Racism in the stories of William Faulkner / "Which Side of the Fence?"

       One quarter way through the short story collection: "The Collected Works of William Faulkner" my recurring and gnawing self interrogation:  following an introverted examination of my own psyche - reguarding the racism portrayed on these pages  -  I keep asking myself -  two generations removed  and descent of  suspiciously similar "white peoples" who lived and breathed in  the very same red dirt hills and gullies of Northern Mississippi.  Were I  to be transporteed then and there, and brought to life in one of the scenes from his books - given the man I've  become in this time and my place -  which of the characters (so empathetically and convincingly portrayed by Faulker) would I be? 
      For example:  Would I , in "Dry September" fall out to be the voice of reason  - of the barber  - who refused to believe the colored Will Mayes to be guilty of a crime, with which he was charged by vigilante bigmouths, becuase he knew it to be out of character?  Would I endure the ridicule of my cohorts in the barber shop, for believing the word of a a "nigger" over that of a white woman?  Would I be able to stand still without flinching while I was called "niggerlover" and a damn yankee, even though I was a native son my entire life.  Or would I fall out to be one of those majority biggots:  accusing an innocent man, interrogating the barber for being rational, and causing paranoia, by such tactics as... "Happen? What the hell difference does it make?  Are you going to let the black sons get away with it until one really dos it?" -- and then later tracking down the wrongfully accused man - shouting" "Get him into the car" ..." Kill him, kill the black son..."

       Given the socio-economic stratus of the time, and my family's position within the hierarchy of those times I'd say the odds were, in spite of a good Church upbringing and "Christian" home: I'd fall out be a fence straddler most likely .  Wonder whichaway I wouda fell?  What about you?

preview to "The Gospel Chariot" chapter 15

So… While the fired up congregation was seeking the little lost lamb of little Jerusalem, and while the deputy dog was sniffing  and barking up the tree of the itinirate false prophet, and so as the psyched out sidekick was stumbling blindly through the locust thicket - after having left open the gate to Chubby Davis’ goat pasture  -  while the local lowriders played forty dogs and dominos  -  and then again while the puppy was pouting and the deputy doubting what the prophet was spouting  -while new crowds were assembling to what was then resembling a free concert featuring the Baldwin Sisters and the “Daughters of Eve” review -  And while the preacher was mumbling while I myself I was fumbling  - And the whole experience being very humbling  -  Because I was the dumsumbich left the door cracked open.

ON VISITING FLANNERY O'CONNOR'S GRAVE

ON VISITING FLANNERY
O'CONNOR'S GRAVE
Milledgeville, Ga., 1988

--MAXINE KUMIN

...but first, an historic detour just this side
of what the local intelligentsia
in fond self-deprecation call Mudville
to take the cart track up to Andalusia,
the family seat, a serene remove from town,
as in a good Victorian novel.

Here, from the first-floor bedroom window
even on those last dark days, she could see
her beloved peacocks pecking and fanning,
the tribe of philoprogenitive donkeys
ambling down to the farm pond in the meadow,
a grove of ancient pecan trees bending
to be picked. Not antebellum grand,
but commodious Andalusia, with real gardens
harrowed every spring with real manure,
so that it's touching but not surprising that
when Mary McCarthy remarked, years before,
she had come to think of the Eucharist as a symbol,
O'Connor, considerably put out
by lapsed Catholic rhetoric, flared,
"Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it."
...

Not as I pictured her, enthroned
on high, fiercely Promethean
with eagles, say, or lions on the headstone --
but the square, unlandscaped family plot
sans even a drooping willow seems right.
Aligned with her father, three great-aunts opposite,
space for the mother who outlives her yet,
Flannery lies unadorned except by name
who breathed in fire and fed us on the flame.

