An American Vein
Critical Readings in Appalachian Literature

Edited by Danny L. Miller, Sharon Hatfield, and Gurney Norman

An American Vein: Critical Readings in Appalachian Literature is an anthology of literary criticism of Appalachian novelists, poets, and playwrights. This book is a resource for those who teach and read Appalachian literature.

“An American Vein succeeds where many southern scholarly studies fail, by considering the work of (Lee) Smith, (Fred) Chappell, and a host of other writers, living and dead, as embodiments of the mountain cultures that produced them.... The book's content is highly varied, rich, and sturdy.”

The Sewanee Review

“It‘s not often that a collection of literary criticism this solid, comprehensive, and comprehensible appears.”

Journal of Appalachian Studies

“From Cratis Williams’ classic study The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction to contemporary scholarship on ecocriticism, this impressive collection of essays provides an important, though too long neglected, part of American literary history. This book effectively gives Appalachian literature the serious attention it deserves.”

Sandra L. Ballard, editor of Appalachian Journal and Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia

“The overall thrust of the anthology is to present Appalachian literature afresh, and to point out its centrality to American literature as a whole while establishing it as a legitimate regional literature. The editors acknowledge that no single work can accomplish all this, but An American Vein is a strong beginning and an excellent introduction to an underappreciated vein of literature.”

Rocky Mountain Review

The blossoming of Appalachian studies began some thirty years ago. Thousands of young people from the hills have since been made aware of their region's rich literary tradition through high school and college courses. An entire generation has discovered that their own landscapes, families, and communities had been truthfully portrayed by writers whose background was similar to their own.

An American Vein: Critical Readings in Appalachian Literature is an anthology of literary criticism of Appalachian novelists, poets, and playwrights. The book reprises critical writing of influential authors such as Joyce Carol Oates, Cratis Williams, and Jim Wayne Miller. It introduces new writing by Rodger Cunningham, Elizabeth Engelhardt, and others.

Many writers from the mountains have found success and acclaim outside the region, but the region itself as a thriving center of literary creativity has not been widely appreciated. The editors of An American Vein have remedied this, producing the first general collection of Appalachian literary criticism. This book is a resource for those who teach and read Appalachian literature. What's more, it holds the promise of introducing new readers, nationally and internationally, to Appalachian literature and its relevance to our times.

Danny L. Miller is the chair of the Department of Literature and Language at Northern Kentucky University. He is the author of Wingless Flights: Appalachian Women in Fiction.

Sharon Hatfield is an award-winning journalist and nonfiction writer. Her interest in Appalachian letters and history led to her writing Never Seen the Moon: The Trials of Edith Maxwell and coediting An American Vein: Critical Readings in Appalachian Literature. She lives in Athens, Ohio, with her husband.

Gurney Norman is a novelist and short story writer whose works include Kinfolks: The Wilgus Stories and Divine Right’s Trip. He is the director of the creative writing program at the University of Kentucky and coeditor of Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes.

Preface
Introduction
1: New Directions: Folk or Hillbilly?
Cratis D. Williams
2: Appalachian Literature at Home in This World
Jim Wayne Miller
3: Jesse Stuart and James Still: Mountain Regionalists
Dayton Kohler
4: The Changing Poetic Canon: The Case of Jesse Stuart and Ezra Pound
Charles H. Daughaday
5: James Still’s Poetry: “The Journey a Worldly Wonder”
Jeff Daniel Marion
6: On Harriette Arnow's The Dollmaker
Joyce Carol Oates
7: The Christian and the Classic in The Dollmaker
Barbara Hill Rigney
8: Social Criticism in the Works of Wilma Dykeman
Oliver King Jones III
9: Casting a Long Shadow: The Tall Woman
Patricia Gantt
10: O Beulah Land: The “Yaller Vision” of Jeremiah Catlett
Jane Gentry Vance
11: The Beulah/Canona Connection: Mary Lee Settle’s Autobiographies
Nancy Carol Joyner
12: The Appalachian Homeplace as Oneiric House in Jim Wayne Miller’s The Mountains Have Come Closer
Don Johnson
13: The Mechanical Metaphor: Machine and Tool Images in The Mountains Have Come Closer
Ricky Cox
14: Kin and Kindness in Gurney Norman’s Kinfolks: The Wilgus Stories
Danny L. Miller
15: “The Primal Ground of Life”: The Integration of Traditional and Countercultural Values in the Work of Gurney Norman
Timothy J. Dunn
16: John Ehle and Appalachian Fiction
Leslie Banner
17: The Power of Language in Lee Smith's Oral History
Corinne Dale
18: A New, Authoritative Voice: Fair and Tender Ladies
Dorothy Combs Hill
19: “Where’s Love?”: The Overheard Quest in the Stories of Jo Carson
Robert J. Higgs
20: Family Journeys in Jo Carson’s Daytrips
Anita J. Turpin
21: Points of Kinship: Community and Allusion in Fred Chappell’s Midquest
John Lang
22: Fred Chappell’s Urn of Memory: I Am One of You Forever
Hilbert Campbell
23: Coming Out from Under Calvinism: Religious Motifs in Robert Morgan’s Poetry
John Lang
24: Robert Morgan’s Mountain Voice and Lucid Prose
Cecelia Conway
25. Class and Identity in Denise Giardina’s Storming Heaven
Terry Easton
26: Cormac McCarthy: Restless Seekers
John G. Cawelti
27. Claiming a Literary Space: The Affrilachian Poets
Theresa L. Burriss
28: Nature-Loving Souls and Appalachian Mountains: The Promise of Feminist Ecocriticism
Elizabeth Engelhardt
29: The Wolves of Egypt: John Crowley’s Appalachians
Rodger Cunningham
Supplemental Notes on Authors
Contributors
Index