Visiting Hours (2012) by Jennifer Anne Moses

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Visting Hours (2012)

by Jennifer Anne Moses

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Louisiana 29/30

  I am missing one book from Louisiana, and I can't figure it out for the life of me.  As far as I'm aware, Visiting Hours is the last book from this chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of American project. Visiting Hours was last because I had to buy a copy- I was surprised didn't have this interesting novel about the grim lives of patients waiting to die in an AIDS hostel in... the 1990s? The early 2000s?  It actually really reminded me of Blackouts by Justin Torres, the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction winner, which concerns a man dying of AIDS (I think) in a New Orleans SRO.  

  I could have used more Bayou.  I'm really loving the swamp-lit of Florida, and Louisiana seems like a missed opportunity in that regard, maybe because the geographical location overlaps so completely with the Cajun population that one supersedes the other.   One other conclusion I drew from this chapter is that Hurricane Katrina did real damage to the city both physically AND psychically. 

Killing Mr. Watson (1990) by Peter Matthiessen

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Killing Mr. Watson (1990)

by Peter Matthiessen

Chokoloskee Bay, Florida

Florida: 8/21

    Killing Mr. Watson was the first of a three-volume series retelling the life of real-life villain Edward "Bloody" Watson, who looms over the history of this remote outpost of swampland Florida like a giant. The three volumes were eventually republished in a single volume called Shadow Country in 2008, and that book won the National Book Award for Fiction.  I checked out the Audiobook edition from the library- Killing Mr. Watson takes the form of an oral history, with 12 voices telling different versions of the same events, starting out with the more-or-less cold-blooded murder of Watson at the hands of a loosely organized "posse" of his neighbors.  Matthiessen, award-winning author that he is, knows how to handle both the human and natural elements- the swampy everglades being almost an equal attraction of the tale.

The Yearling (1938) by Marjorie Rawlings

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Yearling (1938)

by Marjorie Rawlings

Volusia, Florida

Florida: 7/21

   This 1938 children's book is set between Jacksonville to the north and Orlando to the south, broadly swampy but with high points called "islands" where people settled in the mid to late 19th century (The Yearling is set in the 1870's.)   The edition I checked out of the library was an illustrated version- the illustrator being N.C. Wyeth, father of painter Andrew Wyeth and phenomenally successful illustrator in his own right.   Like many so-called "children's books" from before the 1960's and 70's, The Yearling is really an adult book with a child protagonist, written "for" children, but in a way that hardly acknowledges that fact other than the plot of the book itself.   

  Rawlings rounds some of the corners off the harsher aspects of frontier life- she does describe the father-son duo gutting a deer, but omits the part, which I've learned from other novels, that involves being careful not to pierce the guts or entrails in order to avoid befouling the meat.   Describing it as "frontier boy raises baby deer to adulthood" doesn't really do justice to the detail of perspective presented.   The Yearling might be the best depiction of "back woods" life I've come across so far (but with Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas to come in the next chapter).