The Best Loved Short Stories of Jesse Stuart by Jesse Stuart (review)

NEW APPALACHIAN BOOKS OPINIONS AND REVIEWS Stuart, Jesse. The Best Loved Short Stories of Jesse Stuart. Selected and with Commentary by H. Edward Richardson. Ashland, Kentucky: Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2000. 406 pages. Cloth. $24.00. The position of Jesse Stuart's work in Appalachian literature is a lofty one. Not only has his work been praised by such important critics as former Poet Laureate of the United States Robert Perm Warren, but he has acquired a national reputation as a spokesperson for the people and places of Eastern Kentucky and much of the rest of Appalachia. Stories like "Hair," which was anthologized in The Best Stories, 1937, alongside works by William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter and Ernest Hemingway, and "Split Cherry Tree," which continues to be published regularly in high school and college literature books, attest not only to the aesthetic worth of much of Stuart's fiction, but also to his wide and enduring popularity. Serving as Poet Laureate of Kentucky, Stuart used that position to spread his popularity throughout the Commonwealth, while entertaining the entire nation with novels like The Thread That Runs So True and Tapsfor Private Tussie. Significantly, Stuart's work is accessible to the average citizen not only for entertainment's sake, but also for its power to inspire pride and worth in the everyday lives of the common citizen. For those reasons, to many Kentuckians and to the rest of the nation, Jesse Stuart is synonymous with Kentucky literature, especially since Stuart has in other genres like novels and poetry, written glowingly of his native state and its people. The publication of this collection of his most popular and endearing short stories should do much to enhance the reputation of a writer whose words ring as true today as they did over seventy years ago. The commentary by Stuart biographer H. Edward Richardson provides a wealth of material for the serious scholar and casual reader alike, with quotations drawn from notable scholars regarding Stuart's work, snippets of interviews conducted by Richardson with Stuart and valuable background information on the writing of the stories gathered from Stuart himself and others intimately acquainted with the author. Richardson selected the stories on the basis of the frequency of publication and artistic worth, strategies that work well in assembling a truly stellar representation of Stuart's work. 64 Here contained are memorable and often anthologized pieces like "Land beyond the River," "Men of the Mountains," "Old Op and the Devil," "Love in the Spring," and "Dawn of Remembered Spring," thirty-four stories in all that should satisfy the many avid fans of Jesse Stuart's work. In reviewing these stories, readers will find that Stuart's power as a writer rests on his innate abilities to create memorable characters, tell a good tale and show such enduring humanity in the process. Noted critic and former teacher Donald Davidson once wrote to Stuart in praise of his work that, "all you need to do is let your bucket down an old Kentucky well, and the well never runs dry, and up comes the stuff of life again; [and] plenty of it." One of the most memorable persons in Stuart's fiction is Pa in the widely popular "Split Cherry Tree." With a deft hand, Stuart sketches a character through the use of rich, descriptive details that grant readers instant insight into just who Pa is and what he stands for: Pa stood over in the school yard under a leafless elm, in his sheepskin coat, his big sheepskin coat, his big boots laced in front with buckskin and his heavy socks stuck above his boot tops. His blue work shirt showed at the collar. His big black hat showed his grey-streaked black hair. His face was hard and Weather-tanned to the color of a ripe fodder blade. His hands were big and gnarled like the roots of the elm tree he stood beside. Equally memorable is Grandpa in "AnotherApril," who approaches the spring of his ninetieth year by greeting a terrapin who has spent the last fifteen winters under the smokehouse floor. Uncharacteristically, the creature realizes that Grandpa means no harm and allows the elder to...