Reynolds Price



Reynolds Price (February 1, 1933 – January 20, 2011), born Edward Reynolds Price, was an American poet, novelist, dramatist, essayist, and academic.

Life
Price was born in Macon, North Carolina, and, after attending public schools of his native state, went to Duke University, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1955. Afterward, he went to Merton College, Oxford for three years as a Rhodes Scholar and wrote a book about life at Oxford, called The Source of Light. While at Oxford Price formed important friendships with the poets W.H Auden and Stephen Spender as well as the biographer Lord David Cecil which helped to spur his writing career on.

After his return in 1958, he started teaching at Duke University, which he did 'til the end of his life, becoming the James B. Duke Professor of English at Duke. Apart from English literature, Price had a lifelong interest in ancient languages and Biblical scholarship. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

His first short stories were published in Duke's student literary periodical Archive. Eudora Welty also helped Price get his first couple of books published; she sent one of his early stories, "Michael Egerton" to her own publisher, but Price's first book was not a collection of stories; it was a novel entitled A Long and Happy Life. His other books include his memoir Clear Pictures, and his novels The Tongues of Angels, Blue Calhoun, Kate Vaiden, Roxanna Slade and The Great Circle. The Good Priest's Son, published in 2005, is an account of a 9/11 experience.

In 1984, Price was diagnosed with a malignant spinal tumor. It was treated with radiation therapy, which left him cancer-free but paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life.

Price employed one beginning writer a year, in a sort of private fellowship: in exchange for tending to his daily needs, the young poet or prose writer received room and board and time to write. He wrote about his experience as a cancer survivor in his memoir A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing.

Price died January 20, 2011, after suffering a heart attack five days earlier.

Career
Price was a Southern writer. All his books are set in the South and more particularly in his native North Carolina. Price once replied when asked why he chose to remain in North Carolina: "It's the place about which I have perfect pitch." Price has cited Southern writer Eudora Welty as one of his early influences. He has also been noted for his sexually frank writing, and the ambiguous nature of his own sexuality; Price did not write publicly about being gay until his third memoir, Ardent Spirits:  Leaving Home, Coming Back, published in 2009. He began teaching at Duke shortly after completing his Rhodes Scholarship in the late 1950s. For more than forty years Price taught a class on Milton, and his former students included the writers Josephine Humphreys and Anne Tyler, along with the actress Annabeth Gish.

Price is a favorite author of Bill Clinton, who invited him to dinner at the White House early in his first term. Price wrote the lyrics to two songs by James Taylor: "Copperline" and "New Hymn". Price's book, Feasting The Heart (2000), is a collection of controversial and personal essays, originally broadcast to great acclaim on National Public Radio's All Things Considered.

Recognition
Price received numerous literary honors, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the William Faulkner Foundation Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his memoir Clear Pictures (1989). He was also a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Publications

 * A Long and Happy Life (1962)
 * The Names and Faces of Heroes (1963)
 * A Generous Man (1966)
 * Love and Work (1968)
 * Permanent Errors (1970)
 * Things Themselves (1972)
 * The Surface of Earth (1975) (part one of the A Great Circle trilogy of novels aka The Mayfield Trilogy)
 * Early Dark (1977)
 * A Palpable God (1978) (translations from the Old and New Testaments, with an essay on the origins and aims of narrative)
 * The Source of Light (1981) (part two of the A Great Circle trilogy)
 * Vital Provisions (poems, 1982)
 * Mustian (1983)
 * Private Contentment (a 1984 television play)
 * Kate Vaiden (1986)
 * The Laws of Ice (poems, 1986)
 * A Common Room (1987)
 * Good Hearts (1988)
 * Clear Pictures (his 1989 memoir)
 * The Tongues of Angels (1990)
 * The Use of Fire (poems, 1990)
 * New Music (a 1990 trilogy of plays)
 * The Foreseeable Future (stories, 1991)
 * Blue Calhoun (1992)
 * Full Moon (a 1993 play)
 * The Collected Stories (1993)
 * A Whole New Life (1994 memoir describing his survival of spinal cancer that started in 1984 and left him a paraplegic)
 * The Promise of Rest (1995) (part three of the A Great Circle trilogy)
 * Three Gospels (1996) (contains Price's translations of the Gospels of Mark and John, with introductory essays)
 * The Collected Poems (1997)
 * Roxanna Slade (1998)
 * Letter to a Man in the Fire: Does God Exist and Does He Care? (an epistolary essay, 1999)
 * ''A Singular Family: Rosacoke and Her Kin (1999)
 * Feasting the Heart (2000) (52 of the essays he regularly broadcast on National Public Radio's news program All Things Considered )
 * Learning a Trade: A Craftsman's Notebooks, 1955-1997 (2000)
 * A Perfect Friend (Price's first children's book, 2000)
 * Noble Norfleet (2002)
 * A Serious Way of Wondering: The Ethics of Jesus Imagined (2003)
 * The Good Priest's Son (2005)
 * Letter to a Godchild : Concerning Faith (2006)
 * Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back (2009 memoir about his time at Oxford University and his first three years teaching at Duke University)