Conversation with James Still

JOURNAL Conversation with James Still Frank Edward Bourne A long-time admirer ofJames Still's work, Frank Bourne asked us, not long after Mr. Still's passing in April, 2001, whether we would be interested in his journal accounts of two visits with the writer. Of course, we were. Mr. Bourne's remembrances offer us insight into thefar-ranging mind ofJames Still and ofreaders and journal writers everywhere. (1986) I have had a literary treat. Last month, while traveling east out of Whitesburg, heading towards Hazard and Jackson on Kentucky Route 15, just past Carr Creek, my eye caught a sign that read, "Hindman Settlement School 11 Miles," and an arrow pointing north, down a side road. I quickly turned. James Still, the poet, had said to me during our brief meeting in Knoxville, when he was there to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Lawson McGee Library, "When you are up my way, drop in." Upon entering Hindman, a mountain community of maybe 800, 1 saw the Settlement School, and, next to it, the library, James Still's home base for over fifty years. He is retired now, but he had told me to ask for him at the library, which I did. The librarian phoned the poet for me, and I got on the line. "Mr. Still, do you remember our meeting in Knoxville? Well, here I am." He had just awoken from a nap; could I give him thirty minutes to shower and shave and he would be right down? Of course I could, and I was told to make myself at home. I browsed about the library while I waited, picking up a book or two. The history section was next to the telephone, and I was surprised as I looked at some of the titles. Out of curiosity, I sought out the biography stacks, then the literature and fiction stacks; and I turned with awe and said to the librarian, who had been so helpful to me, "The library is very current, and the selections are remarkable and interesting." She said, "Mr. Still advises us on what volumes to purchase, and he keeps us up to date." James Still, poet, short story writer, novelist, and journal writer, is an Alabamian from the Chattahoochee Valley. He graduated from Lincoln Memorial and Vanderbilt Universities during the Great Depression; and then he landed here at the Hindman Settlement School as librarian, with 26 room and board the payment. He is now eighty, looks fifty, and is very agile and sharp. To discriminating readers, Still has always had a unique niche as an artist of prose and poetry, with an acute ear for the ways of the Kentuckymountains, a specialistinfeeling for an isolated civilization, its values, nuances, and exaggerations and the useful, colorful language that accompanies it. But to the general public, he has just come into his own in the last twenty years. I suspect some of this popularity has to do with his being for a while a regular commentator over National Public Radio's All Things Considered. His books sell well now. It has become common to observe, and I do not know who first expressed the thought, but it goes something like this, that it is a pleasure to get away from New York's idea of Kentucky mountain people as seen through the saccharin and contrived and maudlin prose of Jesse Stuart, and to get to the basics withJames Still. I have a friend here in Knoxville who was raised on Troublesome Creek, and she says emphatically, "Stuart doesn't speak for me. Where does he get that stuff?" James Still has published two novels, several collections of short stories and two volumes ofpoetry. His novel, River ofEarth, is a precious work of art—the story of a poor mountain family during the Depression. His collections of short stories, On Troublesome Creek, Pattern ofMan, and The Runfor the Libertas, are also about mountain people, yet his themes are universal. His collections of poems, Hounds on the Mountain, and Wolfpen Poems are popular, too. What is so special about Still, besides his breadth and depth, is his ear for mountain speech, the distinctive mannerisms and...