There is a new Ron Rash novel hitting stores this Tuesday and as one that has enjoyed just about everything the man has published (everything that is in book form), I thought I'd revive some of the older reviews and an interview done with Ron back in 2005.
Eureka Mills – reviewed 3/29/2005
In his first collection of poems, Ron Rash establishes his mission right away with a poem titled Invocation, which sits prior to the six sections of poems the book is broken up into. Invocation is just that, a quiet plea to his grandfather to help the poet tell the story of his grandfather’s life, and to help him do justice to that life. No matter how great a life his grandfather lived, Ron Rash has done it justice with this extremely fine collection.
Each of the sections can be looked at as different parts of his grandfather’s life – living up in the mountains, farming and trying his hand at growing tobacco; working in the mills as a young man; moving down to the foothills once his family has passed on; courting what would end up Rash’s grandmother; his later years at the mill and carousing; and the last years of his life, and the beginning years of his son’s courting and marriage.
Rash’s work is subtle, as how he allows the reader the knowledge that his grandfather cannot read:
He finds a grills, asks for what he’s memorized
In the first poem of the final section, Rash describes his grandfather, father and grandmother going to work:
They pass through the gate where I cannot follow,
except in blood-memory, except in the knowledge
I eat well and I rest on the gift of their labors.
Blood-memory is a big thing in Ron Rash’s poems. There’s very little in these poems that he could have witnessed first hand. If not for paying attention while growing up, listening to the stories, asking questions about photos, and telling stories himself, Rash would not be able to write with such detail.
Rash’s invocation to his grandfather has been answered – he tells his story through these poems and places the reader right there back in the early decades of the 20th century. It’s as if Rash was there working the tobacco with him, walking through those very gates of Eureka Mill years later and seeing the weave, and into the card room and out loading boxcars with him in the yard. You’d swear he was sitting with his grandfather, watching his father court his mother and enjoying their early years together.
He has told his grandfather’s life cycle clearly and in simple straightforward terms. He has done so in a way that his grandfather would have enjoyed hearing.
4 stars.
Among the Believers reviewed 3/21/2005
Ron Rash’s first collection of poems centered on telling the story of his grandfather’s life. In Among the Believers, his second collection, Rash tells the story of the mountains from which his family hails. He tells the story of Appalachia.
His poems grab different spans of time and scenarios and in each, he perfectly captures and describes what it is that makes the western Carolinas unique. There are newlyweds dreaming of flowers blooming in the hands of a dead man, Jones Funeral Home fans, a wife who hung herself from her barn’s highest beam, writing spiders and catamounts (though none officially seen for decades).
There is also, as the title might suggest, a plethora of religion or spirituality. This can be seen in various titles such as: A Preacher Who Takes Up Serpents Laments the Presence of Skeptics in His Church, Sunday Evening at Middlefork Creek Pentecostal Church, Foot Washing, The Language of Canaan, The Afflicted, and The Preacher is called to Testify for the Accused.
There are seven poems where Rash was inspired to write based on his readings of other work such as David Fisher’s Albion’s Seed, and William Trotter’s Bushwackers: The Civil War in North Carolina. From these, he has taken a single line, altered it slightly and then written a poem to get to this alteration.
Even moreso than in his first collection, Rash seems very keen on making sure he uses evenly metered couplets and stanzas in these poems. Most often, he uses seven syllabled lines throughout complete poems. Limiting himself to this tight line structure has seemingly forced Rash to be even more selective with his word choice – frequently ending lines on syllables that push the reader towards the next line.
The collection is much larger in scope than Rash’s first collection, but he is more than up to the challenge, moving from topic to topic and era to era with ease and pulling the reader to each with interest. As well written and interesting as Rash’s Eureka Mill was, Among the Believers tops it both in story and skill.
4.5 stars
Raising the Dead reviewed 4/3/2005
There is a lot going on in this, Ron Rash’s third, collection of poetry. It is broken up into five sections. Each section has ten poems, and then one more written all in italics. Each of the first poems from each section has something to do with water.
