About the Works
Yoshio Kobayashi
Sugar Among the Freaks (1996)
Having written two serious novels dealing with the dark Southern reality, Nordan proves he is a realist, not just a geeky writer who is good at musical prose and surrealistic images. Now he can write anything he wants. Sales figures are not fantastic, but he has earned a bunch of devoted readers. Surprisingly, Nordan and his editor choose to rework on his previous short stories. His new book is a combined edition of his early two collections, with a twist. Here's the Table of Contents.
Introduction by Richard Howorth
Foreword by Lewis Nordan
Part I
Storyteller
The Sears and Roebuck Catalog Game
John Thomas Bird
The Sin Eater
Wild Dog
One-Man Band
Rat Song
Welcome to the Arrow Catcher Fair
Part II
The Attendant
Wheelchair
Part III
Sugar Among the Chickens
The Talker at the Freak-Show
Sugar, Eunuchs, and Big G.B.
The All-Girl Football Team
Sugar Among the Freaks
You can see that there're two introductions, one by Richard Howorth, the owner of Square Books bookstore in Oxford, Mississippi, and would-be mayor of that city (2001-09), and another by Buddy himself. Also, you may notice that there are three stories omitted from his first two collections, "Mr. Nordine, Pentecost, and the Oral Tradition" and "The Copper Balloons" from Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair and "The Farmer's Daughter" from The All-Girl Football Team. Also you may notice that the book is divided in three parts like Music of the Swamp. So it's easy to guess that his editor Shannon Ravenel is behind this combined edition. She admits that she was initially attracted by the title story, "Sugar Among the Freaks" and started to read him.
But in his "Foreword," Nordan admits that the title story is very special for him, too. Writing the story opened the door to the small world of the Mecklin family for him, which eventually led him to write the further stories of Sugar and the Arrow Catcher novels. Sugar here is twenty-four year old, and the location is in Arkansas, but the description about his family and home is about the same Mecklins as we know them. Without further Sugar stories, it didn't sit well in the first collection. We can see his need to rearrange those stories in the new combined edition from his new publisher. Also Buddy wrote more stories about the handicapped character, Winston; "Wheelchair" in the first collection and "The Attendant" in the second collection, in which Sugar appeared under the name of Harris. Obviously it was an important story for Buddy. So in rearranging the stories for the combined edition, those two stories are now set in the Part II and separated from the others. Also all the Sugar stories are now put together in the Part III and the last one is "Sugar Among the Freaks." The title story is the concluding one, proving again that it is important.
Sugar is an ex-attendant of Winston, who is a handicapped poet. Now Winston is attended by an ugly black guy called Franklin, and when he calls him, Sugar decides to give up everything to travel with them. Driving to Oklahoma, he reflects his life which has always been surrounded by the miserable people. He seems to attract every weirdo somehow. His is a life among the freaks. And he's a freak, too. Everyone is helpless, but they have to live their lonely lives. The end line is almost like a phrase in a Grateful Dead song, "I swear, these are the strange times we are living in."
When I read the first two collections and the next novel in stories, I was much attracted by Buddy's magic, surrealistic images, musical prose, humor and loneliness, and the geeky characters including the author himself. It was a brand new American Magic Realism, completely different from other urban American Magic Realist fiction by Steve Erickson, Don DeLillo, Denis Johnson and other new writers of literary fiction, favored by Gary Fisketjon. But his magic was not found in the high technology or the capitalist progress like the others. His was in the eyes and mind which can see mermaids in a swamp, or wear a flying chicken on your head. Especially fantastic declaration of affirmation of life as it is, that we're not ruined, that love would last forever, as we can see in a story like "Sugar Among the Chickens," put a spell on me.
But after reading the two novels, I realized that Buddy was writing about his own reality, his own time, and his life. So all those stories in the previous collections now looked different. His anthem of life looked more hard-earned, bitter, desperate truth. I had to admire him more. I understood why I had called his fiction American Magic Realism. It was really about America, not just the South, and about real world, real life. Magic and humor are just his invented tools to cope with it. Ah, Buddy, I was hopelessly in love with you.