[from Looking for Luck: Poems (W. W. Norton & Company, 1992), pp. 45-47]

Submitted by Jerry Buckley / Voice of One
http://jerrybuckleyvoice.blogspot.com/

The Gospel Chariot : Part 2 "If The Devils in the Way"

Part Two:  "If The Devil’s In the Way"  ( Prerequisite:  "The Gospel Chariot" 101
"The Great Going Forward")

              If I am to be found guilty of transgression, in the keeping to myself of this secret, I must admit no lo contender, but it was out of no motive of covetousness or greed.   I was not attempting to horde up treasure on earth that would rust away with time.  In truth I have been guilty of  a lesser category of sin; specifically that of a sin of omission; since I was culpable of with- holding important information and witness to the Lord’s power and might.   I was in fact terrified at the prospect of facing the consequences of the fully proclaimed truth.  I didn’t want to open a can of forty questions, about the incident at Bucksnort.  I didn’t want to ever have to hear "Why wasn’t she on her leash?"  "Didn’t you see the house down there?"     "Couldn’t you make her stop?"

           I would have been found out guilty by my own statement of contributing to the delinquency of an under-aged dog.    I would have been repirmanded in front of the congregation.  It was a classis no win situation.  So for nearly five years following the great going forward, and  the subsequent emergence of Isabella  Emergent Victorious  -  a new creature herself and a enlisted ensign into the army of the Lord  -  I down-played the entire legend because I was afraid my loose lips would reveal something which I had a dread of discussing with Mamacita or the boys.  

           If I digress even now in telling the story, it's just that there were some points on which I have inferred and surmised, from my intimate knowledge of Isabella (my having become alpha dog in her world) and because  -  as surely as I know that Ice understands not only English but also a fair amount of Spanish  -  I myself never acquired any more than a tourists understanding of Doglish.   We communicated well on an instinctual level but there was never any real way to communicate vital information about news or third party events.  With no common voice as a vehicle for her newfound inspiration and feeling of empowerment in the spirit, she must have felt outcast and thus downcast.  I just know within my heart, that she must have felt that  - if she could but learn to speak the language of men she would be fulfilled -  if she were only able  to tell Mamacita and myself,  and the just boys how much we had meant to her, and to thank us for bringing her up out of the barrios of the darkening Mississippi river delta.  (Not unlike, Moses coming up out of the rushes into the house of Pharaoh, I was thinking at the time.)

           To get back to the narrative, and so that the full account might be revealed from the behind veil of memory,  I need to go back to the first book of moving day and the chapter just following the great "going forward"  -  beginning with the  first verse a new creature.

After Ice had ravenously lapped her bowl of water, clipped in she was behind the Country Cupboard, she was again called up - (not un-like Phillip the evangelist) caught up in the spirit, back into the gospel chariot, that ugly bread box on wheels.   It appears Mamacita and El Jefe had received their own call in the spirit to sojourn like Abraham, into a land that would be shown us, into the hills and vales of middle Tennessee  -  back into the bowels of the Bible belt  to begin a new life in a more glorified state -  into a land flowing with milk shakes and honey-grahams.  Ice was now called to guide the eastward expansion of the "up from Mississippi" Barkley clan.  A rough-cut yet smooth-talking and gregarious lot of deported British (some say Irish) stock. Co-pilot was she Isabella Scapegoatdog of the gospel chariot, laden with all the gathered belongings going into storage, and all of the house plants too mature and cherished to jettison, for whom the oversized cab of the boxy 70's looking commercial chariot became an ark of salvation from the impending flood-waters of the muddy Mississippi river.

              All was going well, Isabella was fixed in a glorious trance;  spirit- gliding across the face of the Tennessee River bottoms; leaving behind the  blanched cotton fields as they gave be-grudging  way into the rolling hills and wooded stretches of the vast Natchez Trace.  In my minds ear, I was hearing a voice humming, "So Long Marianne" and later "If It Be Your Will".   I just couldn’t seem to shake the Leonard Cohen mojo for the entire first half of the drive.   We were "marching on to higher ground" with visions of promised habitations beyond the Tennessee River Valley.  There were new vistas on the eastward horizon and there was balance  -  all old debts having been paid off and the old man sin having been laid off  -  all was in a harmonious flux with all the past year's sins having been rolled forward as was the manner  -  and a newfound optomism ruled supreme upon the day.

