He recounts these stories in his books, “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell” — No. 1 New York Times bestseller and film inspiration —  “Assholes Finish First,” and, most recently, “Hilarity Ensues” and “Sloppy Seconds,” which hit stores today. His blog, TuckerMax.com, which he started in 2002, has also gained him Internet exposure.

Despite fame from his partying lifestyle, the 37-year-old author is ready to settle down and retire from his “fratire” style of writing, as he stated in the epilogue of “Hilarity Ensues.” In the future, Max plans to release an advice book and live life as he wants, even though he says the partying lifestyle isn’t who he is anymore.

“What I’m going to do next is do whatever I want,” Max said in a phone interview. “That’s the cool thing about selling millions of books is that I don’t have to do anything. … It’s not like because I’m not going to be the crazy, out-of-control partier that I was at 25 that I’m going to sit around in the dark and do nothing. At the same time, things change as you grow up and mature and develop and so certain things that I wasn’t really interested in the past are available in the future.”

Max’s lavish stories about getting laid and wasted have gained notoriety in the college scene, even though he points out that none of his stories are college-based.

“My college stories are like everyone else’s college stories,” Max said. “‘I went to this party, got super drunk and came home with this girl…’ There’s nothing funny or unique about that.”

Instead, Max said that the books are actually aimed more toward middle-aged people.

“It’s a different world when you’re an adult,” Max said. “Do 30-year-olds read my stuff? If you had fun at all and you were remotely cool, at 30 you’d be like, ‘That totally reminds me of my friends or I did that.’ … The only people who can’t imagine these things happening are complete losers or so young that they haven’t experienced that kind of stuff.”

Likewise, Max encourages students to get the most out of college, and not necessarily only in an academic sense.

Max said, “I think the point of college is to try new things. If you get to college having no stories like mine, that’s one thing. If you leave college having no stories like mine, you probably did something wrong in college. You should have fun and have nights where you get so drunk that you throw up. You should have a couple random hookups at least. A lot of the stuff I did was a bit extreme, but that style of living and partying is one of the major points of college.”

While Max has gained popularity by those who enjoy reading about his life, there are also those who disagree with his actions or just simply call him a liar.

One particular radio show, “The Opie & Anthony Show,” in 2006, claimed Max lied about his story entitled “Tucker Tries Buttsex; Hilarity Does Not Ensue.” In the story, Max recounted convincing a girl to try anal sex while his friend secretly videotaped it. Needless to say, in typical Max-fashion, things went very wrong and the scene ended up covered in vomit and feces. However, Max could not produce the videotape.

“There’s no video tape of any number of things that have happened in history,” Max told the Daily 49er. “Do we doubt them? … If I had the tape, I would show the tape. But I don’t, and it sucks. There’s a very simple way to say this. Every single thing I write about that’s verifiable is verified. It’s not like I didn’t go to Duke or didn’t have a girl blow me on an X-ray machine. That actually happened.”

Regarding those who may not like him, Max said, “It took me a long time to understand that someone could read my stories and be jealous. They see me as kind of this immature, ridiculous youth but when I started writing, that’s very much who I was as a person. I thought, ‘Why would anyone be jealous? Everyone does the same things I do, I just write them down.’ … Over time I realized that a lot of the dudes hate my stuff, but there’s a difference between something not interesting you and you hating something. … Whenever someone has a serious, strong negative emotion that has nothing to do with them, then it has to do with that person.”

Max is also often criticized as a woman hater, but he identifies himself as the opposite.

“People who haven’t read my books think I’m putting down girls, but I’m not,” Max said. “There’s definitely parts of my stories where I have negative interactions with specific individual women but there are also ones where I have negative interactions with specific men. It’s not about women or men in general; it’s about the people I’m talking about in those stories.”

“Hilarity Ensues” and “Sloppy Seconds” are now being sold in stores. As a token of gratitude to his fans, Max announced today that “Sloppy Seconds” will be available as a free digital download on his website, the Kindle, iBooks and other eReaders.

“‘Sloppy Seconds’ actually isn’t a normal book,” Max said. “It’s 200 pages of my leftover stories that I didn’t think were good enough for my first two books. Anyone can go download it and get it for free. There are no catches or strings. It’s sort of a thank you to my fans for buying my first three books, instead of selling some of my b-material, which would be kind of a dick move.”

Kantor, a reporter for The New York Times, spent five years working on the book, which focuses particularly on the first lady.

“The narrative that runs through the heart of this book is the story of [Mrs. Obama’s] turnaround,” Kantor said. “[In] scene after scene, and anecdote after anecdote, you see her forge her own path and define the role of the first lady.”

Kantor hopes the book will provide insight into how change can be accomplished through the political system and how the political system can, in turn, change those within it..

The book has sparked considerable political controversy since its Jan. 10 release, Kantor said.

The first lady spoke out against Kantor’s portrayal in a Jan. 11 interview on “CBS This Morning.” Kantor told the Miller Center audience she found Mrs. Obama’s response “strange” because the first lady said she had not read the book. Kantor said Mrs. Obama’s response was because of her negative perceptions of the way media in general depicts the first lady, not necessarily, her portrayal in “The Obamas.”

