NASHVILLE, Tenn. – In 1997, writer Tony Earley faced his first freshman English class at Vanderbilt University.
"I was terrified," says the soft-spoken former North Carolina
newspaperman, who was hired after publishing a widely praised 1994 book
of short stories, Here We are in Paradise. "I certainly didn’t imagine
all this was going to happen."
In the intervening seven years, Earley was named by The New Yorker
in 1999 as a writer to watch in the 21st century. He published the
novel Jim the Boy (2000), which was featured on the cover of The New
York Times Book Review. He followed that up with a critically heralded
book of essays, Somehow Form a Family (2001).
Jay Clayton, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English and chair of
the Vanderbilt Department of English, said Earley represents "the best
of the new breed of writer who is transforming what it means to be a
writer from the South.
"Like earlier generations of Vanderbilt writers, including Robert
Penn Warren and Allen Tate, Tony sees deeply into the Southern
character," Clayton said.
In the fall of 2003, Earley was named the first holder of the Samuel
Milton Fleming Chair in English at Vanderbilt University, established
by Joanne Fleming Hayes, a 1968 Vanderbilt graduate and member of the
University’s Board of Trust.
"Do you like my chair?" Earley asks, motioning in his office to a
wooden chair with a plaque attached. "They give you an actual chair."
The chair honors Hayes’ father, a Vanderbilt graduate and bank
executive who headed the Vanderbilt University Board of Trust from 1975
to 1981. Fleming, called "the most authentically generous person I have
ever known" by Vanderbilt Chancellor Emeritus Alexander Heard, died in
2000 at 91.
Hayes says Earley is a writer her father would have loved.
"I think Tony is an extremely gifted storyteller, and there’s a long
tradition of that at Vanderbilt," she said. "A chair is a way of
telling him we appreciate his talent and want him to be here a long
time."
Earley is currently working on the sequel to Jim the Boy. The Blue
Star will pick up the story of Jim Glass at 17, as he finishes high
school and prepares to serve in World War II. The character was first
introduced as an old man in short stories in Here We are in Paradise,
then as a 10-year-old in Jim the Boy.
Earley’s writing is simple and evocative of his roots in rural North
Carolina. His lack of irony and sarcasm can be startling to devotees of
modern fiction.
"The expert and irony-free minimalism of Jim the Boy gives it the
plain, wholehearted sound of a book for young readers," wrote Janet
Maslin in her review for The New York Times. "But the forthright and
sweetly humorous way in which Jim’s story unfolds is anything but
naÔve. This book’s rural characters seem as carefully chosen as figures
in Greek myth, like the widowed mother who sounds as if she stepped out
of a folk song ("Mama was tall and pale and handsome; her neck was long
and white") to watch over her son."
Jim the Boy will be produced as a Hallmark Hall of Fame television film.
While his stock as a fiction writer rose, Earley was also growing as
an instructor. This semester, he’s teaching a freshman seminar on
Ernest Hemingway and advanced fiction writing.
"The things that I’d always done as a writer intuitively, I’ve had
to figure out ways to explain to my classes," Earley said. "That’s
helped me as a writer, because now I’m thinking about these things in
my conscious mind. So now I have two different ways of attacking
problems. That’s a direct result of teaching."
Media contact: Jim Patterson, (615) 322-NEWS
Jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu