Welcome to Eudora
There is a real Eudora, near my hometown of Lawrence, Kansas. But I didn't write about the real Eudora. I just used the name until I could think of a better one...but couldn't...
I don't think it's any secret that in my politics I lean to the left. In fact, I don't so much as lean as take both my feet off the ground and jump on over. When George Dubya Bush was re-elected, I couldn't believe it. I got so depressed I went to bed and just about stayed there, except to teach and look after my daughter Libby Jo.
To perk me up, my husband Andy took me to a Steve Earle concert in Bristol. It was Steve's The Revolution Starts Now tour. Well, it cheered me up no end just to know so many people felt the same way I did and wanted to live in the same America I wanted to live in. The next morning I woke up and started writing Eudora, making that America manifest on the page.
I don't know what really started the idea of Lottie and Doc. I think it was just thinking about the Maple Leaf Festival (which actually happens in another small town near Lawrence - Baldwin) and then thinking about these two very private people having a love affair that is commented on so publicly. I could see the doctor very plainly and then I could see him looking at Lottie and so could see Lottie, too. I had no idea what they'd be doing and I didn't plan any of the problems the town faces. But as I wrote, I wanted to make it a real small American town and if it was a real small town in the rural Midwest, it'd be struggling to survive. So it is.
I read a lot about culture and the creative industries and how important both are in the new economies (it's part of my job in Artswork at Bath Spa University). And there is an assumption in most of this writing that urban centres are always more tolerant than rural communities. But if you want real tolerance of difference, I think you need to look at small communities. That's where you get your real weirdoes (like me!).
I was sitting in my church one day (St Dunstans of Keynsham in Somerset) when this really hit home. When I was young and hanging out in squats in London, I used to think we were all highly individual and able to go our own way. I saw this mainly through clothes and fashion and I was mainly wrong...when I look at photographs of how we dressed, we all look alike. But as I sat in church that day, waiting for the choir to take communion so that I could start getting Libby Jo organised to go for her blessing, I looked at my fellow Keynsham Catholics. It was November, but one dear friend doesn't want to go have an operation on her sticky-up toe, so she was wearing sandals, even though it was freezing. Another mate finds that the lighting system in church disturbs her epilepsy so she's got mirrored wrap around sunglasses on in the communion line, even though it's very cloudy outside. Another of the choir is immpeccably dressed Monday to Friday but turns back into a rock and roll God at the weekends as he still goes gigging. He's wearing a black leather jacket, jeans and Doc Martins, as he no doubt has worn to go gigging for the last twenty five years (though not the same size). Libby Jo has dressed herself and nothing matches. She's also decided that her teddy bear will be baptised today so the bear is wearing a christening gown I knocked up in a hurry from an old lace curtain. Nobody in the congregation finds any of this at all odd.
The reason nobody finds it odd is because they already know all about it. The French say 'tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner', or when one understands everything, one forgives everything. How can you understand anyone in a large city as well as you can in a small community? City folk just seem more tolerant because they're more detached...
If you want to visit Eudora, it's easy. Just drive along I70 and once you cross the Mississipi, exit anywhere you haven't heard of before. Within a half an hour's drive you'll be there.