"Tales From Suburban Widespot" by Roger D. Hicks Just Went On Sale On Amazon

My first collection of short stories has just gone on sale in all three formats, hardcover, paperback, and Kindle on Amazon. These are Appalachian short stories about half of which have previously been published somewhere in paper literary journals or online literary websites. My description of the book on Amazon is: "This book is a collection of Appalachian Short Stories set in and around the mythical community of Widespot which is located somewhere in Central and Southern Appalachia. The stories are purely fictional but based on the author's lifelong experiences in Appalachia. They are about life and common experiences which most native Appalachians have experienced: birth, death, baptism, near starvation, defamation, adulation, love, hate, marriage, divorce, separation, experimentation, and near extermination. There is humor, tears, grief, and a little humor about tears and grief. They are stories about life, the lives of fictional Appalachians and the deep rooted, multifaceted culture in which we live. They are about the common Appalachian Values which were written about by Loyal Jones, Albert Stewart, Robert "Bob" Snyder, P.J. Laska, Don West, and many other native Appalachian writers who have been both my mentors and friends. Now it is the turn of native Appalachan Roger D. Hicks to write about these beliefs and values. It is also your turn to read about and enjoy them!" https://www.amazon.com/s?k=tales+from+suburban+widespot+roger+hicks&crid=D9FJTAVKXQMH&sprefix=tales+from+suburban+widespot+roger+hicks%2Caps%2C128

"Fifty Best American Short Stories", Edited by Martha Foley

I love short stories, and I consider the short story to be the best form of all writing in literature. It has almost no room for error. Even the simplest little changes can either make a short story truly great or turn a potentially great short story into something very ordinary. I have read and studied the short story form ever since my high school days which were a mighty long time ago. I also write and have published about 20 short stories in at least 12 states in a variety of both college and university literary journals and some of the better online websites. I published my first short story in my twenties. But I don't pretend to be an expert on the short story, and I surely don't pretend to be a great short story writer. I do profess to be a good short story writer, and I believe the significant number of editors and/or editorial committees who have accepted and published my stories is some level of proof of their agreement with me about my self assessment. The best way to become a good to great short story writer is to read stories by the authors whom other people who understand the short story believe to be the best in the world. Everyone has their own opinion of what a great short story is, and there is room for some disagreement since the idea of stating what is a good to great short story is very subjective. It should also be very objective and sometimes editors are more subjective than objective. I remember one story I submitted to a book project in Texas, as I recall, and I got a handwritten rejection from the editor who had rejected it which said something to the effect that "This story really doesn't fit our project goals, but it sure is an interesting story." Did that editor mean that "interesting" was a good thing or something less. Since he bothered to send me a handwritten rejection, I assume he liked the story. You never know in a case like that. But to get to the point of this blog post, I am actually supposed to be writing about the book of stories which I recently finished by reading one stor a day from the book with my wife. This particular book, "Fifty Best American Short Stories" Edited By Martha Foley, was published in 1986 and contains stories from 1915 to 1964. It contains short stories from several of my favorite authors although the stories the editor chose are sometimes not my favorite stories by a particular author. It also contains some stories from people whom I had never read who might not make anyone's top ten or top fifty list of short story authors which speaks to that subjectivity of which I spoke earlier. But it is overall a very good book of short stories and well worth reading. The authors in this collection whom I had already placed on my list of favorites includes Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Ray Bradbury, Flannery O'Connor, and Shirley Jackson. Interestingly, the editor did not include the story I consider to be each of those writers' best. She might have been bowing to copyright restrictions on what she considered their best but included another story from each of them in a bow to what she considers their overall greatness. Or maybe we just have differing opinions, hence subjectivity rears its head. If you can find a copy of this old collection, buy it, read it, and make up your own mind while trying to be totally objective about the process.

My Concept Of Writing

The little ditty below is a brief statement I wrote a couple of years ago for posting on the internet literary website, "Creativity Webzine", which is based in Germany and on which I have had three short stories published over the recent years.  It is separate on that website from my primary biographical statement and was published as part of a larger section by numerous writers about how and why we write.  While this little piece and about two dollars will buy you a cup of bad coffee from your favorite gasoline station, some of you who read this blog regularly might find it interesting.  As for my work on "Creativity Webzine", you can go to this link "Creativity Webzine: Fiction" and by using the "Find On This Page" function in your web browser with my name "Roger D. Hicks" and find each of the three stories.  Sadly, the website does not have a direct search function which can take you directly to any particular author, story, or other aspect of the voluminous website.  If you actually go to all the trouble of finding and reading any of my stories there, I'd love to hear what you think of them by having you leave a comment on this blog post. 

 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

My Concept Of Writing

Roger D. Hicks grew up in Appalachia, writes as an Appalachian with publications in numerous print and online venues, and was mentored by nearly a dozen of the best writers in the history of Appalachian Literature.

For me, writing is a natural part of life.  I write to help explain, preserve, protect, and defend the vibrant culture which made me what I am today.  I write both fiction and non-fiction with the intention of producing the best work of which I am capable.  My writing has been influenced both by the Appalachian writers who have been my friends, mentors, and role models and by the great masters whom I have read for my entire lifetime: Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Pearl Buck, Flannery O’Connor, P. J. Laska, Bob “Billy Greenhorn” Snyder, James Still, Kate Chopin, Kerouac, Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy, George Eliot, Guy de Maupassant,  and dozens more.  I don’t write to emulate anybody but I attempt to learn from everybody whose work I read from the penultimate masters to those mistaken idiots who crank out drivel without the ability to understand just how awful their scribblings are.  Examples must be inspirations, objectives, and warning signs along the road of literature and life in order to be well rounded and useful as a whole.  I hope that the last thing I write is the inscription on my tombstone. 

Reflections On "The Hawk's Done Gone and Other Stories" by Mildred Haun

A recent Facebook message exchange with another lover of the short story cycle genre has reminded me that I have never written specifically on this blog about "The Hawk's Done Gone and other Stories" by Mildred Haun.  I have thought about it numerous times and have even reread the book at least once since I began this blog.  I was first exposed to this book about 1974 in Beckley, WV, by the great Appalachian poet and educator, Robert "Bob" "Billy Greenhorn" Snyder.  Bob loved this book and rightly so.  It is one of the most truly Appalachian books in all of Appalachian Literature.  It is also one of the finest works in Appalachian Literature which utilizes dialect writing.  I have said before in this blog that I do not generally attempt to write in dialect because it is very difficult to do appropriately and can be quite laughable and, yet, demeaning when it is done poorly whether the dialect being written about is Appalachian, African American, southern, or nearly any other dialect which is depicted as the dominant manner of speech for any minority group.  

