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 I met Tony Grooms almost twenty years ago on a few occasions, but did not get to know him personally until the death of a mutual friend, novelist Raymond Andrews, in 1991. We attended a celebration of Raymond's life at Rocky's Pizza, an Atlanta institution, and from that point on, we became friends, and although we do not always agree with each other on many issues, the conversations are always lively, but respectful. When I decided to begin a new interview series, I had a list of writers I truly wanted to spend some time with and talk to about a series of things happening in the world, but to pin Tony down even if just for a few hours to conduct an interview was an impossible task. On several occasions he was out of the country, and it was clear very early on that the best method would be by email, even though he lives no more than ten miles from me, and teaches around fifteen miles away. He is a busy man, who from Africa and Sweden and elsewhere in the world, would email his responses to me at all hours. I would email him, and then almost mysteriously, a week or so later, his greeting would appear.
Anthony Grooms was born in rural Louisa County, Virginia in 1955, the eldest of six children. He graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1978 with a degree in theatre and speech. In 1984, he received an M.F.A. degree from George Mason University. His books include Ice Poems (1988); a collection of short stories, Trouble No More (1995) which won the Lillian Smith Book Award; and a novel, Bombingham (2001). Currently, he is a Professor of Creative Writing at Kennesaw State University, outside of Atlanta. He has also taught at the University of Georgia, Clark Atlanta University, Emory University, Morehouse College, the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, and at the University of Southern Stockholm in Sweden.
He resides in Atlanta with his wife, Pamela Jackson, and their son. Currently, he is at work on a new novel, The Redemptioners. This interview occurred over a period of about one year, from 2005 to 2006.
Walsh: Tony, I wanted to begin the interview by talking about your novel Bombingham and the trouble with its release coinciding with the attack on the World Trade Towers which, of course, no one predicted, and second, the genesis of the book?
Grooms: Timing is important in the world of book marketing, and Bombingham did not have the fortune of good timing. The early release date for the novel was September 15, 2001, just four days after the Trade Center bombing. I feel that the attention of the New York reviewers, as with most Americans, naturally, was re-directed. There was a good deal of uncertainty about everything, as you probably recall. Bombingham got no attention from the New York Times, whereas it was a starred review in Publishers' Weekly. During my book tour, a few weeks later, I wandered through empty airports, and was repeatedly searched — I think the guards needed the practice! — and I was carrying a book with “bomb” in the title. Though the book stores weren't empty, it seemed that people were shell-shocked and unfocused. However, there was an unexpected connection made between my novel and the Trade Center bombing. Many of the newspapers that did review the book — and, I got tremendous support from the Washington Post, even though the Pentagon was bombed, as well — compared the “domestic terrorism” that is the backdrop for Bombingham to 9-11. I'm still uncomfortable with the comparison, but I appreciated the point.
 The genesis of the novel is founded both in my coming of age – I am a child of the civil rights movement, and in my specific connection to Birmingham through my wife's family. Moving to the Deep South in 1984, and meeting Pamela's family, I was introduced to a level of story about the civil rights movement that I had not encountered before. This was really a folk history of the movement, told in the vernacular of the folk, and infused with their values and their observations. The first stories that grew out of my Alabama connection were stories like “Uncle Beasley's Courtship,” and “Negro Progress,” which are collected in Trouble No More.
Walsh: Can you describe the difference between the “Deep South” and your “South”?
Grooms: I grew up in central Virginia—born, as I like to say, in the shadow of Monticello. This is almost literally true. There are many similarities in custom between Virginia and Georgia, where I live now, and I am not certain that the reputed differences are that great. For example, Virginia and the Upper South were said to have been generally milder in its application of Jim Crow. What I've found is that Jim Crow varied from place to place and was not a uniform system even within the Deep South. In fact there is no uniform culture that we can call Upper South or Deep South. One finds various things in each region. The South I recall was much more framed in the mythology of the Colonial and Revolutionary periods than the Deep South seems to be. Even though many famous Civil War battles took place within a short drive of Charlottesville and Louisa County, we who grew up there tended to look to Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson as our heroes. Richmond, which is near-by, seemed greatly shaped by its role in the Civil War, but I associated with Charlottesville, Williamsburg, and Fairfax—all of them colonial towns.