“[Mrs. Obama] wasn’t sure it was the best thing for her family, but believed in the potential for his presidency,” Kantor said. “As far as whether she’s come to terms with [the lifestyle] — all of my reporting has indicated that she has.”

Kantor also discussed the evolution of the Obama partnership in light of the mounting pressure of the presidency. The public glamorizes the Obamas’ lives in the White House, but their lives are restricted by media attention. These restrictions are “emblematic of the presidency’s strange combination of power and powerlessness,” Kantor said.

The working relationship between the Obamas could see marked change as the 2012 election period continues.

“As you will see on almost a daily basis, Michelle Obama is playing a much more important role in her husband’s political message,” Kantor said. “The question is to what extent is [she] saving him politically, and to what extent does that reflect a private change in their partnership as well?”

Barbara Perry, a senior fellow and associate professor in the Miller Center’s Presidential Oral History Program, said Kantor’s book may draw more supporters to the president in 2012. “I think that because this book is the first of this kind on the Obamas in the White House, it will have an impact on the people’s vision of the first couple,” she said.

Working as a copy writer after graduating, Lander said he enjoyed his job but sought alternate outlets for his humor. In January 2008, he came up with a list of “Stuff White People Like,” which quickly evolved into a blog.

The blog “Stuff White People Like” soon became an Internet sensation, accumulating 20 million hits since its debut. Lander began to get calls from major newspapers and, eventually, from talent agencies hoping to strike a book deal.

By March 2008 Lander had quit his job and signed a book deal with Random House. On July 14, 2008, “Stuff White People Like: A Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions” became a New York Times best-seller.

The list includes black friends, scarves and beards, but is meant as a joke, Lander stressed. He said he includes himself in the “white people” at whom he pokes fun.

“I encourage everyone to make fun of white people,” Lander said.

Capitalizing on his ability to laugh at himself and people like him, Lander’s list of “Stuff White People Like” expanded, and in 2010 he published a second book, “Whiter Shades of Pale: The Stuff White People Like, Coast to Coast, from Seattle’s Sweaters to Maine’s Microbrews.”

Despite the success currently enjoyed by the racially conscious comic, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. After majoring in English and history during his undergraduate years at McGill and completing a graduate program at U. Arizona, Lander ultimately dropped out of a PhD program at Indiana and moved with his wife to Los Angeles.

Even now, the future of the “Stuff White People Like” creator remains uncertain.

“I’ve hit my wall,” Lander said. “Things have a shelf life in terms of making stuff good. If I don’t have something really quality, I’m not going to put it up.”

The humorist advised aspiring writers to write what they believe in. “Don’t write with the intention of getting popular,” he said.

With its subtle criticism of modern furniture, expensive sandwiches and kitchen gadgets, Lander said his blog tackles class issues, not racial ones.

“You don’t have to be white to be white,” Lander said. “You just have to be rich.”

“I’m delighted to be back in Washington,” Morrison said to a sold-out crowd at George Washington U. “I have some rather special feelings about this town.”

The celebrated novelist joined the community and members of the Toni Morrison Society to read from her upcoming book and participate in a ceremony commemorating the desegregation of the auditorium in 1947.

Associate professor of English Evelyn Schreiber, who is vice president of the society, led the dedication of a bench as part of The Bench by the Road Project, initiated in 1993 to mark the history of slavery in America through a series of memorials.

“A bench is such an un-decorative, easy-access place,” Morrison said. “You don’t pray there, you don’t stand there and look. It’s not awe. It’s just a place to sit down.”

After the dedication, Morrison took questions from the audience and discussed obstacles she faced as a struggling young writer.

With nine critically acclaimed novels, Morrison has not been deterred by previous attempts to censor the controversial subject matter of her work.

“She pushes us to think about the jagged edges of our experience, to reflect and to recollect on the nastiness and beauty of life.” Terri Harris Reed, vice provost for diversity and inclusion, said.

While reading excerpts from her book, Morrison stressed the importance of maintaining an open dialogue between writers and readers.

“My feeling is that people should read anything and everything,” she said. “You can’t be frightened by dirty words.”

Despite historic strides in civil rights, Morrison believes that racism persists as a relevant theme in her literature.

“It never occurred to me that racism disappeared just because they elected Barack Obama,” she said.

At 80 years old, Morrison still finds the energy to wake up before dawn to hone a craft she continues to find fulfilling.

“I’m very happy when I’m writing,” Morrison said. “It sort of fills me together, intellectually and spiritually and in every way.”

Tuesday, Lynch spoke at a New York Barnes & Noble about her new autobiography “Happy Accidents.”

“I bled from the ears many days,” Lynch said. “Writing does not come easy to me. It goes against my wiring to sit in front of something and think and ponder.”

Lynch’s new novel chronicles her struggle with alcohol addiction in the years prior to “Glee” and describes her new wife, Lara Embry. After her battle with the bottle, Lynch turned to nightly NyQuil consumption to help her reach what she termed oblivion.

Having regained control of her life, Lynch is grateful for the two most important accidents she has ever had: meeting her wife and having her other show, “Party Down,” canceled, allowing her to accept her role on “Glee.”