This book falls squarely into the genre of literature known widely as the short story cycle.  I, like many other students of American Literature, was not even aware of the term until fairly recently.  Yet, I had also known literally since the days I was first exposed to the book that it has often been the subject of an ongoing argument as to whether it is a group of short stories or a novel.  Other well known books which also fall within that genre include "The Nick Adams Stories" and "In Our Time" by Ernest Hemingway, "Winsesburg, Ohio" by Sherwood Anderson,  "Go Down, Moses" by William Faulkner, and "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan.  "The Hawk's Done Gone" was written primarily in an undergraduate short story writing class at Vanderbilt University when the author was completing her bachelors degree and needed one more course to fulfill the requirements.  It was originally published in 1940 and a later edition with a few extra stories was released in 1968 two years after the author's death.  It has been the subject of much readership and discussion primarily by students of Appalachian Literature.  But it has also often been a point of argument in the discussion of the short story cycle.

The book is comprised of twenty-two interconnected short stories and a Prologue.  As is generally universal in the short story cycle, most, if not all, of the stories are capable of standing alone as highly readable, well crafted short stories.  But the stories are all set in a small community in East Tennessee which is based on Haun's own homeland in the Hoot Owl District of Cocke County where she spent most of her life.  Most of the stories are about various members of the White and Kanipe extended family and its matriarch Mary Dorthula White who also serves at the narrator of most of the stories.  Mary Dorthula White is a granny woman or midwife who delivers most of the local babies, prepares the dead for burial, and is sometimes suspected of being a witch.  I have written about the book in a comparison with "The Patron Saint of Ugly" by Marie Manilla in an article which has been published online in the "Mildred Haun Review Journal" at Walters State Community College in the area in which Mildred Haun spent her life.   In that article, I discussed how the book exemplifies several of the Appalachian cultural values which Loyal Jones wrote about in his seminal book, "Appalachian Vaules".  "The Hawk's Done Gone" is an excellent illustration of several of those cultural values including Love of Place; Independence, Self Reliance, and Pride; and Religion.

My favorite of the stories in the book is "Barshia's Horse He Made, It Flew" which I believe is Haun's masterpiece.  The story is narrated by Mary Dorthula White and the character for which it is entitled is her step-son Barshia Kanipe who can be described as being somewhere between odd and mentally ill.  Barshia uses the hide of a dead mule and other items to construct a winged horse which he hauls to the top of the family barn in an attempt to fly.  It is one fine piece of fiction and I won't spoil the story or the book by disclosing the entire plot and ending.

Many of the stories are at least partially involved with death and Mary Dorthula White actually maintains a family record in the family Bible which is the one personal antique she is able to prevent being sold by her shiftless husband, Ad Kanipe, and his sons from a previous marriage.  This book is one of my favorites in all of Appalachian Literature and I believe if you read it you will agree. 

"The Contemporary American Short-Story Cycle The Ethnic Resonance of Genre" by James Nagel--Book Review

 Nagel, James:  The Contemporary American Short-Story Cycle The Ethnic Resonance of Genre (Baton Rouge, LA. LSU Press, 2001)

 Over the last several months, I have become more and more interested in that genre, or more appropriately sub-genre, of American Literature known as the short story cycle.  The short story cycle can be described as "...the collection of a group of independent stories that contain continuing elements of character, setting, action, imagery, or theme that enrich each other in intertextual context." (Nagel, p. 15)  To put it a bit more simply, a short story cycle is a collection of short stories which have common characters, settings, or other elements such as a common conflict, plot, or theme which is discussed in multiple stories by a single author.  Some of the best known examples of short story cycles which my not have been previously billed as such would include "The Nick Adams Stories" by Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck's "The Pastures Of Heaven" or "Tortilla Flat", Flannery O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge", or Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg Ohio".  I have to confess that I have not read all these books although I have long been in love with "The Nick Adams Stories" and wrote about them at the link above.  I have also been a devoted fan of the work of Flannery O'Connor and John Steinbeck since I was in my early teens and have read nearly everything both of these wonderful authors have published.  But the short story cycles which James Nagel so ably writes about in this book which we are discussing here are more recent and, perhaps, more popular among modern American readers.  

In his book, Nagel devotes lengthy and scholarly chapters to each of the works he has chosen.  Those works are: Louise Erdrich's "Love Medicine"; "Monkeys" by Susan Minot; Sandra Cisneros's "The House on Mango Street"; "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brian; Julia Alvarez's "How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents"; "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan; and a second collection about Viet Nam and the Vietnamese people, "A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain" by Robert Olen Butler.  I suspect that "The Joy Luck Club" is the best known of the collections discussed in the book.  I must confess, as I did about a few of the books listed above, that I have not read any of the works studied in Nagel's excellent work.  When I bought the book and read it, my interest was in the genre and not the work of any specific author.  I am writing and have already completed several short stories in my own version of a short story cycle.  At the bottom of the front page of this blog, I have a section or list entitled "Links To Other Sites About Appalachia".  At the top of that list are several links to some of my short stories which fall into my own short story cycle which I have tentatively entitled "Tales From Widespot".  I read Nagel's book to further inform myself about the short story cycle and to hopefully improve my own work.  Like many of the writers and readers which Nagel discusses, I had read quite a few short story cycles without even knowing what a short story cycle was.  In a few places in the book, Nagel writes about other reviewers who have reviewed various of the books he discusses without knowing the term short story cycle, or at least without having made it known to their readers if they did know.  

