Tag Archives: Pulitzer Prize

David Copperfield in Appalachia

What do Victorian London and 21st century Appalachia, during the height of the opioid crisis, have in common? Weird accents, obviously. Questionable fashion choices, no doubt. But according to Barbara Kingsolver, there’s much more, and she makes a convincing case in her 2023 Pulitzer winning novel, Demon Copperhead. There’s the complete disregard for people living in extreme poverty. There’s the refusal to acknowledge an economic system designed to keep them impoverished. And there’s the abandoned children who far outnumber the people capable of helping them. Those children are everywhere, and their circumstances are dire. Yet, somehow, this novel is about strength and resiliency. It has a heart and a funny bone – a rather small funny bone, but given the subject matter that also is an accomplishment.

The novel begins in the 1990s in Lee County, Virginia. If you go any further west, you’re in Kentucky or Tennessee. It’s the heart of Appalachia – remote, mountainous, and poor. Damon Fields was born between a coal camp and a settlement called Right Poor. His father died before he was born. It’s not an auspicious start, and it gets worse. His mother was an 18-years old single mom. She was also an addict, and a “kid born to the junkie is a junkie” as far as society is concerned.

When Damon’s red hair comes in, everyone calls him Demon Copperhead. This is a nod to the snake-handling Baptist preachers on his father’s side and to the copperhead snakes that infest the mountains. But Demon learns quickly the snakes that slither are far less dangerous than the snakes that walk. When his mother dies from an overdose, he is put in the cruel foster system where he is raised to be a “proud mule in a world that has scant use for mules.”

Eventually he is placed with an alcoholic high school football coach and his daughter, Angus, who perhaps is the person who cares most for him. Surprisingly Demon becomes a star high school football player. When he suffers a serious knee injury, the team doctor prescribes these little pain pills to “help” him. Within weeks Demon is addicted to opioids, like nearly every other child in Lee County. Angus wants to help, but “she is not in the business of throwing her life away so other people can stay shitfaced.”

Demon Copperhead is a thorough excoriation of how companies like Perdu Pharma cynically hooked nearly all of Appalachia on opioids – all while society looked the other way. Kingsolver sugarcoats nothing, and her portrayal of addiction’s ravages is searing. She won’t allow you to look the other way.

So the name Demon Copperhead reminds me a little of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. Is there any connection? Yes, but you get no points for that. In her acknowledgements, Kingsolver expresses gratitude to Charles Dickens for “writing David Copperfield, his impassioned critique of institutional poverty and its damaging effects on children in his society.” Aw, come on, I never get points for anything! OK. One pity point for you. Sweet.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

TRUST No One – Except Billionaires. You Can TRUST Them

For economic reasons, you should buy Hernan Diaz’s TRUST. It’s four stories for the price of one. For enjoyment reasons, you should also read it.

The novel, which won Diaz the 2023 Pulitzer Prize, asks one question: Who is Mildred Bevel? Four related stories offer answers, but Mildred is different in each. So which one do you trust?

Bonds, the first story, is written by Harold Vanner, a novelist who may have been a friend with benefits. But Vanner obfuscates, because Bonds is about Benjamin and Helen Rask – fictional characters based upon Andrew and Mildred Bevel. In Vanner’s account, Benjamin Rask is a brilliant, amoral Wall Street financier in the early 1900s, and Helen is a kind and generous arts patron who has serious psychological issues.

The second story, My Life, is dictated by Andrew Bevel. He wants to tell his story because a “vicious circle has taken hold of our able-bodied men: they increasingly rely on the government to alleviate the misery created by that same government, not realizing that this dependency only perpetuates their sorry state of affairs.” Mind you, this is during the Great Depression and Andrew is stupendously rich, but the only person he pities is himself. If you have confused him with Andy Rand, Ayn Rand’s dickhead brother, you are forgiven.

Andrew is also offended by Vanner’s portrait of Mildred (disguised as Helen). But mostly, Andrew is outraged by Vanner’s description of him (disguised as Benjamin). He wants to correct the record in an outrageously self-serving and mean-spirited way. To Andrew, Mildred is a saintly woman who dabbled in music and philanthropy. She is no master of the financial universe like him.

The third story is A Memoir, Remembered by Ida Partenza. Ida writes this in 1981 after the Bevels are dead. She’d been hired decades earlier by Andrew to transcribe his memoir (the rebuttal to Vanner) and improve upon it – a euphemism for make shit up.

She sees through Andrew’s self-aggrandizement and makes some informed judgments about Mildred. Her goal is to turn Mildred’s “tenuous ghost into a tangible human being”, but all she has to work with is Mildred’s mostly empty notebooks, Andrew’s self-absorbed account from 50 years earlier, and Vanner’s novel. To Ida, Mildred was a “thoughtful, disciplined philanthropist.”

Finally, in the last installment, Futures, we hear Mildred’s voice. She sees herself quite differently. It’s a refreshing perspective, but is it true?

TRUST succeeds on several levels. It’s absorbing historical fiction. It’s also a brutal examination of how immense wealth enables the super-rich and powerful to “align and distort” reality to their liking. In that sense, it’s not historical at all.

So, considering all the competing narratives, who was Mildred Bevel really? It all depends on who you trust. Me? I always trust the billionaires.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor