Birth of a novel

For the last three years, I’ve been trying to help Gary Mawyer get his epic novel Rockfish published. Here is a synopsis of the book, first called Shad River, that we sent a few years ago to a prospective publisher:

Shad River is a multigenerational story exploring the evolution of racial and family identity in the Appalachian South. The intertwined histories of three families, one white, one of Native American descent, and one African-American, are followed episodically from settlement times through November 2001. The best recent work of comparable scope may be Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. The setting and action of the middle part of the book would be most easily compared to Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain. We believe that Shad River would complement the books on your list while distinguishing itself by its American perspective on racial issues and civil rights.

Says Canadian writer, critic, and scholar John Moss, who read the book and prepared a reader’s report:

Like all great books, Shad River is both a stunning surprise and inevitable. Once it has been read, one cannot imagine a world in which it did not exist. In a lifetime as a writer, literary critic, editor and academic,  I have experienced the thrill of discovering great books many times over, but I have read only a few, and never a manuscript, to match Gary Dale Mawyer’s unpublished chronicle about the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

Here is an unlikely thought: imagine a conspiracy among Faulkner, James Mitchener, Tolstoy and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, they come together, the living and the dead, joined by Samuel Clemens, Alex Haley and Stephen Crane, maybe Eric Idle and Erich Maria Remarque, and they invent Gary Dale Mawyer. Mawyer in his mature years writes a book of life that is also a book of the dead. He calls his book Shad River and puts it in a drawer. But it won’t stay there. The world is too much invested to let it lie.

Possibly the best descriptions of the Civil War ever written lie in these pages. Conflicts from before the Revolution that force people into the hill country of Virginia and conflicts that draw them out again, generation by generation, are opened to the reader as real people turn to memory and memory turns into myth, all in a context shaped by the intricacies of genealogy along the Shad and by History as it whirls each succeeding layer of consciousness to the surface, from then to now. What has passed is prologue, yes, but is perpetually revised; presence is antecedent to the past. The sweep and scope of Mawyer’s narrative is breathtaking. It thrums with details of authenticity. The sustained brilliance as a narrative of times and a place is comparable only to Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha. Yet this book is as much a history of the western world from a wondrously conceived finite perspective as it is a fiction; it is as much a meditation among quarreling philosophies as it is a novel; as much the dream-vision of an astonishingly wise and irrepressibly witty raconteur as it is a chronicle. It is a confession of remembering blood articulated through infinite research, an exorcism and celebration of racial awareness, a guide among bullets and carnage through local gossip, regional politics and global imperatives. It is a novel about a small place in the world and about the world itself. It is a war novel, a pamimpsest of military memoirs, a documentary of race and religion, and it is American history. It is about living in the twenty-first century, and about the generations of men and women who gave us a place to stand on even as they fade to quirks of custom and genetic lore.

Gary Mawyer in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, at the Mule Shoe—or Bloody Angle, as it was known by the Northern troops—on the Spotsylvania Court House battlefield.

Shad River is not always an easy book to read. The writing is superb; brilliantly  articulate and often hauntingly evocative. Exhaustively researched materials of the past are given flesh-and bone-intensity, yet never recede into anecdote or exemplary vignette; more recent recollections, for instance of Washington under siege in the 1970’s, achieve a gut-churning immediacy, tempered with wry cynicism. The characters, from Abraham Marr, a Pennsylvania Quaker whose progeny mix native, white, and black in an infinitely fascinating quilt of cousinage, to Lynn Marr, the divorced Episcopal minister from the west coast, home in the hills for Thanksgiving, 2002, all have brief and glowing narrative lives which, together cast Shad Crossing and the Shad River region into dazzling illumination. The pacing, the narrative tempo, is right on the mark; leisurely at times among the old men around the stove in Marr’s General Store, frenetic in the battle scenes (which are many and varied, as finely detailed as escutcheons on a prize musket, dents on a cop’s billie-club), solemn in the intellectually charged debates on eugenics and Jim Crow, while irreverent, even raucous, in enumerating the strange intricacies of color, race, and genealogy from a layered perspective. The writing is superb. What might have been a sprawling inchoate welter spun around a chronological axis holds together as the whirling visionary gift of a narrative voice that shows absolute confidence in its own judgment to make sense of it all, its own ability to make it all accessible. The reader, however, is not meant to be passive. There are no genealogical charts, no potted historical summaries. These would be a betrayal of its vision. Shad River is implicitly postmodern. It interrogates and subverts and exploits the distinctions among history and fiction, myth and genetics, memory and imagination. It declares, not sole was I born but entire genesis. As with Marquez, it does not give itself as a gift to be consumed but as a parallel world within which to better see our own.

Letter to the editor

The following was sent last night to Frank Bridgewater, editor of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Dear Mr. Bridgewater,

Someone has no doubt already proposed this, but I thought I’d write anyway.

