JAMES STILL

by Catherine Allameh

Born in 1906, James Still remains a pioneer in Appalachian literature. Although born in Lafayette, Alabama, and educated in Tennessee and Illinois, Still has called Hindman, Kentucky, home since 1932. The mountains of Knott County made such an impression on Still that he began to write about the Kentucky landscape and Appalachian people. His ability to paint a vivid and touching portrait of life in Kentucky has made Still a famous Appalachian author, not by birth but by heart and spirit.

As described in an interview with Shirley Williams sixteen years ago, James Still is "slightly overweight and covers his baldness with a hat most of the time when he is outdoors" (24). His shyness often combines with his sense of mischief to create an unpredictable personality. Williams reveals that "if Still thinks you've got his number, he will deliberately do something to convince you that you're wrong" (24). His unpredictability offers the spice that keeps his works fresh and full of life.

As a child, James Still lived an incredibly happy life. Still once said to Williams, "Well, we all think we have the most wonderful parents in the world, but I really believe I did" (31). As the sixth child and first boy of nine children, Still grew up with his many brothers and sisters as playmates. Still, however, proved more adventurous than the rest of his siblings. He was the only one to remain unmarried, to move outside the state of Alabama, and to become involved in literature. At the young age of seven, Still decided to become an editor. He wrote his own magazines, filled with aspiring literary creations. This endeavor was the first sign of a bright future in writing. Dreaming that one day his works would be published in a college textbook, Still decided when he was eight that he would become an author. This childhood fantasy came true for Still; not only has he been published in textbooks, but he has had many books and short stories in print.

After graduating from Fairfax High School in Alabama, Still went to Lincoln Memorial University (LMU) in Harrogate, Tennessee. Ironically, Still shared an English class with another famous Kentucky author, Jesse Stuart. At LMU, Still worked in a rock quarry and as the library janitor. Finding LMU classes and instructors boring and uninspiring, Still commented in Wolfpen Notebooks, "The Library was what Lincoln Memorial meant to me. I was saved by it" (14). His exposure to wonderful literature fueled the already spreading creative fire in him.

During the Depression, Still's education at LMU was interrupted at the beginning of his junior year. He had no money to buy clothes or a train fare back to Tennessee and could not find a job to raise the necessary funds. During that year, Still hitch-hiked through several states in the South, sneaking on rail cars and searching for employment. One brief job Still held was picking cotton in hundred-degree temperatures. Finally, a professor at LMU heard of Still's economic hardships and gave him a scholarship through a wealthy sponsor. This same sponsor paid for Still's graduate studies at Vanderbilt University and also at the University of Illinois. In Wolfpen Notebooks, Still wrote, "All my university years, six of them, came through the generosity of others" (16). Obviously, it was well-invested money.

Vanderbilt University proved to be a turning point in Still's life. Still, Jesse Stuart, and Don West, classmates and aspiring authors from LMU, attended Vanderbilt for graduate school. It was there James Still became better acquainted with Don West, who eventually brought him to Knott County, Kentucky. Although West had also attended LMU, the two did not become friends until their Vanderbilt years. In Knott County, Still organized Boy Scout troops and baseball teams while working at the Hindman Settlement School as a volunteer. The school could not pay him regular wages, but provided room, board, and laundry. Working at this job, meeting interesting people, and seeing the Kentucky hillsides proved to be the inspiration for much of his later writing. Still worked in the library and once a week delivered a large box of books on his back to eight surrounding schools. Educating children was always a top priority in Still's life. In a letter Still wrote to John Townsend, he said, "I have always felt that the most important thing for a child to learn is to read well. And how can the child learn to read well if confined only to authorized textbooks?" (1). Although he was never educated in Kentucky, Still has educated many other students in our state, having taught at the Hindman Settlement School and Morehead State College.

After moving to Hindman, Kentucky in 1932, Jim Still saw the people and the landscape that interested him and spurred him on to write about Kentucky. In his Literary History of Kentucky, William Ward writes, "The area Still writes about is Knott County, and the time is just following the coal boom that faded in the mid-1920's and forced the mines to operate on part-time schedules" (224). Still chose to remain in economically depressed Knott County and not travel to a larger city in search of better opportunities. Still loved the beauty of the Kentucky hills and the privacy of his 150-year-old cabin in the woods. The isolated, rustic cabin provided the perfect setting for writing many of Still's most acclaimed works. He wrote Hounds of the Mountains, River of Earth, and On Troublesome Creek all shortly after moving into his secluded cabin.

