Hollis Summers
Hollis Summers was an American writer born on June 21, 1916, in Eminence, Kentucky. Raised in a family with deep roots in the Baptist ministry, he initially seemed destined for a religious vocation, but his passion for storytelling and poetry led him to pursue a career in writing. After earning a B.A. in English from Georgetown College in 1937, he began teaching high school in Covington, Kentucky. Summers registered as a conscientious objector during World War II, a decision he later described as challenging. He furthered his education by completing a master's degree at Middlebury College and eventually a Ph.D. at the State University of Iowa.
Throughout his career, Summers wrote notable works of fiction, including his first novel, *City Limit*, and *The Day After Sunday*, which showcased his ability to tackle complex moral dilemmas through varied narrative perspectives. He was also recognized for his poetry, marked by a colloquial style and insightful observations on everyday life. Summers's writing often explored themes of flawed relationships and moral complexities, reflecting his Christian background while delving into the intricacies of human experience. He continued to teach and write until his passing on November 14, 1987.
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Hollis Summers
Writer
- Born: June 21, 1916
- Birthplace: Eminence, Kentucky
- Died: November 14, 1987
Biography
The son of a Baptist preacher, Hollis Summers was born June 21, 1916, in the rural Kentucky town of Eminence, northeast of Louisville. With a long family tradition of preaching, Summers was expected to pursue the ministry. Early on, however, he loved the storytelling of the neighbors and the satisfying rhythms of rural music and began toying with writing short stories and poetry. When he graduated from Georgetown (KY) College in 1937 with a B.A. in English, Summers began teaching in a Covington, Kentucky, high school. When World War Two began, Summers made what he described later as the most difficult decision of his life: he registered as a conscientious objector. Encouraged to write (he had received two summer fellowships to the prestigious Bread Loaf writers’ program at Middlebury College in Vermont in 1941 and 1942), Summers completed his master’s at Middlebury in 1943 and then accepted a position at his alma mater where he continued studying the craft of fiction in the summers at the State University of Iowa, completing his Ph.D. by submitting the manuscript of what would become his first novel, City Limit, a provocative narrative in the tradition of Sherwood Anderson about high school romance that tested the tension between sexual discovery and conventional small-town morality by depicting (through shifting narrative perspectives) an unpromising marriage forced upon two high school kids who spend an innocent day together skipping school.
On the heels of its publication, Summers accepted a post at the University of Kentucky where he continued to publish fiction, most notably Brighten the Corner, a psychological study of a minister’s family through the eyes of a introspective son whose coming of age includes the experience of death and the hypocrisy inevitable in the struggle to follow the Christian ideal. The central event—the stillborn birth of the boy’s sister—leads the boy ultimately to affirm God, a difficult yet loving presence. Summers also found regional success as a poet. The poetry, colloquial, unadorned, and accessible with a deceptive kind of Frost-like understated simplicity and wry wit, found in the simplest experiences—family, nature, friendship, church—unexpected insights.
In 1959, Summers moved to Ohio University where he continued to teach and write until his death. In addition to a prodigious output of poetry and short fiction, Summers published what many regard as his defining work, The Day After Sunday, a formal tour de force that uses the structural metaphors of gestation and delivery to chronicle the pregnancy of a middle-aged Bible- toting spinster after she impulsively sleeps with a drunk seventeen-year old boy. By examining the moral dilemma from a variety of narrative perspectives, Summers captures the poignancy of loneliness, the carnal itch of sexuality, and the impotence of Christianity when it comes to matters of the heart (the woman refuses the reveal the father and claims an immaculate conception).
Summers died November 14, 1987. Informed by Christianity, Summers’s fiction—dense character studies of flawed relationships and dysfunctional families—compassionately examined the psychology of relationships perhaps compelled by the flesh and sustained by the heart but ultimately judged by the soul.