The Banned and the Beautiful

“Flophouse” made me giggle.  I’d never heard such a word, and when I pulled the slim yellow volume from my parents’ bookshelves, admiring the bold red print along the spine and the rough, burlap texture of  its cover, I wasn’t certain at first I’d read it correctly.  But there it was: “flophouse”.

Paging through the book I found it once, twice, and twice again.  I giggled every time I read it, and went running down the stairs to the Big People’s party.

“What’s a flophouse?” I asked my Dad.  “What are you reading now?” he asked in turn, not even bothering to look up from his cards.

What I was reading was John Steinbeck’s  Cannery Row. Unlike another of his classics, The Grapes of Wrath, the saga of Doc and Dora, Mack, Hazel and Eddie never was banned by any library or school board I know of, but in my parents’ household, banning would have been irrelevant. Books were written, and books were meant to be read. If the reader happened to be a third-grader who’d pulled a grown-up novel off the shelves because she was attracted by the cover, so be it. Their assumption was that I’d be interested, or not, and if a grown-up book piqued my interest there was plenty of time to look up unfamiliar words or talk about life in a flophouse.

The View from Uncle Henry’s

 

Uncle Henry’s at Moon Lake is a fine place to mark a literary anniversary.  Tucked between Yazoo Pass and the Mississippi River just north of Clarksdale, Moon Lake itself is an oxbow, good for fishing if not for navigation and commerce.  Across the road from the lake, Uncle Henry’s awaits its guests with a spacious gallery, a west-facing view perfect for sunset-watching and no scheduled activities.  On the other hand, there’s all the time in the world for sitting and thinking, two activities particularly dear to writers.  While robins stitch their song through dogwood and azaleas and morning blooms more yellow than the iris, I’ve been sitting with all my might, and doing some thinking, too - about the nature of persistence, and how quickly a year can flee down the corridors of time.

Uncle Henry isn’t my uncle, of course, but the fellow whose name was given to a traditional Mississippi establishment.   Uncle Henry’s started life as an Elks’ Lodge in 1926.   Sold in 1933 to William Wilkerson, it became known as the Moon Lake Club, a Prohibition landmark known for good food, high living and assorted illegalities.  It lost and then re-gained respectability when the locals cut its connections to the Chicago mob.  Finally, in 1946 it was purchased by Henry Trevino, the foster father of Sarah Wright.  Sarah and her son George now run Uncle Henry’s, an Inn and Restaurant by its sign, a Bed & Breakfast in the tourist guides.  It’s a little shabby, quite a bit quirky, imbued with fading elegance and filled with piles of indiscriminate memories.  You don’t have to have been raised in the South to recognize that Uncle Henry’s actually is a “she” -  the prototypical genteel Southern Lady who’s just a little down on her luck. 

On the other hand, Uncle Henry’s is a treasured part of local lore and legend - not to mention local life.  On Friday and Saturday nights, there are “regulars” in the restaurant, the kind of folks waitresses ask, “Will you be having the usual?” even while knowing the answer to their own question.  When I mentioned Moon Lake to some fishermen eating breakfast in the Cleveland, Mississippi Huddle House, their first question was, “Did you stop by Uncle Henry’s?”  When I said I’d been staying there, one of the men said, “Well, it’s not the Holiday Inn, that’s for sure. But that’s the good news – it’s not the Holiday Inn.” 

It certainly isn’t the Holiday Inn. George himself told me that when I made my sight-unseen reservation.  A late and impulsive decision to attend Clarksdale’s Juke Joint Festival had left me scrambling for a room.  Motels were booked, and had been for weeks.  When I called the Shack Up Inn (perfectly respectable lodging, by the way), they were full, too. But with the solicitous kindness I’d already come to associate with Mississippians, the proprietor said, “You better call up at Uncle Henry’s. I do believe I heard they had a cancellation and they might be able to put you up.  Of course, they might not, but you call George. He’ll tell you how things are.”

Speaking My Heart – Writing, Vision and Truth

 

José Saramago, Portuguese novelist and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature, once remarked,  “In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because I didn’t know how to write essays.”  Implicit in his remarks is a refutation of the easy assumption that people write essays  because they are less difficult than novels.  They are shorter, to be sure, and differently structured.  But ease of writing is not necessarily one of their virtues, particularly when the so-called personal essay is involved.