Walsh: You are in good company with Alice Walker as being the only two writers to twice win the Lillian Smith Award for Fiction—for Trouble No More and Bombingham. Has that helped open doors for your other work?
Grooms: The Southern Regional Council, which awards Lillian Smith, is a venerable civil rights organization, and I am proud of my association with this group, but I do feel the award, although it is drawn from a national pool, has little influence in the literary world. It looks good on book covers when you don't have a more recognizable award, but my feeling is that it is mostly lost in the mix of so many regional awards. Perhaps it makes some impression in the South and in academe, but very little, if any, in New York City.
Walsh: From your experience, what is the most efficient way to promote oneself these days as a writer since most publishing houses do not have either the budget or the interest in promoting a writer?
Grooms: Short of committing a crime, you mean? Well, I get pretty cynical on this point. I do think television is the key to national promotion. But I am ambivalent about this kind of exposure. A strong intuition tells me that such exposure is dangerous for a literary writer because it shifts the writer's attention from the world he studies to the celebrity of self. My strategy, as humble as it is, is to continue to make appearances for school and library groups and hope that this way I can build a serious readership.
Walsh: In 2001 you spent time at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, West Africa as a visiting professor. How was your experience and what did you bring back, meaning what was the biggest surprise and the biggest obstacle you faced over there?
Grooms: My experience is Ghana was a milestone in many ways. It was my third trip to Africa and the sixth African nation I'd visited, though it was the first time I had visited in West Africa and the first time I had had an extended stay. I like to say of Africa, that it stretches your heart in all directions. The first month, out of four, was very hard for me. I spent most of the time alone because the university I had gone to teach at was closed. I was isolated on a sprawling campus and my hosts ignored me because they were busy grading papers, they said. Eventually, though I met people, mostly small boys as they called themselves. These were mostly teenage boys — though some of my small boy were in their twenties and were college graduates. The concept of small boy they told me really had more to do with their being un-established — no car and no telly. When the university reopened, I also met other visiting professors, Europeans, and I befriended some of the Ghanaian professors, though I must say, I was not well-received in the English department and I'm not sure why. I became acquainted with many of my students, who seemed very appreciative of my teaching. There were some good fiction writers among them. So, though the university experience was not one I am eager to repeat, I did make very deep relationships with ordinary people in Ghana. I sponsored several of the boys in their schooling and some of my European and Ghanaian adult friends have visited me in Atlanta.
The experience also raised my consciousness about the so-called third world. Nothing emphasizes the relationship between poor countries and rich countries like going to buy shoes in the Saturday market. In Cape Coast, a city of about 200,000 people, I and my friend could not find a new pair of lace-up shoes. There were plenty of used shoes, refurbished, from the USA and Europe, but except for sandals, no new shoes. In Accra, the capital city, 75 miles and a world away, it would have been easier to find shoes, but the boys I befriended and their families wouldn't have been able to afford them.
I have been wrestling with what I saw among the poor—malnourishment, unemployment, lack of access to education, and I have wondered about my contribution to their plight. After all, every middle-class person in the West contributes some to the poverty of poor countries. We don't mean to, but we don't think about the exploitation of labor and resources that our excessive lifestyles require. I have been trying to work out some of these ideas in poetry.
Ironically, the hardest part of the trip was making the re-adjustment to home. I was happy to be home and happy to see my wife after so many months, but I was also quite depressed. Things here seemed excessive, superficial and impatient. I didn't really want to go back to Ghana either. Other than the people, there wasn't a lot there for me. In Ghana, slave castles are its main tourist attractions and the cities can be quite squalid in places, but once I slipped under what I call the tourist veil, I was beginning to find my pace in that society. Drawing an American salary, I could afford good food and beer, and the ordinary people—the people of the villages—though sometimes overly curious—were very welcoming. My life there was beginning to take on a very simplistic and leisurely pattern of work, writing and socializing. Of course, it was not a real life. That is to say, it could not be sustained. Once that American salary stopped coming in, I would have been left with all of the expectations of a rich American and none of the resources!
