Gurney Norman

Fiction. "Like Sherwood Anderson's 'Winesburg, Ohio' or Hemingway's Nick Adams stories, both of which it resembles in form and style, 'Kinfolks' is a short-story cycle dramatizing the growth of a young boy to early manhood, particularly as his development is reflected in changing relationships within a large Appalachian family. Like that of his mentors, Norman's work is novelistic in scope while preserving in the individual episodes the essential qualities of the short story. This new work can only enhance his reputation by suggesting that Norman may be the outstanding Appalachian storyteller of his generation"-The Courier-Journal.

The Wilgus Stories

Kinfolks

Fiction. A "novel of the counterculture," Gurney Norman's DIVINE RIGHT'S TRIP elicited comparison to Salinger and Kerouac upon its publication in 1971. "DIVINE RIGHT'S TRIP shows itself to be a subtly written and morally passionate epic of the counterculture, a fictional explication of the hopeful new consciousness come to birth.Divine Right is bigger than life, and in giving the story thus far of a segment of his generation, in prose nicely threaded between the vernacular and the symbolic, Gurney Norman has shown a noble reach and a healthy grasp." - John Updike

A Novel of the Counterculture

Divine Right's Trip

A Folk Tale

Sharon Hatfield

Danny Miller

An American Vein is an anthology of literary criticism of Appalachian novelists, poets, and playwrights. The book reprises critical writing of influential authors such as Joyce Carol Oates, Cratis Williams, and Jim Wayne Miller. It introduces new writing by Rodger Cunningham, Elizabeth Engelhardt, and others.

Critical Readings in Appalachian Literature

An American Vein

Katherine Ledford

Dwight B. Billings

Appalachia has long been stereotyped as a region of feuds, moonshine stills, mine wars, environmental destruction, joblessness, and hopelessness. Robert Schenkkan's 1992 Pulitzer-Prize winning play The Kentucky Cycle once again adopted these stereotypes, recasting the American myth as a story of repeated failure and poverty—the failure of the American spirit and the poverty of the American soul. Dismayed by national critics' lack of attention to the negative depictions of mountain people in the play, a group of Appalachian scholars rallied against the stereotypical representations of the region's people. In Back Talk from Appalachia, these writers talk back to the American mainstream, confronting head-on those who view their home region one-dimensionally. The essays, written by historians, literary scholars, sociologists, creative writers, and activists, provide a variety of responses. Some examine the sources of Appalachian mythology in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature. Others reveal personal experiences and examples of grassroots activism that confound and contradict accepted images of ""hillbillies."" The volume ends with a series of critiques aimed directly at The Kentucky Cycle and similar contemporary works that highlight the sociological, political, and cultural assumptions about Appalachia fueling today's false stereotypes.

Gurney Norman

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