I had known indirectly about the writing of Walter Tevis for many years but had never really read his work until recently after my wife and I had watched a documentary about his life on KET. Tevis was the author of two books which were made into two of the most well known movies starring Paul Newman, "The Hustler" and "The Color Of Money". I had always loved both movies primarily because of Newman's acting. He was nominated for Best Actor Oscars for both movies and won for "The Color Of Money". But, somehow, I had never read the books on which those two movies were based and had also never read Tevis' science fiction despite having been a regular reader of the genre for most of my teens and twenties. Two of Tevis' books are considered among the best science fiction ever written and deservedly so. I had also not heard Tevis's name mentioned, except perhaps in passing, despite the fact that we both lived in Lexington, Kentucky, for several years at the same time. Tevis was inducted into the Carnegie Center Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame in 2018.
After my wife and I watched the documentary, she wanted us to read his works and she was especially fascinated by his novel "The Queen's Gambit" which has been turned into a Netflix miniseries which has been widely acclaimed. My wife has now read the book and loved it. I have still not read that book will get around to it sooner or later I suspect. I did read his science fiction classic, "The Man Who Fell to Earth" and loved it to the degree that it prompted me to order most of his published works the remainder of which still lie on my always large "To Be Read" shelf. Tevis's work on "The Man Who Fell to Earth" is as good as any science fiction I have ever read. It is one of those rare works of science fiction which also falls solidly within the larger and more important body of what we know as "Great Literature". It is a masterpiece and deserves every accolade it has ever received.
But after reading the book and watching the documentary, I became much more interested in Tevis, his life, and his other works. That led me to the official Walter Tevis website which his agent, The Susan Schulman Literary Agency operates. The website states in their biography of Tevis that "Walter traveled across the country alone by train at the age of eleven to rejoin his family and felt the shock of entering the Appalachian culture when he enrolled in the local school." Tevis actually attended high school in Lexington which is not now, nor was it ever, an example of the Appalachian Culture. The dominant culture in Lexington is vastly different from the Appalachian Culture. The Appalachian Culture is seen in hundreds, perhaps several thousand residents of Lexington but is vastly different from the Central Kentucky Culture which is rooted in the earlier history of Lexington, Fayette County, and Central Kentucky as an agriculturally based economy which was deeply affected by the pre-Civil War slave holding plantation system while the Appalachian Culture is rooted in an area which was first settled by anti-slavery settlers from the British Isles, many of whom had actually come to North America as indentured servants large numbers of which settled the Appalachian regions of Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, and the Western Carolinas. The predominant culture of Central Kentucky is rooted in settlers who were often recipients of large land grants due to a combination of justifications ranging from simple political connections to the political kings and king makers in early Washington, DC, to legitimate service in the American Revolution. Most of the early landowners in the Eastern and South Eastern areas of Kentucky which constitute the Appalachian area of the state were simple homesteaders who traveled to the mountains where they could stake claims to small holdings of land which were never productive of the Thoroughbred horses, Bourbon, and tobacco which characterize early life in Central Kentucky. While Tevis did use the "hillbilly" ethnic slur in his writings and his literary agency seems to see that as a point of pride, Tevis never lived in the truly Appalachian area of the state. Whatever contact he had with Appalachian people took place in Lexington where they were just as out of place and uncomfortable as the somewhat odd genius Tevis who actually was an immigrant from California.
Tevis was a truly unique and apparently deeply damaged person well before he came to Kentucky to join his family of origin after having spent more than a year alone as an adolescent patient in the Stanford Children's Convalescent Home in San Francisco due to his having been diagnosed with a rheumatic heart condition. His parents placed him in the home and effectively abandoned him to return to their native Central Kentucky until he was released from the convalescent home and required him, at age 11, to travel alone by train across the continent to a place he had never lived to be reunited with a family who only contact with him had been periodic letters and telephone calls. Very few children at that delicate age of development would have survived that type of treatment without having been deeply damaged. Tevis became a chronic alcoholic and was always known as a unique individual at best and a truly odd human at worst. An argument can also be made that his advanced level of intelligence might well have made his ability to cope with the abandonment even more fragile. But regardless of how deeply his abandonment affected his later life, it must also be conceded that Tevis was a genius, a tremendous novelist and short story author, and a man deserving of a great deal of respect for his literary output. In all, he wrote six novels and one collection of short stories all of which are well respected work. He also spent most of his life as a teacher and college professor at Ohio University where it said that he was a popular professor. But, I am not convinced that he was ever truly a "Kentucky Writer" or that he ever viewed himself as such. Yes, his works do have settings in Kentucky and he does, from time to time, express his written opinions of the state. But in many ways, he must be viewed somewhat as "a man without a country". He was deeply traumatized by his last year living in his native California and never truly adjusted to Central Kentucky where he spent his late adolescence and was educated at the University of Kentucky. He also taught at UK, Northern Kentucky University, and Southern Connecticut University. He seems to have drifted across a great deal of American geography, spent his last years in New York City where he died, but was buried in Richmond, Kentucky, at the edge of Central Kentucky. He was a deeply damaged human being who managed to turn his personal history into a productive life as a writer of excellent literature but seems to have been unable to attach himself in a meaningful way to any particular environment either in Kentucky, Connecticut, Ohio, or New York.
But, he was a genius and he deserves to have his writing survive as long as humans read great literature.
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