Interview with Wright Thompson, author of “The Barn” (Penguin Random House, 2024)

Interview with Wright Thompson, author of The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi (Penguin Random House, 2024).

Your new book The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi is about Emmett Till’s murder and many things people don’t know about it. What made you want to write this book? And why now?

I wanted to make sure that this building, which is a vessel into the deepest and truest history of the United States that I've ever stumbled across, was never erased again from the American story. That's really important to me. That we, as a generation, construct a real history of our home so that the ideals of our home might continue for many generations to come.

You are a great writer, so in that way it is no surprise that the book is doing so well, but sometimes people don’t want to read about negative things in the past. Are you at all surprised by how well the book is doing? Or do you think it is the right time for this book, is there something about this moment or the time that has passed that makes people more receptive?

I think people are hungry for the truth, which is why so many people are led away by fake versions of it. Much of America wants to know the real story of America and I think are so suspicious of the media that they don't know where to get it, and so they turn to charismatic politicians who are, no matter the party, almost certainly sociopathic liars. That's what self-selects for that job. The only people who want to be elected to high office are insecure strivers with an enormous hole that they spend an entire career trying to fill. 

What do you hope readers of The Barn will take away from the book?

That the history of America cannot be told without telling the full history of capitalism, commodity markets, and the industrial revolution. I hope that people see the whole board, and how we are still so deeply connected to the past that modern life is, under a certain light and a certain kind of microscope, a kabuki reenactment of history.

The Barn is about Emmett Till’s murder and the Jim Crow South, but even just the existence of the book connects to how Americans understand and relate to their history. What are your thoughts on how Americans should relate to their past?

I think Americans should have the courage and the belief in our experiment to hear everything, raw and unvarnished. I know I believe in the power of our democracy to handle history.

How do you understand your own relationship to the past?

I think, in the way that it rains flowers in Macondo, that in the most maximalist true version of reality, there is no time. And so there is no past. Just a future that turns in big sweeping orbital circles.

I love your show TrueSouth and I really enjoyed your book Pappyland. Why is telling stories about the South so important to you? And telling all kinds of stories about the South?

I think TrueSouth, Pappyland and The Barn are all clearly part of the same project. I want to try to understand the modern South, especially to answer the central questions of a) how did we get here and b) do we even still exist at all?

What do you think makes the South distinct as a place?

My worry is that it is rapidly becoming not a distinct place. That the Dixiefication of all white rural culture means that certain parts of the South -- our music, to the good, our caste-based hate to the bad -- are spreading while the South itself is being stripped of its rural identity, which was the well-spring of every single thing that was ever considered Southern. My family farm needed 400 families in 1950. Now we farm it with 18 people, because the tractors cannot turn themselves around. In a decade, we'll farm it with four. There is no more rural South, except for blighted towns and drug addled swaths of empty, barren land. And Bill Gates is the third largest landowner in the state of Mississippi.

As a writer, what do you think are some of the most important elements in storytelling?

Place, place, place, place, place.

Your sports profiles are known for being very in-depth and this book is a very in-depth look at a historical event. What makes you good at doing that kind of research and writing?

I am curious and deeply indebted to my mentors like Rick Telander, Frank Deford, Gary Smith.

This review is all about books, do you have any books, new or old, that you frequently recommend to people?

Greg Grandin's The End of the Myth, Willie Morris' North Towards Home, Sven Beckert's Empire of Cotton, and Seth Wickersham's It's Better to be Feared

In addition to The Barn, Thompson is the author of Pappyland: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things That Last (2020), and The Cost of These Dreams: Sports Stories and Other Serious Business (2019). He is also a writer for ESPN and the executive producer of the television series TrueSouth. You can find a review of TrueSouth here.