Tennessee Literary Luminaries: From Cormac McCarthy to Robert Penn Warren
145
Tennessee Literary Luminaries: From Cormac McCarthy to Robert Penn Warren
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Overview
The Volunteer State has been a pioneer in southern literature for generations, giving us such literary stars as Robert Penn Warren and Cormac McCarthy. But Tennessee’s literary legacy also involves authors such as Peter Matthew Hillsman Taylor, who delayed writing his first novel but won the Pulitzer Prize upon completing it. Join author Sue Freeman Culverhouse as she explores the rich literary heritage of Tennessee through engaging profiles of its most revered citizens of letters.
Includes photos
“The extensively researched book is both readable and informative.” —Clarksville Online
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781625840226 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Arcadia Publishing SC |
| Publication date: | 01/23/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 145 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
ROBERT PENN WARREN AND HIS CLARKSVILLE CONNECTIONS
You don't choose a story; it chooses you.
Robert Penn Warren
Numerous books and articles have been written about writer Robert Penn Warren, but few have emphasized his time at Clarksville High School in Clarksville, Tennessee. Yet the time before and after that turning point in his life led to his remarkable writing career.
Born on April 24, 1905, in Guthrie, Kentucky, Robert Penn Warren was the oldest of three children of Robert Franklin Warren, a businessman and banker, and Anna Ruth Penn Warren, a schoolteacher. His siblings were Mary and Thomas. At home, this child, who would some day be a world-famous writer, was called "Rob'Penn" by his family or "Rob" by his friends.
THE BLACK PATCH WAR
In A Portrait of a Father, the biography of his father, Robert Penn Warren described his own childhood and the life within his family.
Guthrie was the scene, in September 1904, of twenty-five thousand visitors "on horseback, in carriages, in farm wagons, on foot — there for the founding of the Black Fired Tobacco Association to combat price-fixing agreements among tobacco manufacturers." This later led to the "Tobacco War" or "the Black Patch War." Robert Penn said that he had a photograph of that event. This episode in history became the subject of Robert Penn Warren's first novel, Night Rider.
The reason Guthrie was chosen for this momentous meeting was that five railroad lines met in there: the Louisville & Nashville Railroad's (L&N) St. Louis–Evansville–Nashville line, the L&N Louisville-Memphis line, the L&N Guthrie–Bowling Green branch, the Edgefield and Kentucky Railroad and the Guthrie-Elkton (Kentucky) spur.
Tobacco growers formed the Dark Tobacco District Planters' Protective Association of Kentucky and Tennessee (PPA) on September 24, 1904 (the fall before Robert Penn was born in April 1905). The purpose of the group was to market tobacco. There are two types of tobacco: dark fired and burley. Until about 1924, burley was grown in eastern Tennessee, but eventually, sixty-six of the ninety-five counties in Tennessee depended on tobacco for one of their main cash crops. Of the eight counties in Tennessee that grew dark fired tobacco, Montgomery County (the location of Clarksville) was the second-largest producer in the state. Throughout most of their histories, Montgomery County and Clarksville have been well known for production of dark fired tobacco, a primary cash crop for locals.
Tobacco has been such an important part of Clarksville's financial history that it is featured in the rose window of Trinity Episcopal Church, a house of worship in downtown Clarksville since June 1832. Panes of glass that look like the hands of tobacco are featured in the window alongside corn sprouts; in the center of the window is what appears to be a dollar sign, reminding churchgoers of the importance tobacco money played in creating the church and its architecture.
Dark fired tobacco is primarily used for smokeless products, such as chewing tobacco, pipe tobacco and snuff, while burley goes into cigarettes. (Of course, the dangers of using tobacco were unknown in the 1920s.)
The areas of western Kentucky and northern Tennessee where dark fired tobacco was grown became known as the "black patch." The ensuing Black Patch War brought on by a prolonged depression from falling tobacco prices became a serious threat to civil government as the PPA pressured all tobacco growers to join so that everyone would refuse to sell any tobacco until the purchasing companies agreed to raise prices. Those who would not join were called "hillbillies," and the buyers' monopoly (the American Tobacco Company and the Italian Regie) was called "the Trust." Some growers became vigilantes and were called the "Night Riders."
A group in Robertson County (the county with the largest output of dark fired tobacco) met and formed the Possum Hunters Organization, the purpose of which was to visit Trust tobacco buyers and hillbillies in groups of no less than five and no more than two thousand and convince them to adhere to the PPA using "peaceful" means. This spread to other counties, and a secret fraternity called the "Silent Brigade," or "Inner Circle," began attacking people and property, destroying tobacco in the fields, burning barns and warehouses, dynamiting farm machinery and killing livestock. Montgomery and Robertson Counties, western Kentucky and the towns of Hopkinsville, Russellville and Princeton were scenes of spectacular violence especially between 1907 and 1909.
The headquarters for the Dark Tobacco District Planters' Protective Association of Kentucky and Tennessee was located in Guthrie. At one point, the governor of Kentucky sent troops into Guthrie to attempt to quell some of the violence brought about by the Night Riders. Robert Franklin Warren had taken Robert Penn when he was but an infant to see "troops putting up their tents in an open section near the railroad station."