I realize that for many readers the concept of the short story cycle and Nagel's book might seem a bit arcane and not worth the time or bother.  But I can assure you, if you are a lover of literature, that Nagle's book is well worth reading and so are many of the short story cycles he discusses at length or only mentions in passing such as the works of O'Connor, Hemingway, and Steinbeck.  At times, short story cycles come so close to being a novel that they are generally billed as being novels.  My other favorite short story cycle which Nagel does not even mention in his book is "The Hawk's Done Gone" by the Appalachian author Mildred Haun.  In a non-fiction article which was published in "The Mildred Haun Review Journal", I compared Haun's book with "The Patron Saint of Ugly" by my friend Marie Manilla.  If you are a fan of Appalachian Literature and have not read Mildred Haun's book, I strongly encourage you to do so.  It is a fine introduction to the concept of the short story cycle.  So are "The Nick Adams Stories" and  "Tortilla Flat".  

But to get back to my discussion of Nagel's book, it is a wonderful way to learn about the short story cycle and to dig deeper into the histories of some of the more modern books which you might have already read such as Amy Tan's book or Louise Erdrich's.  I will be doing the same over the next few weeks and months and I promise that I will be writing about them on this blog when I do.  I will also be working to publish my own short story cycle collection and to add to it.  For me, the short story has long been my favorite form of writing.  It allows for few mistakes if the author is attempting to produce high quality work.  The books which Nagel disusses are all obviously high quality work and so is his discussion of them.  If you are student of literature, and particularly the short story, this is a book which you should consider reading.  If you do not enjoy reading scholarly books, you might not enjoy his book or even wish to read it.  I leave that choice to you but rest assured  I found the book well worth reading and writing about. 

"Kentucky Voices" Edited by James Alan Riley & Elgin Ward (Ass't Ed.)-- Book Review

Riley, James Alan, Ed. & Elgin Ward, Ass't. Ed. Kentucky Voices (Pikeville College Press, 1997)

This book is a collection of short stories by authors with Kentucky connections.  Not all the authors are native Kentuckians but all do have some arguable connection to the state and its literary movement.  The editor is James Alan Riley who has taught Creative Writing at the University of Pikeville since 1987. His poetry collection, Broken Frequencies, has been accepted for publication in 2018 by Shadelandhouse Modern Press. ElginWard, who is listed as the assistant editor, can be found listed as an Associate Professor of English at the University of Pikeville since 1992 although he is not found when a search of his name is run on the university website.

The book has several stories written by well known Kentucky authors such as Ed McClanahan, Jim Wayne Miller, Chris Holbrook, and Chris Offutt.  It also has a few stories by relative unknowns.  In my opinion, the stories vary widely in the quality of work.  For instance, "My Vita, If You Will", by Ed McClanahan, was the title piece in a collection of his work published by Counterpoint in 1998.  The stories by all the established writers cited above are all well worth reading.   "Out Of The Woods" by Chris Offutt is an unusual and highly readable piece of work which uses an unusual plot that reeks of both originality and genuine Appalachian Culture.  A few of the other stories would have been better off left on the cutting room floor. 

One truly baffling aspect of the editorial work, at least to me, is the fact that the stories are arranged in straight alphabetical fashion by author and the story used in the first position is not one that I would have selected to publish at any level.  I tend to believe that such a choice of arrangement speaks to some level of trepidation about making editorial choices such as using the better stories or more well known writers to "tent pole" the placement of the individual pieces. It leads me to believe that the editors chose to avoid the possibility of hurting the feelings of any of the contributors.  For the uninitiated, "tent poling" is a method of placing short stories by a single author in an arrangement where the best works or previously published works are scattered throughout a book to ensure that the reader will be less likely to become bored with too much lesser work running consecutively and, therefore, more likely to finish the entire book.   In an anthology such as this one, "tent poling" would either have the editors bravely choose the best story in the book, in their opinion, and place it at the beginning of the book and to choose a nearly equal story to end the anthology in the hope of leaving the reader well pleased at the finish. 

But the book is worth reading by the person who has an interest in the literature of Kentucky or Appalachia although not all the work is Appalachian or clearly understandable as Kentucky literature.  Some of the stories are just stories which might just as easily been selected for anthologies in Boston or Seattle.  But, I repeat several of the stories are above average such as "Out Of The Woods" by Chris Offutt or "Death Is A Stranger" by Mary Lou Brown-Byrd, one of the lesser known authors in the book.  She wrote extensively in a small town newspaper in Salyersville for years but had no national, or even regional, reputation as an author of fiction.  Yet her story is one of the best and most authentically Kentucky stories in the book.  When you read it, if you know anything about Salyersville, you can see the buildings, know the characters, and smell the Licking River.  

Short Story or Vignette???

Since the time I entered Upward Bound at Alice Lloyd College when I was about 14, I have known and been friends with a fairly large number of published authors.  During my first summer in that program, I met and became friendly with Albert Stewart and William Howard Cohen both of whom were major American poets.  Albert Stewart was also the founder of Appalachian Heritage Magazine and a mentor to numerous young writers throughout his career.  William Howard Cohen was an internationally recognized expert on Haiku and served as the American Cultural Delegate in the area of poetry at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968. Cohen was also an outspoken and highly effective environmental advocate who fought bravely and well against strip mining in Appalachia. He also mentored numerous young writers in both Eastern Kentucky and Florida where he lived the last years of his life.  I have always been extremely proud to have known and been friendly with both men.  During that first Upward Bound summer, the program directors also brought Harry Caudill to speak at one of our assemblies.  His strongly negative book about Appalachia, "Night Comes To The Cumberlands", was still in the height of its popularity and he was considered by many to be an expert on Appalachia.  I can say that I met Caudill and I can also say that I am proud that, as a native Appalachian, I was not pleased with him and still am not.  I have said all the preceding, a rather long winded introduction, in order to say this once again, I have known and been friends with a fairly large number of published authors, learned a great deal from them both about life and writing.  And that brings me to the title of this article, Short Story or Vignette???

Which is it, a short story or a vignette is a question which is frequently asked by readers and writers about short works of fiction.  It is also a question which should be asked even more frequently, especially by the numerous people who mistakenly believe they are writing short stories.  As a result of having known the writers I have known, I have come to regularly either buy or be given books by many people some of whom are genuine writers and some of whom only wish to be but have managed to make it into print anyway.  I have in my possession at this time several books written and published by people I know and labeled as short story collections.  A sizable portion of those "short story collections", most of them self-published through vanity presses, do not contain a single actual short story and are, instead, collections of vignettes some of which could have been turned into short stories by a skillful writer, and others which Leo Tolstoy, Flannery O'Connor, or William Faulkner could not have stretched enough to make them an actual short story.  That brings us to the key question I hope to address in this article.  What is the difference between a short story and a vignette?