The sections have a pattern to them – the first and last sections are about the Jocasse Valley. The very first poem in fact, begins after the flooding of the valley discussed so often in Rash’s novel, One Foot in Eden. Members of a congregation float above their old church and light a candle.
The second and forth sections deal with life and death – the development and destruction of families and communities, and the middle section has just under a dozen poems that all track the life of the narrator’s cousin. Beginning with fishing with him for speckled trout to the gruesome scenes in At Reid Hartley’s Junkyard:
. My aunt
gets in, stares through glass her son
looked through the last time he knew
the world, as though believing
like others who come here she
might see something to carry
from this wreckage, as I will
when I look past my aunt’s ruined
Sunday dress, torn stocking, find
Her right foot pressed to the brake.
Rash works the seven syllable lines even harder than in the past and reading this snippet above you can see just how strong it makes his images. The lines frequently end with a syllable that pushes you to the beginning of the next line – making it easy to make sure you finish reading all of his work.
This is one of those rare collections of poetry that I flipped back to the front when I finished, and began reading it a second time right away to make sure it was really that good, and that I didn’t miss anything.
5 stars
The night the new jesus fell to earth reviewed 4/1/2005
In this debut collection, of which five of the ten stories had previously been published, Ron Rash establishes himself as a chronicler of Cliffside, North Carolina. This little town is home to cotton mills, churches, graveyards, and a few remaining small farms.
Rash tells the story of the town with the help of three narrators – Randy, Vincent and Tracy, each dipping back into their childhoods with tales, as well as coming right up to the present in other stories. Using the three different narrators, Rash allows the reader to get a more thorough view of the town.
Cliffside, North Carolina is a mill town, and there are enough references to farms or farming pasts in the families, to understand the evolution of the area. Families that used to make their dime farming, raising tobacco or cabbage, or chickens, now work in the mills, having moved from family land higher in the mountains down to the town of Cliffside.
Looking back at the book once complete, the stories of Vincent and Traey found me paying more attention to them – Vincent telling stories from his youth, give an idea of what Cliffside may have looked like a decade or two ago. His family stood out at his father was neither a mill worker, nor a farmer. He instead taught art at a nearby college. His father helped him when he was a young boy capturing and keeping snakes, and made sure he always had a nickel for the ice slush man (who was also the local bootlegger).
Tracy’s stories paid more attention to the last five to ten years of Cliffside’s existence. She was the local carpenter, having taken over for her father, her mother having died when she was nine. They also do the reader the favor of bringing her ex-husband Larry, the local used-car salesman, into the picture. In the title story, Larry has come up with the idea to bring the shine back to their local church, a life-sized crucifixion scene, with both himself as Jesus, and a barn sized sign stating the scene was being paid for by his used car lot.
While there are bootleggers, used car salesman, female carpenters, art teachers, etc. throughout the stories, Rash does not ever use them to create any type of mockery – it is clear that the folks he is writing about share many traits with those people in his life that he loves. That’s not to say Rash doesn’t drop in a funny line here or there – not at all. From “Redfish, Possums, and the New South,” a story in which two men decide to start a Possum farm and convince those in New York that it’s the new eating trend, comes a line from Randy when they are out a bit after midnight looking for their first (live) possum:
I’m thinking there can’t be anything stupider than a possum. Then I think about
what time it is and what I’m doing, and I reconsider.
These are stories to sit back and enjoy, to look at in terms of seeing how people deal with each other and themselves, and to enjoy the fictional development of a small community. Rash has done a great job with his debut, and only leaves his readers wondering when the next book might be ready.
4 stars.
One Foot in Eden reviewed 4/3/2005
It’s difficult to believe that this is Ron Rash’s first novel. It’s a marvelous book written in five sections, narrated by five different individuals. Set in the 1950’s, the landscape is mostly the Jocasse Valley, but the story also dips occasionally into Seneca, the city at the bottom of the hills Jocasse covers.
