30
2019
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
What the dead died wanting pro-
What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,
pelled us, made us weep, not
Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity
to go likewise, not to abide,
And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us
trudge though it was, all it
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders . . . was . . .
....
We the migrating they again,
O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark
scrounge though we did, run
(Four Quartets 26–27)
low, wear thin, theirs the new day
All of which is to say that this is a fine book, one in euphonious and thought-provoking dialogue with many predecessors, even beyond those it invokes by name. But whether you’ve read or listened to all of them or not, Blue Fasa invites you to join the conversation. n
not come . . . History was time’s affliction, eternity’s compromise . . .
That sounds like commiseration with the poet (Eliot) who asked,
RANDALL KENAN, A TRUE NORTH CAROLINA SON, INDUCTED INTO THE NORTH CAROLINA LITERARY HALL OF FAME
What a great honor for me to introduce my friend and colleague, Randall Kenan, on the occasion of his induction into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. I first met Randall Kenan in the summer of 1998 at the University of Mississippi’s Faulkner Yoknapatawpha Conference for the centennial of that great author’s birth. At the time I was a young literary scholar working on a book manuscript and when I found Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits, it changed the trajectory of what was possible for my work. I felt that he had written that novel for black people like me, Southern people trying to find their way back home. I clung to this brilliant work and the main character Horace’s world, which comes to us finely wrought and at a price. When someone told me Randall Kenan would be in residence during the conference, I was beside myself. I would like to say that our meeting was cordial and professional – instead, I made a complete fool of myself. I fawned and talked too fast and followed him like a puppy. Even though I was mortified by my own behavior, I could not stop myself. I wanted to know everything. We were both from a long line of North Carolinians, we wrote, we loved this place we call home, though it vexed us so. He was gracious and kind and when I finally realized he wasn’t going to be scared off by my obnoxious behavior, we fell into a subtle rapport and talked about
SHARON P. HOLLAND is a Townsend Ludington Term Distinguished Endowed Professor of American Studies at UNC Chapel Hill, where she serves as Editor of South. Her books include Raising the Dead: Readings of Death and (Black) Subjectivity (Duke University Press, 2000), which won the Lora Romero First Book Prize from the American Studies Association.
PHOTOGRAPH BY JORGE CORTESE
Induction presentation remarks by Sharon P. Holland
our deep love of Faulkner and his South, now ours. We traversed the Tallahatchie Bridge stopping to sing a few bars of “Ode to Billie Joe.” We drove past the courthouse where Dr. King marched on our way to the Blues and Gospel Festival in Clarksdale, MS. We ate barbecue sandwiches and drank cheap beer on the hill near the railroad tracks while Ike and the Ikettes sang below us. Under the dark peace of a new Mississippi moon we shared our worlds, and I found a kindred spirit to hold close in good times and bad.
ABOVE Randall Kenan giving the keynote address at the North Carolina Writers’ Network fall conference, Charlotte, 2 Nov. 2018