True Grit (1968) by Charles Portis

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

True Grit (1968)

by Charles Portis

Yell County, Arkansas

Arkansas: 1/8

   Arkansas has to be one of the least literary of the United States of America. True Grit is the only title out of the eight from this state I'd ever heard of before the 1,001 Novels project.  I listened to an Audiobook edition narrated by Donna Tartt, of all people.  As she explains in the afterword, True Grit is one of her favorite books, so she leapt at the chance to be the voice of Mattie Ross, the diminutive narrator and protagonist of the revenge tale best known for the movie version with John Wayne as US Marshall Rooster Cogburn.   Tartt wrote an interesting afterword where she speculates on why such a classic novel (I agree) is hardly read anymore- she places the blame at the feet of the John Wayne starring movie (there was a more recent version with Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross) for being a successful dumbing-down of the plot of the book. 

  True Grit was a real discovery for me- I raced through the Audiobook.  I thought Mattie Ross was a delightful character, and Donna Tartt fairly amazed me with her voicing of the text.  Surely the best novel from Arkansas in the 1,001 Novels project.

Weeds (1923) by Edith Summers Kelley

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Weeds (1923) 

by Edith Summers Kelley

Scott County, Kentucky

Kentucky: 6/16

    Author Edith Summers Kelley is the attraction here.  She was a Greenwich village hipster and was engaged to Upton Sinclair for a couple years.  Ended up marrying his roommate, that marriage fell apart, then she married another artist, they moved to Kentucky and cosplayed/larped as tobacco farmers for a few years.  They then relocated to the Imperial Valley desert outside of San Diego- one of my favorite places, where she wrote a second novel about pioneering out in the Imperial Valley.  The second novel was never published, the first fell out of print and was later rediscovered and republished, which also led to her other novel being republished.  Kelley ended up in San Diego- the postscript of the edition I read had an interview with her.

  In that sense, Weeds is just about as inauthentic as a book could be, but the fact that it was published in 1923 excuses the inauthencity, as does the proto feminist POV.   A theme I've noticed from the older novels in Kentucky is an attention to dialect that seems almost Joycean.  I'm almost distracted by the linguistic questions that "Hillbilly" raises.  These days, people recognize that the way people speak in the western Appalachians is not a degraded version of the King's English but its own dialect that is closer to the English of the colonial era than any other remaining.  Thus, a novel set in 1920's Kentucky can put us closer to the 18th century then a 19th century novel set in New England or New York. 

Finn (2007) by John Clinch

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Finn (2007)

by John Clinch

100 Center St, Hannibal, Missouri

Missouri: 8/11

    I was surprised that Jim, by Percival Everett wasn't included in this chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  I suppose Jim wasn't published until after editor had made her picks, but it is hard to imagine a world where the audience is better served by this book, a full-ass novel about Huckleberry Finn's disolute father.  As told by Clinch, Finn is the neer do well son of the local Judge, called "The Judge" from whom he inherits a virulent racism and little else.  Finn the elder is a knock-down, drag-out alcoholic, and the entire book is punctuated by his physical need to get drunk every single day of his life.  In this telling, Finn is of mixed-race, his Mother being a run-away slave that Finn the elder "rescues" after her father is caught in the attempt to hijack a paddleboat to freedom in Illinois.  The virulent racism of The Judge is notable, even after my sweep through the deep south of Alabama and Mississippi- it's long been observed that the worst racists are people who don't have many interactions with black people, and the Judge fits that description- he is known in the book for being alone in having a white servant family instead of black slaves. 

  Finn the elder can fairly be described as a horrific monster, based on his behavior in the book. I was surprised when I listened to an author interview that ran after the Audiobook, when Clinch said that readers he talked to found themselves rooting for Finn despite his notable flaws.  Not me.

River of Earth (1940) by James Still

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

River of Earth (1940)

by James Still

Knott County, Kentucky

Kentucky: 5/16

   I don't think there has been a single work of art talking about the benefits of working in a coal mine. Similar to the art surrounding factory work, contemporary readers might wonder how places like coal mines and nineteenth century factories found anyone to work at all.  The truth is that work that now has a terrible reputation represented an upgrade for most people, like the seasonal coal miners in this book, who work in the coal mine when its open and tend to their hardscrabble family patches when it is not. 

