Eight years into more than a half century of teaching at Duke, Reynolds Price summarized the role of a writer in a 1966 piece for The New York Times.
“The search for influences in a novelist’s work is doomed to trivial results,” Price wrote, taking offense at reviewers labeling him as the heir to William Faulkner. “A serious novelist’s work is his effort to make from the chaos of all life, his life, strong though all-but-futile weapons, as beautiful, entire, true but finally helpless as the shield of Achilles itself.”
At Duke, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1955, Price taught courses on creative writing and the work of 17th century English poet John Milton. For more than a decade he read ghost stories and poems on Halloween.
In 1984, a cancerous tumor affecting his spinal cord left Price paralyzed from the waist down. Considering himself an “outlaw” Christian, Price in a 2006 News & Observer article said he accepted the truths articulated in the Book of Job: that God’s ways are often beyond understanding or finding out.
In 1987 Duke gave him the University Medal for Distinguished Meritorious Service, the university’s highest honor, and the Distinguished Alumni Award. A professorship in creative writing honoring Price was established at Duke in 2008, three years before his death at age 77.
The Macon, North Carolina, native was also a Rhodes Scholar. His noted books include “Collected Stories: A Long and Happy Life” (1962) “Kate Vaiden” (1986) and “The Good Priest’s Son” (2005).