These successful works and many of his other writings won him several awards, including the O. Henry Memorial Prize for an Appalachian short story, the Southern Authors' Award for River of Earth, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, and the Appalachian Treasure Award. His award-winning short stories were also published in the Best American Short Stories collection, an honor for any author. Still also received two Guggenheim fellowships in 1941 and 1946, and the first Milner Award. Adding to his long list of recognitions is the most recent award, the University of Kentucky Library's Medallion for Intellectual Excellence. Along with the University of Kentucky's award, Still also won the Weatherford Award from Berea College. This prize goes to the publication that "best illuminates the problems, personalities and unique qualities of the Appalachian South" (Williams 23). Indicating the priorities in Still's life, the money he received from the Weatherford Award "has been invested and will go toward the education of a child" (Williams 25). Still's love of children is one trait that enhances his human qualities as an author; the characteristics that are so prevalent in him are the same features that he creates in his award-winning and attention-grabbing characters.

A consummate stylist, Still creates his masterpieces through the use of dialect, characterization, and narration. Still's forte is arguably his dialect usage although some critics believe that character creation is his strong point. More likely, his talent is a combination of the two. The characters in Still's books are common Appalachian people; he adds their strong sense of pride, compassion, and humility when weaving his tales. One example of such characters is in his novel, River of Earth, often considered his best work. The Baldridge family perfectly illustrates Still's gift of character creation. The Baldridges are a poor coal-mining family, travelling to various coal camps looking for work. Their human aspects of unemployment, frustration, and poverty are combined with the love the family feels for each other and the overpowering strength that bonds them together. The realistic qualities of the characters are intensified through the use of real Appalachian dialect. Ward writes, "The behavior and speech patterns are authentic . . . Still has chosen to give the flavor of dialect by using a limited number of authentic dialect words and expressions" (228). By using this technique, Still allows the reader to experience the rich dialect without having to decipher a seemingly foreign language.

One example of a character that speaks in the local Appalachian idiom is in Still's short story, "Mrs. Razor." In this story, Elvy, a six-year-old girl, pretends that she has married into an imaginary family. The local dialect is displayed by this character when she confesses to her father, "'When first I married he was smart as ants. Now he's turned so lazy he won't even fasten his gallus buckles. He's slouchy and no 'count'" (Still 5). Combined with personalities like Elvy's that portray common elements of life, for example, her imaginary playmates, the dialect strengthens the human aspect of Still's characters. Another example of Still's use of language to accentuate a character is in his short story, "Snail Pie." In the eyes of their mother, the grandfather, the outcast of the family, seems to bring out the worst in his grandchildren. When speaking to his grandsons, the grandfather says, "'Your mommy hates tobacco like the Devil hates Sunday. She'd hustle me back to the country farm before sundown did I give it to you'" (Still 25). This example of Appalachian dialect typifies Still's mastery in creating realistic language and characters. Still also uses the distinct language in his children's books, for example, Jack and the Wonder Bean, an Appalachian version of Jack and the Beanstalk.

In addition to Still's use of realistic character creation and dialect, his narrative devices have also gained him critical attention. In many of Still's short stories and his novel River of Earth, he uses unique narrators. Again in River of Earth as an example, the narrator is Brack Baldridge's seven-year-old son. Giving the readers unusual insight, Still creates the point of view through the eyes of this young boy. Other examples of children narrators are in "Mrs. Razor" and "Snail Pie." In "Snail Pie," the story is told from the point of view of Todd, a young boy who looks up to his older, wiser grandfather. Todd's perspective allows the readers to actually experience the feeling of admiration felt towards his elder. This feeling could conjure up personal memories for the audience, adding another level of reader appreciation. Another young narrator is Elvy and Morg's sibling in "Mrs. Razor." The narrator is unnamed like many of Still's story tellers, but the audience quickly finds out that the point of view is that of a child because of the style in which the story is told. For example, the parents are called "Mother" and "Father." The narrator reports the facts to the audience through the eyes of a child, but does not comment or elaborate on the scenario. The innocence and freshness of the narrator elevates the quality of the novel, not dulled by the voice of a jaded character accustomed to the hardships or joys of life. The dissolution of Elvy's imaginary family in "Mrs. Razor" exemplifies Still's ability to help the reader sense, in Ward's words, "the familiar metaphor of innocence giving way to experience, the age-old metaphor of the journey into life in search of meaning and purpose" (227). This metaphor reveals the sense of personal growth the reader gains from a Still novel or story. The reader matures with the narrator, learning about a different way of life through the eyes of a child. This point is illustrated in "Snail Pie" when readers learn how idealized a mentor can appear when looking from a child's perspective.

James Still's literary contributions, specifically to the state of Kentucky and the Appalachian region, are critically acclaimed and award-winning. The quality of Still's work reflects the perspective of an author totally immersed in Kentucky culture and fascinated with the common Kentucky family, not the sometimes slick, jaded views of Appalachian life that are sometimes presented by an author not from that region. The insights gained from reading Still's work are a real reflection on the personalities and lives of the Appalachian people, a group different from any other in the world but often left uncaptured by an author not involved in the community. The combination of Still's remarkable writing style, his use of dialect, realistic characterization, and unique narrative technique, with the authentic Kentucky touches of landscape and local color, make his work a testament to literature. Although born in Alabama, to James Still's admirers and critics, he is a Kentucky boy at heart.