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Professor 1 By JEFF LAGRONE Gamecock Staff Writer William Price Fox says he loved Hollywood once-upon-a-time, but he left it because he was "too vain to do movies." "1 really loved Hollywood. I thought it was the greatest damn town in the world. But, I just would rather do fiction. I'm too vain to do movies. I don't want my stuff messed with too much." Fox tells how he got his start writing fiction. "IN 1962 I sold two stories in Southern Fried (a short story collection) to the Village Voice. They ran them on the front page. I started to get a lot of requests for magazine work. Fawcett called me and asked if I could "do a book of these things." I said yes. I thought it would be a one-shot deal." Once a bellhop in a Miami hotel, an Air Force flight officer, a New York salesman and a Hollywood screen writer, Fox is better known arouna mese parts as a Southern Student media to loft ewyfady... even you muma oth Ij^BHTaaSBiTnJJnT eft Hollywc boy who made good writing funny stories about the merits of moonshine, fast soda jerks, the heat from the grease used for frying chicken and smart hound dogs. "People are afraid of the South in a very good, solid way," the USC English professor says. "The ones who overcome that come down here (the South) and try to get along with us." He says this migration will have its effects. "IT'S GOING to take its toll down here. People are all going to start talking like a dialogue on Kojak. There'll be more McDonald's and Hardee's and less Capitol Restaurants. Southern idioms will change. You'll have more of that doublen..A ? (vim auunu. dui i uuiiK we ii Keep the best ? idiomatically ? down here," he said. The South's reliance on kinship, guilt about blacks, sense of defeat Buy ike, GtvweL and BEacfe DURUCK KING ! Apply for summer time employment from 2-5 j Mon-Sun || 111 College St >od to write and the town square will survive the invasion, he said. But southern humor is unique, he said, because of the lifestyle of Southerners. "There's also a playfulness here, a sense of humor. It comes from knowing only that the sun is gonna rise. People don't expect anything. They just play around. When you're really up against it humor comes out." Fox lectures on what may be said about him. "I like to be considered different," he says. "It's very easy for journalists to say 'he's a combination of Mark Twain and Art Linkletter or some idiot.' It's very easy to write that kind of copy, and journalists do it. But I lUSt dnn'f liko hfind nioonnhftW " J o Motorized Bicycle 150MPG GARELLI No drivers License needed Mr Insurance No Helmet Now on sale at Yamaha of Columbia 6029 Two Notch Rd. 786-1 160 FF 4P FO Rely on th< COM REVIE 610 pages mewe New (1977) 9th E or call toll-fri THE C V MOSBV COMPANY ' about good FOX EXPLAINS how a sports enthusiast can be converted into a cracker jack storyteller. "I loved all sports. I wanted to be it all but it didn't work. I'd be pretty good but I'd never be able to do it all. I'd have moments when things would really work for me, and what I wanted to do, I guess, was to get into some field where I could get that moment and stretch it out." Fox is in the process of writing a novel, which he says is different from anything he has ever done. "It has a Northern point of view, he said. You keep doing harder and harder things. I think I'll call it Dixiana Highway but I may scrap tnat. i don't want to get too definite about it now. I don't want to get fWith Dine HEPARIN imekam p? most pvtonciiroln ""J -? _ ??viy U3CU 1 ev in professional nursing Mosby's PREHENS WOFNUI incorporating the latest kn< st trends and current pract edition Now Available < bc (800) 325-4177 to Oi BVSOSBY TIMES MIRROR 11830 WESTLINE INOUSTRIAL DRIVE ST LOl . oF boys steered in a direction I don't want to go." As a rule of thumb, Fox tries not to be too concise. He writes for a particular interest group ? southerners. "One of the things I like to do is not be too clear. I try to write for Southerners. I don't make it understandable for everybody out in Pat Boone land. Once everything becomes clear it also becomes dull. Once you have characters talking to the audience rather than to one another, you break those characters and they lose their credibility." He pulls his half-spent cowbov boots down off the desk. It's time to go teach prose composition. ie Delivery Best Pizza in South Carolina... Serving Colombia for I more wan 25 years! g GENOS 2772 Rosewood Drive 771-9447 or 254-5414 FREE Ad ? your first beverage with a -in order? Beer or Soft Drinks 75 1 I p IS? iew book JIVE ISING owledge, ices at the Bookstore der Direct. J?s. MISSOURI 63141 A80610