Bret Lott back home with new book

Wade Spees
The Post and Courier

Enthused to be back in the Lowcountry, College of Charleston professor Bret Lott also is celebrating the release of his 12th novel, 'Ancient Highway.'

It was as if time had stood still, refusing to budge until the teacher was back in his classroom, the writer back in his familiar haunt.

You can see it in the cast of his eyes, hear it in the timbre of his voice. Bret Lott is home.

Delighted to be back at the College of Charleston after three years editing The Southern Review, a prestigious Louisiana literary journal, Lott is celebrating the publication (July 8) of his 12th novel, "Ancient Highway" (Random House), as well as his family's welcome return to the Lowcountry.

Considering that so much of the staff of the college's English department is still in place, rejoining the fold almost makes it seem as if his time in Baton Rouge was a dream.

"It's very much like that," Lott says. "It really is. Since (wife) Melanie and I got back, it doesn't feel like we spent three years away. All my colleagues are here, and it's like we never left. But when I got back into the classroom, it did feel like three years because I had not taught in that time."

Lott was eager to renew his connection to a school where he'd been a professor and writer-in-residence for 18 years.

"I had romanticized this whole thing. Then you get into the classroom and you go, 'Oh, yeah, that's right. This is creative writing.' You get all comers. It's not like an upper-level microbiology class. And you also have to grade papers. The nice thing about being an editor is that you can just say, 'No.'

You don't have to take into account the kid you are dealing with, whether they're tough and can take it or someone who's more brittle. You have to be tough with everybody, but it's a matter of how to be tough."

Yet having to say "no" with distressing regularity was one of the reasons Lott was ready to relinquish his post with the Review and Louisiana State University.

"What I took away from that experience was that my wife, Melanie, and I realized this was not what I wanted to do with my life. That was the real gift of this thing, to know that I am not an editor and I'm not a boss. There were things about being a boss that I had no clue about. I'm a teacher."

The realization

The day he realized he wanted to return began like any other. Lott sat at his desk, slogging though a dreadful manuscript submission.

"It was like an out-of-body experience. I'm sitting there thinking, 'My only job is to say "No" to this person. That's it.' We did not have time (to cultivate talent) at the Review. We got 10,000 to 12,000 manuscripts a year. It had to be perfect to be accepted. I wrote plenty of letters to people, trying to be encouraging. But there was no time to sit and say, 'Hey, this is really good. Work with me on this,' because we knew that there would be something that worked, as is, coming in the mail. So I was sitting there alone and thinking, 'I don't like this. This is not what I was meant to do.' "

Lott never entertained the idea of going to another school. He had never actively gone out and looked. It was always the College of Charleston. Formerly of Mount Pleasant, the Lotts returned to the area — Hanahan, to be exact — late last summer.

"It was so flattering when they called me up and asked if I would consider coming back. The college was my first real job. My whole life has been here. Every book that I've written except for my first one, which I wrote in Ohio, and this new one, was done in Charleston. I was 27 when we came down here. My sons were 6 months and 2 years old. They're from here."

But no longer in the nest. Lott's elder son, Zebulun, is in the Army, serving with the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq. Younger brother Jacob is a 2008 graduate of the College of Charleston.

Familial wellspring

Lott's latest book, which draws from the wellspring of his own family's history, not least his maternal grandfather, embraces a century of American history from the early years of the motion-picture industry to the repercussions of the Vietnam experience, from the Texas oil boom to the big band era, and from the serenity of Texas farm country to the sometimes hollow glamour of Hollywood.

"Ancient Highway" navigates the routes of three generations of a single family — twined stories set in 1925, 1947 and 1980 — whose lives rest in the shadow of one man's failed dream of film stardom. It is receiving the sort of glowing reviews to which Lott, an exceedingly modest man, must be accustomed.

Still, three months shy of his 50th birthday, Lott says he does not yet feel on the cusp of literary elder statesmanship. He's still grappling.

"When I'm writing, I'm still trying to figure it out. I feel like I still don't know how to do this. I'm not an artiste. Every one is brand-new and presents its own set of problems. With each one, I hope to make it better than the last. This book, in particular, has three different points of view in three different points in time. I've never done that before. So in the writing I was trying to solve the problem of how do you do this when it's in first person, the third person past and third person present. I mean, I know the tricks a novelist uses, but to me the question was how could I challenge myself and also tell a good story. It's been a joy ride."

To Lott, the most compelling facet of the novel is the effect the patriarch had on the next generation, and the generation after that.

To what extent did members of his family shape the contours of the characters?

"When I finished writing 'Jewel' in 1991, my father said, 'You've got to write a book about your mom's dad.' He was a wonderful, hilarious guy who was also a narcissist. But how do you write a book about a narcissist who doesn't even acknowledge other people's existence? Whenever (one mines one's own family) you take where you've been in your life and the people you know and you use that as the beginning point. Then you step away from it and say, 'Given all this stuff, what if?'

"In reality, my grandfather never made it in movies. He was in a handful of films in minor, bit parts. He died back in Texas, still a proud, card-carrying Screen Actors Guild member. My mother grew up in Hollywood, a woman diametrically opposed to the mother in the book. My mom wanted nothing more than to go back to Texas. My job as a writer of fiction is to reimagine these lives."

Reach Bill Thompson at bthompson@postandcourier.com or 937-5707.