Description
Book SynopsisRon Berry [1920-97] is one of the most remarkably astute yet relatively neglected twentieth-century Rhondda writers. An avid walker, birdwatcher, `potcher', sportsman and miner, Berry is the product of a distinctive Rhondda landscape; the formidable peaks of Pen Pych and Cefn Nant y Gwair were to be a continuing source of inspiration for him in his writing. His idiosyncratic viewpoints, of which there are many, are reflected in both his memoir and fiction. As the first sustained critical study of his work, this collection seeks a literal, physical and chronological `zooming-outwards', from the man himself to the personal and literary geographies and communities in which he was posited, to his creative legacy.
Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors List of abbreviations Ways Out: Ways In: Ways Back An Introduction Barbara Prys-Williams, History is what you live: Ron Berry's rumination on his conflicted life and times Tony Brown, A Man's World: The Short Fiction of Ron Berry John Perrott Jenkins, Reading Hector Bebb: Masculinity and Mythic Paradigms in So Long, Hector Bebb (1970) Daryl Leeworthy, The Full-Time Amateur: Sport in Ron Berry's south-Walian Imagination Georgia Burdett, `The Inadequates': Ron Berry and Disability Sarah Morse, `Green always comes back': Ron Berry's ecocentric writing Tomos Owen, `Land of my Feathers': Ron Berry and Niall Griffiths on the Wing John Pikoulis, `Word-of-mouth cultures cease in cemeteries' Afterword Bibliography
