Interview with Gurney Norman, March 15, 1978

Partial Transcript: Um, I'm teaching a class called Storytelling to, um, uh, a class of twenty-two people.

Segment Synopsis: Norman begins discussing a class he was teaching at the time out in California.

Keywords: Authors.; Writing

Subjects: Norman, Gurney, 1937-; Norman, Gurney, 1937- --Interviews; Teachers; Teaching

Partial Transcript: Okay. Well, Gurney, to begin I'd just like to hear about, uh, your early years.

Segment Synopsis: Norman talks about his family history, where either side originated, what either side did for a living, and how his grandparents met each other.

Keywords: Coal mines; Coal mining; Family; Hazard (Ky.); Knox County (Ky.); Mines; Mining

Subjects: Appalachia; Coal mines and mining--Appalachian Region; Coal mines and mining--Kentucky; Coal mines and mining--Kentucky--Hazard; Families.; Genealogy; Norman, Gurney, 1937-; Norman, Gurney, 1937- --Interviews

Partial Transcript: My, um, uh--simultaneously then, while my father was growing up in, um, Perry County, south, across the mountains, about fifty air miles, is the Powell Valley of Virginia where my mother was growing up simultaneously.

Segment Synopsis: Norman tells the story of his mother's early life, how her high school athleticism led her to Lincoln Memorial University (then Lincoln Memorial College), where she met his father, a nontraditional student taking a business course. He also speaks more in depth on his father's immediate family, comparing them to the immediate family he himself was born into, and from there discusses the many family tragedies coinciding with the Great Depression.

Keywords: Coal mines; Coal mining; Family; Great Depression; Grundy (Va.); Hazard (Ky.); Mines; Mining; Parents; Perry County (Ky.); Powell County (Ky.)

Subjects: Appalachia; Appalachian Region; Coal mines and mining--Appalachian Region; Coal mines and mining--Kentucky; Coal mines and mining--Kentucky--Hazard; Cumberland Gap (Ky. and Va.); Depressions--1929; Families.; Genealogy

Partial Transcript: And my grandfather by now, of course, was a kind of senior employee at Columbus Mining Company in Hazard.

Segment Synopsis: Norman discusses his grandfather's life running the coal camp commissary, as well as a romanticization of the suffering of coal camp life.

Keywords: Appalachia; Coal mines; Coal mining; Hazard (Ky.); Literature

Subjects: American literature--Kentucky.; Coal miners; Coal mines and mining--Appalachian Region; Coal mines and mining--Kentucky; Coal mines and mining--Kentucky--Hazard; Families.; Genealogy; Kentucky--In literature.; Norman, Gurney, 1937-; Norman, Gurney, 1937- --Interviews

Partial Transcript: But, my father, simultaneously, was a coal loader and a member of the [indecipherable] local.

Segment Synopsis: Norman returns to talking about his father's vagabond life trying to find work during the thirties and how after his mother's breakdown by the end of the war they lived with their grandparents in Hazard, Kentucky.

Keywords: Appalachia; Appalachian writers; Coal mines; Coal mining; Great Depression; Hazard (Ky.); Kentucky writers; Mental breakdowns; Mental health

Subjects: Coal mines and mining--Appalachian Region; Coal mines and mining--Kentucky; Coal mines and mining--Kentucky--Hazard; Depressions--1929; Families.; Genealogy; Norman, Gurney, 1937-; Norman, Gurney, 1937- --Interviews

Partial Transcript: And my father went into the, uh, army in 1944, and so which meant that my mother in the hospital, my father in the army, we three kids--y'know, the, the family had essentially disintegrated, and we, we fell back upon the grandparents.

Segment Synopsis: Norman talks about he and his brother and sister being raised by both sets of grandparents. The Musick side were hillside farmers. His paternal grandfather fell ill, was given six weeks to live, and went back to his hometown in North Carolina to die, but moving away from the coal dust for a while healed him, and he lived twenty more years. When Columbus Coal Company failed, he lost his pension and his grandmother had to go to work at a department store. Eventually his father died in the VA hospital system.

Keywords: "Nineteenth century people"; Coal mines; Coal mining; Great Depression; Grundy (Va.); Hazard (Ky.); WW2; WWII; World War 2; World War II; World War Two

Subjects: Appalachia; Appalachian Region; Coal mines and mining--Appalachian Region; Coal mines and mining--Kentucky; Coal mines and mining--Kentucky--Hazard; Depressions--1929; Families.; Genealogy; Norman, Gurney, 1937-; Norman, Gurney, 1937- --Interviews; World War, 1914-1918--Personal narratives, American; World War, 1939-1945

Partial Transcript: And, y'know, I was, uh, nine, ten, eleven years old, watching all this.

Segment Synopsis: With his family broken up, Norman and his brother were placed in a Southern Presbyterian boarding mission school in Letcher County in 1946. These were a parallel development to the folk craft-focused settlement schools, both of which were created to attempt to improve the lives of mountain people. He was at the school for nine years.

