Making conversation: Algonquin Books editor Shannon Ravenel, left, moderates discussion on Southern literature with, clockwise, writers Robert Olen Butler, Jill McCorkle, and Roy Blount Jr.

Jon Gardiner

Any connoisseur of post-1950s American popular music would welcome the rare opportunity to sit at the feet of Spooner Oldham and Dan Penn, listening to them perform their classic songs and tell stories about their songwriting experiences.

On a Saturday afternoon in late April, some 200 appreciative listeners were treated to that experience in the Griffith Film Theater at Duke's Bryan Center, where the two Southern soul-music legends sat onstage looking relaxed and pleased at the warm reception. Resembling a goateed Harry Dean Stanton in a gray sports jacket and red sneakers, Oldham was in easy reach of a compact electric piano. Penn, a jovial ringer for Stanton's fellow actor John Goodman, wore overalls and cradled an acoustic guitar. The two aren't nearly as well-known as their songs--"I'm Your Puppet," "Do Right Woman," "Sweet Inspiration," and others they wrote for 1960s soul singers like Aretha Franklin and Solomon Burke--but they're clearly at home before an audience.

Their companion onstage was North Carolina novelist Michael Parker--wiry, dark-haired, and a generation younger. He was there to prompt Oldham and Penn with questions and requests and also because the occasion for their appearance was, in fact, a literary event--this spring's 2006 North Carolina Festival of the Book.

"I'm not a musician or a music writer," Parker said by way of introduction, "but I grew up with the music of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham."

Chris Hildreth

Les Todd

Chris Hildreth

From top, Ann Patchett, writer Pearl Cleage, playwright Craig Lucas

Not only did he grow up listening to their songs and other classic Southern soul tunes, he added, but their kind of music helped inspire his latest book, If You Want Me to Stay, "a novel about an Eastern North Carolina white boy who loves black music, and particularly R & B." He read a pertinent passage of dialogue in which the protagonist's mentally unstable father critically expounds on his preference for Southern soul music over the Motown version of R & B.

Then, barely able to conceal an ardent fan's enthusiasm, Parker questioned the duo about their careers. "Tell me about how y'all wrote 'Cry Like a Baby,' " he requested, referring to the tune that became the second hit for the Box Tops, a short-lived Memphis rock band.

"I was about to move to Memphis," Oldham obligingly recalled. "Dan had produced 'The Letter,' by the Box Tops, and he said, 'Let's write a song for the Box Tops.' " They got together in a Memphis recording studio in the morning, Oldham said, and worked all day and into the night. "On this particular night, we had about ten titles that went into the garbage can."

Penn picked up the story: "We were about to call it a night, and we went across the street to Porky's Barbeque, at five in the morning. We couldn't even buy a buzz. Everything was just flat. So we were about to order at Porky's, and Spooner put his head on the table and said, 'I could just cry like a baby.'

"I said, 'What did you say?!'

"And we headed right back across the street. By the time we got there, I had the first line. We wrote the song in about twelve minutes, while the [audiotape] reel was going on. And I told Spooner, 'I'm not leaving this building.' It just felt so good! And the band came in the next day: 'Yeah! We've got something to cut.' It was a million-seller, a number-two hit."

The elusive, unpredictable, and sometimes startling nature of artistic inspiration was a topic that came up often at the Festival of the Book. This free, weeklong extravaganza of contemporary American letters--and a surprising amount of music--brought an audience of more than 11,000 to Duke and other Durham locations at the end of April. The program consisted of thirty-nine events and involved more than eighty writers, including high-profile authors Pat Conroy, Kaye Gibbons, Barbara Kingsolver, and Tom Wolfe. Other well-known participants included writer-humorist Roy Blount Jr., cartoonist-turned-novelist Doug Marlette, poet C.K. Williams, and political biographer Richard Reeves.

Parker's appearance with Oldham and Penn was among eight festival events that featured musicians, singer-songwriters, and other writers for whom music is a daily creative practice or a source of special interest. Festival participants with music careers included songwriting singer Mary Chapin Carpenter and legendary North Carolina indy-rock icons Don Dixon, Mitch Easter, and Chris Stamey. (Dixon and Easter produced R.E.M.'s first album, and Stamey was a founding member of the dBs, a pioneering post-punk band.)

Music was included as an integral component of the festival because it's an important touchstone in contemporary literature. Although writing is a solitary activity, writers' ideas and inspirations generally come from sources outside themselves, and music turns out to be a potent source for many writers. In a session with essayist Hal Crowther on "Politics, Music, and their Intersection," popular-music writer Peter Guralnick--author of music-themed books including the recently published biography Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke--helped explain the literary fascination with music when he said, "Music is the one thing, perhaps, in which we can place some hope."

Guralnick recalled a conversation he once had with Bob Dylan during which Dylan wanted to compare notes about writing and what inspires it. Guralnick said that his own work as a writer amounts to an ongoing search for something he can believe in, and that he finds it in the music of Sam Cooke, Elvis Presley, Sleepy LaBeef, Robert Johnson, and others. Artists like these stand out because of the lofty goals they've set for themselves, Guralnick said, and their talent tends to emerge "to the utter disbelief and incredulity of the people around them." Blues legend Robert Johnson's guitar-playing was unexceptional when he left home, distraught after the death of his young wife. When he reappeared two years later he played like a genius, giving birth to the legend that he had sold his soul to the devil. Guralnick said that what draws him to figures like Johnson is "the way in which inspiration flowers into something inexplicable."

Inspiration was also on the minds of Carpenter, Gibbons, and Marlette in their discussion of "Creative Process" in Page Auditorium--a session in which Carpenter also performed some of her songs.