Her memoir also brings light to the complexity of emotions she experienced while coming to terms with her sexuality. She, like many LGBTQ youth, felt alienated, and turned to destructive habits and a judgmental streak.

But Lynch learned to find comfort in comedy. She believes she comes from a family of funny people.
“I became kind of a scientist about funny early on,” Lynch said. “I began to focus on why some things are funnier one way than another way.”

Before leaving Barnes & Noble, Lynch offered a quick piece of advice.

“I didn’t sit around and wait for anybody,” she said. “I was out doing it. Do, do, do, do. To wait for something that crazy to happen is a waste of your life force.”

Co-author of the thought-provoking “SoulPancake,” Wilson encourages students and readers alike to engage in substantial discussions about life.

“People looked at me so weird, like I’m at a party and I’m just kind of like, ‘You think that we have a soul?’ and people would make a lot of jokes like, ‘Well, that sounds like a conversation you’d have when you’re stoned,’” Wilson said. “But why can’t you have have a deep conversation in the real world?”

The book was written for society’s thinkers, said co-author Devon Gundry.

“We really wrote it for all of… the innovators and the misfits and the creators and the artists and writers,” Gundry said. “All of the people out there that are looking at the world, figuring out what they believe, how they affect the people in the environments around them.”

The best part about the “SoulPancake” experience is the interaction and collaboration, Wilson said.

The book is meant to be a conversation-starter, Gundry said.

“We wanted it to be part workbook, part journal,” Gundry said. “We kind of decided to kind of take an approach that would, it would create a little artifact, a little tool that anyone can carry around with them.”

Wilson said he believes spirituality has become a polarizing force.

“Spirituality is pretty lame in our culture today, it’s really flaky or new-agey, or else it’s kind of born-again fundamentalist, and there’s no one kind of in-between,” Wilson said.

People’s definition of spirituality is often incorrect, according to Wilson.

“Anything having to do with life, love, the heart, looking at the universe as something greater than oneself — that’s what spirituality is,” Wilson said.

Spirituality can also be everything that makes one a human being, Gundry said.

“It’s not just praying, it’s not just your soul, it’s not just your religion, it’s really everything about us that makes us human, and we’re going to call that spirituality,” Gundry said.

The book incorporates many different colors and popular art to get its message across.

“We used creativity and art and expression as the bridge between philosophy and spirituality,” Wilson said. “Artistic expression is integral to what SoulPancake is.”

The book and website make philosophy more fun, Wilson said.

“Philosophy classes in college are boring, let’s face it,” Wilson said. “They’re really dry, and they have no bearing on real life whatsoever, it’s a bunch of funless intellectual arguments.”

Spirituality and morality are not things people can learn or develop, Wilson said.

“There are things that we will do and that we will not do. We mostly instead of learning them in churches, we learn them societally, socially,” Wilson said.

Morality, spirituality, and other aspects of life represented in the book are not just concepts, Wilson said.

“It’s something we all live. We live a life of experience, of the soul, of our emotions, beyond just… our bodies,” Wilson said. “If young students want to encourage their spirituality that they look at life as a spiritual journey and that spirituality is part of the everyday life.”

The book will help people live through their own experiences, Wilson said.

“A lot people in our culture don’t really dig into life’s big questions,” Wilson said. “It’s a much more real part of life than the Kardashians.”

Music influences people more than most mediums today, Wilson said.

“Bob Dylan is probably the biggest musical influence on my life,” Wilson said. “He’s always dealing with life’s big questions as an artist.”

The book is an investigation about what the reader believes, Gundry said.

“It’s supposed to be an experience of what everyone else around us believes and what all sorts of thinkers and creators believe, and then it’s about taking that and really seeing what we believe,” Gundry said. “So figuring out how we determine truth to ourselves and how we determine truth as a society and how we determine truth as a family and our friend circles, I think is a really important kind of foundation for all of this.”

He dissects historical examples of “g-rogue,” a term a friend coined, from Jack Sparrow of “Pirates of the Caribbean” to Lord Byron, noting their mix of stealth and suaveness. Metzger could very well have included himself, considering how he has smoothly continued to include writing in his life.

Although he received a marketing degree from the McCombs School of Business, writing has always interested him, and eventually he decided to minor in English. After taking a job in phone sales at a major corporation after college, he found himself in a warped “Office Space” nightmare and decided to pursue a career with a small business.

However, as he strode into the interview room of an Austin-area spa with absolutely no understanding of the mechanics of spa treatment, his knowledge of literature and writing came in handy.

“I noticed my interviewer had a British accent,” Metzger said. “I asked her where she was from. She said the U.K., and I asked what part. She answers, ‘Swansea,’ and I go, ‘Where Dylan Thomas is from?’ And she gets all excited, and I begin to recite Dylan Thomas’ ‘Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night.’ I was then offered the position, even though I was grossly unqualified.”

Now he works with a student housing real estate company but regularly keeps a block of time on Saturdays just to write whatever inspires him. Three years ago, that inspiration came as he was flipping through a book at a friend’s house on how to be a gentleman.

