The Hat of my Mother by Max Steele
The Hat of My Mother by Max Steele
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Max was one of my writing teachers at Chapel Hill, a tall man with an enormous head, a golden voice, and a penchant for messing with people’s heads. Especially students. He was also a brilliant teacher who could say one sentence about writing that would stick in my head for days. When I read his writing I was consumed by the idea of southern writing, which in those days meant, largely, white writing about the idea of a doomed south. He fit the mold but wrote exquisitely, leaving behind one novel and a couple of books of stories. He was supposed to do a lot more than that, and the fact that his writing went cold for a decade or more was always trouble to him. This book was a late collection of stories published by Algonquin Books, and it included a number of stories that had already been published in his collection Where She Brushed Her Hair. The stories are very fine. “Where She Brushed Her Hair” is included in the volume; I remember Max reading this story aloud to us in class and thought then that the various turns of the story were simply beautiful. It is still one of my favorites. So is “The Cat and the Coffee Drinkers.” He deserves to be remembered.
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