On regionalism and women’s writing. A conversation with Lee Smith

Revista de Estudios Norteamerica11os, 11.º JI (2006), pp. 117 - 121 ON REGIONALISM AND WOMEN' S WRITING. A CONVERSATION WITH LEE SMITH MARÍA FERNÁNDEZ GüNZÁLEZ Universidad de Santiago de Compostela Lee Marshall Smith has enjoyed a prolific career as a reporter, film critic, news editor, educator, and as an award-wining novelist. An impressive body of work, consisting of ten novels and three collections of short stories published to date, signals Smith as a productive and gifted writer with plenty of good stories to tell. Among her many published novels and short-stories are Oral Histo1y (1983), Family Linen (1985), Fair and Tender Ladies (1988), Me and My Baby View the Eclipse (1990), The Devil's Dream (1992), Saving Grace (1995), The Christmas Letters (1996) and News of the Spirit (1997). Her latest novel, The Last Girls (2002) was a New York Times Best seller as well as a co-winner of th e Southern Book Critics Circle Award. Raised in Grundy, a small town lo cated in the coal-rnining region of southwest Vi rginia, Smith has been widely recognized as one of the first female writers to give an authentic and dignified voice to Appalachia. Her writings are endowed with a strong sense of place. From the marginality of the southwest Virginia mountains, she weaves together history, folklore and legend to explore changes in family, comrnunity, class and culture. Part of Smith's effectiveness as a writer is due to her portrayal of the psychic dislocation of southern women in times of rapid culture change. Under a hurnorous, playful surface, the serious issues of female isolation and identity constitute the core of her work. She examines cultural conventions about the rnale and the female, the public and the private, romance and quest giving voice to communities of women bound together through shared experiences, hardships and triumphs. Certainly, Smith's early experiences shaped her career. Her !ove of a good story began when she was a child, when she would spend her free time Iistening to the tales 118 Mar ía Fernánde: Gm1zá l ez of customers and townsfolk who fr equcnted her father's drugstore . This love of th e spoken world translated into a love of reading, and by t he time she was nine y ear s old, Smith had begun cr ea ting her own stories. In Grundy nobod y had ever doub ted that Lee would grow up to be a famous storyteller, especia ll y not Smith herself, who says she had been «romantically dedicatcd» to th e grand idea of being a writer ever since she could remembe r. Like, Karen, the teen-aged na rrator in her story «To n gucs of Fire» in the short story collection Me a11d My Bab y Vi ew tlz e Eclipse, who Smith says is closest to her autobiographical double, she of ten pic tu red herself «poised at th e foggy edge of a cliff someplace in the South of France, wearing a cape, drawing furiously on a long ci ga rette, hollow-checked and haunted.» Smith has receivcd eight major writing a wa rds, including the Li la Wallace/ R ea ders Digest Award ( 1995-1997), the Robert Pe nn Wa rren Pri ze for Fiction ( I 991 ), and two O. Henry Awards (1979 a nd 1981). The list of honours, awards an d gra nts documenting her literary achievemenrs goes on: Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts & Letters (1999), Weatherford Award fo r Ap palac hi an Literature (1 988), Nonh Carolina Award for Literature (1984), Sir Walter Rale igh Award for two of h er books (1983 and 1989) and th c Lynd hur st Grant (1990-1992). Nurnerous periodicals and anthologies have published her articl es and stories, such as the Southem Revi ew, Re dbook , T he New York Times, and Atlantic, to name a few. Although she has retired from h er teaching post at North Carolina St ate University, Smith shows no signs of slowing down. Rathcr, sh e began her retireme nt by lcading a new generation of writers through th e develo pment of a project published in Novcmbcr, 2000, by Tyron Pr ess of Chapel Hill. And in an effort to pr eserve oral history of her own stomping ground in Grund y, Virginia, she edited a book made up of interviews with th e town's older residents, collected by high school students there. I met Lee Smith on November 18 , 2004 at Weaver Stree t, Cha pel Hil l. Ev en though I had ne vc r met her before, the minute 1 started ta lking to her, l felt like she was an old fri end. No doubt she is a tremendous talent but what most impressed me was h er generosity of spirit. With a warmth and grace sou the rners are often noted for she li stened to me and answered my questions for about an hour and a half. I must say that l couldn't help falling in !ove with the charm of h er voice as much as I did with her female prota go nists. M.F.: Yo u've set a li yo ur novcls in Appalachia. I wonder how the region has developed through the years a nd how the rcst of the South see Appalachia nowadays. SMITH: Oh, that's interesting because the Appalachian region has always be en per ce ived as somehow less th an the South. John Shelton Re ed in his book referred to it as the «South South» in the same way that people in ot her parts of this country l oo k d ow n on the South. People in th e Sou th look down on Appalac hi a because of the Hillbilly image, which is pretty much a media image a nd it has to do with ... M. F.: Stereotypes? 