Reflections on the passing of John Prine

Woke up this morning to the sad news that John Prine has been carried off by Corvid-19.

John Prine, a child of the post-war Appalachian diaspora northwards, wrote many songs that evolved out of the Anglo-Scots-Irish tradition of oral story telling through ballads.

His song Far From Me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ujOTP8oPpY is something I trot out frequently as an example par excellence of a  lyric that operates at the same literary level as a short story.

In spite of its brevity, 185 words leaving out the more lyrically poetic refrain, there is a depth to the characters and the landscape they inhabit that opens out into a real sense of their past and future.

It has that thing that a good short story has of dropping you right into a situation, immediately creating a cinematographic visual place that you enter into as both observer and participant.  You know, without preamble, who these people are.

This is the universal within the specific.  The characters are not you but also you, the situation particular to them but resonating as very much like one you’ve been in yourself.  And even if you haven’t had an equivalent experience it does what all good art does, it makes you feel as if you had.

See also: Angel From Montgomery and Donald & Lydia

If you’re interested in fiction out of that particular place, Appalachia, and possessing a similar feel I would recommend the short stories of Jayne Anne Phillips and Breece D’J Pancake.

If you are interested in the aforementioned diaspora and the historically dominant ethnic culture of that region there is, the somewhat judgmental and therefore contentiously received, J D Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy.