40
2016
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
A of “these extraordinary Price brothers”
James W. Clark, Jr. interviews William S. Price, Jr. Notes contributed by the NCLR staff
COURTESY OF WILLIAM S. PRICE, JR.
ABOVE Bill Price (holding a portrait of his
brother painted by Will Wilson) with his interviewer, Jim Clark, and his daughter, Memsy Price, 2015
Both of us, Bill Price and Jim Clark, call Warren County, North Carolina, home. We’re conducting this conversation in Bill’s townhouse in Raleigh during January/February, 2015. Living in Raleigh for years, we are retired from careers as state employees. William Price is Director Emeritus of the North Carolina Division of Archives and History; I am English Professor Emeritus at North Carolina State University. Our focus now is the life and writings of Reynolds Price (1933–2011) in relation to his family, especially brother Bill and their parents. When distinguished historian H.G. Jones heard about our plan, he stated: “I have been unable to think of another pair of siblings that reach the prominence in North Carolina’s literary/historical heritage as do Reynolds Price and William S. Price, Jr.” Reynolds is the better known of these extraordinary Price brothers. His thirty-nine books, including a posthumous memoir with an afterword by his brother, reveal an astonishing mastery of literary forms. No other North Carolina author has ever exhibited greater acuity in long and short fiction and nonfiction, drama, poetry, social and biblical commentary, published notebooks, and four volumes of memoir. With a sharp eye for family dynamics and a forgiving heart, a stoutly religious character as well as a gristly funny bone, Reynolds remained a bachelor and did not belong to a church when he grew up. After age fifty, when a tumor was removed from his spine, this Rhodes Scholar and James B. Duke Professor lived in constant pain and used a wheelchair but wrote and taught routinely until the fall before he died early in 2011. The special devotion of William to Reynolds throughout this era of their long and happy brotherhood is a model to cherish, even beyond their professional accomplishments.
JAMES W. CLARK, JR. is currently serving as President of both the North Caroliniana Society and the Paul Green Foundation. His honors include the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association’s R. Hunt Parker lifetime achievment award for his contribution to the preser vation of Nor th Carolina literature, for which he was also recognized as an honoree at the 2015 North Carolina Writers Conference (for more about him, watch and read the tributes at this event).
WILLIAM S. PRICE, JR. earned a BA from Duke University and his PhD from UNC Chapel Hill and was a Kenan Professor of History at Meredith College. He co-edited with Jack Claiborne Discovering North Carolina: A Tar Heel Reader (University of North Carolina Press, 1991).