At Home in the Heart of Appalachia

At Home in the Heart of Appalachia
by John O'Brien

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Book Summary Information

Author: John O'Brien
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-09-17
ISBN: 0385721390
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Anchor

Book Reviews of At Home in the Heart of Appalachia

Book Review: The Truth Behind a Terrible Literary Myth
Summary: 1 Stars

Two things stand out about this book that are nothing short of incredible: First, the fact that O'Brien actually managed to get it published, but after over 10 years of failed attempts, I guess his determination paid off. This brings me to my second point, which is O'Brien's ability to hold meaningless grudges and the fictionalized the claims that he has the audacity to make within this book, which he never attempts to document in a professional manner. Let alone having a basis for any of the statements he makes such as evidentiary findings or an accredited bibliography of any kind.

I actually searched this book on Amazon in order to ascertain the bibliographic information to reference it as an example of "geographic racism" and was shocked to see that it got any reviews at all, let alone good ones. Unlike some of other people who have left comments, I was born and raised in Pendelton County and met O'Brien several times before he died the last two were during his book-signings, which were more then just flops in one case it was an outright protest towards O'Brien's distortion of the facts. While segments of the older generation appreciated it for its romanticism and over-simplified description of WV culture, the younger generation and youth were outraged and offended. I would still like to know who did this man think he was coming into a region of a state that his father happened to be born in and claim he somehow knew our lives or culture? The man didn't even own property in Franklin, he rented a tiny little match-box house and chased a failed career as a writer. He glorifies self-indulgent ignorance as if its a virtue, while having no true grasp of the culture he's discussing and no professional training or evidence behind any of his statements. He clearly realized how pathetic his career and life had been so he moved to Franklin and somehow thought by romanticizing "appalachian" life through majestic quotes, he was doing some great deed. He's not even clear whether he's writing his own biography, a cultural portrayal based on meaningless folklore and gossip, or launching a personal and extremely inaccurate campaign against several key individuals the majority of which are landowning respected people who have a much more established base in the state and county then he ever did.

Unlike O'Brian, I have done my research, my interest in anthropology which is now my profession spurned from the same question he claims to address within this book, my own personal identity in relation to not only WV, but the world in general. I have faced the prejudice he relives through his fathers experiences both inside and outside of the state as well as the country. I've been called "hill-billy", "redneck", "hick", and "inbred" more times then I can count as have my peers. In turn, we have faced the same treatment within the state because we tried to have more open-minded views, and then their are always the older generation who resent the young because they are different. While I'm not denying that this is a problem within society, and has a beautiful traditional heritage, this romanticized view of the society as romanticized victims of society, but in doing so he reaffirms that this belief is okay as long as you see its beauty as opposed to its dark-side its an okay view to hold. This isn't the case and as someone who has struggled with these things my whole life, not as a "West Virginian" a brand that suggests we're all the same on a geographic basis that allows us to all claim that we are representing our "state right" when we intentionally stick our thumbs sideways when we flip an outsider off because it forms the basic outline of the state.

The book primarily flops between him trying to stake a claim he is West Virginian because his father was born there and attack people he views as arrogant for what he claims as placing the very same brand of "Hillbilly", which he also tries to claim somehow belongs to him as if it matters and that he's somehow doing a great deed by showing you the real "West Virginia", which is in its very attitude extremely offensive and what is what I have spent the past five years labeling as "geographic racism". By putting this very brand on the county, during the time period he is, he's describing my childhood and turning us into his own research subjects with no regard for the very heritage he claims to love. The very thing he accuses the Woodlands Institute folks of doing.

