Reynolds Price - 1933
|
Read another essay on Reynolds Price written by North Carolina students Josh J. and Ruben L.
I. Family Life and Upbringing Edward Reynolds Price, a lifelong native to North Carolina, was born on February 1, 1933 in Macon, North
Carolina to Elizabeth and William Price. He was the eldest of two children and was older than his brother Will by nine years. Price attended Duke University and received his BA
in 1953. It was here that he established one of his first principal influences in his writing from the works of Eudora Welty. As his professor, she took him under her wing in his
writing at Duke. In her own writing, Eudora emphasized a great deal on the southern lifestyle and almost always created her stories in an American-south North Carolina
setting. In his interview with Marsha Barbara, Price stated that Eudora's single largest influence was that "she gave me a reassuring sense that my world of middle class eastern
North Carolinians—people like some of her own early characters—were worthy subjects for good fiction." Beginning only a month after Price graduated from Duke, he began personal journals,
which would later establish the foundation to all of his writing. In these notebooks, he sketched his thoughts and ideas for his upcoming writing, including his first novel A Long and Happy Life
, and also his own personal thoughts and feelings. Later, the notebooks were published as Learning a Trade: A Craftsmen's Notebook (1998). The
writing establishes the gradual development and growth of one of North Carolina's most prominent and well-known writers. Henceforth, Reynolds attended Oxford University's Merton College for three years and
studied English Literature as a Rhodes Scholar, receiving his Bachelors of Literature degree in 1958. Thereafter, Reynolds Price returned to his native school of Duke and
began teaching English, where he is now a James B. Duke Professor of English. Among his students were well-known writers Taghi Modaressi, Fred Chappell, and Anne Tyler.
In 1957, while Price was still at Oxford, his first novel A Long and Happy Life was published. It later received the prestigious William Faulker Award in 1962. The book was
reviewed by Esquire's Dorothy Park as being "this lovely novel, meticulously observed, beautifully told," and has never ceased being printed. Over the next four decades of
Price's career, he published several dozen works in several different genres including poetry, fiction, drama, and differing categories of nonfiction.
In May of 1984, on a walk with a friend, he was asked why his foot repeatedly was being slapped against the ground. As a result of his own curiosity, he went and visited the
doctor and found out he had a malignant spinal tumor, or astocytoma. It was concluded that he had the condition his whole life, and had just gotten used to it without realizing its
presence. Price recalls that before his diagnosis, the only symptom or clue to his illness was that "he walked somewhat like a drunkard." A physician told his family that his
chances were "six months to paraplegia, six months to quadriplegia, six months to death." In his treatments, he underwent several surgeries, steroid use which disfigured his body
and mind, physical therapy which only brought more pain, monumental leaks of spinal fluid and absolute despondency. After the cancer was officially named dormant, Price
went through a series of back braces and other forms of structure building appliances. Price stated that many times during his quadriplegia, he spent much of his time listening to
music, which included Baroque. It was "a real part of the healing process I went through," he remarked. Written while Price was still undergoing the aftermath of his cancer, Kate Vaiden was
published in 1986. It received the National Book Critic Circle Award in 1967. Amidst his writing of this novel Reynolds became paraplegic and lost all control of his lower body.
The cancer left Price paralyzed and lingers in constant back pain as a reminder of the struggle. Because of his fortunate survival of such a threatening disease, Price is
convinced that Jesus saved him, forgave his sins and pulled him through the immense small "keyhole" of hope to be able to live and write today with a fervent passion. As a
result Price has been inspired to write very strongly and intensely about the realism and believability of the Christian religion. Price has published three biblical interpretations as well as an article in Time Magazine
entitled "Jesus of Nazareth" concerning the existence and actions of Jesus, both in his own time and in the time elapsed to the present. Because
of his brushing with death, he believes that life is a special and wonderful thing, and has thrown himself twice as passionate into his writing and his Biblical interpretations. Before
he was stricken with illness, Price only published a total of 13 books, one every couple of years. But in the time elapsed between when he was able to pick up a pen again and now,
he has surpassed his original amount with a dozen and a half encounters of his struggles, novels, interpretations and plays. Although he is not a fervent church goer, and does not believe that it is right for him,
Price does argue that "The older I get…I just can't comprehend the necessity that so many human beings have—and especially those human beings that set themselves up as
God's best friends—to condemn right and left or to judge everything they see. In the first place, Christians have specific instructions from Jesus not to do that. And Jews have
specific instructions from God-'Vengeance is mine, not yours.'" In all, Price is a true North Carolina writer. He has lived in the same house near Duke
University for over 30 years and has always remained in his home state, less the three years he was at Oxford. He still teaches at Duke, his alma mater, where he himself went to
school and enjoys provoking the minds of young inspiring students. Although he was never married, he has experienced marriage and love in his writing, and has an ability to
establish himself and actions and feelings such as marriage and love that one cannot help but think he is happily married to a beautiful wife of his own. Despite his bout with cancer,
Price still maintains his flow of books annually and never ceases to amaze and enlighten his readers. II. Literary Works Summarized A Long and Happy Life Kate Vaiden Clear Pictures III. List of Literary Works Co-Wrote "Copperline" with James Taylor IV. Bibliography
A novel entailing the search of a young girl named Rosacoke Mustian for long lost love. Set in rural North Carolina, it depicts the lifestyle and way of life in the mid-fifties in the
south. The main character remains in his short story collection The Names and Faces of Heroes and her brother Milo is present in another novel A Generous Man.
This novel, which has been thought to have been based on Price's own mother, although he has declared that it's basis is only of "a distant, atmospheric, sort of way." It is based
in his own hometown of Macon, North Carolina. It consists of a middle age woman who is looking for the son she abandoned at 17, and in doing so comes across a letter her father
addressed to her right before he killed her mother and then himself, years earlier.
A memoir of his youth and experiences growing up in rural North Carolina, it is by far his
most personal work. It reflects the actions and people who made Price who and what he is today.
A Long and Happy Life (1962)
The Names and Faces of Heroes (1963)
A Generous Man (1966)
Love and Work (1968)
Permanent Errors (1970)
Things Themselves (1972)
The Surface of the Earth (1975)
Early Dark (1977)
A Palpable God (1978)
The Source of Light (1981)
Mustian (1983)
Private Contentment (1984)
Kate Vaiden (1986)
The Laws of Ice (1986)
A Common Room (1987)
Good Hearts (1988)
Clear Pictures (1989)
The Tongues of Angels (1990)
Use of Fire (1990)
New Music (1990)
The Foreseeable Future (1991)
Blue Calhoun (1992)
Full Moon (1993)
The Collected Stories (1993)
A Whole New Life (1994)
The Promise of Rest (1995)
Three Gospels (1996)
The Collected Poems (1997)
Roxanna Slade (1998)
Learning a Trade (1998)
Letter to a Man in the Fire (1999)
Feasting the Heart (2000)
A Perfect Friend (2000)
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/magazine
http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/story.php?articleID=2148
http://www.goucher.edu/cwpromo/kratz/ReynoldsPrice.htm
http://www.ncstuff.com/people/pricer.htm
This essay was submitted by a student of Rita Achenbach, a teacher at Fuquay-Varina High School in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina.