She has received awards for her writing from James Michener and the Copernicus Society of America (1989), the Kentucky Arts Council (1999, 1996, 1995), the Kentucky Foundation for Women (1987), and the Appalachian Writing Association (1988, 1987). Her first collection of short stories, Farlanburg Stories, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection in 1990.
A freelance writer since 1980, Koger is best known for her short fiction. Having worked as a newspaper journalist and as a teacher of creative writing in workshops across the country, she is currently at work on a novel. She lives with her husband and two children in Somerset, Kentucky.
When her first published story appeared in Seventeen magazine in June, 1985, she remembers, “a familiar voice inside my head told me that the only reason they'd accepted my story was that their regular writers had gone on vacation or had died.” Though she had worked on it for three years, she was dissatisfied with it, as she reports she always is when she reads her published work.
She explains the importance of her home in her work, set in the rural southern Appalachian Mountains: “I suspect that trying to separate a writer's work from his background is a little like trying to separate a turtle from its shell…. Remove home and its influence from my back, and I will have lost not just shelter but an essential part of me. I grew up in a community where people had meat on their bones, physically and spiritually. As a reader I like fiction with heft and heart rather than fiction that is fashionably thin. I like ‘necessary’ fiction, stories that feel as if they were born because they had to be born, to give life to a character who had begun to kick and thrash about because he knew his incubation period was up.”
Stories from Farlanburg Stories appeared originally in Seventeen, Kennesaw Review, American Voice, and Ploughshares. The ten-story collection won acclaim from Anne Rivers Siddons, Lee Smith, Mark Childress, and Madison Smartt Bell, among others, who praised her storytelling skill, wit, humor, and compassion for her characters.
In these scenes from “Extended Learning,” Della Sayer relishes spending time with her grandson, T. Barry, and his parents who have come for a summer visit.
OTHER SOURCES TO EXPLORE
PRIMARY
Short stories: Farlanburg Stories (1990). Autobiographical essay: “Writing in the Smoke-House” in The Confidence Woman: 26 Women Writers (1991), ed. Eve Shelnutt, 353–66; rpt. in Bloodroot (1998), ed. Joyce Dyer, 154–66.
SECONDARY
Atlanta Journal and Constitution (15 July 1990). Charleston Gazette (26 August 1990). Chattanooga Times (16 July 1990). Chicago Tribune (29 July 1990). Mark Childress, review of Farlanburg Stories, New York Times Book Review (August 19, 1990), 16. Cleveland Plain Dealer (19 August 1990). Contemporary Authors (1991), Vol. 133, 216–17. Joyce Dyer, “Lisa Koger,” in Bloodroot, 153. Newsday (12 August 1990). Philadelphia Inquirer (22 July 1990).
FARLANBURG STORIES (1990)
from Extended Learning
At eleven o'clock the next morning, Frank and Marjorie were still asleep. The sun had completed half its arc across the sky, and Della's dogs, two male mongrels, had already lumbered off to find shade. Silvervine, the cat, just returned from hunting, sat licking her paws and sunning herself on the walk.
Della had been up since five. When she was younger, she used to crave sleep. She dreamed of going to bed before dark and nesting there until noon the next day, but now that she had the opportunity, she had lost the inclination, which was just as well, she supposed, considering she had a grandson to attend to and a turn of light bread to make.
T. Barry sat beside her on the back porch steps, hands on his knees, a wrinkled bag full of hickory nuts in his lap. Della had gathered the nuts last fall from the big shagbarks that lined the road below her house and had stored them in a box on the top shelf of her cupboard until the insides were sweet and chewy, the shells the color of clean sand. She had saved them for this occasion, and at the end of the week, she planned to send what was left home with T. Barry with the hope that each time he cracked one, he'd remember the fun they'd had. She scooped a handful from the bag, tapped one with her hammer, then dropped the kernel into her grandson's open mouth. “So,” she said. “Tell me again what the T. stands for. It's Timothy or Terrence or Tutwyler. My memory's not as good as it used to be, you understand.”
The boy chewed steadily and looked at Della out of clear, deep-set gray eyes. He was a quiet kid with thick, blond hair cut so his head appeared pea-nut-shaped and difficult to balance. His arms and legs were remarkably unscarred and new looking, as though he hadn't figured out what to do with himself from the neck down. “It stands for Thurman,” he said, shyly. “You know that.”
Della nodded and cracked another nut, this time for herself. “Maybe,” she said, “and maybe I just wanted to see if you did. I knew a man once, a pitiful fellow, who got kicked in the head by a horse and couldn't remember his own name. He went crazy trying to remember it, so they locked him in a corncrib and kept him there till he died.”
T. Barry frowned and studied Della's crib. The rock supports at the two front corners had crumbled during the years, allowing the north side of the building to sit down, but the south side was still stable and several feet off the ground. Della liked her corncrib, though she had to admit it was hazardous. It reminded her of the hotrods the young boys drove through town.
“I don't believe that,” said T. Barry. “It's against the law to lock someone in a corncrib.”
“They abolished that law,” said Della. “I guess you're not familiar with the Corncrib Act.”