Let me put on the record that anyone in the county young or old will tell you that he managed to leave out some very important information because it either would have shown the degree to which he was targeting key people as well as the fact he would have been literally boycotted out of town. While he conveniently, focuses a huge portion of his book to the school-consolidation and frames it as being the result of the Woodlands Institute's involvement, which he frames in the context of "taking over the school system". He neglects to even discuss the fact that the controversial "secret" discussions they held in Charleston were not just limited to Pendelton County, but actually emerged out of the success of the Institute's "WV Scholars Academy", which was instrumental in aiding WV youth to get financial aid and acceptance into prestigious colleges that the "stereo-type" he glorifies throughout the book would have prevented. While I was not a scholar, many of my friends were and praised the program as being life-changing. WV continues to have one of the poorest education systems in the country, which continues to brand us as ignorant "hillbillies", while their are always segments of any population, especially the old that resist change the beneficiaries did not. And the state government in an attempt to improve education contracted the Institute to research and develop cost effective methods of improving education, yet he aims to vilify them for this, and even goes as far as to imply that educated people should stay away from the state because they are somehow alienating the locals by attempting to constructively help build the capacity of the next generation. All of this then makes the central and well-to-do Franklin side of the county into heros of some kind, while he polarizes them against the North Fork branch of the county, which are traditionally a poorer society in order to make them fit the "Hillbilly" mold because they resisted the consolidation of the county school system. I lived through this, the beautiful historic high-school in Franklin was bull-dozed to the ground and a modern-day "prison-building" replaced it, giving the rich section of the county a nicer building and lower tax rates, while the North Fork high-school an even more stunning WV building was abandoned to deteriorate until the very same "villains" in this book requested the help of non-other then the lead bad-guy: Daniel Taylor-Ide who later helped lobby and instate it as a historic building. It has now been restored and transformed into a community center. I was from Franklin, but I remember talking with my North Fork class-mates who were forced to spend as much as four hours a day on the school busses in order to reach the distant regions of the county, it was economic segregation at its finest.

The way he particularly attacks Underwood and Taylor-Ide, going as far as to ridicule Underwood's son and try to make statement's that Taylor-Ide lied about a zoology study, based on an early interview in which he suggested this might be the case, but takes it all out of context. Never to go as far as mention that Taylor-Ide subsequently published a book on this study where he explains with evidence, unlike O'Brien, the whole story. This pick and choose writing style clutters O'Brien's book and makes it not only fictional lies, but in some cases makes O'Brien seem border-lined on clinical obsession. As a person, he was anything of what he claimed he was reclusive, did not interact in community meetings, but instead scribbled notes and in many cases it appears he claims to have been present when there is no evidence aside from his own account. While generally this would be accepted, his lack of finalized data and his bizarre obsession with both Woodlands and West Virginia, while not even including gigantic portions of history and relevant background information gives an educated reader anything from an objective argument in any regard and instead seems to be forcing the facts to meet his fantasy land.

He also neglects to ever mention that Woodlands was started by Taylor-Ide and Dr King Seeger, who were then joined by Taylor-Ide's younger brother Dr Henry Taylor prior to any of the education fiasco and it was their joint-efforts within the Institute that formed Pendelton Community Care, which was the first community managed health clinic in the state, which now serves the whole counties health services. Dr Taylor went on to become the longest serving State Health Commissioner in WV history and has been instrumental in improving state health services and delivery, specifically to the poor and isolated areas. His attacks towards Underwood's innovative Earth Shelter and the creation of the Kirk's climbing business, which has thrived building the local economy as it keeps all the revenue from Seneca Rocks Recreational area within the county. The only reason he does so, using 'fictional gossip' as opposed to data or even attempting to access the massive amount of sociological studies in regard to appalachian folk culture is clearly a personal obsession of revenge he feels towards events he never references that he had with Underwood and Taylor-Ide because his son was not admitted into the scholars academy. It is important to note that the key acceptance criteria for the scholars academy is that your only one of your parents could hold BA or higher degree in order to access under privileged candidates.) He therefore appears to have turned this anger into an obsession, so that he then actually took the time to dedicate over a decade to trying to make them out to be horrible men and capitalize on the ugliest elements of the counties social feuds and conservative values, while he sat by and dealt with a failed career. Other reviews have praised his clarity on the Hatfield/McCoy clashes, which is nothing more then highlighting the more reasonable element behind what remains a violent feud. I remember when the book was released in 2002 attending a public book launch where despite debates on what actually happened the same universal was asked from both sides of the polarized social topics he covers in his book: "Your recount of our differences and quotes of people in this room end in the early 90's, yet it took you 10 years to publish this book, why would you open sore wounds within the segregation of our society after we have tried to recount our differences because must remain a community? We're still the same people and we're still members of the same community that you claim to be speaking for." O'Brian had no answer, he'd proved his own point that outsiders, like him, really do judge. You can highlight the goods or the bads, but neither gets you closer to resolution, neither will preserve the culture as well as improve it.

