MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO

FACULTY OF EDUCATION

Department of English Language and Literature

The South in Contemporary Popular Literature Thesis

Brno 2006

Written by: Tereza Lavická Supervisor: PhDr. Irena Přibylová, Ph.D.

I hereby declare that I worked on my thesis on my own and that I used only the sources mentioned in the bibliography.

Brno, 21th April 2006 Tereza Lavická

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Acknowledgements I would like to thank PhDr. Irena Přibylová, Ph.D. for her kind help, comments, and valuable advice that she provided me throughout the thesis as my supervisor.

3 Contents INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………...4 CHAPTER 1 The South…………………………………………………………………………7 1.1 People…………………………………………………………………………………….9 1.2 Religion ………………………………………………………………………………….11 1.3 Outdoors…………………………………………………………………...... 13 1.4 Language………………………………………………………………………………... 14 1.5 Music……………………………………………………………………………………. 16 1.6 Violence…………………………………………………………………………………17 CHAPTER 2 Violence in Southern Literature: Historical Outline…………………………..... 18 CHAPTER 3 Comments on Popular Literature……………………………………………….. 22 CHAPTER 4 The Analysis…………………………………………………………………….. 25 4.1 In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead (1993)…………………………………….. 26 4.2 Jolie Blon’s Bounce (2002)……………………………………………………………... 31 4.3 Under Cover of Daylight (1987)………………………………………………………... 35 4.4 Tropical Freeze (1990)………………………………………………………………….. 37 4.5 Hard Aground (1993)……………………………………………………………………39 4.6 Maximum Bob (1991)……………………………………………………………………41 4.7 Jack and the Beanstalk (1984)………………………………………………………….. 44 4.8. Puss in Boots (1987)……………………………………………………………………49 4.9 The Writers‘ Biographies……………………………………………………………….. 51 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………..54 SUMMARY……………………………………………………………………...57 RESUMÉ…………………………………………………………………………57 NOTES…………………………………………………………………………...58 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………..59 APPENDIX

4 INTRODUCTION

“If one thing seems certain about the region of the United States of America known as The South, it is that there will always be those of its inhabitants who will be arguing about whether it can continue to exist .” Louis D. Rubin, Jr. ( The American South 3)

The American South has always been well characterised by the words of poverty, agriculture, racism, xenophobia, and the Bible Belt. In the past many foreigners had difficulty understanding the southern way of life closely connected with plantations, slavery, and race riots. The 20th century brought many changes. The South has become urbanized and industrialized; it has changed politically, economically, and socially. Some people have started to cast doubt on the uniqueness of the South, but others have still believed in its distinctiveness. Despite many changes it has experienced in the last one hundred years, the South has remained perhaps the most distinctive region of United States.

Southern writers have been able to document the region’s distinctiveness in their novels, short stories, and other pieces of writing. Southerners can be proud of many significant authors such as Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and William Styron. Others have followed in their footsteps. However, only a few contemporary southern writers are known to a Czech reader.

Prior to writing the thesis I realized that I could name hardly any of contemporary southern novels. This was the reason why I chose the South and southern literature to be the topic of my thesis. I decided to find out which of the books of contemporary southern literature were available on the Czech market. I searched for any pieces of writing depicting the South in bookshops and libraries. This resulted in the following finding: The majority of the books of contemporary southern literature available on the Czech market fall into the category of popular literature, particularly into the genres of crime and detective fiction.

5 The aim of my thesis is to find certain stereotypes that could be rooted in contemporary popular southern literature available on the Czech market. I expect to examine whether or not the Czech reader can gather enough information about the South from literature.

In Chapter 1, I deal with the topic of the South in general. I focus on the southern history and the themes that I consider to be characteristic of the region. Among the discussed themes are people, religion, outdoors, language, music, and violence. In Chapter 2, I briefly examine the development of southern literature. I find the historical outline necessary, for I suppose that contemporary popular literature has been inspired by high literature from previous artistic periods. I put special emphasis on the topics of violence and terror since I consider them to be the most important features of the texts included in the following analysis. In Chapter 3, I comment on the typical features of popular literature. I expect that the characteristics of popular art will help me find the reason why the Czech market is primarily interested in southern detective and crime fiction.