Behind them, inside the kitchen, Snapper whined and dug at the screen. Della had walked him earlier and would have let him out to run in the yard, but Marjorie had forbidden it. “Not as long as your dogs are home,” she'd said. “Fleas.”
T. Barry bit down hard on an unshelled nut. “What's ‘abolish’?”
“It means to do away with, to get rid of. Don't worry about it though. I still think you're plenty smart.”
“I'm in the E.L.P.”
“Sorry,” said Della. “I didn't know.” She tilted her head and looked at her grandson through her bifocals. “What's the E.L.P.?”
“Extended Learning Program. It's a thing for smart kids at my school.”
“Oh,” said Della. “Are you smart?”
T. Barry shrugged. “They say I am.”
“They say a lot of things,” said Della.
“I'm smart enough not to believe everything you tell me. Mama and Daddy say you have a bad habit of making things up.”
Della laughed. “I don't know why grown-ups do that.”
“Do what?”
“Try to keep things from kids.” Della shook her head. “Fifty cents says they'll tell you there's no such thing as the Corncrib Act.”
“I'll ask them,” said T. Barry, rising.
“Go ahead. I guess I'd better hurry inside and fix their breakfast. But I must say I was having fun sitting out here cracking nuts and talking to you.”
T. Barry rolled a nut with the toe of his shoe, then sat down again. “Is it true about that crazy man? I want you to tell me the truth.”
“Of course it is,” said Della.
“Tell me his name, then.”
“Can't do that.”
“Why not?”
“If he didn't know it, how do you expect me to?”
The day turned out to be a scorcher. By three o'clock that afternoon, the temperature had reached the mid-nineties, and the cows had wandered off the hills and stood under the apple trees below the house, chewing cuds and flicking matted tails at the flies.
Della's house had no air-conditioning, but she kept fans in most of the windows. On humid days, the only really cool spot on the place was the cellar because it was partially under the hill, and occasionally, Della would pull a chair in there and relax or take a flashlight and admire the variety of colors in her canned fruits and vegetables. Earlier, she had mentioned the cellar to Frank and Marjorie, but neither of them took
her up on it, so she assumed they weren't too uncomfortable with the heat. She had also suggested they all get in her car and go for a drive to enjoy the countryside, maybe get an ice cream cone, her treat, but no one had seemed especially wild about that idea.
“Don't think you have to entertain us,” said Frank. “You just go on and do your thing, and so will we, and that way we can all relax.”
“I am relaxed,” said Della. “I just thought you might enjoy getting out and seeing the sights.”
“I grew up around here, Mom. Remember?”
“Things change,” said Della. “You've been gone a long time.”
Della stood in her kitchen, rolling and cutting egg noodles. She had the radio on to help pass the time. Frank was asleep, Marjorie was reading, and T. Barry lay stretched out on the living room floor doing his homework. It was their first full day of vacation, and Della wanted it to be memorable and exciting.
“Homework?” she had said when Marjorie told T. Barry it was time to get his books. “It's summer.”
“He takes a test in three weeks when school starts. He has to have a high score if he wants to stay in the E.L.P. That's a program for gifted kids at his school.”
Della looked at her daughter-in-law over the top of her glasses.
“He enjoys it,” said Marjorie. “At home, he'd much rather be inside reading or fooling with his computer than outside with the other kids playing in the street.”
“You think that's normal?”
“What's normal?” said Marjorie.
“Homework,” Della said to herself as she picked up a big knife and sliced off sections from the roll of noodle dough. Frank had never done homework during the summer, and as far as school went, he had certainly done all right.
At the moment, he was snoring in the front porch swing. He had eaten his breakfast a little after noon and had gone upstairs and prowled through some boxes of old books. He was asleep again when Della went to check on him at two. The noodles were for him; Della hoped they might enliven him. When he was a boy, his favorite dish had been a concoction of homemade egg noodles and beans. In those days, he liked to fish and hunt, and he spent hours walking the creek banks or just wandering over the hills. Back then, he'd come home with burrs in his socks and a craving for noodles, and Della had wound up fixing them once or twice a week. Now, he insisted they weren't worth the trouble it took to make them. Della loved her son dearly and was proud of his accomplishments, but there were moments when she was struck by the unmotherly thought that, at some point, he had turned into one of the most boring people she knew.
He had done well in high school and had earned a scholarship to the state university. Four years had turned into six, six into ten; more than half his life had been spent in school. He had knocked off all the rough edges, but in the process, something else had been knocked off, too. Though he could tell her there was a statistically significant correlation between canopy tree mortality and drought-induced stress, he could not tell her how to save her wild chestnut trees. And Della was surprised and, secretly, a little disappointed the first time she discovered that, unlike his father, he could not recognize a white oak suitable for veneer from one destined for crossties.
Neither she nor Royce had any education beyond high school, and Royce had always been proud that his son was smart and had done so well at books. “It's the way the world's goin',” he had said when Frank finished his Ph.D. “Gettin’ an education is the ticket to a better life.” There was a slightly wistful tone to his voice that Della hadn't heard before.
“Oh, I don't know about that,” she said. “I don't have an education, and I'm happy with my life.” She laughed. “Why, I don't know as I could stand it if it got any better.”
