Earl Hamner: From Walton's Mountain to Tomorrow
James E. Person Jr.
Earl Hamner, a Virginia native, is one of America's best-loved storytellers, but he has never been the subject of a full-length study. Earl Hamner: From Walton's Mountain to Tomorrow fills that gap.
Hamner once said, "Even though families are said to be shattered these days, and God is said to be dead, if people can revisit the scenes and places where these values did exist, possibly they can come to believe in them again, or...to adapt some kind of believe in God, or faith in the family unit, or just getting home again." This vision of what makes for a whole life permeates all of Hamner's work. It is present in the novel Spencer's Mountain, upon which The Waltons is loosely based, and in his screenplays, such as the work he is perhaps most proud of, Charlotte's Web. It is even present in such unlikely places as the eight scripts he contributed to the classic television series The Twilight Zone and in the tales of cold-blooded betrayal and boundless ambition depicted on Falcon Crest.
In Earl Hamner: From Walton's Mountain to Tomorrow, readers will discover the integrated nature of his career. A pervasive theme runs throughout Hamner's work, that of a man forever taking a backward glance to his roots for direction in the way of what makes life worthwhile. Upon learning that this book was being written, Hamner told one of his friends, "I can't imagine anyone wanting to read a book about me, much less write one about me." Readers of this book will find Hamner's doubts indeed misplaced and will discover a delightful individual who has enjoyed a long, accomplished career as a storyteller, laboring for a worthy goal: that posterity may know of an age and a people whose legacy has not, through silence, been permitted to pass away as in a dream.
"Once immensely popular, TV's The Waltons is sometimes recalled by today's cynics as an overly idyllic portrait of characters too optimistic to be believed. But in fact, the series closely paralleled the early life of its creator and his family. From Walton's Mountain to Tomorrow traces Hamner's Depression-era upbringing and its effects on his prolific career. It explores his fascinating contradictions: an impoverished but happy childhood in rural Virginia, followed by a move to opulent Los Angeles, where he also conceived the salacious prime-time soap series Falcon Crest. (Hamner once joked that the fashionable decadence of Falcon Crest represented his 'wicked-side,' noting the disparity between the famous TV creations that became his signature). But as this biography deftly demonstrates, what all his works have in common is a mark of the enduring family values he clearly holds so dear." —American Profile Magazine, February 2006
 | JAMES E. PERSON JR. is the author of RUSSELL KIRK: A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF A CONSERVATIVE MIND, and THE UNBOUGHT GRACE OF LIFE: ESSAYS IN HONOR OF RUSSELL KIRK. He has also contributed more than one hundred essays, articles, and reviews to scholarly journals and journals of opinion. He lives with his wife and two children in Northville, Michigan. |
$22.95, Hardcover
ISBN-10: 1-58182-455-6 (Hardcover)
ISBN-13: 978-1-58182-455-1 (Hardcover)
Hardcover Currently Available