In her Write on Wednesday prompt this week, Becca asks, “Do you enjoy reading and writing personal essays?”  The fact is I do – primarily because I’m most interested in exploring the world around me, rather than inventing a fictional world from whole cloth.  I’m intrigued by the challenges posed when attempting to communicate rich, densely-textured realities through an apparently simple form, and I prefer the freedom to move from one topic to another as my attention is engaged, rather than devoting months or years to the same project.

Alain de Botton, another prolific essayist whose The Art of Travel is one of my favorites, says, “I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It’s always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.”

He goes on, “I passionately believe it’s not just what you say that counts, it’s also how you say it – the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.”

The word essay  itself comes from the French essayer, which means ”to try”.   Trying to communicate the richness of reality can be difficult at best.  When Anita Diamant, in her introduction to Pitching My Tent, writes that her challenge as an essayist was “to pay closer-than-average attention and then shape…experiences and reactions into entertaining prose”, she suggests what I have come to believe: that vision comes first. 

If You Have to Ask, You’ll Never, Ever Know…

 

In a letter to author Cecil Dawkins written 3 April 1959, Flannery O’Connor not only remarks on the electric typewriter she is using, she has a comment or two about the wonderful news that Cecil has been paid $1,000 for a story.  Noting that the most she ever has been paid is $425, Flannery goes on to say,

“Your sale to the Post  ought to impress your mother greatly.  It sure has impressed my mother who brought the post card home.  The other day she asked me why I didn’t try to write something that people liked instead of the kind of thing I do write.  Do you think, she said, that you are really using the talent God gave you when you don’t write something that a lot, A LOT of people like?  This always leaves me shaking and speechless, raises my blood pressure 140 degrees, etc.  All I can ever say is, if you have to ask, you’ll never know.”

Dazed and Confused

 

 With more years behind me than I like to remember, startled into cyber-sensitivity by assorted encounters with a brave new world, I stand at the edge of the precipice:  leaning, looking, listening for the voice that has lured me to this place. 

What do I know of websites, blogs, html, css, pagemaker?  Not a thing.  Or, at least, so little that my friendly five-year-old neighbor could out-navigate me in any cybercontest.  When I look at a hyperlink, I hyperventilate.  When I hear the word “tag”, I think of a children’s game.  If any computer guru in the world begins a sentence, “All you have to do is…”, I’ve already done a mental turn and am running for my life.  They mean well, and so do I.   It’s just that “intuitive” is not a word I associate with computers or their programs.

But I have things to say – words to write, metaphors to build, conclusions to draw, paragraphs to stack and reorder and move around to suit myself, and perhaps others.  Whether I like it or not, the day of the Number 2 pencil, or even the old, clunky Underwood, is over.   If I am to share my words and my vision, technology must become my friend.

Friendship, of course, takes time.  It requires energy, and perseverance.   Friendship isn’t an afternoon project, a weekend diversion, a passing inclination for those times when nothing else piques interest.  Friendship is a commitment as well as a delight; it requires attentiveness and care.   

I have far less time than I wish, and my energy can ebb, but I know attentiveness and perseverance.  Perseverance is making coffee at 2 a.m.  Perseverance is changing a title in order to attract more readers, and then changing it back  to its original form because it is right.  Perseverance is continuing to listen for the voice that lures us to the edge of the precipice even when the voice falls silent.   Perseverance is singing in the night, though all others may sleep - believing that the song will be heard.

The question no longer is: do you want to write?  For good or for ill, read or unread, poorly scribed or passionately sung, I will write.  At the edge of the precipice, a bit dazed, a good bit confused, I have made my commitment.  Let the perseverance begin.  

 

                                           

 Speaking of technology, we have this, from a letter dated 3 April 1959, written by author Flannery O’Connor to Cecil Dawkins:

“This is a nervous letter.  I am congratulating you on the electric typewriter.  It is very nice but I am not used to it yet.  I keep thinking about all the electricity that is being wasted while I think what I am going to say next…”

                                             

 

 

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