The first three chapters serve as a theoretical preparation for the analysis of the chosen texts in Chapter 4. I analyse eight novels from the point of view of their content, with the focus on the southern themes suggested in Chapter 1. I aim to find out how is the South portrayed in these novels. The analysed texts share certain similarities: they all have been published recently, that is after 1980; they are set in the South; and they should be known to a Czech reader.

Although I have spent several months in the United States, I have never been to the American South. Academic books and encyclopedias have provided me with good opportunity to learn about the South and southern culture. Concerning my important source, the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture , I will shorten its title to Encyclopedia in parenthetical documentation throughout the thesis.

6 CHAPTER 1

The South

The area referred to as the American South lies in the southeastern part of the United States. Sometimes eastern Texas is said to form its border in the West and the Ohio River in the North. However, exact definitions vary from source to source.

According to the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture , the South geographically consists of eleven states of the former Confederacy - Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennesee, Texas, and Virginia (xv). These states seceded from the United States between 1860 and 1861. Taking cultural aspect into consideration, other states such as Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri, are sometimes added to the eleven states of the Confederacy. The reason for the use of the broader definition is the similar historical development of all fifteen states before the Civil War (1861- 1865) (xv).

The Oxford Companion to American Literature defines the South as the region including the present states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, eastern Texas, Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, West Virginia, and formerly Delaware (Hart 709). This definition is similar to the cultural classification of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture . There are only two exceptions: In The Oxford Companion West Virginia is included and Texas is restricted to its eastern part.

Another possible vision of the South is that of social scientists. In addition to the states mentioned above, social scientists include also District of Columbia in their statistics ( Encyclopedia xv).

Finally, Houghton Mifflin Company which makes its maps accessible on the Internet excludes Missouri in its definition of the South (see Appendix, Picture 1).

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A list of several different definitions of the South shows that the region’s border is not clerly defined. However, this is not very important for the purpose of the study of southern culture and its stereotypes. In this chapter, I will describe several southern themes which will serve as a basis for the analysis in Chapter 4. Among the discussed themes will be people, religion, outdoors, language, music, and violence.

1.1 People

When talking about the people in the South, one cannot forget to mention black Africans, who formed with English and Scotch-Irish a dominant part of southern population for a long time. Other groups of people mentioned in this section are later immigrants, especially Cajuns, Conchs, and Cubans; rednecks; aristocracy; and Native Americans. I will focus on the typical groups of people in the South regardless of making a difference between race and social class.

Growing up Black To talk about blacks in the South often means to talk about race relations. Black southerners were for a long time viewed as subordinate, being exploited, lynched and terrorized by whites. As slaves in the antebellum era, they were an essential part of the labour force. Only a minority of them were free at that time.

One could think incorrectly that the abolishment of slavery meant that the blacks were given equal rights. To become free did not mean to become a citizen; in other words, to gain social and political equality. After the Civil War black farm workers became tenants and sharecroppers (Holt, Encyclopedia 135). Landlords maintained maximum control over them which was similar to the era of slavery. Black urban dwellers did not find themselves in a better position because they were excluded from many crafts and newly developing industries (Holt, Encyclopedia 135). In both the cities and the countryside, blacks suffered from violent racism.

8 Segregation, another form of white supremacy, took place in the 20th century. Mary E. Mebane asserts that for black folk “life became a round, a ritual: birth, existence, death. One worked for subsistence wages, or below, partied on Saturday night to releave the harshness and monotony of existence, and on Sunday prepared his soul to die” ( American South 94). Segregation was everywhere: in housing, public transportation, cemeteries, educational streams, waiting rooms, and rest rooms. Some facilities, such as parks, beaches, and swimming pools, were rarely designed for black people.

The Civil Right’s Movement arose after Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. It was followed not only by numerous demonstrations against segregated facilities but also by the lynching and beating of the blacks.

Currently, it is not clear whether white versus black relations have improved considerably. Considering that films, books, and the media deal with the subject, the issue seems to remain topical.

The Caribbean Influence The Gulf Coast from Texas to Louisiana and down to Florida has been characterised by the presence of the immigrants from the Caribbean.

According to Charles Reagan Wilson, Louisiana Gulf Coast was influenced by Spanish Canary Islanders from Cuba, and French planters from what is now the nation of Haiti. They came to this area at the end of the 18th century (Encyclopedia 405).