The STAR-BULLETIN is now billing itself, as I saw from the newspaper stand this morning, as Hawaii’s first compact newspaper. It seems to me that the worth of this trendy phrase is lost on people who haven’t been following developments in the industry. Perhaps instead of focusing on this conversion, SB could create nodes of interest around which new readers would form.

Could, say, SB select two or three people in the community who would function as editors for a month? For argument’s sake, let’s say that I nominated my boss as an SB editor-for-a-month and he was selected. His site would be www.mystarbulletin.com/stewart. He would select the content that SB (1) gets from news sources and (2) generates itself, and then he would give it his particular slant. For example, his editorial page would consist of opinions he’d selected from those possible—or of opinions he wrote or solicited. His front page would consist of news that was of interest to him and his friends and associates.

His stint as editor would have to be preceded, of course, by some kind of course in SB’s editorial/publishing policy.

I like this idea because it would repackage SB content and resell it based on the strength of the reputation, or cachet let’s say, of the people selected to be editors every month. The banner, look, images, and so forth of SB would be consistent across these editions.

This idea formed as a result of (1) a HUFFINGTON POST article on newspapers that I just read and (2) a casual visit to a store in the heart of Chinatown. My sister, a friend, and I had had lunch at Mei Sum and then, because my friend needed to get a birthday gift for another friend, we went into the store called Into. Into, as you know, is a wonderful interior decorating store that imports stuff from all over the world. The man at the counter, who is one of the owners, told me that his store would be moving to Aina Haina because, as much as he loved the location, Into was losing money. I was very disappointed and said so, and he looked anguished and said he preferred to be in Chinatown and was even the president of the Downtown Merchants’ Association.

If someone such as he were able to create his own edition of SB, I think it would be intriguing, and, I predict, the edition would gain new readers for the paper. This would have to be a money-making proposition, of course. Perhaps SB could charge $10 for a month-long subscription to these special editions or have a special advertising section targeting each month’s set of readers.

In addition to considering individuals as editors, SB could consider groups, e.g., the Iolani (or Punahou) School newspaper staff, the Association of University Women, and so forth.

Thank you for reading this, and best of luck to SB, which I remain loyal to.

Aloha,
Pat

Strangers with access

July 1 postscript: this was accepted for publication by another SB editor and was published last week.

The following was written as a submission to the Star-Bulletin’s column “The Goddess Speaks.” Features editor Betty Shimabukuro wrote back to say that SB would need to contact Ocean Cablevision for a comment and that I might consider submitting the piece to “Kokua Line” or as a letter to the editor. I haven’t yet made a decision about this; in the interim, it appears here.

Recent news reports about women being talked into letting strangers into their homes and then being robbed prompted me to write about my own experience.

The first week of March, I received a call from a man who said that he was an Oceanic Cablevision employee and that he had gotten my unlisted phone number from the security office of my downtown condominium. He explained that he needed access to my home because the resident in a unit above me was having trouble with his TV and the cable wiring in my unit might be the cause.

I was suspicious of this man for the following reasons. He had not made his request through the management office of my condominium; I assumed that the condo’s security office was not supposed to release the phone numbers of residents; the contact number he gave me did not resemble Oceanic’s listed numbers; and his explanation for needing access sounded like the sort of story a person with ulterior motives would fabricate.

Even though this man said he needed immediate access, I replied that I could not make any arrangements with him at that time. Some days later, on the morning of the fourteenth, my doorbell rang and I opened the door to find him and another man standing in the hallway.

In the interim, I had tried to contact Oceanic. I e-mailed the company via its website, describing the situation, but received no response. I was alarmed that the company was not concerned someone might be impersonating one of its employees, but I waited a day, then called Oceanic. I spoke to a woman, giving her the contact number the man had given me. She put me on hold for a few minutes, then returned, saying that she would talk to the man’s foreman because he should not have been contacting people this way. She did not, however, confirm that he was an Oceanic employee.

I also spoke to a woman in my condo’s management office and was told that the call was suspicious and that the security office and all other staff of the building are prohibited from giving out information about the residents. After a few hours, the woman called me back and said that the man was indeed an Oceanic employee and that I should make arrangements with him to let him into my home. I have no idea how she verified who he was, and I remained suspicious.

This urban tale has a happy ending, fortunately. After the two men entered my home, I stayed on guard, keeping a wary eye on them. They quickly got to work, however, and after several minutes, it became clear that their reason for being there was legitimate. The man I had spoken to was quick, efficient, and personable, and the two left after about twenty minutes.

Would I therefore let another stranger into my home? No, I wouldn’t. In fact, the next time I will be even more careful and vigilant than I was this time.

