Have you read the novel, The Dollmaker by Harriette Simpson Arnow, first published in 1954? I read it years ago and also saw the movie. One of them, the book I think, had a sad but realistic ending. I may have seen the movie first and liked its ending better, but it’s been so long ago, I may have it backwards.
I’m working on a new idea for another story set in the Eastern Kentucky mountains, and I’ve been reading all sorts of Appalachian writing. I’m reading River of Earth by James Still right now. I’m not planning to reread The Dollmaker. At least, not until I write my book, but I have forgotten much of the story and perhaps should give the book another read through someday.
Anyway, as I was searching through posts and articles on the internet about the Appalachian region, I came across a long interview with Harriette Simpson Arnow about her life and writing. I’m always interested in reading about writers and how they came to write this or that story. So, even though I didn’t think it would be helpful research for my book idea, I had to read it.
In the interview, Arnow talks about being born in Kentucky in the eastern part of the state, but she was in a town that wasn’t isolated as many of the mountain communities were. Her mother was a teacher before she married and she wanted Harriette to be a teacher too. When Harriette was eighteen, she taught at a one-room school not that many miles from her hometown of Burnside, but the place was isolated with no roads. There she got to know many back hills women while teaching for a year before going to college in Louisville. Because she had always been consumed with the desire to write, she stopped teaching which didn’t pay that well at the time and worked as a waitress where she made more money and had more time for her writing.
The Dollmaker is the book that made Arnow well known although she published a couple of books before it. The Dollmaker is told through the eyes of Gertie Nevels, a woman torn from the woods and farmland to move with her children to join her husband living in World War II factory workers’ housing in Detroit. Critics have often labeled it feminist fiction. Arnow herself disputed that and said it was simply the story of an individual woman’s struggle to survive in a harsh and changing world.
Many years later, after she married, Arnow did move from a farm she and her husband owned in the mountains to a housing project in Detroit during what many call the Appalachian migration when many mountain people moved north to work in war-related manufacturing. However, Arnow stressed that The Dollmaker was in no way autobiographical. Rather, she said the story was created in her imagination. She talked about how readers were always assuming that something she wrote was about her own life or the experiences of someone they knew.
I can relate a little to that as at times, people will think something I write in my stories has come from my own experiences when in fact, like Harriette Arnow, I dreamed the characters up. That’s not to say I don’t thread in bits of my experiences or that of people I know. Everything a writer experiences or reads or hears can go into the creative well to perhaps be drawn out later at the right time in a book.
Toward the end of the piece, the interviewer asked Arnow, “Do you have any idea about the next novel that you plan to write or hope to write?”
Arnow answered, “Oh, yes. If I didn’t have an idea about it, I wouldn’t be wanting to write about it. But I never talk about my writing, not even to my husband or anyone, until I have it written.”
Again, I could identify, and I’ve read other authors who say the same. I can’t share about my stories before or while I’m writing them. The interviewer obviously understood this too as she responded, “It makes good sense, because otherwise you talk it away.”
To which Arnow said, “Well, I’ve heard of people. . . . I read somewhere about some man who could have been a writer, but he talked his novels out.”
I’m sometimes surprised by how much alike writers can be while at the same time being totally different with individual creative ways.
When I looked for a picture of Arnow, I found this she said about her writing. “I am afflicted with too many words … Like the characters in my books, I talk too much and tell things I shouldn’t tell.”
Sometimes, well, many times, I have the same affliction with too many words. If you want to read the whole 1976 interview with Harriette Simpson Arnow about her interesting life as a mountain girl, teacher, writer, wife and mother, here is the link. It’s part of the Southern Oral History Program Collection.
Do you enjoy hearing about the writing process of authors?
Comments 12
I think learning about how an author writes is very interesting. It’s amazing to me how a story is formed and ideas keep coming to write the story. I remember trying to write stories when we were asked to for an assignment in school. It was a real struggle for me to come up with something, but somehow I got through it. The person that writing comes easily to is a very lucky person. Everyone is not born to be a writer, but I am very glad for the ones that are because I love reading books.
Author
And those of us who like to share the stories are very thankful for those who love to read books, Connie. Of course, most, if not all, love to read books too.
I have discovered that I truly enjoy reading books that occur in my home state of Kentucky. You have really opened that up to me and I thank you. I have not read The Dollmaker but it is on my list!
