The Good Earth of West Virginia

Through the Allegheny Mountains of eastern West Virginia you follow the perpetual S-curve that seems to define all of the Mountain State’s highways. In Pocohontas County, the road straightens long enough to be an exception to the rule, and the broad Greenbrier Valley spreads out--historic, geologically interesting and a “leafer’s” paradise for visitors in fall.

But some of the visitors stop to tour a historic white frame house just off the road in tiny Hillsboro. It’s the birthplace of Pearl S. Buck who, 50 years ago this autumn, became the only American woman ever to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Beginning in the late 1920s, Buck produced book after book eagerly snatched up by millions of devoted readers. From a lifetime total of 107, about a fourth were based on intimate knowledge of China, where she grew up as the daughter of missionaries.

Americans were enchanted by the lives of peasants, farmers, warlords and concubines that she wove into tales chronicling turbulent times in the history of an exotic nation.

From “East Wind: West Wind” in 1930 to a posthumously published short-story collection in 1979, three novels hit annual Top 10 lists, three were among the 500 all-time best sellers and 13 were Book-of-the-Month selections. Most of the others were commercial--if not always critical--successes.

Reviewers frequently said she rushed novels into print that would have benefited from more careful polishing.

They were kinder than William Faulkner, who reportedly said of the Nobel Prize, “I don’t want it. I’d rather be in the company of Sherwood Anderson and Theodore Dreiser (who never did win it) than S. Lewis and Mrs. China-hand Buck.” (He had apparently changed his mind when he accepted the Nobel Prize in 1949.)

Buck’s writings bridged cultural chasms for herself as well as for others. For Wang Lung, the Chinese farmer, the romance of the land was in “this perfect symphony of movement, of turning this earth of theirs over and over to the sun, this earth which formed their home and fed their bodies and made their gods.” The author was perhaps thinking of the “high, level, fertile plain set among encircling mountains,” the good earth of her birthplace, which she described in “The Exile.”

With the 1938 Nobel Prize announcement came the general assumption that it, like the Pulitzer Prize she’d won in 1931, was for “The Good Earth.” But the committee chairman indicated the “decisive factor” was, “above all, the admirable biographies of her parents, the missionary pair in China--two volumes which seemed to deserve classic rank.”

“The Exile” was a loving memorial to Buck’s mother, the fun-loving, warm-hearted Caroline (Carie) Stulting Sydenstricker, who left a beloved home out of a sense of duty to God and husband, probably in that order, to go to China.

Carie’s husband, Absalom Sydenstricker, was an austere figure too remote for love from his children. But in a posthumous surge of empathy, Buck immortalized him in “Fighting Angel.”

Buck was born June 26, 1892, during a home furlough that Carie needed badly to refresh her health and sagging spirits after burying three of four infants who would die from diseases easily curable in this country. A few months later the family sailed back to China.

Buck was 8 when they next returned home, and she was filled with stories her homesick mother had told her in China about broad meadows, fruit trees, dooryard flower gardens and a square porch with wooden seats.

The stories, she found, were all true. She also discovered her American identity.

Growing up among Chinese children, she hadn’t thought about being “different.” Once, when they were playing a favorite game, a Chinese girl said Pearl shouldn’t be the make-believe dowager empress. Not understanding, Pearl retorted, “I’m as Chinese as you are!” In America she realized it wasn’t so.

Time and new authors have eroded her name recognition in the United States. However, according to the New York agent who handles foreign sales for the estate, Buck remains the second most translated American author (Mark Twain is first) and her books still enjoy lively sales aboard.

In the meantime, at WSWP-TV, a PBS station in nearly Beckley, W. Va., work is progressing on a biographical documentary to air in 1990.

“She may not be timeless as a literary figure,” says Donn Rogosin, the station manager, “but she is as a historical figure, in the same way as Cooper, Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis.”