William Faulker’s “Dry September” as a Possible Opera

           The opera takes place one exceptionally hot afternoon and evening in a small town named Jefferson in the American south just after WWI, perhaps around 1920 during the Jim Crow era of strict racial segregation.  A rumor is sweeping town that a Black man has done something transgressive to a local white woman, but no details have been forthcoming.

Principal characters:

           Minnie Cooper (soprano), an unmarried woman about 39, who lives with her ailing mother and a problematic aunt. She’s “on the slim side of ordinary,” frequently goes into town wearing new, voile dresses and tries to represent herself as younger and more desirable than she actually is, asking the children of friends she knew in school to call her “cousin” rather than “auntie.” That’s been the case for several years now, after she had a four-year relationship with a widowed bank clerk about 15 years older than she was. The affair, her first such relationship, ended when he left for Memphis without her and although he returns to Jefferson every Christmas, he has had no interest whatsoever in seeing any more of Minnie.

           Will Mayes (tenor or baritone), an attractive Black man, probably in his late thirties or early forties, who works as a night watchman at an ice-making plant outside of town. Little else is known about him in Faulkner’s story, but in the opera, he recently did an odd job for Minnie.

           Hawkshaw (tenor or baritone), a middle-aged white man who works as a barber with two or three other barbers in a shop in Jefferson. He claims to know both Minnie and Will and insists that if a negro was involved in the rumored incident, it couldn’t have been Mayes. He urges restraint until the facts are known.

            McLendon (bass), a man in his 30s who led troops in WWI and was decorated for his service. He is insistent that whether the rumor is true or not, the untouchable status of white womanhood, and thus of the prevailing order of society, must be maintained whether the facts are clear or not. He questions anyone who would believe a Black man before a white woman. Carrying a pistol, he declares himself the man to lead a mission of retribution and urges others to join him

 Prelude (in front of the curtain)

             There are brief scuffling noises of an indeterminate nature off stage left and Minnie, somewhat disheveled, appears. She starts to run across the stage, but suddenly pauses, quickly glances about, and then briefly checking her attire, tugging a shoulder strap or sleeve down a bit more. She then resumes running in an agitated state. She seems to be saying something, but nothing comprehensible.

 Scene One (a barbershop in town, late on a hot Saturday afternoon)

             The curtain rises on an animated discussion among a group of men – three barbers, a couple of customers in the chairs plus various other men awaiting their turns or just hanging about. Hawkshaw’s chair is downstage and he is shaving a client, evidently a traveling salesman known as a “drummer” passing through town. Prominent among the others is a poorly spoken, hulking youth called Butch.

During the discussion, which is mainly if not entirely sung, Hawkshaw, seemingly out of the blue, declares that if anything did happen, and he doubts it did, that Will Mayes was most definitely not the culprit. He repeatedly says he knows Mayes and that Mayes is “a good nigger.” Hawkshaw’s client accuses him of being “a hell of a whiteman” and the youth accuses him of being “a nigger lover.”

 Another man attempts to quiet the youth, who had lept to his feet. But the salesman backs Buck up, declaring “if there ain’t any white men in this town, you can count on me even if I’m a stranger.”

The man who first attempted to quiet Butch says there is plenty of time to look into things. But the stranger insists there can’t be anything that excuses a nigger for molesting a white woman. He accuses the man of being from somewhere up North and the man responds by saying he was born and raised in Jefferson.

During the course of the discussion, Hawkshaw says he also knows Minnie and implies she’s too much of a spinster to attract the attentions of a man.   Another man asks her age and Hawshaw says she’s about 40. No one says anything more about her.

The youth fulminates, struggling without success to explain his thoughts. (He’s clearly threatened if Blacks are allowed to advance.)

Suddenly a door bangs and there stands McLendon, heavy set, wearing an open white shirt, and a felt hat. “Well,” he sings,” are you going to sit there and let a black son rape a white woman on the streets of Jefferson?”

