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Article: Lee Smith, At Home With Her Muse; The Novelist & Her Blend Of Southern Color & Comedy
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- December 4, 1988
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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Fiction has always transported novelist Lee Smith. Sometimes
literally. During her years at Hollins College she became so
enthralled with Huckleberry Finn that she and her classmates built a
raft and floated down the Mississippi River.
The trip, she says in the wonder-filled half drawl, half twang
of her native Southwest Virginia, "was really wonderful" but, like
much in life, "turned out to be something completely other than we
meant for it to be." So irresistible did the Huckleberry Girls prove
to the media that "by the time we got to New Orleans we were met by
the Preservation Hall Jazz Band on a tugboat and the mayor and all
this stuff ... People were dropping roses out of ...