The story covers the murder of Holland Winchester, a veteran recently return from the Korean War. The first section is told by “The High Sheriff” Will Alexander. Will originally hailed from the valley, but his football skills took him to Clemson University until he blew out a knee. Marrying seemingly above himself, he ended up moving to Seneca and moving up within the department of law enforcement. This section involves his going up to the valley, with his deputy Bobby, at the call of Holland’s mother, who heard gunshots and her boy hadn’t come home for dinner.
The second section is told by Billy Holcombe, owner of the farm next to the Winchesters. Seems it was common knowledge that Holland and his wife Amy were fooling around. Amy herself tells the third section, and it is the Holcombe’s son that tells the fourth. They all leave it to Deputy Bobby to tell the final short section on his own.
Rash gives his readers many stories within this novel. There is the standard mystery novel within these pages. Did Billy Holcombe actually kill Holland and if so, what in the hell did he do with the body? There is also the story of life. Two different couples within this novel are unable to have children. The sheriff and his wife, Janice, cannot because of an earlier miscarriage. Billy and Amy cannot because of Billy’s completely inactive sperm.
Death is also constantly lurking throughout this book. Besides Holland Winchester, there is also the Holcombe horse, and an old woman who claims to have medicinal abilities, and in fact mid-wifed most of the babies born to the Jocasse Valley. This doesn’t even get into the symbolic eventual deaths of the marriages noted earlier. Lastly, and mentioned maybe even more often than the death of Holland, is the fact that Carolina Power and Electricity has bought most of the land in the Valley, and has made plans to flood it by the end of the year, creating a large man-made lake to serve as a power conducting reservoir. This looms in the background of every action and conversation up on that mountain, especially those between Will Alexander and his father and brother, who still farm the land.
Rash takes his abilities in poetry and short fiction and uses them in writing this debut novel. There is no fat at all within these 214 pages. Every word, every comment, every conversation within the book is necessary to get the reader to see, to believe and to think about what Rash wants them to. As a future reader, you will enjoy trying to figure out what happened to Holland and why. You’ll suffer with the Valley residents as they tried to squeeze one more year of farming out of their land. You’ll ride out on that man-made lake with Detective Bobby in that last section and peer down the clear water with him, to the driveway of the Holcombe house, looking at the home and half worrying you’ll see the door open and Amy step out. Rash has laid his story out that clearly.
5 stars
Saints in the River reviewed 4/3/2005
With Saints in the River, Rash returns somewhat to a scenario he used in his earlier novel, One Foot in Eden. That’s to say, he has a narrator of his story, come back from the bigger city, to his or her original smaller town origins, to try to help out with a story.
Where One Foot in Eden had the local sheriff come back from town to the mountains, this time around the narrator is a women, Maggie, and the difference in size and modernity of the two towns is greater than that of the earlier novel.
Maggie is a photographer, sent to cover the story of a young girl, whose dead body is trapped underneath the water in the Tamassee River near Tamassee, SC. Her parents want her body to be rescued, and certain folks from the area don’t want that to be allowed.
The story involves Maggie having feelings for the reporter she is sent out to cover the story with, her having had feelings for Luke, the river rat who leads white water rafting tours on the Tamassee, but also is a staunch environmentalist, leading the charge on the river’s behalf that no efforts be made to clear the river of that body unless they be done without any structural damage to the river.
There are different factions within the folks from Tamassee, the girl’s father is developed wonderfully by Rash – under any other circumstance you’d love to slug the guy and walk away, but because it’s his daughter’s body you’re reading about, you hesitate.
The book flies by in one sitting, and by that time you feel that you have known most of these characters for the forty or so years they’ve been around. The main story itself is enough to sustain this novel, but Rash went ahead and tossed in a few side stories in that all work on their own, just to make this novel a must read. He succeeded.