“That’s what I been telling them,” sings Butch, cursing and fulminating in a ever-more agitated fashion.

­Aria:  McLendon sings an aria in which he mentions his citation for valor in the recent war, says he is ready to lead an immediate mission of retribution and calls on others to join. During the course of this, he advances themes associated with what are known as “the lost cause” of the Confederacy and the Southern way of life, centering on the inviolable nature of fragile, vulnerable women. Such women, the symbol and essence of a superior culture, must be protected at all cost. Blacks, who must keep their place, can’t be allowed to think otherwise. It’s a slippery slope and any perceived transgressions must be nipped in the bud.

 "But did it really happen?” one of those present asks.

 "Happen? What the hell difference does it make? Are you going to let the black sons get away with it until one really does it?" McLendon says as he demand of the group: “Who’s with me?”

Butch jumps up eagerly and several others follow more reluctantly.  McLendon whirls around to head out, the butt of a pistol visible in his back pocket. Hawshaw hesitates for a while, looking at the other two barbers who have remained at their chairs.  Then suddenly, tossing down a towel, he heads after the group.

Scene Two (a deserted property, ice plant visible in the background, a bit later in the afternoon as dusk is just starting to fall.  A black man stands alone, thinking about things.)

 Aria: Will Mayes sings an aria about what it is like to be a Black man in the Jim Crow era. Among other things, he sings about the difficulty of getting an education and finding decent work (he’s about to start his shift as a night watchman). He sings of doing odd jobs for whites, most recently for Millie Cooper and her mother who needed porch steps repaired, grateful that they at least paid him promptly. He sings about wanting to get married and have a child, but also that he’s hesitant to bring anyone else into the world as he experiences it. But he ends on a hopeful note.

The men led by McLendon suddenly arrive, surprising Mayes who asks what they want.

“What is it captains?” Mayes sings, adding “I ain’t done nothing.” He looks at the men, mentioning some names, but not that of Hawkshaw who has claimed to know him.

“Get him into the car,” McLendon demands.

A brief scuffle ensues, during which at one point, Mayes lashes out, randomly hitting Hawkshaw in the mouth, who hits him back.  But he’s rapidly subdued and the men haul him off-stage toward the car (headlights can be seen shining).

 Hawkshaw at first starts to follow, then declares he isn’t going.  They leave him behind.

 Aria: Hawkshaw sings of the hopeless state of things and his own inability to effectively act on what he thinks is right. Society doesn’t have to be this way, but what can change it? What can one man do?

As Hawshaw is finishing his aria, a single shot rings out in the distance, off-stage – far enough away to be somewhat muffled, but still audible.

 Scene 3 (Minnie’s house. She is wearing a robe and bathing out of a tub on the floor. Her aunt is helping her while her mother sits nearby. She’s in an odd mood, a bit distracted, it seems, reminiscing about the past.)

 Aria:  Minnie (with her aunt and/or mother occasionally joining in) reviews her past life: how pretty she was as a girl, how things were going well until other kids started saying rude things about her behind her back (you didn’t understand our station, her aunt or mother sings. We’re proud people who can take care of ourselves even after your father died, but those others don’t think we’re as good as they are. Some families have been here a long time, some even owned slaves.) Minnie continues, singing about her friends pairing up, getting married, having children. They started getting their children to call Minnie “aunty.”  Then the bank clerk with the new car came along (Minnie brightens up) and started “courting her.” (that’s not how the town people saw it, her aunt reminds her. It was like adultery in their eyes).  Minnie bristles. His wife had died, he was a widower. I was still young and pretty, she insists, and he showed me off as we drove around in his car – the first in town.  I was ever so proper in my motoring bonnet and veil. (But he tired of you, picked up and moved to Memphis just like that, the aunt or mother sings). Comes back every Christmas, but not to see you. You’ve got nothing left but the whiskey he taught you to drink).  Minnie’s mood darkens and she starts to sing a different song, but there is a knock on the door.

