Vance Randolph

Although denizens of the high tech Ivy League schools like UPenn or elistist West Coast universities like Berkeley may scoff that there can be anything of value from the Ozarks (or any other place between the Schuylkill and American River), they should try reading the books of Vance Randolph, books like Down in the Holler, Who Blowed Up the Church House?, We Always Lie to Strangers, and of course, the iconic and masterful, Pissing in the Snow and Other Ozark Folktales. From 1920 until he died in 1980 at age 88, Vance Randolph was the pioneering folklorist of the Ozarks.

Although Vance has been the subject of a full length (and excellent) biography, those who eschew those non-electronic devices with the white flappy things in the middle can learn a bit more about the gentlemanly, scholarly, and (at times) cantankerous Man from the Ozarks if you just stay online and click here.