. Spinning .

Whew.  Should’ve been framing but I think I would have locked the shop doors once I got into the last 25 pages.

Somehow, the ending came full force and fast.  Almost a little too fast, as if the whole summer’s problems came to a head and got settled on a few days in November.  But the story is credible; though I originally questioned some of the events, after thinking about it, I can see where they were building up and things forgotten (a book that plays a role I completely missed), and E.F.’s belief in his imminent death as well as his nature did answer my questions.

One thing that may not have been missed by William Gay, but it stuck in my own head as an important detail that never panned out was this:

You have to wear this hardhat all the time you’re on the work site.
Have you not got another white one like you got?  Albright was licking the point of his pencil, studying Woodall’s hat.
These blue hardhats are laborer’s hats.  This one I got is a superintendent’s hat.  It might be a little early in the day for one of them.  I been here twenty years and I own the company. (p. 49)

That’s Albright signing on for a job with Woodall that turn’s disastrous and just the beginning of his troubles.  Then this, when he pays Brady to put a hex on Woodall to get him off his back:

I’ll need somethin of his.  Somethin he touched.
Albright rose and went through the front room. (…)Outside the yard was dappled with shadow and light, the moon was out now and curdled clouds ran before it as if in the keep of some enormous lunar wind.
He took the blue hardhat out of the back floorboard and for a moment just stood holding it, wondering how Brady could use it, trying to feel something of Woodall in its sleek metal surface. He put the hat on his head and stood remembering the hot metal through his shoes, the clicketyclack of the crimper.  He tried to think as Woodall might think.  Then in a moment of insight he saw himself as a fraction of the fool he was. (p. 101)

Gay makes a big deal of the white (Woodall’s) versus the blue (Albright’s) hat, and I suspected immediately that that’s where the curse could go terribly wrong.  Well it didn’t work that way and I wondered if Gay himself had forgotten about it.  Well, he didn’t; it was just much more subtle than I expected.

Gay’s writing is exquisite. Language lovers will enjoy the book for this alone. And I find I’m not alone in comparing him to Cormac McCarthy.  But McCarthy lovers (and I am one) won’t be put off by the similarity.  I think instead, they’ll be as happy as I was to discover another great writer.

There were several threads in this narrative and little by little they are each knotted off.  Here’s just a sample of where Albright’s debt to Woodall is being paid off, his guilt assuaged by his painting Woodall’s widow’s house:

She refilled their glasses and seated herself across from him in a bentwood rocker.  Albright was noticing that she had done something to her hair.  He did not know what, but it looked somehow softer, less like a lacquered wig.  Perhaps it was the cognac but she was looking considerably less froglike and more like a kind, well-educated woman. (p.260)

Well where this leads is a riot; and what it reveals of a situation that has been interwoven within the main tale is just hysterical and had me laugh out loud.

Though a subplot has been somewhat settled to and brought to its end, there is still one small niggling thing that can’t quit my hold on this.  A small detail that will either be brought to a conclusion or something that I feel Gay might have missed. 

With fifty pages to go (and believe me, I wish there were more!) I can’t help but consider the back cover blurb and feel a bit confused:

Only Fleming, E.F.’s grandson, is pleased with the old man’s homecoming, but Fleming’s life is soon to careen down an unpredictable path hewn by the beautiful Raven Lee Halfacre.

For some reason, Raven Lee didn’t appeal to me; a rather sarcastic, self-centered girl from the first date with Fleming, though I warmed up to her a bit when I got to know her better, recalling such girls from my high school years–likely with some envy.  But Fleming sort of cools off on her too it seems; the red-hot flush of wanting to be with her is sort of toned down real early in the game.  At this point, he’s seen her maybe 3 or 4 times and after a close encounter of the wild kind at a drive-in, I’m not sure they’ve had sex yet.

There was also a statement made about things changing and it didn’t really seem to have the basis–though I can’t say much because now I can’t find it.

Certain things are coming together and the tension is building, and there are things that have settled into my mind that I’m still anticipating.  But one thing I might say is that while I read nothing of reviews on book or author prior to a reading, this one back cover blurb has stayed in my head and as I near the last portion of the story I can’t help but get a bit anxious. Have I missed something? Is it up ahead?

There have been some beautiful phrases here, the dialect and tone so well suited to each particular character:

I’ve drunk good whiskey and I’ve drunk bad, the old man told Fleming.  I’ve drunk whiskey so good you could smell the leaves in the woods where it was made and I’ve drunk it so bad you could strip the paint off a barn door with it.  (E.F. Bloodworth/pg. 174)

I’m lookin for a feller named Rutgers, he told her.
He ain’t down the front of my dress, she said.  She slapped his tea onto the red Formica table and walked away.  (Coble/pg. 199)

True, the southern drawl is present in all the characters of this novel set in Tennessee, but the diction is well put forth so that each character does have a way of putting things that distinguishes him from the others. 

In Jamestown, one of the best (and vital to the novel to be well done) elements was the way Matthew Sharpe told the story from multiple characters’ points of view, often depending upon this factor to stress the perception differences of a single incident.

