Home and Beyond: An Anthology of Kentucky Short Stories

Afterword

CHARLES E. MAY My introduction to Kentucky writers occurred in the summer of 1960, when, after graduating from high school in the small Appalachian town of Paintsville, Kentucky , I received a scholarship to attend Albert Stewart's Writers' Workshop at Morehead State College. Real authors were there-folks like Jane Mayhall, Robert Hazel, and James Still-authors who read and talked about their work, and wonder ofwonders, read my work too. AI Stewart, who later founded the Appalachian Writers' Workshop at the Hindman Settlement School, has been one ofthe strongest supporters ofwriters in the mountains for almost half a century, and I thank him for encouraging my lifelong interest in literature. I still have a copy of a little paperback book he gave me titled Kentucky Writing. In addition to fiction and poetry by Hollis Summers, Billy C. Clark, and Wendell Berry, it also contained the wonderful story by James Still, "The Nest." I thought it was a marvel; I still do. During my undergraduate years at Morehead, I was fortunate enough to take a short story class under Jim Still, who introduced me to Chekhov, Turgenev, and Gogol. I still remember his reading "The Run for the Elbertas," a story that makes the back ofmy neck itch now when I think ofit; you need to read it to understand what I mean. After I left Morehead in 1963 for graduate school at Ohio University, I ran into other Kentucky writers. In a class called "Stylistics," Hollis Summers made me so painfully aware of every word and nuance of syntax I feared I would never be able to write a decent sentence. During my first year ofteaching at OU, my colleagues included David Madden and Walter Tevis. I was awed by Madden, who seemed to be the complete professional, always writing. And after reading Tevis's The Hustler and seeing Paul Newman in the movie role, I wouldn't drink anything except J.T.S. Brown whiskey for a long time. In the thirty-three years I have been teaching English at California State University , Long Beach, I have had fewer occasions to be in contact with Kentucky writers. Occasionally, I taught Robert Penn Warren's classic story "Blackberry Winter " or Bobbie Ann Mason's "Shiloh," or used Hollis Summers's Discussions ofthe Short Story in a class. Once in a while, I would run into Richard Day, who taught up at Humboldt State, and we would have a beer and talk about Kentucky writing. He 392 AfTERWORD sent me a copy of "The Fugitive" just after it appeared in The Kenyon Review, and that wonderful first line still makes me smile every time I read it. Once in a while, my brother Don would send me a book, such as Gurney Norman's Kinfolks: The Wilgus Stories. Maxine's final dream of riding away with Wilgus, headed west, always haunts me. On occasion, I would be asked to write a review ofa new book by Wendell Berry or Chris Offutt. In fact, I had just finished a review ofOffutt's new collection Out ofthe Woot&, when my friend and colleague Morris Grubbs asked me ifl would write the afterword to this collection. My most recent encounter with Kentucky writers came when an old college buddy, Lee Mueller, who covers Eastern Kentucky for The Lexington Herald-Leader, wrote and asked me ifl had read a memoir entitled Creeker by Linda Scott DeRosier, who was born up a holler four or five miles from where I was born. It is a fine, honest account that made me as homesick as soup beans and cornbread. I indulge myself in these homey remarks about my personal familiarity with Kentucky writers because the convention of the afterword seemed to give me permission to do so. Since Morris's preface provides a fine critical and historical context for the stories and Wade Hall's introduction does such an excellent job ofwhetting the reader's appetite, what, I thought, is left for the "words" that follow "after"? Well, to reflect, of course, both personally and professionally on what I have read. So now that I have essayed the personal, I'll assay the professional. First, let me lay my biases out. In my opinion, when it comes to the art of fiction, the short story, when done right, beats the novel every time. I am not the only one to say this ofcourse. Jorge Luis Borges once claimed that, unlike the novel, "a short story may be...