Sheriff and His Son’s Soul

I believe it was Pablo Picasso who said something to the effect of if we want to see the caliber of an artist, first ask him to paint a horse, which I’ve remembered to signify:  Before you head off and attempt Cubism, let’s see if you’ve got the basics down.  Reading Charles Chestnut today I was reminded of this:  Before attempting a shifting narrative of traveling along a coastal road and introducing asides on German munitions and Hong Xiuquan, like W. G. Sebald, you should shore up the fundamentals of storytelling.  Learn the form before you attempt to deconstruct it.

Chestnut’s short stories shine for a number of reasons; the remarkable vernacular, the effortless shifts between poor southern white, to first generation Irish, to the southern aristocracy, the public voice of African Americans that shifts suddenly when there are no whites around.  I’m also enjoying the fact that he is a good-old-fashioned storyteller.  Often there’s a tension between the authoritative voice of the white or high-caste black, who adheres to reason and decency, contrasted with black magic of the old ‘conjure’ woman.  The reader is left to wonder, just what force it was that swayed the events.  Always, there is an injustice that illustrates the cruelty and hypocrisy of racism, though Chestnut doesn't feel pedantic.  He’s is generally a step back from judgement.  Rather the facts unfold, and the reader is left to draw conclusions which, though foretold are revealed subtly. 

And while I felt sting of injustice and considered anew the indignity of things I’d only otherwise read about in historical texts or slave narratives, and played with the accents he profiled in my mind, I noticed I was having fun watching him set the trap and spring it.  In “The Wife of His Youth” we know noble Liza will find her man, and it works somehow and not too early to spoil things, when we realize just who Mr. Ryder was.  Precisely who “The Sheriff’s Children” are is coincidentally revealed in the final scenes but it doesn’t feel forced as we are shown the real nature of the Sheriff and his son’s soul.

Setting up a trap to spring can feel forced and at odds with the linear flow of life.  As would building a mouse trap from scratch.  Masterful dramatic treatments are frictionless.  We effortlessly and forever believe in McBeth’s ambition, in Pierre Bezukhov’s illumination.  Chestnut’s short stories spring like clockwork at the end.  The tale is always resolved and there is a lesson to savor each time.  And as I look back over the dozen or so I read today I noted how satisfying and memorable each resolution was the way a masterful bluesman like Albert King can interlock two phrases in a manner that is both predicable and satisfying each time they are uniquely undone.

Friday, 06/19/20