He felt that the book was too serious and decided to write his own handbook. Instead of the serious tone, he would inject some playfulness, and instead of simply the gentleman, he would describe the gentleman rogue, an archetype made distinctive in the intrigue he possesses and that had interested him for years in books and movies.

Although he has written two manuscripts before, “The Rogue’s Handbook” is his first to be published by a major publishing house, Sourcebooks. It has been a long process of editing, revising and publicizing. The experience also showed him how much growth he has made as a writer since his time as a UT student.

When Sourcebooks returned his manuscript to him with formatting revisions, Metzger was more than willing to make the changes; a stark contrast from his 19-year-old self. During his sophomore year at UT, he and a friend sent an article to then-fledgling Maxim magazine. Maxim wanted to publish it but with some slight changes.

“To me, they wanted to dumb it down and distill it down to a textbox or a text,” Metzger said. “Back then, my artistic integrity could not be compromised. I was just arrogant. I thought they would back down. Then they said they wouldn’t publish it. Years later, I’m older and wiser, and Sourcebooks said they wanted to make formatting changes, which I found to be constructive and I made. I had this thought bubble of myself at 19 saying, ‘Absolutely not! I will not change a word.’”

Now, after that exhausting three-year process, “The Rogue’s Handbook” has finally been released. Already, Metzger is working on a manuscript of a novel that he first started as a student that includes Cuba, prostitution and culture shock. It is an ambitious work, but given the “g-rogue”-like skill Metzger has shown in continuing his writing career, he should have no problem finishing it.

In his book, Carter reveals his unedited diary entries during his one term in office from 1977 to 1981.

“When preparing this book, I decided not to revise the original transcript, despite the temptation to conceal my errors, misjudgments of people or lack of foresight,” Carter said.
“I haven’t changed the meaning of a single sentence.”

While Carter still holds the original 5,000-page diary, one copy has been sequestered in the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum in Atlanta. Next year, he plans to make the entire document available to scholars.

“I want people to know what it’s like within the White House as an incumbent president dealing with a plethora of problems and challenges and opportunities, and the personal effect on me and my family,” Carter said. “I also want people to know how I dealt with different kinds of people and different kinds of issues. It revealed quite often how I felt then, which may not be the way I feel now over 30 years later. Also, what people have forgotten [about the presidency].”

Carter said he sees much of his presidency in President Barack Obama’s, including some of the same foreign relations issues.

“We both had to deal with many of the same countries — Iran, Afghanistan, China — although through different circumstances,” he said.

BookPeople, an independently run bookstore, is well-known for its high-profile book signings and appearances, which have included politicians such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Margaret Thatcher and Rick Perry. Friday’s event was the third visit Carter has made to the bookstore, said Paul Benson, the store’s floor manager.

“It’s an extraordinary opportunity and a great pleasure to have someone from that political realm come to our bookstore to do a signing,” Benson said. “We were very honored. It took a lot of hard work from a lot of people.”

Round Rock resident Carolene English said she arrived at the bookstore at 6:30 a.m. — about three hours before it opened and about six hours before Carter starting signing books.
English said she saw the former president at his last BookPeople book signing.

“No other president has rivaled what he has done as far as charity and humanitarian work, especially his work with Habitat for Humanity,” English said. “I have a lot of admiration for him.”

Twelve years later, Lipsky was asked by Rolling Stone magazine to profile Wallace under much different circumstances: Wallace had committed suicide weeks before. While writing the article, Lipsky uncovered the tapes from his interview, the transcripts of which would make up his newest book on Wallace, “Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace.”

The Daily Texan spoke with Lipsky about Wallace, the formation of this book and literature’s place today.

The Daily Texan: Your latest book is “Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace,” which was released after you wrote a feature after his death in Rolling Stone. So what brought about this book?

David Lipsky: [In the Rolling stone piece] I really wanted to describe why he was alive and I think that is why I released this book. It’s like watching the best of the minds at work. And what his writing is like is like a primer for how to be alive. And so it was very hard that this mind had died the way it did. So I thought the best way to tell his story kind of was for him to tell the story himself. He and I had spent five days traveling around when his book “Infinite Jest” came out. And when I started reading it to do the piece about him in Rolling Stone, it was just clear that this was the best way for the reader to spend time with him, not to have to have a biography where you have to cut to have what other people thought about him. Also, his company for me is very much like his writing: incredibly charming, brilliantly smart and incredibly alive.

DT: Was this interview your last contact with David Foster Wallace?

DL: I actually had one more contact with Wallace. He’s great to be around and I clearly didn’t want to leave. At the end of the book, it’s me trying to find reasons to stay in his house, like I’m reporting what’s in his garage, I’m reporting what’s in his living room. And I clearly didn’t want to go home, but I clearly wanted to leave a foot in his world because a week or two after I came home, I got this big package in the mail and I recognized his return address. I wondered if he’s sending me some great book he wants me to read, or if there’s some terrific thing in there that has to do with him being a writer. And what was in there was my shoe. I left behind one of my loafers. I lift this thing up and there’s my giant size 12 loafer with a little note written on Chicago Bears stationary, and he’d written “Yours I presume?” and he’d drawn a smiley face under it. And that’s the last I heard from him.

