The following is an interview with Brad Vice, two time author of the short story collection, The Bear Bryant Funeral Train. Brad currently lives in Mississippi.
(Note: I’m just tossing a brief note out, for those not familiar with the story. Brad’s story collection, The Bear Bryant Funeral Train, was awarded the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award, in 2004, to be published in 2005. Shortly after hitting stores and libraries, it was deemed to include language too similar to a non-fiction work by Carl Carmer, and the University of Georgia Press recalled and pulped the book immediately. While I’ll get to questions about that, there will be some background information questions first, which hopefully will shed some light on later questions. Just letting everybody know though, as I probably allude to the pulping without mentioning it in some of those earlier questions.)
Dan:
Hello Brad, thanks for taking some time out of your schedule to answer some questions.
Brad:
Thanks for taking an interest in my book.
Dan:
Where to start? How about starting back in grad school. You attended the University of Cincinnati. How did you end up there? Was it because of the program, the instructors, a feel for a need to get at least a little distance from the south?
Brad:
All three. The program was one of the few Ph.D. programs in Creative Writing at the time. (There are many of them now.) The Alabama poet Andrew Hudgins knew of me and my then-wife, Juliana, because he had been a University of Alabama grad and our teachers wrote strong letters-of-rec. He took time out of his schedule to meet with us and told us he wanted us to come study with him. Then Juliana won a big fellowship there, so that settled it. I found when I was in Ohio I began to desperately miss the heat and the red dirt and even the SEC mania, which had kind of annoyed me throughout my childhood. So, when my comp. exams were over, and I had time to read something other than Saul Bellow or Lacan, I began to read sports biographies of Bear Bryant. Reading about Bear Bryant gave me two things: a cultural history of Tuscaloosa, my hometown, and an example of a hero — a hero working in a different genre, but a hero nonetheless. Bear Bryant was one of the most determined, persistent people to ever pursue a dream. I remember once I was in a workshop with Amy Hemple at Sewanee Writers’ Conference and she said, “As a writer you must be obsessed. Like Bear Bryant used to say, ‘Get obsessed! Stay Obsessed!’” I can’t tell you what it did to my mind to have a sophisticated woman from New York quoting the Bear and using him as an example for young writers. Anyway, Cincinnati gave me the perspective I needed to write about my hometown as a place worthy of universal attention. I assume this is what Faulkner learned about Oxford, Mississippi, in Paris. Same goes for James Joyce. Also, Bear Bryant has been helpful during my recent troubles. He was the subject of more than one scandal. It is sad that universities prove more loyal to football coaches than to writers.
Dan:
During the discussion of the first go-around with The Bear Bryant Funeral Train, the idea of intertextuality came up. Can you describe your own understanding of this concept? Can you also detail for me, if this was something you had been working with prior to your attending the University of Cincinnati, or if it was something you learned about, and began incorporating into your own writing, while there?
Brad:
Yes, my story “Stalin” was written before I was in Cincinnati. It appropriates large sections of Nikita Khrushchev’s memoirs Khrushchev Remembers. Also, the story “Artifacts” is somewhat intertextual. I was a fiction writer writing about a frustrated poet who becomes a cookbook writer. Inside this story there is much about the history of not only food, but of books themselves, as cookbooks were only outsold by the Bible after the invention of the printing press. So both of those stories are intertextual and were completed when I was an MA student at UT-Knoxville.
Both Carmer’s book and Khrushchev’s book were part of my dying father’s library. Intertextuality is a concept that focuses on the notion that no work of art is made whole cloth, that everything we write is made up of bits and fragments of the works that came before us. Literature is an echo chamber, a rag-bag, a pastiche, a crazy quilt, and I think it would be safe to say that collage, montage, and bricolage are the dominate modes of both modern and postmodern art -- literary and otherwise. Intertextuality -- this name is one invented by postmodern critics, but the concept is as old as literature itself. The poet John Donne describes himself as a magpie picking through the scraps of paper left by his forebears. T.S. Eliot saw literary culture as a “Wasteland” and his goal was to compose “these fragments shorn against my ruin.” These are fragments of The Bible, Shakespeare, Andrew Marvell, Virgil, Dante, and a host of many, many more. The first five lines of his poem Gift of the Magi come from a Lancelot Andrews poem, and this isn’t even noted in the Norton’s Anthology, much less acknowledged by the poet himself. Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead rewrites Hamlet by using whole portions of the Shakespeare play, the plot of which Shakespeare had in turn borrowed from writers before him, like Seneca and Plautus. Contemporary novelists like Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, and D.M. Thomas have kept this tradition strong, as it is seems the goal of their writing is to draw their readers attention to the fact that the book is a text, an artifact, not a window into a dream world or fantasy. For these writers, every book contains its own literary history. Cormac McCarthy has said that every book is a Frankenstein Monster of the books that came before it. My work seeks to follow in the tradition of the writers I admire, and as such I employed their techniques.