The Sharp Shooter Blues (1995)
Wolf Whistle was a big success, winning ALA Notable Book citation, Mississippi Writers Award for Fiction, and Southern Book Critic Circle Award. Lewis Nordan was now a new Southern Writer to watch. Inevitably he turned his attention to another shameful aspect of the South: Gun society.
Actually, the new novel again employed many anecdotes from his previous stories, and I had to correct my ideas about his world, Arrow Catcher, again. It was very hard for me to do that, especially since it was the saddest story so far, full of death and moaning, so I couldn't finish it at the first try. Now I know the reason why. It was a fictional account of actual suicide of Buddy's son.
When a nineteen year old Morgan, a Texas sharp shooter, shows his great art of gun shooting, Hydro isn't impressed. The twenty year old "slow-witted" boy from ""Storyteller" of his first collection can shoot as well. The ex-high-school footballer is now a shop clerk, reading comic books with his younger friend, Louis, while looking after a grocery shop. But then, two young gangsters, a sister and a brother, break into the shop, holding guns. After seizing money and groceries, the sister fucks Hydro, intending to shoot him later. Slow Hydro doesn't understand what's going on. Then Morgan's truck stops in front of the shop, taking gangsters' attention away from him. Hydro simply seizes the pistol and shoots both kids down.
But then, Hydro's dad, Mr. Raney appears, and seeing the bodies, he thanks Morgan for rescuing his son from the gangsters and calls police. All the while Louis is hiding in the storeroom. Morgan doesn't know what's going on, but he hurries to his lover, who is Louis' mother. Hydro is too stunned to talk, so everything's now going wrong. Louis suddenly speaks out and tells the police that Morgan killed the kids in cold blood, because he's raged at his mom's adultery, dad's helplessness, and his own inability to cope with the situation. Police Marshall has to arrest the sharp shooter, knowing the killing was the right thing. But Hydro eventually kills himself, being unable to bear the burden of the killing. And Morgan is tempted to seize the pistol from Marshall's belt and kill him, knowing that he's the only scapegoat available to them, being an outsider and guilty of adultery. Everybody has a small secret and acts wrongly to hide it. Here, Buddy's humor is subdued, and magic is eclipsed by the tragedy.
I didn't realize first that Buddy was suffering from his private tragedy. It looked like an innocent novel about innocent people. All I could blame was the existence of guns and American love affair with them. I still don't know. Did writing about his own tragedy save Buddy? It still remains the saddest novel ever, for me.
Yes, as the title announces, it is a blues--Southern flavored, sorrowful but tinged with humor and some exaggerated surreal images, soulful expression of the real life and real people. Buddy sings this emotional music beautifully.
Wolf Whistle (1993)
The next step for Buddy was to write a proper novel, which he did and surprised me. Well, it shouldn't have. The novel was set in Arrow Catcher, Mississippi and many anecdotes from his previous collections were referred and even Sugar and his daddy Gilbert appeared in cameo scenes. It was a natural development from his Sugar stories. Do you remember the last line from his previous book? That line appeared in the first page again, which surprised me, too.
Well, that line is what her teacher and lover Dr. Dust said to our protagonist, Alice, before she graduates and comes to Arrow Catcher, as a new teacher. She's ambitious, full of modern ideas of education and ideals, eager to modernize the small town in the deep South. She takes her four grade class to everywhere, letting them see the sick, dead, and other dark truths of the world, take them as they are. But it is 1955, and racism is still strong and violence and injustice is everywhere. When a black kid calls hubba-hubba to a white woman, the tragedy happens.
Actually the novel is based on the historical fact, the murder of Emmett Till. The incident is retold faithfully to the testimonies and facts. The kid is visiting his uncle from the North, and feels a bit boastful about his girl friends, when he talks to other black kids in town. Then he sees a young white woman and speaks to her. She later tells the incident to his husband, that a black used a "wolf whistle" to her. The husband gets angry and visits the boy's uncle's house. He abducts the boy and kills him. Now in the light of the brutal reality of the American South and its racism and violence, our Arrow Catcher looks completely different. Yes, there's still magic and wonders are around, especially the scene of a flying parrot in the courtroom and its perching on the killer reminds me of the red rooster on Sugar's head in his earlier collection. But Buddy employs a lot of Southern dialect and its phonetic spellings, which he's avoided in his previous stories, and quotes a lot of southern songs, to show us it's not an imaginary place and imaginary story. In his first novel in the true sense, he returns from his fictional world where he can show us the universal wisdom of love and magic, to his own background and reality. This is the Southern Novel.
