Unsurprisingly, readers committed to Appalachian identity tend to resist the notion that it is not significantly different from a taste for Cheerwine Cola. preconceived.” Billips implies here an intellectual-cum-moral admonition: because readers under the spell of stereotypes fail to see the dynamic reality before them, more astute reading demands a continual effort to root out such preconceptions and to let the text itself communicate its more complex 1 Jon Smith provides a useful discussion of branding as “a more inclusive and hybrid range of participation in ‘imagined communities’ ranging from nations to veterans’ groups to tractor fans to whatever sort of community consumers of a product imagine themselves participating in by buying into it” (109). When Billips refers to a “static, preconceived notion” of Appalachian culture, she marks this tension precisely, for she evidently means “static because. Yet the very sophistication of these responses masks a tension: how can one affirm Appalachian distinctiveness as anything but an expression of personal taste, tribalism, or branding, if in fact Appalachianpeopleandplacesarejustlikepeopleandplaceselsewhere?1 Much of this tension can be traced to the problem of how to recognize and evaluate stereotypes. The most sophisticated of these readers profess not to subscribe, as Martha Billips puts it, to a “static, preconceived notion of Appalachian culture” (“Wild” 28): they also endorse something like Fred Hobson’s claim that in Smith’s work, “the ‘mountain people’ are like other people, no more and no less ‘sweet’ or ‘simple’” (29). Seeking markers of Appalachian or Southern distinctiveness, such readers are often delighted with the granny women, coal miners’ daughters, snake-handling preachers, and irresistible fiddlers who populate Smith’s novels, and with her characteristic affirmation of continuities of place and family in the face of significant social and economic change.
Members of the first group identify themselves as Appalachian or Southern and wish to acclaim Smith as a major Appalachian or Southern writer.
HADDOX University of Tennessee Myth as Therapy in Lee Smith’s Oral History TO JUDGE FROM SCHOLARLY CRITICISM, POPULAR REVIEWS, AND THE responses of my own students, the audience for Lee Smith’s novels consists primarily of two groups with distinct, though often overlapping, commitments. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
0 kommentar(er)