          I recalled laughing to myself along the way, and telling myself that Isabella and the Parrish brat would always have the same “birthday”  as regards their conversion and sanctification processa; and that the Parrish brat was fortunate to have such an exciting conversion experience to be able to share with others, and that the same thing might be said of Isabella, if only her story  could be understood by those who would listen.

           Everything was under control and as cool as cucumbers, until that is, the fateful pit stop at the Bucksnort exit off  I 40.  (Until we were abruptly called to make an accounting for our faith and were to come were to come face to face with the enemy!)   I knew the exit and the physical layout well enough; just past the Bucksnort Trout Ranch, and so I fell into the fallacy of the reliability of prior experience and cognizant that the former truck-stop property was unoccupied at present due to a burst commercial real estate bubble, I figured the truck stop plaza should be the ideal place for Ice to make her puppy pit-stop and maybe even stretch her legs a bit before the second half of the journey.

          I suppose that, if  I had been in full Zen awareness mode like I had learned in karate dojo;  I may have seen the clues of danger lurking on periphery  -  but I was all happy-goes-lucky - no apparent need for hesitation and prayerfully thankful to Providence for providing such a convenient and timely pit-stop opportunity.  Cheerfully and carelessly I piloted the gospel chariot to the vacant truck stop lot, pulling up reigns out back where no old biddies from the road or restaurant should be disturbed by the sight of a dog doing its business in public.  Not smelling the danger myself, I was taken aback when - like an arrow from a charioteer’s bow -  Ice launched from the driver’s side seat and hit the ground, fullspeed ahead shitinangettinit down into the hollow below the level of the parking lot .  

           Into a boisterous maelstrom of animal noises, flying feathers and chicken squat: and accompanied by sound effects  not unlike those from the bedroom scenes in "The Exorcist"  and then -  in the blinking of eye -  in a spectacle of Darwinian drama-meets dogmatic fervor, I was  bought to a lurching standstill by a single blast from a sixteen-gauge shot BOOM     (Not entirely unlike, it occurred to me,  Gabriel blowing his trumpet to begin the bodily resurrection and the final judgment of mankind)

          Bumfuzzled and dazed I gazed into a hazyclearing through a screen of  scat infused sunshine,  gun smoke and the chicken dander floating on the updraft like some hellish dandelion blown to smithereens;  Hovering over the mid-day calm.  This was my very visceral and very personal burning bush experience.

        "Please Mister"! "Don’t shoot her, she’s our family pet" I shouted into the haze, as a small puff of smoke wafted off toward the Negev.   I looked and beheld two creatures of Biblical proportions which had transfigured into a small clearing at the edge of a small brush-choked patch.  I was positioned above the battlefield plain - looking down into the hollow from the steep hillside at my feet, which was sown with the seeds of righteousness having born fruit into a buffer zone of ballast rocks   -  to prevent the truck-stop property from eroding into the defile at its feet.  The sight below me was a fright for sore eyes: two haggard southern-gothic creatures of darkness, looming apparitions from the pits of Hades or other nether regions.  A pair of animalistic Samaritans or false prophets no doubt;   stood and/or staggered in the clearing, garbed in filthy overalls and greasy dollar-store flannel shirts.   These fowl smelling specters staggered onto the edge of the clearing breathing threats and curses against man and beast.  The first of them;   ringleader and the elder of the pair was brandishing the shotgun, while his younger sidekick had opted to sport a square lipped, short-handled shovel for his personal mode of self defense.

           "stay right there you sum-bich" …Yur goddam dog done went and kilt my best rooster…"

The false prophet blasted additional threats and curses in my direction, his Z Z Top beard disguising the true ugliness of the evil in his face,  which harbored the hard glare of a wayward prophet;   eyes glazed over and blood shot, one of them crossed, noticeably inward. Too many generations of inbreeding I surmised.  Deep-set pupils like two off- kilter black-eyed peas, or those infinitesimal points where a black hole squeezes the life out of light and life.  The sight of the prophet and the sudden unease about my present situation was causing my mind to race through several worse case scenarios, clicking off one after another, and I could hear the ..plink-plink.. of a dueling banjo and in my mind’s eye.  I envisioned an inbred adolescent picker and I imagined off camera, his lecherous and animalistic uncles, hell-bent on the instant gratification of sodomy and destruction of the spirit.

