Favorite Ozarks Books – 10

Tags

anthologies, books, Don West, Donald Harington, Eugene Doty, Harry Minetree, Jack Butler, Jean Bell Mosely, Jim Bogan, Jim Hamilton, Langston Hughes, Leonard Hall, Miller Williams, Ozark Ozark, Paul Johnson, Roy Reed, Speer Morgan, Thomza Zimmerman, University of Missouri, Vance Randolph, Walter Bargen, Ward Dorrance

I’ve been thinking about Ozark anthologies lately, and have been re-reading a couple. Ozark, Ozark, edited by Miller Williams, came out in 1981. I have a vague recollection of being an intern at the University of Missouri Press when this book was in production, but I don’t believe I worked on any of it, except perhaps for helping to proofread the Acknowledgements page or something equally forgettable. That’s too bad, because I would like to be able to claim some small amount of credit for this very memorable anthology.

Williams employed a sort-of chronological approach in this anthology, organizing by author birthdate starting in 1869 and ending in 1949. Like all structures, this approach both confines and provides framing; there’s no Schoolcraft or Turnbo, but the early- to mid-part of the century is well represented. Vance Randolph is in there, along with Ward Dorrance and Donald Harington. But I’m more taken by the less-familiar names in the collection, authors I hadn’t known before: Don West, Jack Butler. Some people I’ve known personally are welcome inhJabitants of these pages: Speer Morgan, Eugene Warren (who writes as Eugene Doty nowadays), Jim Bogan, Paul Johnson, Walter Bargen. An occasional ringer fills out the pages as well, like Langston Hughes, who yes was born in Joplin, making him an Ozarker by birth, but who high-tailed it for Mexico, Europe, and New York as quick as he got the chance.

I particularly like the inclusion of some accomplished newspaper columnists in the anthology. The newspaper column is a demanding craft, with strict word counts and unforgiving deadlines, and it’s easy to become a hack at it. Even the best columnists occasionally write a bad one, but the good ones somehow manage to find grace or insight in the everyday rhythms of life. The Jean Bell Mosely/Thomza Zimmerman alternating column, “From Dawn to Dusk,” which appeared in Cape Girardeau newspapers and was syndicated regionally for 21 years, was such a column. So too were the columns of Jim Hamilton, the longtime editor of the Buffalo Reflex, who later collected some of his best ones in a book entitled River of Used to Be, which is one of the prizes on my shelf. We don’t have selections from either of those in this anthology, but we do have columns from Leonard Hall and Roy Reed, and a short magazine piece from Harry Minetree.

The anthology is a reflection of its time, overwhelmingly male and white, and that’s a weakness. I also spotted a few errors in the introduction and notes, but despite those difficulties, Ozark Ozark: A Hillside Reader is still a pleasure to dip into. It’s out of print, as far as I can tell, but used copies can be found for not too outrageous a price.

 

 

 

 

Advertisement

Favorite Ozarks People – 10

Tags

Advance, Cape Girardeau, Favorite Ozarks People, Jean Bell Mosely, Mineral Area College, Southeast Missouri State University, Southeast Missourian, Thomza Zimmerman

Jean Bell Mosely

Missourians of a certain age may remember Jean Bell Mosely, and those who are not of that age should learn about her. She was a prolific writer whose work was characterized by a gracefulness of style and a clarity of observation that many of us would envy.

Her work was conventional in the sense that it stayed within accepted social norms; she was an exceptionally good citizen in the community where she spent most of her life, Cape Girardeau, a churchgoer and faithful alumna of Flat River Junior College (now Mineral Area College) and Southeast Missouri State College (now University), having been the valedictorian at both Doe Run High School and the junior college. So you won’t see her name in the list of ground-breakers. But her devotion to craft and her exceptional observativeness are exemplary. Her stories were published in Woman’s Day and The Saturday Evening Post in the 1950s, and her books, six in all, came out from the Fifties through the Eighties. She died in 2003 at age 89.

But the way most people in Southeast Missouri experienced her work, I suspect, was in her newspaper column “From Dawn Till Dusk,” which appeared in the Southeast Missourian and was frequently republished elsewhere. She and another Southeast Missouri writer, Thomza Zimmerman of Advance, alternated columns, and they were eagerly read throughout the region. Mosely’s close observations of nature and of human nature were particularly insightful. She began writing the column in 1955, and the last one was published five days before her death. How’s that for meeting your deadlines?  In that final column, she mused about how the clothing worn by the various caregivers at her medical facility reflected their personalities and perhaps their unspoken wishes.

I hope I am still writing in the week before my end, and if I am, I’ll try to remember to end whatever I’m working on with the word that Jean Bell Mosely used to conclude every column: Rejoice!