DT: Speaking in broader terms, do you think there can still be a capacity for a book like “Infinite Jest,” a book that touches the culture and changes the cultural direction?

DL: Well, it’s an interesting question. I think that there are different kinds of books. The books Stephanie Meyer wrote about Bella and Edward — those have changed certain things. I think that there are a number of ways books can change a culture. It can change the direction of entertainment. Entertainment is this big ocean liner that’s just great to be on and that we move on kind of slowly. Every so often, something comes along that jolts it and makes it move along in a different direction. But yeah, I do think that the way books do it is slower. I think that books suggest to people ways to look at their own lives. They’re more private than movies or TV. They change the way we experience of our lives.

Norris originally set out to write about what she calls the “hidden conversation on race” in America, or how people after the election of President Barack Obama talk about race in the private sphere. As she began uncovering family secrets and stories her own family had kept hidden in silence, Norris instead took on a cross-country journey to unearth what else her family left in the dark.

Race is an intricate subject with its complicated history, connection to identity and its use as a lever in the political arena, Norris said.

Before beginning work on her memoir, “The Grace of Silence,” Norris had reported on a series of conversations about Obama with different voters. She was inspired by their open, candid responses and wanted to examine how people engaged in these conversations away from the microphone, starting with her own family, Norris said.

“People are reticent to talk about race in the public for a variety of different reasons,” she said. “People don’t want to come off as insensitive. They don’t want to seem like they’re dividing people up or that they’re out of touch.”

It was over breakfast in downtown Chicago one morning when her uncle revealed her father had been shot by the Birmingham police several weeks after he was discharged from military service in World War II.

Her uncle had been expressing his frustration with young people not knowing the sacrifices made so they could vote. During his venting, he spilled the story of her father’s shooting. It was the first time Norris had ever heard of it.

“The discovery was shocking,” Norris said. “[My father] kept it in the dark because the memory was painful for him, but it was also painful for me thinking of how difficult it must have been for him to carry that weight around.”

Although she had planned on using the anecdote in her book about the hidden conversations of Americans, it was something Norris could not let go. As she felt the story tug harder at her curiosity, Norris realized the book she wanted to write about was her family’s silenced conversations.

Norris traveled from her childhood home in Minneapolis through the Deep South, exploring not only the history of her family’s suffering during segregation, but also the long-lasting burden carried by whites who once enforced segregation.

“One of the revelations I had deep in my experience, as I was pulled back in time, is that these stories are a part of American history that is in danger of being lost to us,” Norris said.

What made this such a rich experience was learning so much about America along the way and how the past prologues to today.”

Richards’s book is entitled, Katrina: Eyes Have Not Seen, Ears Have Not Heard The Story Of How An American City Was Taken Under Siege By Powerful Forces In Government. There are a plethora of theories that have surfaced in main stream media but Richard’s book focuses on the testimonies from survivors, FEMA, if the levees broke or were blown up and the white business elite of New Orleans, La.

“The stories that I reveal have not been recorded by the media or the press accurately. While every one was focused on the looting and the rapes, they should have been focused on the people who had the courage to survive. And on August 29th 2005 what broke, besides the levees, was the clock of humanity,” valiantly said Richard.

The purpose of the book is to raise questions and to shed light on the social injustices that still occur within America.
“I started this in January 2006 (at the age of 19) in the dorm room of Moore Hall and my friend Irvin Hall motivated me to develop this book,” said Richard. I interviewed over 15 people and by 2008 it was finished, continued Richard.
Those interviewed were Clothide Mack, an elderly woman who was trapped in the attic for 11 days; Mama Dee, a New Orleans native and community leader; Mrs. Viola Washington, Malik Rahim and social activist Dick Gregory.

“What people don’t see on everyday T.V. is that after the devastation there was a group of minority contractors that tried to get the bid for cleaning up the city, yet the bigger corporations such as the Kellogg Grounding crew and the Shaw Group received the contracts and those are the people with ties to the White House,” speculated Richard. There are also popular theories surrounding the Kellogg Grounding crew having ties with Halliburton, which is an oilfield corporation that is established in 70 countries worldwide. Halliburton is also acclaimed to have ties with Dick Cheney and the Bush family.

Richard concluded his review with a few questions to ponder on: “It has been five years since Katrina and the Methodist and Charity hospitals have yet to be re opened. They only sustained damage on the first floor. Why aren’t they opened? Why did the president say he didn’t know about the nature of New Orleans, yet Mike Brown, the head of FEMA, warned him the day before? Why was FEMA preventing food and water from being provided at the Superdome? What Does the Urban elite have to gain from the lower ninth ward and New Orleans East?,” questioned Richard.

All of these questions are supposed to be answered within Richards’s book. Richards’s upcoming reviews will be on August 28 at the Community Book Center on Bayou Road in New Orleans, La.

The Rev. Tony Hefner spent six years working as a security guard for Burns International Security Services, a private company contracted to provide security at the Port Isabel Service Processing Center in Los Fresnos in the late 1980s. The processing center serves as a detention facility for men, women and children from around the world who are apprehended trying to enter the United States illegally and are waiting for their immigration status to be decided. Passionate about human justice, Hefner has turned his experience into a memoir.

