Podcast #80: Ron Rash on Writer Survival and Place
No one knows Appalachia like Ron Rash. The author of over ten books, including Serena, Rash is a two-time winner of the O. Henry Award, recipient of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner. For this week's episode of the New York Public Library Podcast, we're proud to present Ron Rash discussing writer survival skills and place.
The author's newest work is a novel called Above the Waterfall. Although at one point, the project felt hopeless, Rash used a little fiction on himself that has helped him before:
"This book began with an image of trout dying in a stream, and that's all I had. The danger or the inevitability of writing this was there comes a time, usually about a year in, where it just seems hopeless and I'm ready to give up, and this book it was several years in. I kept trying to quit on it. But there are certain lies that writers have to have to survive, and one I believe, make myself believe, is if that image is deep enough in me, then the book is already written. I think of how Michelangelo when he saw the block of stone, he thought the finished statue was already in it, and I make myself believe that. It's gotten me through some tough spots."
Often associated with Appalachia, Rash points to the way that a thorough evocation of one place gestures toward the universal. Yet he also believes that its topography begets a psychology rich in awareness of human finitude:
"I love the place. I will say one thing though: I am interested in as far as landscape, and that is how the actual landscape effects the psychology of the people. And I'm absolutely convinced that if you grow up in the mountains, your view of reality is different from, say, if you grew up in the Midwest or if you grew up on the coast. I find that fascinating, and one of the aspects that I found interesting since my books have been translated into other languages is I've gotten emails and letters from other people whether in Andes or in China, mountain people. And they say, 'Yeah, I connect with that.'"
In Above the Waterfall, two voices lead the narration. These voices celebrate the darkness and light the author finds so integral to writing fiction with a heart of truth:
"I wanted to be true to the world, and I think for an artist to be true to the world, that artist has to acknowledge the darkness, and I have certainly done that in my work. But you have to acknowledge the wonder, the beauty, the possibility of redemption."
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