Authoring Landscape: Ron Rash and the International Conversation of Place
Creators: name: Bell, Jacob
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2018

description: The maxim to be regional is to be national no longer holds true; now, reflecting the interconnectedness of culture and the globalization of the world, to be regional is to be international. Regionalism, the writing of the specific culture and landscape of a place, can be simultaneously unique and relatable. Regionalist authors face a challenge and an opportunity. They face the challenge of capturing the nuances and deeply-rooted idiosyncrasies of their places in the world, yet hold the unique opportunity to use their place as a template to preserve a snapshot of their home and educate others about its importance. William Faulkner reflected that one could never exhaust ways to describe his or her “postage stamp of native soil,” but also moved beyond this definition to investigate how the individual plots of soil could intertwine and create a broader sense of what it means to be human (57). One such intersection of postage stamps exists between two seemingly independent literary traditions, Imperial Russia and southern Appalachia. The connection between these traditions comes in the form of author Ron Rash and the influence on his writing by Lev Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Ron Rash’s novels and short story collections both draw upon and bring into dialogue the literature of Imperial Russia. Rash uses this link to develop the simultaneously regional and universal values of his work and the simultaneously distinct and relatable values of his people and landscape. By using many of Rash’s novels and some of his short stories, this paper will address that assertion by arguing that Rash uses a strategy employed by Russian authors of the nineteenth century to promote his home on the international stage. His characters draw on the unique geographic and cultural features of Appalachia, yet transcend the mold through universal themes and emotions. While Rash has also published a wide array of poetry, this paper will focus mainly on his novels and selected short stories. The influence of the Russian authors on Rash is evident in his style. Rash, understanding the elements that propelled Russian literature from obscurity to a widely-recognized tradition, adapts the themes and strategies of two of Russia’s most prominent authors to his reality. In the vein of Lev Tolstoy, Rash views himself as an “author of landscape,” writing a tapestry of his people, proving, through his conceptualization of nature, that Appalachia’s natural world is distinct, yet transcends through an innate spirituality (Rash Personal Interview).2 Much like Tolstoy and his contemporary, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Rash draws upon the unique qualities of his culture; he offers a glimpse into the social issues and defining characteristics of Appalachian culture, exhibiting the importance of its preservation. Finally, with a flare akin to Dostoyevsky, Rash takes the specific physical and cultural elements of Appalachia and demonstrates their humanity, transcending regional boundaries through the shared human experiences of ambition and war. Through the cultural work of his writing, Rash makes the regional international.