While employed at the center, Hefner witnessed some of his fellow employees abusing the detainees, including using the threat of deportation to force women to perform sexual acts.

Hefner documented these abuses as he saw them happening and has spent the past 20 years alerting government officials about what he witnessed and demanding an investigation.

“They’re just mistreated something terrible,” Hefner said. “In the time I worked at the detention center I never saw a detainee raise their hands toward an officer. They always held their hands up trying to surrender.”

In his memoir “Between the Fences: Before Guantánamo, There was the Port Isabel Service Processing Center,” Hefner implicates his former co-workers and describes the abuse he witnessed at the detention center.

Hefner originally took a job as a security guard at Port Isabel, one of the highest-paying jobs in the South Texas region, to fund his ministry, the Bearing Precious Seed Ranch. Hefner and his wife started their ministry to serve Hispanic children in the border region and teach them to stay off drugs and off the streets.

Hefner says many of his fellow employees considered the detainees “second-class.” He speculates that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would take out their frustrations on the detainees, allowing their personal lives to encroach on their professional behavior.

For Hefner, the transition from a security guard to human rights activist was a no-brainer.

“When it comes to seeing abuse take place, I did exactly what every red-blooded American would have done,” he said.

Hefner says that to his knowledge there has not been an improvement in the conditions at the detention center and that in 2006 there were 108 detainees who died inside the facility for unknown reasons. Beginning January of this year, detainees organized a hunger strike, protesting conditions at the center and the frequency of transfers.

The abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq received national media attention and launched a government investigation. Hefner says he witnessed similar abuses at Port Isabel, but that the detention center is receiving less attention because of the detainee’s immigration status.

“Because these are undocumented aliens, people just don’t care,” Hefner said. “Even though our government is against human rights abuse, they still do not enforce it in these compounds at these detention facilities.”

In Hefner’s view, government officials need to “open their eyes and stop pointing their fingers at other countries about human rights abuse and start looking in there own backyard.”

After everything he’s been through, Hefner still supports strong border security and says he stands behind Arizona’s recent immigration reform.

“If I break the law, I go to jail. You cannot allow people to come over here and break our laws and reward them by giving them citizenship,” Hefner said. “We got to put a stop to it. America is an example, not a refuge. Other countries should be able to stand up for their rights; that’s what our forefathers did.”

Award-winning writer and teacher Gambone visited Boxcar Books in Bloomington, Ind. on Friday night, an event sponsored by BloomingOUT on WFHB and IU GLBT Support Services.

At the Sixth Street venue, Gambone read the introduction of his most recent book. Participants of various sexual orientations joined in a question-and-answer session following the reading.

“The turnout was great, and the questions were wonderful,” Gambone said. “I hope the crowd got a little sense of my personality — about the personality behind this book, about the enthusiasm behind this book. I hope that in the excerpt that I read from the introduction, they picked up a little bit about what my goals were for the book, how I went about doing the book, who I saw as the audience for the book.”

Gambone is an essayist, journalist and fiction writer hailing from Massachusetts and has written three other GLBTQ-based books.

Along with writing, he has taught English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston College and the Harvard University Extension School.

“Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans” is a book of various profiles of people in the GLBTQ community.

Gambone traveled to different parts of America, candidly interviewing people about their lives.

Celebrities included in the book are David Sedaris, George Takei, Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin.

Less familiar voices include a retired Naval officer, a transgender scholar and “drag king,” a Princeton philosopher, two opera sopranos who happen to be partners, an indie rock musician, the founder of a gay fraternity and a pair of Vermont garden designers.

Altogether Gambone interviewed 102 people, he could only publish 44 interviews. He said it was difficult to choose which stories made the cut.

In the end, he mainly focused on showcasing diversity and sharing untold stories.

“Some people who have been really well profiled in the past — (I) cut them,” Gambone said. “(I was looking for) diversity in whatever way you could measure it: age, geography, occupation, race, religion, ethnic group — any way I could cut it.”

The project began in summer 2007. The author traveled for two years across America. He started by sending letters to potential participants, introducing himself and asking them to speak.

Gambone said he also used Google as a tool to find places to visit and people to interview, typing in searches such as “gay Chicago” or “gay Austin.”

“‘Gay Chicago’ was the best because … Tracy Baim, who publishes the Windy City Times, put together this enormous website in which she interviewed gay/lesbian Chicagoans,” Gambone said. “I browsed the website and came up with names of people I wanted to profile in the book.

“‘Gay Austin’ was another one. I really wanted to go to Texas.”

Face-to-face interviews with permission to use first and last names was a must for each profile, as Gambone was determined to get more than just a voice. Seeing the interviewee in some sort of environment was  alsoimportant.

“I interviewed people in their homes, in their offices, in hotels, outside on picnic tables, in their workplace, wherever we needed to meet,” Gambone said.

To research, Gambone studied each interviewee and how he or she creates his or her identity.

“If they were a writer I read their work, if they were a musician I listened to their music, if they were a filmmaker I watched their films, if they were a historian I read their books, if they were a politician I tried to familiarize myself with their political record,” he said.

