If Clyde Edgerton was not so busy moving forward, it would be mighty easy for him to get caught up in his past. Because it is a life jam-packed with tremendous accomplishments and honors. The most recent is being selected to the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. That does not happen officially until Oct. 16, when he, Margaret Maron, and Carl Sandberg will join 57 currently enshrined inductees in a ceremony at the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities in Southern Pines.
Currently, a professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, Edgerton is the author of 12 books, including “Raney,” “Walking Across Egypt,” “The Floatplane Notebooks” and “Lunch at the Piccadilly.”
A native of Durham, Edgerton graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill and was a fighter pilot while serving in the Air Force. He was also the recipient of the distinguished Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts and has a street in Kernersville named for him.
ONC: Did you grow up loving books and reading? If so, who was responsible for that?
CE: We had the Bible in our house. Starting about seventh grade, I received a monthly magazine called Boys Life. And about that time I started reading paperback books. When I was very small, my mother read Bible stories to me out of a book called “Aunt Charlotte’s Bible Stories.” In the novel “Where Trouble Sleeps,” I created a facsimile of that book.
I started realizing a new world was available through the printed word when I started reading Ralph Waldo Emerson in high school. After that, through college and later on, came Hemingway, Twain, Crane, Welty, Flannery O’Connor, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Jill McCorkle, Lee Smith, Alan Gurganus, Larry Brown, Cormac McCarthy, and Lewis Norton, to name some of the main influences. The problem is I leave some of the best out—for example, Mark Richard, Mary Hood, Vic Miller, and others.
As a boy, what did you want to be someday?
As a boy, I wanted to be first, a fireman, second, a cowboy, third, an airplane pilot. I was able to fulfill the third wish.
Was it your aim to live in North Carolina your entire life or move somewhere else?
I have always felt comfortable and at home in North Carolina, especially among people who grew up in North Carolina. I grew up in Piedmont, now live on the coast, and I love to visit the mountains in the northwest corner of the state. There are good and bad stories from all over, just like from all over the world, but the actual land and geography in North Carolina, except where we have forests that have been overcut, like in sections in the mid-southern parts of the state, is welcoming and in many ways, moderate.
Who was the strongest influence on you?
Clearly, my mother. She had a way of pushing me out into the world and sheltering me at the same time. I always felt safe with her and with the people in my small Southern Baptist church in Bethesda, North Carolina.
Were there college courses or professors that changed you?
There was an English class when I was a sophomore at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1963. In that class, I read a novel, “A Farewell To Arms,” by Ernest Hemingway.
That book started me on the path to becoming a fiction writer. It is ironic, perhaps, that I went through a war, as did Ernest, and one of my deepest wishes after that experience of warfare was that we might someday say a farewell to arms —or at least, as human beings, be less eager, even hungry, to shout war-like cries across the hills and valleys of the world.
And then there was Sterling Hennis. He was my adviser as an undergrad and grad student at UNC-Chapel Hill. Without going into details, I can say he gave me insights and opportunities to change my life in major ways. There were other important professors who greatly inspired me.
Fighter pilot has a heroic ring to it. What’s your memory of doing that?
My memory of being a fighter pilot is twofold: No. 1, the adrenaline charges that I experienced and will never experience again (until I die, perhaps). No. 2, human beings can be barbaric, regardless of their nationality. Some human beings can never see that their reason and insight are blinded by a bright spotlight of nationalistic fervor. It’s happened before, on large scales, as a short study of history demonstrates —that is, a study that examines facts, not fantasies. The lack of such a factual study can help lead Americans to the large-scale embracing of strange national leaders.
When and how did you decide to write a novel?
I started out writing short stories. Then one day my aunt came unannounced and unexpected into my home—to leave my wife and me a note. That event, I knew, made my wife from Atlanta a little more uncomfortable than it made me. I was the country spouse; my wife was the city spouse. I suddenly saw the clear and unmistakable clash of two very different subcultures of the South. That clash led to my first novel, “Raney.”
Are some of your characters based on folks you loved or disliked or just found funny?
Some of my characters are based on people I knew or know. But it’s important to realize that these fictional characters take on personalities, ethics, moralities, points of view that, as I write about them, become their very own. They become for me a new person in the world, a fictional world that can seem to be as real as the real world.
The way you develop characters is really special. Does that come easily for you?
