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 Gap Creek
by Robert Morgan
Announced on January 18, 2000
Exclusive Essay
Reading and Writing
Because
I was born in October I was kept back from school for a year. There
was no Kindergarten in those days, so my mother taught me to read
at home. Every morning we sat by the fireplace and read from the
Dick and Jane primer. Neither of my parents had much formal education,
but they read to my sister Evangeline and me every night. I sat
on one of my dad's knees and she sat on the other and we listened
to him read storybooks she brought from school, as well as Mother
Goose, and stories from the Bible.
My
parents were very devout, and they required us to read from our
Testaments every day. My first reading on my own was probably Farmer
Boy and the Little House on the Prairie books. But I didn't
really fall in love with books until the Henderson County Bookmobile
began coming to Green River Baptist Church the first Monday afternoon
of every month around 1957 or 58. The bookmobile was an old utility
truck fitted out with shelves. I checked out Jack London's Klondike
stories and James Oliver Curwood's Royal Canadian Mounted Police
stories, and raced through them in the dim light of my bedroom on
rainy days, and after the milking and other work was done.
From
London and Curwood I moved on to Dickens and read Oliver Twist
and David Copperfield. I saw Tolstoy's War and Peace
advertised in the Sears and Roebuck catalog as "the greatest novel
ever written." When I spotted the huge volume in the bookmobile
at the age of fourteen I checked it out. Never had I been so possessed
by a book before. For weeks I lived in Imperial Moscow and on the
Napoleonic battlefields. Tolstoy showed me a richness and depth
of characterization, and a range of experience I'd never dreamed
of before. Soon after that a Friend's brother who had gone off to
college sent him a copy of Crime and Punishment and I read
that with equal fascination. They were spiritual books, and epic
stories.
My
first writing was done in the sixth grade for a teacher named Mr.
Ward. One day the rest of the class was visiting the Biltmore House
near Asheville. The cost was three dollars, which I did not have.
Rather than let me sit idle in the classroom all day, Mr. Ward told
me to write a story. Knowing I liked the Jack London stories so
much, he suggested I write about a man lost in the Canadian Rockies,
describing how he found his way back to civilization. I worked on
the story all day, and got so involved with the plot and character
I was surprised when the rest of the class returned at the end of
the day.
Over
the years since I've had so many favorite authors it would be hard
to list them all. But in recent years I've especially enjoyed reading
the work of contemporaries, especially Southern and Appalachian
writers such as Fred Chappell, Cormac McCarthy, Lee Smith, Doris
Betts. And I especially admire authors who write honestly about
rural life, such as Thomas Hardy, and those who write about Native
American life such as Louise Erdrich and Jim Welch. A story that
has meant a lot to me over the years is Alice Walker's Everyday
Use.
But
I also love reading biography and history, especially regional history.
I always recommend to young writers that they read history. You
only learn to write by writing, as you learn to play tennis by playing,
but reading widely and intensely helps also.
© 2000 Robert Morgan
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