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LIFE
Novel tells of effects of mountaintop removal
Ann Pancake is the author of the new novel "Strange As This Weather Has Been."
Purchase this photoAnn Pancake, a native of Romney, W.Va., has been toiling and grappling for the past seven years with a book that has chipped away daily at her heart.
"Strange as This Weather Has Been," published by Shoemaker & Hoard, is a novel about a family fighting for survival in a community ravaged by mountaintop removal mining in Southern West Virginia. The story is told through the lives of several members of one family -- a couple, Jimmy Make and Lace, and their four children, daughter Bant and sons Corey, Jimmy and Dane.
Pancake is making her way around the country talking about the book that's just received rave reviews in Oprah's "O" magazine and in the New York Times Book Review. She was already an award-winning short story writer, with her collection of short stories, "Given Ground," winning the 2000 Bakeless Award.
Pancake, who has a doctorate in literature from the University of Washington, teaches in the Masters of Fine Arts program at Pacific Lutheran University. She will read from her work at 8 p.m. Monday, Oct. 22, in Room 2W16 of Memorial Student Center at Marshall University.
Her appearance is sponsored by the Marshall English Department and the College of Liberal Arts. It is free and open to the public.
Just a day after Pancake's book was called "a fine, ambitious first novel" in the Times, we spoke with her from her home on the West Coast.
LAVENDER: I just got an e-mail that had the New York Times Book Review of your novel. This is the day after. What has it been like waiting on that to hit print, and what has today been like?
PANCAKE: I was pretty nervous about it. A New York reviewer doesn't necessarily understand West Virginia. I got it on Tuesday, and so I knew what was coming. I thought it was kind of weird, (the reviewer) focused on Corey. He isn't the primary character, but it is great press. He complained about my language, which they often do, but I am used to that. It's going to be an Editor's Choice in the Times next week. I just found that out the other day.
LAVENDER: I really love the voice and spirit of (the characters) Bant and Lace and could hear an entire novel from either one of their points of view. Tell us about the importance of breaking the novel into Dane, Corey and Jimmy Make, who see the world and mountaintop removal through their own lenses?
PANCAKE: There are a couple reasons. I was a short story writer and started the short story from Bant's point of view, but I found out in my situation it was easier to move from person to person for a novel. The other main reason was to get a lot of perspective on mountaintop removal through Lace's activism and Bant's love of the land and her then being compelled to really detach from it and have to deal with it that way. Corey would be the kid who would want to be the miner, not dissing underground miners. Corey would want to be the above-ground miner who runs the big machinery. ...
LAVENDER: I really like the Wendell Berry back cover quote about "the book's completeness is made possible by its full acceptance of the heartbreak ... " Tell us a little bit about the process of writing this novel.
PANCAKE: It actually took me seven years and there was a whole year in there where I had a whole lot of personal mini-disasters and couldn't even face the book. It was too dark because of how much other darkness was going on in my life. I think changing point of views, Corey is lighter to write, helped, too. Bant's point of view about how hard it is to digest it and that impulse to desensitize yourself and become indifferent because it is so hard to face and so overwhelming to do anything about it -- that happened, too. But the fact that I had interviewed so many people and know those people who are living in it everyday -- that motivated me to write about it at my distance. LAVENDER: How much did making the documentary "Black Diamonds" with (sister) Catherine influence you and this work?
PANCAKE: I hadn't planned to write this until I was helping her with the interviews. I knew a lot of about the history and culture of West Virginia. When I started to hear all of these stories, I was trying to write a short story about it and then found it was too big of a subject for a short story to handle. I conducted interviews for about three years. The stories are composites of things I have heard from so many people.
LAVENDER: Tell us at little bit about growing up in West Virginia and your ties to Huntington?
PANCAKE: Both my mom's parents (Don and Helen Leckie) grew up in Huntington, and grandmother's people, they go way back in Cabell and Wayne counties. My grandmother went to Marshall and graduated with an English degree, which is amazing; her mom only had a third-grade education. I've been coming there several times a year since I was born. It was always the big city and big doings. One summer I was the popcorn girl in the Keith-Albee... We would always come up there and go shopping and go to Camden Park.
I was in Charleston for 15 months doing the research (for "Black Diamonds") and in general left out of here for other reasons. When I left at 22, I had no idea what was there, good or bad. I didn't understand we had our own culture. I didn't understand how rich the language was until I was surrounded by standard English speakers. The distance helps, but detracts. I always struggle about being here (Washington state) and being away from there. I'm always drawn to come home. I tried to express it through Lace. So many of us share it. I think it is part of us and it is just such a uniqueness of culture. There almost seems to be something mystical about the land that pulls you back, and you miss the people in West Virginia who are so warm and generous.
LAVENDER: Did being away bring perspective and help you to write the book?
PANCAKE: Yeah, but there still is guilt attached to it because I am not living down there and I feel guilty for representing their stories and they are not getting a direct benefit. Indirectly, I hope to raise the awareness about the people and mountaintop removal. It was really hard to get it published and there were a lot of rejections, but one thing that got me going was that I wanted to play my part and tell the story about the people who moved me so deeply and their integrity and their dignity and their, I wouldn't say optimism, but the positive face that they have. LAVENDER: In setting your novel in West Virginia and taking on mountaintop removal as a subject, were you afraid of it getting pigeon-holed as a regional book?
PANCAKE: Yeah, yeah, I was worried the whole time about that. I have been surprised that in the past couple months it was in 'O' magazine and then in the New York Times, so I think it is transcending the regional label. I was worried about it, but I still had to do it. I can't write otherwise. West Virginia is what moves me the deepest and the dialect is really important to me because it is so poetic and creative.
It is really interesting, too, because the timing of the novel is great. If it came out three years ago, I would have had no press, but there's been a shift in the country -- at least half the population has had a whole shift in sensibilities about the environment and about the Bush administration's destructive policies. People are sitting up and paying attention -- finally.
If You Go:
WHAT: Romney, W.Va., native author Ann Pancake reads from her new novel, "Strange As This Weather Has Been." It's about a family struggling with the fallout of mountaintop removal mining in southern West Virginia, published by Shoemaker & Hoard.
WHERE: Marshall University Student Center
WHEN: 8 p.m. Monday, Oct. 22.
OTHER READINGS: 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 27, at Taylor Books, Charleston; 7 p.m. Nov. 1, at West Virginia Wesleyan, Buckhannon; 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 5, in the Robinson Reading Room of the Main Library at West Virginia University, Morgantown.
AWARDS: Pancake has won many literary awards including the Pushcart Prize, 2004; Glasgow Prize for Given Ground (a collection of short stories set in West Virginia), Washington and Lee University, 2003; First Place, New Millennium Writings, Creative Nonfiction, 2003 and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Grant for Fiction, 1996.
ON FILM: Ann helped her sister Catherine, a filmmaker who now lives in Baltimore, with the 2005 award-winning documentary film about coal mining and mountain top removal, called "Black Diamonds: Mountaintop Removal and the Fight for Coalfield Justice." Go online at www.blackdiamondsmovie.com for more info.
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