Florida has particularly been connected with Cubans who appeared there for the first time at the beginning of the 19th century (Pérez, Encyclopedia 427). Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959 caused that the biggest wave of the Cuban immigrants arrived (Wilson, Encyclopedia 406). Nowadays, Cubans constitute the largest group of all the immigrants in Florida.

9 Cajuns and Creoles The southern part of Louisiana is sometimes referred to as Acadian Louisiana. The Acadians were the French settlers deported by the British from Nova Scotia, Canada, in the 18th century. Their descendants, the Cajuns, formed a coherent community because they lived in isolation until the discovery of oil in Louisiana in the early 20th century (Pillsbury, Encyclopedia 540). Richard Pillsbury speaks about several significant elements of Cajun culture - Roman Catholicism, a variety of unique dietary preferences, some retention of French language, and Cajun music (Encyclopedia 540).

The word ‘Creole’ is also used in connection with Louisiana. It meant originally “home-grown, not imported“(Ancelot, Encyclopedia 421). The Creoles have been mostly the descendants of African slaves and the people from the Carribean. They introduced many customs in southern Louisiana such as voodoo; prevalence of festivals; a Creole language based on French words and African grammar; and zydeco which is fast, syncopated dance music (Wilson, Encyclopedia 406).

Conchs The Florida Keys are associated with the presence of Conchs, the descendants of Cockney Englishmen who migrated to Bermuda in the 17th and to the Bahamas in the 18th century. Guy Bailey points out that they finally settled in Key West and the upper Keys being for a long time isolated from the United States mainland. Despite the arrival of many newcomers, the Conchs have continued to separate themselves ( Encyclopedia 786).

Rednecks “Rednecks”, who got their name after a sunburned neck, have been associated with the South since the colonial era. However, the term was not used much until the 20th century. Redneck is described mostly as a man from the South of a lower-middle- or working class. He is typically undereducated and talks in a variety of southern accents not bothering his head about language accuracy. He often gets into fights, eats plain and unhealthy food, and drinks too much alcohol. He does not have many hobbies; he usually likes hunting, stock-car racing, and

10 country music. To make the characteristic complete, F. N. Boney suggests that redneck “is and always has been a racist at heart ( Encyclopedia 1140).

Aristocracy Aristocracy is present in any region, state, or country. However, in the South it is a phenomenon. While the North developed a more diversified economy with much industry after the Civil War (Boney, Encyclopedia 1391), the South remained agricultural and was primarily interested in crop market. The southern aristocrats were mainly planters, as opposed to the northern elite who had the opportunity to take an interest in another business field.

Although the South’s agricultural background helped distinguish the southern aristocracy from the rest of the nation, the crucial factor in making the difference between the southern and northern upper classes was slavery. F. N. Boney points out that slavery “set apart the South and its upper class from the rest of the nation” (Encyclopedia 1391).

Nowadays, the difference between the southern aristocracy and the aristocracy from the rest of the nation is not so striking. Nevertheless, some southerners have preserved a certain kind of aristocratic behaviour. Hence the phenomenon of southern aristocracy continues.

Native Americans Native Americans, the original inhabitants of American land, have extensively affected the South and its culture. They made contributions to agriculture, oral lore, pottery, clothing, and also house equipment. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 reminded us that Native American tribes are still visible in the states of Louisiana and Mississippi. Similarly, the presence of Seminoles in Florida is obvious.

1.2 Religion

The nature of the South’s religious life has made at least for a century one of the most striking differences between the South and the rest of the United States.

11 Generally speaking, southerners have always been far more religious than other Americans. Flannery O’Connor described the South as “Christ-haunted” (qtd. in Reed, American South 30). H. L. Mencken characterised the South of the 1920 as “a cesspool of Baptists, a miasma of Methodism, snake charmers . . . and syphilitic evangelists” (qtd. in Gerster, Encyclopedia 1124).

Currently, the majority of southerners regard themselves as Protestants; precisely Baptists, Methodists, or Presbyterians (Gerster, Encyclopedia 1122). Regardless of their denomination, southern Protestants are extremely orthodox in their beliefs and take religion seriously. Churchgoing is considered to be an essential part of their Christian life. John Shelton Reed asserts that “Southern Protestants are more likely than non-southern ones to report that they went to church on any given Sunday” ( American South 31). They also attend many activities organized by the church during the week, and provide the church with a considerable amount of money (Hill, Encyclopedia 1273).

