In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

BOBBIE ANN MASON Born in 1940, Bobbie Ann Mason grew up on a dairy farm near Mayfield, Kentucky . At age fourteen, she served as national fan-club president ofThe Hilltoppers, a popular musical group founded at Western Kentucky State College in Bowling Green. After earning her bachelor's in English from the University of Kentucky in 1962, she moved to NewYork City, where she wrote for television and movie celebrity magazines. The following year she entered the State University of New York at Binghamton, where she earned a master's in English. In 1966 she entered the doctoral program at the University of Connecticut, eventually earning her Ph.D. in literature with a dissertation on Vladimir Nabokov's novel Ada. She then taught at what is now Mansfield University in Pennsylvania until 1979, when she left the teaching profession to devote full time to writing fiction. She and her husband, Roger Rawlings, have lived in Kentucky since 1990. Mason's "Shiloh," which appeared in the New Yorker in 1980, is one of the most frequently anthologized stories ofthe last two decades. Her collections include Shiloh and Other Stories (1982), which won the PEN/Hemingway Award for best first book of fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the American Book Award, and the PEN/Faulkner Award; Love Life (1989); and Midnight Magic: Selected Stories (1998). Her other books to date include two literary /cultural studies, Nabokov's Garden (1974) and The Girl Sleuth (1975); three novels, In Country (1985), Spence+ Lila (1988), and Feather Crowns (1993); and a Pulitzer-nominated memoir, Clear Springs: A Family Story (1999). The central story in Shiloh and Other Stories, "Residents and Transients" portrays a woman's reinvigorated love of her heritage and the complexity and ambiguity of that love. • Since my husband went away to work in Louisville, I have, to my surprise, taken a lover. Stephen went ahead to start his new job and find us a suitable house. I'm to follow later. He works for one of those companies that require frequent transfers, and I agreed to that arrangement in the beginning, but now I do not want to go to Louisville. I do not want to go anywhere. 210 BOBBIE ANN MASON Larry is our dentist. When I saw him in the post office earlier in the summer, I didn't recognize him at first, without his smock and drills. But then we exchanged words-"Hot enoughfor you?" or something like that-and afterward I started to notice his blue Ford Ranger XII passing on the road beyond the fields. We are about the same age, and he grew up in this area, just as I did, but I was away for eight years, pursuing higher learning. I came back to Kentucky three years ago because my parents were in poor health. Now they have moved to Florida, but I have stayed here, wondering why I ever went away. Soon after I returned, I met Stephen, and we were married within a year. He is one of those Yankees who are moving into this region with increasing frequency, a fact which disturbs the native residents. I would not have called Stephen a Yankee. I'm very much an outsider myself, though I've tried to fit in since I've been back. I only say this because I overhear the skeptical and desperate remarks, as though the town were being invaded. The schoolchildren are saying "you guys" now and smoking dope. I can imagine a classroom ofbashful country hicks, listening to some new kid blithely talking in a Northern brogue about his year in Europe. Such influences are making people jittery. Most people around here would rather die than leave town, but there are a few here who think Churchill Downs in Louisville would be the grandest place in the world to be. They are dreamers, I could tell them. "I can't imagine living on a street again," I said to my husband. I complained for weeks about living with houses within view. I need cornfields. When my parents left for Florida, Stephen and I moved into their old farmhouse, to take care ofit for them. I love its stateliness, the way it rises up from the fields like a patch ofmutant jimsonweeds. I'm fond ofthe old white wood siding, the sagging outbuildings. But the house will be sold this winter, after the corn is picked, and by then I will have to...

Share