46
2016
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
With respect to Reynolds’s public persona, can you distinguish over the years between his public charm and his off-stage personal behavior? Reynolds was a great charmer in public; you’ve seen him in public. He was a natural entertainer and loved an audience. That’s somewhat true of me as well. And privately – if Reynolds didn’t know you well, he still had that charm and humor but could also be guarded. He would not do something that was foolish or embarrassing. In private, Reynolds could be irritating at times, even downright mean on some occasions, but never violent. Reynolds was a very self-centered human being, and he didn’t suffer fools gladly. The greatest offense a human being could make was to be boring. With people that Reynolds didn’t like, he was easily bored. There are various longtime friends of Reynolds’s who’ve been stung by his having been so friendly and charming on one occasion, then abrupt and rude on others. And all of us who’ve known him a long time and been close and intimate with him have experienced that. Even his dearest friends then and now, two of whom – one a man and one a woman, very, very close to him – have acknowledged to me how hurt they were when those occasions took place. But Reynolds was a very severe critic of himself about that; he knew it, and he talks about it to some degree in Ardent Spirits. A lot of his poems allude to it. So he wasn’t always “hail fellow well met,” but I don’t know any human being (including myself) who is. REYNOLDS PRICE PAPERS; COURTESY OF DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN RARE BOOK & MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY, DUKE UNIVERSITY
I gathered from listening to your daughter, Memsy, that it was fun watching him be himself. When she would be on a road trip, just the two of them, he would be indulging his own need to buy something for himself. Precisely, which is pretty much the way any trip with Reynolds was. But having said what I said about having some resentment about wishing he had done more with my daughters, been more giving of himself – not of money but of himself – Reynolds had a patience about letting time play itself out that I don’t have. I’m more like Mother in that regard; Mother wanted it here and now and not think about tomorrow. But some of her misery was a considerable result of having been orphaned, and maybe my lack of patience is a result of my having been left without a father at fourteen, unlike Reynolds. But Reynolds was just content to let it be – all things are going to become clearer in time.
Read more of this interview in the NCLR 2016 print issue. n n n ABOVE Memsy and Reynolds Price in
Raleigh, NC, 1988
This interview was designed by KAREN BALTIMORE, a graduate of Meredith College, where she worked with NCLR Art Director Dana Gay. She is currently illustrating and designing a series of children’s books for the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. See other samples of Karen’s graphic design work on her website and in NCLR since 2012, including all of the poetry in this issue.