Everything That Rises Must Converge Read Free Page B

lot of writing, some of it as good in its way as she would ever do. The story entitled “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” an inimitably funny one that is also a triumph over Erskine Caldwell and a thing of great beauty, I remember reading in manuscript on the road to Indiana. She showed us, too, the opening of a second novel, so powerful that we felt, one and all, that since it would be very hard to sustain it might have to be toned down. It was later, a little, and became part of The Violent Bear It Away. She wrote “The River.” In the fall John Crowe Ransom invited her to apply for a Kenyon Review Fellowship, and she applied, she said, “before the envelope was opened good.” By Christmas she knew that she had it. “I reckon most of this money will go to blood and ACTH and books, with a few sideline researches into the ways of the vulgar. I would like to go to California for about two minutes to further these researches, though at times I feel that a feeling for the vulgar is my natural talent and don’t need any particular encouragement. Did you see the picture of Roy Rogers’ horse attending a church service in Pasadena?”
    News and other items in the press of our favored land were always a solace to her. She turned eagerly for years to the testimonial ads for a patent medicine called HADA-COL, and these she would often pass on, especially after we moved to Europe late in ’53 and were cut off from the savor of American life. Early that year, when she began to receive her fellowship money, she reported a mild change in the interest shown her work by the countryside. “My kinfolks think I am a commercial writer now and really they are very proud of me. My uncle Louis is always bringing a message from somebody at the King Hdw. Co. who has read Wise Blood. The last was: ask her why she don’t write about some nice people. Louis says, I told them you wrote what paid  … I am doing fairly well these days, though I am practically baldheaded on top and have a watermelon face…”
    In another letter of about the same time I find: “The Maple Oats really send me. I mean they are a heap of improvement over saltless oatmeal, horse biscuit, stewed kleenex, and the other delicacies that I have been eating … The novel seems to be doing very well. I have a nice gangster in it named Rufus Florida Johnson…” Disappearing from the novel, he turned up a long time later in one of the stories in this volume. Dr. Merrill, whom she liked and called “the scientist,” told her in the summer that she was “doing better than anybody else has that has what I got,” and she flew up to see us in August. It was our last meeting as a family for five years.
    The correspondence for 1954 begins: “I got word the other day that I had been reappointed a Kenyon Fellow, so that means the Rockerfellers [the Foundation supplied funds for the fellowships] will see to my blood and ACTH for another year and I will have to keep on praying for the repose of John D.’s soul … Today I got a letter from one Jimmie Crum of Los Angeles, California, who has just read Wise Blood and wants to know what happened to the guy in the ape suit … I am also corresponding with the secretary of the Chef’s National Magazine, the Culinary Review…” She was acquiring what she called a “gret” reading public. She would soon have enough short stories for a collection. And her disease had apparently been checked. Late in the year, however, we heard of a new ailment in a letter to my wife: “I am walking with a cane these days which gives me a great air of distinction … I now feel that it makes very little difference what you call it. As the niggers say, I have the misery.” In the same letter: “I have finally got off the ms. for my collection and it is scheduled to appear in May. Without your kind permission I have