I remember the first day I went for a cup of tea in Oxford [Mississippi], and I looked up at the courthouse and saw the state flag, and it seemed very contradictory to me that this very gentle town with a university and an elegant bookshop with all these thoughtful and great writers would coexist [with that]. That coexistence is not always appreciated by people who make generalizations about the South or areas outside of its major metropolitan areas. They don’t realize that there are great writers or take in the literary or cultural dimension of these places.