Chapel Hill Magazine November 2020

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R E M E M B E R I N G

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R and a llKen ll Ken an When the prolific author and UNC professor passed, the Hillsborough Arts Council and fellow writers paid tribute to him during a live virtual presentation

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teven Petrow It’s a sad honor to remember Randall Kenan, who was our friend, our neighbor, a teacher and a writer.

For those of you who are not that familiar with Randall, a biography of him would tell us this: “Born in Brooklyn, he moved to Duplin County as a baby. [His] notable works include “Let the Dead Bury Their Dead,” “A Visitation of Spirits,” “The Fire This Time” and his latest collection, “If I Had Two Wings.” [Randall was] a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award and the John Dos Passos Prize. He was nominated today for the National Book Award for Fiction. Black, gay, Southern, he died too young at age 57 [on Aug. 28]. Beloved.”

Alane Mason, a longtime friend and editor of Randall’s, added [to that bio]: “He had a virtuosic panoply of chuckles, like notes of an organ, from chuckles of delight and whimsy, high in the chest, to those, a bit deeper, of wonder at the absurdity, to a perilously deep, dark chuckle of endurance, a one-has-to-chuckle-because-one-can’t-killthe-damn-fool chuckle.”

Jill McCorkle Randall’s chuckle and facial expressions were never

singular, but a complicated mix of all that was going on in his orbit. He didn’t miss a beat, and the chuckle was often good humor. He never missed irony. He took it all in and spun it around and put it back out there in brilliant, provocative ways every time – both in his speech and on the page.

Steven Lee, I had asked you via email how you knew Randall, and I

loved what you told me: That you have known him so long, you can’t remember not knowing him. [Talk] a little bit about [his] book, “If I Had Two Wings.”

Lee Smith I am just floored by this book. It is filled with vigor and

originality and imagination and things you’ve never seen before, heard before, magic realism and absolute up-to-the-minute social commentary.

It’s full of humor, it’s full of belief, it’s full of pathos. Who knows what more he might have written. This is the work of our friend, but it’s the work of a great writer, and we are so privileged [and] honored to have known him.

Steven Jaki, you met Randall in the 1980s, and you emailed me this

week that you had circled around each other in different social and academic groups. You wrote, “Our first conversation was at a book reading party for ‘Let the Dead Bury Their Dead,’” where you became really fast friends. What was the core of that friendship?

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chapelhillmagazine.com

November 2020