Rivendell
Interview with Jonathan Greene
with Sebastian Matthews & Ryan WalshThis interview started as an extended e-mail exchange. On April 9, 2005, Ryan and I taped an interview with Jonathan at the home of Chan and Miegan Gordon in Asheville. The night before we’d gathered with hosts of others for a book party for Jonathan Williams’ latest book. We all met at Chan’s bookstore, The Captain’s Bookshelf, then headed over to the house. We set up our recorder in a small study surrounded by old and rare books and started talking.
Greene is the author of over twenty books: most recently a collection of poems, Fault Lines, and On the Banks of Monks Pond, The Thomas Merton/Jonathan Greene Correspondence (both Broadstone Books, 2004). In 2006 a small collection of poems, The Death of a Kentucky Coffee-Tree & Other Poems was published by Longhouse and his commonplace book, Gists, Orts, Shards, is to be published by Broadstone Books.
What makes someone a regional writer?
Every writer should start at a place that they know intimately and then hope that the universal grows out of that particular. And, I guess, readers reading a writer who is just starting out, somebody like James Joyce, after his very first books, would think of him just as an Irish writer and of course Ireland would claim him. If Joyce just left us his book of stories, The Dubliners, it is doubtful he would be seen today as anything beyond a local Irish writer. It’s ironic that a lot of the Irish writers to write about Ireland (Joyce, Yeats, Beckett as examples), had to leave Ireland and they had ambivalent, claustrophobic feelings about the Emerald Isle and perhaps you could see a parallel with the many Appalachian writers who moved elsewhere, like Morgan teaching at Cornell, Chris Offutt in Iowa, David Huddle in Vermont, the late Richard Marius teaching at Harvard, etc. Even Jim Wayne Miller moved out of the mountains to live; Bowling Green is many miles from the Appalachian counties of Kentucky.
There are a lot of pitfalls. The obvious pitfall of Appalachian writers is how much dialect and slang they use and how they use it. Typically, if you use a lot of slang and you don’t make it your own in a certain distinct way, the bottom rung could be the perception that you’re a local color writer. Dialect often becomes a stumbling block for readers who are not native to the region. But then in the hands of a master like James Still, those readers can be won over. And it’s easier to be pejorative about Southern Appalachian writers in the general culture than it is, say, about a New Yorker. People don’t think of a New York writer as a local writer; they don’t think of it the same way. Of course, it’s such a cultural center that their own insularity and parochialism is invisible. Who knows the fate of any writer or artist. As you go through the history of art, often the reputations change drastically. In his day, Salieri was the equal, if not more successful, than Mozart. We all know whose music now? And J.S. Bach was mostly known as an organist, not as a composer, during his lifetime. He was re-discovered by Felix Mendelssohn.
Robert Morgan once said of Jim Wayne Miller that he "writes at once of Appalachia and the planet." In a recent interview, John O’Brien, author of At Home in the Heart of Appalachia, answered the question about "finding" Appalachia by saying, "There are really two Appalachias—the place I have always known and the mythic Appalachia most Americans imagine. " Do you consider yourself an Appalachian writer?
No, I am not an Appalachian writer. I think Americans are geographically challenged, as in that famous Steinberg New Yorker cartoon where there are the two coasts and then what is in between is foreshortened into a small space. As if there is not much there.
So for those living in New York, Kentucky’s total land mass might as well be all Appalachia. But Kentucky has its regions: Appalachian, Bluegrass, the Knobs, Pennyrile, etc. And culturally most of it is Southern, but to my sense of things Louisville and Northern Kentucky near Cincinnati have more of a Midwest than Southern feeling. Those distinctions are breaking down in that our whole country is homogenizing somewhat; our distinctive ways are becoming less important and the mass media is to a large extent to blame.
On the other hand, Appalachian anthologies and Appalachian scholarly journals have included such Kentuckians as Wendell Berry, Bobbie Ann Mason, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, and Robert Penn Warren though none are Appalachian writers. Why do I say this? The land these writers are native to is not in Appalachia, nor do I think they ever thought of themselves as Appalachian.
I grew up in New York City. My mother's family came to Kentucky in the 1860s. I still have relations here. And though I saw these relatives when they came to New York, I never stepped foot in Kentucky until the winter of 1961-62. But that visit was pivotal and shaped much that followed. It was then I met Victor and Carolyn Hammer, fine printers and much else. Through them I got interested in the typographic arts. I also visited Gethsemani on that first trip. And later through Carolyn Hammer I met Thomas Merton by chance one afternoon and that began a friendship with Merton chronicled in a small book of our letters just out. I also met my first wife during that first visit to Kentucky.
