Sherry Chandler

Meredith Sue Willis has been kind enough to share with us a short memoir of Davis Grubb by Norman Julian. Julian’s column, A Writing Life, appears in The Dominion Post.

Davis Grubb (1919-1980), I hope you remember, is the author of Night of the Hunter, one of the best American novels that was made into one of the best American movies. Grubb was a West Virginian, living in Clarksburg when Julian talked to him shortly before he died of lung cancer:

Davis smoked Marsh Wheeling stogies, long black cigars. When one would burn down to a stub, he’d light another.

Grubb saw by his own bright lights and wasn’t afraid to let it shine in his books or in his personal appearances. He once said that “I was a sore thumb on the hand” of the town. Davis was not shy about writing the truth and sometimes paid the price.

As a keynote speaker at a support gathering for the Clarksburg-Harrison Library, he slammed strip mining, a widespread occupation in the county at that time. Some in the audience had ties to that industry.

When Julian talked to him, Grubb was writing his last novel, Ancient Lights:

The book’s main character, Sweeley Leech, an Appalachian sage and eccentric, argues that the greatest truths are couched in laughter.

Leech, like Grubb, survived many personal crises. How prophetic of our own time he was when he proclaimed, “Any kind of love is all right, as long as it is sincere.”

He proclaims that the command, “Little children, love one another” is not loud enough to be heard over the stamping feet of “Onward, Christian soldiers.”

Seems like as good a Christmas message as I could share with you.