The Prophets (2021) by Robert Jones Jr.

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Prophets (2021)

 by Robert Jones Jr

1833 Haining Road, Vicksburg Mississippi

Mississippi: 13/18

Author Robert Jones Jr.

Published 2/22/21

The Prophets (2021)

by Robert Jones Jr.

  An early front runner for the National Book Award longlist, The Prophets is the debut novel by American author Robert Jones Jr., about a forbidden love affair between two slaves on a Mississippi plantation in the early 19th century.   And although the hook should be enough to pique the interest of most fans of American literary fiction, this book is by no means "just" a LGBT love story set in the antebellum south.  Jones ably blends different voices- the white children of the plantation owner, women slaves on the same plantation as well as voices from Africa- which expand the standard parameters of the American slave narrative across the ocean in time and space.

  Like Marlon James, Jones Jrs' take on the African American LGBT experience is physical and intense.  His two protagonists, Isaiah and Samuel, are nuanced figures, even as their actions become increasingly direct.  Jones deserves plaudits for his frank and direct depiction of the trauma inflicted on the enslaved by their so-called masters, reserving special spite for the "progressive" white children of the planation over class. 

   Although I shouldn't have to say this in 2021, The Prophets is not "just" for people interested in LGBT issues in literary fiction.  It is a broadly appealing work, and it packs a narrative punch that will make you glad you picked it up.

The Oxygen Man (1999) by Steven Yarbrough

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Oxygen Man (1999)

by Steven Yarbrough

Indianola, Mississippi

Mississippi: 12/18

   Indianola is in northwest Mississippi, what I imagine to be "catfish country," where cotton farmers converted their plantations to aquaculture in an attempt to adapt to changing times.  Within the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America, The Oxygen Man is interesting because it is a debut novel on a small press- besides academic imprints there are very few non-major press books in the 1,001 Novels project, which seems like a lost opportunity.  Yarbrough writes in modernist style with the narrative skipping between time periods, for the benefit of the audience the years are added in between segments.  The main protagonists are a brother-sister duo of what can only be described as a white-trash family- Dad is an itinerant commercial painter, Mom is the town whore.   As a pair they have penchant for big fights followed by lusty make-up sex, and they are not afraid to do either in public, to the chagrin of their minor children.

  Unsurprisingly, this behavior impacts the children's lives and attitudes, with the fulcrum of the story hinging on a semi-public sexual encounter between the sister, witnessed by the brother and his friend.

Little Altars Everywhere (1992) by Rebecca Wells

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Little Altars Everywhere (1992)

by Rebecca Wells

Thornton, Louisiana

Louisiana: 20/28

   Wells is best known for her viral phenomenon, The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, which is the publishing industry equivalent of the late-blooming chart success of Appetite for Destruction by Guns n' Roses.  Both rose to number one on their respective industry charts over a year after publication.  This success drew the attention of Malcolm Gladwell in HIS best-seller, Tipping Point, where he explored the word of mouth that made Ya Ya such a hit.   The website for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America mistakenly lists the publication date as 2009, no idea where they got 2009 from, and not the first or second time they've listed the wrong publishing year for a mapped title.

   I'm not sure it was because of my utter disinterest in the book or actual issues with the writing, but Little Altars Everywhere felt more like a knitted together cluster of short stories.  It's a fine, well-travelled literary tradition though I don't think Wells was getting stuff published in the New Yorker before Little Altars Everywhere was released.  I would place Wells' bibliography squarely within the "chick-lit" genre- 1992 was the year the phrase was coined, in reference to Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale.  Altars fits into that broad category although it's also obvious to an almost painful degree the literary debt Altars owes to its southern literary forebears.    Maybe it's just the early Eudora Welty stories I started reading after this book that put me in mind of this, but it always seems like there is pressure on writers from the deep south to add some element of freakishness, either race based or otherwise, that sets the action apart from what you commonly see in other parts of the country.

  Here, there is a plot line- in a light comic novel mind you- about mother son incest that would be eyebrow raising even a much more seriously regarded work of fiction.

The Feast of All Saints (1979) by Anne Rice

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Feast of All Saints (1979)

by Anne Rice

New Orleans, Louisiana

Louisiana: 19/28

  Like Stephen King, Anne Rice hit career gold with her first published novel, Interview with the Vampire (1976) but there was an eight year gap between it and The Vampire Lestat, the first of 12(!) sequels that I didn't realize were published as late as 2018.   I imagine in the period between 1976 and 1985 Rice was trying to not be pigeonholed as a one trick pony, failed, and then spent the rest of her light pooping out crap to pay for her San Francisco mansion.  The Feast of All Saints reads like Interview but with the free people of color at the center instead of Vampires.  Like the Grandissimes, Rice is writing this book from the perspective of someone who is not herself related to any free people of color.  Her plot is confusing and hard to follow, with at least a half dozen major characters and dozens of minor characters spread out over several interrelated clans. 