The Presidency Has at Last Been Desegregated

I first wrote about this subject on 10 November, using the phrase “social disruption” to describe one of the effects of desegregating the presidency. A friend’s response to the post made me recast the sentence; now I feel that I should have kept the phrase in. Racial harmony is a myth in Hawai‘i, as elsewhere, but it comes close to being realized here. Reading the following Associated Press article in this, the fiftieth state, made me tremble with anger and sadness.

Posted 16 November. An abridged version of this news report appeared in today’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin. I’m including the piece in its entirety.

Election spurs ‘hundreds’ of race threats, crimes

By JESSE WASHINGTON – 1 day ago

Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting “Assassinate Obama.” Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.

Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America.

From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders.

There have been “hundreds” of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.

One was in Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: “I hope Obama gets assassinated.” That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law’s front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door, Millner said.

She described her emotions as a combination of anger and fear.

“I can’t say that every white person in Snellville is evil and anti-Obama and willing to desecrate my property because one or two idiots did it,” said Millner, who is black. “But it definitely makes you look a little different at the people who you live with, and makes you wonder what they’re capable of and what they’re really thinking.”

Potok, who is white, said he believes there is “a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them.”

Grant Griffin, a 46-year-old white Georgia native, expressed similar sentiments: “I believe our nation is ruined and has been for several decades and the election of Obama is merely the culmination of the change.

“If you had real change it would involve all the members of (Obama’s) church being deported,” he said.

Change in whatever form does not come easy, and a black president is “the most profound change in the field of race this country has experienced since the Civil War,” said William Ferris, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina. “It’s shaking the foundations on which the country has existed for centuries.”

“Someone once said racism is like cancer,” Ferris said. “It’s never totally wiped out, it’s in remission.”

If so, America’s remission lasted until the morning of Nov. 5.

The day after the vote hailed as a sign of a nation changed, black high school student Barbara Tyler of Marietta, Ga., said she heard hateful Obama comments from white students, and that teachers cut off discussion about Obama’s victory.

Tyler spoke at a press conference by the Georgia chapter of the NAACP calling for a town hall meeting to address complaints from across the state about hostility and resentment. Another student, from a Covington middle school, said he was suspended for wearing an Obama shirt to school Nov. 5 after the principal told students not to wear political paraphernalia.

The student’s mother, Eshe Riviears, said the principal told her: “Whether you like it or not, we’re in the South, and there are a lot of people who are not happy with this decision.”

Other incidents include:

• Four North Carolina State University students admitted writing anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free speech expression, including one that said: “Let’s shoot that (N-word) in the head.” Obama has received more threats than any other president-elect, authorities say.
• At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: “Osama Obama Shotgun Pool.” Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. “Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count,” the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written “Let’s hope someone wins.”
• Racist graffiti was found in places including New York’s Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and “Go Back To Africa” were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.
• Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted “assassinate Obama,” a district official said.
• University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur. “It seems the election brought the racist rats out of the woodwork,” Houston said.
• Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported. The president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas said a rope found hanging from a campus tree was apparently an abandoned swing and not a noose.
• Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.
• A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted ‘Obama.’
• In the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying “now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house.”

Emotions are often raw after a hard-fought political campaign, but now those on the losing side have an easy target for their anger.

“The principle is very simple,” said BJ Gallagher, a sociologist and co-author of the diversity book “A Peacock in the Land of Penguins.” “If I can’t hurt the person I’m angry at, then I’ll vent my anger on a substitute, i.e., someone of the same race.”

“We saw the same thing happen after the 9-11 attacks, as a wave of anti-Muslim violence swept the country. We saw it happen after the Rodney King verdict, when Los Angeles blacks erupted in rage at the injustice perpetrated by ‘the white man.’”

“It’s as stupid and ineffectual as kicking your dog when you’ve had a bad day at the office,” Gallagher said. “But it happens a lot.”

Associated Press writers Errin Haines, Jerry Harkavy, Jay Reeves, Johnny Taylor and researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed to this report.

Posted 10 November

From Barack As President.

Wikipedia makes a distinction between desegregation and integration. One can argue that it is correct, given Wikipedia’s definitions and arguments, to say that the presidency has been integrated. But it seems to me more correct to say that the nation’s highest political office has been desegregated. The legal aspect of desegregation is probably what many Republicans and people who voted Republican have mistaken the majority will for. They seem to regard Obama’s election as a de facto desegregation that has taken place without their participation or permission.

Response from Mike:

Hi! Yes we can, Yes we will, Yes we did!!! I would like to think that at this stage in our nation’s racial development, the process we are undergoing is integration, which is organic, as opposed to desegregation, which is a deliberate intervention in a social system. The South was desegregated by law and writ, but it started integrating when enough people realized that equality of worth was not based on race, but on human commonality. That is, a realization that that which makes us different is so trivial when compared to that which we all have in common. As for majority rule, if we were going to have to live through 4 or 8 years more of stupid government…