A southern church service is distinctive by its spontaneity. It maximizes hearing and speaking as well as singing. As Samuel S. Hill notes, in church services “the pace is energetic, the mood is urgent, and the manner of approach straightforward” ( Encyclopedia 1273).

The Bible is the only authority and reference point of belief and practice in the religious South (Hill, Encyclopedia 1270). This can go to extreme. Some churches force their members to live exactly in accordance with the New Testament. Moreover, certain Christian sects take only pieces of sentences from the Bible out of context in order to incorporate them into their rituals.

Reed points out that there has been a little change in the South’s attitude toward religion. He says that “the data strongly suggest that the religion of the “new South” will be as vigorous and distinctive as that of the old” (The American South 31). On the contrary, Hall speaks about “a secularization of life and thought” in the South ( Encyclopedia 1274). The southern life might have become more secularized. However, the role that religion plays in the comtemporary South is still important.

12 1.3 Outdoors

Fishing A poet, James Seay, wrote that “owing to the agrarian traditions of the South, the average Southerner has always had a more than casual association with the outdoors” (The American South 129). The southerners’ notion of the agrarian South as well as their strong attachment to the land might have contributed to their immense interest in outdoor sports, such as fishing and hunting.

Concerning the popularity of fishing in the South, geographical criteria might also be taken into consideration. Glenn Morris says that “more than one-half of the contiguous U.S. coastline is in the South” (Encyclopedia 1219). Consequently, much of the southern population lives in or near the coastal areas. It is not surprising that saltwater fishing is enormously popular. Inland fishing is popular as well, despite the lack of natural lakes in the South. Rivers, ponds, dams, and irrigation impoundments offer various kinds of fishing and thus meet the southerners’ needs.

As Morris suggests, “fishing is a predominantly masculine activity” (Encyclopedia 1219). Stereotypically, men, either rich or poor, are attracted to the sport more than women. Although they have developed certain characteristic fishing styles based on the regional differences, they all share their enthusiasm for fishing. In the South, various magazines are published and many fishing events, such as professional fishing circuit and saltwater fishing rodeos, are organized. Outdoor commercial shows, which include fishing, exist in every city (Morris, Encyclopedia 1220).

James Seay points out that “in the contemporary South the frequency and the quality of the outdoor experience have, like most other traditions, changed radically” (The American South 130). Some people may have looked for the new attractive ways of how to spend free time. Nevertheless, there are certainly many of those who have not lost their interest.

13 Plants A mild climate, a long growing season, and adequate rains have been the key factors in making the South botanically diversified. Plants have always played an important role in southern culture, commerce, and even politics. In the early 20th century, the majority of southern states adopted state flowers, and thus only stressed the importance of plants in the South.

Among the most typical southern plants are magnolias, longleaf pines, live oaks, cypresses, and bay trees. Introduced plants, such as rice, cotton, indigo, peanuts, collards, and tobacco, also typify the region. A characteristic southern picture of an evergreen tree shrouded in wisps of Spanish moss very often sticks in a foreign visitor’s mind.

1.4 Language

General Characteristics of Southern Speech The South is considered by many linguists to be the most distinctive speech region of the United States. According to Michael Montgomery, grammar in southern speech is characterized by the use of y’all and you all as second-person plural pronouns; “multiple modal” constructions, such as might could ; done for emphasis, e.g. I done told you that ; liked to as “almost” in e.g. I liked to died ; and the use of the a-prefix with verbs which end in -ing , as a-walking . Among phonological features are for example the r-lessness in words like beer or bear ; the lengthening and raising of accented vowels which is referred to as “drawl”; or breaking of some vowels ( Encyclopedia 761).

Although there are some general features which are common for the majority of the territory, southern speech is not uniform. A lot of distinctive varieties can be found in the different parts of the South, mainly in isolated areas such as islands, mountains, and coastal areas. For example, Conch English, which is a distinctive speech of the population of the Florida Keys, shares some features with British English (Bailey, Encyclopedia 786); New Orleans English is characterised by the use of had + the past participle of a verb instead of the simple past verb form (M.

14 Blanton, Encyclopedia 781); and Mountain English is generally simplified - speakers from Ozarks and Appalachian Mountains tend to use was with singular as well as plural subjects and regularize verbs which are considered irregular (L. Blanton, Encyclopedia 777).

