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Chapter Title: Appalachian Literature Chapter Author(s): JAMES B. GOODE

Book Title: The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture Book Subtitle: Volume 9: Literature Book Editor(s): M. THOMAS INGE Published by: University of North Carolina Press. (2008) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469616643_inge.8

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This content downloaded from 76.77.171.221 on Thu, 23 Feb 2017 15:20:43 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms able agriculture, vital community life, and connection to local places. However, as farming ceases to be a way of life in the South and elsewhere, the coherent philosophy it once represented will likely lose much of its impact or find a new mode of expression. M. THOMAS INGE Randolph-Macon College

M. Tomas Inge, ed., Agrarianism in (1969); Mark G. Malvasi, Te Unregenerate South: Te Agrarian Tought of John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and Donald Davidson (1997); Leo Marx, Te Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Idea in America (1964); Henry Bamford Parkes, Te American Experience (1947); Twelve Southerners, I’ll Take My Stand: Te South and the Agrarian Tradition (1930).

Appalachian Literature Te Appalachian region is loosely defined as a generally rural, moderately urbanized, and partly industrialized region in and around the in the eastern . More than 20 million people live in , a heavily forested area roughly the size of the United Kingdom, covering largely mountainous, ofen isolated areas from the borders of Ala- bama and Georgia in the south to and New York in the north. Between lie large areas of South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, , , West Virginia, Maryland, and Ohio. Te ethnic makeup is diverse, initially including immigrants from the British Isles and later eastern European ethnics, who followed industrialization of the region by timber and coal inter- ests. Te literature of Appalachia has coincided with distinct historical devel- opments including early exploration by Native Americans, hunters, trappers, and adventurers; a pioneer period characterized by scattered settlement and an agrarian life-style (barely interrupted by the Civil War); and a period of ex- ploitation of coal and wood beginning slightly before the 20th century, spawn- ing rapid in-migration; and a postindustrial period characterized by economic fluctuation prompting significant out-migration. Robert J. Higgs and Ambrose Manning in their landmark anthology Voices from the Hills: Selected Readings of Southern Appalachia (1975) make a very important distinction between the themes of Appalachian writing and those of the South by suggesting that in- stead of focusing on the relationship of aristocrats, blacks, and poor whites, Appalachian literature centers upon the mountaineer and his struggles with himself, nature, and the outside world.

APPALACHIAN LITERATURE 29

This content downloaded from 76.77.171.221 on Thu, 23 Feb 2017 15:20:43 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Cratis Williams, in his classic dissertation on Appalachian literature (New York University, 1961), divided the literary-historical periods into three: early exploration to 1880, 1880–1930, and 1930 to the present. Scholars have since added a fourth period beginning in the 1960s and continuing to the present. In an updated anthology, the two-volume Appalachia Inside Out (1995), Robert J. Higgs, Ambrose Manning, and Jim Wayne Miller parse Appalachian literary history into two broad categories—“Conflict and Change” and “Culture and Custom.” Te earliest recorded period of Appalachian literature began in the late 1600s and is identified as journal and diary entries by explorers, trappers, traders, ad- venturers, and those who were looking for settlement lands or had some invest- ment interests in the area. Many were matriculating from more populated areas in the Northeast. Several of these writings are honest, straightforward accounts of encounters with Native Americans and pioneer life in the region; others have a distinct, romanticized, James Fennimore Cooper–like flavor, and still others are written from the perspective of the supposed more “civilized” outsider. In their 1975 anthology, Higgs and Manning include works from John Lederer, who began to write about the region in 1669; John Fontaine, whose journal published in 1838 included accounts of his travels into the Blue Ridge and the Shenandoah Valley; Timothy Flint, whose Biographical Memoir of (1833) was perhaps the most widely read biography of the early 19th cen- tury; James Kirk Paulding, whose Letters from the South (1816) demonstrated the captivating qualities of the Appalachian Mountains; and Anne Newport Royal, called America’s first hitchhiker, who wrote of the unspoiled region in her Sketches of History, Life, and Manners in the United States (1826). Examples from other sources ofen include portions of William Byrd’s History of the Di- viding Line Run in the Year 1728 (1728) and A Progress to the Mines (1732) and John Muir’s “Crossing the ” (an excerpt from his mem- oir A Tousand Mile Walk to the Gulf [1916]). Te second period of Appalachian literature began about 1885 and lasted well into the 1930s. Tese “local-color” writers were of the Mark Twain or Bret Harte tradition. Teir signature was the marketing to urban populations of odd characters and stories found in the somewhat isolated Appalachian Mountains. John Fox Jr. was perhaps the most accomplished of these. His Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (1903) explored the theme of the Appalachian placed in the “foreign” environment of a Kentucky Bluegrass plantation, and Trail of the Lone- some Pine (1908) explored the “foreigner” coal company engineer placed in the Appalachian Mountains in southwest Virginia. Other notables include Mary Noailles Murfree (In the Tennessee Mountains [1884] and 25 other works, mostly

