Gone With the Wind(1936) by Margaret Mitchell

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Gone With the Wind (1936)

by Margaret Mitchell

Clayton County, Georgia

Georgia: 15/26

  I read Gone With the Wind back in 2015. I considered listening to an Audiobook version but decided against it. 

Published 1/30/15
Gone with the Wind (1936)
by Margaret Mitchell

   Gone with the Wind is a brick, first of all.  The hard back version I checked out from the San Diego Public Library was full 8.5 x 11 dimensions and close to a thousand pages.  A thousand pages! Gone with the Wind is both a top ten novel and film in terms of popularity for those art forms. Gone with the Wind was the first and only novel that Margaret Mitchell wrote. In 2015, more people are familiar with the 1939 film but the book has sold 30 million copies.  It's the second most popular novel behind the Bible with American audiences.

  Make no mistake- Gone with the Wind is racist as HELL.  It is UNBELIEVABLE how virulently racist Gone with the Wind is.  Annnddd.... even though Gone with the Wind is written about the 19th century, it was published in 1936 and everyone LOVED it.  I don't know that GwtW is defensible in the way that Uncle Tom's Cabin- a book written during the 19th century by an ardent abolitionist.

  In terms of literary antecedents, Scarlett O'Hara most resembles Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair.  The amount of literary merit one accords to GwtW is likely to tie closely to ones opinion about the literary merit of Vanity Fair.  If you haven't read Vanity Fair, you should probably read that book before you read this book.

Silver Sparrow (2011) by Tayari Jones

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Silver Sparrow (2011)

by Tayari Jones

Atlanta, Georgia

Georgia: 14/26

  Tayari Jones had a breakout hit in 2018 with her novel, An American Marriage, which was an Oprah's book club selection, a sales hit and a literary prize award winner.  I read it when it was released- a good example of a book that I would only read based on the attention of people like Oprah and the Prize Committee's, i.e. not a subject matter (race based injustice in the criminal justice system in the south) that I would seek out given my day job as a criminal defense attorney.   But I did read it, and I thought it was a well-written book.   Susan Straight, editor of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America did not select An American Marriage to represent Jones, but rather picked her third novel, Silver Sparrow, about the experience of two children growing up with a bigamist father.  

   I know Jones is a good writer, so I wasn't dreading Silver Sparrow the way I might have been, in light of the number of novels in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project that stick to the viewpoint of pre-adolsecent children who are stuck in a shitty living situation and never go anywhere or do anything while getting abused by their family members.  No one gets physically or sexually abused here, but the psychic scars of both families are front and center.  

   Like many of the novels that deal exclusively with family issues, I was left wondering why people bother with having kids and relationships if it is just going to bring them misery.  I know the answer: because every human being thinks things will work out for THEM.  Here, the Mom of the side family is particularly vexing as she copes with a situation that she walked into with eyes wide open.   Girl, I wanted to scream, don't do it.  

Appalache Red (1978) by Raymond Andrews

 1,001 Novels:  A Library of America

Appalache Red (1978) 

by Raymond Andrews

Muskhogean County, Georgia

Georgia (13/26)

     This is the half-way point for the Georgia chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  Currently I'm reading around the south of Georgia.  Muskhogean county is closer to Tallahassee, Florida than Atlanta by hundreds of miles.   This southern part of Georgia contains peach and pecan trees and swamps as well.  I enjoyed Appalache Red, the first of a four-part series about the goings-on in this part of Georgia.  It's more about the town than the eponymous Red, a Caucasian looking, African-American Entrepeneur who manages to turn a humble black-owned diner into a sprawling sin-embracing bar and casino.   I like the novels from the south that don't sugar-coat the cruelty and violence of this part of the world, and Red fits that bill, with plenty of rough talk and triggering behavior that probably explains why this book, and the author, are mostly forgotten today.  It even says that it won an award: The James Baldwin Prize, that the internet says doesn't even exist.

Unworthy Republic (2020) by Claudio Saunt

Audiobook Review

Unworthy Republic: 

The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory (2020)

by Claudio Saunt

        Unworthy Republic is a 2020 Bancroft Prize (US history) winner about the removal of Native American tribes from the Eastern half of the United States.   It is a sad, sordid history, not simply limited to the more-or-less well known "Trail of Tears" but including similar removals from the old Northwest (today's Ohio/Wisconsin/Michigan) and Florida.  

