Febary 24, 2012 Novelist William Gay died at his home Hohenwald, Tennsee, last night, at age sixty-eight. Among the most crilly acclaimed of his generatn of Southern wrers, Gay began his public wrg reer famoly late, when, at age fifty-five, his first short story was published The Geia Review. His first novel, The
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WILLIAM GAY, 1943-2012
Complete orr of William Gay books Publitn Orr and Chronologil Orr. * william gay novelist *
AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTWilliam Gay Di at 70; Wrer Tied to TennseeFeb. 29, 2012William Gay, a self-tght novelist om ral Tennsee who emerged om obscury his late 50s wh crilly praised books the Southern Gothic style, died last Thursday at his home, a log b Hohenwald, southwt of Nashville. Gay’s most recent publisher, MacAdam/Cage.The son of a sharecropper who spent much of his workg life blue-llar jobs, Mr.
Gay wrote about stic Tennsee wh an si observer’s eye for lol lor and a hyperbolist’s light regnal idsyncrasi. Gay created a hometown for his fiercely eccentric, furly motivated or morally challenged characters — Ackerman’s Field, Tenn. Gay wrote “The Paperhanger,” a short story about a man who killed a ltle girl bee she had looked at him funny.
Gay’s prose, not exactly purple, was often ght wh mythic ronance — that serpent, for example — which sued the amb parabl of good and evil that drew him. Gay to the readg world beyond lerary journals, he created a battle between Dallas Hard, a malevolent bootlegger, and Nathan Wer, the young rpenter Hard hir to build a honky-tonk on the property he has taken over om s crippled owner.