Dan:
I know at many universities, the following idea goes against the grain, but was there much discussion in your creative writing classes about the process of publishing? I’ve heard from MFA students that at some places it is nearly forbidden – the idea that writing is art, and thinking about that bigger picture is not to be discussed.
Brad:
No, we didn’t discuss publishing much in class, but we discussed it a lot out of class. In class we focused on the long term. Not how to get published today but how to keep writing for ten years until you break into print. Out of class, we talked about which magazines to send to, and of course how to get an agent. Except for a few like DeLillo, Pynchon, Richard Powers, William Vollmann, etc., it is generally accepted that postmodern lit. is unmarketable. Your academic profs pushed you to be more experimental, while most of your creative writing teachers urged realism. A revered writer like Donald Barhtleme would never have made a living outside of a university setting. But novelists like DeLillo and Pynchon are icons, and it is hard to follow in their footsteps. Writers like Ian McEwan and Margaret Atwood have attempted to maintain their popular readership and intrigue critics at the same time with their books, Atonement and The Blind Assassin, both of which use postmodern techniques. But the legal aspects of publishing, like “fair use” or even “copyright,” were never once mentioned. Now I have had a crash course in the subject, and to be honest, I understand it less now than I did before the whole mess got started. In school it is assumed you are sincere; it is a greenhouse where most of your fellow writers hold the same values. Literature is art. Copyright assumes that there is a commercial aspect to this endeavor. Few of us really seek to be rich. We know we write for a limited audience. There are much better ways to earn money than writing. When you’re getting a Ph.D, your goal isn’t to be Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling. You want to be Ray Carver, who even as a modern realist practiced the same techniques I used in “Tuscaloosa Knights” in his biographical story of Chekov entitled “Errand.” (See John Dufrense essay in the new version of the BBFT.) I was unprepared for the cynicism of a general readership.
Dan:
What was it like to find out that your story, "Mojo Farmer," had been included in New Stories from the South 1997? Which also brings up the question, do you consider yourself to be a regional writer?
Brad:
Finding out I was going to be in New Stories was a great day. It was one of my big goals as a writer. Everyone I admired had been in it—Barry Hannah, Rick Bass, Peter Taylor, Larry Brown. Padgett Powell, Wendy Brenner, Nanci Kincaid, et al. My goal was to write in a vein similar to Hannah and Powell, one that seems to level the distinction of regionalism and postmodernism. I say in the abstract of my dissertation that I want to be a postmodern regionalist. George Saunders, Brock Clarke, and Robert Antoni are contemporary writers who seem to share this goal.
Dan:
You also had one of your stories, "Chickensnake," selected for inclusion in Best New American Voices 2003. Was it the same level of excitement being included in this anthology as the New Stories from the South series?
Brad:
I didn’t have the same level of excitement, but it gave me pride and confidence. It made me feel like, hey, this is not a fluke. If I keep working hard I can keep growing.
Dan:
Throughout these years, I believe 1998 through 2003 or so, you had also been attending the Sewanee Writers Conference. As you know, there was an article implying that a great deal of your success to that point of your life could be directly correlated to the time you spent there. I don’t think there’s any secret that networking can help a person, to some degree, in the literary world, just like any other professional career. Can you explain how attending Sewanee did help your writing or career?
