1993 Volume 116 No 1–4 - Phi Delta Theta Scroll Archive

Reynolds Price lives in a house in rural
Durham County, North Carolina, set in
acres of birches and firs. It is the same
house he lived in when he collapsed in
May 1984, during a neighbor's wedding.
A pencil-thick tumor near his spine had
caused his legs to stiffen. After three
operations and watching the use of his
legs deteriorate. Price was free of the
cancer, but he was also a paraplegic.
Price says that cancer caused only one
drastic change in his life: it gave him
more time to devote to writing. Since his
operations, he has been in one of his most
prolific phases as a writer. Plays, novels,
poems, essays all have come flowing
from him as if the cancer unearthed some
underground well of literary material.
With his new word processor, he can now
produce from 10 to 15 pages each day,
and the pages need little, if any, revision.
His wheelchair has not confined him,
however. Price still zooms about the
Duke University campus with a fierce
smile, talking to students and fellow
faculty. There is no trace of bitterness for
losing the use of his legs.
"When it happened to me,
I had had a very full and
able-bodied life for a long
time, so it was not a gigantic
trauma for me," he says.
"God knows 1 was sorry to
lose the use of my legs, and it
took me a very long time to
get all the new skills and
ways of living figured out.
But I think it happened to me at a time in
life when it was easier to absorb than it is
in the case of so many men and women
Reynolds Price in his home in
the rural area of Durham
County, North Carolina.
^All narrative artists are very
much involved in telling the
only story we really want to
hear, which is: History is the
will of a just God who knows
me."
Winter 1993 • The Scroll