"Roger Mary Lee Williams"

MARY LEE SETTLE INTERVIEWS "Roger Mary Lee Williams" Kate Long Exerpted from Kate Long's 2002 radio program on Mary Lee Settle for the West Virginia Public Radio series on West Virginia writers, In Their Own Country, available on CD through the West Virginia Library Commission, at www.intheirowncountry.com. The entire program script can be found at www.librarycommission.lib.wv.us/itoc/materials. ...Kate Long: In her eighties, she's still outspoken andfiesty. Mary Lee Settle: Beware of anybody who thinks they're absolutely right. Because they're damn dangerous. Sometimes I think the greatest gift of God is doubt and questioning. KL: And every year, shefalls more deeply in love. MLS: I have, as a result of all this work, literally fallen in love with democracy. But democracy is not me against you. Democracy is the balance between us. And there's another way of saying it. Voltaire: "I disagree with you, sir, but I defend to the death your right to say it." KL: She was born into a Kanawha County family of considerable social position. But in her writing and life, she has always spoken up for equality and resented exclusion and privilege. MLS: The choice is completely individual and always has been. KL: When Mary Lee talks about her writing, the subject offreedom ofspeech —freedom to disagree—comes up quickly. MLS: You know, why can we sit here and talk now without somebody looking over our shoulder? I've lived in countries where people are talking to me, and suddenly they want to tell me something, and they glance over their shoulder to see if there's a policeman or a listener around. We don't have that. We have had it. ... Recorded history becomes official history. I thought in terms of writing good, honest 83 history, and to give those - you know, when they say, "One and three quarters arrived on such-and-such a day as indentured servants to Virginia in 1774"—I gave them a name! And a world that they did come from. And a place where they did go. And what happened to them. I simply tried to put a human face on American history. I wasn't concerned with what they call historical fiction. I was concerned with the fact that we had had our history censored. And I didn't like that. I wanted to find out what had actually happened. KL: The Beulah Quintet started with a single image that popped into Mary Lee's mind in 1954. MLS: I had a vision. Of course, vision sounds so spooky like angels and stuff. But I tend to get a visual sense which is sensuous and which will start me actually writing. And I saw, in my mind's eye, two men in a drunk tank on a Saturday night. And one man hits the other. ... It was going to be another modern novel. But then I kept wondering why the man hit that man instead of the next man. It was Saturday night, the drunk tank was full. What was behind the fist? What were the prejudices? What was the training in hatred and in distrust? KL: Theguy who punched the other turns out to be an unemployed coal miner who'd gotten drunk in despair. The guy he punched was a grandson ofa US Senator who'd gotten drunk at the country club. Neither man knew it, but their ancestorsfought together in England to overthrow the King, before they came to America MLS: That's right. Their ancestors had started out as companions, and they were blood kin to each other KL: But once they got to America, their kinship gradually had been lost, in more than one way. MLS: Because the land that had once been frontier, where there was this seed of equality, grew into who had money, who didn't, what farmer became master, what farmer became servant. And the social split happened in the valley. ... These people have a past, whoever they are. And I kept going back and back and back and back. It was like following a river upriver, and into a creek, and into a rill, and where...