Besides the modifications of southern English which depend on the change of place, ‘racial’ difference between black and white English is emphasised. Countless researchers have tried to find features which would distinguish one from another. Some scholars used to say that black speech was the product of physiology and mental ability (Bailey, Encyclopedia 194) but these myths were later debunked. It has been found out that “whites and blacks of comparable education and social status have not been contrasted” (Montgomery, Encyclopedia 767). Social difference seems to be more important than racial one. Nevertheless, the terms ‘Black English,’ or ‘Afroamerican English,’ do exist. According to Bailey, ‘Black English’ is most often used to describe the dialect of lower-class blacks. The typical features of Black English are invariant be , as in we be working , absence of the verb be , as in they sick , absence of the suffix –s, e.g. he run , and the suffix –ed, e.g. he walked to school yesterday (Encyclopedia 194).

The other European languages, mainly Spanish, but also French and German, are spoken in the South. Spanish can be found along the whole southern coastal areas, particularly in Florida and Texas. According to the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) and the United States Census 2000, approximately a third of the population of Florida (2,476,528 from the total of 15,982,378) and a quarter of the population of Texas (5,195,182 from the total of 20,851,820) are Spanish speaking. French can be heard in southern Louisiana (there are 194,314 French speaking Americans from the total of 4,468,976). Varieties of German survive mostly in the certain parts of Texas (82,117 German speaking Americans).

Personal Names and Place-names The history of the settlement in the South can be documented by personal names and place- names. As Virginia Foscue notes, the English named places after their kings or queens. For example, the states of Virginia and Georgia honoured Elizabeth I and George II respectively. The French also gave many places names

15 in honour of their rulers and members of nobility, such as Louisiana, which was a designation for Louis XIV. The Spaniards often named settlements after saints, such as the city of San Antonio, Texas. A lot of place-names, e.g. Creek name Tallahassee, a city in Florida; prove the vast settlements of the first inhabitants of the region, the Native Americans ( Encyclopedia pp. 779-780).

Concerning personal names, Philip Kolin suggests that among popular southern names are commemorative given names and the names after heroes ( Encyclopedia 778). For instance, George Washington Cable, the novelist of the Creoles, was named after the first president of the United States; and Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, the Florida governor, got his name after the famous Napoleon Bonaparte. Classical names of Greco-Roman origin as well as biblical first names appear there too.

Diminutives, which end in y or ie, also characterize the southern region. Double given names, where one or both parts are diminutives or shortened forms, are frequent. Besides diminutives, picturesque names, such as Bear Bryant, are popular in the South (Kolin, Encyclopedia 779).

1. 5 Music

The South has always been connected with music and musicians. Original music forms of Afro-Americans, Anglo-Americans, and small groups of other immigrants, such as Cajuns, contributed to the shaping of specific southern music forms at the end of the 19th century and throughout the whole 20th century. The result was the birth of new music styles in the South. Many of the southern music styles became part of the dominant American music styles of the 20th century.

Among the southern music forms which had originated by the end of the 19th century are ‘Cajun music’, ‘gospel’, ‘ragtime’, ‘blues’ and ‘jazz’. ‘Zydeco’ appeared in the 1940s; and ‘country music’ and ‘rock and roll’ in the 1950s. ‘Southern rock’, which is a subgenre of rock music, emerged in the early 1970s.

16 The musicians, such as blues singer Bessie Smith, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, jazzman Louis Armstrong, and rock-and-roll singer Elvis Presley, are only a few representants of a large group of Southerners who helped southern music win worldwide fame.

1.6 Violence

The South has often been connected with crime and violence. Prior to the Civil War, travellers from the North or Europe described southerners’s unusual interest in soldiering and resolved interpersonal disputes. Later, 20th century scholars wrote about southern enthusiasm for wars, the national military establishment, private military academies, dueling, and other activities connected with the army and fighting (May, Encyclopedia 1108). As Robert E. May notes, southerners “provided disproportionate support” in both world wars and Vietnam (Encyclopedia 1108). May also suggests that they enshrined violence (high homicide rates, the Ku Klux Klan) within their social mores” (Encyclopedia 1108).

