Writer Spotlight

Mason Smith

Mason Smith grew up in St. Lawrence County and gravitated towards the area around Lake Ozonia, near St. Regis Falls. After a 13-year span of college, Navy service, and graduate school (Ph.D. Stanford) and some teaching (Clarkson, Potsdam State, UCSC), Mason came home to build boats and write.

Smith's first novel, Everybody Knows and Nobody Cares (Knopf, 1971) was published with great acclaim: "Joy, unmitigated joy. [Smith's] prose has an apparent effortlessness and a poetic flex and lilt that make you sit up straight."-L. Woiwode, N. Y. Times Book Review -"In tone, texture and pace, Everybody Knows and Nobody Cares is that rarity, a book with no false moves."-R. Z. Sheppard, Time

Smith's second novel, Florida, which is set in fictitious Olmstead County (between Franklin and St. Lawrence) in the '70s was recently published through Xlibris in 2005.

Mason Smith's awards include a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, two MacDowell Colony fellowships, and a 1982 NYSCA Writer-in-Residence in Blue Mountain Lake.

Excerpt from the novel, Florida:

Later in the afternoon word came down from the bank and Arquit's and the gas company about another quitter, Clarence Shampine. He hit the three places one after the other. First, the bank. He came in there very much like a robber, had a kerchief round his neck that he only pulled down from his nose at the last minute. When asked if they could help him, he told them gruffly, Give him everything in his account, cash. No, he didn't have no checkbook, it was his money, however much there was of it, which they knew better than he did, and he wanted it, now.

One looked at the other, afraid to just hand him that much money. The teller said, "My goodness, Clarence, all of it?" She knew she wasn't supposed to bat an eye, but she felt responsible to Bess and Nellie Shampine.

He said, "Yes, all of it. Starting a new life, that's what I saved it for. How much is it, girlie?"

"Well just let me see. (Girly!)" But the one not talking to him had already looked up his account, and she put in, "It's ten thousand two hundred thirty-seven dollars and twenty-two cents, Clarence."

"All right, maybe you think that is a small amount, for a man who has worked hard all his life. But more than some clowns that ride motor-sleds under water could lay hands on that fast. Fork it over."

"You must be going on a spree. I could use a nice vacation myself." The younger woman, in the teller's window, raised a shoulder at him and touched her hair in back. But before Clarence could prepare a gallantry, the other one said, "Clarence, do your sisters know you're doing this? Taking out all your money?"

"No and I put myself to bed at night too. If *twas up to my relations I would have kept that cabbage in a sock and forgot where it is by now."

 

Adirondack Center for Writing
Paul Smith's College, PO Box 265
Paul Smiths, New York 12970
Phone: 518-327-6278
Fax: 518-327-6161
Email: acw@paulsmiths.edu