4.5 stars
An Interview with Ron Rash -- This is the only interview I’ve done by phone and not by emailing back and forth. The phone call was made on 3/29/2005
The following is an interview with Ron Rash, author of two short story collections, three poetry collections, a children’s book and two novels. Ron is the current John Parris Chair in Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University. His story “Speckled Trout,” which was published in Kenyon Review last year, won an O. Henry Award.
Dan:
Hello Ron. Thanks for taking some time out of your schedule to do this interview.
Ron:
Happy to do it, and to be a part of your network.
Dan:
Before we get into the questions about your writing, I understand you were quite the long distance runner in your younger years. I’ve been told you might even have held a pretty substantial record in the 800.
Ron:
I don’t know about substantial. I did run the 800 in high school and college and did pretty well. My best time was a 1:53. Why I think the question is relevant though is that I think running was great preparation for being a writer: getting up early each morning, working out alone. You have to have self-discipline to be a good runner and you need to have that same self-discipline towards writing and reading.
Dan:
What sort of studying did you do to prepare yourself to be a writer? How important do you think being well-read, both in terms of classics and contemporary writing, is to being a good writer?
Ron:
I have a BA and an MA in English. I’m one of the few writers of my generation without an MFA. I believe, for me at least, the straight MA was more valuable. That deep immersion into great literature was what I needed in my early twenties. I feel especially fortunate to get an MA before the theorists took over - to have been able to read the actual literature and not read “theory.”
I believe deep, intense reading is crucial to being a good writer. Every good writer I know is a voracious reader, both in the classics and in contemporary fiction. I think you need to know where fiction has been and where it is going. I worry that MFA programs don’t always have enough emphasis on reading, particularly works that are not recent.
Dan:
You are currently the John Parris Chair in Appalachian Studies at WCU. What duties does that hold for you?
Ron:
I teach Appalachian Literature and Creative Writing. Each month I co-sponsor a program that features some aspect of Appalachian Culture. The program is not only for faculty and students but also for the surrounding community.
Dan:
You are frequently described as an Appalachian writer. What does that mean to you when you read it or hear it?
Ron:
I am very proud of my Appalachian heritage, which goes back over 250 years on both sides of my family. I’m always wary, though, of adjectives before the word writer, as they can be seen as limiting, as in “just” an Appalachian writer. All writing that matters must transcend its place of origin. I love Eudora Welty’s quote, “One place understood helps us understand all other places better.” My writing is intensely Appalachian, in landscape, the way people speak. Ultimately, however, the writing must connect to readers outside the region as well as in.
Dan:
Something that is very apparent from reading your work, in all forms, is how important it is to you to remember prior generations. Is that something you believe to be a personal belief for you, or does it come more from a regional belief?
Ron:
Probably both. Appalachian people have a tendency to honor their ancestors, but I’m also specifically grateful for what my parents and grandparents gave me, particularly their sacrifices.
Dan:
Your first collection of poems, Eureka Mill, has a poem, Invocation, where you are basically asking your grandfather, a man who couldn’t read or write, to help you put the words on the paper. How was your grandfather instrumental in your becoming a writer?
Ron:
Well, I’ve written an essay about this that is posted on my agent’s website. When I was five years old, I gave my grandfather a copy of The Cat in the Hat. He opened it up and made up a story for me. Around a week later, I gave it to him again, and he made up another story. Words became magical to me at that moment - they had an ability to transmogrify on the page. Later, knowing he couldn’t read or write made writing even more important. I developed a feeling of obligation to tell his story as well as my own as he couldn’t write it himself.
Dan:
Your poetry is often written in a very tight, seven syllable per line, format. Is there a specific reason you’ve chosen to go this route so often?
Ron:
My Welsh ancestry. Traditional Welsh poetry is syllabic and often uses seven syllable lines. My poetry uses a lot of devices of traditional Welsh poetry, particularly assonance and consonance within the line. A big influence on my work is Hopkins.
