I first met Ron Rash in 2003 when he interviewed for the John Parris Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Studies position at Western Carolina University. “We already have a lot of creative writers in the department,” I thought dubiously as I sat waiting for his presentation. But then Ron started reading from his first novel, One Foot in Eden, and I was completely enthralled. Since then, he has published six novels, four short story collections—including his newest, In the Valley (Doubleday)—and two collections of poetry. He is a New York Times best-selling author, PEN/Faulkner finalist, two-time winner of the O. Henry Prize, and a winner of the James Still Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His works have been translated into twenty languages.
Last August, the two of us sat down in his office to talk about the topic of “Crime and Punishment in Appalachia.” In the course of our conversation, we discussed religion, grace, redemption, justice, and other writers who have focused on these topics, from Dostoevsky to “grit lit” writers. Ron Rash takes his roles as writer and teacher very seriously. His works often uncover the darkest acts of inhumanity. As he stated in the interview, “Optimism is not a defining characteristic of Appalachian culture.” At the same time, Rash’s writing reveals a belief that words can act as incantations of hope. “Even the words proclaimed an order,” he writes, “the crookedness of the world made straight.”
This interview appears in full in Appalachian Journal: A Regional Studies Review, Crime & Punishment special edition, vol. 47, no. 3-4 (Spring-Summer 2020).
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Claxton: What can you tell me about the theme of crime and punishment? I’ve read some interviews where you’ve talked about how Dostoevsky’s novel informed your own writing.
Rash: When I was fifteen, I read Crime and Punishment. I was too young to understand that story at the level I would now, but what I remember is Raskolnikov’s murder of the pawnbroker and how intense that experience was. Until then I had entered the books I read, but that was the first book that entered me. I am still amazed that splotches of ink on paper could, and still can, make me feel such intensity. Crime and Punishment was the first book that made me want to be a writer.
Claxton: So, it was your Helen Keller moment?
Rash: Yeah, it really was visceral.
Claxton: Once I started looking back over your work, crime and punishment is definitely a theme. Why do you think it continues to be something you keep coming back to?
Rash: On some level we all have our crimes, those we inflict and those we endure. Fiction often takes this reality and ratchets it up to the most extreme and most complex situations, what Coetzee calls “the battle pitched on the highest plain.”
Claxton: Is your work influenced by your religious upbringing?
Rash: I grew up Southern Baptist, and that religious atmosphere certainly inculcated in me the idea that that we need to be redeemed, that we’re fallen creatures. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten past that.
Claxton: How do you [get past that]?
Rash: How does one? I think I address this better in my work, for example The World Made Straight, with the main character, Leonard, and Billy in One Foot in Eden, and Amy, too, in her own way in that same novel. Certainly The Risen. It’s not that my novels answer the question, but they raise it in a particular situation. I would say this general theme transcends my own particular religious upbringing. I’m a Jungian, so I believe there are certain stories that are universal. The theme of crime and punishment often ties into the fall of someone and then the attempt for some sort of redemption. Go back to the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is perhaps the world’s oldest novel. We know that at the end he’s a wise, just ruler. Yet within the story we see his earlier hubris, particularly when he goes in the cedar forest and cuts down its trees. In fact, I would argue Gilgamesh is the first environmental novel. Crime and punishment is a central myth, one that we’re hardwired for. It continues to have a power. You know, novels are about when things don’t go right. (Laughs)
Claxton: If we think about religion, we think about the concept of grace. Sometimes it seems like grace is missing in this idea of crime and punishment because there are people who, even if they kill somebody by accident, still seem to suffer for the blood that was spilled. Is that a pre-Christian idea?
Rash: That’s an interesting question—does that exonerate one from suffering? In The World Made Straight with Leonard, he appears to achieve… maybe you wouldn’t call it grace, but something akin to it at the end. I mean, in many ways he is at peace. At least he knows he’s done something right. He has saved Travis’s life. And maybe that’s as much grace as we can hope for on a secular level. The reader may believe that the sheriff in Above the Waterfall has achieved some level of decency. This does not exonerate him from what he did to cause his wife almost to kill herself. But I have characters who don’t redeem themselves, or desire to. I never go into a story or novel with the intent of addressing such issues; it happens organically. I’m not a Calvinist when I write. My characters have free will; I can’t tell them what to do or feel.
Claxton: And maybe it’s more about justice, instead of something given without us asking.
Rash: The idea of “justice” is a huge part of literature, because often literature is about when the accepted forms of justice don’t prevail, so sometimes another kind of justice comes in, as in Antigone. Billy certainly feels that in One Foot in Eden when he says, “I’m just beginning to suffer.” He’s going to look at that child every day and be reminded what he did. He tells us he will live with the burden of his sin the rest of his life. But at the same time, in that instance, and in the title, the religious views I grew up with are also his…
[…]
Claxton: Do you believe every human is capable of redemption, or have some people committed such horrible acts and have so little sense of remorse that they can never be rehabilitated? It seems with the characters you’ve mentioned there’s definitely still a moment of redemption, even if it’s just a moment of humanity between two people.