Brad:
Sewanee taught me how to conduct myself like a professional. I met my heroes and discovered they were people. I found out that if you didn’t treat them merely as people who could help you, oil wells to be drilled, but just talk about movies, or football, or whatever they were more willing to spend time with you. I saw that being a professional meant being polite, showing up on time, being gracious, or still doing your job when you were sick. I have the greatest admiration for Barry Hannah because he performed his duties as a faculty member suffering through the ill-effects of chemo. I learned the pros play hurt. What’s more, people have suggested that Barry Hannah has had something to do with all my success, and that all my success is a quid pro quo for a favorable review I gave him in the San Francisco Chronicle. Barry Hannah has no connection to New Stories from the South (other than as an occasional contributor), The Flannery O’Connor Award, or River City Publishing. I wrote my review of Yonder Stands Your Orphan the same year I met him for the first time. In that encounter, I sat in on a class of his, and we talked for a few minutes about Tuscaloosa, where he had lived a number of years back. That was it. We have only met three or four times since. I told my editor at SFC that I had read every Hannah book ever published and I was likely to give the one they assigned me a good review, as I had enjoyed everything else he had written. My editor said, “Sounds like you’re qualified for the job.” Since then, Hannah and I have exchanged a couple of notes, Christmas cards really, and he wrote me a note of encouragement when the O’Connor Award was revoked. He is a kind, generous, man who helps lots of young writers because remembers the senior writers who helped him, and I resent those who would accuse him of anything more than simple generosity. Networking is a given in any endeavor, be it writing or selling shoes. Hannah helped me most by being a good example, as did writers like Alice McDermott, Jill McCorkle, Tim O’Brien, Margot Livsey, Claire Messud, and a many of the other faculty members I assisted at the Sewanee Writers Conference. The most direct way Sewanee helped my career was that my story “Chickensnake” was selected for Best New American Voices 2003 there. That was a decision made by the editor at the time, John Kulka, who visited the campus and heard me read the story.
Dan:
You received your PhD in 2001, and part of your dissertation was the original manuscript for The Bear Bryant Funeral Train. Were you trying to get this published ‘as is’ up until the time that you won the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award?
Brad:
I immediately removed the epigraphs from the collection because I thought it looked egg-headed. Frankly, I was kind of embarrassed that I had been in school so long and I thought, hey, the air up here is pretty thin. I replaced five of the original seven epigraphs with the Walker Percy epigraph about Tuscaloosa from The Moviegoer, which I discovered after I defended my dissertation. I did leave the epigraphs from Art Spiegeman’s Maus II and the Mickey Herskowitz’s Bear Bryant biography in front of the title story. I thought of this story as the postmodern key, the Rosetta Stone, that would give new depth to the rest of the collection. The manuscript circulated for years in that form. When GA Press selected it for the O’ Connor Prize, the literary advisor assigned to me asked me to removed these epigraphs from the title story, and so then I assumed I had made the right decision to remove the other five as well. He thought it looked egg-headed too. The epigraphs were meant to provide a rubric for the collection, not to deter accusation of plagiary, but if I had left the original Carmer epigraph at the front of the dissertation, I would have avoided this controversy. The new version has all of these epigraphs and is arranged in a similar manner as my dissertation. My editor even asked me to restore a story entitled “Demopolis” which I felt uncertain about at the time. It was the removal of this story that led me to rearrange the order of the stories. TK moved to the front of the GA Press version because it was set in the past. The title story, the postmodern story that raises issues of textual construction was at the end. My idea then was to have a postmodern story in the front that looked like an old-fashioned story and to have a story at the end that wore its postmodernism on its sleeve. I doubt my accusers made it to the end of the book.
Dan:
In 2003, you found out you were selected as one of two winners of the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award. How would you rank the various aspects of that, in terms of excitement? The series, the prize money, the fact that it meant your book would be published – which was most exciting?
Brad:
The prize and the publication of the book are linked. It was my most profound wish to win the O’Connor Prize. Many of the writers I most admired had won it and since O’Connor is the queen of Southern Gothic, it seemed the perfect debut. It was a dream come true. The money was nominal, but I don’t write for money.
Dan:
Can you describe the editing process? In some of the conversations after this book was pulped, there were questions as to why the editor either pushed for, or agreed to, take out the Carmer epigraph that appears in your dissertation. There were also questions as to why somebody at the University of Georgia Press, an inherently Southern press, was not aware of the Carmer book.
