Fayetteville

What do I know about Fayetteville, Arkansas?

It is in the Ozark Mountains. They get snow there, in the winter. So it is in The South, but not the sticky south. I wonder if they get tornadoes there? I am scared of tornadoes. (I wonder how much this Wizard of Oz legacy affects others? I have nightmares about tornadoes chasing me across the landscape. When I was bicycling through Alabama a couple of years ago, we went to a cocktail party. All the southerners sipped their drinks and mingled while I stared transfixed at a television set (who leaves a t.v. on at a party?), at the bottom of which a red line scrolled “Tornado Advisory”. One man came over to see what I was looking at. “Dang,” he said, “My daughter’s driving through Mobile County tonight. Hope she pulls over.”

Ellen Gilchrist lives there. A favorite writer of mine since I was in my teens, she has a house on a hill, designed by the architect E. Fay Jones. Not too many years ago, she started teaching in the creative writing program at the University of Arkansas. She took up teaching in her 60s. Ellen Gilchrist is the author of the story collections In The Land of Dreamy Dreams, Light Can Be Both Wave and Particle, and Victory Over Japan. I like some of her novels too, especially The Anna Papers and Net of Jewels, though I suspect they’ve never matched the literary merit of those early story collections. In fact, I think some of the novels aren’t very good, but I love Ellen Gilchrist so I don’t care.

The creative writing program at U of A (it will take me some time to get Alberta and Alaska out of my mind, I think) was run by Miller Williams for many years, the poet and father of Lucinda. Lucinda was raised in Fayetteville, I think.

Bill and Hillary lived there.

When you look at Fayetteville on Google Earth, the biggest feature is the dark oval of a football stadium. This football stadium holds more people than even live in Fayetteville. Football is big there. The Arkansas team is called The Razorbacks. Razorbacks are wild pigs. The time name was changed in 1910 after coach Hugo Bezdek proclaimed his team played "like a wild band of Razorback hogs". According to Google, there is a tradition at football games known as ‘calling the hogs’. The famous yell, “Woo, Pig! Sooie” has been heard since the 1920s.

The staff and student as U of A creative writing department are incredibly friendly and welcoming. They have been thoughtful and generous with advice and information. They don’t seem to hold to regular office hours, calling and emailing me evenings and weekends.

I think I might go there come September.

Razorback figurine from Noah's Animals.