Tag Archives: Tennessee

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

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

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