Walsh: Could you discuss your background, childhood, education and how you made your way to Atlanta and how you have carved a name in the literary scene in this area. You probably know this, but you are regarded as the person who knows everyone, and as far as I know, liked by everyone, too.
Grooms: Thanks for saying that. I doubt if I know everyone, since there has been such an explosion in Atlanta's literary communities since I moved to Georgia twenty years ago. In the last ten years, I've felt that I've been fairly isolated in the academic community. I don't get out to coffee house readings any more, for example. In the last three years, I've been parenting—so I rarely get out to a movie, either!
I grew up in rural Virginia, just east of Charlottesville. Technically, I was born a few months after end of segregation, in 1955, but in reality, the first 12 years of my life were lived under de facto segregation and the rest during the transition to where we are now. I was very fortunate to have nurturing and ambitious parents. Neither was well-educated, but they saw education as an important opportunity for me. My mother was my first teacher, so I learned to read and write early. Then I was expected to teach my little sister. The elementary school I went to was a relatively new school for black children. It was one that my maternal great grandfather, George Parrish, had advocated for. We were very proud of it. But it was designed to be inferior—five classrooms for seven grades; no cafeteria; no library; no playground equipment. Some people have asked me what was so bad about that since they went to one-room school houses and so on. What was bad about it was that less than ten miles away there was a school that had one classroom for every grade, and two for the 6th and 7th grades; though small, it had a library; and it had a cafeteria and a decent playground. But it was off-limits to me because I was black.
At age 12, I was a part of the Southern resistance program called “Freedom Choice.” Under this program, parents were to “freely” choose which school they would send their children to. Of course, no white parent would choose to send his child to the inferior black school, and the unstated threat was that no black parent would dare send his child to the white school. I like to say that my parents freely chose to send me to the white school. My sister, a neighbor, and I were one of just a few black children who integrated the Louisa County Public School system in 1967.
Looking back on it, it went rather well. For one thing, we had young idealistic teachers, most of them Northerners who had just graduated from the University of Virginia. There was also strong leadership from the principal, a man named Mr. Hoover. I remember him well. He was lanky, tall and bald, but very kind-mannered. When I got tried of the bullies slathering me with spit balls on the bus, I went to him, and he put an end to it.
In 1970, federally mandated integration came. And like that return from Ghana, things got strange at home. Even though, in my life outside of school I associated exclusively with black people, I was not used to black people in the school — and I had white friends. There was an adjustment where I found myself walking between two communities, at time welcomed by one or the other and at other times alienated from both. Still, in so many ways, mine was a typical rural upbringing in a large extended family. Out of that experience I have taken a love of nature, and a strong dedication to family. I also came away with some distrust of, and a bit of anger about political systems—you do understand it was the state of Virginia that oppressed me and my family!
For a long time during my high school years, I expected to go to the Vietnam War. It was what boys, especially rural black boys did. But my birth date came up high in the draft lottery, and I was given an opportunity to go to college. I chose William and Mary. It was the seventies and I partied a lot and wrote plays. Somehow I managed to graduate. Then I went to George Mason for creative writing. Richard Bausch and Susan Shreve were my teachers. I owe them a lot. I was a laid-back, but serious student and did well there. Then I got my first teaching job in Macon, Georgia. I'd only been in Georgia for about four months when I met Pamela on a blind date, but she lived in Atlanta, and that is how I came to live here. It is also how I discovered Birmingham's civil rights movement as a literary subject.
Walsh: You mentioned your distrust for the government, and it is ironic that Pamela, your wife, is a judge, one of the very people who now control what you fear. Are you still fearful and how do you reconcile this fear?
Grooms: I think it is an American, perhaps a human, quality to hold some wariness for government, and I do. You have to understand that from my perspective, the history of this country has been the struggle of the poor, of women and of minority people to establish equal treatment under constitutional law. Time and time again, government has let us down — whether it was Indian removal, Dred Scott, Plessy, or hundreds of other decisions made by, generally speaking, the bigoted men who have run our country over the past two centuries. The progressive Warren court was unique in American jurisprudence. Noted, there have been many laudable decisions, but overall, it has been as Fredrick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
As for my wife having control, no. Her position as an administrative judge sets no policy.
