His entry begins:
Because I teach writing, most of my reading is of student manuscripts—often novels. I am fortunate to have good students. Still I am reading a good number of books, usually literary novels, at any given time. I recently finished Haylow by Gray Stewart, his debut novel. The novel is a satire about a white professor at an historically black university. Few novels have such settings and none that I know of with an HBCU setting is told by a white protagonist. The novel is remarkable for its clear-eyed honesty. It’s a take-no-prisoners kind of satire, and the protagonist gets as much as he gives. And yet, the characters are treated with genuine sympathy and the reader...[read on]About The Vain Conversation, from the publisher:
Inspired by true events, The Vain Conversation reflects on the 1946 lynching of two black couples in Georgia from the perspectives of three characters--Bertrand Johnson,Visit Anthony Grooms's website.one of the victims; Noland Jacks, a presumed perpetrator; and Lonnie Henson, a witness to the murders as a ten-year-old boy. Lonnie's inexplicable feelings of culpability drive him in a search for meaning that takes him around the world, and ultimately back to Georgia, where he must confront Jacks and his own demons, with the hopes that doing so will free him from the grip of the past.
In The Vain Conversation, Anthony Grooms seeks to advance the national dialogue on race relations. With complexity, satire, and sometimes levity, he explores what it means to redeem, as well as to be redeemed, on the issues of America's race violence and speaks to the broader issues of oppression and violence everywhere.
Writers Read: Anthony Grooms.
--Marshal Zeringue
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