Two of Minnie’s women friends arrive and the mother and aunt leave the room.

They tell Minnie they are so sorry about what happened and ask her if she feels well enough to go out.  She nods and asks if they can hand her first her underwear and then her new, pink voile dress, all of which is laid out near by.

“When you have had time to get over the shock, you must tell us what happened. What he said and what he did; everything,” one of her friends sings.

Aria:  (Minnie sings as she puts on her sheer underclothes and then her new pink voile dress). I’m not sure what I can tell you because I’m not sure just who he was. I was out back, in a laid back chair in the shade of the two big trees. It was so hot I felt faint and my eyes were closed. I think I was almost sleeping when I felt it like a dream – a hand on my breast. Just every so lightly, you know, that I didn’t move at first. But I awakened and tried to cry out as I rose up, but nothing came out.  The hand was gone and at first I was scared to turn around, but I did and no one was there.  I heard some movement, but couldn’t see anything because of the trees. (She shudders and stops in mid phrase).

"It's alright, Minnie," one of her friends assures her.

 “So he didn’t ….?

 “ … rape me? I …I … I …”

 “McLendon says he deserves to pay if he even thought about it.”

 “McLendon?”

 Minnie for some reason starts to laugh, tries to control it, but can’t. Her friends look confused, then worried.

Aria resumes: Minnie sings in what sounds like a confused state – phrases, then laughter, then phrases – something about men, what they want, what a woman pays, the bank clerk, children, she will show them – more laughter, more confusion – she did what she needed to do. And as she passed through town in her pink voile dress in the wake of the rumor, even lounging young men followed with their eyes. So Faulkner tells readers. So Minnie sings in feverish triumph.

 Minnie’s friends try to calm her.

 “I heard McLendon and some men have gone after Will Mayes,” says one.

 “Will Mayes?”

 “Well, he was at your place, doing some work for you, wasn’t he?”

 Minnie sits up, puts her hand up to her mouth, but can’t stop a hysterical laugh that rapidly turns into screams.

 “Go fetch a doctor” one friend says to another as Minnie’s mother and aunt reappear.

 Aria resumes: Minnie’s hysteria results in her “mad scene” aria along the lines of Lucia’s, or even better (in my humble opinion) the “mad scene” aria sung by Electra in “Idomeneo.” The society of which she is a victim has sacrificed an innocent on its behalf using her plight as an excuse for atrocity. Madness is a salvation.

[What’s going on here?  Minnie, increasingly sexually frustrated after having been abandoned by the bank clerk, a man to whom she sacrificed her reputation as well as perhaps other things, and upon realizing she is reaching the end of the line in such matters at only age about 40, loses her senses and commits a desperate act.

 She invented an incident to make society still see her as a desirable woman without considering the possible consequences. Learning what has transpired, she realizes she has in all probability just killed Will Mayes.

 The desperation of an abandoned woman, in the tradition of Medea, Dido and a host of other, is a  trope, if you will, most recently extensively mined by Elena Ferrante, author of  "The Days of Abandonment" and four novels known as "The Neopolitan Quartet." Abandonment is a major subject for her, Ferrante makes clear in series of interviews.

Minnie, in her days of abandonment, began drinking whiskey supplied by a clerk at a soda fountain, and continued to go out into town in her new voile dresses, insisting that the children of her friends call her “cousin” rather than ”aunty” to reinforce the notion she is still young and potentially desirable.  But it was no use. “Lounging men did not even follow her with their eyes anymore.”

Based on what Ferrante, if no one else, tells us about abandoned women, Minnie’s resentments were thus continuing to build along with, one can fairly assume, her sexual frustrations. Surely her four-year relationship with the bank clerk, given his background, age and likely desires, was not devoid of intimacy.

On the day in question, on the single afternoon and evening during which the story takes place, readers, though the narrator’s eyes, are allowed to see Minnie late in the day, feverish (presumably as a result of the rumored incident) and having trouble dressing while three seemingly sympathetic, but also salaciously curious, female friends await her story.

