SECTION TWO
PAGE TWO
()vid Pierce, Weldon: “CourageTo Offend”
> (Editor'* Nate—Tit* article below is
» chapter from “Tar Hr«l Writer* I
Know” by Bernadette Hoyle, a book of
interview* and photograph* of out
standing North Carolina writers, pob
lished in IMS by John F. Blair. Pub
lisher, Winston-Malem. N. C.» Reprinted
by special permission from the author
in connection with the observance of
labraey Week JBsrah 16-22).
When Ovid Williams Pierce’s
novel, “The Plantation,” was pub-1
lished last year, the critics de-1
dared that at last here was a'
Southern novel without magnol
ias and mint juleps.
Time magazine greeted it with
a lead review, declaring that “If
Ed Ruffin (the main character)
seems almost too good to be true,
so does the novel which makes
him believable.”
Time’s reviewer added, '‘When
a Southern novel rolls off the
presses, it is an odds-on bet that
it will land either in the dark bog
of Gothic violence or in the
mobnlit magnolia patch. Ovid
Williams Pierce’s ‘The Plantation’
does neither; it is a first, novel of
grace, style and quiet excellence.”
Orvinne Prescott, in The New
York Times, declared, “This nov
el has demonstrated such im
pressive artistry and has revealed
so understanding a heart that all
those interested in the emergence
of new writers of great promise
should take care not to miss ‘The
Plantation’.”
Other Praise
The New York Herald Tribune
said, “Beautiful, poignant . . .
Nothing is more finely handled in
Ovid Williams Pierce’s book than
the relationship between black
men and white.”
Harnett Kane, in the Chicago
Tribune, called it “a gem of rare
polish.”
How did such a novel come to
be—one which has been called I
“the most Southern novel imagi- 1
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Its author, a native of Weldoo,
is a bachelor, a college professor,
fortyish, graying, quiet spoken.
His mother was Minnie Deans
Wilson. His father, Ovid Wil
liams Pierce, of Halifax County,
was born just after the Civil War,
the son of Dr. Alexander Blucher
Pierce, son of Rice Bolton Pierce,
who came to Halifax County after
the War of 1812, from Southamp
ton Countyi Virginia. The Pierc
es settled the area now known as
Pierce’s Cross Roads near Wel
don.
Soon after the Civil War his fa
ther’s family left Pierce’s Cross
Roads and came to Weldon.
“Grandfather Pierce was one of
the few doctors around at the
time,” said Ovid. “He covered
the countryside in a buggy. My
father and his brothers were
farmers or planters, depending on
what the word means. To an ex
tent they revived a pattern shat
tered by the Civil War. In The
Plantation, Mr. Ed’s life is rough
ly contemporaneous with that of
my father, but there is no other
analogy, except time, place and
problem.’,’
The Plantation evolved slowly,
he said, and was written over a
period of five years, mostly dur
ing his summers at home.
The book incorporates that
which was so common to a gen
eration of people: After The War,
the disintegrating plantation, the
predominance of women, their
dependence on the men, and the
realization that an old code would
be insufficient for survival in a
new world.
“And yet I wanted to do some
thing in addition to this regional
theme,” he said, “I wanted the
THE CHOWAN HERALD, EPEKTON, NORTH CAROLINA, THURSDAY MARCH 13. 1958.
characters to be people first and
Southerners second, to render the
atmosphere and the motivations
of the characters, so convincingly
that their behavior should appear
to the outsider as. inevitable un
der the circumstances.”
That he succeeded is evidenced
by the Opinion of Lee Barker, a
doubleday editor, who called The
Plantation “the finest first novel
I have seen in twenty-five years
of publishing.”
Graduate of Duke
Ovid Pierce has been writing
since college days. After finish
ing high school at Weldon, he
went to Duke University, where
he was graduated in 1932. There
he was Kappa Alpha, Phi Beta
Kappa and editor of The Archive.
“It was during this period that I
suppose I developed my first real
concern with matters literary,” he
smiled. “I remember that I was
enormously interested in the pub
lication of ‘l’ll Take My Stand,’
the collection of twelve essays by
twelve Southerners. This book
helped to launch me on my long
preoccupation with the problem
of interpreting the complete
Southern scene.
“Os course, the South is tre
mendously complex there are
many ‘Souths’. Before World War
I, Southern writing was almost
exclusively regional, all novels
followed set patterns: glorifica
tion of the past, mostly defensive
or chauvanistic. What we lack
ed, as Ellen Glasgow pointed out,
was 'the courage to offend,’ or
the ability to interpret or assess
with objectivity and perspective.”
When he went to Harvard for
a Master’s degree, Ovid studied
writing under Robert Hillyer. “It
was then that I began to write
seriously,” he said. Most of the I
stories he wrote then were later
published in “The South West
Review.”
On The Defensive
“Hillyer is a wise man and a
good teacher,” said Ovid Pierce.
“Looking back, I see that he did
what any good teacher does: he
helped us find where our direc
tions lay. At Harvard, associat
ing with ‘Yankees’ for the. first
time, I was made to feel acutely
conscious of being a Southerner.
I found myself on the defensive,
among doubting foreigners, about
i the whole history of the South.
It seems naive now, but at least I
was loyal! All this finally served
the purpose of making me think
about my own home and people
I with perspective. It helped me
to see the strong sense of contin
uity which hds been a governing l
force in Southern life, also to ex
amine the advantages and disad
vantages of tradition, which in a
sense is one of the problems of
The Plantation.”
After Harvard and a few more
stories, his writing stopped. He
went into the Army in April,
1941, was a member of the coun
ter Intelligence Corps and was
stationed on the Mexican Border,
Puerto Rico, Trinidad and British
Guiana. After his release in
1945 he became a member of the
faculty at Southern Methodist
University in Dallas, Texas,
where his main course was Crea
tive Writing. After four years at
SMU he took a year off because
of illness. Then he taught the
modern novel at Tulane ‘Univer
sity. Last year he travelled in
Europe and now plans to return
to the faculty of SMU this fall.
Inveterate Reader
He is an inveterate reader, his
taste running to novels and
Southern history. “I read all
Southern writers—the last gener
ation, that is—Dubose Heyward,
Julia Peterkin, Ellen Glasgow, a
little Cabell, some Caldwell, all
Faulkner and Wolfe,” he said. “I
had to teach Henry James and
Calvert
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through him learned more about
the problems of Writing than
from any other: his effort to re
duce the.poorly defined, practices
of fiction to something• answer
able to ‘art’-^assessdHe: and or
ganic.”
Last year the dramatic rights—
both stage and movie—of The
Plantation were bought by . John
Patrick, who will probably begin
work on the stage production in
the seal future. 'J
Latest news on The Plantation
ip that Rtyi, the French publish*
ing fimf will publish a 'French
translation of the novel this win*
Continued on Page B—Section 2