Audio Interview with Ron Powers

Ron Powers talks about his book White Town Drowsing, which takes place in his home town Hannibal, Missouri, which is also the home of Mark Twain.

His initial inspiration was to give his sons a written record of what it was like to grow up in a small town: the changing smells with the changing seasons, the night sky versus the neon-lit darkness of the city

But, he found another story. He wrote about the changes of Hannibal, a town in the midst of an economic slump. The plan was to change Hannibal into an amusement attraction featuring their most famous native, Mark Twain, as a way to revive it economically. But it didn’t work out. The town became divided. The attraction was too big for the town. In the end, the scaled-down version was successful, but it was still tainted with the false promises.

Despite his critiques of that summer, Powers was still well received in his hometown because his love of boyhood in Hannibal was easily noticed in the pages.

Click on the link below to hear more about his story.

Listen to the Ron Powers interview with Don Swaim, November 18, 1986
(22 min. 49 sec.)

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For over a decade, many of the best writers of the English language found their way onto Don Swaim's daily two-minute CBS Radio show, Book Beat. His New York-based program was derived from longer interviews, sometimes 40-minutes in length. Found exclusively here, Wired for Books proudly webcasts these conversations in their entirety using RealAudio.