Recently, I fell down the rabbit hole of comparing Andrew Lytle’s The Mahogany Frame to William Faulkner’s The Bear. Both short stories relate the experiences of boys going on their first hunt. Not exactly Catcher in the Rye angst, but still, they are pretty good coming-of-age stories. Surprisingly, The Bear remains on the recommended reading list in some public high schools, while The Mahogany Frame continues in obscurity.
The rabbit hole opened during a discussion with my son about literary structure and form. That’s where Lytle popped into my undisciplined mind. As a past editor of The Sewanee Review, one of the Vanderbilt Fugitive poets, a respected critic and professor of Southern literature, I thought he might help me understand the issue.
All of this mental activity prompted me to find my copy of Lytle’s short stories along with a criticism of his works by M. E. Bradford. While reading The Mahogany Frame I was reminded of The Bear so I found my copy of that story along with Cleanth Brooks criticism of said story and down the rabbit hole I went. Did I mention that impulsive obsessiveness is a side-effect of Parkinson’s medications? Fortunately for all of us, I don’t take those anymore.
I easily connect to the South that Faulkner, O’Connor, and the Fugitive poets wrote about. My imagination intertwines their stories into my childhood impression of my South being a collage of small faded one train track towns scattered across a sweltering kudzu-choked countryside dotted with old barns, gray houses, rusting automobiles, and worn-out hounds bathed in loss but with expectations still rising.
This haunted landscape is peopled by those who were imperfect in all of their humanity - the lame and the maimed, the diseased and the mentally challenged, the meth-heads and moonshiners, the hypocrites and the television preachers - and I am just talking about my extended family here - yet they survived through big helpings of charity and grace that comes from above and each other. The lame shall enter first, indeed.1
My childhood was spent mostly in the woods when I wasn’t attending the local school in my rural community. I spent hours playing in the creeks that coursed through my family’s property. My friends and I built forts from the logs left over when the pulpwood cutters came through. Many imaginary wars were won amongst those trees. Many more real snakes were encountered. Most of them lived.
My son did not grow up in that South. Though we still live within shouting distance from where I grew up, many of the old farms around us have been subdivided to accommodate those who envy the rural life that but only if it includes a community of slab-built McMansions protected by gates and cul-de-sacs. His coming of age story does not resemble mine for he is not me.
As we talked about the different and sometimes contradictory essay requirements held by his various professors, my son suddenly declared that one of the enduring challenges of college is for one to get used to being told that one is wrong. I immediately replied that he was wrong and the argument was joined, in a joking manner of course.
I have come to appreciate these arguments. They reveal how much thought that he puts into what I have tried to teach him to be true. He challenges me, sometimes causing a change in my thinking, but mostly not. Because I am old or least old enough to be set in my ways. Maybe I’m just Parkinson’s old.
Watching his mental awakening delights and frightens me. I remind him that even if all premises are factual in any given question, the logical answer is not always the truth. Something to remember in our age of universal deceit.2
The Lame Shall Enter First by Flannery O’Connor, 1962 Story Text
“In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” from George Orwell’s 1984.
On a more personal note, I opened my 2008 campaign speech with this quote to a group of around 7,000 Tea Party voters in Greenville, SC. They didn’t seem impressed but it makes me wonder how many aspiring conservative politicians have used Orwell’s 1984 to their benefit. I am sure that his estate is owed something . . .