30 APPALACHIAN LITERATURE

This content downloaded from 76.77.171.221 on Thu, 23 Feb 2017 15:20:43 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms fiction set in the southern mountain area); Elizabeth Madox Roberts (Te Time of Man [1926] and Te Great Meadow [1930]); and Lucy Furman, who wrote realistic and positive sketches about the culture near Hindman Settlement School at Hindman, Ky., in her Mothering on Perilous (1913), Sight to the Blind (1914), Te Quare Women (1923), and Te Glass Window (1925). Many of these works were largely romantic and were ofen written in dialect. Sentimentality and neoromanticism merged with Appalachian stereotypes and motifs to set the tone until the 1930s. Feuding, the Civil War in Appalachia, moonshining, religious , and historical romance became common topics. Te post-1930 period spawned a vital group of writers who dominated the Appalachian literary scene well into the 1980s and 1990s, overlapping the next period that began in the 1960s. Among the outstanding members of the post- 1930 group were Kentuckian Jesse Stuart, with his more than 40 books covering biography, autobiography, novel, short story, poetry, essay, and journalism; Ken- tuckian Harriette Simpson Arnow, whose powerful novel about out-migration to the steel mills of Detroit, Mich., titled Te Dollmaker (1954) received national acclaim; adopted Kentuckian James Still, with his highly respected attention to art and craf in fiction, short story, and poetry in River of Earth (1940), On Troublesome Creek (1941), and Hounds on the Mountain (1937); North Carolin- ian Tomas Wolfe, the famed author of Look Homeward, (1929), (1935), Te Web and the Rock (1939), You Can’t Go Home Again (1940), and Te Hills Beyond (1941); West Virginia writer and 1977 National Book Award recipient Mary Lee Settle’s Beulah Quintet, including O Beulah Land (1956), (1960), Prisons (1973), and Te Scapegoat (1980); West Virginian Pearl Buck’s Te Good Earth (1931 winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the William Dean Howells Medal), Sons (1932), and A House Divided (1935); and Tennessean James Agee, who was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1958 for A Death in the Family (1957). Dominant themes of this period in- cluded politics, religion, rural mountain life customs and traditions, industrial- ized mountain life, and economic displacement of Appalachians. In the 1960s the torch was being passed to another set of regional writers such as Wilma Dykeman, whose novel Tall Woman (1962) is the quintessential portrait of an Appalachian pioneer woman and the enduring role she has played in American history, and the hard-hitting, frank Harry Caudill, whose Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area (1963) grabbed the attention of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson and is credited with having planted the seeds for the antipoverty programs of the 1960s. Others in this era included such notables as Jim Wayne Miller, Cormac McCarthy, Lillie D. Chaffin, Billy Edd Wheeler, Loyal Jones, and Jack Weller. Although the