        In law school I learned about the legal back and forth- tribes desperately seeking relief from the Congress and the United States Supreme Court over a period of decades with limited/no success.  I know about the result- the presence of dozens of tribes in the eastern half of Oklahoma who had no historical ties to the area.  What I learned from this book were the voices of those involved- the leaders of civilized tribes who thought the Federal government would protect them.  The bureaucrats and adventurers who were tasked with implementing the removal.  The state authorities in places like Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and Florida, who come off the worst of the bunch and the voices of Americans from outside the South and old Northwest, who often stood in opposition to these policies.

    What strikes me most about the events in Unworthy Republic is the blood-thirstyness of the local population in places like Georgia, where fear mongering and simple greed let to the greatest atrocities- a clear-cut case of ethnic cleansing if not genocide.  It's also hard not to link the events of Unworthy Republic with the large trends in American democracy during the same period, namely the rise of Andrew Jackson and enfranchisement of non-property holding Americans, making the dispossession of Native groups an attractive prospect for poor white Americans.

Hell at the Breech (2003) by Tom Franklin

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Hell at the Breech (2003)

by Tom Franklin

Mitcham Beat, Alabama

Alabama: 1/18

    I'd probably put Alabama on a list of Ten Least Interesting states, but maybe this experience will change my mind.  So far, I'd put Rhode Island and Delaware on that same list.   I had to stumble into the Alabama chapter because there are so few Audiobooks (that aren't sad POV's/coming of age books about poor women) in this chapter.  Hell at the Breech drew comparisons to Elmore Leonard, though I personally saw kinship with Cormac McCarthy's books from before he left Tennessee for the desert Southwest.  Hell at the Breech is a rare book on from this part of the country that doesn't feature any African American characters, this being a part of the country where African Americans were forced out after the Civil War.  Instead, the dynamic is poor white country-folk vs. wealthy town-folk, as illustrated by the eponymous gang of country "Night Riders," who go by Hell at the Breech. 

   The plot revolves not around violence against local African Americans (who apparently do not exist in this part of Alabama at the time of the novel, the 1890's) but rather traces a conflict between a local sharecropper turned general store owner and his animus against the town folk, as represented by the local Sheriff and his cousin, the Judge.   The major protagonists are Mack Burke, an orphan boy who works at the store of the magnificently named Tooch Bledsoe, leader of Hell at the Breech, and the sheriff, Billy Waite.

   Hell at the Breech was certainly a win for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  I'm surprised no one made it into a movie.

Jubilee (1966) by Margaret Walker

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Jubilee (1966) 

by Margaret Walker

Lee County, Georgia

Georgia: 12/26

  Almost half-way through Georgia, and it has been a bit of a slog.   This is the last Audiobook- it's all reading hard copies of books without Audio options, YA titles and coming-of-age books from here on out.  Jubilee is sure to end up in my top five for this state simply because it wasn't written in the past decade from the perspective of an adolescent. Vyry is the iconic protagonist and frequent narrator, she is born a slave, and lives through the Civil War and aftermath as she tries to forge a destiny as a newly emancipated woman.  I thought the Ante-Bellum chapters were particularly interesting, and by that I mean "savage" because I simply can't get over the cruelty of the ante-bellum slavery system.  Of course, all American slavery was an abomination, but there were better or worse situation, and the late-period, plantation based cotton growing economy of the deep south was the worst of them all.

   The chapters on reconstruction are also interesting, giving the account of a newly freed African American family of some means, relatively speaking, and their struggle to simply exist in a world where they were surrounded by white supremacy. 

The Return (2016) by Hisham Matar

 100 Best Books of the 21st Century: New York Times

The Return (2016)

by Hisham Matar

#89

  Exploring the non-fiction selections on the New York Times recent 100 Best Books of the 21st Century has been a real pleasure and a good break from fiction.  The fiction portion, on the other hand, fills me with a vague dread mostly because the titles I haven't read on that part of the list represent conscious decisions rather than a lack of familiarity.   It's almost all domestic fiction and there is just only so much of that I can take in a given time period, which is currently filled by the prevalence of the same genre on the 1,001 Novels: A Library fo America list.   It took me awhile to make it to The Return, the non-fiction work by novelist Matar about his decades long quest to obtain closure regarding the whereabouts of his Dad, who was kidnapped out of Egypt by the Quaddaffi regime and held for years at a nightmarish Libyan prison.

  This is the only non-fiction title on the 100 Best Books List to not have an Audiobook edition available via the library app so I read the hard copy on my Kindle.   The Return is both a coming-of-age book about the author, a family biography and a history for a place- Libya- that is poorly documented.  For example, this book was the first I'd heard of the Italo-Turkic war between the Italians and the Ottoman Turks before World War I.  It's important to Libya because it marks the beginning of the Italian colonial period.   Matar keeps the book moving along- 272 pages is sufficient to tell a story that could have been at least three separate books.  Not surprising that it was a Pulitzer Prize winner after it was released.