A commonly used definition of the term "short story" runs something like this:  the term short story most often refers to a work of fiction no shorter than 1,000 and no longer than 20,000 words. An actual short story should contain these five essential elements, characters, plot, setting, conflict, and theme. An equally common definition of the term "vignette" runs something like this: a brief, evocative account, description, or episode.  A less common definition of the term "vignette" runs something like this: a vignette is a cute little story which, on a good day, might include one or two of those key elements of a short story but never by any stretch of the imagination will a vignette contal all five.  By that I mean that a vignette is something a first grader might tell her mother when she returns home from school. Two or three old men sitting in the local country store, gas station, or barber shop swap vignettes.  Old, blue haired widows do the same in beauty shops, meat markets, and boutiques.  While I almost never say anything this personal or negative to any of my friends and acquaintances who have produced collections of vignettes which they insist on forcing to masquerade as short stories, I really do not like buying, borrowing, or being given such collections of vignettes which a vanity press has managed to make a buck on while perpetuating the misbegotten dreams of the people who cranked them out on a PC or antique Underwood in the lonely silence of their home.  

It is also interesting that, for a skillful writer, it is not necessary to produce a work the size of "War And Peace" in order to tell a good story with all five of those key elements, characters, plot, theme, setting, and conflict. While I despise what is now known and inordinately popular as "flash fiction", I also recognize that it is possible to tell a great story with a bare minimum number of well chosen, well organized words.  The best example of this I can think of is the classic Kate Chopin short story, "The Story Of An Hour".  This incredible little masterpiece of roughly a thousand words contains every one of those five key elements and perfection to boot.  With an opening sentence of less than thirty words, we meet the central character, Mrs. Mallard, learn that she has a heart condition, that she is/was married, that her husband is dead, and that someone cares enough about her to "break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death."  Then the story goes on in the remaining 950 or so words to work in a couple of absolutely masterful twists in which she weeps loudly and publicly in the company of her family and friends, retreats to her bedroom where she realizes with great joy that she is "Free!  Body and soul...free!" and then, as a combination of that great joy and her aforementioned heart condition, she dies without her family and friends ever knowing how happy she was to anticipate that freedom.  That my friends is a short story.  And I haven't even mentioned that in those thousand words, Kate Chopin threw in a train wreck.  

I am not completely opposed to vignettes and often use them myself, sometimes in the middle of what I believe are short stories I produce, sometimes in country stores, gas stations, and barber shops with my illiterate friends, and even at rare times in beauty shops.  As an addendum to this little article I will also insert a short list of some of my other favorite short stories and suggest that you read them sometime if you haven't already.

Desiree's Baby by Kate Chopin

The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

Parker's Back by Flannery O'Connor

Ugly by Guy de Maupassant

A Rose For Emily by William Faulkner

Big Two-Hearted River by Ernest Hemingway
A View Of The Woods by Flannery O'Connor

Mildred Haun Conference--Walters State College, Morristown, TN, February 2-3, 2018

The 2018 Mildred Haun Conference will take place at Walters State College in Morristown, TN, on February 2-3, 2018.  The featured author at this year's conference, in addition to Mildred Haun, will be Marie Manilla, whose work I have written about on this blog and also previously published a review of her novel, "T he Patron Saint Of Ugly", in the Appalachian magazine "Now And Then".  Marie Manilla is a native and current resident of Huntington, WV, and the great majority of all her published work focuses on Appalachia with just a wee bit based on Texas which she knows well.  Manilla is often the featured writer at conferences these days which focus on the literature of Appalachia and she well deserves that attention.  

The focus of the conference is titled "Who Tells Our Stories: History, Haints, and Happenings".  I apologize for the fact that I did not mention this conference on this blog before the submission deadline for papers and presentations had passed.  The conference staff are also establishing an online journal this year which will publish the best papers from the conference where they will be available for the foreseeable future.  I will be presenting a paper at the conference on Saturday afternoon, February 3, 2017.  That paper is titled "Mary Dorthula White and Saint Garnet: Saints Or...?"  The paper will examine similarities in and differences between two major female characters, one each of which was created by Haun and Manilla: Mary Dorthula White, the protagonist/narrator of Haun's book, "The Hawk's Done Gone" and Saint Garnet del Vulcano, the protagonist/narrator of Manilla's book, "The Patron Saint Of Ugly".  

If you have not read the work of either of these women, you should spend the money to alleviate that void in your knowledge of Appalachian Literature, especially Appalachian Literature by and about women.  Marie Manilla is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop which has furthered the education of Flannery O'Connor, John Irving, and Wallace Stegner.  It is arguably the best masters degree level creative writing program in the country.  Admission to this program in and of itself is a statement that the applicant has demonstrated talent well above the average. 

Mildred Haun was a 1937 masters degree graduate of Vanderbilt University under the well known writing professors John Crowe Ransom and Donald Davidson.  Haun only published one book of fiction, the aforesaid "The Hawk's Done Gone", which is one of the finest little books ever produced in the state of Tennessee.  She wrote the stories in the book during her writing classes and never sought to publish another book.  Her masters thesis "Cocke County Ballads And Songs" is widely considered one of the best collections and examinations of the folk songs of Appalachia ever assembled.  The book, "The Hawk's Done Gone", is a unique work in many ways.  It is an outstanding use of Appalachian dialect in a fictional setting.  The dialect used in the book is that of Cocke County Tennessee around the turn of the twentieth century at the time of Mildred Haun's childhood.  It is a shame that she never wrote and published more both in the fields of fiction and non-fiction.  The book also bridges the gap between the novel and a collection of short stories with a central narrator and protagonist in most of the stories and a central cast of recurring characters.  The book does have a rough time line which runs parallel to the narrator's life which further blurs the line between novel and short story collection.  It is a book well worth reading for many reasons.

I would love to see all of the regular readers of this blog at the conference.  I will also look forward to reading comments on this blog from those of you who have read or will read the works of both Haun and Manilla. 

