Clabough, Casey 1974- (Casey Howard Clabough)

PERSONAL:

Born January 31, 1974, in Richmond, VA; son of Howard (a coach and farmer) and Jeanne (a professor of anatomy) Clabough; married Rochelle Booker (an antiques dealer), 1998. Ethnicity: "White." Education: College of William and Mary, B.A., 1996; University of South Carolina, M.A., 1998, Ph.D., 2000. Hobbies and other interests: Farming.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Appomattox, VA. Office— Department of English, Lynchburg College, 1501 Lakeside Dr., Lynchburg, VA 24501. Agent—Sorche Fairbank, Fairbank Literary Representation, 199 Mount Auburn St., Ste. 1, Cambridge, MA 02138. E-mail—clabough@lynchburg.edu.

CAREER:

Lynchburg College, Lynchburg, VA, assistant professor, 2001-06, associate professor of English, 2007—, English graduate coordinator, 2007—. University of Virginia, Lillian Gary Taylor fellow at Harrison Institute, 2006; University of South Carolina, fellow at Institute for Southern Studies, 2007; guest speaker at many conferences and institutions. Road Rangers Project, archivist, 2006—.

MEMBER:

Cthulhu Society.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fellow of Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 2005; Mednick fellow, Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges, 2005.

WRITINGS:

Elements: The Novels of James Dickey, Mercer University Press (Macon, GA), 2002.

(Under name Casey Howard Clabough) Experimentation and Versatility: The Early Novels and Short Fiction of Fred Chappell, Mercer University Press (Macon, GA), 2005.

The Warrior's Path: Reflections along an Ancient Route, University of Tennessee Press (Knoxville, TN), 2007.

Contributor of articles, short stories, and reviews to periodicals, including African American Review, Appalachian Heritage, Callaloo, Contemporary Literature, Hollins Critic, Mosaic, Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, Southern Literary Journal, Southern Quarterly, and Virginia Quarterly Review. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, editor of literature section, Encyclopedia Virginia, 2006—.

SIDELIGHTS:

Casey Clabough told CA: "I developed a fondness for literature based upon my reading. Even very early on, I could tell there were things going on in literary writing that were not taking place in other books, on television, or in other areas of popular culture with the same depth and intensity. That sense of mystery, of some kind of unusual and riveting wisdom lurking inside a very regular-looking book, was fascinating to me. Then I discovered that when I tried to write, even when I failed, I learned things— things that I thought were worth learning. Most of the people I knew and grew up with didn't care about them, but I did.

"I have read to the point that it seems impossible now to reconcile writers into a handful of general influences and favorites. I have learned a great deal in the process of writing about other writers. So I would assert that the writers I've written books about—James Dickey, Fred Chappell, George Garrett—have influenced me significantly. Incidentally, all of those people were writing teachers, so I think the tenor of some of their work is inherently geared, unconsciously perhaps, toward instruction. The reader can't help but learn from them.

"I have found that I am also influenced on a physical and psychological level by the rudiments of my visceral surroundings in a manner that most folks are not. I grew up working on a farm and find even now that I am attuned to things—terrain, for example, or the weather—in a way that is different from most other people.

"I'm one of those ‘black box’ scribblers. I don't really understand what I do. I'm still somewhat early on in my career so perhaps I will figure out more in time. Right now, though, I guess what I do is closest to what some of the European writers called automatic writing, where you listen to the voices, follow the threads and impulses, etc. It's a whimsical and meditative approach. It would be nice to have a more reliable one eventually.

"What has surprised most to this point is just how hard it is to write something substantive, even when it's not very good. I'm a lot more sympathetic toward bad work than I was before I wrote my first book. My favorite reply to a no-count critic trashing a book is to tell them to go try and write one.

"To this point, my favorite book would have to be The Warrior's Path: Reflections along an Ancient Route. The scholarly books were vitally interesting and instructive to do, but it was fun to abandon that deskbound, pedantic voice and get the narrator out of doors and wandering down highways and up hillsides. It is also probably the only book of mine to date that has something of myself fairly evident and functioning in its pages.

"My scholarly books on other writers have a lot of rare primary sources in them and proceed from an impulse to know the writer on her/his own terms, as opposed to aggressively impressing a fashionable theory upon the work. This approach probably damages the books in terms of contemporary resonance and receptivity, but my hope is that the primary sources element and the focus on the writer"s working philosophy will conspire to make them enduring and useful beyond the present moment.

"The Warrior's Path is a book that I hope will attract people possessed of an interest in the establishment of a certain important part of America—what some call eastern Appalachia—and how it has changed while also maintaining a ghostly connection with its past. That's also my general focus for the future, by the way, both in my creative and scholarly work."