Royce smiled, patted her shoulder, and said, “Some are just easier satisfied than others,” which caused Della to wonder for weeks whether he knew something about their life that she didn't.
Della lifted the noodle sections, combing with her fingers until the yellow strips unwound and lay like a pile of shorn curls. Through the kitchen window, she had a clear view of Marjorie, who was stretched out in a lawn chair in the backyard. She was a good visitor, really, no more trouble than the cows. She did not hang around the kitchen and get in the way by trying to be useful, nor did she rattle on about the food and interrupt Della's work by asking for recipes. All she wanted was to be left alone with her book, and occasionally, she would look up and inquire whether there was any iced tea.
She was Frank's wife, and Della wanted to like her, but Frank's wife or not, she wasn't very lively, and Della often wondered how she worked up enough energy to pull a tooth. Della recalled having a tooth pulled by a dentist, a Dr. Weeble, when she was a child, and what she remembered most about the experience was not the pain or the blood but the look on Dr. Weeble's face as he rolled up his sleeves, rubbed his hands together, and told her to say, “Aaahhh.” It was an eager, alive look, one that said, “I am passionate about teeth!” To be good at anything, you had to feel passionate about it, Della had always believed, the way she felt about the people she loved, the way Royce had felt about trees.
“If you had only ten minutes left on earth, how would you spend them?” she once asked Royce, and, without hesitation, he told her he'd go to the woods, lie on his back, and look at trees. At the time, she was hurt because he hadn't said he'd spend his last moments with her. Looking back on it, she thought she recognized a rare, uncalculating honesty and a genuine love of nature in his answer, and she wished he were around to instill a little of that love in their grandson.
When she had finished with the noodles, Della washed her hands and tip-toed into the living room. T. Barry lay on his stomach, studying. Seeing him like that took Della back almost thirty years. He looked so much like Frank from certain angles.
“Psstt,” she said.
He glanced up.
“You don't look like you're having much fun,” she said. “Are you having fun at Grandma Della's house?”
He wrinkled his nose. “You've got something awful in your carpet,” he said, pointing at a dark spot in the pile.
Della knelt and examined it. “That's not something awful,” she said. “It's a mashed raisin. Your better brand of carpets come that way.”
T. Barry looked skeptical.
“It's true,” said Della. “The manufacturers put little pieces of food in there so the people who buy the carpets will have something to fall back on in case of hard times.”
T. Barry put his face closer to the raisin and peered at it. “You're making that up,” he said. “I bet it doesn't say that in any carpet books.”
“Just because it's not written down somewhere doesn't mean it's not true. Grandma Della loves T. Barry. True or false?”
He shrugged. “True.”
“See,” said Della. “You believe that without reading it.” She untied her apron and took it off. “Are you finished with your homework?”
He shook his head.
“Too bad. I was looking for someone to take a walk with me.”
“I've got to do my math,” said T. Barry.
Della picked at the raisin. “What's nine plus nine?”
He rolled his eyes and looked insulted. “That's easy. Eighteen.” Della held up her hand. “Ding-a-ling-a-ling.”
“What's that?”
“A bell,” she said. “School's out. You already know more than me….
CATHERINE LANDIS
(June 9, 1956–)
Novelist Catherine Landis is a native of Chattanooga, Tennessee. After graduating from Davidson College in 1978 with a B.A. in English, she spent several years as a newspaper reporter in New Bern, North Carolina, before moving on to a job in the promotions department at Kentucky Educational Television (KET). She resides in Knoxville, Tennessee, with her husband and two sons.
Landis's first novel, Some Days There's Pie, was published in 2002, to critical acclaim. Fred Chappell wrote, “With its strongly engaging characters, suspenseful story,
and limpid, evocative style, Catherine Landis’ novel is first-rate…. Landis should take pride—and prizes.” Reviewer Pam Kingsbury described the fried pies sold at the local hardware store in the novel as “a mouth-watering metaphor for the surprises of life in a small Southern town.”
“I consider myself more of a re-writer than a writer,” says Landis. “The first draft of any project is merely a tool for writing…the real writing unfolds only when I dig deeper into the material…. One minute I feel like a genius, the next, a deluded pretender. I have found both ‘voices’ unhelpful and have learned to tell both to, ‘Sit down and be quiet.’ The only ‘voice’ I listen to is the one that tells me, ‘Okay, it's not right, but here's how to make it better.’”
Landis says the music of the region has been a major influence on her work. “Writing my first novel, I found that, when I got stuck, the way to ‘unstick’ was by listening to this music. It gave me voice, rhythm, tone, humor and an efficient way of telling a story. I sometimes am amused to hear people deliberate at length on what makes Southern writing. I want to say to them, ‘Listen to the way I talk and ask yourself, what else would you expect?’”
The opening chapter of Some Days There's Pie is set in the North Carolina mountains, where Ruth Ritchie, a young woman searching for herself, has been befriended by the aging Rose.
OTHER SOURCES TO EXPLORE
PRIMARY
Novel: Some Days There's Pie (2002)
Listen Here Page 34