011 r e¡: ionalism w1d Wom en 's Writing. A conversation with Lee Smith 119 SMITH: Yes, with stereotypes and mis concep tions. But still it is very pervasive. And it has to do with ma jo r media and movies s uch as Deliverance about James Dickey's novel Deliverance. But this is not much applicable any more becausc there are certainly parts of Appalachia that are really progressive and really even bccoming quite industrialized. You know, we al i have sc hools, wc all have shoes ... (laughing) M.F.: Ho w do you think that indus trialization and touri sm ha ve affected Appalachia? SMITH: Well, they have opened it up. Industrialization in terms of coa! mining has put a lot of money into the county but it took coa! away from the people that lived there and ultimately destroyed a l ot of the land . Right now in any big part of South West Virginia we have mountain top removal. It's a kind of mining where they 're just taking the tops of the mountains and causing it to flood everywhere. The Appa l achi an re gio n has certainly been opcned up to tour ism now ... it's be en a big deal ! And one thing that se e ms interes ti ng to me about that is that when I was growing up we felt we should be ashamed of the place we carne from, of the way we spoke, of our accent. Even my parents were interested in going away. We didn 't perceivc the Appalachian culture as being a culture. But now many people are getting back to Appalachia and want their children to be raised there. M.F.: Why úo you think outsider.1· are now becoming interested in Appalachian culture? SMITH: Well, 1 think th at many pcople nowadays ar e feeling homogeniz ed . People living in big cities, with a lot of trame and no nature for the kids prefer to return to th e rural, although many have an idealized conception of the mountains. M.F.: Have you ever felt that the label re gional litemture is cons idered as something opposite to the so-callcd grand literature? SMITH: Oh. absolutely (laughing). 1 think regional literature is regiona li zed. It 's con sidered tril e, and man y urban p eo ple have t roub lc reading it be cause they ca nnot under stand thc Appa lachian vernacular. For instancc many pe op le have told me the y found trouble un derstanding Ivy Rowe in Fair and Te nd er Ladies. M.F.: Wh y are y our first novels Saving Gra ce and The Devil '. 1· Dream so concerned with religion? SMITH: Because when 1 was a child I was very dramatic and charismatic. I Joved going to churc h and that everybody spoke in tongues. T also used to read a l ot about ecsta s y, saints and that s tu ff. The chur ch was such a big deal. M.F.: It is still a bi g deal. SMITH: Y es ! (laughing). And it 's a lot about power. 1 wanted to talk abo ut its terrifying s ide . M.F.: What about your female characte rs ? Most of them se em to have sorne trouble with th eir roles as mothers and wives. They are torn bet ween two worlds. SMITH: Yes. Forme the novel that best expresses this idea is B/ack Mountain Breakdmvn where the protagonist gets paralysed. But forme Fair and Tender Ladies 120 María Femánder. Gon z ále z was a kind of a break th rough. lt 's the novel I'm probably most proud of, to gethe r with Oral History. Wi th that book I sought to honour th e memory of so many of the ol der women I ha d known growing up and I think at the e nd lvy Rowe was able to solve the conflic t. She ca rn e to terms with her life and reached spiritual it y. M.F.: F or Ivy Rowe writing was a kind of therapy. Is it for you too? SMITH: Oh, absolutely. J think reading and writing are legitimate ly used as an escape for a ll of us at any time. For me writing is very visceral, and be cau se I havc a storytelling tradition 1 find it necessary. M.F .: In Western tradition we are used to thc idea of the male hero starting a quest for identity; do you think that women ca n perform the sa me journey? SMITH: Well, I don't know any woman that has li ved her life in this lin ea r path. I think that pl ot has not been very honest in dealing with women. M.F. : But what about The Last Girls'! lsn 't that a joumey, a river trip? SMITH: Yes, it's a joum ey but nothing gets resolved and they go back. It' s a circular jo urney and it has to do wi th who you meet along the way. 1 was trying to show in that book that the whole notion of the hero and the journey is not a women 's plot. M.F.: Dealing with artists. You seem to make a clear distinction in yo ur works between the soca lled i nt ellectuals a nd the artists that rnake art of the everyday. Actually you kind of make fun of intellectuals' pretentiousness. SMITH: (laughs) I know 1 do that, but it's so easy! 1 prefer ar li sts th at are connected to the real world. For example I am not the kind of wr iter who's ap ar t from the world. Anyway I'm afraid I'm going to do it again because l'm writing my next novel in the form of a thesis (laughing). M .F .: Really? SMITH: Yes, really. M.F.: What is it about? SMITH: It 's set in North Carolina after the Civil War and it has a lot to do with the aftermath and how upsetting and chaotic life was. It 's about a orphan girl whose family has moved to North Carolina from the Deep So uth and she's writ in g a Diary. Everybody in the l 900's was wr iting a Diary. M.F .: What do you find more interesling, writing or teaching? SMITH: I think teaching is more outgoing because when you are writing you have to think into your self for a long period of time. M.F.: What's your favourite novel? SMITH: Absalom, Absalom by Faulkner and To the Lighthouse by Virginia Wolf. M.F.: Do you have a room of your own like Virginia? SMITH: Well, J do have a study but 1 ca n r ea ll y write anywhere as long as I don't get interrupted. 1 also have a cabin in the mountain. 011 re g ü111ali . m1 a 111i Women 'J Writing. A co11venatio11 willt Le e Smi th 1 21 M.F.: Do you usually write t he ending lines of a novel before you start it like you <li d with Fair mzd Te nder Ladie s'? SMITH: Ye s, I do. M:F: Really? And do you sti ll use ye ll ow pads to make notes? SMI TH : (Laughing) Yes, I 'm afraid 1 sti ll u se the m although the computer saves me a l ot of work. M.F.: Thank you Lee, for your ti me and help. SMITH: Oh, you 're welcome. This has been fun.