An average of 20 to 30 hours of review was done prior to each interview.

Because each person was different, the sets of questions were specifically tailored to each participant — though each discussion started the same: “tell me something memorable about your childhood.”

From that question a theme emerged.

Personality, story, anecdote, humanity, pride and strength were all qualities the author wanted to capture from each person.

Never bored by a story, he said he heard tales with laughter, tears and emotions in between.

After the event, Gambone stayed to speak to patrons and sign copies of his book.

IU student Samuel Buelow came to the event 20 minutes early and was the first guest to arrive.

He said he was attracted to the reading because of its description and especially because of the popular names featured within it.

“I thought I’d go and see what it was like, and it was really kind of a surprise,” Buelow said. “Just the stories in general and this idea of this compilation of stories is just exciting to me.”

From what Gambone read, the book sounded interesting, Buelow said. As a result, Buelow left the bookstore with a signed copy in hand.

This particular book hit shelves in June 2010. Though a second volume is not in the works, writing one is a hopeful thought — Gambone said he has 58 more interviews he’d like to see published.

“I didn’t approach this book with an agenda; I didn’t approach this book with a thesis; I didn’t approach this book with an ax to grind,” Gambone said. “The only agenda was: Let me get as diverse a range of stories as possible.”

In 2006, Karen Valby, a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly, was asked by her editor to find a small town far removed from the effects of popular culture.

In search of the location, Valby, a Trinity U. alumna, sent an e-mail to former classmates inquiring if any had grown up in such a town. Luckily, one classmate’s response led her to Utopia, 60 miles away from any movie theaters, book or music stores.

According to Valby, Utopia, located 90 miles west of San Antonio in the Texas Hill Country, is a town in which a man “isn’t considered dressed if he’s not in his boots and britches, with a hat on his head and a pocketknife in his jeans.”

Valby initially wrote an article about this small Texas town for Entertainment Weekly, but received such a positive response that she began toying with the idea of writing an entire book on Utopia.

“People seemed to think that it was really refreshing to read about ordinary people in a mainstream magazine,” Valby said. “The article had hit a nerve, so I decided to try and expected to fail, but the book sold. I was very nervous throughout the process but really glad I went for it.”
In “Welcome to Utopia: Notes From a Small Town,” Valby follows the lives of four strikingly different Utopians and their experiences living in a town with about 1,000 residents. In her book, Valby attempts to express what is special about small-town America and which of its aspects are sacrificed as the infiltration of popular culture washes away some of its unique characteristics.

In her book, Valby found that as much as the people of Utopia try to resist it, pop culture is slowly becoming a facet of their daily lives with the increasing popularity of Facebook and cable television. Valby explains that this is not necessarily a bad thing, and that more exposure to popular culture can foster awareness and tolerance.

“I think messages of tolerance or a different way of living are always a beautiful thing to show to kids,” Valby said. “But at the same time, as the world opens up to Utopia, some of Utopia’s really rich flavor leaks out. I think that’s something to mourn as well. Progress is tricky. There is nothing simple about change; it’s complicated, just like everything real is complicated.”

Although the stereotypes about small towns are endless, Valby did not begin her project with visions of cowboy hats and chili cook-offs.

“I think the benefit I had going for me was that I didn’t begin the project expecting to find something in particular, so it allowed me to be really open to the experience,” Valby said. “I mean, honestly, I just went in, expressed ignorance and interest, and together, that was a pretty powerful combination.”

One challenge Valby encountered while immersing herself in the culture of Utopia was dealing with the occasional racist or intolerant comment from the town’s “old-timers,” a group of older men, many of whom had lived in Utopia their entire lives.

“Their language hasn’t necessarily evolved, and they’re pretty reflexively racist, even though they wouldn’t own that. I remember one time, I mentioned that my stepmother is black, and one of the guys was like, ‘You weren’t raised by her, were ya?’ He was just struck dumb by the notion,” Valby said.

The public discourse about race during the 2008 presidential election continued to get “uglier and uglier even in a town as disconnected as Utopia,” and it almost became too much for Valby to handle.

“It was around this time that my husband and I went on a waiting list to adopt a baby from Ethiopia, so it became kind of unbearable for me to not express outrage,” Valby said. “But I think as sort of strange journalistically as those conversations were, I know they were valuable for me and I hope they were valuable for those guys.”

Valby notes that “Welcome to Utopia” required a different set of reporting skills than those typically used at Entertainment Weekly.

“It was a different kind of reporting than I’m used to, which is, you’re going to meet this movie star at this time, at this restaurant, on an agreed-upon 90 minutes. This was so intimate, and I was really in these people’s private lives, so it was all new muscles to stretch,” Valby said.

Although Valby enjoyed her time in Utopia, turning her experience into a finished product was another story.

“It was brutal. Once you sell a book, you have this advance that you blow through really quickly, and all of a sudden you’re left with this white screen of a computer that just sends subliminal messages of failure — failure at you — and you’re like, I don’t know what to do,” Valby said.

While working on “Welcome to Utopia,” Valby moved with her husband to Austin, and she now calls Texas home.