APPALACHIAN LITERATURE 31

This content downloaded from 76.77.171.221 on Thu, 23 Feb 2017 15:20:43 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms themes of this period are as varied as the number of substantial writers, many of these works began to focus upon the postindustrial malaise brought on by environmental, economic, and social effects of the timber and coal industry. Beginning in the mid-1970s, a new set of writers who included quality work in the genres of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and essay emerged. Promi- nent are Charles Frazier, who won the 1997 National Book Award for Fiction for Cold Mountain (1997), a novel set in the Blue Ridge Mountains dur- ing the Civil War; North Carolinian Robert Morgan, whose acclaimed novel Gap Creek (1999) follows a young couple through their lives in their new home in the Appalachian high country at the turn of the 20th century; and south- west Virginia native Lee Smith, who has published 11 works of fiction includ- ing Oral History, the tale of a mountain family who lives in Hoot Owl Holler. In addition, West Virginian Denise Giardina has written eloquently about the injustices committed by coal companies in Appalachia in her novels Storming Heaven (1987) and Te Unquiet Earth (1992). A new Appalachian writer with great promise is Kentuckian Silas House, whose trilogy of novels Clay’s Quilt (2001), A Parchment of Leaves (2002), and Coal Tattoo (2004) has received high praise. East Kentucky native and retired professor James B. Goode has published three books of coal mining poetry, including Te Whistle and the Wind (1972), Poets of Darkness (1981), and Up From the Mines (1993), which James Still declared “the best book of poetry on coal mining ever written.” Harlan County, Ky., native George Ella Lyon has published four novels, two books of poetry, and 18 picture books. Southwest Virginia native and University of Kentucky professor Gurney Norman’s Divine Right’s Trip (1971), which originally appeared in the acclaimed Last Whole Earth Catalog, and Kinfolks (1997) have garnered national attention. Two of Norman’s stories, “Fat Monroe” and “Night Ride,” have been adapted for film. North Carolinian Fred Chappell has published 22 major works of poetry and fiction, including World between the Eyes (1972), River: A Poem (1978), Bloodfire (1979), and I Am One of Yours Forever (1985). West Virginian Homer Hickam’s Rocket Boys (1998) was selected by as one of the “Best Books of 1998,” and his Te Coalwood Way (2000) and Sky of Stone (2001) have also received national attention. Another Appalachian writer of national prominence is North Carolinian mystery/historical fiction novelist Sharyn McCrumb, who is best known for her seven-novel Ballad series beginning with Lovely in Her Bones (1990). She also has written satirical and comic novels as well as short stories. Another Ten- nessean, William Gay, uses the rural mountain landscape for Gothic tales remi-

