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Joshilyn Jackson's SLR
profile
SLR's review of gods in Alabama
SLR:
Where were you born and raised? Schooled?
Jackson: I
was born in the Florida panhandle, spitting distance from Alabama. My
father was military, so my early years were spent all over, mostly in
the South--- I lived in Alabama, Oklahoma, Virginia, etc etc. When I was
about 9 we settled back in the panhandle and I lived in Pensacola until
I went to college.
SLR:
When did you first start writing stories?
When did you know you wanted to spend you life writing?
Jackson: I can’t
remember not writing. I can’t remember not reading. My mom has boxes of
little books I “self-published” as a child using the stapler-and-crayon
method.
SLR: I read
that you were an actor. Can you elaborate on that a bit and tell us how
that has contributed to your writing, if at all?
Jackson: It contributes hugely to the revision process. For me, it
all begins with a character---I am not Arlene, but she is mine, if that
makes sense. I knew her story from writing the awful first draft of the
novel. The revisions were all about finding her voice, and that part
felt the same in head as it felt to find a character when I was acting. And I didn’t just use acting to find Arlene…as I revised, I went back
through each scene at least once to get a strong feel for the characters
and to be sure they were consistently themselves. Then I filtered what
they were doing and saying through how Arlene would interpret their
actions and through her voice. It’s hard to explain because it’s such an
internal process.
SLR:
What writers influenced you the most
when you were growing up?
Jackson: When I was
maybe eight or nine, my favorite book was Charlotte’s Web. I read
it so often that it irritated my then twelve year old brother. He
claimed to have glued all the pages together, and told me he would get
me a new copy if I read one of his books…then he handed me Conan the
Destroyer. I loved it! I grew up reading very eclectically---I would
read, say, Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan books, and then dive into A
Little Princess. I’d follow that up with an early Heinlein space
opera like The Door Into Summer and then I’d pick up Little
Women or reread To Kill A Mockingbird for the 987th
time.
I
still read that way---I read everything from contemporary lit-fic to
hard boiled detective books to sci fi to classic literature to chick-lit
to epic fantasy to cosies... I’m the walking definition of avid. And of
course I love great Southern literature---I think Flannery O’Connor,
Eudora Welty, and Harper Lee are about perfect.
SLR: This
was your debut novel. I bought a copy of the New Yorker at the
airport a few weeks ago and when I got on the plane and thumbed through
it there was a full page ad for your book. How did you make that jump?
Jackson: I was blessed with a dynamo
of an editor who fell deeply in love with the book, and she championed
it at Warner.
She pretty much stormed the building
with the galleys for gods in
Alabama.
She sent one to every person who had a pulse, and then she placed them
on the graves of former editors, and then she put some more by the
toilets.
The
result of her unwavering support was this: Someone in marketing read it
and really liked it. This led to other people in marketing
reading/liking, and then the other editors and some associate publishers
read it and took to it, and they told two friends, and then they told
two friends, and soon everyone in the entire building had read it and
the reps started reading it and asking why it wasn’t the lead book for
spring, and my publisher said, “Hmm, good question,” and made it the
lead book, so it ended up with a marketing budget. It was just a word of
mouth thing that happened in house and then spread from the reps to
booksellers, who got excited about it too, and they made it the number
one Book Sense pick for April. It was entirely outside of my control,
and I nearly died of thrill.
SLR: How did
you come up with the storyline of gods in
Alabama?
Did you begin the novel with this particular storyline or did it
develop, change as you went a long?
Jackson:
It developed. It started with the
first line -- once I had that line I knew I was hearing Arlene’s voice,
and then the first thing I wrote actually became the second half of
Chapter 2: Arlene Fleet, fifteen years old, with no idea that actions
have consequences, creeping up to the top of Lip Smack Hill with murder
in her heart. And I think I probably spent 90% of my time on this book
revising---so it changed a lot. Just as an example, Burr started out as
temperamental, loud, and passionate artist, with hundreds of little tiny
braids that came down to the center of his back. By the time the book
was done, he was the world’s most reserved tax attorney. So. And
everything was like that…the characters, the plot, the thematic elements
all morphed and grew organically. The only exception -- the thing I
protected from the beginning -- was the way the relationship between
Arlene and her estranged Aunt Florence grows and changes. That
relationship is the heart of the book to me.
SLR:
I’m interested in the title. It isn’t often
that I read a book where the title is repeated within the text as often
as “gods in Alabama” is in this novel. I also know that as the author
you may not have even chosen the title, but I get the impression that it
was a very important phrase to you. Can you elaborate?
Jackson:
As I said, that first
sentence --when I had that sentence, I knew I had a handle on Lena’s
voice. Part of what it does for her is to distance her from her act; to
make Jim Beverly a small god, an idol, is to take his humanity away. The
repetition is her entrance into the story she so wants to tell
Burr -- she longs to confess, and I wanted it repeated because that’s how
a confession works.
SLR:
What are you currently working on?
Jackson: I’m just
finishing up the edits on a novel called Between,
Georgia
that will be out next spring. I’m very excited about this book. Between
is a small town---maybe 100 people live there, and the novel tells the
story of a feud 50 years in the making.
People ask me if it
is “like” gods in Alabama,
and I don’t know how to answer that. The plot, the characters are
nothing like gods in
Alabama. It’s a different book,
but at the same time, I think it’s pretty obvious I wrote it. It’s that
same odd blend of humor and violence.
SLR:
Who
do you like to read now?
Jackson: Oh lord,
that’s hard to narrow down. I read so much and so eclectically, but
there are names that guarantee I will buy a book without even looking at
the jacket copy: Haven Kimmel, Mindy Friddle, Michael Chabon, Dennis
LeHane, Ann Patchett, Neal Stephenson, Adriana Trigiani…I could probably
list fifty.
SLR:
Well Joshilyn Jackson, thank you for talking
with Southern Literary Review. Congratulations on the success of
your first novel and we look forward to reading Between, Georgia
someday. | 
