Tag Archives: Mountains

Myths of Self-Reliance – My Favorite Myths

In Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods, Barbara Van Laar, a thirteen-year old at summer camp in the lush Adirondacks, has gone missing. The most important rule at this remote camp is “When lost sit down and yell.” Barbara hasn’t done that, which is strange because her wealthy family owns the camp. She’s aware of the rule. Her family also owns the mansion overlooking the beautiful mountain lake next to the campgrounds. Barbara knows the area. She’s not lost.

This is also strange. Barbara’s brother, nicknamed Bear, went missing in the same area fourteen years earlier in the summer of 1961. He was only eight years old, and he was never found. Stranger still, Jacob Sluiter, whose ancestors previously owned the ancient woods surrounding the mansion and campgrounds, escaped from prison a few weeks before Barbara disappeared. He’s a notorious killer, convicted of murdering eleven people between 1960 and 1964. He was blamed for Bear’s disappearance. That’s a coincidence, I’m sure, because there are rumors that Barbara has a much older secret boyfriend, and she may have run off with him.

All of this means there’s some urgency to the search for her, and the state troopers are brought in to lead it. Judyta is a young woman in her mid-twenties, and she has just been promoted to investigator. She doesn’t have much experience looking for missing children, but she does know how to work within patriarchal systems. Since this is 1975, those skills serve her well, as the patriarchy is everywhere.

There’s much to like about this book. Moore does a nice job jumping between the timelines relating to each child’s disappearance. She’s devised an interesting plot with two engrossing mysteries. The exploration of female empowerment working within a suffocating patriarchy is effective and authentic. Moore isn’t afraid of irony or poking fun at patriarchal and capitalist mythology. The Van Laar’s Adirondack mansion is named Self-Reliance, but it was built by the local townsfolk, and time and again the Van Laars must rely on the locals for help.

While the book is an enjoyable read, it falls short of being great. Judyta is a distant, less compelling, cousin of The Silence of the Lambs‘ Clarice Starling. At times the prose is silly and clunky. “When one’s parents and grandparents have already quested and conquered, what is there for subsequent generations to do?” But the real problem is the ending. The mysteries are solved, but only one resolution is satisfactory. The other one is ludicrous. Throughout the story, Moore correctly shows how self-reliance is a hypocritical myth perpetuated by the patriarchy. However, she then takes self-reliance to absurd lengths to mythologize female empowerment.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Child of Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God is set in the mountains of eastern Tennessee around 1965. It opens with the county auctioning off Lester’s home. “Lester Ballard never could hold his head right after that.” Then he’s falsely accused of rape. After several days in jail, the sheriff determines Lester is not guilty (he’s certainly not innocent) of this particular crime and he’s set free.

You might think Lester is a little pissed off now, and you’d be right. But not to worry, Lester is a “child of god much like yourself perhaps.” And like you perhaps, Lester becomes unmoored, feral – though in fairness he was probably always feral. He starts collecting things: stuffed animals from the fair, women’s clothing, female corpses. You know, the standard stuff anyone would collect after losing everything.

So the sheriff gets involved again, but Lester has disappeared into the mountains. The sheriff represents what passes for civilization in this “dead and fabled waste.” This is obvious because he wears “pressed and tailored” chinos, and his name is Fate (no one ever accused Cormac McCarthy of light-heartedness or subtlety). So Fate is chasing Lester in a place the “good lord didn’t intend folks to live in.” Some things just don’t change in Cormac Land, and when the sheriff is asked if he thinks people are meaner now compared to the old days, he responds predictably. “I think people are the same from the day God first made one.”

Lester is a precursor to McCarthy’s Judge Holden in Blood Meridian and Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. He’s just not as compelling as those superbly nihilistic killers. These novels share other Cormac tropes too: wild and brutal landscapes, men comfortable with random acts of violence, and civilization fighting a losing battle against viciousness.

But back to Child of God. I hope this doesn’t come as a surprise, but people die. And when someone dies, we call it fate even though fate had nothing to do with it. So fate does eventually catch up with Lester, but Fate doesn’t.

What makes men like Lester Ballard, Judge Holden, and Anton Chigurh so vicious? Is it the inhospitable environment? Something inside them? The devil? I hope you aren’t so naive as to think Cormac McCarthy is going to answer that for you.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Fair and Tender Ladies

Lee Smith drops an astute warning at the start of her enthralling Oral History. And though its directed at the ladies, anyone aiming to “court” young men should listen up.

Come all you fair and tender ladies
Be careful how you court young men.
They're like a star in a summer's morning,
First appear and they're gone.

That sets the tone for a story “that’s truer than true, and nothing so true is so pretty. It’s blood on the moon.” Yikes! I’m not sure fair and tender ladies and gentlemen are ready for this.

Jennifer is a college student who was raised by her father. She hardly remembers her mother. She’s working on a project for her Oral History class, and her professor (who clearly has taken some non-academic interest in her) has encouraged her to interview her mother’s family. She may learn something about herself in the process. Cool.

But is it? Jennifer’s mother was a Cantrell, and she grew up in Appalachia. Geez, Gladiola, that’s a huge territory in the eastern United States. Could you be more specific? OK, fine. The Cantrells have lived for generations in the most remote part of southwestern Virginia – the pointy nose part that sticks into Tennessee and Kentucky.

Not everyone is glad Jennifer has shown up. Her grandmother in particular is frosty. Wow. Grandma doesn’t sound like a fair and tender lady. She’s not. Perhaps it’s because she has spent most of her life in the shadows of Hoot Owl Mountain. It might be the “prettiest holler on God’s green earth” but there’s something about it that makes a “body lose heart.” Maybe it’s because that witch cursed it.

And let’s not forget. Jennifer may be family, but she’s also a “foreigner” – a term that “does not necessarily refer to someone from another country or even from another state, but simply to anybody who was not born” in that area of the county.

In Oral History Lee Smith tells a rollicking tale of four generations of Cantrells. It’s full of music, moonshine, laughter, tragedy, desperation, ghosts, and violence. There is poverty, hard times, and true grit. It’s also honest and loving. Appalachia has been stereotyped and ridiculed ever since foreigners have been telling its stories. Smith doesn’t do that. She knows the region well and has affection for it, but she does not gloss over its tortured history. Her characters are flawed and sometimes wicked, but they’re human.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor