THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 5, 1996 TAG: 9605060187
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN
LENGTH: Long : 101 lines
The North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame opens at 2 p.m. on May 18 in a statewide ceremony at Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities in Southern Pines, and of the many reasons why this is an authentic biblio-big deal, one transcends all for me:
Manly Wade Wellman will be inducted into it.
That, my friends, although belated, is a slam dunk for recognition of writing that roars.
Like the 14 other 1996 honorees, Wellman is deceased. He passed on 10 years ago at 82. Wellman will be remembered at the shrine of the Southern Literary Renaissance in a company that includes O. Henry, Randall Jarrell and Thomas Wolfe.
In 1981, I encountered him squeezed into an upward-bound elevator at the Chamberlin Hotel in Hampton among peers of whom he was considerably more fond, notably a Wookiee, a Klingon and a small boy with a bright green face. As winner of a Life Achievement Award for fantasy fiction, Wellman was guest of honor at Sci-Con 2, a wild gathering in the Chamberlin Roof Garden hosted by the Hampton Roads Science Fiction Association. White of hair and mustache, suited and tied, he looked like Walter Cronkite suddenly loosed on Universal Studios at lunch break.
But the tall septugenarian belonged in this colorful assemblage of trolls, star warriors and space cadets; he was, in fact, an Obi-wan Kenobi of the mind.
``I'm reminded of how it used to be said that there never were any dragons, that such things were impossible,'' Wellman said. ``That was all very good until those bones were dug up, of big brontosaurus, grotesque triceratops, the Tyrannosaurus Rex that must have been the most terrible of all things that ever lived. And if you say no flying dragons, what about Pterosaurus, dug up a year or so ago in Texas, with a wingspread of 50 feet?
``If one of those survived and flew in here, which of us would he carry off for dinner?''
He spread his large arms, and the eyes of the green-faced boy grew wide.
``Who knows,'' Wellman asked, ``what can't exist?''
Certainly not he, who had stopped counting at 70 the number of his published books, at 500 the number of his short stories and articles. Pulitzer Prize nominee for history, Phoenix Award winner for science fiction, Edgar Allan Poe Award winner for mystery, Wellman had been marketing his imagination for more than half a century. He was a major contributor to the literature of wonder, a scholar of the past and future.
Perhaps Wellman's most famous volume is Who Fears the Devil?, a collection of tales about a balladeer named John who battles strange supernatural forces with his integrity and a silver-stringed guitar. These yarns are South-steeped, set in the Carolina mountains ``up from Rebel Creek and through Lost Cove, and up and down the slopes of Crouch and Hog Ham and Skeleton Ridge.'' In Wellman's prose is the scent of smoked meat, the grab of oak scrub, the bite of strong blockader liquor.
And, above all, the sound of old songs.
``I always loved folk music, still do,'' Wellman said at Sci-Con, and sang in a low, clear voice:
Her lips were red as red could be,
Her eyes were brown as brown.
Her hair was like a thundercloud
Before the rain came down.
The Literary Hall of Fame to which Wellman has been elected realizes a dream of North Carolina Poet Laureate Sam Ragan to honor the state's authorial heroes and their accomplishments. The Hall of Fame was set up in 1993 by a joint resolution of the North Carolina House and Senate and funded by a grant established by the 1995 Session of the General Assembly. The public is invited to attend the free outdoor ceremony launching the Hall at Weymouth Center.
They will be paying their respects to literary balladeers who, like John, had silver in the strings. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
THE INDUCTEES
The 1996 honorees for the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame
are:
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1. James Boyd, of Southern Pines, historical novels
2. Charles Waddell Chesnutt, of Fayetteville, novels
3. Jonathan Daniels, Raleigh, journalism and fiction
4. Inglis Fletcher, Edenton, novels
5. Paul Green, Harnett County and Chapel Hill, plays and fiction
6. Bernice Kelly Harris, Seaboard, North Hampton County, novels
7. O. Henry (a k a William Sydney Porter), Greensboro, short
fiction
8. George Moses Horton, Chatham County, poetry
9. Randall Jarrell, Greensboro, poems and essays
10. Gerald Johnson, Riverton, Scotland County, journalism and
essays
11. Guy Owen, Bladen County and Raleigh, fiction and poetry
12. Thad Stem, Jr., Oxford, poetry and essays
13. Richard Walser, Lexington, literary history, biography
14. Manley Wade Wellman, Chapel Hill, juvenile & adult fiction,
nonfiction
15. Thomas Wolfe, Asheville, novels
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For more information, contact the N.C. Writers' Network at (919)
967-9540.
by CNB