My reason for writing that sentence is to make it so. Having nursed the little devil for three years, I'm not sure I can let her go. Since finishing up at 5:00 yesterday morning, I've mentally rewritten so many scenes my fingers simply tingle to revise some more.
The result of working so hard to complete the book is that I've not worked on much else besides. But I have a summer reading suggestion for those who enjoy Southern writers, and in particular, Carson McCullers.
I'd just finished Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge, absorbing and highly informative if you're a writer trying to create an unforgettable character, and found myself on vacation in the mountains of West Virginia without another book to read. Fortunately, my step-daughter- the- bookworm arrived with a pile of them, and I chose Carson McCullers' Clock Without Hands. Her final novel treats timeless themes like death, final reckonings, and racial prejudice about 80 years after the Civil War.
Two things struck me about the book. The first sprang from a familiar-sounding challenge voiced by one of the main characters, Judge Clane, who asks, "Would you let your sister marry a Nigra buck if you had a sister?" The sentence captures so well the kind of emotional appeal used by apologists for discriminatory acts even today. It's as though someone is exhorting these apologists to get out there and make the threat personal! Bring it right inside home and hearth! I shouldn't have been surprised when, while on that same West Virginia vacation, a fellow guest at our hotel used a similar strategy when commenting on Arizona's controversial immigration law. He was trying to justify overturning the new law based on the recent release from jail of an alleged Hispanic rapist, saying, "Would you want that to happen to your daughter?" As I say, Clock Without Hands deals with timeless themes.The second is that the book had much in common with To Kill a Mockingbird, complete with a trial, noble white lawyer and black man convicted for his color rather than his guilt. Clock Without Hands' first publication (1961) postdates Mockingbird (1960) by just a little, but McCullers had been working on her book as early as 1955 (according to Google sources). I intend to re-read Mockingbird to try to figure out why it has become a classic in American literature and the other book remains all but unknown, to me at least.
I'm bound and determined to move on from my novel and get back to short stories, and hope to make an excerpt from a new story my next post.
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I loved your blog. Carson McCullers is one of my favorites. Have you read Member of the Wedding? Awesome! I think every writer out there analyzes To Kill A Mockingbird to figure out what makes it so special. It's the perfect book. Another one of my all time favorites is John Steinbeck. His male characters are like none I've ever met in fiction before. They're almost female in their ability to express themselves and show their deepest feelings.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for commenting. Since you obviously enjoy southern writers, as I do, can you put your finger on what characterizes them, and makes them so special? Faulkner, O'Connor, Welty?
ReplyDeleteSo glad you brought up Carson McCullers! Haven't read any of her in ages and am now inspired to do so again.
ReplyDeleteAlso, looking forward to your posting excerpts from your short stories. Anxiously awaiting, I should say, which is more truthful.
I've never read any Carson McCullers but now I will. I'm always looking for good books to read on the subway. Maybe it will give me a new idea for a story to write. I hope to some day be a mystery writer but I work two jobs and don't get home until late. Then it's kids etc. Sometimes I lock myself in the bathroom to write.
ReplyDelete"...Can you put your finger on what characterizes them, and makes them so special?"
ReplyDeleteTheir stories are as sultry as the southern weather, and they're honest in a way that is quite different from other regions. They air their dirty laundry as if it's fine linen--delicate, intricate and scorched by the sun .
They know that those family skeletons are better off out of the closet talking a blue streak and sipping bourbon out of floral pattered tea cups.