Brad:
The literary advisor GA Press assigned to me did not work directly for the press. He is not a Southerner. He is not a professional editor but a former O’Connor winner, a writer like me. He was not included in the decision to pulp my book. He learned about the decision from the GA Press release. We spent the least amount of time editing “Tuscaloosa Knights” because to his mind it was the most complete story. We talked about it for about five minutes on our first conversation and that was it. He thought it could have used more “period details.” I told my literary advisor that my story “Tuscaloosa Knights” was based on Carmer’s memoir and I described the scene in “Tuscaloosa Nights” where the Alabama politician can recognize all the Klansman from their shoes. I told my literary advisor that it was my intention to put an odd pair of shoes into the line, a pair of shoes that could possible belong to the historical Bear Bryant. He said I might want to go back to my sources an incorporate more period detail if I had time. The editing of the book was so hectic we never returned to the story. I dropped the epigraphs from my collection before submission, all except the ones in front of the title story. My literary advisor asked me to drop these as well. I don’t think he liked that story. When he asked me to drop the epigraphs in front of the most postmodern story, I thought I had made the right decision to drop the others. As I have said before, the purpose of the epigraphs was not to deter accusation of plagiary but to provide a rubric for the reader.
Last week I met for the first time with my advocate John Dufrense, who maintains that acknowledgement or not, I did nothing wrong. His essay in my new collection shows that Ray Carver wrote a story about Chekhov “Errand” that used a Chekhov Henri Troyat biography in exactly the same manner. Still, Dufrense says his publisher always issues him a questionnaire that asks specific questions that make sure the publisher avoids printing anything actionable. I wish I had been provided with such a questionnaire or an academic editor as I have been told by many that the standards of academic publishing are high than that of mere literature or commercial publishing. I have never lied to anyone about anything I have done. I assure you had anyone asked me any questions about the composition of the book, I would have answered to the best of my ability.
Dan:
So then, the book finishes through the process, and comes out to publication. Within days, a librarian in Alabama notices the similarities between your story Tuscaloosa Knights and the Tuscaloosa Nights section from Carmer’s Stars Fell on Alabama. If you are able to, can you describe what, if any, conversations about possible measures were had between yourself and the University of Georgia Press?
Brad:
The head of GP Press contacted me. I was made aware of the accusation before the phone call. I was mailed an envelope with about 500 words of my 21,000 word story underlined and copy of about the same number of words underlined from the Carmer text. I called one of my teachers and explained the situation and asked what she thought was about to happen. She said to me that copyright conflicts were not uncommon and she thought the press would want to stand by their man. The next day the head of GP Press called again, this time with the university lawyer present. Right then I should have gotten off the phone and gotten my own lawyer but I was so anxious to have the matter resolved I spoke anyway. The head of GP Press asked, “Well, Mr. Vice, what do you have to say for yourself?.” I said, “I did it.” And I began to speak of the transformational powers of fiction. I think I even used the word the “magic” of fiction. And they kind of chuckled. Or at least they seemed to. We got into an argument about whether Carmer’s book was a work of fiction or not. As, in my mind, and according to the law, one has more license to incorporate the details of something that actually happened into fiction than something that something that was made up. GP maintained that Stars Fell On Alabama was a work of fiction. At that point, I realized they had already made up their mind as to what was about to happen and I quit talking. They then informed me they would revoke the prize, I would return the prize money, and they intimated they would sue me for six thousand dollars in publishing costs if I did not comply immediately. I hung up and called my agent. My agent struggled with them for days. “I’ve never seen anything like this.” She was exasperated, “Why do they want to kill a mouse with a machine gun?”
Dan:
One thing that I must say surprised me – if I recall correctly, one of your initial statements was, to paraphrase, that you didn’t understand Fair Usage laws. My original qualms with this response dealt with the fact that you had a Doctorate of Philosophy in English. And that you were teaching English at the university level. I guess that’s not really a question so much as a comment. Any thoughts about it? Does it maybe go back to my earlier question about discussion of publishing while in creative writing classes?