“I view my role as witness, not advocate. I respect my readers too much to tell them what and how they should think.”
Rash: Yeah, I don’t think I’m a nihilist. I know I’m not a nihilist. But whether some people are beyond redemption is another question that is part of the greater mystery of being human. Whether a character in my fiction is or isn’t is a question I try to leave my reader to wrestle with. I view my role as witness, not advocate. I respect my readers too much to tell them what and how they should think.
Rash: But I think to be true to life, you have to acknowledge the light as well as the darkness. And I hope I do. I spend most of my time [in the dark]. But some light leaks in. Not to acknowledge the light is a kind of sentimentality.
[…]
Claxton: Do you think that there can be anyone purely evil in the world?
Rash: For me it’s always been a very interesting philosophical question. Was Charles Manson made the way he was because of the family he grew up in, or is something more involved? The French philosopher Gabriel Marcel believed that some people, what Shakespeare called the “rarer monsters,” willed themselves toward such an extreme degree of evil that it became a form of insanity.
[…]
Claxton: I’m thinking about somebody like Serena, who’s the obvious person to come to mind. Have you written very many purely evil characters? Or do you see her as having some societal reasons for her behavior?
Rash: I believe evil is often a mystery. A writer’s quid pro quo explanation makes it too easy for us, less troubling. If, for instance, Serena was beaten when she was twelve years old, and I emphasized that, then the reader can say, “OK, that is what caused it.” I think the evil is much more disturbing when we can’t do that. […] Serena willing herself toward that amoral state can be perceived as an act of evil. Marcel would argue that it was.
[…]
Claxton: Is it easier and more fun to write villainous characters than characters who are saintly? Why does evil have such an allure?
“The most optimistic way to look at why people love to read crime stories is because most of us, while capable of extreme evil, ultimately follow our better angels…”
Rash: It can be fun to depict evil characters. Faulkner mentioned that one of his favorite characters was Jason because Jason is such a scoundrel. It’s interesting for fiction writers because we have to stretch our imaginations to depict it (or at least we hope we are) from the inside. The most optimistic way to look at why people love to read crime stories is because most of us, while capable of extreme evil, ultimately follow our better angels… So that’s where the imagination comes in. Not understand it—depict it. What I’m trying to do is deepen the mystery, as Francis Bacon said art should do.
Claxton: Following up on that, you’ve spoken about how you were in a dark place when you were writing Serena in particular. Maybe there’s almost a danger in trying to penetrate that much evil.
Rash: Nietzsche said that if you stare into the void long enough it stares back. There were moments when I felt I was being sucked into that void. I had to consciously pull myself back—I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but it was an experience I’ve never had before or since…
[…]
Claxton: Novels set in Appalachia often feature violence and crime, [but] the violent crime rate is actually lower here than in other parts of the country. So there’s the “Hillbilly Elegy” type question—how do you portray the darker aspects of life here without it perpetuating a leading stereotype?
Rash: We’re not as violent. But most literature explores when things go wrong. You have to have conflict. And very often the ultimate kind of conflict is violent. I am very aware of the violent-hillbilly stereotype, but it would be the same as if I read a Richard Price novel—he writes about murders in New York—and then said, “Gosh, in New York people must be getting mowed down right and left.” Or Jo Nesbø—an even better example. “Oh man, that Sweden, I’m never going there. They’re killing people all the time!” But here’s the key to it—and Flannery O’Connor said this, too. When you put characters in potentially violent situations, it’s about revealing the character’s essence. The masks are stripped away to reveal the character to the reader, reveal the character to other characters, and very often to reveal the character to him or herself. Violence in literature can lead to those moments, and that’s the way I try to use it. […] Literature is about conflict, and that conflict very often involves bad things and guilt and evil and punishment, or lack of punishment.
[…]
Claxton: Somerset Maugham once said there were essentially two different types of story writers, exemplified by Maupassant and Chekhov; the stories of a Maupassant are driven by the occurrence of a dramatic incident, while a Chekhov focuses on more mundane, everyday life. Do you agree? And would it be fair to say that you are closer in spirit to Maupassant than Chekhov?
Rash: I would agree that my stories are more often about a dramatic incident than the seemingly mundane, but I don’t find Maugham’s categories satisfactory. One of Chekhov’s most famous stories, “Misery,” is about a dramatic incident, the death of a man’s son. I feel a greater kinship with Chekhov than Maupassant. Chekhov is so aware of human foibles, a wonderful sense of irony, yet he never simply settles for that. He is a writer of immense humanity and so open to the full spectrum of life. He is willing to risk sentiment, at times risk what some might perceive as sentimentality. I’ve tried to do the same in my work. As Rilke says, “Seek the depth of things, therein irony does not reside.” I believe Rilke is right, and I have tried to follow Rilke’s dictum. I wouldn’t mind that as my obituary: He tried to go to the depth of things.
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Used with permission, excerpt from “Grace, Justice, and Redemption: A Conversation with Ron Rash” by Mae Miller Claxton in Appalachian Journal: A Regional Studies Review, Crime & Punishment special edition, vol. 47, no. 3-4 (Spring-Summer 2020).
