Reading Group Guide
A magical novel of women's wisdom passed down through generations of storytelling.
Fred Chappell has written a novel of lyrical grace, rich with the music of the Southern mountains and the stories of their people. Jess Kirkman's grandmother is dying, and as her family gathers around her, Jess remembers the tales she and his mother have passed down to him. We meet the "Fisherwoman," the "Traveling Woman," the "Feistiest Woman," the "Silent Woman," the "Wind Woman," and others, in a range of ghost to detective to comic to love stories. In preparing Jess to come of age, these stories assemble a chorus of women's voices that sing and share and celebrate the common song of life.
Discussion Questions:
1. The title is a line from the Southern ballad, "O Shenandoah." How does the tradition of folk song relate to Chappell's method of telling his story?
2. The first sentence of the book, "The wind had got into the clocks and blown the hours awry," suggests that time has changed, and we are about to enter into an unfamiliar world. What sort of world does the book open up for us? How does this world reflect upon the one in which we live oureveryday lives?
3. Each story Jess remembers contains central women characters. What is the role of women in Jess's coming of age? What wisdom do these stories contain that stories about men might not?
4. Farewell, I'm Bound to Leave You is deeply rooted in Southern traditions of storytelling, and in its hill country. Yet the book has a universal feel, transcending its setting and colloquialism. How does Chappell's portrayal of the Kirkman family vary from more "urban" scenes of family life? What do we gain as a result?
5. What will Jess take from his grandmother after she passes on? In the world Chapell has created, how is it possible to keep the past alive for generations to come? If the novel begins as a death vigil, how does it become a celebration of life?
6. How does Chappell's style differ from most contemporary fiction? Chappell is also a poet -- how does that affect his use of language?
7. Jess's father, Joe Robert, is said not to be a good storyteller. In the logic of the novel, does that mean he plays a lesser role than his wife, or Jess's grandmother? What sort of role does he have?
Fred Chappell, in his own words:
On what he wants his fiction to accomplish:
"I was born in the 1930's, and it might as well have been in the 19th century because things have changed so much. If you take a sociology course, you soon learn that the great change in the United States, and certainly in North Carolina, has been the change from a rural to an industrial society, but that's just generalization. In my writing, my job is to make people feel the experience, which the history book doesn't need to do."
On the difference between poetry and fiction:
"If you get up in the morning and write poetry, your IQ rises 15 points for the whole day. Get up in the morning and write fiction, your mind slows down a little bit and you take things a little more philosophically and a little more steadily. Poetry has the intensity of walking through the woods, and fiction has the doggedness of riding a bicycle uphill."
On being a "Southern" writer:
"All writing is regional. It takes place somewhere. It either takes place in a real place, or it takes place in some place where you have had to imagine it . . . What was it that Archimedes said? 'Give me a lever, a place to stand, and I will move the earth.' Well, writing is my lever, the South is where I stand, and I have ambition to move the earth."
On fiction and life:
"Farewell is autobiographical, but it is almost impossible to say how much. What was real becomes fabulous, and what was mythical becomes extremely real . . . I think I've always worked in relative obscurity, and I've come to enjoy that. There's a lot of freedom in that. I always feel, when I sit down to write, the only person I really have to worry about failing is myself."
About his work, Chappell writes, "It's not to moon about the old times passing, but I wanted to write a kind of tribute for a different way of Life. I like the strength of character, the different flavors of speech and manner of living that was produced in the mountains." Chappell grew up on a farm near Canton, North Carolina. He is the author of six novels, two books of short stories, thirteen collections of poems, and three anthologies. His literary awards include a Rockefeller Grant, the Award in Literature from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Best Foreign Novel Prize from the French Academy, the Bollingen Prize, and the T.S. Eliot Award from the Ingersoll Foundation. He teaches literature and writing at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
