Charles Frazier
Charles Frazier
Charles Frazieris an American novelist. He won the 1997 National Book Award for Fiction for Cold Mountain...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth4 November 1950
CountryUnited States of America
memories writing labels
I've never been very attached to genre labels and never set out intentionally to write historic fiction. Besides, what you consider historic depends on how far back your memory extends.
book boys grandparent
One time at the University of Colorado, at a faculty dinner, this professor said to me, 'Well, my goodness, a boy from Appa-lay-chee-a with a Ph.D!' The dinner was in her house. And I said, 'My grandparents didn't have indoor plumbing, but they had more books in their house than you do.' I was a little insulted by the Appa-lay-chee-a business.
giving phases littles
Publishers give you deadlines for those last phases of production that are perfectly comfortable for them. So, to whatever extent I can, I like to push those to give me a little more time, and make it so that they're as uncomfortable as I am.
war too-much good-things
It's a good thing war is so terrible or else we'd get to liking it too much.
teenage wind two
The Sixties were different in an isolated place. We got two television channels if the wind was blowing in the right direction. The radio stations went off at sundown. Then you picked up Chicago and heard the teenage music you really yearned for.
clever writing two
While writing 'Cold Mountain,' I held maps of two geographies, two worlds, in my mind as I wrote. One was an early map of North Carolina. Overlaying it, though, was an imagined map of the landscape Jack travels in the southern Appalachian folktales. He's much the same Jack who climbs the beanstalk, vulnerable and clever and opportunistic.
real writing years
Writing doesn't come real easy to me. I couldn't write a novel in a year. It wouldn't be readable. I don't let an editor even look at it until the second year, because it would just scare them. I just have to trust that all these scraps and dead-ends will find a way.
thinking journey cold-mountain
Thinking: this journey will be the axle of my life.
believe talking contentment
Contentment is mostly a matter of talking yourself into believing that God will not strike you too hard for leaning in the direction of your hungers.
beautiful father school
I remember my father checking on a mountain kid who hadn't been coming to school. My father had this beautiful Harris tweed overcoat. He came back with a knife cut all down one side. The parents had told him it was none of his business why their son wasn't going to school.
two people way
I met people when we lived down in Raleigh who'd ask where I grew up, and I'd say about two hours west of Asheville, and they'd say they didn't know there was any North Carolina two hours west of Asheville. It was in many ways an isolated place.
book years woods
I do the same things I did when I was 12 years old: I ride bikes, I read books, I walk in the woods. And I listen to music.
horse nice house
I was 46 when 'Cold Mountain' came out. I was settled. We had a nice house in Raleigh and a horse farm.
men grandchildren passing-on
All I can say is that we are mistaken to gouge such a deep rift in history that the things old men and old women know have become so useless as to be not worth passing on to grandchildren.