I feel that William Gay shows extreme skill in bringing out character through their conversation.

I like this:

In these early days with the old man it seemed to Fleming that he was already changing, though he had never known his grandfather before and could not have said what he was changing from: from the protagonist of other men’s stories, perhaps, for he no longer looked like a man given to gunfights with deputies, this benign old man watching whatever moved with his wry ironic eyes did not seem the type to clean out Saturday night honkytonks, to be waylaid on Indian Creek by men who rose out of the sage like sepia men of another century who sighted down the barrels of their rifles and blew him off the wagonseat into the bloody weeds.  (p. 173)

Fleming is getting to know his grandfather and holds him up against not just what he reads (he’s an avid reader and wannabe writer) but against the few stories he’s been able to catch from townfolk–since his family has little to say about him. 

Gay’s simile is one laced with ‘authorspeak’ –"protagonist," and referring to the drama and action required of genre novels.  It is an interesting inclusion that reminds us of Fleming’s desire to be a writer in a very subtle manner, and yet one that holds high appeal to the writer/reader.

Here’s supposedly the meaning:

There was something oddly restful about the fireflies.  He couldn’t put his finger on it but he drew comfort from it anyway.  The way they’d seemed not separate entities but a single being, a moving river of light that flowed above the dark water like its negative image and attained a transient and fragile dominion over the provinces of night. (p. 161)

And here’s where I feel I’ve missed something from the book; if the title was taken from this line it would seem to be of utmost import. 

What the above, in the context of the story as it has unfolded, and here, in Fleming’s thoughts after meeting and falling in love with Raven Lee Halfacre, might suggest is his seeing the world in a new way. Maybe he can put some sense of order in his own family by seeing the whole of mankind as a temporary superior force: "transient and fragile…"  Maybe he recognizes human nature as the single drive behind actions.  Maybe he realizes that all this is just a state of mind.

"negative image" is a phrase that may denote a helplessness against what will be, that of life being brief and passing and leaving no mark behind it on the stability of the earth.

How does this concept tie in with my thoughts of movement?

At this point, the end of Book 2, I am beginning to see a story of seeking, of looking for what man thinks will fill his needs. The old man, E. F. Bloodworth, is looking for a peaceful death.  Brady is looking for his father’s commitment.  Boyd is looking for the wife who left him for a peddlar, and Warren is just looking for good times and women.  We have highly recognizable vehicles: a white truck emblazoned with lettering, Junior Albright’s handpainted yellow car turned taxi.  So we have the movement between states, crossing borders to bring each character out of his comfort zone of home ground.

But what of Fleming? He is forced to drive though he hasn’t a license, when his uncle Warren, then his friend Albright, are too drunk to drive where they need to be. Fleming’s left home alone, yet he walks through the woods when he first needs to get away (as his grandfather, E.F. walks through the woods the final miles of his journey.  The car brings them together, as E.F. requires the use of Albright’s "cab."  And interesting too, the home that E.F. has his sons set up for him before his arrival, is a mobile one–a trailer.

So in this case, the vehicle is the vehicle of story. As we close out Book 2, E. F. has reached his destination but Fleming has discovered love, and she’s forty miles away.

Another that, unless you read this novel, you’ll miss and I don’t want that:

Fleming cranked down the window and the warm day rolled in, the smell of the fields, the distant woods. (pg. 112)

(Note: Faster reading and heavier postings are not related to Judith Martin’s unkind comments on my reviews, but rather because the novel is really good)

There are many similarities between Gay and McCarthy in writing style, but there are some in the building of characters and the characters themselves.

The young Fleming reminds me of Suttree; there is a quiet acceptance, a loneness, a self sufficiency and quiet intelligence about these men.  Fleming, soon after his father, Boyd, takes off to find his wife, goes out into the woods and because of hunger and exhaustion, comes close to Suttree’s own venture into the wilds to find himself. Or to escape, or to return to the comfort zone away from others that only raw nature offers them.

Like Suttree, Fleming appears to be the one stable and dependable force within the story, surrounded by a strange cast of characters that drift around him in all sorts of tension building episodes that interweave and grow tight like vines in attempts to ground them.

Unlike McCarthy, Gay tells us more about his characters and how they think and feel though still allowing us to judge their actions and interactions for ourselves. 

Gay is quite skillful in setting up his story and giving us plenty of sideplots that are self-standing and yet nicely interwoven by the characters.  For example, Brady Bloodworth, Fleming’s uncle and Boyd’s brother, supposedly claims certain powers of foresight and abilities to cast hexes on people.  Brady appears to successfully sicken the mailman who’s run over his dog. Fleming tells his friend Junior Albright about his uncle and Albright, whom Gay has already endowed with a serious problem as a result of a rather hilarious scenario, does ask Brady to help him.  But there is something that Gay has given us as a detail earlier in the book that we delightedly pick up on when the spell is about to be cast.

Love it.

I’ve been reading William Gay’s novel Provinces of Night and as is my
habit lately, I’ve been reading not only for story, themes, imagery,
language, etc., but I found myself following the trails of the
characters as I would in a hypertext piece.  There are three
generations of men: the grandfather, old and ill and wanting to come
home to the wife and three sons he abandoned twenty years ago; his son
Boyd, determined to find the wife who has left him; and Boyd’s son,
Fleming, abandoned by his mother and then his father as he takes off
after her.

