3) A Different Drummer
In my initial searches for books to read for this project, I came across an allusion to William M. Kelley's Dunfords Travels Everywheres as a sort of parody of Finnegans Wake. Devoted Joycian that I am, it immediately went on my to-read list. Experienced reader of Joyce that I am, I know that starting with Finnegans Wake without first going through Portrait and Ulysses would be insane folly. So Kelley's earlier novels went on my to-read list, too.
A Different Drummer tells the heavily allegoricized story of Tucker Caliban, the descendant of black slaves who, working as a sharecropper in the 1950s Deep South, decides to salt his fields, set fire to his house, and take his family and leave the state. The action spurs a revolution, as every black person in the state picks up and follows him out of the state. It's a sort of near-past alternate history, written in 1962 to alter the events of 1957.
As a novel of the civil rights era, it asks what would have happened if protesters would have taken Thoreau's actions as a model instead of his words. It's an odd and unsatisfying question, and I think it partially explains why the novel has apparently gotten mixed reviews over the years. Tucker's actions, as themselves, don't make sense beyond rationalization as the act of a man moving to the beat of a different drummer.
But as a novel of people and ideas, it is a remarkable success. The novel's fantasy could never happen, but IF IT DID, this is how it would go down. And the ability of a novel to work thought experiments through to their logical conclusion is powerfully demonstrated. It is almost enough that this happened in a novel for it to have the intended effect.
As itself, the novel does not compare to Joyce as well as it does to Faulkner, who is given his due as an inspiration in a thought-provoking introduction by David Bradley (who is now also on my to-read list). It kind of feels like Faulkner meets Pynchon, but with a lot less convoluted language. And of course, with the racism of Faulkner refashioned into something... else.
We have a host of richly drawn Southern... White characters. There are no main black characters in the novel, which makes the story even stranger and more fantastic. There's Mister Harper, who spins the novel's initial fable of The African with deep and condescending respect. There's young Mister Leland, whose parents are trying to shape into a 'passable human being' and falling short because of their ingrained prejudices. There's Dewey Willson III and the uneven friendship he maintains with Tucker without ever realizing its onesidedness. There's his sister Dymphna, who is selfish to the core and only overcomes her selfishness when she ignores communal prejudice to help Tucker's wife Bethrah. And we have the novel's central couple, David and Camille Willson, and the stunning and very intimate inner story that Tucker's disappearance unexpectedly resolves.These characters are real, and they are loveable in spite of their failings. But we cannot forgive them their failings, and we cannot ignore the depth to which their racism goes.
Tucker is... not wrong, to leave, though it's easier to say he's not wrong than it is to say he is right. But he leaves behind questions that are very troubling about the directions we are following to work through our issues with race. I think what is crucial to note about Tucker is that he is not trying to start a movement. He succeeds in changing the status quo because what he did felt right for the moment, not because he was leading the people or because they saw him as a leader.
A Different Drummer tells the heavily allegoricized story of Tucker Caliban, the descendant of black slaves who, working as a sharecropper in the 1950s Deep South, decides to salt his fields, set fire to his house, and take his family and leave the state. The action spurs a revolution, as every black person in the state picks up and follows him out of the state. It's a sort of near-past alternate history, written in 1962 to alter the events of 1957.
As a novel of the civil rights era, it asks what would have happened if protesters would have taken Thoreau's actions as a model instead of his words. It's an odd and unsatisfying question, and I think it partially explains why the novel has apparently gotten mixed reviews over the years. Tucker's actions, as themselves, don't make sense beyond rationalization as the act of a man moving to the beat of a different drummer.
But as a novel of people and ideas, it is a remarkable success. The novel's fantasy could never happen, but IF IT DID, this is how it would go down. And the ability of a novel to work thought experiments through to their logical conclusion is powerfully demonstrated. It is almost enough that this happened in a novel for it to have the intended effect.
As itself, the novel does not compare to Joyce as well as it does to Faulkner, who is given his due as an inspiration in a thought-provoking introduction by David Bradley (who is now also on my to-read list). It kind of feels like Faulkner meets Pynchon, but with a lot less convoluted language. And of course, with the racism of Faulkner refashioned into something... else.
We have a host of richly drawn Southern... White characters. There are no main black characters in the novel, which makes the story even stranger and more fantastic. There's Mister Harper, who spins the novel's initial fable of The African with deep and condescending respect. There's young Mister Leland, whose parents are trying to shape into a 'passable human being' and falling short because of their ingrained prejudices. There's Dewey Willson III and the uneven friendship he maintains with Tucker without ever realizing its onesidedness. There's his sister Dymphna, who is selfish to the core and only overcomes her selfishness when she ignores communal prejudice to help Tucker's wife Bethrah. And we have the novel's central couple, David and Camille Willson, and the stunning and very intimate inner story that Tucker's disappearance unexpectedly resolves.These characters are real, and they are loveable in spite of their failings. But we cannot forgive them their failings, and we cannot ignore the depth to which their racism goes.
Tucker is... not wrong, to leave, though it's easier to say he's not wrong than it is to say he is right. But he leaves behind questions that are very troubling about the directions we are following to work through our issues with race. I think what is crucial to note about Tucker is that he is not trying to start a movement. He succeeds in changing the status quo because what he did felt right for the moment, not because he was leading the people or because they saw him as a leader.