Truth or fiction? Northwest oral history examined at next Oregon Chautauqua

SOU Professor Tom Nash.

LA GRANDE, Oregon – Eastern Oregon University and the Blue Mountain Forum will host an Oregon Chautauqua program by Tom Nash entitled “True Stories and Other Fictions in Northwest Oral History.”

 

This free, public program will be held Wednesday, November 1 from 7-8 p.m. in the first floor Reading Room of Pierce Library. Refreshments will be served. Oregon Chautauqua is a program funded by the Oregon Council for the Humanities.

 

Where does history end and folklore begin? When oral histories reveal the threads of legend, the stories undoubtedly become more engaging. Are we duped by elements of tall tale and legend, or do they reflect the dynamic interplay between events and memory? And what, ultimately, is the role of fiction in history?

 

Nash looks at the elements of folklore embedded in supposedly nonfiction stories of frontier Oregon and the West in an attempt to answer these questions. His material is drawn from Oregon oral histories that were recorded primarily in the 1930s and 1940s, and are now held at the State Library in Salem. These oral histories reveal the hand of the interviewer in both subtle and bold ways.

 

“Literalists” took down every hiccup and expletive along with the story, while “word smiths” perked up dull recitations and fictionalized uneventful details. Yet others known as “collaborators” became so involved that their own narrative vision interacts with the story being told in the interview.

 

Nash is a professor at Southern Oregon University specializing in linguistics and folklore. He is the author of three books including, “The Well-Traveled Casket,” a collection of Oregon history and lore, and is currently completing a fourth book tentatively titled, “Oregon Trails, Oregon Tales.”

 

For more information about the program please contact Connie Johnson at (541) 962-3699 or e-mail cjohnso2@eou.edu.

 

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