SOURCE: Runyon, Randolph Paul. “Fred Chappell: Midquestions.” In Southern Writers at Century's End, edited by Jeffrey J. Folks and James A. Perkins, pp. 185-200. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Runyon examines the structural aspects of Midquest, particularly the placement of poems focusing on Virgil Campbell, a recurring character in the collection.

Born in western North Carolina, in 1936, Fred Chappell has drawn increasingly on his Appalachian heritage in recent years. His best works—the epic poem Midquest (1981) and the novel I Am One of You Forever (1985)—are rooted in a quasi-autobiographical network of recurring hill-country characters, including his parents and grandparents, various eccentric uncles, and general-store proprietor Virgil Campbell, whose prankish independence harks back to Sut Lovingood but whose first name has a deserved Old World resonance.

This is particularly true in Midquest, which takes place in the Dantean middle of the protagonist's life, his...