, here was the Black response to it, and it wasn't what you say the white response was."

So you have to modify the white response because the Black response is now institutionalized.

John Henry is an American folktale, that sort of thing.

But that's a product of... That's a matter of looking at it not in black and white terms, but looking at it in terms of a historical, a historical interaction that's been going on for 400 years or so now.

And then when you get it all done on paper, you find that nobody's black and nobody's white.

At least culturally, nobody's that way.

Does that answer you?

- [Bill] Yeah, mmhmm.

- I think that Black studies is important as a way of uncovering material that's not been used by historians as we are helping them modify assumptions they've made for a long time, but it's not a good thing for a young kid to major in because he needs to compete.

- [Bill] I was afraid of that, that whole majoring in Black studies tends to bring you out with a very limited... - [James] Well, I think in some ways it was a concession on the parts of administrations to the demands of Black students.

But on another level, on a more Machiavellian level, it was a way of integrating without integrating.

That is instead of having the Black studies program over there that you call segregated college, you bring it in and segregate it inside the... And then you have, like at Yale, there are very few Black and white students talking to each other.

The Black students have certain tables in the dining halls, and they sit together, and the white students have their own tables, and nobody makes the first move.

So you find both sets of students missing an opportunity to exchange knowledge.

But at the same token, you find that most of the Black teachers in northern, I guess and southern colleges are teaching Black studies.

I would never teach Black studies.

Why would I go to a university and segregate myself in terms of knowledge that's there?

Virginia has never yet asked me to teach Black studies.

- [Student 6] Critics have called you one of the leading Black writers today.

And I wanted to ask you, do you feel that you are a voice for the Black people?

Do you think of yourself maybe as writing for a Black audience more than a white audience?

- No, if I did that, I wouldn't sell anything.

(chuckles) 'Cause Black people expect you to give it away.

Also, the book reading... The people who buy the most books in this country are white women.

(class chuckles) They make the bestseller list, that sort of thing.

But no, I don't think of myself as a spokesman for Black people.

In fact, I don't think of myself as a Black writer, but I'm not gonna argue that point.

That is I'm trying to compete with the people who've done best with the short story form.

And I guess time will tell whether I've competed successfully.

If my stories last, maybe they won't be considered stories by a Black writer.

- [Student 5] Do you believe there's a general disrespect in America for the writing profession?

- [James] No, I think, I think that there is an underestimation of the power of the written word in this country.

When you have all the nuclear weapons, you feel safe, not knowing that the written word can outlast weaponry.

Other countries know it.

That's why you have so many writers in jail, in jails in other countries.

But this country I think still believes that if you've got your gun, you're in control.

Whereas writers can be subversive in a good way I mean, and healthy way.

There is not this disrespect.

There's just the disinterest.

But meanwhile, the books keep getting, keep being written and read and supported.

It's a strange thing.

Some of the same people who would dislike hearing certain things said in print will still use their corporations to get it into print because they feel that written word is no threat.

If this country ever begins arresting writers, then it'll be time to leave.

But until it does, it's a very good country in that it protects that kind of freedom, I think.

- [Bill] We have time for about one more.

Listen, any general comments, we've got about two minutes, about how you see the South now?

Any changes that have struck you come back this time?

- Well, I'm not gonna say that on television.

- We can always cut it out.

- 'Cause it could be wrong.

I don't know.

- Any feeling though?

- I don't know.

Whatever I say will be based on just the impressions I've had since I've been here.

- [Bill] I think I want to hear those if you have those.

- Well, I've spent all my time here in your community.

I've not gone into the Black community, so I don't know what it's like there.

- That's right.

- I do know that there's a trend towards moving Black people out of certain areas.

But I do see communication between Black people and white people here that I didn't, I don't see very much in the north.

But then that's always been the case in the south.

There's always been that communication.

I don't know.

I can't say any more than that because I haven't seen enough yet.

- [Bill] But it feels better to you now than it did 10 years ago.

- Oh yeah, oh yeah.

- [Bill] And there's some step there.

- Yeah.

- [Bill] That's about good enough here.

You want to say anything in conclusion?

Any advice to struggling writers?

- No, I have no advice to give to anybody.

I wish you all luck.

- Any pitfalls to look out for?

- They change.

- [Bill] Yeah, they keep changing the rules.

(chuckles) - Change all the time.

If you write well enough and you have confidence in what you do, that's all you really need.

If you wanna make money, that's another story.

If you do it because you like it, then you're in good shape.

- From Columbia, South Carolina, this is Tom Wolfe thanking you for joining us for the University of South Carolina Writer's Workshop.

(calm concert band music) (music intensifies) (music fades)