But to get back to Appalachia. I did in the course of my living in Kentucky get to know and publish many Appalachian writers. I also ended up designing books by other Appalachian writers. And I became friends with writers and musicians from the region. I also helped produce two LP recordings of Appalachian music, one by Buell Kazee and one by Jean Ritchie that we are now working towards turning into CDs. I also designed covers of over a dozen albums.
I have spent some time in the hills and there is some writing that I have done from that. We have a daughter who now lives in Estill County and works in Berea. I have also had a connection for many years with the Hindman Settlement School, first because of the writer James Still residence there and then later because of the annual Appalachian Writers Workshop which I have attended as a bookseller and publisher through most of its history.
Despite many connections, I am not an Appalachian writer since I am not native to the mountains nor have I lived there. Though my mother’ family was from Kentucky, they lived in urban areas. I actually moved here from California where I twice lived in San Francisco in the Sixties and that was important to me as a writer, publisher, and book designer as well.
Appalachian Journal published an interview on some of this same territory. And I have been published in a number of Appalachian literary journals by invitation and when I raised the issue of not really being an Appalachian writer they said "close enough" or that I had done so much work in this area that I could be considered an "honorary Appalachian writer" or somesuch.
Well, if you do not see yourself as an Appalachian writer, can you go on to describe in a bit more detail your connections to Southern Appalachia specifically and the South in general? And, of course, with its literature and art.
Well, I guess I consider myself an ally of Appalachian culture and somehow I am deeply concerned with its state-of-being now and before I even moved here. For example, when Appalachian novels, short stories, books of photographs, music become available, I often buy, read, listen, look at them. When movies are produced with an Appalachian focus such as "Songcatcher" or "Cold Mountain" I am as touchy about their representation of that culture as many natives would (or should) be.
Before I moved here, I was conscious and a fan of old-time country music — the original Carter Family, Roscoe Holcomb, Doc Boggs, Tom Ashley and Doc Watson, Bascom Lamar Lunsford — from the late 1950s on.
One of my problems is having too many interests. You could say a "dilettante" and then argue over whether that term should be one of praise or its usual American pejorative self. The original Italian was "love of the arts," from the present participle of dilettare to "delight."
And one of those intense interests is in things Appalachian. And of course I guess this is most evident in my Appalachian publications through Gnomon Press where I have published books by such Appalachian writers as Chris Holbrook, Jane Wilson Joyce, Chuck Kinder, Michael McFee, Jim Wayne Miller, Robert Morgan, Gurney Norman, James Still, Jonathan Williams, Meredith Sue Willis. (I just rearranged this to be alphabetical to avoid getting myself in hot water!) Often I have published these authors repeatedly.
As a publisher, I have chosen work that I felt was important, that should be published. We published a novel called Lonesome Road by Martha Bennett Stiles, where much of the action takes place in Appalachia. And then I have published photography books such as Appalachia: A Self-Portrait edited by Wendy Ewald and The Neugents by David Spear that are also of the region. It was not my intention ever for Gnomon to be solely a regional press. It is just by living here these books came to my attention, fell into my lap, and earned my enthusiasm.
Also, I have designed and produced books for other publishers by such writers as Jeff Daniel Marion, Jesse Stuart, James Still, Cratis Williams, etc. And then there are others, such as Chris Offutt, that I consider friends. And through the years I have done a number of projects with Appalshop in Whitesburg and have been friends with many who have been part of that organization at one time or another. And then there is my friendship with Loyal Jones and our collaborations on numerous projects.
Having lived in the South since 1966, over half my lifetime, I am not immune to coming to its defense when those who know little of its culture belittle it. Life is trade-offs, each region with its good and bad points. And one of the crucial factors for me was that land here compared to much of the country was reasonably priced and as soon as I left New York City in 1960 I knew I wanted to live in the country, though it took some time to do this. I spent much time before that exploring the countryside. And for a while, while studying at Bard, I lived at Rokeby, an estate in the Hudson River Valley in a very small place called Barrytown. At that time Barrytown had some interesting residents, such as Gore Vidal and Chandler Chapman, the prototype for Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King. Also, right before I left I had dinner with a new resident, the Appalachian writer Mary Lee Settle, who bought a small decommissioned church to live in.
I think now that one can only really know one place with any deep knowledge. So much so, I at times cannot comprehend how a governor of any state, no matter how small, can think to represent its many typographies and peoples and natural histories.
Jonathan Greene with Basho Statue
photo by Dobree Adams