Author
I’m so happy you’ve enjoyed reading my Kentucky settings and history in my stories, Pamela. I like writing books set in Kentucky. I feel as though I can know my characters better if they talk with the same Kentucky accent as me. 🙂
I read The Dollmaker many many years ago, and want to read it again someday. My friend and I were just talking about it last week. She had finally seen the movie and loved it! I’ve always enjoyed books about the Appalachian area. The first one I read was Christie by Catherine Marshall, also one I want to reread because I was so young the first time I read it. That story had me wanting to move to the mountains and be a teacher.
I enjoyed this blog a lot, and I’ll be following that link to read the whole article about Arnow. It’s always fun to hear about a writer’s experiences. Thanks for sharing!
Author
Hope you enjoyed reading the entire interview, Lavon. I got irritated at times with the interviewer who sometimes didn’t seem to give Arnow enough time to finish her answers, but it was great reading about Arnow’s life and writing. I also ready Christy years ago. I have it on my Kindle but I won’t read it again until after I write my new story since I wouldn’t want Catherine Marshall’s tone and words to color my own.
I enjoy reading about Kentucky and Appalachia, but somehow I never read The Dollmaker. It’s going on my TBR list now. James Still’s River of Earth is good. Janice Holt Giles was one of my favorite authors when I was younger. I need to go back and read her books again. One of the reasons I enjoy reading about our beautiful state is how everything differs from one region to another. We really aren’t the stereotypes portrayed in much of the media.
Author
I love reading historical fiction set in Kentucky too. I read all Janice Holt Giles’s novels and her autobiographical books too. I did just recently reread her book, Run Me a River. It did have some dated stereotypical parts that although perhaps true to the times wouldn’t be published in a book today. I was researching riverboats for my next spring’s book, In the Shadow of the River. I liked reading about the riverboat and the crew.
Jane Fonda read the book early in the 1960’s and wanted a studio to produce it but they held out for years. She bought the rights to the novel until she found backing and made the movie. It was hard to imagine her as Gertie Nevels but she did a pretty good job of it.
It is a book that resonates with those of us who went to Detroit in the 1950’s and faced stereotyping and teasing for being “hillbillies” but who loved the book’s characters as people we were raised among.
Thank you for listening. Love all your books.
Would that we could have an online book discussion group on our literature! When I lived in Somerset Ky my book discussion group did just that with works by Arnow, Janice Holt Giles, yourself and others. How I miss that group.
Here in Colorado we meet to discuss women who homestead on the prairie and in the mountains in the gold and silver mines. History is rich wherever you live.
Author
That’s interesting about the movie too, Ruby. Someone let me know that it was the movie that had the more upbeat ending while the book was no doubt more realistic. I’m sure I preferred the happy ending. I remember being sad that Gertie didn’t get back to the mountains she loved.
So fun to know that you were in a book club that talked about books like mine and Janice Holt Giles. I loved her books. I’ll have to do a blog about her sometime and about how her stories inspired me to write Kentucky based stories.
I did a Zoom meeting with an online bookclub, Ruby. They had members from California and Kentucky and several other states. That was fun. Maybe you can find a group like that someday to join a bookclub that has readers from all over.
I sat in an audience in Ann Arbor once as she talked about writing. She wrote all her novels in long hand on yellow legal pads. She revised but kept the story true to the time and setting.
She told of writing about coon hunters and their dogs and how their love of the sport was a deeply learned part of Appalachian life. I had an uncle who loved coon hunting and raised Beagle dogs and was a judge of dog trials. He felt no books were ever about any things he liked therefore he detested reading. I read him 2 chapters of “The Hunter’s Horn” and he loved it and shared it with his friends in the hunting world. She captured the very essence and feelings of Appalachians and coon hunting and the importance of dogs in their culture.
Her characters can be compared to John Fox Jr in his books.
I took a college course at Wayne State University in Detroit called Women in Folklore. The Dollmaker was included in the course. Our final had to be a visual presentation depicting one of the novels. I took a large Appalachian melon basket, filled with old chisels, blocks of various woods some half carved figures, wooden toys and an apron that was my grandmother’s and a paring knife with a few apples. My husband was a carver and wood model builder for General Motors so brought the book to life for others.
Author
Thanks for sharing about hearing Harriette Arnow speak about writing. Yes, in the interview she said she always wrote her first drafts in long hand on yellow legal pads. She also said she had horrendous handwriting. Her husband typed one of her stories for her from the handwritten draft, and she said she didn’t know how he interpreted her writing. 🙂 He was also a writer when they married, but he became busy with other work.
She also talked about learning about hunting and dogs from the men around her. She said she did ask some questions, but mostly she just listened to them talk about their hunting and their dogs.
Your visual representation was perfect for The Dollmaker.