Participation Type
Paper
Presentation #1 Title
Appalachian Folk-metaphysics and the Power of Choice in Wiley Cash’s The Last Ballad
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Appalachia has often been eager to accept the perspectives of outsiders when it comes to characterizing who we are as a people within a region. These outside perspectives, masquerading as either science or folk-history, severely complicate the already knotty concept of Appalachian identity and culture. In order to untangle this complex rhetorical web, I propose a return to an Appalachian Aesthetics rooted in our folk-metaphysics as illustrated in Wiley Cash’s novel The Last Ballad.
This paper explores the role nostalgia has in redefining tradition and fatalism by explicating Cash’s aesthetics as a particular set of problem solving techniques, inherent in Appalachian folklore and lifeways, providing a strategy for living a meaningful life in the face of uncertainty, in-justice, and failure. Through an exploration of how time, ethical planning, and action create art and meaning, individual choice, as informed by these texts, replaces passive fatalism as the means by which we construct and express who we are as individuals and a region.
By making readers aware of the unique qualities and contexts that go into the creation and expression of Appalachian literature, those of us in the region will see ourselves in this particular manifestation of folk-literature and not in the mass media narratives that reduce us to either clowns or monsters. For those not from the region, they, too, will discover Appalachia and Appalachians in this folk-literature where we express our roots and our place, in our art, as an essential fact of our existence.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Ed Karshner was born in Ross County Ohio and raised in the Salt Creek Valley that binds Hocking, Ross, and Pickaway Counties. He is an Associate Professor of English at Robert Morris University and lives in Oberlin, Ohio with his wife and their two children. His essay “These Stories Sustain Me” will be included in West Virginia University Press’s Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to JD Vance.
Appalachian Folk-metaphysics and the Power of Choice in Wiley Cash’s The Last Ballad
Appalachia has often been eager to accept the perspectives of outsiders when it comes to characterizing who we are as a people within a region. These outside perspectives, masquerading as either science or folk-history, severely complicate the already knotty concept of Appalachian identity and culture. In order to untangle this complex rhetorical web, I propose a return to an Appalachian Aesthetics rooted in our folk-metaphysics as illustrated in Wiley Cash’s novel The Last Ballad.
This paper explores the role nostalgia has in redefining tradition and fatalism by explicating Cash’s aesthetics as a particular set of problem solving techniques, inherent in Appalachian folklore and lifeways, providing a strategy for living a meaningful life in the face of uncertainty, in-justice, and failure. Through an exploration of how time, ethical planning, and action create art and meaning, individual choice, as informed by these texts, replaces passive fatalism as the means by which we construct and express who we are as individuals and a region.
By making readers aware of the unique qualities and contexts that go into the creation and expression of Appalachian literature, those of us in the region will see ourselves in this particular manifestation of folk-literature and not in the mass media narratives that reduce us to either clowns or monsters. For those not from the region, they, too, will discover Appalachia and Appalachians in this folk-literature where we express our roots and our place, in our art, as an essential fact of our existence.