Walsh: With the case you mentioned, Plessey v. Ferguson (1892), and I entirely agree with you, but the judge, John Howard Ferguson, who previously had essentially argued Plessey's same argument that it was a violation of the 13th and 15th Amendments, reversed his decision because he thought that individual states could chose to regulate railroad companies that operated only in one state, in this case, Louisiana, and that Plessey being one-eight black and seven-eighths white could be required to sit elsewhere other the in a “white” car. Obviously, as it went through to the Louisiana Supreme Court and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, biases and prejudices interfered and the incorrect decision occurred. The country has had a long and painful history, a developmental struggle to live up to what the Constitution adheres to as being color-blind. Do you think that now, our country still operates under such ideals, that some individuals have fewer rights than others?
Grooms: It is unfortunate that the state's rights argument has often been used to support bigoted legislation, just as much of the heritage argument is being used to excuse historical bigotry. But yes, Americans are still idealistic, though color blindness ought not to be one of the ideals, rather fairness and tolerance regardless of color. I feel strongly that many individuals have fewer rights and privileges than others. We could talk about gays, for example. There is nothing in the constitution which bars gays from marriage and sharing the same rights as heterosexuals. And there shouldn't be. We could talk about women. Why is it that only 13% of the congress is female, while 51% of the country is female. The wealthy have always had advantages that the poor do not have. They might argue that they deserve them, but when it comes to education, heath care, shelter, legal representation, these fundamental human rights, why shouldn't every citizen regardless of economic status get the best? For example, the country can afford to make every school as well facilitated as the best private schools. But what we see is that the poor who in actual numbers are mostly black won't be given these privileges and yet they are the ones most likely to be on the front line in Iraq. And, too, the legal system is slanted against minority men. You probably haven't been profiled by the police, but I have been more than once. Still, I am hopeful for the USA. I am hopeful because I can look at history, even personal history, and see progress. Pamela's great grandfather was a slave until he was 25. Her father, after serving in WW2, managed to get a college education at Tuskegee Institute on the GI Bill. She began her education in segregated schools, but went to college in integrated settings. Our son is beginning his education in a diverse setting and even though I suspect he will be challenged by bigotry and neo-conservative policies, I think, his future will be very bright.
Walsh: What do you mean by the heritage argument being used to excuse historical bigotry? Could you expand on this idea?
Grooms: The heritage argument is set forth by those who support Confederate emblems on various state flags. They say the emblems represent their heritage. Often this argument is made with a selective recounting of history that fails to recognize that along with the positive achievements of Southern whites there have been many atrocities against black and native peoples. It fails to account for the contributions of black and native peoples in the making of Southern culture. Also, by focusing on the Civil War, a destructive, perhaps self-destructive, four-year period, this argument does not account for the many wonderful achievements that occurred before and after the Civil War. Finally, the argument isn't about heritage, but about a misguided notion of white supremacy.
Walsh: There are a large number of watch-dog organizations that monitor such injustices, as well as the media, be it newspaper, television, or the Internet news. Isn't it more difficult for such atrocities to exist within our government?
Grooms: It depends on what you mean by atrocity. I don't think anybody in American government will sponsor a Rwanda-like genocide. But injustices are occurring all the time. Take for example the abuses of the Patriot Act; or the abuse of the environment; or the appalling double standard in our legal system. OJ didn't get off because of jury-nullification, as the media likes to suggest. OJ got off because he had eight million dollars to spend on his defense. Sometimes these injustices reach the media and sometimes not. And by the way, I don't see corporate-owned media as much of a safe-guard of our liberties. Besides, monitoring injustices don't prevent them.
Walsh: Injustice(s), as with crimes, are difficult to prevent. People commit them all the time, but isn't it usually only after the fact that we, as a country or individually, take action afterwards. It's difficult, if not impossible, to be preemptive. Laws don't prevent either, but the punishment or fear of the punishment often times prevents crimes and/or injustices. And it really isn't the job of corporate-America to prevent any of them (I'm talking about the media), but report and allow the people to take action.