"Still Life With Plums" by Marie Manilla--Book Review

Manilla, Marie 2010 Still Life With Plums (Morgantown, WV, Vandalia Press)

I just took a long, quiet drive across the West Virginia I have always loved courtesy of Marie Manilla, one of the Mountain State's finest writers.  This collection of short stories is set primarily in West Virginia with a bit of Texas thrown in for good measure.  But the author's primary setting, source of knowledge and folkways, and the home place of her heart is West Virginia, the West Virginia that is found in the lyrics to "The Green Rolling Hills Of West Virginia". 

"The green rolling hills of West Virginia
Are the nearest thing to heaven that I know
Though the times are sad and drear
And I cannot linger here
They'll keep me and never let me go."

That line "though the times are sad and drear and I cannot linger here they'll keep me and never let me go" personifies this book in many ways.  Several of the stories are set among times, places, families, and individuals who are "sad and drear".  But nearly every character in the book has learned the truth that West Virginia will "keep me and never let me go".  They have found the sources of both their pain and their pleasure in that sweet, dark, heart warming, shimmering green, and dreary land between the Ohio River and the headwaters of the Potomac.  Thanks to Ms. Manilla, these characters are generally able to resolve that pain and relish the pleasures of life.  As I read this book, I was reminded of the song writing of Dolly Parton in such songs as "Mountain Angel" and "These Old Bones". Marie Manilla has that same ability to reach into the soul of a flawed character who is generally not responsible for her flaws but found them at the hands of others.  

"Still Life With Plums" is a book to be read slowly, thoughtfully, and deeply.  These characters are real people that you and I have both known and often loved with a love that was deepened and strengthened by many shared mornings fueled on water gravy and a thin hoe cake.  These characters have a few too many patches on their britches and the cold winter winds blowing down the Guyandotte or the Gauley have cut right through their pea coats on the way to the mine, factory, or company store.  Marie Manilla understands West Virginia and her people as only one of their own can comprehend.  She creates characters out of the whole cloth of a life lived in that land built from secession, independence, and hardship.  These characters find connections, assistance, and subsistence among others like themselves, strong despite having been bowed, compassionate in addition to being tough, loving despite having been discarded, and proud Mountaineers in the face of all that history of having been discriminated against.  They are my people.  They are your people.  They are the people of Cabell, Wayne, and Summers Counties.  They are the people of the industrial and chemical river and the people of the log woods and coal fields.  They are people you should meet and come to know.  They are people you should take a long, quiet ride with across the green rolling hills of that beautiful, blessed paradise we call our mountain home. 

"The Hills Remember The Complete Short Stories Of James Still" Book Review

Still, James and Ted Olson (Editor) 2012  The Hills Remember The Complete Short Stories Of James Still (Lexington, University of Kentucky Press) 

Growing up in Knott County Kentucky where James Still lived for most of his 94 years, I knew about James Still at about the same time I became aware of Appalachia and Appalachian Studies sometime in the late 1960's. I honestly do not recall the first time I met James Still.  I cannot say that James Still and I were friends but we were acquaintances and I was flattered to be able to refer to him as Jim to his face.  I was also able to introduce Jim Still and my long time friend and mentor, National Book Award Finalist P. J. Laska at a James Still reading at Black Swan Books in Lexington, KY, sometime in the early 1990's.  As I recall, it was some time shortly after the release of the "Wolf Pen Notebooks". That was a highly interesting evening for several reasons.  Lexington socialite Anita Madden was at the reading wearing a pair of skin tight bright blue pants and she and Jim flirted for most of the evening.  If you have never seen an 85 year old man flirt with a 60 year old woman and find that flirtation reciprocated, I highly recommend it as entertainment especially if the man and woman are of the caliber of Madden and Still.  After the reading, Laska, Still, and I went to eat at a Shoney's Restaurant on North Broadway near the Springs Motel where he usually stayed when he was in Lexington.  We stayed in the restaurant until about 1am talking about Appalachia, literature, Appalachian Literature, Still's travels around the world, the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College writers group of which Laska and I were both members, and the triumvirate of Appalachian writers of which Still was a member, the 1929 class from Lincoln Memorial University which included Still, Jesse Stuart, and my friend and mentor as well as Laska's professional colleague, Don West.  That evening deserves to be addressed in a completely separate blog or essay and will be some day.  

James Still Photo by University Of KY

Over the years I had read large chunks of Still's writing but had never had the pleasure of reading his complete short stories.  I recently bought the book "The Hills Remember..." and plowed through it in something less than record time.  It contains 53 stories of which a couple are published in the book in two versions, usually one as it was published in a magazine and another as it was included later as a chapter of a novel or part of a major short story collection. Still  had a practice of often publishing short stories in magazines and later using them as book chapters both as originally published and sometimes with significant edits.  "The Hills Remember..." is believed to contain every extant story written by Still.  Ted Olson, the editor, did an excellent job of locating, editing and collating the works.  Olson had worked with Still prior to his death, was aware of his idiosyncrasies, and was an excellent choice as the editor.  The stories are arranged in somewhat chronological order as they were originally written or published and contain all the stories which were included in "River Of Earth", "The Run For The Elbertas", "Pattern Of A Man", and "On Troublesome Creek".  The book is an excellent way for the economically minded reader to achieve as broad as possible a sampling of Still's short fiction.  But I would not recommend that the person seeking to fully understand his prose output read the book and assume they are done.  The stories which were included in "River Of Earth" are not always exactly as they were published in the novel. There may also be slight differences in these versions of the stories included in "The Run For The Elbertas" and the other two aforementioned collections.  The stories which are included as chapters in the novel "River Of Earth" are also not necessarily published in this collection along the timeline of the novel.  If you are a real aficionado of Appalachian Literature or James Still, you will want to read his entire body of work.  Still was a widely known short story author in America as evidenced by the body of stories which were previously published in national magazines such as "Atlantic", "Yale Review", and "Virginia Quarterly Review".  This book attempts, in part, to reassert Still as a major American short fiction author in addition to his prior recognition as a novelist and poet.

