More on Regions & Gothics

An Indiana Gothic?

Even before my entry from the other day went up, I found what I think might be an Indiana Gothic. I have been doing some research on Jennings County, Indiana, the only Jennings County in America. It was named for our first governor, Jonathan Jennings (1784-1834). In my research I came across a book that I haven't read by an author everyone in Indiana has heard of. I would like to read this book now to see if it really could be a Gothic story, or at least have some Gothic elements.

Jennings County is the birthplace of author Jessamyn West (1902-1984). She was born in the county seat of Vernon, which is situated inside of a loop in the Muscatatuck River. That river has cut deeply into the local landscape: there are bluffs and very steep slopes along much of its length. On July 11, 1863, John Hunt Morgan and his raiders threatened Vernon, but they were put off by local militiamen and a small force of Union troops occupying those bluffs and slopes above the river. There wasn't any battle at Vernon as there had been at Corydon two days before. Morgan and his men retreated without any losses.

Jessamyn West wrote The Friendly Persuasion, a collection of interrelated short stories published in 1945. There was a film adaptation of her first book. It was released in 1956 as Friendly Persuasion. In the movie version, there is a battle at the river when Morgan's Raiders try to cross. We in Indiana know that to be a historical inaccuracy, but then there are lots of historical inaccuracies in movies. Anyone who has been along the Muscatatuck River knows, too, that it looks nothing like what is shown in the film. Hollywood movies are full of geographical inaccuracies as well.

Jessamyn West's first novel is called The Witch Diggers. It was published in 1951 and is also set in the author's native place except that Jennings County is fictionalized as Rock County. Like I said, I haven't read this book, but in reading reviews and descriptions of it, I have the impression that there are some dark, violent, grotesque, and possibly fanatic people and events in its pages, possibly including in the title characters, who dig innumerable holes in the ground looking for truth buried by the devil. It's hard to imagine a seemingly gentle soul and writer like Jessamyn West writing anything tinged with Gothics, but you never know. By the way, the witch diggers were based on real people of Jennings County of the nineteenth century.

Kentucky & Ohio Regionalists?

In thinking about American regionalism, I have also thought of some possible regionalists still living or recently departed. We think of regionalism as being a thing of the past, but there are probably still regionalist authors. One who has come to mind is Wendell Berry, who was born ninety-two years ago this month in Henry County, Kentucky. I think you could call Mr. Berry a regionalist, but he might also be called a state-alist (my new, awkward, and totally unpleasing word, in aesthetic terms) or localist, for he writes about Kentucky, moreover a specific place in Kentucky. Most recently, he published a novel called Marce Catlett (2025). I read a little about it last year and I thought, good for him. We need more of this hard work, dedication, and writerly devotion in American letters. Bobbie Ann Mason (b. 1940) is another Kentucky author who writes about the people and places of her native state.

Before Wendell Berry and Bobbie Ann Mason in Kentucky there was Jesse Stuart (1906-1984). And now I wonder if Hollis Summers (1916-1987), a Kentuckian, and Jack Matthews (1925-2013), an Ohioan, also wrote as localists, state-alists, or regionalists. I have read several of the late Mr. Matthews' books and many of his short stories, and I have found that many of them are about Columbus, where he was born; southeastern Ohio, where he lived, worked, taught, and went looking for rare books; or the area of Gallipolis, "the French City" where his father was born. (I believe Jack Matthews fictionalized Middleport, located upriver, as Brackenport in his late novel The Gambler's Nephew, published in 2011.) Earlier this year, I found some old newspapers at a secondhand shop across two rivers in Point Pleasant. I was pleased to find what I believe to be a picture of his father in a Gallipolis newspaper from the early 1940s. I'll close by writing that Jack Matthews and Hollis Summers were at Ohio University at the same time. What a time that must have been. But it has come to a close, as has this entry.

Happy Birthday to Wendell Berry.

Text copyright 2026 Terence E. Hanley