Brad:
I still don’t understand fair use or copyright. It makes no sense to me at all. I do have a Ph.D. in English but I am not a lawyer. No lawyer has been able to explain it to me yet. Plenty of people have told me different things and they all seem to contradict one another. It is my understanding that only a federal judge can make a pronouncement as to whether something constitutes fair use. Dr. Jake Adam York published my story “Tuscaloosa Knights” alongside the corresponding Carmer text six months before the book was even published, and he obviously did not think that my work constituted plagiary (a non-legal term) or a violation of fair use (a legal one). He made the connection between me and Carmer on his own. He immediately understood the intertextual and transformational relationship of my story to the Carmer text. I didn’t even know the Carmer piece had been online that long until after we met in person for the first time that Christmas. Since then, York has written a very good essay on my case and copyright, and I hope everyone will read it. If you’re a writer, it may save your career. If you want to point a finger at me, you can say, Brad Vice is an academic who published with an academic press and academics value citation of all sources. I presented my ethics investigation committee with countless examples of writers, writers I studied in the academy, writers before and after copyright, who employ similar methods. Their response was to say, “The standards of academics are higher than the standards of literature or commercial publishing.” But there is no MLA Handbook for writing fiction, and if there was, the first thing any novelist worth his salt would do would be to write a parody of it. With a Ph.D in English, I could go on at some length about the importance of intertextuality, the embedded text, postmodernism, the literature of exhaustion, heteroglossia, or dialogism, but I still don’t understand “fair use.” “Fair Use” is another way of saying realpolitik of publishing. It doesn’t mean anything in and of itself.
Dan:
There was plenty of conversation about the pulping, your writing, and plagiarism in general after the news of this pulping came out. Did you read much of it and if so, how did it affect you?
Brad:
It was devastating. Most of it was mean-spirited. You could see the veins standing out on peoples’ foreheads as they typed their uninformed diatribes. It is a fearful thing to become the focal point of sheer rage. My family suffered along with me. The most press occurred in my hometown, and I was on the front page of the Tuscaloosa News twice in one week. But cyberspace was the worst. There was no text on which to base an argument. The text was destroyed, so everybody was talking out of their hat. Soon, for my own mental health, I stopped reading anything online. People wrote me many encouraging emails, but I also got hate mail. Things like, “YOURE GOING DOWN MR. VICE” and “I’d like to get you alone in a dark room.” I have never been spoken to like this before, all these people rejoicing in my pain. It was scary. I’m still sort of shocked. Someone even created an email account in my name and contacted my friends and my ex-wife fishing for dirt. Just so everyone knows, I don’t use Yahoo Mail.
Dan:
Aside from seeing your book get pulped, you also went through the process of going before Mississippi State University’s Ethics Committee. My understanding was that while they found you had violated some rules of ethics, they suggested you not be terminated from your position. However, this suggestion was ignored. Are those facts pretty much correct? And, what was it like teaching there this past year, in pretty much a lame duck position? Was it similar to past semesters there or different?
Brad:
The Faculty Handbook under the heading Misconduct 80.02 defines Faculty Misconduct as: Falsification of Data, Plagiary, or Serious Deviation from Standard Practices. After accumulating over 30 letters in my defense from writers, editors, and academics from all over the world, and many more letters of personal support, plus Jake York, a letter from my The GA Press literary advisor, and a letter from C. Michael Curtis from the Atlantic, plus my examples of literary texts employing similar methods to my own, the ethics investigation ruled that I was guilty of what they termed a “huge mistake.” They did not address any charge specifically, nor did they address what I considered to be the problem of intent. Did I try to deceive any one? “Huge Mistake” seems to indicate no. But nevertheless, I am guilty, and as such they recommended I be “reprimanded.” There are eight penalties prescribed by the faculty handbook. Number 1 was “Letter of reprimand.” Number 8 was dismissal. The Vice President of research, Colin Scanes, a man who never appeared at the hearing itself, was supposed to hand down the official ruling. My lawyer, the head of my department, and the former head of my department, told me I could expect the VP to act in accordance with the findings of the ethics investigation. VP Scanes did not, however, act in accordance with the committee’s recommendation and wrote me a letter mailed to me one the first day of spring break, saying that he did not agree with the ethics committee, and that my contract would not be renewed. He gave no explanation for his decision.
Dan:
Out of curiosity, do you know if Mississippi State University has had any discussions with, or about, the University of Cincinnati’s Creative Writing program? After all, if what you did was truly unethical, or deemed to be by MSU, should they not have a major problem with another university issuing you a PhD based on a document that includes so much of the work deemed unethical? Without this PhD, would MSU have hired you to the tenure track position they did?
