SOURCE: “Southside Life Inspires Author,” in Richmond Times Dispatch, May 15, 1988, pp. C1–C2.

[In the following review, Neuberger relates how Hoffman enjoys living in a small, agrarian community in Virginia, and discusses the inspiration Hoffman draws from the landscape and the people around him.]

Like almost everyone else in this small Southside town. Bill Hoffman can be seen each morning ambling to the post office, greeting others along the way.

In the afternoons, Hoffman will do chores around the small farm he and his wife share with their horses, dogs and cats.

But a typical resident of Southside, Hoffman is not.

He’s the author of nine novels and dozens of short stories, some collected in the recently published By Land, by Sea.

With the countryside just outside his office window, Hoffman has penned a pile of tales focusing on life in rural Virginia communities. The places often bear a striking resemblance to towns like Farmville and Charlotte Court House.

“I’ve lived here so long, it’s part of me now,” says Hoffman, a native of West Virginia who adopted Southside Virginia as his home about 35 years ago.

White-haired and easygoing at 62, Hoffman is settled into the unhurried life around this town of fewer than 600 people. He and his wife, Sue, reared two daughters, and once raised cattle, vegetables, even grapes for their own wine.

Tending to their four-footed charges and looking after the 50-acre farm and its pre-Civil War farmhouse, the Hoffmans stay busy. Occasionally, they find time to ride horses through the woods and fields that hug the town.

“Living here is something I chose to do,” Hoffman said in an interview in his wood-paneled office. “I’ve lived in Washington, D.C., and New York City, but it really didn’t seem to me a very civilized life. I began to yearn for some space and a different kind of life, and I think I pretty much found it over here.”

What he found was more than just the space and pace he longed for. “I like the kindness of the people and the patience that people in an agricultural community have.”

Hoffman, a Presbyterian who attends one of the community’s seven churches, also likes the importance of church and religious faith in the lives of people in this rural area. “These people here are seriously searching for spiritual answers. Here, there is a definite spiritual undergirding.”

In his most recent novel, Godfires, Hoffman pokes fun at the excesses of religious fanatics. Yet his portrait of Aunt Lettie, a hard-working woman with a deep faith, reflects his admiration for the personal search for spirituality.

There’s no mistaking how life and people in rural Virginia have influenced Hoffman's work.

Once, a friend got peeved when he thought he recognized himself in one of Hoffman'’s books. The author maintains that his characters are composites with traits drawn from many people he has known.

An especially humorous portrait of a local official appears in Godfires as Hoffman describes fictional Howell County Sheriff Burton Pickney:

“The sheriff sat at his oak desk, a man whose flesh was so loose it seemed the only thing holding him together was his rumpled tan uniform. Unbutton his shirt or drop his pants and he would've flowed across the floor like lard melting in a skillet.”

Hoffman also drawn heavily on places he knows best. The fictional Howell County might easily be recognized by Southside residents as Charlotte County.

The Chesapeake Bay has provided another backdrop. That's not surprising since the Hoffmans own a cottage on the bay in Mathews, where they go each month to sail, fish and put out crab pots.

Back in Charlotte Court House, people say the hometown author enjoys a strong following. The libraries carry Hoffman's books, and a review of By Land, by Sea hangs prominently in the one just a stone's throw from his farm.

“Our people around here are very proud of Mr. Hoffman,” said Josephine Locke, acting librarian. “We have all his books, and people are now going back and reading the old ones. We just think he's great.”

Beyond Virginia, numerous works by Hoffman have fared well. More than half of his books also have been published as paperbacks, and The Trumpet Unblown was published in several languages.

One producer bought the movie rights to Trumpet, and others have discussed making films based on Hoffman novels. But film plans have never gotten off the ground.

Hoffman's short stories have appeared in magazines such as Atlantic Monthly, McCall's and Cosmopolitan, as well as the Virginia Quarterly Review and Sewanee Review. Sewanee, a top literary magazine, has published more stories by Hoffman than by any other writer.

