ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 25, 1996 TAG: 9604250012
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WENDY CLARK SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
George Garrett describes himself as a painstaking writer. Even so, the Virginia author took more than 30 years to complete his eighth novel.
"The King of Babylon Shall Not Come Against You" actually has its roots in a short story that Garrett wrote in 1964.
"It started as a story about people dealing with the high state of confusion that was occurring around them, then [it] moved into a novella before it took its present shape," Garrett said in an interview last weekend.
Some of the events in the novel "hadn't even occurred when I wrote the short story," said Garrett, former director of the creative-writing program at Hollins College. Garrett returns to the college to give a reading tonight at 8:15 in the Green Drawing Room.
``The King of Babylon" is the story of a reporter returning to his hometown, the fictitious Paradise Springs, Fla. He's come to interview townspeople about the events that occurred there the week of April 4, 1968 - the week Martin Luther King was assassinated.
"I was teaching at Hollins then and remember we really didn't hear the news till the weekend because it had occurred on a Thursday night," Garrett said. "I went out in the yard to rake and burn leaves. As I burned the leaves, I reflected on the burning of the cities" that accompanied the rioting that followed King's death.
"The burning brought the rattlesnakes out from the woods,'' he continued, ``and I wondered what this turn of events would mean to us all."
In his book, published this year by Harcourt Brace, the characters are dealing with different types of destruction.
"There's a kind of a mystery that the reporter investigates because in that one week in the town there was a double murder, arson and a suicide," Garrett explained. "I wanted to write a book like Wright Morris' `In Orbit,' which is a book I taught from at Hollins."
Morris' book describes what happens when a ``motorcycle freak'' descends on a Nebraska town "with violence as forceful as the twister that ultimately destroys the town," Garrett said.
Like Morris, Garrett weaves fact and speculation together to bring his story to life.
"My training in Chaucer and Shakespeare means that I use a lot of metaphors and parables to tell the story," Garrett said.
There is an undercurrent of Christianity, too. "In a purely literary way, Christianity is one of the first religions whose primary teachings are parables," Garrett said. "Ministers can preach elaborate stories that create a window through which they help you view the world."
Most of his previous historical novels have been based in Elizabethan England.
"There is a connection between eras," he said. "Chance affects our lives greatly."
In "The Succession," an earlier work, Garrett wrote of strangers who were linked by a single event. "Just like in my new book, that event affects them and their lives forever," he said.
Garrett, 67, has taught and written for more than 35 years.
"I've been writing all my life, and yet I feel as though I'm never satisfied by my work," he said. "I always want to do more editing - even after the work has been published."
He writes mostly during the summer months, when he and his wife retreat to a getaway in Maine.
During the school year, Garrett is a Hoyns professor of English at the University of Virginia.
As a teacher, Garrett often finds himself cast in a grandfatherly role with his students.
"Students today are bright or even brighter than ever, but they don't have the foundation of the literature I was taught," he said. "Our generation didn't read enough, and these students have read even less."
Still, his students are eager to learn, they haven't been turned off from reading and writing, and they work hard to improve themselves, the professor said.
Wendy Clark is a Roanoke-area librarian.
George Garrett reads from his new novel this evening at 8:15 in the Green Drawing Room, Main Building, Hollins College. Admission is free.
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Novelist George Garrett is the former director of theby CNBcreative-writing program at Hollins College.