“I felt very comfortable in Utopia, and in some ways more comfortable than in my life in New York. It’s probably no surprise that I now live in Texas. I think there is something about the personality of Texas that is authentic and unique,” Valby said.

Valby remains in contact with many of the book’s characters and anxiously awaits their thoughts on the finished product.

“I hope they think that the same person that spent time with them is the person that wrote the book,” Valby said. “I hope they recognize the town, I hope they recognize themselves and beyond that, I’m trying to not have any expectations of how they feel because I imagine it’s all going to be [an] individual and shifting experience.”

Earl H. Fry’s book, “Lament for America,” aims to show the average American trends and warning signs of a declining nation.

Unemployment rose 6 percent from 2000-09 and the median household’s real income was lower at the end of the decade. The percentage of Americans reliant on food stamps doubled in the decade, with a record one-in-eight adults and one-in-four children using food stamps at the end of 2009.

These bleak statistics preface Fry’s 184-page book, published May 1 by U. Toronto Press.

“The main goal of the book for the American reader is recognition that we face some challenges and that these challenges are serious,” Fry said.

The book points out three major trends that could lead to the decline of America’s superpower status: The rise of competitor nations, rapid changes in technology and creative destruction and the presence of 15 major fault lines in U.S. society and government.

Included in his fault lines is massive U.S. government debt, 49 percent of which is held by foreign countries, and unaffordable health care.

“Whether it’s been Republican leadership or Democratic leadership, we’re just spending so much beyond what we are taking in, and somewhere down the line we are going to have to pay the piper,” Fry said.

He warned that this will present problems for those entering the workforce with the approaching retirement of the nearly 80 million baby boomers and will place a burden on students graduating soon.

“My generation has not done what it needs to, to leave a positive legacy for the next generation,” he said.

Fry not only discusses 15 fault lines, but gives solutions to overcome these faults.
“In Washington, we have too many politicians and far too few statesmen and stateswomen,” Fry said.

His recommendations in improving the inevitable decline of America include health care reform that can cut back on cost and holding politicians more accountable so that re-election isn’t a guarantee.

Fry frequently references a quote by Charles M. Schulz, who created the cartoon “Peanuts,” in which the cartoon character Linus confessed that, “No problem is too big to run away from.”

That is what Americans have been doing, Fry said, and Americans have to get away from that mindset.

“We need to understand that the solutions will be painful, but we owe it to our children and grandchildren,” he said.

Stephen Cranney, a senior at BYU and assistant to professor Fry, commented that the writing of the book is not too technical or specialized and would be a good reader for the average American voter, a major goal of Fry’s writing efforts.

“I hear all this talk about journalists having objectivity, but I’m like, ‘What are you talking about? I am emotionally involved.’” Cullen said in an interview with The Dartmouth.

In “Columbine,” Cullen paints an entirely different picture of the shootings than was portrayed by the mainstream press, including many details he gathered during his 10 years of interviewing those affected by the tragedy. Delving beneath the surface of the media’s portrayal of the events and even exploring the minds of the killers, Cullen’s novel is poignant, affecting and a truly remarkable read.

Cullen, who lives in Denver, said he found out about the shooting just like anyone else: by turning on the news.

“I was sitting down to lunch … It must have been about a quarter to noon when I turned on the TV, and they were just getting reports of shooting … when I started to see helicopters circling, that was the moment where I realized, ‘This is more serious than I thought,” Cullen said.

The notes Cullen took at Columbine High School that day — the people, the smells, the reactions — are used in his book, but he said it was not until the day after the shooting that he decided to invest himself in writing about the event.

“The scene that really got to me was how the kids had literally changed overnight,” Cullen said. “The day after the shooting, they had all stopped crying. I was really unnerved by what happened to these kids. For the first 22 hours since I had heard about the shooting, my focus had been on the kids who had died. But the morning after, that really changed. There’s 2,000 kids that are in incredible emotional danger. ”

While writing “Columbine,” Cullen said he experienced two bouts of secondary post-traumatic stress disorder, an affliction he had been unaware of before beginning to write the novel.

“I do something called method writing where, when I write a scene, I picture myself in that room, and picture myself inside of each of the people involved, and try to feel what it’s like to be them … Writing that way turned out to be really debilitating,” Cullen said. Cullen added that he was surprised to find that it was much easier to write about the killers than the survivors.

“I thought [writing about the killers] would be psychologically dangerous, but it wasn’t — it was fine … What was hard for me was talking to the survivors — I would absorb so much of their grief,” he said.

“Columbine” does more than explore the psychological trauma of the events, however it also reveals many facts about the shooting that were not as heavily popularized in the mainstream media before the book’s 2009 release. For example, the killers had set up bombs on the school grounds that failed to detonate. Their intention was not to kill 11, but the whole school.

Cullen cited this as an example of the public’s willingness to believe what they are told without investigating events for themselves, which he said is what he attempted to do in his book.

“People didn’t accept it because they still wanted to believe that the killers were targeting jocks,” Cullen said. “We remember a storyline, and if there are parts that don’t fit into what we want to believe, we’ll ignore it. If the garbage makes sense, we’ll take it. And that to me is quite scary. It really makes you think about how much responsibility the media really has.”