Regional Stories
HEAD 0'
W-HOLLOW,
by Jesse Stuart. E. P. Dutton
&
Co. $2.50.
Head
0'
W-Hollow
is Jesse Stuart's second book. It
covers the same Kentucky ground and people found in his
earlier,
Man Frith a Bull Tongue Plow.
Man With a Bull Tongue Plow
consisted of seven hun-
dred and three sonnets. The poet, a one-horse farmer, sang at
the plow of his ioves, of the seasons, of winter "releasing his
high mortgage on the weather," of hunters ripping the guts
of the cornered rabbit. Scattered among the descriptions of
nature were a series of thumbnail sketches of his neighbors
-mountaineers,
merchants, politicians, all sorts of folk in
the Kentucky mountain valley where Stuart has lived most
of his life.
In spite of its novelty and virility,
Man With a Bull
Tongue Plow
was not as successful a book as
Head 0'
W-llollow.
The sonnets were loose, irregular,
repetitious.
Few of them had the inevitability and finish which mark
poetry of a high quality. The writer, wrestling with the
sonnet form, too often involved the reader in his struggles.
Too often the verse showed the groping and the sparks
thrown off by a vigorous talent sharpening its share to get
a firmer hold in his soil and people.
The second book by Stuart shows a remarkable advance.
The stories show a happier man.age of content and style
than the poetry. It is true that at times as in "The Death of
Battle Keaton," the prose becomes too lyrical, choking the
stream of the action. Where metaphors should be illumi-
native. they are merely decorative. As a whole, however, the
prose is more original, more pointed. The reader is swung
into the mood and atmosphere of the story with the first
sentence. Stuart's prose is a far better medium than his verse
for giving us his particular experiences of life in the Ken-
tucky backwoods.
The short stories cover the same ground and people dug
up by the bull tongue plow, but they go much deeper. The
thumbnail sketches of the mnets have trained the writer
for the full canvas. The writer is not content like the typical
regionalist to describe the quaint customs, the poetic speech,
the color of his people. He creates characters. He peoples his
book with innumerable men and women whose twang,
humor, hustle and struggle remain with the reader long
after the book is closed. We come to know these people as
well as we know the little Jewish tailor or the militant sea-
man battling scabs and police on the New York docks.
Stuart was not blind to social injustice in his first book.
He had no kind word then for the "merchant men, the poli-
ticians, and the preachers who rise like maggots in a dead
hen." He could understand the exploited Hog Mullins "who
put the tree line back, built furnaces and made steel, spikes
for the tea-rails and slabs of rail cars."
This growing awareness of the social struggle is the
driving axle behind several of the short stories. "Mountain
Poorhouse" is an unforgettable picture of fifteen helpless
"whores, outlaws, and killers," farmed out to a ginwhack-
ing scoundrel who keeps them in a cowshed for
$2.30
a
week paid him by the county. "Accidental
Death" relates
how Boss Man Oliver, head of a white section gang. kills
an unemployed Negro squatting on a coal heap by firing "a
turnip of a cinder" at him. The coroner declares the death
accidental. "Dark Winter" gives the story of a poor farm
3°
family, caught between the stones. The mother, heavy with
child, and her ten-year old boy run the farm while the father
lies all winter long at death's door. This simple beautiful
story is the finest piece in the whole collection.
Both of Stuart's books indicate that here is a writer with
oakroots in the ground. Here is a writer who lives the life
of his people, who knows them all-the Senators Foulfoot,
the Forty-Gallon Baptists, the farmers, the merchants,
the
feudists, the whores and saints. He feels at home with them
as too few revolutionary writers do. He knows that there
is a greater ferment going on in the world than that found
in a "jug of herbs." His stories show a greater mastery of
form and content. If he continues ~orking over his craft
and growing fists "big enough to fight my own battle" as an
artist and a man, we shall have in Jesse Stuart one of the
most vigorous and able young writers today in America.
BEN FIELD
CORRESPONDENCE
To the Editors:
Substantially Sydney Justin Harris'
Letter from Chicago
conveyed
an adequllte picture of the cultural status of the Windy City. How-
ever, there were a few hues in his picture which are a bit question-
able. And there were a few lacks also. For instance, Harris failed
to sketch, no matter how lightly, many hopeful tones, the absence
of which throws his picture out of balance.
There are young writers and artists in Chicago who stland clear
of the mire he paints. There are left-wing theatre groups doing
fairly good work in spite of the Kelly-Hearst- Tribune-Poetry-
Esquire-Daily News-University atmosphere.
Some of these counter-
tendencies are as yet raw, green, and in a certain sense ineffective.
But if there is any hope for a vital and well-knit cultural life in
Chicago, it is coming from their direction.
The second exception I take with Harris is his incl usion of
Meyer Levin in his dismal gallery. The case against Chicago is
bad enough without dra;;;ing in the innocent for crucifixion. Levin
is a member of the League of American Writers,
an organization
which commits its members to a struggle through their crafts against
war, against Fascism, for the protection of national minority groups,
and for the preservation of culture. As a member of the League
of American Writers,
I am glad that Levin is with us. He has
been active in the left-wing theatre movement in Chicago,
and
has given his staunch support in the fight against censorship.
Harris overlooks entirely the fact that Levin's play
Model Tme-
menl,
which deals with a rent strike, was barred as "Red" by the
same Kelly admini~tration that closed
Tobacco Road.
May I suggest that a more intimate acquaintance on the part of
Harris with what few forces there are in Chicago working toward
progressive cultural ends might help to change his doleful picture?
The truth of the matter is, some of the things are much blacker
than Hlarris paints. Most of the young artists and writers with a
tinge of talent flee this city as if it were on fire. But this, of course,
does not help to solve the problem.
The job is a big one; it is nothing less than the task of building
our own organs of expression, mobilizing our own audiences, main
taining our own critical standards,
and nursing and developing our
own talent. And the beginning of such a movement has already
started.
RtCHARD WRIGHT
Chictlgo.
J
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I
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