I’m primarily a narrative poet, leaving me the potential danger of having my poems be merely chopped up prose. The short lines have been helpful in making my poems more intense; the short line makes me work harder to find the right words to avoid being prosy, particularly because I try to make something interesting in each line happen as far as sound..
Dan:
When you sit down to begin something new, do you know right away that what you are going to write is a poem, or story, or novel? How often do you start something as a poem and shift it to a story, or vice versa?
Ron:
I don’t always know. Very often I shift. One Foot in Eden started off as a poem, then moved to a short story and eventually became a novel. Saints in the River went through the same progression. Sometimes I have a short story turn into a poem. I usually start with images, and where the images will lead me I often don’t know.
Dan:
I know your last published book was the novel Saints in the River, and you’re currently working on another novel. Are you still writing stories and poems on a regular basis? Do you only write them in between writing novels, or if you get a great story or poem idea, can you take a break from your novel and work on that?
Ron:
I’ve been primarily writing novels for the past five years, and not many poems or stories. Occasionally I do though. I find that novels are so consuming that it’s hard to write about anything else. Novels are always with you and they block out anything else. Sometimes, between drafts, I might be able to write a few poems.
I find writing poems and fiction to be similar to listening to AM or FM. They are nothing like each other to me – it’s like listening to a completely different frequency.
Dan:
Your first story collection, The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth, sets the stories in town, away from the mountains that so much of your work is set. Was this a conscious effort on your behalf to separate yourself from the mountains? Or perhaps a need to get these stories out of the way so you could get back to the mountains?
Ron:
The latter. I spent a lot of time up with my grandmother in the higher mountains, but I grew up in the foothills. I had to write first about the foothills so that I could move my writing into the world that was ultimately my subject matter.
Dan:
Your first novel, One Foot in Eden, won the Novello Festival Press’s Novello Literary Award, which is how it came to be published. As accomplished as a novel as this is, I find it hard to believe it took winning an award to get it published. Had you sent it out to many publishers before this?
Ron:
Yes. It was out there a while and a number of rejections were because I used multiple narratives. Ironically, many reviewers and readers have told me that’s exactly what they like about it. One nationally known publisher told me they’d take the novel with a single narrator, but I just couldn’t make that change; that would destroy what I was trying to do with the book. Another irony, several of the publishing houses that turned down the hardcover were in on the bidding for the paperback.
Dan:
Water. It is everywhere in your work, seemingly a symbol of both life and death. Where did this fascination with water come from?
Ron:
Well, I’m a Southern Baptist so I believe in total immersion. Seriously though, I think growing up in an agrarian culture, you’re aware of the way a rain in August can save a crop or how a heavy storm in the spring can destroy one.
Water is such a potent symbol: destruction/resurrection - life and death - and it plays a large part in my novels. In Welsh folklore, water is a conduit between the living and the dead - to the other world. This Celtic belief plays a big role in Saints in the River.
Dan:
You have won your fair share of awards – the Academy of American Poets Prize in 1986, General Electric Foundation Younger Writers Award back in 1987, an NEA Poetry Fellowship in 1994, the Sherwood Anderson Prize in 1996, the Appalachian Book of the Year (One Foot in Eden) and last year, the story you had published in the Kenyon Review was named an O’Henry Award winner. How important are such prizes to a writer as he/she is developing his/her career?
Ron:
They’re always welcome. Pats on the back are good. It’s nice to know that somebody’s out there reading the work and appreciating it. However, you still have to get up the next morning and battle the blank page to try and get the words right.
Dan:
What led to your writing the children’s book, The Shark Tooth? How much different was the process than in writing any of your other work?
Ron:
I have a neighbor who kept after me - she wanted to publish a children’s book. She had an illustrator and continued to ask me to write it. I finally relented, telling her I’d give it one day and whatever I came up with I’d give her. I took a Saturday, 8 hours, and what got published is what I came up with. It was a very different experience than my other writing.