Grooms: Certainly government can't prevent all atrocities, but it can prevent injustices. It can do so by creating a more just system. For example, every citizen, poor or rich, ought to have the same access to legal protections, or to education, or to health care—if not equal access, at least, sufficient access. These are preventable injustices.
Walsh: Your first book was a collection of poems, Ice Poems, but when we have talked you don't consider yourself a poet and seem to shy away from this concentrated level of discussion. Why is that and do you continue to write poetry?
 Grooms: I do continue to write poetry and I read poetry and many of my favorite writers are poets. If being a poet is a state of mind, that is being open to the mysteries of life and their expression in language, then I am certainly a poet. But when I consider the level of commitment that those I consider to be practicing poets put into their discipline, I do not see that I am doing that for my poetry. I can barely do it for my fiction, since I teach so much. When I first moved to Atlanta, I was a part of the Poetry Atlanta community. Over the years, I have settled in a loose but decidedly fiction writing community. I don't feel like a poetry insider, anymore. However, I do answer to the name of poet, because I write and publish poems. But given the limited time I have for writing, my concentration is on prose fiction. Lately, I've been writing more novel prose than short story prose. But as I said, I write poems, too. I am working on a book of poems.
Walsh: As a youth, having been placed in what was considered a white school, if you were to do it all over, knowing what you know now, would you want the same experience, and would you chose to send your own child?
Grooms: To be clear, I didn't choose to go to the “white school,” rather my parents chose it for me. And I suppose I would choose it for my child, too, because, after all, it was the best chance for the best education in that place at that time. For me, the experience had positives and negatives, and I think the positives probably won out. Life, you know, is uncertain, and my parents did the best they could for me.
Walsh: What were the positives and negatives for you?
Grooms: They were both obvious and subtle. Obviously it was a better general education than I could have gotten in the black schools. But, unfortunately, generality meant a white-centric education. I do not believe I heard, for example, the name of W.E. B. Du Bois in my white class rooms—though I had the benefit of learning about him from the black community. Also, the experience was alienating in various ways. I made friends easily with most of my white classmates, but I was never invited into their homes—nor they to mine—and when the mandated desegregation came in 1970 and the racial line was drawn at school, I found myself straddling the line, belonging fully to neither group. Though it was often uncomfortable for me then, I think in the long run it has given me valuable tools as a writer, the ability to observe and to empathize across cultural lines.
Walsh: It's interesting that you, as well as other people talk about segregation in the schools, and obviously I grew up years after Brown v. The Board of Education, but I can remember growing up in the north and having almost no one of color or other ethnicity in my public schools, so in a way, I feel there was more segregation from my experience residing in New York that I have ever experienced or observed in the south.
Grooms: In some ways, the South has borne the stigma of segregation unfairly, since the North has historically been just as segregated and often just as bigoted. But Southern segregation was persistently humiliating and brutal. Consider, for example, that most of the estimated 5,000 lynchings since the Civil War took place in the South. There are many reasons why your public school might have been homogenous. It is hard to believe, though, that in the state of New York you wouldn't have had some diversity among white ethnics. But, as you know, public schools are community-based, and many communities, for various reasons, are homogenous. Most educators agree that racial and ethnic diversity is good, so homogeneity is a persistent problem. The South certainly isn't out of the clear. Studies have noted the re-segregation of many, if not most, public schools, and the separation is made by jurisdiction — just look at metro Atlanta with the predominantly white schools in the north and the predominantly black ones in the south. I spoke at a large inner-city school just this week where there was only one white student. And the real problem with all of this isn't so much diversity as it is the equal sharing of resources, poor schools, whatever their make-up, are inherently unequal because the communities that support them are poor.
Walsh: You are once again out of the country. What are you writing now? A new novel?
Grooms: I am on a Fulbright fellowship to Stockholm, Sweden where I am teaching and researching for another novel. The novel is about American exiles to Sweden during the Vietnam War period. My teaching and lecturing here is keeping me busier than I had planned so I am very much aware of the need to balance teaching and research. I have been fortunate to meet many people who are being helpful with the project and Stockholm is a fantastic city to explore for settings.
