I had two rules: I could visit only small towns, and I had to sit at the bar. So I rented a camper van in Atlanta and zigzagged through cotton fields and sugarcane. I have never known the South, and after the 2016 election, it became a greater mystery. My father shed all traces of his Kentucky accent, and the many foreign languages he speaks camouflage him in foreignness some people assume he is Norwegian. My mother, who in college had to wear long gloves on Sundays, is now a retired lesbian chemist in San Rafael, California. I had never really visited the South, though it is where my family is from. In preparing for my latest, Less Is Lost, I asked myself: What baffles me? What am I afraid of? The answer came, spelled out as if in alphabet blocks: ALABAMA. I don’t know where novels come from, but I know where they happen: in places of bafflement and unease.
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