Nothing Sacred: Outspoken Voices in Contemporary Fiction
edited by Bernard Schweizer & James Morrow

SYNOPSIS: “Appalachian Gothic” gives readers an aging moonshiner, Shiloh “Homerun” Summy, famous for his strong whiskey and ornate rhetoric. He’s so notorious, in fact, that he’s gotten on the radar of a New York filmmaker who plans to incorporate him into her left-leaning documentary about the political culture of the Great Smoky Mountain region. From the instant he opens his mouth, Homerun achieves escape velocity from whatever ideological commitments we may hold dear to become one of the most gloriously repulsive-magnetic characters since Ignatius T. Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces.

MINI INTERVIEW:

Q: Was it hard for you to bring to (fictional) life a Trump voter?
A: Although the politics of “Appalachian Gothic” as a whole are, to my mind, about as comparable to pro-Trump Homerun Summy’s as apples are to “the Orange Man,” I had many models, both among personal acquaintances and in the media, to draw from when creating Homerun qua political animal. Besides, Homerun’s support for Trump seems to me rather reflexive and only tenuously connected to his motive force; far harder than representing ideology or slogans or soundbites is bestowing the illusion of warm, capable life and liberty on one’s characters. All of that being said, in my experience not a few readers, both recreational and professional, tend to confuse an author’s perspective with those of his or her creatures, or they shy away from platforming or otherwise attending to work in which an author airs perspectives that violate certain ideological preferences. Due to such confusion or timidity, it may have been easier, all things said and done, to bring Homerun to life than it was to find a publisher willing to share his life and the lives of those around him with the reading public.

Q: Where did the idea of “Appalachian Gothic” originate?
A: In the spring of 2014, while I was studying overseas, I watched Neal Hutcheson’s inspiriting documentary “This is the Last Dam Run of Likker I’ll Ever Make,” featuring an Appalachian moonshiner. The film somewhat relieved my homesickness and moved me to hazard a sketch of the character who would many moons later ferment into Homerun Summy. That sketch lay stashed in a drawer for years thereafter, thematically undeveloped and verbally unruly; but I returned to it with new designs in the sickly light of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and after a closer reading, guided by Northrop Frye, of the works of William Blake (those familiar with Blake’s Urizen and Orc, for example, may discern the lineaments of those archetypal figures in “Appalachian Gothic”). As to form, I learned how to structure the fiction after reading George Duckworth’s Structural Patterns and Proportions in Vergil’s Aeneid. There, Duckworth explicates Virgil’s masterful deployment of symmetry and contrast; I have, in my novice way, sought to emulate what I could. Finally, the spirit of gratitude compels me to acknowledge that I drew imagery for the crucial scene in which Homerun commits infidelity from the music video for Lana Del Rey’s “Ride.”

Q: What sources did you consult to create the distinct local vernacular spoken by your protagonist?
A: My paternal grandparents, Homer and La Rue, both spoke Texan English, which primed my ear for dialect, and they also introduced me as a child to a host of rich colloquialisms, a few of which I’ve worked into the texture of “Appalachian Gothic.” But Texan English ain’t no Smoky Mountain English, and I’ve regrettably never set foot in Appalachia (except imaginatively, most memorably through the fiction of the late Cormac McCarthy). Therefore, to represent Smokies speech as faithfully as I could despite my inexperience and linguistic limitations, I turned to Michael Montgomery and Joseph S. Hall’s “Grammar and Syntax of Smoky Mountain English (SME),” made available online through the University of South Carolina. Somewhat reluctantly, I also confess that my high school viewings of the adult cartoon Squidbillies may have influenced, as one character on the show has it, the workings of my “damn laughy trap.” I thank Sorrel Westbrook and the editors at Heresy Press for ferreting out implausible phrases in my characters’ speech; all remaining infelicities and errors are my own.

BIO: Joshua Wilson lives in San Francisco, California, along with his partner, the writer Sorrel Westbrook. His work focuses on the relationship between culture and capitalism. His reviews, poems, and fiction have appeared, under his own name as well as various pseudonyms, in The Harvard Advocate, The New Republic Online, The Decadent Review, Big Whoopie Deal, and elsewhere. He dedicates “Appalachian Gothic” to the memory of his uncle Craig Wilson, who nurtured those seeking out the best that has been thought and written.