City Folks in Hoot Owl Holler: Narrative Strategy in Lee Smith's Oral History

Over the years American writers have perceived Appalachia differently depending on how America has perceived itself. While those who have approved of the American way of life have looked down on mountain life, those who have disapproved have seen Appalachia as an alternative culture from which America might take a lesson (Appalachia, 65). In 1873 the journalist William Harney and the editors of Lippincott Magazine "discovered" Appalachia, and historian Henry Shapiro argues that since then America has thought of this mountainous portion of eight southern states as a discrete region, "in but not of America" (Appalachia, 4). In the 1870's writers caught up in what they saw as America's progress saw Appalachia as behind the times. For vacationers and local-color writers, who looked with wonder at colorful people, quaint customs, and picturesque scenes, Appalachia was a measure of how far America had come. At the turn of the century when writers of "uplift literature" accompanied the missionaries and teachers to the region, America's success became a measure of how far Appalachia had to go. These outsiders viewed Appalachians as ignorant, isolated hillbillies, poor, shiftless, and easily provoked. (1) World War I, however, and the depression that followed not only changed America's view of itself but altered its perception of Appalachia. For the first time America saw Appalachia not as unAmerican but as more nearly American--conserving old English folk culture and preserving American pioneer individualism. The mountaineer's way of life seemed to be the very heritage the war was fought to safeguard but a heritage that was slipping away. These outsiders viewed Appalachians as sturdy, independent folk, who enjoyed a noble life. In her recent novel Oral History Lee Smith uses the perspectives of two outsiders, upper class Richard Burlage from Richmond and middle class Jennifer Bingham from Abingdon, to examine the causes and consequences of typical twentieth-century perceptions of Appalachia. Smith, who grew up in southwestern Virginia, is adept at revealing the naivete and the condescension that often characterize the outsider's perception of mountain people. She relates the Cantrell family legend through the tales of four generations of friends and enemies, insiders and outsiders, to Hoot Owl Holler. The multiple perspectives Smith uses indicate that she is just as interested in the varying perceptions of Appalachia as she is in the actual place and its people. Smith frames her novel in the present when Jennifer Bingham returns to her dead mother's home in Hoot Owl Holler to collect oral history for a class project. Taught by her upwardly mobile father and stepmother to look down on her real mother's family, Jennifer now sees her relatives from another perspective--that of her "Yankee" folklore professor who finds Jennifer's tales of the haunted Cantrell homeplace and Hoot Owl Holler lore fascinating material. Through Jennifer, Smith satirizes amateur folklorists--the latest breed of curiosity seekers in Appalachia. Although their collection of oral history and analysis of mountain culture is supposed to be objective, Smith suggests otherwise. While Jennifer, like some amateur folklorists, tries to prove that a pastoral past still lives in the present, Smith is at pains to paint a more complex picture, making sure that for every cotton quilt there is an aluminum lawn chair and for every log cabin there is a custom painted van. The first mountain character we meet, however, is a folklorist's dream come true; Jennifer calls him a "real treasure" (11). Little Luther Wade, dressed in western shirt and cowboy boots, sits on the porch strumming his dulcimer while his wife Ora Mae makes an afghan in the star pattern. But when the rest of the family arrives on the scene, any reader who like Jennifer had hopes of an Appalachian time warp is pulled back into the present. For along with the rest of America, the people of Hoot Owl Holler learn their culture from the television and their manners from the movies. …