For the past three years, I've had several projects going. In addition to the novel I am researching in Stockholm, I have just sent a novel project to my agent, and I feel I am nearing the end of a narrative in poems. I came across a beautiful quote from the photographer Edward Weston. In his diary he wrote: “Peace and an hour's time — given these, one creates. Emotional heights are easily attained; peace and time are not.” How true.
Walsh: It is interesting—we are not that much different in age, about five years, yet, the Vietnam War was a major force in your youth. I knew the war was there but I never had any fear of going to war primarily because knew the war would end soon. Even though I was young, I saw an end to it. What do you remember about that time of your life and how did it contribute, positively and negatively, to your thoughts about your options for school, writing, and the possibility of going to war.
Grooms: The Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement were the major social backdrops to my coming-of-age. I can remember well that from 6th grade until college, I followed the war on the news. I knew young men only a few years older than I who served on the front lines. Because the military, the “service”, as it was called in my community, was seen as a beneficial economic option, and because many of the boys I knew took that option in lieu of the menial jobs in my rural county, going into the military was a real possibility for me. Four of my five male cousins who were my age went into the service.
The War was like a shadow, a danger, always little distant, but real and sneaking up on me. I didn't obsess about it, but I did think about it and I saw it as an obstacle to a bright future. In those days there was still a draft and I got my draft card at eighteen. I recall going down to the firehouse to sign up. The draft board clerk asked me if I had any identifying marks. I pointed to a bruise-like scar I carry on my forehead from a childhood mishap. She said, “Oh, a little mud on your face and no one would ever see that.” I remember her saying that because I felt very possibly I could be lying dead in a rice paddy and people would be trying to identify my body. As it turned out, my birth date was put into one of the last of the draft lotteries. It was 1972, I think. I got a high number which meant that I wouldn't likely be drafted. About the same time, I was receiving invitations to apply for colleges. There was a push by many universities to employ affirmative action programs and diversify their student populations. So at this nexus of the War and Civil Rights movement, my outlook changed for the better. I went to college.
During my first year at William and Mary, though the war was still going on and Americans were still being killed, it was clear that American involvement was de-escalating. It was 1973. There was marijuana and rock and roll. Later disco! After 1973, I mostly didn't think about the Vietnam War.
Walsh: Let's discuss the new novel. What's it about?
Grooms: Who knows at this point! It is still very much in draft so there isn't anything definite I can say about it now, except that at the center of it is a lynching, set in the late 1940s in Georgia. It was about the legacy of witnessing such an event, but in the many drafts it has morphed into a story about redemption for such a crime. Can people be redeemed for their participation in atrocities, and if so, can that redemption lead to reconciliation? I keep coming back to Martin Luther King's “Beloved Community” in which he calls for redemption and reconciliation. Is such a thing possible?
Walsh: Is it?
Grooms: I sincerely believe that both redemption and reconciliation are possible, if the nation wants them. The first step is reparation—and we have had several reparation strategies in our history, starting with the 13th through 15th amendments which constitutionally ended slavery and establish equal rights, though no woman could vote. But not ten years later, the Reconstruction ends and Jim Crow sets in. Similarly there have been various civil rights and voting bills and affirmative action programs designed to repair the wrong of slavery and Jim Crow, but these, too get whittled at until they are ineffective. In the deepest sense, there can be no redemption without a commitment to repair the damage of the crime, and no reconciliation without redemption. Nonetheless, the country gets along just fine, except for the suspicions among the races and the occasional embarrassments like the poverty exposed by Hurricane Katrina.
Walsh: The new book of poems, do you have a title for the collection?
Grooms: For the present, the title is Wrestling the Waves or maybe Wrestling the Waves in the Gulf of Guinea; but, even as I write this I have my doubts. The book is a set of narratives that follow a black American's travels in Africa. They pose questions about African American identity and third world poverty. Like the novel draft, I've been working on this book for about four years. It began while I was living in Cape Coast. I was so pent up and alone for various reasons that I was drafting a poem, some times two, a day for about a period of a month. After a while, I met some people and got a bit better adjusted, so my production fell off. Still, after four months I came home with about 100 poem drafts. I quickly culled out half of them. The other half have been fiddled with and replaced over the four years. This is a secondary project to me, though and important one, so the progress seems slow.
