When I interviewed Mockbee, I was in the middle of an MFA program in creative writing, having left my full-time job at Fast Company the year before. After learning that I was interested in fiction -- this was over the phone, before we met in person -- Mockbee announced that all great writers were from his native Mississippi. Despite that apparent bias, he tried to set up a meeting for me when I was in Hale County with Mary Ward Brown, a local writer in her eighties; when he couldn't track her down, he gave me a book of her short stories.
I also was struck by Mockbee's kindness following our dinner with his students. It was after 10 PM, and I was about to set off for my bed-and-breakfast, which was 15 minutes away. Mockbee offered to drive me there in his truck. I declined, not wanting to trouble him. I was relieved when he insisted and even more relieved when we actually began the drive, which was along curving, pitch-black roads; without him, surely I would never have found the way.
In our culture, and especially in the media, superlatives are used so frequently that they have come to mean little. But I am not, as Mockbee was, a visual artist; the only medium I have in which to express myself is language. And Samuel Mockbee, I believe, deserves superlatives. More than anyone else I have ever interviewed, he inspired me. His death represents a terrible loss. He was an extraordinary person.
Curtis Sittenfeld (csitten@soli.inav.net), a former Fast Company staff writer, lives in Iowa. Learn more about the Rural Studio on the Web.
The Mockbee family has established the following memorial fund to support the education of Samuel Mockbee's son:
The Julius Mockbee Education Fund
c/o Ken Barton
P.O. Box 22567
Jackson, MS 39225-2567
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