There are layers of time here that and place that intersect as those who have left drift in and out of the minds and thus the place of the story. Characters become alive and real and float away. Fleming, a young man whose interest in reading and writing is likely borne of being deserted, has his first sexual experience and even this turns out to be with a woman who leaves him.  Fleming has become independent and makes his own roads.  Here, at the end of Book 1, we find a metaphor of his life:

He sat for a time and rested.  He was uncertain as to which way to go.  If he bore left he would wind up at his grandmother’s.  Straight ahead followed the spine of the ridge to his home.  There was something mystic about crossroads, they doubled the options, confused both pursuer and pursued.  He didn’t know which he was, and after a while he made a pillow of the magazines and slept this night at the crossroads.  (p. 73)

While it may seem contradictory to say that he has self confidence even as the above states his uncertainty, it is the fact that his decision is to spend the night at the crossroads, feeling secure enough to sleep at what is usually considered a metaphor for great changes.

Just had to share this one:

He went on.  When he reached the crossroads the moon was well up and the intersecting roads lay dusted with silver until they faded into the velvet trees.  (p. 73)

Gay gives us texture in shades of grey, sparkling and soft.  It also, without saying it, describes a place one would think of as silent, a magical place.

And I’m going back to this one I can’t get out of my head:

The wind was at the trees like something alive and faint light quaked and died, flared and diminished far to the west and he held his breath waiting for the thunder.  It finally came, so faint it was like a dream of thunder, a hoarse incoherent whisper, just a madman mumbling to himself in the eaves of the world.  (p. 26)

It’s personification of nature, and Gay is not afraid to call the wind "alive" right off the bat.  He builds the image with the pulsing lightning, softens it with the words "dream" and  "hoarse" as if the wind would be a gentle thing and harmless.  Then he gives us  the kicker, "just a madman mumbling to himself in the eaves of the world." 

There is a feeling you get from this novel that is similar to reading poetry.  You find yourself enjoying the language, the flow of words that feel handpicked, thought about carefully before he felt them the perfect way to tell his story.

More about the story later.

I know I’ve been slow with this novel, but reading Gay is often like reading McCarthy, or poetry:

They laid aside their tools when all the sun there was was a fierce chromatic rose flaring behind the thunderhead and by the time they reached the roadbed night was seeping down out of the trees and nighthawks came slant out of the mauve dusk like flung stones. (p. 23)

It’s all beautifully put, and I particularly like "nighthawks came slant out of the mauve dusk…"  It’s a picture, it’s got color and movement.  The use of "slant" is particularly useful here to establish what we all would simply have called the overused "swoop."

But the next sentence is where once again I see a repetition that’s not needed (in my mind) for reinforcement:

When they reached the house full dark had fallen and the house was cold and dark and enigmatic like some house abandoned, like some house where no one lived at all.

The double use of "dark" is too obvious, and the "abandoned" is the same way of saying "where no one lived at all."  I think we’ve already gotten the image from previous reading that the two men who live here have a heavy sense of loss since the wife/mother has, well, abandoned them.  I love imagery in novels, but when I become too aware of it, when it seems to scream out rather than add another facet, it’s like someone trying to make a point by speaking the same thing louder rather than offering it in a clearer way.

Finally got back into reading after a busy couple of weeks and while I do love Gay’s story and writing style, I’m wondering if this is just a tad overdone:

He fell silent, watching her.  He didn’t want to tell her that what she did for a living was part of the problem.  Cora worked in a hospital in Little Rock, in the wing where patients were sent to die.  It was Cora’s job to help them, and he guessed she was good at it, they all died, but he didn’t want any help from a professional.  An aura of death hung about her like a plague.  The smell of dying folks had soaked into her clothes, her lungs were saturated from breathing the last breaths of too many men, when she got up to cross the floor the unquiet dead she’d helped ferry across the Styx struggled up and followed obediently after her.  She moved always encumbered by a legion of the invisible dead. (p. 19)

There are five phrases emphasizing that (he felt that) Cora carried the dead she helped around with her. It’s as if Gay couldn’t decide which description the most eloquent and couldn’t pare them down further than these five.  There’s also the almost cliche’d use of "across the Styx" that maybe he liked too much to drop as it is simply another way of saying "dying."

Okay, so size and weight of the book selection had something to do with it since it’s a take-along on a brief trip, but I’ve been wanting to read a novel by William Gay since I read one of his short stories in the creative writing class last semester.  Read a couple pages to make sure I could get into it, and this, from the Prologue, hooked me in:

What the hell is that, the superintendent said.

In the splintered glass of this transparent crypt lay diminutive human bones of a marvelous delicacy.  Bones fragile and fluted as a bird’s, tiny skull with eyeholes black and blind, thin as paper, brittle as parchment.  Scattered as if cast in a necromancer’s divination, as if there might be pattern to them, order.

It looks ike there was somebody in there, Risner said lamely.