“While she was still dressing her friends called for her and sat while she donned her sheerest underthings and stockings and new voile dress.” Her friends told her (the narrator relates) that when she got over the shock, she was to tell them everything – “what he said and did.” Who was “he?”

In the eyes of a John McLendon, a WWI veteran who commanded troops and was cited for valor, any Black male would do. “What the hell difference does it make?” he asks when Hawkshaw suggests the sheriff investigate the rumored incident to discover who, if anyone, is to blame. “Are you going to let the black sons get away with it until one really does it?” (my emphasis), McLendon says.

But again back to Minnie: eventually she sallies forth, escorted through the town to a film by her friends, “fragile in her fresh dress” – pink in color readers eventually learn thanks to one observer.

And rather than the apparent lynching, about which readers are told nothing, what happened to Minnie is described in some detail. She wanted to break out laughing and hoped the film would help the laughter under control “so it would not waste away so fast and so soon.” She clearly wants to enjoy something she has apparently pulled off, but to no avail. Her friends hear her, take her home in a taxi “where they removed her pink voile and sheer underthings and stockings.”  They put her to bed and as her laughter, increasingly hysterical, turns to screams, send for a doctor, but since it was a Saturday evening, one couldn’t easily be found.

An abandoned woman, one might argue, is a force of nature. While Dido limited the destruction by killing herself with a sword Aneas, her lover and the founder of Rome, had left her as a souvenir, Medea murdered her own sons by Jason, who abandoned her, as well as various others.

“Can one continue to live if one loses love?” Ferrante asks in an essay contained in her book of miscellany called Frantumaglia. “It seems like a pretty much discredited subject; in reality it’s the question most crudely posed by female existence. The loss of love is a failure; it causes an absence of sense.” [my emphasis]]

 Scene 4 (About midnight, at Mclendon’s neat new, but very small house)

 Mclendon returns home and discovers his wife sitting up, waiting for him. He demands to know why, telling her he has repeatedly told her not to.

 Aria:  McLendon’s wife sings “what kind of a man have you become since you went away to the war?  I still want you, but I don’t know you anymore. Within you there is no longer love, but hatred.”

When she has finished, McLendon slaps her and pushes her half over the chair where she remains, sobbing.

McLendon walks over to a screened-in window and gazes vacantly outward, removing his shirt, which he uses to wipe down his sweat-coved body. The butt of a gun is visible in his rear pocket.

Curtain

 

 

 

 

Current U.S. Culture Wars Plus An Age-Old Controversy

 Readers interested in what appear to be intensifying culture wars within the U.S. -- specifically over whether "Whiteness" should be toppled, but other issues as well -- are strongly encouraged to read "Blind to Hate or Sounding the Right Notes?" in the Oct. 15, 2021 issue of the Arts section of the New York Times.

The lengthy article also brings up an age-old controversy: whether a work of intellect or art stands independently on its own merits, or whether the merits of it's creator need to be taken into consideration when deciding it's worth.

For example, see "Is It Time Gaugin Got Canceled?" in Nov. 18, 2019 New York Times.

But back to current culture wars, this time centered on a University of North Texas professor of music theory named Timothy Jackson and his chief critic, Philip Ewell, a professor of music theory at Hunter College in New York City,  Jackson is white and Ewell is Black (I'm following the NYT here in that the word "white" when referring to racial identity is not capitalized while "black" is.)

In Ewell's view, music criticism generally is dominated by white males and beset by racism, the NYT reported, and nowhere more egregiousness so than by the work of a Jewish theorist named Heinrich Schenker who died in Austria in 1935.  Jackson, identified as the grandson of Jewish emigres, has, the NYT said, has devoted himself to the study of Schenker's work.

