Walker Percy, Looking for the Right Happened in the Trevon Martin Hate Crime
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2013 Presented By The Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society Photograph by Joséphine Sacabo Faith & The Search for Meaning As Inspiration for The Arts Published December 1, 2013, New Orleans, LA Guarantors Bertie Deming Smith & The Deming Foundation, Cathy Pierson & Charles Heiner Theodosia Nolan, Tia & James Roddy & Peter Tattersall Judith “Jude” Swenson In Memory of James Swenson Randy Fertel and the Ruth U. Fertel Foundation Joseph DeSalvo, Jr., Rosemary James & Faulkner House, Inc. Frank G. DeSalvo, Attorney The J.J. and Dr. Donald Dooley Fund: Samuel L. Steel, III, Administrator Pam Friedler Joséphine Sacabo & Dalt Wonk Louisiana Division of the Arts, Department of Culture, Recreation & Tourism The State Library of Louisiana & The Louisiana Festival of the Book The Louisiana State Museum Hotel Monteleone & The Monteleone Family: Anne Burr, Greer & David Monteleone, Denise Monteleone, Ruthie Monteleone Anne & Ron Pincus Diane Manning, Floyd McLamb, Courtenay McDowell & Richard Gregory Hartwig & Nancy Moss In Memory of Betty Moss, New Orleans Hispanic Heritage Foundation David Speights in Memory of Marti Speights Mary Freeman Wisdom Foundation, Joyce & Steve Wood Zemurray Foundation Good Friends Jennifer E. Adams; Barbara Arras; Barbara & Edwin Beckman; Deena Bedigian; John & Marcia Biguenet; C.J. Blanda; Roy Blount, Jr. & Joan Griswold; Angie Bowlin; Birchey Butler; Charles Butt; Hortensia Calvo; Batou & Patricia Chandler Cherie Chooljian; Jackie Clarkson; Ned Condini; Mary Len Costa; Moira Crone & Rodger Kamenetz; Jerri Cullinan & Juli Miller Hart; W. Brent Day; Susan de la Houssaye; Stephanie, Robin, & Joan Durant; Louis Edwards; James Farwell & Gay Lebreton;Madeline Fischer; Christopher Franzen, Patty Friedmann; Jon Geggenheimer; David & Sandra Groome; Douglas & Elaine Grundmeyer; Christine Guillory; Janet & Steve Haedicke; Michael Harold & Quinn Peeper; Ken Harper & David Evard; W. Kenneth Holditch; Page Harris; Margaret Jones and David Isginitis; Karen Kern; Carolyn & A.J. Levy; Nancy Kittay Litwin; Pamela & James Lott; Pam & Ralph Lupin; Mr. & Mrs. Ivan Mandich; Ken & Lesley Mask; Deanna Miles; Lee McDonough; Gregory Morey & Scott James; Sybil Morial; Bert & Joel Myers; Jeanne Nathan; Rachelle O’Brien and Rosary O’Neill; Kent Osborne; Dean Paschal; Sandra Pulitzer; Jack Pruitt; Joycelyn Reynolds; Heidi Rowan Quenan; Caroline Rash; Dale Rathke; Cynthia Reeves; Garmer Robinson; Ben Sandmel; Dr. Michael Sartisky & Dr. Lin Li; Rheba Schlesinger; Alexandra Scott; Dr. & Mrs. Byron C. Scott; Joanne Sealy; Rebecca Schultz, Bill & Elizabeth Sewell; Kathy Singleton; Julie Smith & Lee Pryor; Patricia Strachan; Nia Terizakis; Suzanne Toledano & Bill Roberti; Carlos Trujillo & Bryan Drude; Linda Usdin & Steven Bingler; Terry Verigan & Kathy Higgins; Deborah Vinson & Harvey Burns; James C. Walsh & Yvonne Lafleur Walsh; Robin & Michael Wilkinson; Sandra & Louis Wilson 2013 Contents Commentary...........................4 New Poetry..........................177 Memorial: New Fiction.........................185 Oscar Hijuelos........................6 Words, Music & Art.............199 Program,: Faulkner & Friends.............209 Words On Music,2013.............7 Writers on Writing..............217 Essays/ Papers Presented...233 Spiritual Journeys.................25 Visual Arts & Drama ...........257 New Orleans, Mon Amour.....99 2013 Faulkner-Wisdom Literature of the South.........119 Competition Winners..........265 Pan-American Connections........................145 2012 Faulkner-Wisdom Classics Revisited...............165 Competition Winners..........361 Welcome To The Double Dealer Welcome back to The Double Dealer! Now, entirely an online journal published, The Double Dealer is published in conjunction with Words & Music: A Literary Feast in New Orleans. Working with our Associate Editors for The Double Dealer—Caroline Rash, Geoff Munsterman, Christine Murphey, and Shari Stauch—is a great pleasure for me because of their diverse talents. All are writers but they have editing and publishing skills as well. Caroline Rash comes to New Orleans by way of Clemson, SC; Dalian, China; and Conway, AR. Currently a copy edtior at Peter Mayer Advertising, she has contributed as a freelance writer to regional newspapers and interned at Oxford American magazine. Geoff Munsterman’s poems have been featured in Poets for Living Waters, The Southern Poetry Anthology, story|south, The New Laurel Review, and Margie to name a few. His debut collection Because the Stars Shine Through It is just out from Lavender Ink and he is hard at work on the follow-up, the book-length poem Where Scars Wake. His shingle hangs in Rosemary James New Orleans. Shari Stauch has been in publishing, marketing and PR for 33 years. She is a frequent presenter at Words & Music and five-time finalist in the Faulkner-Wisdom Competition, with first-runner-up finishes in both Novel- in-Progress and Essay. Her firm, Where Writers Win, works with emerging authors