Critically, his books have been warmly received. For example, the New York Times named his second novel, Days in the Yellow Leaf, one of 1958's best books.

Nonetheless, at least one ardent fan believes Hoffman hasn't gotten the commercial and critical attention he deserves.

A Longwood College professor, Dr. William Frank, says, “It continually surprises me that a writer with his range and very impressive list of novels and short stories continues to remain relatively unrecognized.”

Hoffman once thought that any worthwhile work would inevitably find its audience. Now he recognizes that his books may have suffered commercially because he chose to live a relatively secluded life, removed from the publishing industry.

“I don't belong to any writing clique. I think I fail to get things published and reviewed,” he said

A trim man with a small frame and informal attire, Hoffman is modest. The idea of promoting his writing doesn't sit well with him. “I hate to do that. It somehow doesn't seem like you should have to.”

Dr. Frank hopes a symposium September 12–14 featuring Hoffman's works will bring him wider attention. Sponsored by Longwood and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy, it will be held at Longwood and Hampden-Sydney colleges. Scholars and critics will discuss selected stories and novels, and Hoffman will give a reading.

Hoffman's books have been used regularly in courses at Hampden-Sydney and Longwood. Yet even in Southside, it’s not easy to find his earliest books, some of which have been out of print for more than 20 years.

Hoffman occasionally will hear from someone looking for his books. In fact, the author has been looking for extra copies so he can leave each of his daughters a complete set.

One famous fan has helped. Singer Bruce Hornsby sent Hoffman a copy of Trumpet after finding three at a bookstore in the Los Angeles area.

The son of a coal miner, Hoffman was raised by his grandmother in Charleston, West Virginia. The coalfields later became the setting of his fourth novel, The Dark Mountains.

Hoffman's flair for writing emerged in high school at Kentucky Military Institute. Word got around that he could skillfully craft a love letter and his classmates began asking for help with notes to girlfriends.

At 18, he was drafted and sent to an ambulance unit in Europe during World War II. His wartime experience inspired him to write. The Trumpet Unblown, his first published novel. Hoffman's long adjustment after returning home led him to write Days in the Yellow Leaf.

Hoffman graduated from Hampden-Sydney in 1949. Thinking he wanted to become a lawyer, he enrolled in Washington and Lee University’s law school. It was during a creative writing course there that “something clicked. I felt that this was something I was attuned to.”

He settled in a small apartment in Farmville, but his efforts to carve out a writing career foundered. He worked briefly for the Washington Star in Washington and for the Chase National Bank in New York before returning to Hampden-Sydney as an English instructor in 1952.

During seven years of teaching, Hoffman met his wife, Alice Sue Richardson, and had his first two novels published. He left the college to concentrate on writing and published three more novels.

The Hoffmans bought their farmhouse in 1964, the year Hoffman returned to Hampden-Sydney for seven years as writer-in-residence.

After years of writing full time, Hoffman has a well-established routine. He rises before the sun and sits in a worn wooden swivel chair to work on a novel. In the afternoon, he turns to a short story. Writing for short, concentrated periods, he works for no more than three hours a day.

He does his writing on a manual typewriter, a gray Royal he has owned for 20 years. There’s an identical machine at the cottage in Mathews. In this age of computers, Hoffman has never wanted a word processor. “The way I work suits me,” he says.

Manuscripts of two novels are circulating among publishers. One is set in Virginia and West Virginia, the other in Richmond and central Virginia. Another book—“now in the typewriter,” he says—is set mostly in Richmond.

For Hoffman, writing is not so much a job as a calling. He doesn’t talk of retirement; he plans to write as long as he has an audience.

“Chances are good as I grow older and when there are signs that what I write isn't wanted, I’ll just quit. But I don’t think I'll ever quit because I've run out of ideas. I've never been to a point where I can't write about something.”