In Her Own Words
by Lee Smith
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Photo by Susan Raines
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Although I don't usually write autobiographical fiction, my
main character in one of the short stories from News and the
Spirit sounds suspiciously like the girl I used to be: "More
than anything else in the world, I wanted to be a writer. I
didn't want to learn to write, of course. I just wanted to be a
writer, and I often pictured myself poised at the foggy edge
of a cliff somewhere in the south of France, wearing a cape,
drawing furiously on a long cigarette, hollow-cheeked and
haunted. I had been romantically dedicated to the grand idea
of 'being a writer' ever since I can remember."
I started telling stories as soon as I could talk--true stories,
and made-up stories, too. It has always been hard for me to
tell the difference between them.
Lee and her mother, Gig
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My father was fond of
saying that I would climb a tree to tell a lie rather than stand
on the ground to tell the truth. In fact, in the mountains of
southwestern Virginia where I grew up, a lie was often called
a
story, and well do I remember being shaken until my teeth
rattled with the stern admonition, "Don't you tell me no
story, now!"
Lee as a child
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But he was hardly one to talk. Both my mama and my father
were natural storytellers themselves. My mama--a home ec.
teacher from the Eastern shore of Virginia--was one of those
Southern women who can--and did--make a story out of thin
air, out of anything--a trip to the drugstore, something
somebody said to her in the church. My father liked to drink
a little and recite Kipling out loud. He came from right there,
from a big mountain family of storytelling Democrats who
would sit on the porch and place 25 dollar bets on which
bird would fly first off a telephone wire. They were all big
talkers.
I got hooked on stories early, and as soon as I could write, I
started writing them down. I wrote my first novel on my
mother's stationery when I was eight. It featured as main
characters my two favorite people at that time: Adlai
Stevenson and Jane Russell. In my novel, they fell in love and
then went west together in a covered wagon.
Lee, in 1968, with her first published novel
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Once there,
they became--inexplicably--Mormons! Even at that age, I
was fixed upon glamour and flight, two themes I returned to
again and again as I wrote my way throughout high school,
then college.
Decades later, I'm still at it. Narrative is as necessary to me as
breathing, as air. I write for the reason I've always done so:
simply to survive. To make sense of my life. I never know
what I think until I read what I've written. And I refuse to
lead an unexamined life. No matter how painful it is, I intend
to know what's going on. The writing itself is a source of
strength for me, a way to make it through the night.
The story has always served this function, I believe, from the
beginning of time. In the telling of it, we discover who we
are, why we exist, what we should do. It brings order and
delight. Its form is inherently pleasing, and deeply satisfying
to us. Because it has a beginning, a middle, and an end, it
gives a recognizable shape to the muddle and chaos of our
lives.
Lee's new book, 