The book contained several stories I had not read and several of those are well above average.  The first and best surprise I received from the book was a story called "Sweet Asylum" which is set in James Still's native Alabama.  This story is about an Alabama cotton plantation owner who is deep in debt, widowed, and seeking a way to resolve his debts and save his family plantation.  It is a masterpiece which instantly reminded me of the work of Kate Chopin.  In terms of technique, it is highly reminiscent of her classic "The Story Of An Hour".  It is not quite as masterful a work but uses the same type of double twist ending to slam doors in the faces of both the protagonist and the reader. It may well be the best short story James Still ever wrote.  James Still has so thoroughly been identified as a master author of Southern Appalachia that many of his readers either forgot or never knew that he was born and grew up in Chambers County Alabama, an area that is very different culturally and physically from Knott County Kentucky and Central Appalachia. I should state for the record that I have traveled extensively in Alabama in general and Chambers County in particular and know that area quite well.  James Still did, however, spend the great majority of his life in Knott County and Appalachia and will forever be seen as an Appalachian author.  He went to Lincoln Memorial University in 1925 and graduated there in 1929 as a member of that incredible threesome of Appalachian writers: Still, Don West, and Jesse Stuart. LMU is located in Harrogate, TN, in Claiborne County, which is just as much the heart of Appalachia as Knott County. Hindman, KY, and Harrogate, TN, are only 100 miles apart.  During his time at LMU and later throughout his life, Still was a classmate and friend of both Jesse Stuart and Don West. During that time frame, John Crowe Ransom and the Agrarians and Fugitives were key components of the literary world at LMU. Collectively, Still, West, and Stuart of the LMU Class of 1929 are arguably the best single graduating class of regional writers to ever graduate from any university in the same academic year. That is a particular feather in the hat of LMU since it is a decidedly small university with only 1,675 undergraduate students as of this writing. Still then completed a Master of Arts Degree in English at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.  After completing his work at Vanderbilt he was employed by the Hindman Settlement School and remained in Knott County for the rest of his life.

The second observation I made as I read "The Hills Remember..." was that in many of Still's short stories there is a level of violence which could almost be called gratuitous.  Several of his stories, including one which I consider among his best, culminate in or originate from murder.  The second story in the book and the title piece "The Hills Remember" is a fine piece of work but also inordinately violent.  The main character, Old Aus Hanley "...had a graveyard all his own across Stormspur filled with men he had killed."  As the story begins, Aus Hanley is lying in a pool of his own blood after being ambushed by a drunk man, shot in the back by someone whom no one in the area  would have believed capable of murder and especially not capable of the murder of Aus Hanley.  A crowd gathers to watch Aus Hanley die.  The sheriff arrests the drunken perpetrator and stands near the victim also waiting to see him die.  The crowd all believe that one of Aus Hanley's family members who are too far away to attend the death will eventually seek revenge against the shooter.  But Aus Hanley calls the sheriff from his death throes to bring the shooter to him so he can learn who killed him.  The story concludes with Hanley pulling his murderer close to him and "...his right arm lunged in a single driving stroke toward Luke's breast...The handle of a Barlow knife protruded from his breast."  With his final dying act, the murdered man has also murdered his killer.  It is a wonderful story but the level of violence portrayed is well beyond that found in most short American fiction.

Speaking as a native of Knott County which is generally assumed to be the setting of most of Still's work, I must say that it is not a level of violence I found common in the time I was growing up there. I was born in Knott County roughly 20 years after James Still moved to the county.  I grew up in a country store in the Beaver Creek area of the county. My father was born in 1887 on Bruce at Mousie and lived most of his early life in Mousie, not far from Hindman where Still lived.  My mother had been born and reared on Rock Fork Creek in still another area of the county.  I was exposed to people from all over Knott County and the surrounding area.  Although I knew several people during my childhood who either had already or later committed murder, the area was never as violent as Still portrayed it in many of his stories.  A second story which is incredibly violent is called "The Scrape".  In that story, two men induce the protagonist to tie their arms together with a wire, take charge of their guns, and observe as they fight with knives to a mutual death.  "Jiddy produced a wire...He ordered me to tie an end around his left wrist, and the other about Cletis's.  A thing they had agreed on.  I did what I was bid do..."  The story ends with both men dead in the dirt road and the narrator heading off toward his original destination with the comment "I thought about Posey Houndshell.  Nobody stood between me and her." 

I must admit that I have not read the two books which might help me to further understand the violence in Still's fiction.  They are: "James Still In Interviews, Oral Histories, and Memoirs" by James Still and the aforementioned Ted Olson; and, "James Still: Critical Essays On The Dean Of Appalachian Literature" edited by Ted Olson and Kathy H. Olson.  What I would really love to see is a book length work solely addressing that issue of violence in Still's work. 

Still is also frequently referred to as one of the better, if not the best, writers in Appalachian dialect.  I do not dispute that he is a fine writer in Appalachian dialect.  But I will always believe that Mildred Haun is a far superior writer of Appalachian dialect.  Her classic work "The Hawk's Done Gone" is far and away the best dialect writing ever done in Appalachian Literature.  As I said earlier, I spent the first twenty years of my life in Knott County Kentucky, was educated there through high school and began my college education at Alice Lloyd College.  I was also reared by my parents, maternal grandparents, and an extended family of aunts and uncles who all grew up in Knott County early in, and in some cases before the turn of the twentieth century.  I know Knott County Appalachian dialect as well as any human on earth and I must insist that there are times when I see that  James Still wrote linguistic expressions which I never heard from my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, farmers at the livestock sales or jockey grounds, or the elderly customers at my parents' country store.  The one word which he used frequently, especially in "River Of Earth" and his short stories and which I never once heard in Knott County is "chaps" in reference to small children.  In my childhood, small children were "young'uns", "chillun", "yard apes", "curtain climbers", and several more conventional, less colloquial terms.  But they were never "chaps".  I suspect that is an expression from Still's youth in Alabama.  Getting back to the comparison between Still and Haun, I will defend Still to the degree that the two of them were writing dialect based on two different subregions of Central Appalachia.  I have also traveled extensively in the Cocke County, TN, area where Haun spent her life and did extensive research among Appalachian serpent handlers there.  The two subdialects have significant differences.  But Haun's consistency and accuracy in writing dialect is superior to James Still's.  It is also worth noting that it is only 63 miles from Harrogate, TN, where Still attended college to Newport, TN, where Haun lived her life.  I do not know that Still ever spent time in Newport but since he and Haun both attended Vanderbilt University it is possible that he did know her and might have even visited the area which would have also exposed him to the dialect which she wrote so admirably.  It is also possible that Still's travels from Chambers County Alabama to Claiborne County Tennessee to Davidson County Tennessee to Knott County Kentucky could have provided a plethora to opportunity for Still to blend the dialects of the four to a degree that not even he recognized. 

