This week, the country is remembering former President Jimmy Carter, who died just over a week ago at age 100. President Biden has declared Thursday to be a national day of mourning as the state funeral for Carter is held in Washington, D.C.
Carter is probably most celebrated for what he did after leaving the White House in 1981, including his years of philanthropic and humanitarian work. But he also leaves behind a rich literary legacy having written more than 30 books. A book called “The Literary Legacy of Jimmy Carter” was released last month.
Mark West is an English professor at UNC Charlotte and co-editor of the book. He joins WFAE’s Marshall Terry to discuss.
Terry: Can you give me an overview of the books Carter wrote? Because it wasn't just the sort of memoirs we expect from former presidents, right?
West: He wrote some memoirs, but he wrote many other types of books. He wrote political. He wrote historical books. He wrote biographies. He was very religious and so he wrote several works of theology. He was the first president to write a novel. He wrote a book of poetry. He wrote a children's book. He really covered a lot of territory in all of these books that he wrote, and he wrote them himself.
Terry: And I want to get into that in just a moment. But why was Carter driven to write so much?
West: Well, I think part of it was that he had a lot to say and he wanted to be able to say it in the level of complexity that reflected his thought process.
One of the problems when you're relying on giving speeches is that you can't do nuance. And Jimmy Carter always wanted to do nuance. So a book gave him the space to express his full range of ideas on the various topics that he decided to write about. And the other reason is it was a way for him to generate an income that did not involve the kinds of compromises that a lot of former presidents make in terms of serving on boards and giving high-powered paying speeches. He didn't want to do that sort of thing.
Terry: And you mentioned a moment ago he wrote these books himself. Didn't use a ghostwriter. How unusual is that? And why is it important that Carter didn't use one?
West: Almost all politicians use ghostwriters. So when you hear a president giving a speech, well, oftentimes that speech was written by a speech writer. Jimmy Carter liked to write his own speeches, but he also liked to write his own books. And one of the things that's so remarkable about that is that when you're reading a book by Jimmy Carter, you're reading his own words — not reading somebody's attempts to provide a political pitched sort of. It's his voice and that, to me, really is one of the remarkable things about Jimmy Carter's books is that he does have a distinct voice and you really pick that up in his books.
Terry: You and your coeditor assembled a range of different writers to pin essays on Carter's work for this book that were talking about. How did you go about selecting who would be included?
West: Well, I should mention that my coeditor on this book is a man named Frye Gaillard. And he has a lot of contacts in the world of Jimmy Carter's circle. He wrote a book himself about Jimmy Carter and interviewed Jimmy Carter when he was a journalist for the Charlotte Observer. So part of the process of selecting contributors to this book was a process that Frye and I worked on together. And trying to find people who would be interested in a particular text written by Jimmy Carter.
Since he wrote on such a wide range of topics, we would try to find somebody that would know something about Jimmy Carter's ideas about peace in the Middle East or try to pick somebody who understood Jimmy Carter's interest in politics, poetry. And so we kept various people that either I knew or he knew and in some cases, it was just giving people an opportunity to talk about somebody that they really admired. And people rose to the. It was a real pleasure to read the essays as they came in over the course of the assembling of the book.
Terry: Now, do you have a particular favorite book?
West: My favorite book by Jimmy Carter is "An Hour Before Daylight," his memoir about his childhood. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the area of biography, and it is a very interesting, introspective account of his childhood, his relationship with his parents. His connections to that particular community in the area of Plains, Ga., and a real insight into the nature of childhood in the South in the 1930s. It's a remarkable book.
Terry: Now, what are some of the lessons to be learned from Carter’s writings, and maybe applied in today’s world and political environment?
West: Well, Jimmy Carter was always willing to delve into the complexity of issues. He didn't give glib answers. He was always ready to go into the nuance, and he often times is willing to look at both sides of complex and controversial issues. His books that deal with peace in the Middle East are examples of that. So some people want to hear just the side of the story that they sympathize with. But Jimmy Carter oftentimes is willing to look at the various different angles that would come to bear on a topic that he was writing about in one of his books, for example, dealt with his interest in religion. But one of the things that he was concerned about as a Baptist was the patriarchy that was built into the denomination that identified with that doesn't mean that he wasn't a devout Baptist, but he was still willing to look at his beloved religion and church with a critical eye. You see that in almost all of his books.
Terry: Well, thank you for taking the time and talking more about this new book.
West: Well, thank you very much. And I hope people will be interested in seeing this side of Jimmy Carter because it's a side of Jimmy Carter that most people aren't aware of.
