Burnt House to Pawpaw: Appalachian Notes

by Merrill Gilfillan

Merrill Gilfillan is the award-winning short story writer and poet whose Magpie Sketches from the Great Plains, won the first PEN/Martha Albrand Award for non-fiction. Five years later, Gilfillan returns to the genre with a new collection of poetic essays that grew from his travels along the folkloric backroads of Appalachia.

Genres: Essays

144 pages, Paperback

First published April 25, 1997

Reviews

[Elizabeth Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Appalachian noted in a Gerard Manley Hopkins inspired prose “inscape”

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gilfillan's method, he says, is to write as he drives -- a new twist on the al fresca approach from Magpie Rising, his Sauerian essays from the Great Plains. Burnt House to Paw Paw is a long essay, not quite travel narrative, not quite natural history. The observation of people and groups is smart, and much of the smartness is turned back on itself, the language self-consciously in a mixed and highly troping register; it could be that having written an extraordinary book, Merrill Gilfillan wanted in this book to meditate on what he'd done, returning to Eastern Ohio to do it -- the "Appalachian Notes," of the subtitle -- and never ending up feeling other than a "carpetbagger," as he puts it, somebody trying to write a book. Of Appalachian life, you will get a much better idea from something like Paul Bennett's Appalachian Mettle, or Wendell Berry's early essays.