Brad:
UC conducted an ethics investigation of its own. UC is standing by its degree. I don’t know to what extent MSU has communicated with them.
Dan:
Have you ever heard anything from the Carmer family?
Brad:
No, my editor has tried repeatedly to find an heir but he hasn’t been able to locate one.
Dan:
When news of the University of Georgia Press’ decision to pulp the book came down, you and your agent decided to not go down swinging, but to issue apologies and seemingly hope for the best. How difficult a decision was this? Were there any large periods of regret between the decision and the determination that River City Publishing was going to take the book?
Brad:
Well, my first impulse was to apologize. But my first impulse is always to apologize. It is just the way I was raised. If you give offense, apologize and try to work toward a solution. Many of my friends from the north had a much different attitude and tell me they would have handled the situation differently. Once I had apologized, I couldn’t win in court. But no, I don’t regret anything. I hate the litigiousness of the entire country right now. Even if we went to court, what would be the upside? I’m stabled by a publisher I beat in court. Sounds awful. I’d rather work on another book, or travel, or go fishing, rather than fill out paper work, talk to lawyers, and waste time in court. I am just not built for it.
Dan:
Last summer, you taught over in the Czech Republic. What was that experience like (I see that you’re doing it again this summer, so I assume it must have gone at least fairly well)? How much of your decision to do this teaching was a move to get away from MSU, both physically and mentally?
Brad:
Last year I got a Teaching English as a Foreign Language Certificate at the International Summer Language School run by The University of West Bohemia. This school was started by Dr. Charles Hall for the University of Memphis in 1989 when the Wall came down. He was a Fulbright fellow. Charles goes back every summer to help oversee the growth of the program. When he heard my story, he asked if I would like to expand the school to offer creative writing. The university owns Nectiny, a castle in the Bohemian countryside, which the creative writing class will use for a few days as a retreat. We will spend the rest of our time in Pilsen, home of the best beer in the world and a nice little college town. There are still plenty of spaces available for this summer’s class. Anyone interested in studying with me can go to myspace.com/bradvice and click on the blog: Study with me in the Czech Republic. All you need is a passport and about $1000 which can be paid by credit card once you arrive in the CZR. This tuition covers room/board and several day trips to Prague and various castles, spa towns, etc. All in all, it is certainly the most economical study abroad program I know of. So if you are looking for a working vacation, one that should be very inspiring, please look at my Myspace page or go to http://www.isls.cz/en. The school runs through July 9th-27th. Deadline to sign up is May 31.
And yes, I need to get away from Mississippi and the South for awhile. Going to Bohemia seems like the perfect retreat. It is almost like traveling to a metaphor.
Dan:
So, River City Publishing decides they want to re-publish The Bear Bryant Funeral Train. Did they come to you, or had you and your agent begun to re-submit the manuscript?
Brad:
My editor Jim Gilbert sent me a query email sometime before Christmas 2005. We met over Christmas along with Jake York. I’d never met Jake before. I had only met Jim once, when he was in the bookstore business. He had a pretty clear idea of what the new book could look like. He asked for my dissertation and began to compare it to the GA Press version.
Dan:
The new collection is slightly different than the version that was pulped. First of all, there is one new story included. The format of the book is also similar to that of your PhD dissertation, split into two halves, with the more southern stories including the figure of Bear Bryant, included in the second half.
Why did you decide to go back to that dissertation style format? Was the ordering of the stories in the pulped version one you had been pushed into utilizing?
Brad:
I removed the epigraphs from my dis and took out “Demopolis.” (I heard somebody make fun of that story once, and I wasn’t confident about it.) I didn’t think three stories constituted a train, so I reordered them in the manner I described above and took out the pomo epigraphs, except for the title story. My literary advisor at GA Press asked me to remove these as well, so I thought I made the right decision to change the format of the book. Jim wanted to restore “Demopolis.” He liked it, and his friend Marlon Barton, a writer from Demopolis, liked it too. They restored my confidence in the story. Obviously, the removal of the epigraphs is what caused the controversy in the first place, so it seemed to make sense to restore the book to its original format. On the other hand, I don’t think it would ever have been selected as the O’Connor winner in this form.
Dan:
And the story that was previously not included in the collection. Was it in your dissertation. Or is it a story you’ve written since the original version of the collection had been accepted? Which actually brings up another question – how has your own writing been affected by this whole ordeal? Were you able to write? If so, have you continued to use intertextuality in your newer work?