Do not allow anything I have said in this post to leave you with the impression that I do not respect and value the writing of James Still in all genres in which he wrote.  He is definitely at the vanguard of writers about Appalachia.  His short fiction can stand up well in comparison to nearly any other writer in American Literature.  The book "The Hills Remember..." is a compulsory read if you intend to believe or say that you understand the literature of Appalachia.  Buy a copy and read it sometime soon.  You will enjoy it greatly. 

The Widespot Women's Club

Appalachian Fiction by Roger D. Hicks*

They had never chosen the name for themselves.  They never would have.  The name had been given to them by the community.  Or more accurately, the name had been given to them by the men of the community.  They were known quietly and derisively, often even by their husbands, as the Widespot Women's Club.  They were spoken of this way on days when decisions were being made about the little church to which they all belonged.  On these days the church board would meet and all the members of the Widespot Women's Club would be there in their official capacity.  Today the Widespot Women's Club was meeting.  There was a decision to be made.

Today, like all days when the Women's Club met, the men were in the Widespot Grocery next door, talking, telling jokes, trading knives, and waiting to hear what decision had been made by the Women's Club.  No man had ever been a member of the Widespot Church Board.  None of them ever expected to be.  It was a situation they had come to accept; some of them quietly, some with grumbling, and some with the faint hope that someday something would change.  All these men were members of the church.  All attended church each Sunday.  All came to the Widespot Grocery to vent their frustrations, eat a bologna sandwich, or buy a few groceries. 

Widespot had been named several years ago when the post office had been about to arrive in a little white building across the road from the grocery.  The post office was going into a new little building beside the house of Wilhelmina "Willie" Wilson who in addition to being the postmaster was the chairperson of the Widespot Church Board.  Willie was known in the all male enclave at the grocery as "The President", a name her husband Bobby had coined once when a decision of the Women's Club had left him feeling powerless and emasculated.  The post office had required a name and the community was so small that it had never even had a name until the Postmaster General had decreed that it must.  The decree had also delegated total authority to Willie, in her capacity as postmaster, to choose that name.  After long thought and little discussion with anyone, Willie had chosen the name Widespot for a place that had been known in past years as Down The Road, Over There, and Them Wilson's Place.  Willie had chosen the name; the place would forever be Widespot and that was that.  This was Willie's customary way of making decisions.  This was how the decision today would be made in the Widespot Church. 

Willie called the meeting to order in her customary way--"Well, let's get started."  The other women in the club nodded, smiled, and mumbled, "Okay", "All Right", and "Uh Huh", just as they always did at the start of every meeting.  In the store, Bobby sat on his stool behind the u-shaped wooden counter littered with a hand operated cash register, an old set of Globe-Stimpson scales, wrapping paper for bologna sandwiches, and a University of Kentucky basketball schedule.  He called the meeting of the Widespot men to order in his usual way--"Well boys, what do you think they're going to do over there?"  Bobby's brother Billie, Uncle Bert Small, and the others all responded in their usual way.  There were muttered grunts, "I don't have no idea", and a statement from Jim Bob Johnson, the only single man in the group, "Whatever they want to do, just like always." They all knew that today a decision would be made. 

The Women's Club would hire a permanent minister for the church today.  There were only two candidates for the job.  There were two opinions in the community about who should be hired and why.  There was only one opinion in the Women's Club and that was Willie's opinion.  She already knew who would be hired; in their own way, the men knew who would be hired also. 

One of the candidates was a retired minister who had once helped build a large and effective church on the other side of the state.  He held a doctoral degree from the best seminary in the state and had been a minister for over fifty years.  He was looking for one last community and church in which to preach, minister, and matter.  He was known as Tom Price, or in the area where he had preached before, as Independent Price.  Independent Price had been given that name by a banker who had once served as the chairman of a church board where Tom Price had served.  The banker had wanted very much at that time to build a church football field that would bear his name because he loved both football and himself.  Tom Price had wanted to build a new addition to the church that would house several new Sunday School rooms and a baptistery because he loved to minister and felt the church needed the new addition.  Tom Price had won the discussion with that church board and the new addition had been built.  However, the banker had won the overall discussion with the community and Tom Price found himself out of a job a year later and known as Independent Price.  He had not sought the appellation, but he did not deny or abhor it.  He cherished his independence and believed he had earned it with fifty years of service to the Lord.

The other candidate was a nervous and acquiescent young man of twenty, who was in his first year at a second rate seminary whose students were farmed out to little churches at low wages while they completed their educations.  His name was Marion Shirley, although the men in the Widespot Grocery had begun to call him Shirley Marion.  Shirley had no degree; he had no experience; he had no opinions and no desire to form any.  He was exactly the kind of minister Willie Wilson wanted.  She had realized this one morning as she had begun making biscuits.  The dough in her hands had been soft, white, and formless.  It changed shape often and readily in her hands.  It met her every desire and was completely powerless to resist.    And, after ten minutes in her overheated oven, the biscuit dough would become small, tasteless, worthless lumps that bore no resemblance to anything desirable.  Naturally, as she kneaded the dough, Willie thought of Marion Shirley and what he could become in her hands. 

Marion Shirley was about to become the next minister of the Widespot Community Church and he had no idea. That was his customary state. He had come to the church on a Sunday in July just before his first semester in the seminary to preach on an emergency basis without having ever known where Widespot was, who lived there, or their leanings in religion.  The little church often had ministers sent to them by the seminary president because they often had ministers sent elsewhere by the Widespot Women's Club due to Willie's aversion to "preaching that got too far over everybody's heads".  Bobby and Jim Bob Johnson had jointly come to the conclusion that her real aversion was to preaching that got too deep in the Bible.  Bobby was not a supporter of his wife's positions.  However, his wife was the primary support of their family since her father had once made a living buying, selling, and converting anything his hands found available into money.  Willie owned the Wilson home.  She owned the building in which the Widespot post office resided, and her father had donated the land on which the church sat.  Bobby knew better than to argue with Willie.  Tom Price had come to Wide Spot under the same circumstances as Marion Shirley since the seminary president also sometimes referred him to churches on a temporary basis.  Tom had come to Widespot with knowledge of the church structure statewide and a general knowledge that no minister had stayed in Widespot long who ever amounted to much later in life.  Tom had come to the church just as he had gone to many churches armed with his Bible, an extensive knowledge of its contents, and a lifetime of experience in both ministry and the world.  