 "I’m fixin’ take it out of your hide…You stay right there you sum-bich…I’m gonna...

 I fumbled for words with which to reply, and finally countered in my best ready-to talk-turkey tone  -  ready to do the Christian thing and prepared to reimburse for the offense.  Like when a man’s ox trampled another man’s field in the days of Moses – he must make restitution to the injured party and then the offense is to forgiven and forgotten.

         "Sir, I can pay for your chicken, what is she worth?  I’ve got twenty bucks in my billfold,  I’ll lay it right here under this rock and we’ll get out of your hair.

The false prophet grabbed the shovel from the sidekick and exploded in a fury of fowlness:  "You sum-bich…..You stay right there, this damn bird worthy of way more than any twenty clucking bucks…I’m fix-in’ shove this shovel up yo skinny white arse…..you sum-bich,  you stay right were you’re at… you skinny little peckerwood sumbich you"

 Luckily for me, his less-enthusiastic sidekick  - (whether they were the huff- buds, moonshine cousins, or the methamphetamine mafia of Hickman County  or full time sporting men I could only guess;  there being so little time for formal introductions)  -  was of a more settled disposition.  The sidekick was more Kid Rock than ZZ Top.  He looked in from eternity  - peering outward with eyes  like quasars from some distant galaxy.   Apparently the salesman of the outfit, he attempted a diplomatic approach by kindly explaining the immediate situation to my better understanding. 

 "That there ain’t no regular chicken….. That right there’s a "show chicken"  "This here bird’s worth two or three hundred bucks easy"  

Kid Rock appeared to be opening the bid for the bird while Z Z, unable to contain his righteous indignation started to stumble toward the scree of ballast rocks; blathering treats and vulgarities seldom heard in our docile Little Jerusalem neighborhood.   (Except for those times when Mr. Weingarten, our eccentric neighbor would go off his medications and would vanish  - traipsing about half clothed on his walkabouts as far away as West Memphis, during one of his frequent bi-polar binges.)

 Never one to over-analyze a situation, I knew it was time to take up the full gospel armor, and possessing neither shield nor sword with which to arm myself, I was content in grateful reception of what the Lord provides in such times of need.  I reached down and plucked up two of the dirty white ballast rocks, the size of Egyptian pomegranates, as if I were picking two cantaloupes out of my garden.  In my mind’s eye I remembered the courage of the young shepherd-boy David when, faced down by the Philistine giant, he stooped to pick up pebbles.

           It was my time to call the Devil’s bluff.  With the courage of Moses and the voice of Aaron, it was time for me to “give an answer for the hope that lies within me”.

”You take one more step and I’m a gonna crush your melon with one of these here God-given rocks here in my hand" I resounded with the voice of circuit preacher…  "And if these don’t land on target there’s plenty more these seeds of the gospel  right at my feet…… bet I can get three good shots on your worthless noggin’ before you can crawl your god-forsaken carcass up these temple steps you sumbich" I blasted with the courage of John the Baptist.

 In the same way the shotgun blast had frozen the air; this threat from the supposed victim, and the realization of his predicament, had flabbergasted the false prophet like a bolt of Zion’s lightning.  Freezing for an instant, to assess his options, he thus afforded  the now emergent-victorious scapegoat-dog Isabella just the opportunity she was looking for -  to break free and runaround the flanks of third base and headed toward home, and up and into the sanctuary of the cab of the open armed gospel chariot. 
 My nostrils recoiled in tears and disgust from the awful stench of battle; (the ammonia smell of chicken squat mixed with the stench of the putridity of death)  as she galloped past me flashing a frothing Rin-Tin-Tin grin.  The joy of competition!  The thrill of Victory in our Chariots of Fire!  The flag not only found and taken but a demon cast right down.             
 "If the Devil’s in the way we will run right over him!"