He coins the term "come-heres" around people who have done exactly as he has, which he throws around as if its an accepted idea in WV, while it is not and still remains an insult to all members of the community: implying we have developed a tendency to judge and hate based on false stereotypes that are thrown around society about "HillBillies". I've read through each review posted thus far, many of you claim a heritage to WV, but in most cases its an inherited one. I'm sorry, it doesn't matter where someone was born or which generation; the glory of WV is intertwined with a age-old heritage and ever changing culture of 'goods" and "bads" from both "insiders" and "outsiders" it is not up to you or any search for place or heritage that defines who you feel you really are that is a meaningless excuse for living a disconnected life, which is your own fault and choice as to whether or not you've participated in the interplay between the two sides. I say this as well as a proud West Virginian that culture is not inherited and its not stopped in time attempts to do so are attempts to stop progress, which by definition puts you against that beautiful process of traditions as they are handed and remolded by each generation if you want to glorify it, respect all of it, and love it for what it is. Do not say you care, or this is timeless because while the rest of the country learns about the mining camps from generations ago, while you lament on the past we are fighting to keep the same corporations from stealing our timber and blowing up our mountains for mineral resources, while we continue to lead the country in poverty, obesity, and poor education rates, so before you glorify a man like O'Brien's attempt to turn the place I call home into a romance novel, make sure you know the true meaning of "Montani Semper Liberi."

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Summary of At Home in the Heart of Appalachia

John O?Brien was raised in Philadelphia by an Appalachian father who fled the mountains to escape crippling poverty and family tragedy. Years later, with a wife and two kids of his own, the son moved back into those mountains in an attempt to understand both himself and the father from whom he?d become estranged.

At once a poignant memoir and a tribute to America's most misunderstood region, At Home in the Heart of Appalachia describes a lush land of voluptuous summers, woodsmoke winters, and breathtaking autumns and springs. John O'Brien sees through the myths about Appalachia to its people and the mountain culture that has sustained them. And he takes to task naïve missionaries and rapacious industrialists who are the real source of much of the region's woe as well as its lingering hillbilly stereotypes. Finally, and profoundly, he comes to terms with the atavistic demons that haunt the relations between Appalachian fathers and sons.

John O'Brien's scrupulous, exactingly honest memoir opens in 1995 on the day of his father's funeral in Philadelphia, which he will not attend because "eighteen years of silence stand between us [and] my presence would only add to family stress." Instead, he chooses to visit his father's birthplace in Piedmont, West Virginia, and consider the roots of their estrangement in the region that indelibly shaped them both. In a subtle, ruminative text, the author interweaves his memories with a history of Appalachia that debunks many myths. (The Hatfield-McCoy "feud," for example, had more to do with dislocation caused by the coal and timber industries than any native blood lust.) Much of the book limns O'Brien's first few years in Franklin, a small town two hours south of Piedmont where he and his family settled in 1984. A bitter conflict involving the Woodlands Institute, an educational establishment that locals feared was trying to "take over" their school system, becomes a paradigm for O'Brien of the way affluent outsiders have always stereotyped Appalachia as a primitive backwater peopled by hillbillies, while the residents resisted attempts by strangers to "improve" their home ground with a stubborn fatalism about the possibility of (or need for) change. The author's own conflicts with his parents--who were skeptical when he went to college and horrified when he admitted to seeing a psychiatrist--reveal a provincialism and narrow-mindedness he does not deny are common in the region. At the same time, he affirms the joy of living close to nature and honors the "plainspoken, empathetic, and genuine" native character. Because his complex work doesn't trade in stock nostrums or easy sentimentality, the portrait that emerges of a people and a place rings deeply true. --Wendy Smith

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