  Something I've noticed is that precious few works of art dealing with this subject actually take place INSIDE the mine or factory, rather what you get is the impact the work has on the workers and their families outside the work environment.  I'd be more interested to read a novel about what it is like to work in a coal mine then what the experience is like seeing one's dad work in the mine, which is the situation here.

  I give extra points for any book in the 1,001 Novels project that is published before 1970, but other than the dialect, I wasn't a huge fan of River of Earth.

Somebody Else’s Mama (1995) by David Haynes

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Somebody Else’s Mama (1995)

 by David Haynes 

River Ridge, Missouri

Missouri: 7/11

  The closest geographical neighbor to Somebody Else's Mama is Winters Bone, but tonally the books couldn't be set farther apart. Somebody Else's Mama is set in River Ridge, Missouri, an all-black town near the Mississippi River.  This is a multi-generatonal family saga with a husband/wife/2 teen sons set up reflecting the present and past relationships with their mother's.  Specifically, the plot centers around the wife taking in the mother of the husband, moving her from St. Paul, Minneapolis, to this town in Missouri, where her husband was the longtime mayor and himself the son of an almost unbelievable founder figure who owns most of what counts in the town.  So soon after reading The Warmth of Other Sons I found myself wishing for more information about this founding grandfather, but alas, most of what we get is the wife complaining about their life together.   

  The wife of her husband has her own interesting story- the only daughter of a wealthy St. Louis area insurance agent and his widowed wife.  Their complicated relationship in the past is contrasted wit the complicated "sandwich generation" dynamics of the present.  I do find that the plight of the upper-class American housewife strikes similar notes regardless of the era and ethnicity of the housewife in question. 

The Weight of Blood (2014) by Laura McHugh

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Weight of Blood (2014)

by Laura McHugh

Henbane, Missouri

Missouri: 6/11

  It is hard for me to read Ozark set noir without thinking about the Netflix drama, Ozark, with Jason Bateman.  There is a strong connection between Ozark noir and Appalachia noir: characters who live in or around a "holler."   Few non-white people of ANY kind in evidence. Generally speaking, a world where the lives of people, particularly children are cheap. The Weight of Blood ticks all those boxes, with a story about an attractive Iowa orphan who "ages out' of the foster system and unwittingly signs a labor contract with a man who is going to turn her into a prostitute.  She thwarts his scheme by marrying his brother.  They have a child, who is the central protagonist, interspersed with flashback chapters from the POV of the Mom (now gone) and the two brothers, as well. 

  I think the plot is meant to be a thriller in terms of finding out what actually happened to the Mom of the protagonist and solving the gruesome murder of a local wayward teen.  Normally I'd take a shot along the lines of these characters are uninteresting because they don't do anything or go anywhere, but that is not quite the case here- probably because the central mother/daughter pair are outsiders (half outsider) and the two brothers are well off and reasonably sophisticated about the world.

Corregidora (1975) by Gayl Jones

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Corregidora (1975) 

by Gayl Jones

Lexington, Kentucky

Kentucky: 4/16

     Gayl Jones was a Toni Morrison protege in the 1970's who disappeared for over 20 years before recently returning with new work. Corregidora was her fiery debut, about a Lexington, Kentucky jazz singer with a tangled personal history (slave owning great-grandfather who fathered her great grandmother AND grandmother.  Written decades before the phrase "intergenerational trauma" became common, Corregidora is nothing but an expression of the theme. Surely the best book in the Kentucky chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America- arguably a classic of 1970's American lit.   Something I've noticed is that precious few works of art dealing with this subject actually take place INSIDE the mine or factory, rather what you get is the impact the work has on the workers and their families outside the work environment.  I'd be more interested to read a novel about what it is like to work in a coal mine then what the experience is like seeing one's dad work in the mine, which is the situation here.

Earth 7 (2026) by Deb Olin Unferth

 Audiobook Review

Earth 7 (2026)

by Deb Olin Unferth

Daunt Publishing

  The idea of "book-tok" is not something I take seriously, probably because it favors genres like Romantasy.  The major exception to this stance is the phenomenon of Jacquelline Harpman, the Belgian author who struck Tik Tok gold a couple years back with the English language translation of I Who Have Never Known Men (1995).  I had that book recommended to me by a random woman at a dog friendly cafe in Eagle Rock, but when I searched up the title, it seemed clear I would like that book, and I did. Earth 7, which is published by Daunt Publishing, seems to mine that same literary territory: minimalist science fiction and strong feminist themes with an end of the world vibe. 