In response to Ewell's views, Jackson and some colleges decided to solicit a series of papers on the  controversy for publication in the "Journal of Schenkerian Studies," which boasts about 30 paid subscribers, the NYT said, and a veritable volcano erupted. Read the article for details.

As for culture wars, the central battle covered by the article is yet another front in the ongoing war over whether not just the U.S. but, indeed, all of Western Civilization, is simply one big racist abomination  that needs to be overturned. In that context, Powell contends that when it comes to the study of music, Ancient Greek, Latin, Italian, French and German should be prohibited except by special dispensation in specific instances.  One wonders how English made the cut,

But also at issue is what the article descried as a contention by Jackson that Ewell's position is illustrative of a much broader current of anti-Semitic attitudes of American Blacks. 

Free speech -- an increasingly controversial topic in the wake of silencing Trump -- also comes into question in the Jackson-Ewell flap.  The traditional notion that speech should be free particularly on college campuses competes with a "newer view that speech itself can constitute violence," the NYT article said. In other words, things may be moving beyond concerns over "micro aggressions"  into justifications for censorship -- on both the Right and the Left.

Lastly, there is that issue of what to think about the products of intellectuals and artists who have lived arguably reprehensible lives or expressed arguably reprehensible opinions.

Schenker, for instance, is on record as having referred to "inferior races" and worse -- views that, in Ewell's opinion, are inseparable from his apparently very significant contributions to music theory. The counter view is that the theories should stand on their own merits.

The answer apparently isn't easy as per the comment of an NYT reader identified as "Lisa" (from Boston) who says:

"I have a doctorate in music and while I have always been aware of Wagner's well-known antisemitism (just to name an example) I was required to understand and utilize Schenkerian theory on my comps--and it was not until this controversy came to light that I was even *aware* that Schenker was a racist. To the point, it is up to the individual to decide what to do with information once it is known. But it NEEDS to be known. When it's not, it is indeed what Ewell says it is: whitewashing."

In "Lisa's" case, Schenker's work clearly stood on it's own when she needed it academically, but ... 

 

How Female Wrestlers Illuminate Everyday Women

 As a male who has dabbled in writing fiction, I'm always interested the lives of woman -- what is important to them and what they want. Not long ago I published one take on this matter and now here is another.

On Dec. 3, 2020, the Arts section of the New York Times, carried a piece by Scarlett Harris lamenting the apparent premature end of a Netflix series about woman wrestlers entitled "GLOW." It ran for three seasons and was supposed to have one more, but that was cancelled. According to the NYT, Netflix cited production delays as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Harris said she liked the series because, along with women pummeling each other with such things as fly-tackles and face slams, the series dealt with subjects faced by "everyday women."  These, she said, include "motherhood, friendship, queer identity, ambition, reproductive rights, racism and eating disorders."

Racism was apparently one topic the show, created by Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, both white women, didn't successfully address in the context of putting the series together.

"After the show was cancelled, it was revealed that the principal cast's women of color had asked the producers for more inclusivity, criticizing the show for sidelining their characters and making them feel like check boxes on a list," the NYT article said.  In other words, they wanted bigger roles. 

Well, OK, as Harris said earlier in her article, racism is one of the things contemporary women have to deal with.

On another front, it appeared GLOW didn't actually break much new ground.  Sex sells and the more transgressive, the better. Early in the series, one of the main characters discovers the other, a best friend, is sleeping with her husband. But, thanks to having to trust each other in the ring when both become wrestlers, they get their personal relationship back on track, leading Ms Harris to say that for her, GLOW was at its core a love story between the two women. Well, as we learned above, queer identity is one of the issues "everyday women" currently face.

Lots of ideas for aspiring writers here.

A Play on the Murder of Emmett Till Brings to Mind Faulkner

 In 1955, a 14-year-old Black boy named Emmett Till, down from Chicago to visit relatives in Mississippi, was abducted and killed for allegedly flirting with a 21-year-old white woman named Carolyn Bryant who was working in a family grocery store. The two men, her husband and brother-in-law, who mutilated Till, shot him and dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River were acquitted by an all-white jury. Protected by the decision from being charged for the same crime again, the two men admitted about a year later to having done it.