I was really stunned to finish the book. Yes, the publisher announced that it was based on the Till murder, which eventually ignited the civil right movement in the sixties. And it also gives us the perspective of the background of the Sugar Mecklin stories. The boy's body is discovered by Sugar and Sweet as described in "Music of the Swamp," And Alice here reminds us of the good natured young teacher in "Rat Song" in his first collection. But after giving us the wonder and beauty of love in the last book, Buddy now has to face the reality and his past. This is a powerful novel and I only have to admire his courage and honesty to depict a shameful aspect of his time and place, his life.
Music of the Swamp (1991)
As Lewis Nordan found his style with Sugar Mecklin stories, he also found his editor, Shannon Ravenel at the Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. She saw that the real problem with Buddy was just the sales and she urged him to arrange the stories chronologically and called the new collection a novel as a commercial strategy. Yes, a novel in stories, or a collection of linked stories. It was the most successful strategy so far. Buddy could maintain his beautiful lyricism yet he also could give the readers a perspective. Here's the TOC:
Part I
Music of the Swamp
Part II
Cabbage Opera
A Hank of Hair, A Piece of Bone
Train, Train, Coming round the Bend
The Cellar of Runt Conroy
Porpoises and Romance
Field and Stream
Part III
How Bob Steele Broke My Father's Heart
Creatures with Shining Scales
Epilogue
Owls
Wow, those titles look fantastic! I mean, I can hear music from them, see movies from them, imagine many things just by looking at them alone. And the world of Sugar and Arrow Catcher is as colorful as suggested by those titles. The main subject here is the coming of age of Sugar, but his world is filled with elves and mermaids, wonders and magic. Though there are sickness, violence, and tragedy beneath those fantastic landscapes, Sugar and we can still find love and hope.
Take the title story. Sugar wakes up one morning, feeling great. His mind is filled with wonderful imaginary things, like mermaids in the swamp. But when his best friend, Sweet Austin, takes him to the swamp, they actually find a dead body. Sweet's father has been long gone, and he's afraid it should be him. They go back to Sugar's home, telling the news. But his mother is sunk deeply in her daydream, playing the usual Sears & Roebuck catalog roleplaying game, as was depicted in the second collection. His father is drinking, stoned high in the music world of Bessie Smith. Sugar realizes they are all failures, hiding away from the real world. Like a line in his daddy's favorite song, they feel so lonely they could die. But his mom comes to rescue the helpless Sweet, and suddenly Sugar is proud of them. The world is not simple and clear, and everything just mingles. Just as Bessie Smith sings in "Muddy Water."
It really reflects the Southern reality. They're all losers, ever since the Civil War. The reality is too heavy for a small boy to bear on his tiny shoulders, and he has to grow up fast, because his parents flinch from the burdens. The story set the tone of the entire novel, or collection. It is a coming-of-age story. Eventually, Sugar grows up and faces the death of his father. But even then, his mother blurts out the secret about his birth. There's no simple happy moment or sad occurrence. Everything has its own secret and hidden reality.
The collection ends with an impressive line, "There is great pain in all love, but we don't care, it's worth it." Compare it with the closing line of his previous collection; "...we would somehow never grow old and love would last forever." Yes, that was a strong and beautiful line, too, but in this novel-in-stories, Buddy, with a help from his new editor, delivers a proud message. He could finally conclude the Sugar stories.
The All-Girl Football Team (1986)
Lousiana State University Press edition
This was my first exposure to the fantastic world of Lewis Nordan. It was 1989. Joe Montana was still at his peak and won another Super Bowl. I was fascinated by his coolness, which had changed my negative image toward "American" football that had been associated with some machismo, typically depicted in the Burt Reynolds film The Longest Yard. So the title of the collection attracted my refreshed eyes. Yes, I've been a big fan of the Vintage Contemporary series, originally edited by Gary Fisketjon. But my expectation was not that high, because it was only a slim collection of mere 125 pages. I expected something cool and weird, from that title and its editorial background. Here's the TOC;
Sugar Among the Chickens
The Talker at the Freak-Show
Sugar, the Eunuchs, and Big G. B.
