Fred Chappell’s writing is rich with surprising paradoxes that make it both rewarding and challenging for the reader. Though the Appalachian region of North America informed his prose and poetry, his work also transcends the regionalist designation; and while his writing appears varied, disparate, and distinctively original in all of its separate parts, there is a remarkable wholeness and interconnectedness throughout - as pieces of patchwork quilting which form a rich mosaic of word color and design and ultimately art. Chappell’s early novels portray a dark and existential world, characteristic of the postlapsarian condition, while the later poems and novels are lighter in tone and concerned with how we might ultimately adjust to and accept the limitations of a fallen world - or as…
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Citation: Shurbutt, Sylvia Bailey. "Fred Chappell". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 September 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=825, accessed 22 November 2024.]