Dan:
What was like having a Ron Rash Day at Emory & Henry College in 2004? Having a day dedicated to your writing and an entire issue of their literary journal, The Iron Mountain Review, dedicated to you?
Ron:
A real honor. Because so many of my friends were there to share the day. It meant a lot to me.
It was also important as many previous winners were some of my favorite writers: Lee Smith, Robert Morgan and James Still.
Dan:
Have you seen Ted Kooser’s The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets? What do you think about his using your work, with your seven syllable lines, as a wonderful example of form, not to mention the near raving he did about your work?
Ron:
I was honored. Kooser’s a writer I greatly admire and have for over a decade. He’s a wonderful choice for Poet Laureate. He writes with such clarity and precision, both that book, and in his poetry. It’s nice to be reminded that significant and excellent poetry can be accessible.
Dan:
There seems to be a pretty stock Ron Rash photo. It’s mostly a head shot, but drops down enough to allow the viewer to see a flannel shirt. You aren’t exactly clean shaven and almost appear to be sitting on a porch bench or rocker. It this the real Ron Rash, or is there a bit of making the writer fit his stories involved in this?
Ron:
I showed this question to my daughter and she wanted me to tell you it’s the real Ron Rash.
Dan:
I see that you’ve also done some reviewing, at least a couple of times for the South Carolina Review if nowhere else. Is this something you enjoy doing?
Ron:
Usually I have to be coerced into doing reviews, but I do think it’s important to occasionally do reviews because it gives me a chance to praise a worthwhile book.
Dan:
Speaking of reviewing, just how good is Tommy Hays new novel?
Ron:
I think it’s exceptional. What makes it exceptional is that Tommy takes the most depressing of topics - a man losing his wife to Alzheimer’s - and makes it a life affirming book. That is quite an accomplishment.
Dan:
As one who began his publishing career with many poems and short stories, I’m sure literary journals were very important to your getting your work out there for people to read. What journals are your favorites and why?
Ron:
The journals were very important in getting me a readership, not just the attention of readers and other writers. Shenandoah is really good, as are Kenyon Review and Southern Review, and Chattahoochie Review, and Poetry. The reason I like the journals is that there is always have something excellent in them, which means they have exceptional editors. I’m rarely disappointed by what’s in these journals. I don’t often ask myself, as I often do when I read The American Poetry Review or The New Yorker, why on earth would someone publish this crap.
Dan:
Lastly Ron, if you were a character in “Fahrenheit 451,” what work(s) would you memorize for posterity?
Ron:
I’d say Hamlet by Shakespeare. I have no doubt he’s our language’s greatest writer. If I were choosing a work by a living American, it would have to be Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.
Dan:
I thank you again sir for taking so much time away from you daily schedule. I appreciate it greatly and cannot wait for that novel coming in 2006.
Ron:
Thank you Dan, I appreciate your taking an interest in my work.
Serena by Ron Rash
2008 Ecco 384 pages
Review copy supplied by Ecco at the suggestion of the author
I was fortunte enough to a) have the author make sure I was on the review copy list and b) be asked by Charles McNair of Paste Magazine if I'd take a shot at reviewing Serena (see what happens when you've read and reviewed all nine of an author's previous books, including his book for children?). I read this one was read straight through on the way down to Murray State University in Kentucky (many thanks again to Aaron Burch and Matt Bell, personal drivers for the weekend!). I couldn't tell you a thing about the first half of the drive there - what the weather was like, what we listened to, what Matt and Aaron were talking about, etc. Rash is an author that I've obviously enjoyed in the past but I think Serena is his best work yet. He's given his readers an incredible protagonist, an extremely tough-minded woman (Serena Pembleton) in a fantastic setting (1930's North Carolina timberlands) and pushes her and her husband (George Pembleton) to extreme limits. As in most of Rash's writings, there is a nice mix of violence and beauty, and the language with which he serves both is lush.
5 stars
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