Because of his age, the nature of the trail and the fact that Till's body was found and put on display in an open casket in Chicago, the atrocity was of great significance to the civil rights movement.

Ironically, Till's father,  Louis Till, separated from Till's mother, was executed for the rape and murder of an Italian woman in 1945 when he was in the Army. That's according to Wikipedia.

I mention this because "The Carolyn Bryant Project," a 2018, two-person play on the subject is currently available for view via streaming, and also because I recently read, for a seminar, a 1931 short story called "Dry September" by William Faulkner, which you can read by clicking on this link.

In some respects, Faulkner's story, illuminating what had long been happening in the South, also foreshadowed what happened to Till. As a New York Times review of the play put it, at issue is "the potent, poisonous myth of fragile white womanhood — in particular, the Southern belle as damsel in distress."

Neither Bryant nor Minnie Cooper, the woman in question in Faulkner's story, were Southern belles in the sense of "Gone With The Wind," which is to say plantation-owners' daughter flouncing about in crinoline dresses. But no matter: its the illusion that counts. While there appears to be no mention of what Bryan was wearing when the incident with Till occurred, Faulkner repeatedly depicts Minnie as going to town in a new voile dress, voile being a lightweight, sheer or semi-sheer fabric suitable for the very hot weather, but arguably also a bit provocative.

In both cases what actually transpired was beside the point. The maintenance of a caste system was at stake.

"Happen? What the hell difference does it make? Are you going to let the black sons get away with it until one really does it?"  So says a man named McLendon in Faulkner's story as he leads a rapidly formed gang of men out of a barber shop to get the Black suspect.

Has much really changed? "The ritual we watch (in the play) Emmett and Carolyn repeat is emblematic of an American cycle that shows no signs of stopping," Laura Collins-Hughes, who reviewed the play for the NTY said.

Flannery O'Connor as a Displaced Person

 Earlier this year, Loyola University Maryland removed the name of author Flannery O'Connor from a residence hall, making her in effect a displaced person.  I mention that because I recently read her story "The Displaced Person" for a literary seminar and will have a couple of things to say about it.

O'Conner, a Catholic who died in 1964 at age 39, repeatedly used the word "nigger" in her stories set in the South because that's how the characters she was writing about often referred to Black people back then. But that is not what purists in the age of Back Lives Matter/Cancel Culture have found to be the subject of concern.  Rather, some comments she made to friends in personal correspondence that has become public have been deemed to show that she was a racist.

In the age of Cancel Culture, the significance or worth of a piece of art is determined far more by the racial/gender/sexual orientation of the artist than by the attributes of the object in question. One only need to read the arts pages of the New York Times in the current times to see how that works. To my knowledge, there has been no outcry against O'Connor's published novels, stories and essays. Falling into the now highly unpopular genre of literary fiction, they are not what one would call "page turners" and perhaps are now not widely read.

But on to "The Displaced Person," a story set in the American South in the wake of World War II that was first published in 1955. It centers on two women: Mrs. McIntyre, an older widow who runs a farm, and Mrs. Shortley, who, with her husband, works for Mrs. McIntyre as do two Black men.

The displaced person is a Pole who, with his wife and two children, have been, through the offices of a local Catholic priest, placed with Mrs. McIntyre who has apparently sought to have them on the view the man may be a better worker, and less expensive, than the help she has been able to hire locally. This is cloaked in humanitarian considerations, leaving Mrs. McIntyre somewhat confused about her own sentiments.

