Carolina’s New Literary Crop
By WALTER SPEARMAN
One of North Carolina's most pro¬
lific crops these days is literature.
Books by North Carolina writers arc
in every bookshop window, stories by
North Carolina authors are in dozens
of magazines, plays by North Carolina
authors attract thousands of theater¬
goers in New York. Washington and
in the mountains and on the shores of
this state.
When book club selections are made
or literary fellowships awarded, count
in our North Carolina authors! For
instance, last year a Houghton Mifflin
$2,400 Literary Fellowship went to
Fred Ross of Badin for his Jackson
Mahalfey. This year Ross is hard at
work on a sequel taking his cock-
fighting. politically minded Mahaffey
to the halls of the Legislature in Ra¬
leigh — and in Chapel Hill Mrs. Rebec¬
ca Patterson has a Houghton Mifflin
Fellowship for her new book scheduled
for this fall. The Kiihlle of Emily Dick¬
inson .
Pulitzer Prize Winner Paul Green,
whose play. The Ims I Colony, cele¬
brates North Carolina's founding, is off
on a trip around the world sponsored
by the Rockefeller Foundation. His
purpose is to explain American de¬
mocracy and the American way of life
to writers, political leaders and just
plain people of all the countries he
visits. Another Pulitzer Prize winner.
Carl Sandburg in Flat Rock, gets
around the stale as much as possible
giving readings from his poems or sing¬
ing American folk songs and accom¬
panying himself on the guitar.
Currently on the best-seller list is
James Street's The High Calling, his
novel about a Baptist minister which
is the sequel to The Gauntlet. Both
these novels were book club selections.
Now Mr. Street is off on a project he
has had on his mind for years, a novel
about Columbus to be called The Vel¬
vet Doublet. Another Chapel Hill
writer. Betty Smith, has this year seen
her perennially popular novel, A Tree
Grows in Brooklyn, converted into a
musical that made an immediate suc¬
cess in New York and is still playing
to crowded houses. Max Steele, who
left Chapel Hill for a year in Europe
on his income front the $10,000 Har¬
per Prize Novel. Debby, has been
travelling and writing in Italy, France
and Scandinavia. Josephina Niggli.
whose Step Down. Elder Brother was
a Book of the Month Club selection,
is having a fling at Hollywood this fall
adapting her earlier Mexican Village
for the movies. Other Chapel Hill writ¬
ing news includes a recent short story
by Noel Houston in Collier's and James
Saxon Childers’ departure for Atlanta
to become an associate editor of the
Atlanta Journal.
Writes About Dr. Sloop
Charlotte's LcGctte Blythe, who
tried to explain away Evil in A Tear
for Judas, ought to have an easier time
extolling Good in his new book about
Dr. Mary Sloop of Crossnore. Bob
Marshall, whose Little Squire Jim cele¬
brated mountain coves and mountain
legends, is working away at Old Lady
Gwynn, the story of a North Carolina
town. Elizabeth Boatwright Coker, a
South Carolinian by winter but a North
Carolinian by summers at Blowing
Rock, has decided on The Day of the
Peacock as the title for her new novel
about a Carolina textile family. Eden-
ton's Inglis Fletcher, who has caught
the early history of North Carolina in
a series of fine novels, is always hard
at work on the next one. After attend¬
ing the North Carolina Writers Con¬
ference at Cherokee this summer, she
invited the whole group to come down
to Edenton and Bandon Plantation for
a spring conference.
One of the most enthusiastically re¬
viewed books of the fall is Durham
author Frances Gray Patton's The
Finer Things of Life, a collection of
short stories that appeared mostly in
the New Yorker magazine. Her latest
project is a Southern novel. In Novem¬
ber she appeared as reviewer on the
program of the Greensboro Historical
Book Club’s Town Meeting on Books.
Sharing the reviewing spotlight with
her was Burke Davis, author of the
Revolutionary War novel. The Ragged
Ones, now out in the 25-cent reprints.
Incidentally, Davis has returned to
North Carolina from Baltimore and is
currently writing a new historical novel
as well as doing special assignments for
the Greensboro Daily News.
A novel in verse called Abel Anders
was the unique contribution to North
Carolina literature made this year by
Frank Borden Hanes of Winston-
Salem. who drew on the mountains of
Western Carolina, the college town of
Chapel Hill and an industrial city for
his backgrounds. A new Winston writ¬
er is Thomas G. Wicker, whose first
novel. Get Out of Town, was published
this fall by Gold Medal Books under
the pseudonym of Paul Connelly.
In her latest. Wild Cherry Tree
Road, Bernice Kelly Harris of Sea¬
board goes back to the Pate’s Siding
setting in Wake County which she used
so effectively in her earlier Purslane.
Lettie Rogers of Greensboro, whose
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THE STATE. DECEMBER 1. 1951