Brad:
“Demopolis,” the restored story, was from the dissertation. I worked on it for my first two years in Cincinnati and it is really a novel that never grew up. It was over 150 pages long at one point, and I was kind of sick of it when I graduated, and that’s why I removed it. I have already told you how Jim talked me into restoring it. The two stories in the collection I wrote after the dissertation are “What Happens in the Burg” and “Mule”. I have not written a word of fiction since the controversy began. I was working on a novel that used Carmer in the same way as Tuscaloosa Knights, which I now have no desire to return to. I have written an essay about the nature of genre, subversion, and intertextuality which I am submitting for publication now. When I move to Pilsen and get settled I hope to find my voice again. I have no idea how I will change as a writer. I have no idea how long it will take to rehabilitate. But I am confident that sooner or later I will find my stride again.
Dan:
River City Publishing has bulked up the book with an introduction by yourself, detailing some of which I’ve asked you about above. It also contains four essays written by authors Michelle Richmond, Jake Adam York, and John Dufresne, as well as Don Noble, who is Professor Emeritus at the University of Alabama, as well as the host of the literary television show, Bookmark. Not surprisingly, these essays all defend your work.
What do you think of this tactic? Would you have preferred to see your work just thrown out there as originally intended, a collection of short stories, and seen the reaction?
Brad:
I like the fact that there are people taking a stand to defend me. I have had precious little of that up until now. Recently I was on a panel with Jim Gilbert, John Dufrense, and Don Noble at the Montevallo Writers’ Conference, and it felt healing to have all these professionals at my back. Michelle and Jake York are my best readers. They understood exactly what I was up to. I think many more people would have understood what I was up to if GA Press hadn’t pulped the book. Of course, as an academic I like the critical aspect of literature, so I am sort of proud that a critical version of my work has been produced. I must admit, in my hubris I thought an essay like Jake York’s would have been written twenty years down the road after I had produced a string of books. I thought maybe someone will find my early works worth reading and written an MA thesis or an article for tenure about the relationship between regionalism and intertextuality in my book.
Dan:
Where do you go from here? Have you begun to look for a future long-term job at the university level, or do you see yourself possibly spending even more time across the Atlantic teaching over there? And writing – are you back at it? Writing stories, or something larger?
Brad:
I am keeping my house here in Starkville. This is my home. I am closer to my family farm here than where I grew up in Tuscaloosa. I will stay in the Czech Republic for at least a year and possibly longer and work as a Visiting Professor for the University of West Bohemia. I think I will want to live in Asia for a while as well, but I have no immediate plans to get there. (Lately I’ve been reading a lot about Singapore.) I will continue to work for universities and be a teacher because I feel I am really good at that. It gives me a sense of satisfaction. I grew up on a college campus and I feel at home in that environment. But I don’t know if I will ever work for a university in the United States again. If I can’t live close to home, I’d rather live abroad.
Dan:
Now for the real nitty gritty – you have to choose one comic series to have access to, and will not have access to any other. Which do you choose and why?
Brad:
Batman. Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns is a formative moment for my imagination. And Alan Moore’s essay on the anti-hero “Mark of the Batman” was my introduction to literary criticism. The psychological aspects of Batman are fascinating. Who is the real person here? Is Batman Bruce Wayne’s alter ego, or is Batman the real ego and Wayne just a cover? Batman is has no superpowers other than his incredible willpower. Perhaps a Nietzsche scholar would call this, his the-will-to-power. And this is also why I am fascinated by Bear Bryant. He is a man who could overcome anything. In my title story I wrote of Bryant, “He was our Nietzsche in houndstooth, wielding his gridiron will-to-power like an ax-handle. Walking tall redneck ubermensch.” Batman and Bear Bryant are cut from the same cloth. They are solid purpose, both mythic in their self-conception. One taking on the mantle of a Bear the other a Bat, both superheroes or anti-heroes depending on how you look at them.
Dan:
What can you tell me about the Dexateens?