  Marcel, the child of a French trader and rescued Haitian woman, yearns to leave New Orleans for the fairer environs of Paris, which lacks the entrenched racism of the nascent American order.  He falls under the spell of Christophe, a writer who has returned to New Orleans after finding literary success abroad. Each male protagonist is surrounded by a suite of females: mothers and sisters, while a ring of predatory white men rings each female character. African American men appear only as slaves.   Like all of the novels set in early 19th century New Orleans, it is impossible to ignore how deadly a place it was before medicine got a grip on yellow fever and malaria.  People died every year in the hundreds.  It was brutal.

Nonesuch (2026) by Francis Spufford

 Audiobook Review

Nonesuch (2026)

by Francis Spufford

    I really enjoyed English author Francis Spufford's last book, Cahokia Jazz, an alt-history work of detective fiction where Native Americans survived and evolved in parallel with Euro-Americans in the Midwest.  I really, really loved the alt-history part of Cahokia Jazz whereas the actual story was a pretty straightforward take on detective fiction.  Here, my preferences swung in the other direction, I wasn't wowed by the scenario, but I found the actual plot and characters interesting.   In Nonesuch, Spufford has moved back to the UK, where he finds his protagonist, Iris Hawkins, staring down the barrel of World War II.  Hawkins is a self-described "Suburban Slut," and a second generation "City" girl, where she works for a stockbroker of the Jewish persuasion and dreams of achieving financial success as a female stockbroker (literally illegal in that time and place.)   

    One night she ditches her date and finds herself at an avant-garde film party where one-reel art films are played over phonographic records.   There, she meets her romantic interest, Geoff, a technician in the nascent television department of the BBC as well as her nemesis, Lady LaLage Cunningham, a British Aristo Fascist.   The plot involves the occult, and an attempt by the British Fascist movement to travel back in time and prevent England from coming into the war against the Nazi's.   Along the way she learns about her feelings and has a decent amount of lit fic sex- Spufford must have been keeping tabs on the romantasy trend, because there was exactly zero sex in Cahokia Jazz.

The Grandissimes: A Story of Creole Life(1880) by George Washington Cable

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Grandissimes: A Story of Creole Life (1880)

 by George Washington Cable 

New Orleans, Louisiana

Louisiana: 18/28

  I thought there would be more 19th century American literature in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America but thus far it hasn't been the case.  The Grandissimes is the only 19th century title in this entire Chapter and I'm pretty sure there wasn't a single 19th century book in the prior chapter.   The preface to this edition calls The Grandissimes "the first modern southern novel," thought they can only mean that it is the first modern by novel BY rather than ABOUT the south, since Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in 1852 and is certainly "about" the south.   The Grandissimes, set in the beginning of the 19th century (before New Orleans was an American city) is named after a local family with a white part and a "F.M.O.C" or "free man of color" part. Cable uses the conventions of 18th century gothic fiction- masked balls, confusing correspondence to heighten the drama of conflict between the white Grandissime and the colored one through the deployment of various proxies- a newly arrived white pharmacist, a creole voodoo priestess.  It is, to be honest, confusing and reminded me again about how fiction influenced by 18th century fiction and early 19th century fiction can feel "post-modern" when it is actually "pre-modern." 

   This is the first 19th century American novel I've read in some time, and I suppose the knock on second-tier semi-classics like this one is that they are too derivative of their inspirations.  Here, it's hard to find anything that doesn't seem directly lifted from Sir Walter Scott.

Pariah and Other Stories (1983) by Joan Williams

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Pariah and Other Stories (1983)

by Joan Williams

Arkabutla, Mississippi

Mississippi: 11/18

   I read this slim volume of short stories sitting in court in a single afternoon, waiting for my matter to be called.   Pariah is geographically distinct because it is the northwestern location within the entire chapter spanning Florida to Louisiana.  Louisiana is further west but the northern border of Louisiana is miles south of the northern border that runs through Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.  Thus, Arkabutla is closer to Memphis than any large population center in Mississippi. 

