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NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
flaccid argumentation seems more realistic for contemporary Confederate flag–toting Southerners than some dramatic altercation about history and identity. The flag, all too often, is a signifier without a clear signified, and Cash hones in on this ambiguity in a remarkably well-handled intergenerational conflict. There are no fireworks and relatively little drama, which I think is how it should be in the here and now. In other words, must novelists give undue drama to issues that remain a concern solely for those at the outermost fringes of Southern culture? Cash seems to suggest that such tortured conversations are a thing of the past for many Southerners, and I say good riddance. What Cash gives drama to, and rightfully so, are the lives of real, believable characters. While the characters in A Land More Kind than Home seem to fall into
three categories – the good, the bad, and the misguided – the characters in This Dark Road to Mercy are more ambiguously (and thus more realistically) portrayed. There are no dark-hearted, maniacal preachers here – just everyday people fighting for (and sometimes against) family. All have motivations – and legitimate ones – but no one seems inherently good or evil. Evidence of the strength of Cash’s storytelling in his new novel is the fact that I empathized with all the characters, without exception. In addition to an in-depth investigation of human nature, Cash provides a fascinating exploration of the idea of “home.” His epigraph, from Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood (1952), observes that “In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got,” which functions both as a refutation to Eudora Welty– inspired place-obsessiveness in
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the South but also to the necessity of physical place as the basis for home, a luxury the itinerant Quillby sisters do not have. Cash’s novel provides a sense of place that is based on family, friends, psychological wellbeing, and the unexpected and yet satisfying confluence of local and global cultures. To my ears, this rings true. I don’t miss the hermetically sealed hollers, tobacco farming, and religious fanatics of days gone by. I do miss the mountains along the Blue Ridge Parkway, minor league baseball, fried catfish in Gastonia, and the charming tackiness of Myrtle Beach. Does this list just reinscribe an alternate brand of Southern stereotype? Perhaps. But that’s the North and South Carolina that I remember, and that’s also the late twentiethcentury Carolina experience that Cash records with authenticity and authority and beauty. n
ALLAN GURGANUS RECEIVES THE 2014 R. HUNT PARKER AWARD PHOTOGRAPH BY MATHEW WAEHNER; COURTESY OF NC OFFICE OF ARCHIVES AND HISTORY
Allan Gurganus received the 2014 R. Hunt Memorial Award from the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association for his significant contribution to North Carolina literature. The protagonist of this author’s first published fiction, “Minor Heroism” (published in 1974), was the first gay character in a New Yorker short story. His first novel, The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (Knopf, 1989), has been translated into twelve languages; it won the state’s Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Gurganus is also a recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature and a member of the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. Accepting the award, Gurganus spoke of the wonderful education he received growing up in North Carolina. A native of Rocky Mount, Gurganus left his home state to attend college, to serve in the Vietnam War, and to teach, but he has returned home and now lives in Hillsborough. His years in New York inspired his novel Plays Well With Others (Knopf, 1997; reviewed in NCLR 2000 and the subject of an essay in NCLR 2008). For other NCLR content by and about this award winner, see our online indexes. n
ABOVE Allan Gurganus accepting his Parker Award from
the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association, New Bern, 7 Nov. 2014