  The protagonist of Earth 7 is the lonely daughter of a single mom who happens to be a gifted scientist/programmer, working in the aftermath of "Depop" which is pretty much how it sounds- the causes being many and varied.  Dylan Stein is her name, and she is raised by her mom inside a living habitat at the bottom of the ocean.  Originally planned as a community, Dylan's mom ends up being the last hold out, which leaves Dylan, naturally, dreaming of escape.  Unferth works with a light touch as far as the genre stuff goes- there are no chapters of exposition where recent history is explained by a thoughtful professor or authority figure.   Rather, Earth 7 more or less resembles a bildungsroman as Dylan escapes her undersea mom prison for life on the dry n' dusty surface, where she works for an obscure corporation plodding forward in the wasteland. 

  Eventually she falls in love, with another woman, of course and that sets in motion the rest of the book- Dylan and her love living in obscurity in the desert until death do us part.  Stuff happens, but it is low impact plot and mostly what the reader is left with is atmosphere of the dying Earth. 

Lost World (2026)by Patrick Wyman

 Audiobook Review

Lost World (2026)

by Patrick Wyman

  I love the subject of "pre-history" or the history of pre or semi-literate peoples.  The frontiers of linguistic history have been joined with incredible advances in DNA science and LIDAR ground-scanning technology to produce a new knowledge about complex cultures in pre-history outside of those who developed writing.  Wyman has a podcast, but he is well versed on his linguistics.  I'm not as sure of his grasp of the underlying science of dna and human genetics- a historical pitfall for linguistics trying to stretch historical identity back into non-historical times.  But there is no denying that DNA is a big improvement over 20th century nonsense about "blood" and "race," neither of which exist as they relate to identifying human cohorts.

  Wyman does an excellent job traversing the recent work in these various fields and harnessing them to a narrative that roughly tracks the theoretical outline of scholar James C. Scott and his successors like David Graeber, i.e. not taking for granted that the concept that we know as "civilization" through Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Mediterranean somehow represents the ONLY way for humans to organize complex society.  As recently as a decade ago this was mostly speculation, but the confluence of DNA science and LIDAR archeology has really pushed back the frontiers of knowledge in non-western places like Bronze age Ireland, the Amazon, the Andes, China, etc.  Even if we don't know what DNA specifically represents, we can use it to track the kinship of people we find in archeological settings.  

  Lost World is at its least interesting when it gets into the familiar proto-indo-european game- although it's clear that genetic evidence has borne out the truth of the traditional thesis of horse writing redheads who came and conquered Europe, especially in the north and west.  More interesting to me was the less familiar material- firming up the Anatolian Farmers vs. the European Hunter-Gatherer groups and showing how they persist in modern DNA despite the loss of their culture.    His description of the expansion of the Malay-Austronesian language group from a small patch of land in present day Taiwan to a present geographic territory encompassing everywhere from Malaysia to Hawaii is a welcome counterpart to the western intensive PIE hypothesis. 

  I also thought the archeological evidence was interesting- here he mostly discusses recent discoveries in modern day Turkey and Ireland, making the case that pre-bronze age Earthworks (think Stonehenge) were not a product of elites and enslaved a la the Egyptian pyramids but rather a more cooperative, voluntary endeavor. 

All the Living(2009) by CE Morgan

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

All the Living (2009)
by CE Morgan

Berea, Kentucky

Kentucky: 3/16

   Like Strangers Here Below, All the Living is set in Berea, Kentucky.  Birds of Opulence, the first book in the Kentucky chapter, is also set nearby. I gather from all three books that this whole swath of Kentucky was settled from the north, and settled late, and settled without a landed class of plantation owners, which allowed for alternative ways of life: Interracial schools, communities of free African American.  Here, we have a young man who inherits his family tobacco farm and then moves in to his family home with a local girl he meets at an orphanage.  They live together "in sin" which is surely unusual but the farm they live on is so isolated that literally no one knows.  She finds work as a pianist at the local church- piano being her only skill (something she reflects upon frequently.)  All the Living is another example of the "Go Nowhere, Do Nothing" novel which becomes about the place where it is located because that is the only setting.  Great for the purpose of the project, but these protagonists, white, black, young, old- blend together over time in terms of the limits of their insights about the human condition.