In Night Rider, Robert Penn Warren relates how he grew up in a world of violence that he accepted as part of life. He heard about it, saw fights and felt there was no way out.
When World War I began in 1914, the Night Riders ceased their activity, not only because Kentucky troops were dispatched against them but also because civil suits against some were won and tobacco prices rose.
It is no surprise that Robert Penn Warren set his novel Night Rider, based on this terrifying time, in the areas of Guthrie and Clarksville, the two towns with which he was most familiar during his childhood.
Robert Penn Warren actually uses a quotation from his father as the words of his Night Rider character Dr. MacDonald when he states his beliefs about white people who blame African Americans for their "bad luck." Robert Penn Warren might have used unacceptable terms when his characters spoke, but at home, no one was allowed to use the n word. His father forbade it and assured all within his hearing that he had rarely met anyone of any color who would not try to treat you right if you treated him right.
Of course, the language used in some of Warren's writing is the racist language of the day, and every reader must be aware that none of his characters is concerned in the least about being "politically correct" according to today's standards. That just wasn't the way things were in Warren's time. Later claims that Warren was a racist were based on that language but did not take into consideration that he wrote two books, Segregation: The Inner Conflict in the South (a discussion of attitudes long-held by Southerners concerning race) and Who Speaks for the Negro? (interviews with leaders of the civil rights movement), that could not be considered racist volumes.
EARLY CHILDHOOD
I remember an overwhelming passionate desire to write a poem when I was twelve years old and had a fever.
Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn entered Guthrie School when he was six and continued there (where there were some very good teachers, he insisted) until he was fifteen. His summers were usually spent at the farm of his maternal grandfather in Kentucky.
Having met in Clarksville and married in 1904, Robert Penn's parents seemed, to him, to always be in private conversation together. His memories of them were often of their walking or sitting with their heads slightly bent toward each other. He claimed he never learned what it was that they were talking about.
The reason Robert Franklin moved from Clarksville to Guthrie was the promise of a newfound prosperity there, as the crossing of north–south and east–west railroads brought twenty-two trains a day. Also, two new banks and three saloons were part of the attractions.
Robert Penn said he never heard a cross word between his parents and that his mother had claimed that a happy marriage was simple because everything outside the front gate belonged to her husband and everything inside belonged to her.
Robert Franklin Warren believed that education was the only salvation for democracy, according to Robert Penn, and therefore, he served on the school board in Guthrie.
Both parents provided for the interests of all three of their children as they progressed from one hobby to another.
Robert Penn remembered having books appear alongside his current activities; for example, when a friend who was a woodsman engaged Robert Penn in tramping along on his hikes, the book Two Little Savages and How They Grew by Ernest Thompson Seton was suddenly part of Robert Penn's reading matter. When he became interested in bird watching, he was given a good pair of binoculars. Later, when he wanted to sketch birds and animals, he was sent to spend some summer months in Nashville with a family his mother knew and was given watercolor lessons from Sister Mary Luke at the Convent of Saint Cecilia.
Other delightful activities of childhood brought forth different types of equipment. A rock collection begun and later abandoned set the ground for a book on geology. His parents also provided a chemistry set, a homemade radio set (that never worked, he admitted) and manuals on electricity and the Morse code.
Summers were spent with Robert Penn's grandfather Gabriel Thomas Penn on his farm near Cerulean Springs, Kentucky. A Confederate captain, the grandfather told Robert Penn stories of his rides with Nathan Bedford Forrest during the war and engaged the boy's interest in history with stories of Napoleon. He also quoted Byron, Scott and Romantic poetry, leading his daughters to call him "visionary" (by which they meant impractical) and Robert Penn to feel that his grandfather was almost larger than life. Grandfather Penn is credited along with Rob'Penn's parents with engendering in him a love for the spoken and written word.
The early life of his father seemed to hold a fascination for Robert Penn after Robert Franklin Warren died just before his eighty-sixth birthday. His father had spent a number of years in Clarksville, Tennessee, around 1890, when he was described in a newspaper as a "promising young man" after he was involved in an escape from a deadly tornado and was written up. (Robert Penn was able to see a yellowed copy of the paper many years later but was not sure whether the paper was from Louisville or Nashville.)
Robert Penn was never sure where his father had worked when he first moved to Clarksville but believed he had a job on the Cumberland River. His father eventually came into a good job probably because, although he probably had no more than a sixth-grade education, he began collecting books and reading them as a young man. He even engaged a Greek tutor and attempted to learn the language. In later years, Robert Penn was especially heartened that he still owned his father's Greek grammar and dictionary.
Robert Penn also retained his mother's set of Shakespeare's plays that he described as "well-thumbed, multivolumed" and "green-backed."
