Appalachia in James still's River of Earth

In spite of a good deal of recognition in Appalachian circles, and in spite of ample acknowledgment of his achievement by fellow practitioners of the craft of fiction, we have not yet claimed James Still as an important Southern writer, a significant figure in the Southern Renascence. This essay addresses Still's place in the traditions both of Appalachian and Southern literature, to discover fresh perspectives, new avenues. Through examination of Still's association with Vanderbilt University, we may arrive at some useful sense of his version of agrarianism, his lyrical variation on one of the paradigms of Southern literature and experience.

Through study of his masterpiece, River of Earth, we may find a way of according Still his place in literary history, a terrain which he shares not so much with other Appalachian writers, such as John Fox, Jr., and Jesse Stuart, as with such masters of the modern Southern novel as Elizabeth Madox Roberts, such acute chroniclers of various “postage stamps” of earth as Faulkner, and, in a wider sense, such delineators of place and the genius loci as William Wordsworth. At the heart of Still's fiction and poetry is a master motif, a core image, based on the rivers and creeks which “glean the valleys.” Four of his books have titles which draw on this reservoir of river-creek imagery: River of Earth, On Troublesome Creek, Way Down Yonder on Troublesome Creek, and Sporty Creek: A Novel About an Appalachian Boyhood. Moreover, at least eighteen poems and seven short stories take their titles from creeks, and as many more draw key images from rivers or creeks.

Consider some of the rivers and creeks, the prongs and forks and branches in Still's fiction: Big Ballard, Biggety, Big Greasy, Big Leatherwood, Big John Riggins Creek, Boone's Fork, ...