Jesse Stuart Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Mary Rohrberger

Critical Essay by Mary Rohrberger

SOURCE: "The Question of Regionalism: Limitation and Transcendence," in The American Short Story 1900-1945: A Critical History, edited by Philip Stevick, Twayne Publishers, 1984, pp. 147-82.

In the following excerpt, Rohrberger discusses Stuart as a regionalist writer.

[A writer] clearly in the regionalist tradition is Jesse Stuart, who does for the culture of the Appalachian region of eastern Kentucky what Ruth Suckow did for rural Iowa. One of our country's most prolific writers, Stuart wrote more than 350 short stories, many of which appeared in seven collections dating from 1936 to 1966. In addition to short stories, he has published seven autobiographical volumes, hundreds of poems, seven novels, five juvenile books, and scores of articles and lectures. Born in an isolated log cabin in Kentucky, Stuart appears to have lived a life fast passing into mythology, where boys roamed the hills shooting squirrels and, grown into men, continued male pleasures...
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