  Williams is best known as a protege of William Faulkner- her bare bones Wikipedia page is almost comical in its lack of biographical detail- surely Joan Williams is a candidate for a literary revival?  Perhaps though it's the perspective- like Flannery O'Connor her characters are losers and weirdos- the collection of short stories beginning with three interconnected stories about a mentally challenged person.  There is frequent and unkind use of the n-word- many of these characters can be described as poorer whites who fear and resent the incipient Civil Rights movement, a frequent subject of discussion among the characters.  

 I can see how folks might shy away from reviving stories like these, but I found the obtuseness refreshing, as well as the literary ambition.

The Awakening (1899) by Kate Chopin

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Awakening (1899)

by Kate Chopin

Grand Isle, Louisiana

Louisiana: 17/28

  No re-reads!  Man, that is a sassy-ass write up below- written during my year of divorce, clearly.  I stand by the analysis, though. 

The Awakening by Kate Chopin (10/17/13)

1,001 Books to Read Before You Die
The Awakening (1899)
by Kate Chopin

  The Awakening by Kate Chopin is often called the American Madame Bovary.  That makes her the fourth and last of the national Bovaries.  Let's see- you've got the original by Flaubert, the Russian Anna Karenina by Tolstoy and the German Effi Briest.  Although The Awakening is the only book of the four to be written by an actual woman there is nothing about it that marks off the presence of a female authorial voice.  The Madame Bovary of the awakening is Edna Pontellier, a bored New Orleans house wife of a wealthy Creole stock market guy.  Edna is unhappy, but she doesn't know why, oh, it must be her husband whom she decides that she no longer loves.

 It is impossible to read any of the quartet of national Bovary novels without reflecting on my own experience.  I have heard the words of Bovary/Karenina/Briest/Pontellier from the mouth of my own wife, and I've been through the marriage therapy sessions that these women lacked, so I am intimately familiar with the thought process that leads a woman from a "happy" marriage to an "unhappy" marriage without any assistance from a disrespectful or malevolent husband.  That is something that all of these protagonist's share in common:  A husband who doesn't "do" anything to merit abandonment.

After reading all four novels I am left with the abiding conviction that all four husbands make the same mistake of treating their wives with respect.  It seems like if all four of these characters had been treated with a bit less respect, they might have stayed married.  Perhaps they would have been unhappy, but they all seem to be pretty unhappy post separation as well, so it hardly seems like an unfair swap.

Ten Seconds (1991) by Louis Edwards

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Ten Seconds (1991)

by Louis Edwards

Lake Charles, Louisiana

Louisiana: 16/28

   Ten Seconds is another familiar tale from the American South, albeit told with some literary ambition. Louis Edwards frames the flashback intensive format through the ten seconds it takes to run a forty-yard sprint, with the narrator reflecting on the poor choices he has made regarding his family, particularly in regard to his wife and young children.   It is well trodden territory for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America.  I did enjoy the depiction of the narrator's commute the petro-chemical plant where he works- here in Southern California "the commute" is a huge part of everyday life, but I can't think of a single book so far- at least since the chapter on New Jersey, where commuting is even something a character does. 

Biloxi (2019) by Mary Miller

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Biloxi (2019)

by Mary Miller

Willow Avenue and Volunteer Park, Biloxi, Mississippi

Mississippi: 10/18

   Louis MacDonald is a recently divorced 63-year-old man, someone who has retired early from an unspecified job/career in anticipation of a substantial inheritance from his deceased father.  As the book opens, MacDonald is at what you would call "loose ends": He adopts a dog under mysterious circumstances from a quasi-neighbor and spends time drinking full sugar Coca-Cola and ignoring warnings from his doctor about his incipient diabetes.  MacDonald is one of those adult American men who doesn't know how to care for himself- he is seemingly unable to cook for himself and mostly relies for sustenance on leftovers his sad-dad apartment compels neighbor brings home from his job cooking at a chain restaurant (are there any other kinds, here in Biloxi, Mississippi.) 

   I've hit a mini streak of his pathetic protagonists inside the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America. The southeastern Louisiana coast doesn't have a monopoly on the character type, but there is no denying the affinity between the bleak landscape and the bleak lives.  You could put this novel and Frederick Barthelme's Waveland back-to-back and maybe not notice the switch from one book to the next.   The third 1,001 Novels selection from this stretch of coastline is the similarly bleak Where the Line Bleeds by Jesmyn Ward, which at least had the benefit of solidly depicting the landscape in a way that the protagonists in Biloxi and Waveland seem incapable of doing.