Keywords: Appalachia; Hazard (Ky.); Letcher County (Ky.); World War II

Subjects: Appalachia; Appalachian Region; Education--Appalachian Region; Families.; Genealogy; Norman, Gurney, 1937-; Norman, Gurney, 1937- --Interviews; World War, 1939-1945

Partial Transcript: Uh, like, also here's another thing that happened in 1946.

Segment Synopsis: After returning from the war, Norman's mother's brothers and their father went into business operating a scab (non-union, strikebreaking) mine. Norman then explains the details of how this mine worked.

Keywords: Appalachia; Appalachian writers; Coal mines; Coal mining; Kentucky writers; Lee County (Va.); Strike-breaking; Strikebreaking; Tax evasion; Unions

Subjects: Appalachia; Appalachian Region; Coal miners--Labor unions; Coal mines and mining--Appalachian Region; Families.; Genealogy; Norman, Gurney, 1937-; Norman, Gurney, 1937- --Interviews; Strikes and lockouts--Coal mining

Partial Transcript: How'd they find the land to mine?

Segment Synopsis: Norman expands on the history of his mother's side of the family and thus how the uncles were in possession of a coal seam and how their father knew what to do.

Keywords: Appalachia; Coal mines; Coal mining; Lee County (Va.); Russell Co. (Va.); Strike-breaking; Strikebreaking; Unions

Subjects: Appalachia; Appalachian Region; Coal miners--Labor unions; Coal mines and mining--Appalachian Region; Families.; Genealogy; Norman, Gurney, 1937-; Norman, Gurney, 1937- --Interviews; Strikes and lockouts--Coal mining

Partial Transcript: Well, I'm really interested in, in this--then back to these entrepreneurs.

Segment Synopsis: Norman talks about the success of the pony mine, and tells a story of how it was ultimately shut down in response to a fiasco created by picketers from the union.

[Warning: Use of a racial slur in reference to the name of a club that existed in the 1940s.]

Keywords: Appalachia; Coal mines; Coal mining; Lee County (Va.); Strike-breaking; Strikebreaking; Unions

Subjects: Appalachia; Appalachian Region; Coal miners--Labor unions; Coal mines and mining--Appalachian Region; Families.; Genealogy; Strikes and lockouts--Coal mining

Partial Transcript: Well, what did this incident then do to the family?

Segment Synopsis: Norman elaborates on the extent of the profits of the scab mine, how it was all lost in legal fees as described in the previous segment, and what each brother did afterwards.

Keywords: Appalachia; Coal mines; Coal mining; Dayton (Ohio); Lee County (Va.)

Subjects: Appalachia; Appalachian Region; Coal miners--Labor unions; Coal mines and mining--Appalachian Region; Families.; Genealogy; Norman, Gurney, 1937-; Norman, Gurney, 1937- --Interviews; Strikes and lockouts--Coal mining

Partial Transcript: Well, this, this decline that you talk about, it reminds me, in a way, of the, y'know, the famous family declines that are described by Thomas Mann or di Lampedusa.

Segment Synopsis: Norman talks about his grandparents, who had four sons simultaneously serving during World War II. He describes the fate of each of the sons, including one who was shot in Normandy and lived. Gurney talks about how his own brother was killed in a car accident two weeks prior to his graduation. Their father had died the year before. He talks about the impact of these deaths on his grandmother.

Keywords: Appalachia; Appalachian writers; Brothers; Coal mines; Coal mining; Cousins; Death; Fathers; Grandmothers; Kentucky writers; Literature; Mines; Mining; Mother figures; Musik family; Relationships; Short stories; Sons; Uncles; WW2; WWII; World War 2; World War II; World War Two

Subjects: Appalachia; Appalachian Region; Coal mines and and mining--Appalachian region; Coal mines and mining--Kentucky; Coal mines and mining--Kentucky--Hazard; Education--Appalachian Region; Kentucky--In literature.; Literature.; Norman, Gurney, 1937-; Norman, Gurney, 1937- --Interviews; Short stories.; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945--Aerial operations, American; World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Europe; World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--France--Normandy; World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American

Partial Transcript: And I, I went--I--it affected me powerfully and I distinctly declined to stay around all summer with my grief-stricken grandmother. I went hitchhiking.

Segment Synopsis: After discussing the aftermath of his brother's death, Norman tells the story of his childhood spent hitchhiking between the two sides of the family, that as a metaphor for the fighting between the two families, and how he incorporated them all into his fiction.

Keywords: Appalachia; Appalachian writers; Family; Hitchhiking; Kentucky writers; Travel

Subjects: Appalachia; Appalachian Region; Appalachian Region--Social conditions; Appalachian Region--Social life and customs; Childhood; Families.; Norman, Gurney, 1937-; Norman, Gurney, 1937- --Interviews

Partial Transcript: Uh, you've just used the word "survivor," which you've used a couple times today, and then--

Segment Synopsis: The interviewer returns to the discussion of the thirty-something-year-old students who are "exiles to California," comparing Norman himself to those exiles, how he considers himself an exile to California, and how this ties into his role as a writer--a displaced Kentuckian who can look into others' lives as an outsider.

Keywords: Appalachian writers; Hazard (Ky.); Kentucky writers

Subjects: California.; Norman, Gurney, 1937-; Norman, Gurney, 1937- --Interviews