Robert Penn discovered a book, The Poets of America, one day when he was about eleven or twelve. The book fell open to a page at the top of which was the name of Robert Franklin Warren followed by several poems that he had written. There was also a photograph of Robert Penn's father from when he was about twenty-two or twenty-three. When his father came home, after an impatient period of eager waiting on Robert Penn's part, Robert Penn showed the book to his father, who promptly looked at it, said nothing and took it to a hiding place where it was never to be seen again. Many years later, his sister, Mary, revealed that she had found the book and had "stolen" it. It appeared that the book was printed by a "vanity" press, and their father had not been proud of the fact.
When their father was in his seventies, he sent in a letter to Robert Penn a yellowed piece of paper with one of his poems on it signed "R.F.W." and typed the instructions, "Do not answer" at the bottom.
On April 9, 1984, Robert Penn Warren was asked to speak at the bicentennial of Austin Peay State University. Fortunately, that speech was recorded and is now located on tape both in the Felix G. Woodward Library at APSU and in Emory University's library.
In the speech, he describes (as he does in A Portrait of a Father) watching his father shave with a straight razor and hearing its "whack! whack!" After this procedure, Robert Franklin Warren would utter phrases that he told Robert Penn were in Greek. Robert Penn claimed that he believed, when still a little boy, that all people in Clarksville spoke Greek.
CLARKSVILLE HIGH SCHOOL
And I couldn't get in Vanderbilt because I was not old enough, so I had the good sense — or the good luck — to go to a very good high school in Clarksville the next year while waiting for my sixteenth year to go to Vanderbilt.
Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren also spoke of riding the train to Clarksville when he was a "man" of fifteen to attend Clarksville High School during the bicentennial speech. In A Portrait of a Father, he tells that during that year, he stayed with a family who were friends with his parents during the week and went home for the weekend. He said that he was not too closely supervised and was only doing "what boys do" at the time, but he felt that he was truly entering manhood.
In the Felix G. Woodward Library at APSU hangs a class picture of Clarksville High School 1920–21. A very young-looking Robert Penn Warren has his picture there beside an oil portrait that was painted years later when he had become the only person to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction and two Pulitzer Prizes for poetry.
From 1917 until 1933, my paternal great-grandfather, Albert Wayne Jobe, served as superintendent of schools for Montgomery County. C.H. Moore was principal of Clarksville High School during the year that Robert Penn Warren was a student there (1921–21). These two men would most likely have been on the stage when Robert Penn Warren received his diploma.
The Purple and Gold, a literary monthly for students at Clarksville High School, featured a story, an essay and a short vignette by Robert Penn Warren. Remaining copies of the small magazine reveal "Munk" in the February 1921 issue of the Purple and Gold and "The Dream of a Driller" and "Senior Creed" in the April 1921 issue. (Robert Penn Warren signed a copy of "Munk" on April 9, 1984, when he returned to Clarksville. It is now located in Special Collections at the Felix G. Woodward Library.)
The ambitions of Robert Penn Warren when he entered Clarksville High School, having finished the Guthrie School the previous year, were those formed when he saw the young son of a friend of his mother exit a train in Guthrie. The young man had just graduated from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis and was wearing his summer white dress uniform that sported brass buttons and epaulets. Giving Robert Penn a "manly handshake" after having kissed his mother, the young man made such an impression on Robert Penn that he was determined from then on to go to the U.S. Naval Academy.
Although his father strongly desired that Robert Penn would become an attorney, Robert Penn stuck to his desire to make the navy his career. Robert Franklin made arrangements with their congressman, R.Y. Thomas, for Robert Penn to be appointed to Annapolis.
For six weeks during the summer of 1921, Robert Penn Warren attended Citizens Military Training Corps at Fort Knox, Kentucky. During that time, his first poem, "Prophecy," was published in the Messkit.
The summer after Robert Penn Warren graduated from Clarksville High School changed those plans forever. His younger brother, Thomas, was, for some unknown reason, throwing objects. In some descriptions, the objects are described as "stones," and in others, they are "chunks of coal." Whichever is true, one landed in Robert Penn's left eye and caused that eye to have to be removed. Thus, he could not pass the physical to go to the Naval Academy and, consequently, entered Vanderbilt University in the fall of 1921 at the ripe age of sixteen.
VANDERBILT
For this was the time of the Fugitives at Vanderbilt, a group of poets and arguers — including John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson, Allen Tate, Merrill Moore — and I imagine that more of my education came from those sessions than from the classroom.
Robert Penn Warren
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Tennessee Literary Luminaries"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Sue Freeman Culverhouse.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Preface 9
1 Robert Penn Warren and His Clarksville Connections 13
2 Peter Matthew Hillsman Taylor and His Wife, Poet Eleanor Ross Taylor 33
3 Cormac McCarthy: From Knoxville to Seclusion 49
4 William Gay: The Man from Hohenwald 59
5 Alex Haley on the Path of Family History 75
6 Vietnam Veteran Bud Willis Reveals a Huey Pilot's War 85
7 Alice Randall: Bountiful Writer and Renaissance Woman 97
8 Amy Greene: Appalachian Novelist 108
9 A. Scott Pearson: Novelist, Cancer Researcher, Surgeon and Patient Advocate 113
10 Marshall Chapman: Author, Rocker, Songwriter, Actress Extraordinaire 123
Bibliography 133
About the Author 141