Walsh: I wanted to discuss the process of fiction writing. For you, how does a novel start? First with the character, an idea, a theme, what starts the motivation to begin writing the new novel?
Grooms: For me a story idea usually begins with a problem or a situation. The situation is often connected with a setting then the character comes and develops over many drafts, as does the theme. For example, with Bombingham, I knew I wanted to write about Birmingham in the spring of 1963. I knew that it would be an insider's view of the movement, though I didn't know, at the very start, whose view. In my story “Negro Progress,” the insider was a young black aristocrat. I might have thought for just a moment about a similar character for Bombingham, but soon was drawn to the younger, “teacher-class” man. Bringing the character and situation together, I discover, that is I imagine, the specific problems and details that will give the story interest and shape.
Walsh: Do you feel that you can write better about the South from afar?
Grooms: No. All of my writing about the South has been done while living in the South.
Walsh: What do you feel is the most important aspect to being/or becoming a good writer?
Grooms: Let me put it this way—the most important aspect of becoming a good writer is the practice of writing, including reading. Writing, like any art form, is a discipline, and writers must get into a habit of practice just as any other artist, a dancer or a musician does. The most important aspect of being a writer is engaging thoughtfully and as truthfully as possible with the important human conflicts. My published work to this point focuses on American social conflicts, but, of course, there are many other important conflicts, psychological, philosophical, and so on. The mode hardly matters, as long as writers are ambitious. I think that writing any book, even a popular romance or a celebrity memoir is difficult work, but, I do find myself respecting these writers less than those who challenge me with ideas and forms.
Walsh: Let's end on a tough question. You travel a lot around the world, what do you see as being the major problem(s), and how would you solve it/them given your views, money not withstanding?
Grooms: Without doubt the major problem is poverty. There is the biblical saying that the poor will always be with us, but in this day and age, that doesn't have to be true. As a world community, we have the resources to provide clean water, nutrition, shelter, education, health care—the basics—to every person on earth. People at the UN have calculated just how much it would cost per year, and it is only equal to a fraction of the wealth of the wealthiest people in the world. The problem could be solved with only a slight redistribution of wealth—but the obstacle is commitment. As a human community we haven't the will to solve the problem.
Walsh: When you mention the redistribution of wealth—whose wealth are you referring to?
Grooms: In this context, I am talking about the wealth of every citizen of the world, which tends to be locked up by the richest 20% of people and corporations. Why should it be that the richest 20% of people consume nearly 90% of the world's resources. You might argue that the wealthy have earned the privilege to consume, but as a humanist, I argue that such consumption is wrong, especially when we consider how excessive it is. Why should one person own three or four mansions when millions have no shelter at all?
Sounds socialist, doesn't it? And though I appreciate many of the aspects of democratic socialism, I do approve of capitalism! I believe people should be allowed to earn all the money they can, as long as the rights and basic needs +of every one else are met. Importantly, to meet these needs does not put even the slightest hardship on the rich. Consider for example, that for about 13 billion dollars annually we could provide basic nutrition and health care to every poor person in the world and we in the US and Europe spend 17 billion dollars annually on pet food. A New York Times article stated that for 40 billion dollars we could provide basic health, education, drinking water, shelter and so on to everyone in the world. In three years we Americans have spent nearly 400 billion on the Iraq war.
Even if these figures are wrong, my point is that it doesn't cost rich nations very much to make solving world poverty a strong priority. In fact, it benefits them greatly in making the world healthier, happier and more peaceful.
Walsh: Playing devil's advocate — we (the United States) haven't even solved the poverty in the United States (and likewise, the United Nations has done a terrible job world-wide). Lyndon Johnson's plan in the 1960s to eradicate poverty hasn't worked. We've spent nearly three trillion dollars on the War on Poverty and what remains are more people dependant upon a welfare system. We have created and funded a system by which we encourage people to be non-producing citizens. Plus, when people discuss “giving” money, they usually want other people to give more of their money. I simply have to ask you, personally, how much more of “your” money do you think you need to give? 10%. 20%. Why not 35% more. Also, we have redefined the term poverty. Most people in poverty in the U.S. have color television sets, cars, many luxuries. True poverty does not have such luxuries, and yes, there are people living in true poverty in this country. As well as in other countries.