But readers are introduced to the situation first and foremost through the eyes of Mrs. Shortley and what she sees corresponds to prevailing currents, and especially since Donald Trump ran for President on an anti-immigrant platform. Although there is some rather nobleness-oblige-type sympathy for those trying to flee horrible circumstances abroad, and some thought that immigrants can be useful (especially in high-tech and agriculture at present), they are "not us" and if not a potential drain on government resources, a threat to the employment and wage levels of existing Americans. They are also viewed as source of cultural and social disruption and even an outright threat of one sort or other -- potential terrorists if they come from certain countries or subscribe to certain religious beliefs, or "rapists," drug dealers, etc, if they arrive from elsewhere. 

And sure enough, the displaced Pole, despite or perhaps because of his admirable work ethic, is soon viewed as a threat, even by Mrs. McIntyre. It's a good read.

Flannery O'Conner is generally identified as a member of the "Southern Gothic" school of fiction and one characteristic of that style of storytelling is the employment of grotesque characters or situations to shed light on the human condition by, in effect, amplifying certain of it's characteristics.

In "The Displaced Person," the grotesque appears most notably in the sexuality of the two women mentioned above.  This is most explicit with respect to Mrs. Shortley, clearly not a particularly attractive women. "She stood on two tremendous legs, with the grand self-confidence of a mountain, and rose, up narrowing bulges of granite, to two icy points of light that pierced forward, surveying everything." 

What gets Mrs. Shortley's sexual juices flowing?  

One day, in the story, she encounters her husband smoking a cigarette in the cow barn, which, she warns him, he shouldn't be doing.  "There was about a half an inch of cigarette adhering to the center of his lower lip. ... Mr. Shortley, without appearing to give the feat any consideration, lifted the cigarette butt with the sharp end of his tongue, drew it into his mouth, closed his lips tightly, rose, stepped out, gave his wife a good appreciative stare, and spit the smoldering butt into the grass. ... This trick of Mr. Shortley's was actually has way of making love to her."

This stunt, it turns out, was the manner in which Mr. Shortley had courted his wife. He didn't give her anything pretty, but sat on her porch steps smoking. "When the cigarette got to the proper size, he would turn his eyes to her and open his mouth and draw in the butt and then sit there as if he had swallowed it, looking at her with the most loving look anybody could imagine." 

"It nearly drove her wild." 

What about Mrs. McIntyre?  When she was 30, she married a 75-year-old man after working as his secretary for a few months "because of his money, but there had been another reason she would not admit then, even to herself: she had liked him."

Known as "the Judge," what was he like?

"He was a dirty, snuff-dipping Court House figure ... His teeth and hair were tobacco colored and his face a clay pink pitted and tracked with mysterious prehistoric-looking marks as if he had been unearthed amid fossils. There had been a peculiar odor about him of sweaty folded bills ..."

"The three years that he lived after they had married were the happiest and most prosperous of her life, but when he died his estate proved to be bankrupt."  Despite having married him in part for his money and getting left with nothing but a mortgaged house and 50 acres from which the timber had been cut, Mrs. McIntyre had buried the judge on the property and preserved his home office untouched through two subsequent marriages, one to an alcoholic and the other to a man who ended up in a mental institution. She didn't hold it against him. Other considerations had evidently been more important.

While O'Connor provides no details of Mrs. McIntyre's sex life, one can easily imagine that what turned her on was equally grotesque to that of what stimulated Mrs. Shortley and perhaps that is one reason that of all her hired help over the years, Ms. Shortley was the person Mrs. McIntyre got along with best.

 

Zadie Smith Has Some Explaining To Do

I'm a white male of a certain age -- in case you hadn't already figured that out.  So what would your reaction be if I said the following:

"The first time I was aware of Zadie Smith's existence was a few years ago. We had James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, Earnest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. What did we need with a black writer?"

My guess is I would be viewed at best as being politically incorrect and at worst as an outright racist.

So what should one think when Zadie Smith, herself, says the following in "Feel Free," her collection of essays published in 2018:

"The first time I was aware of Debbie Harry's existence, I was in college.  We had Joan Armatrading and Aretha and Billie and Ella. What did we need with white women?"

