My Little Town: A Pilgrim’s Portrait of a Uniquely Southern Place
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D.B.Tipmore has returned. After his escape from the world of Manhattan journalism decades ago, he has allowed the reader back into a nomadic life spanning a staggering variety of experiences. Having survived teaching English to Saudi princes, playing sardines at Stevie Wonder’s 40th birthday party, lunching in Tangiers with Mick Jagger, or suffering through a down-and-out year in a Caracas maid’s quarters, Tipmore has caught up with himself and taken the opportunity to frame his distinctive life from the vantage point of a tiny town in the Deep South. With the release of his first book, My Little Town: A Pilgrim’s Portrait of a Uniquely Southern Place (NewSouth Books), he conquers the challenge of his most recent extreme adventure: trying to find a final home in a Deep South village that appears to have avoided the last 75 years of history.
This is no “old white man’s” memoir. With an irresistible style Nora Ephron once termed “one of the best of his generation,” Tipmore approaches his Alabama town through shrewd observations about revealing details of the natives’ lives--details that often get missed in the usual attempts to understand “the South”. The social significance of chicken salad, the disappearance of Jews, the racial implications of the local swimming pool, the fierce revenge of church ladies, the riots on the town square, the agonies of supper club meetings, are treated with humor and honesty, grace and bluntness, leaving the reader—and writer--with questions that cut to the core of the personal and political conflicts which afflict our country today.
Photos Courtesy of Frank C. Williams
D.B. Tipmore now resides in a town out of the way enough that his privacy remains undisturbed for long periods of time. And that is pretty much how he likes it: writing, reading, swimming, playing the American Songbook on the piano, visiting friends, and having the occasional single malt Scotch.
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