The Sears and Roebuck Catalog Game
The Farmer's Daughter
Wild Dog
John Thomas Bird
The Attendant
The All-Girl Football Team
But it blew my mind. The first story, "Sugar Among the Chickens," was one of the most memorable stories I'd read so far, and Kevin Brockmeier, another wonderful southern writer, chose it as one of his favorite 50 short stories, too. It's a story about a kid who tries to fish a chicken in his own backyard, because his neurotic mother never allows him to go out alone, and his alcoholic father doesn't take him out often enough. It made me laugh out loud and nearly cry at once. He isn't a "good" boy as his prank suggests, but is nice enough to love his parents and try to save his family from breaking up. The surrealistic image of a boy with a red rooster on his head walking proudly remains in my mind as a symbol of our human endeavor. The title story which sat at the end was also great. This time, our adorable protagonist, Sugar Mecklin is now a high school boy. The town, Arrow Catcher, Mississippi, has two annual drag costume festivities, and now Sugar proposes another at his high school. The All-Girl Football Team. Naturally, he ends up as a cheerleader. I really could relate to his embarrassment, pride, and love. Of course, I did once try a drag costume with my rock band. The collection features a lot of Sugar Mecklin stories, tales about a ten/eleven year old boy with his collapsing family. The author found a focus here. A small scale comedy and tragedy of a young boy and his family in a small Mississippi town, full of sadness and loneliness, yet filled with wonders, love, joys, and in short, magic. This is a magic realist fiction with a personal touch. Here, magic conquers geekiness. Three cheers for Buddy, for he established his own style!
Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair (1983)
It was Lewis Nordan's first collection of stories, published in 1983 by Louisiana University Press. I read its reprinted edition, published in August, 1989, by Vintage Contemporaries, after I read the second collection, The All-Girl Football Team. Here's the Table of Contents;
Mr. Nordine, Pentecost, and the Oral Tradition
The Sin Eater
Rat Song
Wheelchair
Storyteller
The Copper Balloons
One-Man Band
Sugar Among the Freaks
Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair
It was a very slim collection of 129 pages, with no introduction, afterword, or anything. It was just the let's-just-try-this-literary-sample-by-a-new-author kind of a collection. All the stories are set in a small town in the American South, but not specifically named Arrow-Catcher, yet. Characters are varied from the aged to young kid, styles are, too. Christianity and violence, poverty and ignorance are evident like any other traditional Southern fiction. Indeed, some stories are influenced by Flannery O'Conner and other traditional Southern writers. Well, you might notice that there are a lot of hyphens. Musical elements that are one of the strongest features in Lewis Nordan prose are already prominent. Compared to his second collection, the author hadn't found his focus yet, but those were definitive Buddy stories. The first story, which hooked me at first, is about an embalmer, and it was written way before Six Feet Under or The Unnatural by David Prill, a cross-genre novel hailed by slipstream enthusiasts in SF genre. "Sugar Among the Freaks" is a tale about traveling with a handicapped "freak." The title story is about a competition of catching arrow by hands. My favorite, "Rat Song," is about keeping an unattractive rat, not mice nor hamster, as a pet because your daughter beg for it, calling you "daddy" for the first time.
Yes, there are elements of weirdness in most stories. But they're not typical southern gothic, nor hipness or gonzo kind of wackiness as you see in Barry Hannah's fiction. Surrealistic strangeness in Buddy's fiction could be defined as geekiness, or at least it seemed so to me after working on cyberpunk geeky SF. Those hyphens showed uniqueness or something special about them, as in tech terms or new lingo--somewhat different from contemporary normalcy yet not in the sense of obsolete superstitious narrow-mindedness as you see a lot in southern fiction. It isn't nostalgia, either. Buddy approved the strangeness people show, act or find in their everyday lives, and their efforts to live with it. He already wrote his own anthems of life in that unfocussed and uneven first collection.
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(C) Copyright by Yoshio Kobayashi