Chappell, however, remains unperturbed by his lack of popular recognition in the United States, maintaining that his career has been "just exactly what I could have handled. If I'd been more successful, I'd be dead somewhere."
The humorous detachment with which Chappell views his career is typical of the man. He was born in Canton, a small industrial town in the mountains of North Carolina. His parents, James Taylor and Anne Davis Chappell, were schoolteachers who had been reared in the region. The author's ties with his native area are close; the mountains and the people of western North Carolina figure prominently in both his novels and poetry. Although the region is conservative, it enabled Chappell to become acquainted with people from wide ranging social and economic levels. As Chappell grew up, he observed a culture undergoing a transition from a primarily agrarian economy to a society in which men's ties with the land and the stability this connection instills became more and more distant. This upheaval underlies all of Chappell's work. Thus, the author's native region not only provided him with characters and locale for much of his art but also suggested many of the moral and philosophical foundations of that art as well.
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