Coal Miner Mother of a Mess

Sarah made young LeRoy record "There He Goes" by forcing him to hold a pawn-shop jambox up to a motel TV that was airing Coal Miner's Daughter…Sarah and LeRoy would make such scenes in Nashville record shops about Lynn's ownership of "There He Goes" (Patsy Cline has another version) that record store clerks would escort them out at the wrong end of a shotgun. (How very Quentin Tarantino. But I can assure you -- having lived there both before and after the time the story was set -- that Nashville record store clerks were far more like Jack Black in High Fidelity than the Gimpkeepers in Pulp Fiction.)…Sarah would get wasted and tell people that she and LeRoy were not just the daughter and grandson of coal miners -- hell, they were coal miners themselves! When people would doubt that J.T. was a miner, she would wonder "Ain't they read they Dickens?!"…That Sarah called all her boyfriends "Doo" during this era….That Sarah, J.T. in tow, would perform Lynn songs at Nashville open-mike nights, her face daubed in charcoal to simulate coal dust. And then, when the crowd would hiss, she would flash them her bush. (How very Sharon Stone!)…Later, she fashioned a Coal Miner's Daughter outfit from materials purloined from the Salvation Army, and she and LeRoy would shoplift food and liquor from Publix stores…

Wait a minute, I suddenly thought. What the hell is a Publix store? Like I said, I lived in Nashville before, during and after that period, and I had never heard of such an animal. I guessed that it was a supermarket, and I knew that to this day, liquor was unobtainable at Tennessee grocery stores. Turns out Publix is a grocery store chain -- but until 1990 it was confined to Florida. (According to a Publix spokesperson, the chain opened its first Tennessee store in late 2002.) It was a telling misstep -- while he never specified the names of any of the bars Sarah sang in, the stripper dives she pole-danced in, the motels they stayed at, or where the shotgun-toting record store clerks were, LeRoy did manage to screw up one of the only specific places he mentioned.

A few days later, via e-mail, I confronted LeRoy and Oxford American editor Marc Smirnoff with my doubts. How could such a preposterous, uncorroboratable tale, wherein one of the only two businesses mentioned by name did not check out, be passed off as "an essay" and not fiction? Within hours, I was ladled the following e-mailed dollop of mushy condescension from LeRoy's camp.

Hi John,

J.T.'s in LA right now and away from his computer. This is his assistant, Nancy. Having worked with J.T. for 4 years, I am confident that I can speak for him regarding your questions.

If you were to look at J.T.'s works, you would find that all of them are published as fiction, even those pieces that are very close to his actual experiences. This is because J.T. doesn't really believe in the concept of true fact and true fiction. The way he sees it, any event that occurs is subject to interpretation from the person involved with it. Two people may be in the exact same situation but take entirely different memories away from it, depending on what they bring to the table and their own personality. Likewise, a writer always weaves parts of his/her life experiences, opinions, thoughts, small noted details, in short, everything that they are and have been, into their writing. It would be unnatural not to do that.

So, you see? No true fact or fiction.

J.T. has, surprisingly, been asked this kind of question about his book, Sarah, which, like all his work, has a foot in reality. He has replied to these folks that yes, much of the folklore is true and he was a lot lizard in West Virginia and that ramps are a celebrated food there but he never really walked on water. It's the genre called "magical realism."

J.T. is a story teller. In my opinion, his works do everything that good writing should: they captivate, move me to tears and laughter, uplift me and fill me with wonder. I am always the better for having read and digested his words. I, of course, am not alone here. In fact, J.T. is guest editor of this year's Da Capo's Best Music Writing of 2005. Paul Bresnick, the editor of many books in this series, upon receiving his copy of the Oxford American, replied:

"BTW, I really liked your piece in the music issue of the Oxford American. It'll definitely make the first cut for next year's BEST MUSIC WRITING."

I've always felt that the main measure of a piece of writing is how much a reader enjoys it, is made to think and to feel. However, if your reliance on the facts precludes your appreciation of J.T.'s Loretta Lynn piece, I guess there's not too much we can do about that.