And I did not like what the Clinton Administration tried to do – they redefined the word rich (wealthy) to include anyone earning more than $50,000 per year (maybe it was $75K). Well, neither of those figures is hardly wealth. And what about nations whose governments continue to be corrupt? Why should we continue to fund them? Make them change first so that the people of the country have a chance at a better life. Just look at the fiasco in 1985 with the We Are the World artists who raised more than 50 million dollars. All that food was left rotting in the desert because of corrupt governments that wouldn't allow for the distribution of the supplies. That's just one of many examples. It was a total waste but we felt good about ourselves. I believe Americans do not want to deal with corrupt governments. If these governments will not abide by the rules we set in place and make internal changes as to how they run their country in order to provide for their citizens, then why should we continue to fund them, and if we find fraud, then discontinue the funding. It's very simple. It is not the role of the United States to necessarily support every third world country especially if they are corrupt.
I come at this from a very pragmatic business point of view. It's nice, as well as very easy, to say “Let's give more money—tax someone else”. We all feel good about ourselves when we do this, real touchy-feeling kind of goodness, but the bottom line is what really gets done. Most of the time, very little, because when people say “Let's give more. Let's take from the rich” they do not understand at all the consequences. They simply resent the rich guy (and to make certain people know, I am not one of the rich guys) because he has what they don't and they want to punish him. It's class envy. When you tax a rich people it simply means that person does not have money to spend on something he/she wants, and the resulting consequence usually means some people down the working chain will not benefit by that rich person's purchase for goods and/or services. For instance, back in the 1980s (and this can be seen with many other and more current examples) the luxury yacht/boating industry was heavily taxed on the purchase of a new boat, a luxury tax. Well, rich people simply stopped buying new boats. They bought used boats and refurbished them. It did not hurt the rich. It hurt the craftsmen building the new boats and those companies subsequently had to layoff huge portions of its industry until the tax was repealed. High taxes never helped anyone. But those workers suffered as did their children.
Grooms: This is quite a bit to address in a short space—but essentially, you have not understood my position. You are looking at the issue from a narrow, personal perspective and I am trying to broaden the view. There are ways to redistribute wealth other than to tax the rich in the US or elsewhere! The primary way is not to allow the rich to take more than our fair share of resources to begin with. I am asking for a fair distribution of the fundamental resources, which include clean water, nutritious food, good education, and fair compensation for labor.
I am a capitalist, but I choose to emphasis that capitalism can be moral, responsible and fair. Many of the most powerful corporation—not just American—are none of these. And as far as taxation goes, my tax monies support a wide range of interests, including those many corporations who overcharge the government, sell dangerous products to consumers, and pay no taxes whatsoever to anyone. When we measure where tax monies go—into highways, military industrial corporations, airports, research and development science, or release from tax responsibilities, and so on—we will see that the corporate rich also get trillions of dollars from tax monies. But that is not so much what concerns me. As you noted, many of the poor in USA have TV sets and automobiles—even if they can't afford good education or health care—my concern and my optimism is for the poor on a scale beyond, but inclusive of, our borders. In spite of corrupt governments and the failures of the past, we—world citizens, not just Americans—still must work as diligently and as optimistically as possible to solve such world-endangering problems as poverty.
And finally, I must, on a personal note, say, fuck class envy! I reject the idea that our welfare system has created wide-spread lethargy among the poor. I do not deny problems with the system—but I also know too many hard-working poor people, people who have benefited from welfare—which includes education—to say that the program is a failure. Remember that I have come up from Jim Crow and I know in a visceral way that people can change systems for the better. No one can make a perfect system, but we can do better. This is what I write about because it is fundamentally true and crucially important to all of us.
I agree with you that class envy is a driving force in the American psyche, but it is mostly a middle-class force—if by the class to be envied is the upper class. But I see it as a more complicated relationship than just envy. The middle-class also want to achieve this status—even knowing that it is more than just a status of wealth—it is a heritage. The new rich rarely become upper-class, and all of the upper-class don't have money!
I think of it a little bit like the relationship that the general public has with writers. They are wary of us. . . but at the same time they admire us. Don't you feel that?
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