"Roll the gospel chariot along  Roll the gospel chariot along  Roll the gospel chariot along  … and we won't tag along behind."

Flannery O Connor on Interpretation

There is always the danger of over-analysis coming between the reader and author, a danger of which O'Connor was keenly aware.

(Read her letter of March 28, 1961, to a professor of English who shared with O'Connor his students' interpretation of "A Good Man is Hard to Find." Her letter begins: "The interpretation of your ninety students and three teachers is fantastic and about as far from my intentions as it could get to be." It ends: "Too much interpretation is certainly worse than too little, and where feeling for a story is absent, theory will not supply it. My tone is not meant to be obnoxious. I am in a state of shock."

         This is so true in my experience,  I've just thrown my hands up after wasting three consecutive lunch hours trying to get any good perspective about the "Southern Gothic" overtones in the novels of William Faulkner.
         The intelligent and hard working author  whose name and book title shall best remain anonymous, went to extreme lengths to link our boy W F with the gothic implications of Freud and Jungian psychology  and the Gothicism of Faust and Dickens:   She draws a direct link between Gothicism and Surrealism, and she develops such thought provoking chapter titles as "Sanctuary: The Persecuted Maiden, or Vice Triumphant" 
        The book was a brilliant example and masterpiece of the sort of scholarly correctness which stuffs full the shelves of libraries all over the world:  and a totally baffeling ball of baloney  - one  which I can't imagine even the most arcane of graduate students or literature buffs outside her own narrow clusterfuk of overly-educated cronies could comprehend and follow along for much longer than a  three dollar cup of coffee.  File 13!  Forget the foot notes.  Tell us a story, daddy!

Steven King on rewrite & edit

Write with the door shut until you have a very good finished product.  Don't show anybody anything until it is prim and proper.  Share first with one person, your Important Reader, who is most likely your spouse or partner, or possible a mentor or colleague.  Celebrate the completed project and put the draft in a drawer for six weeks untouched.  Go to work on next project. 

Conduct the revision with the door closed.  Areas of primary concern and concentration include:

1. unclear pronouns  -  make sure it is absolutely clear who is antecedent
2. unnecessary adverbs  -  adverbs are not your friend - minimilist usage
3. recurring elements?  identify  - repeat - expand upon - make symbolic
4. keep asking "What do I mean?"  Can I "show" this without saying it?
5. check the pace -  Where will the reader get bored or confused?

Share your revised version with five or six important readers, requesting them to apply the same criteria.  Involve only those who will give you honest feedback and suggestions, or tell you when something doesn't work.  Revise once more with particular attention to those areas of your own weakness:

J B's  supplemental checklist for revision: "The Gospel Chariot"

1.   vernacular?  How would they say it back home?
2.   Biblical accuracy?  Is this the best archtype from scripture?
3.  punctuation & sentence length ?   effective use of the dash symbol
4.  point of view?  Am I still telling this "eye witness" or omniscient?
5.  respect?  Am I alienating too many readers - due to "blasphemy"

notes to self on the "Snowflake Method" of novel writing by Randy Ingermandson PhD

Ten Steps to A Novel   by Randy Ingermandson PhD ( A streamlined method.)

1.  Write a one sentence summary of your novel.  Fifteen words or less is better.
2.   Expand this sentence into a full paragraph, describing the story set up - the major disasters and the ending.  Ideally five sentences.  The backdrop, three disasters, and the ending.
3.  Character study sheets  .... storyline, motives, goals, conflicts, epiphany,  summary
4.  Expand each section  as the story grows.  All but last section should end in a disaster.
5.  Write a one page description of each character.  Tell story from his or her point of view.
6.  Expand synopsis into four pages.  Cycle back and fix things as you gain insight into story & new ideas.
7.  Expand character description.
8. Based upon your four page synopsis -  Make a list of all scenes necessary to turn story into a novel. Spreadsheet  the story on computer !!    This is the time saver of the method!!
9.  Switch back to word processor and expand dialogues
10. Pound out the draft in "150 hours instead of 500 hours"