Black Male Writers Experiencing "Extraordinary Moment"

Black male writers are experiencing "an extraordinary moment" of mainstream attention in the world of American literature, Ayana Mathis, a best-selling black female novelist, said.

If so, it runs at least somewhat counter to recurring assertions that American publishing is one of the strongest remaining bastions of white male domination in U.S. society.

"The last decade has seen a burgeoning multiplicity in America's literature, with gifted black men writing novels, poems and plays of great import," Mathis said in the Dec. 2, 2018, edition of "T," the New York Times Style Magazine.

Enumerating several top literary awards won by black male authors, Mathis said that "what matters here, what's more striking than the sums exchanged or the awards received is the intense focus on works by African-American men in America's artistic landscape, even as the problems of race and racial violence continue to plague the nation."

Indeed, one reads repeatedly that the attitudes expressed and postures taken by U.S. President Donald Trump have served to encourage White supremacist initiatives.

"Now in 2018, blackness is as lethal to black people as it ever was," Mathis said. "Even as African-American writing currently experiences unprecedented mainstream appeal and critical recognition, the focus on black expression has another, uglier face: a deadly obsession with black bodies."

In addition, some believe anti-Semitism is on the upswing in the U.S. at present as well.

"To be sure, there is much to celebrate, but these recent developments are not without complication," Mathis said, noting that a surge in mainstream attention to blackness and its literature isn't unprecedented in periods of American crisis. And it is possible that at least some "gatekeepers" (presumably liberal white males) expect black males to focus mainly on racism and oppression, she said.

"I wonder if, in the annals of history, this extraordinary period of artistry will find a name, or a unifying sentiment that codifies it as a movement," Mathis said.  Earlier in the article, she had pointed to the Harlem Renaissance that sprung up in the wake of WWI and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Societal Change: The Rise of Tribalism in the U.S.

As per its title, this blog is focused on fiction, but with one or two exceptions, what I have had to say on that topic has attracted little interest.

This, one could argue, opens the door to other subjects, such as where we are in the wake of Donald Trump's election as President of the United States.

An important factor seems to be that as America's traditional white majority shrinks in size and various categories of non-whites demand seats at the country's various tables of power -- political, social and cultural -- tribalism is on the increase.

This Sunday, the New York Times magazine tackled the topic in its "First Words" column.

For most of the post-war period, and particularly in the wake of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that led to Southern conservatives switching from Democrat to Republican, the country has been pretty evenly divided between the two parties. And until recent years -- according to regular American National Election Studies surveys -- most people were not strikingly dissatisfied with the opposition party.  As a result, disputes were mainly based on policies and compromise was often possible.

More recently -- and particularly since Barack Obama was elected president -- there has been an important change: the percentage of survey respondents expressing extremely negative views of the opposition party has risen dramatically.

"In the post-war era, the coalitions that made up the Democratic and Republican Parties were haphazard and incongruous, bearing little resemblance to the tribes of today," the NYT article says.

More than any other politician -- and perhaps because he wasn't previously a seasoned politician conditioned by what went on  before -- Donald Trump has tapped into this apparent new reality. Among other things, he has clearly determined that his tribe -- very largely white -- wants everything associated with former president Obama overturned or erased. That's not so much because Obama's policies were too far left -- they weren't -- but because Obama's very ascension to the top elected office in the U.S. represented a major real or symbolic shift away from those who traditionally sat at American tables of power. Or at least that seems to be the way in which many who voted for Trump perceived it.

It is tough for partisans to say that in a straight-forward manner.  "Racist" remains a very uncomfortable label. But many can quite comfortably vent their feelings or frustrations by being opposed to immigration, particularly since unlike the past, the vast majority of those seeking to enter the U.S. now do not look like them. With something like 20 million people living illegally in the U.S. already and the possibility of terrorism ever present, many can feel comfortable backing strict border controls and in so doing hopefully slow the country's increasing racial and cultural diversity.

That seems to be where U.S. socio/political realities stand at present.