Brad:
The Dexateens are my favorite band from Tuscaloosa. I knew one of the song writers, John Smith, in my UA college days. He is a sort of removed Brian Wilson figure for the band. He’s a bit older than me, and I doubt he would remember me. The band has an equally talented song writer in Elliott McPherson, but I don’t know him personally. Lately I have struck up a friendship with the gregarious drummer Craig “Sweet Dog” Pickering, who works as a tireless promoter for his own band and many other musicians for the Oxford, MS, Fat Possum record label. He has drummed for some of the blues greats like T-Model Ford and Paul “Wine” Jones. He is teaching me to love Memphis Soul Music. I am hoping I will get to see the band in Europe, as they are planning a tour in the future. The Dexateens have been around for a while, but lately they are getting some of the notice they’ve always deserved. Patterson Hood from the Drive-By-Truckers produced their last record, Hardwire Healing, and the track “Neil Armstrong” was selected for a PASTE Magazine cd sampler. They are a gritty, Southern-rock garage band that knows how to salt sincerity with irony. Their lyrics are somehow winsome and biting at the same time. Also, they have a keen seen of literature, history, and what it means to be from Tuscaloosa. Rock and Roll, and Roll Tide!
Dan:
Lastly, if you were a character in “Fahrenheit 451,” what work(s) would you memorize for posterity?
Brad:
Okay, for “posterity” means you are making me responsible for the future. Assuming some other Homeric bard has Gravity’s Rainbow and Absalom Absalom! covered, I think I’d pick Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree. On the desert island, I’d take Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer.
Dan:
Thanks much, Brad, for taking so much time to discuss your work and the issues you’ve dealt with over the course of the past two years.
This is a great interview with Brad. How can I top this?
River City Publishing recently sent me Brad's book. I just happened to start it this week. Just today Brad left a note on my myspace to check this interview out. As I wrote on Paperback Writer, his book is "hotter than the bloody glove". I can't wait to really dig into it.
The question remains for every reader: Does Brad Vice say enough in his intro to dispel any idea that his book was plagiarized? I'll be sure to give my full opinion when I'm done...
Posted by: n.l. belardes | May 11, 2007 at 04:14 PM
I am very glad The Bear Bryant Funeral Train was able to be reissued, and I am extremely sorry that Mr. Vice, a fine writer and a well-spoken individual (as evidenced by his interview here) was the recipient of unnecessary and extreme reactive measures that belong more with cheesy wrestling shows on TV than in the literary world.
Mr. Vice, I have had a lot of trouble with the writer who wrote the New York Press article about you, as I used to know him personally and he has taken an extreme dislike to me, to say the least. I won't be at all surprised if I get an article of my very own from him when my book comes out. He is already trying to discredit me as a writer on Wikipedia by denigrating me and the subject I am writing about with personal attacks, so I am prepared for whatever he decides to say about me. Please do not take what he says about you personally. By the way, impersonating you via Yahoo accounts or otherwise is actually a crime and should be reported to law enforcement if you haven't already.
Vice is a great writer and I hope he will continue to write and have a great literary career. I believe he made an honest error that he has now done his level best to correct. I look forward to having The Bear Bryant Funeral Train on my shelf and hope that Mr. Vice has a long and fruitful teaching and writing career.
Posted by: Ms. Strega | May 13, 2007 at 04:28 AM
Here's another instance of semi-plagiarism in Vice's book, which I haven't seen mentioned--
Barry Hannah has a little known story called 'I Am Shaking to Death' in his out-of-print collection 'Captain Maximus.' The story ends with this one line paragraph:
"I really wish she'd read this and write me a letter."
Brad Vice's story "What Happens in the Burg, Stays in the Burg" ends with this one line paragraph:
"Still, I wish she'd read this and give me a call."
Hannah may have blurbed Vice's book, but Hannah is famous for blurbing anyone's book, admittedly without reading it.
'Postmodern regionalism' or not, plagiarism issue aside, Vice's work is at best extremely derivative; the cannibalizing of better work by real writers, thinly disguised by someone who's made a career of attending conferences and sucking up to anyone he thought could help him with his 'career.'
Posted by: rsnowbarger | December 31, 2007 at 12:41 PM
WTF does "semi-plagiarism" mean? Is that like being "a little pregnant?" That just seems like a similar line, not plagiarism. I think you could lice-comb most writer's works and find similar lines to other writers in them.
Posted by: mason dixon | January 10, 2008 at 07:39 PM