to provide marketing, websites, training and tools to set authors apart in a crowded marketplace. We would also like to thank Christine Murphy, a published poet and non-fiction writer currently working on novels and a memoir,who contributed valuable proofreading and copyediting. We are actively soliciting advertising for our next issue and future issues so that we can continue The Double Dealer well into the future. If you are interested in becoming a guarantor or advertiser, we’d love to hear from you. We’d also like to get your comments and suggestions for improvements in the future. And, finally, for those of you interested in submitting work of your own, we’d be happy to hear from you, too! One e-mail will reach us all, [email protected] —Rosemary James Co-Founder, Faulkner Society; Supervising Editor, Shari Stauch The Double Dealer Christine Murphey Caroline Rash Geoff Munsterman 4 The Double Dealer 2013 COMMENTARY: The First Word our hatred spewed out toward gays; if women, toward The Other men; if Farsi, Shiite Muslim, Jew, toward Christians; if by Rosemary James Serb toward Croats, if Jews, toward Iranians and Iranians toward Americans, and emphatically in each instance, vise versa? Hatred … is dislike and antipathy inflamed to a high Do we hate the other? If so, can we explain why? degree and inspired by beliefs which stimulate a set Is the reason fear? Can we overcome that fear and, of other emotions in the hater, chief among them fear, eventually, therefore, the feelings of hatred? ignorance, jealousy, anger and disgust. But note that all The body of the year, 2013, is riddled with these emotions, and especially the first three, are about wounds inflicted by hatred of the other; erupting from the hater; thus hating says more about haters than what our deep inner fears, taking center-front away from they hate. It shows weakness, for it is a crude emotion honorable actions in the theatre of life. which turns fears and anxieties outward to fix them on Today, battle-torn ghettos of poverty, American’s something else. urban concentration camps, and the violence boiling — A. C. Grayling, The Meaning of Things: Applying up and out of them are en pointe on the home front. The Philosophy to Life monstrous spectre of fear-powered racism threatens to pull our own country to pieces. One theological faction holds to the belief that the Can we ever resolve our differences? Do we Biblical brothers, Cain and Abel, were black and white, even wish to love the other? different from one another in a startling way at any rate. The difference is held to be at the heart of the Flannery O’Connor made it her only too envy and hatred and meanness and alienation which brief life’s mission to come as close to God as possible developed between them, resulting in the murder of through faith and to write about the people of the world one, the ostracism of the other, destroying Paradise in she knew best, those of her small town of Milledgeville, the process for their parents. GA. She might justifiably be called the Saint of The It matters little if The Bible is your good book, Other. or the Torah, the Quran or, perhaps, the Bhagavad- As a young woman, O’Connor went to the Iowa Gita or the Pali Canon of Buddhism. It does not matter Writers Workshop, to the exclusive Yaddo artist’s colony if the difference is between black and white or between in Saratoga Springs, and then to New York City and other skin tones. The eons-old legend of the other has Connecticut, writing all the way. Then, at the age of 25, meaning for us today. And that meaning is: she learned that like her father before her, she was dying of lupus. She was forced to return home and it One who would hate, one who would destroy a was back in Georgia in the 1950s that she discovered brother is self-destructive. the characters for her stories. In Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away and in 20 short stories, she told Self-examination, always timely, is especially dark tales of murder and bigotry and madness, of a right for us now in an era which is characterized by preacher of the Church without Christ who puts out increasingly aggressive levels of brother against his own eyes. Ralph Wood, one of her biographers, brother not only in our own country today but abroad. explained the inspiration for her characters. And looking deeply into our souls is most certainly appropriate in this season traditionally given over to Flannery O’Connor lived in not the cotton belt, not the concept of brotherly and sisterly (to be politically the tobacco belt, but, ugly description, the Bible correct, of course) love; peace; good will toward all men Belt, and for O’Connor that was the glory of her and women, to be politically correct. region. Hers were the marginalized people on the If it seems inappropriate to call attention to the sidelines of southern life in small, out of the way “politically correct” here, not so. Adding “women” to the places. old words in this case is simply to appease the militants. Otherwise, there is no need, as it is, most often, men who break the peace, kill their brothers, leave women to Ms.