Tom preached a sermon that first morning based on a short story from Tolstoy and a Biblical text.  He also had an extensive knowledge of literature.  The sermon had called for Christian action, love for the down trodden, and awareness of one's own shortcomings.  Willie had stated after she gave Tom the little check from the church, "Can you believe that man preached a sermon about a story some Russian wrote?"  On his way to his car, Tom Price smiled to himself and thought, "That was not the favorite sermon some of those people ever heard.  But thank the Lord, they heard the truth."  

On his first Sunday in Widespot, Marion Shirley had preached, or more accurately, mumbled and stuttered his way through a brief attempt to explain why he thought he should become a minister.  He had no Biblical text, organization, or conclusion.  It pleased Willie Wilson greatly.  As she handed the quaking young man the check, she gushed praise for him, saying, "That was so nice Marion.  You are going to make a fine minister.  The church needs more dedicated young men like you to preach the gospel."  Marion had limped to his car thinking, "Why on God's green earth did I ever think I could be a preacher?"  For the first time in his life, he had come to an accurate assessment of himself.  Willie Wilson had not.  

The minister who  had been serving the Widespot Community Church at the time of the first visits by Shirley Marion and Tom Price had returned from his vacation in Myrtle Beach to inform the church that another opportunity had been offered to him during his trip and he must resign.  The opportunity had been in the form of the bikini clad daughter of a Georgia peanut farmer but the minister did not inform Willie Wilson or the church of that in his resignation.  Instead, he simply stated, "I must leave within sixty days to pursue a career in agriculture in Georgia.  I may also minister to a small flock there as well."  He made no mention of  the ministration he had in mind or the fact that they would be on the peanut farmer's daughter.  She had assured the fellow "Daddy will take care of us and you can take care of me."  Like many of Willie Wilson's former ministers he had found his natural calling.   

The resignation had left a job to be filled and for two months the seminary president had sent a different seminary student or retired minister to Widespot each to preach while the church board reached  a decision about which they wished to hire.  The only two who applied for the job were Marion Shirley and Tom Price.  Each was called back to preach one additional sermon prior to the meeting of the church board.  Marion Shirley had blundered his way through an essay he had snitched from Reader's Digest about finding satisfaction.  Tom Price had preached eloquently and well on a text from the New Testament with the title "Do You Know A Prostitute?  Jesus Did!"   Tom Price's sermon caught the hearts of Bobby Wilson and Jim Bob Johnson.  Uncle Bert Small said he found the sermon interesting, "but I just ain't that interested in it at my age."  Marion Shirley's blundering ineptitude and apparent malleability caught Willie's heart.  She made the final decision of the church board with her hands deep in her biscuit dough.  

Immediately after bringing the meeting of the church board to order, Willie Wilson stated to the group, "As you all know, we are here today to decide which minister we are going to hire for the church.  We had two applicants, that wonderful young man of the cloth, Marion Shirley, and the old man from over in the flat land who preached about that communist writer when he was here.  None of the women, including Willie, remembered, or wished to, that the sermon had been about nothing remotely related to communism.  But Willie knew that since the story on which it was based had been by Tolstoy she could easily hang Independent Price from the yardarm which Tolstoy's words had created.  The restless squirmings and unhappy mutterings of her minions told Willie instantly that she had chosen the correct method of getting her way.  

After assessing the mood of her club members, Willie went on.  "We have all seen the applications, (She did not know the word resume.) and it is obvious to me from the fine work Marion Shirley did in high school that he is going to do fine work at the Bible college and he will be a fine young minister.  Would anybody like to make a motion that we hire one of the applicants?"  There could only be one name placed in nomination.  Willie waited patiently to see which of her underlings would nominate Marion Shirley.  She knew that each of the women wanted to make the nomination but that they also would hesitate for some time in order to avoid the possibility of appearing to seek to take charge.  Finally, Bert Small's half sister, Sally "Sweet" Small, a bitter, venomous old maid who might one day assume Willie's seat at the head of the table were it not for her lack of intelligence and overabundance of bad judgement, leaned forward and said, "I think we should assist the good Lord in doing his work and give that fine young man a chance to preach where we can help him along in a good way."  

Willie smiled and accepted the nomination after it was seconded by Bobby's obese and timid Aunt Birdie Miles.  Then Willie asked, "And would anybody like to make any other nominations?"  Mercifully, she hesitated only briefly before closing the nominations lest one of her club members err by nominating Tom Price.  Then she proceeded by saying, "Well, since we only have one nomination, we don't have to put it to a vote.  We have just made the God directed choice of hiring that eloquent young man Marion Shirley to be our next minister."  Then Willie brought the official meeting to a close by asking, "Birdie, did you bring any of that wonderful German Chocolate Cake today?"  

The meeting broke up quickly and the women served the cake and coffee which had been perking in the kitchen and the conversation turned to grandchildren, spring greens, and ways to keep onions from going to seed.  Then Sally Small asked, "Don't you think we should get that fine young man a welcoming gift before next Sunday? And who is going to tell him he has been hired?"  

Willie gave a Sally a look that left no doubt who would deliver the message and then smiled benignly at the other members of the Widespot Women's Club, "You all can find him some kind of gift with the church money.  But it should be small and we can give it to him after church on Sunday,  I'll call him, as the chairperson, to tell him we have hired him.  I might get him some kind of welcome gift of my own.  But if I do, I'll give it to him when we meet in town to discuss his money and other stuff."  Then she smiled sweetly, contentedly, and thought quietly to herself of that upcoming private conversation with the naive young man.  Then as she helped clean the table of the cake crumbs, she said to no one in particular, "I think I'll bake biscuits in the morning.  I swear I'm craving biscuits."

Author's Note: This story was originally published in "Orpheus Volume VI No. 1 Spring 2004".  Orpheus held first publication rights only.  
Copyrighted by Roger D. Hicks, 2003 & 2015.