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This content downloaded from 76.77.171.221 on Thu, 23 Feb 2017 15:20:43 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms niscent of . Gay has published three novels and the collection of short stories I Hate to See Tat Evening Sun Go Down. Substantial anthologies on the region are rare, but a few good ones exist. Sandra L. Ballard and Patricia L. Hudson’s Women Writing in Appalachia (2003), Ambrose Manning and Robert J. Higgs’s Voices from the Hills (1975), Ambrose Manning, Robert J. Higgs, and Jim Wayne Miller’s two-volume Appa- lachia Inside Out: A Sequel to Voices from the Hills (1995), Cecille Haddix’s Who Speaks for Appalachia? (1975), and Ruel Foster’s Appalachian Literature: Critical Essays (1976) are among the most notable. Two recent Kentucky anthologies are important as resources: Wade Hall’s Te Kentucky Anthology: Two Hundred Years of Writing in the Bluegrass State (2005) and William S. Ward’s Te Literary History of Kentucky (1988). Tere are also several good bibliographies. Te important ones include Appalachian Studies Association’s A Selected Bibliography of Scholarship on Appalachia (2004); Morgantown University’s Appalachian Outlook, 1982–2003 (a yearly bibliography of scholarship and articles on Appalachia); Appalachian State University’s Carol Grotnes Belk Library’s Appalachian Studies Bibliogra- phy, 1994; and Charlotte T. Ross’s Bibliography of Southern Appalachia (1976). Others include Louise Boger’s Te Southern Mountaineer in Literature (1976), Robert Munn’s Appalachian Bibliography (1968), and appendices A–G of “A Guide to Appalachian Studies” (Autumn 1977 issue of Appalachian Journal). A few small-shelf lists and other bibliographies are also helpful: the fiction and poetry list of the Weatherford-Hammond Collection, the former Appalachian Book Record Shop’s Appalachian Literature and Music: A Com- prehensive Catalogue (1981), the Council of Southern Mountains’ Bibliography of the Appalachian South (1963), and West Virginia Library’s Bibliography and Guide to Appalachian Studies (1961). Numerous good literary magazines are located within the region and have consistently published excellent Appalachian poetry, fiction, and essays. Among the most prominent are Appalachian Journal: A Regional Studies Review (Appa- lachian State University, Boone, N.C.), Appalachian Heritage (Berea College, Berea, Ky.), the Sewanee Review (University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn.), the Virginia Quarterly Review (Charlottesville), Now and Ten: Te Appalachian Magazine (East Tennessee State University, Johnson City), South Carolina Re- view (Clemson University, Clemson, S.C.), and Asheville Poetry Review (Ashe- ville, N.C.). Te Carolina Quarterly (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and North Carolina Literary Review (East Carolina University, Greenville) also publish Appalachian literature.

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This content downloaded from 76.77.171.221 on Thu, 23 Feb 2017 15:20:43 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Appalachian literary history includes a remarkably skilled number of writers and an extraordinary variety of writing that has immeasurably added to the evolving body of American letters. A part of that literature unmistakably has some kinship with the South but also has a strong, unique identity found in the central character and life of the mountaineer. Te rural agrarian mind-set, the mass immigration from nearby southern states, the fierce independence as evidenced by the bloody union movements (which may parallel the ideas reflected in the Civil War), the emphasis upon folk tradition and culture, the history of oral tradition, the inclination to use literature to express sociological or anthropological concerns, and the struggle by Appalachians to bridge the gulf between traditional Appalachian culture and contemporary America are all characteristics that prove both a link to southern literature and the separate- ness of its place. Appalachian writing remains an independent body of letters with an important place in American literature. JAMES B. GOODE University of Kentucky

Sandra L. Ballard and Patricia L. Hudson, eds., Listen Here: Women Writing in Appa- lachia (2003); Dwight B. Billings, Gurney Norman, and Katherine Ledford, eds., Confronting Stereotypes: Back Talk from an American Region (1999); George Brosi, ed., Appalachian Literature and Music: A Comprehensive Catalogue (1981); Rodger Cunningham, Apples on the Flood (1988); Ruel Foster, ed., Appalachian Literature: Critical Essays (1976); Cecille Haddix, ed., Who Speaks for Appalachia?: Prose, Poetry, and Songs from the Mountain Heritage (1975); Wade Hall, ed., Te Kentucky Anthology (2005); Robert J. Higgs and Ambrose Manning, eds., Voices from the Hills (1975); Robert J. Higgs, Ambrose Manning, and Jim Wayne Miller, eds., Appalachia Inside Out: A Sequel to Voices from the Hills, vols. 1 and 2 (1995); Jim Wayne Miller, Appa- lachian Journal (Autumn 1977); William S. Ward, ed., A Literary History of Kentucky (1988); Cratis Williams, “Te Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction” (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1961).

Autobiography and Memoir From the colonial period to the present, southerners and visitors to the region have created a rich body of autobiographical writing, whether in diaries and journals, slave narratives, family memoirs or formal autobiographies, revealing a remarkable diversity of experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives. Using the persuasive authority of first-person testimonial, many of these writers have defended the region’s social practices, while others have criticized them. Many have shown no hesitation in reinforcing stereotypes of southerners, whereas

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