Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 29, 1993 TAG: 9303290046
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHELLE WILLIAMS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CHATTANOOGA, TENN. LENGTH: Medium
"The South got jerked into contemporary America during the 1960s," said Virginia-born Lee Smith, author of "Oral History" and "The Devil's Dream."
"Our writers no longer have a legitimate tragic sense. The writing is less regional, less gothic. It's more American, homogenized."
But Smith, one of several prominent writers who will speak Friday through Sunday at the Seventh Biennial Chattanooga Conference on Southern Literature, said Southerners' narrative urge will never die.
"For instance, if you go to a strange town and ask a Southerner where the post office is, you'll get a little story about how somebody's cousin got bit by a mad dog on the way to the post office.
"You'll get all kinds of things that you don't want to know, necessarily, but may be fun to know," Smith said. "That's certainly not going to leave us."
Among a dozen other writers slated to attend the event are Shelby Foote, author of "The Civil War: A Narrative," Clyde Edgerton, author of "Walking Across Egypt," and Earnest Gaines, who wrote "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman."
The conference was established in 1981 to bring together writers and readers to explore Southern fiction, drama, history, poetry and criticism.
The event will feature panel discussions, films from the James Agee Film Project, lectures, readings and music, and will be held at the historic Tivoli Theatre and the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga campus.
"These conferences are important because they urge people to turn off the television and pick up a book," Smith said in an interview from her Durham, N.C., home. "They encourage us to value our family stories, our traditions and to understand the places we're from."
A conference highlight happens Friday night when writers in six categories will be honored by the Fellowship of Southern Writers, which will also induct new members.
The organization was formed in 1987 by some of the most respected Southern writers in American Literature including Eudora Welty, Robert Penn Warren, Walker Percy and James Dickey, to promote and recognize writing by young authors.
Smith, who will be inducted to the group and give the banquet's keynote address, said a more mobile society is transforming the region's literature, but doesn't fear it will drift from its roots.
"Writing always reflects its time. It will always be Southern, whatever Southern is at that time.
"The South is still a region of small towns and shutaway places," said Smith, who grew up in Grundy, a rural coal town. "These areas [will continue to] produce idiosyncratic writing."
Smith added that Ken Burns' Civil War series for PBS and the election of Arkansasan Bill Clinton to the White House has rekindled an interest in the South.
"So many of this nation's best writers have been from the South," said Smith, who believes Maya Angelou's poetry reading at Clinton's inauguration potentially inspired people to seek out the works of Welty and William Faulkner.
"[Their writings] have an enormous sense of place, a sense of history, a tragic sense which you don't find anywhere else in a regional body of American literature."
Smith, 48, who has written eight books and teaches literature at North Carolina State University at Raleigh, said she had no preconceived notions about becoming a Southern writer.
"You can't choose what you write. Your voice is just simply given to you and comes out of where you grow up and how you first hear language," Smith said. "Your material chooses you."
by CNB