{"id":10349,"date":"2011-01-21T17:22:14","date_gmt":"2011-01-21T22:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=10349"},"modified":"2011-01-21T17:22:14","modified_gmt":"2011-01-21T22:22:14","slug":"reynolds-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/01\/21\/reynolds-price\/","title":{"rendered":"Reynolds Price"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Photograph by D. L. Anderson<\/p><\/div>\n

Yesterday, we learned<\/a> that Reynolds Price had passed away following complications from a heart attack on Sunday. Price set all of his books in his home state of North Carolina, where he also taught at Duke University for more than fifty years. In his 1991 interview<\/a> with The Paris Review<\/em>, Price discussed his process as a writer: <\/p>\n

First, my eyes are my primary teachers. And I assume that this is true for a vast percentage of the human race, certainly for the entire sighted portion. For us, the world enters there\u2014it mainly enters my mind through my eyes, and I make of it what I will and can. The granary, the silo\u2014my garnered experience\u2014begins as stored visual observation \u2026 I love to watch the world, and that visual experience becomes, in a way I couldn\u2019t begin to chart or describe, the knowledge I possess; that knowledge produces whatever it is that I write. From the very beginning of my serious adult work, when I was a senior in college, my writing has emerged by a process over which I have almost no more conscious control than over the growth of my fingernails.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A prolific author, Price\u2019s career was nearly cut short because of a battle with spinal cancer from 1984 to 1986. The radiation treatments left him paralyzed from the waist down, and he was unable to focus on reading or writing. As he explained in the interview, he was \u201cdeeply stunned and then intent in every cell on healing and lasting.\u201d But he quickly regained focus and, in 1986, finished Kate Vaiden<\/a><\/em>, one of his most beloved novels (and for which he was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award). Even in the most trying times, Price believed in his work: \u201cWriting is a fearsome but grand vocation\u2014potentially healing but likewise deadly. I wouldn\u2019t trade my life for the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, we learned that Reynolds Price had passed away following complications from a heart attack on Sunday. Price set all of his books in his home state of North Carolina, where he also taught at Duke University for more than fifty years. In his 1991 interview with The Paris Review, Price discussed his process as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[173,1733,426,75],"class_list":["post-10349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-memoriam","tag-north-carolina","tag-reynolds-price","tag-the-paris-review","tag-writing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nReynolds Price by Natalie Jacoby<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"January 21, 2011 \u2013 Yesterday, we learned that Reynolds Price had passed away following complications from a heart attack on Sunday. 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