A few months ago I read The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come by John Fox, Jr. (1898). It is much cited among scholars of Appalachia, and was evidently a popular and influential book in its time. At least four major movies were based on elements of the plot, and Kentucky named Kingdom Come State Park after it.
With an elevation of 2,700 feet, Kingdom Come is Kentucky's highest state park. Resting near the Kentucky-Virginia border on the crest of Pine Mountain, the park offers scenic vistas second to none.
The park's name is from John Fox Jr.'s novel "The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come," a book about an orphaned youth and his journey through the hills and into the furor of the Civil War. Extraordinary rock formations are featured at this park, including Log Rock, a natural sandstone bridge, and Raven Rock, a giant monolith that soars 290-feet into the air at a 45-degree angle.
I found it rough going, myself. I was stopping to make notes so often that I downloaded a Gutenberg project free text file, opened it in Emacs, and made "marginal" notes to my heart's content. I'm guessing the people who named Kingdom Come State Park after it never read it through. The plot is silly, the main character is despicable (he's not nice to his dog, for heaven's sake! A dog that makes Lassie and Rin Tin Tin look like lazy, stupid layabouts!), and the author slings offensive stereotypes about as freely as dew in the morning. This last bit is what makes it so much fun to quote. I'm afraid you'll be in for selected Appalachian tidbits from this volume for some time to come.
Here are a couple of Internet references to whet your appetite.
- "Artist Paints Types of Kingdom Come: Lawrence Earle of Grand Rapids Finds Interesting Subjects Among the Humble Folk Made Famous by the Novels of John Fox, Jr., in and About the Great Stearns Lumber Region of the Mountains of Southern Kentucky" by Ben Dean, Grand Rapids Herald, Sunday, November 5, 1911. The article starts out with:
It is a fact that we learn from schoolbooks that the geographical conditions of a country, and its physical features exert much influence, favorable or otherwise, on the civilization of its people. This is quite certainly the reason why the Kentucky mountaineers, which Lawrence Earle, the artist, describes so interestingly by word as well as by brush, are such a backward, unambitious lot.
It continues in the same vein, giving us an idea of how the Fox's contemporary readers interpreted his work. - KYLIT's Biography of John Fox, Jr. gives a thoughtful account of Fox's interesting and eventful life.
John Fox, Jr. made a tremendous contribution to Appalachian Literature. His best-selling novels put the region on the map. His exciting plots and colorful characters combined to give an over-drawn, but sympathetic, view of the hill country to the world.
I'll share some Fox quotes soon that may make you question how sympathetic his view of the hill country really was.
3 comments:
Wow! Have you visited the rocks described in the book? I'm wondering about Raven Rock in particular.
I've never been there, but it looks spectacular. You have a raven connection, don't you? Lately, our ravens have been coming close enough for a really good look. (When they keep their distance, I have a hard time telling whether it's the crows or the ravens. They seldom oblige me with characteristic vocalizations.) On Thursday morning, a raven was balancing on a flimsy sapling just above my mailbox, letting me appreciate just how BIG he is. Quite a treat!
"silly plot", despicable main character", "offensive stereotypes"-these are all comments that don't take into account the era the author lived in. He was born near the beginning of the Civil War, and died at the end of World War I. He wrote the speech of the mountain people as it was spoken. The offensive "stereotypes" apply more to sensibilities of today than to when the novel was published over a century ago.
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