I think that my habit of translating real things into fictional things is helpful. I learned from Mr. Faulkner that writers have three treasure chests that act as tool chests.
One is called experience, one is called observation and knowledge, and the other is called imagination. As you pull your tools, ideas, personalities, facts, and imaginings from one box, you have your eye on the other two boxes.
Are your books snatches of life and folks as you have observed them in the South?
My books include snatches of life, habits, norms, attitudes that I have observed in the South and in other places where people have hearts in their chests that aren’t that different from the hearts of Southerners. As I write a story, a theme develops. That is, I begin to learn what the story is about. That’s when my story starts moving toward a final mold. Sometimes the theme has to shift a bit in order to fit my people and what they want to do.
I think we, in the South, see so much of the past as romantic and ideal. Does that make writing about it more enjoyable?
There is much about the South that is seen as romantic and ideal. Much of this is a lie; some of it isn’t. It is in individual family stories where you find heroic acts. Much “official” history of the South, especially “antebellum” stuff written by Southerners, is malarkey. It’s insightful, fun, and healthy to read and study well-researched and well-written history.
Since North Carolina is your home state, do you lean toward glorifying it in your stories?
That is possible. It is difficult not to glorify a person’s home if that person has fond memories of it. As human beings, it is important for us to generalize. If we could not generalize, then we would not have survived as a species. We generalize about all kinds of things so that we can organize our day, our week, our year. But then we start generalizing about concepts and words—like “conservative,” “liberal,” “republican,” “Baptist,” “African-American,” “White,” “Hispanic,” “Muslim”—that’s when we, in my view, may lose the precision that could make us more equitable and gentle—more likely to give the dreams in our Constitution a better chance of seeing the light of day.
Do you ever change a plot path or a character’s personality in midstream?
I do sometimes change a plot path or a character’s personality. One way I change a character’s personality is to kill them off in one book and thus save them for another book. That has happened before. I’ve also on occasion changed a plot path by putting up a detour sign and then running my road into the ocean so that my novel drowns, dies, and never sees the light of day.
Which of your books is your favorite, and why?
This is a hard question to answer, but if all my books were in a boat and I had to throw all of them out except for one, the one I would keep is “The Floatplane Notebook.” It is the closest to my family, my favorite family stories, my deep feelings about war.
Are there authors whose books you especially like to read?
I especially like to read and reread the books of Lewis Nordon. I like to reread the stories of Flannery O’Connor. There are dozens of Hispanic and African-American writers that I would like to read before I die. That’s a big gap in my reading education thus far.
In teaching creative writing, what are a couple of key tips you give?
The main key tip I give as a creative writing teacher is this: Never accept any advice which doesn’t make sense to you. Another key tip is to pull on your own imagination, your own experience, your own observation as you write stories.
Are you working on your next book? If so, can you share anything about it?
My next book has two tentative titles: “Raney vs. the Board of Education,” and the second title is “First Come, First Serve, Last Come, No Serve.” The main source for the story will be my experiences in the field of education —as teacher, parent, citizen, and observer. The main problem will be dampening down facts which seem to me to be too fantastic to work in fiction.
Do you have a writing schedule, or do you write as ideas come to you?
The best time for me to write is early in the morning. And when I’m working well, that usually means five or six days a week. I am always keeping notebooks and jotting down notes—now on my iPhone.
What are other things you enjoy doing?
I like to oil paint. And I like to play blues piano and bluegrass banjo whenever I get a chance. I like to spend time talking with my wife—as well as hiking with her, and cooking, eating, and other things. I like spending time with my children, and I like to discuss ideas with them.
What do you count as your greatest accomplishment?
My greatest accomplishment includes, most recently, the tutoring of a child in a Title I public school. I am in the process of trying to begin to determine the breadth and depth of practice of not tutoring children considered “too slow” in Title I schools. It sounds crazy, but I’ve recently discovered that it is, in fact, happening. Too slow for what? Too slow for learning or too slow for raising test scores? I may be missing something but I don’t think I am. “No Child Left Behind but the slower ones” seems an odd and scary practice. I hope it’s not a wave of the future.
One of my other greatest accomplishments is being chair of the Arts Council in Wilmington. We are in the middle of raising funds. Our cause, our programs, our beliefs bring together people and artists (sometimes struggling) from all walks of life, all ages, all religions, all political beliefs—we support the arts in southeastern N.C.