Important Links:
To learn more about writer Allan Gurganus, visit his website:
Listen to Filmmaker Wil Weldon’s recording of RWB Latta:
Read Zachary Vernon’s essay, “Halloween’s Herald of Democracy: Allan Gurganus and the Horror Show of American Politics.” It was published in the North Carolina Literary Review:
Halloween's Herald of Democracy
Listen to a recording of Allan read his essay, “Old Houses & Young Men: Notes on Renovation and Survival,” which was featured in the anthology 27 Views of Hillsborough:
Music for this episode is entitled “The Haunted House,” by John Abbot. It’s available on Epidemic Sound:
The Haunted House
Season Two, Episode 20 Show Notes
Allan Gurganus & the Haunting of Hillsborough
Allan Gurganus as RWB Latta & Jane Holding as Joan of Arc. Photo by Roger Haile.
It’s that time of year when we remember Hillsborough’s favorite self-taught mortician RWB Latta (aka writer Allan Gurganus). Now retired, he offered trick or treaters a coffin full of candy and his sales pitch promising deeply discounted and artistic funeral services with examples galore of his work. To clinch the deal, he treated potential clients to a mash-up of skits, full of fright and politics and frightful politics. The crowds couldn’t get enough. 500 souls lined up each year. For more than a quarter century on All Hallow’s Eve, the spookiest and most over-run place in town was the Latta funeral home which took possession of writer Allan Gurganus’s otherwise respectable bungalow.
Bio—
Novelist Allan Gurganus has been delighting reading audiences of decades. His books include The Practical Heart, Plays Well With Others, Local Souls, White People, and Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, which has been adapted to bother stage and screen. Many of his short stories have been published in The New Yorker. He recently published The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus and is at work on a new novel, The Erotic History of a Country Baptist Church.
Note—
If you have any photos or stories of Allan Gurganus’s Haunted House that you would like to share in an archive Friends of RWB hope to create, please contact elizabeth@enopublishers.org