The Möbius Book (2025) by Catherine Lacey

 Audiobook Review

The Möbius Book (2025)

 by Catherine Lacey

  I loved The Biography of X, Catherine Lacey's 2023 combination of alternate history, downtown New York art scene report and LGBT character study.  I listened to the Audiobook, then had someone track down a hard copy in New York at a time when I couldn't find a copy here in LA, then read the hardcover, then told everyone that I loved it.  It wasn't quite enough to get me into her back catalog, but it was enough for me to check out her new work, The Möbius Book, which is billed as a combination memoir/fiction with a typographical stunt where the nonfiction is written in one direction, and then the fiction is written in the opposite direction.  Honestly, I would have bought a copy on my recent travels, but I couldn't find it anywhere.  Instead, I checked out the Audiobook from library.   Apologies to authorial intent.  

  It occurred to me, as it did to the reviewer in the New York Times, that Lacey might be playing a trick on the reader, as she is wont to do.  The Times wasn't the only review to make that point- a quick internet search revealed a feature from The Observer published in June which named her ex-husband, author Jesse Ball.  The memoir portion calls Ball "The Reason" and depicts a number of behaviors which, objectively speaking, border on the abusive.   I'm not talking in any criminal sense- the worst it gets is Ball/The Reason breaking things near the body of Lacey but it is disturbing stuff.   The fictional portion also deals with a woman, Edie, struggling with the end of a relationship, and her friend also dealing with the end of her lesbian marriage.  It all sounds pretty mundane, but Lacey is bonafide interesting author and I enjoyed the topic in spite of myself because of the wit and insightfulness Lacey brings to the table.  I think it is time to get into the back catalog.

 Also Happy Booker Longlist day!!!

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971) by Ernest J. Gaines

 1,001 Novels:  A Library of America

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971) 

by Ernest J. Gaines 

Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana 

Louisiana: 4/28

  It's true my progress on the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America has stalled out on two fronts- Pennsylvania, where Philly and the suburbs broke my heart with banality, and the deep south, where a lack of Audiobook options has sent me clambering back and forth between Georgia and Louisiana.  Compounding the situation is a general lack of interest in some of editor Susan Straight's favorite genres: sad coming-of-age stories and domestic fiction, generally.  Both genre's make a good fit for the criteria of the project, which seemingly dictates that a specific work be tied to a specific place- neither neglected/abused children in poverty nor housewives facing the same challenges go many places.   By the standards of the 1,001 Novels:  A Library of America, Miss Jane Pittman, the subject and narrator of her Autobiography, is well travelled.  Originally published in 1971, the Audiobook wasn't created for 25 years.  It was also hard not to think about the success of The Oldest Confederate Widow Tells All, which was published in 1989.  Surely Allan Gurganus, the author of The Oldest Confederate Widow Tells All was aware of this book when he wrote his book.

  The idea here is that Miss Jane Pittman lives a life that spans slavery to Civil War, born a slave, ending by marching for her rights in rural Louisiana.  In between, she lives a relatively privileged life, emerging out of the chaos of the Civil War to marry, survive her husband and settle down as a domestic servant who lives in the big house.  Along the way she sees plenty- mostly cruelty with some kindness sprinkled in.  Autobiography takes a hard right turn in the last third of the book to detail a doomed relationship between the white scion of the plantation and an "octoroon" schoolteacher from New Orleans before concluding during the Civil Rights era. 

  It makes for a great Audiobook because of the oral history format- Pittman recounting to an unseen scribe.

Seaweed Chronicles (2018) by Susan Hand Shetterly

 Book Review

Seaweed Chronicles (2018)

by Susan Hand Shetterly

  I bought this book at an independent bookstore in Castine, Maine, several years back on vacation and read it this year, also on vacation.  Seaweed Chronicles is a great example of what I call "New Yorker lit" or books that seem like a New Yorker feature extended to book length.  Here, the subject is seaweed, its uses and (potential) abuses, written from a variety of perspectives of people who live on the coast of Maine.   It starts out from the perspective one might expect: efforts by locals and multi-national corporations to harvest what might seem like a limitless resource.  Seaweed is a valuable commodity, though not a monolithic one, as I learned from Seaweed Chronicles there are several different types of seaweed, depending on where you are.