Some commentators may not see the difference between violence in the South and other regions. It could therefore be argued that the idea of violent South is only a myth. However, one might realize that the South is associated only with a particular kind of violence. Harold A. Herzog calls it ‘lethal violence’- “violence that is cruel and abrupt, designed to punish” ( Encyclopedia 1473). John Shelton Reed has concluded that the South is violent only in certain respects; and in many crime categories it is at or below national averages (Herzog, Encyclopedia 1475). In the South, crime in the street is not as common in as in New York City. However, murders which result from arguments and disputes are frequent there.

The region’s violent tendencies can be proved by the emergence, rise and revival of the Ku Klux Klan. Southerners tend to incline toward capital punishment and have generally more positive attitude toward gun ownership. Their great interest in the military and violent sports, such as cockfighting and dogfighting, is also known.

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As far as the origin of violence is concerned, one might come to the solution that violent tendencies in the South have its roots in a higher percentage of poverty, lower educational levels, and a racist nature of southern life.

CHAPTER 2

Violence in Southern Literature: Historical Outline

The South used to be referred to as a poor and belated region of the United States. This can be explained by its major orientation towards agriculture in the past, which did not generally promise as comfortable living and high incomes as the life in the developed urban areas in modern cities. It was particularly the southern climate and geographical location that caused the South to become an agrarian region. While the rest of the nation modernized in the 19th century, the southern growth of industry was retarded. The arts, including literature, were devalued in the South at that time. Although Southern literature did not develop much until the 20th century, several important writers appeared in the South in the 19th century.

In this chapter I will briefly comment on the most significant southern writers from the 19th and 20th century. I will focus on the authors who used the topics of violence and terror in their books because I suppose that they have had an influence on the writers of contemporary southern crime and detective fiction.

There were not many southern writers who focused on the topic of violence in the 19th century. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) seemed to be the most striking figure among the writers who stressed ‘terror’ in their books at that time.

The terror is the common feature in the majority of Poe’s writings. It is used either as the main theme or as a supplement to the different topic. One could speculate that the darkness of Poe’s books resulted from his living conditions. Poe suffered from depression which was gradually worsening and after his wife’s death in 1847

18 deteriorated considerably. Although Poe devoted all his energies to literature, it did not bring him recognition. He desired to mock the readers on the one hand, and to suit them on the other. Nowadays, his influence on popular writings is indisputable. As Leslie Fiedler notes, “the popular audience has always demanded the pseudofiction of terror, which in all of its major forms Poe perfected for the American market-place: the ghost story, the detective story, and science fiction” (pp. 495-496). It is generally accepted that the first detective story as a recognizable form in English was Edgar Allan Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841). The Purloined Letter and The Mystery of Marie Roget followed soon.

The majority of Poe’s works could be labelled as gothic due to their dreary and deathlike athmosphere. Fiedler suggests that “ ‘gothic’ was a thoroughly pejorative word, applied not only to whatever belonged in fact to rude “medieval times”, i. e., any period before the sixteenth century, but also to any surviving mode of speech or behaviour considered unworthy of enlightened modernity” (137). In literature, the term is connected mainly with gothic novel which represents a novel’s sub-genre invented in England. Although it did not start a new fashion, Horace Walpole’s (1719-1797) The Castle of Otranto (1764) was the first successful attempt. In a gothic environment, mad monks and evil barons acted as typical characters of crumbling castles, antique dungeons and ruined abbeys. The claustrophobic structures and mazelike pathways underlined their inner anxiety.

American literature adopted the gothic style and modified it. Fiedler points out that “in the American gothic, that is to say, the heathen, unredeemed wilderness and not decaying monuments of a dying class, nature and not society becomes the symbol of evil. Similarly, not the aristocrat but the Indian, not the dandified courtier but the savage colored man is postulated as the embodiment of villainy” (160). Poe could certainly be the representative of the American gothic, since his books “turn from society to nature or nightmare“ (Fiedler 25). It is less certain whether he could belong to the specific category of southern literature. This is unlikely because there was not such an official category in the 19th century. Nevertheless, Poe’s short stories have influenced the contemporary popular genres of horror, sci-fi, and detective story.

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The topics of terror and violence were not stressed after the Civil War and were mostly used in connection with race relations, such as in the works of George Washington Cable (1844-1925) or Thomas Dixon, Jr. (1864-1946). According to the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture “much southern literature between the th end of the war and the early 20 century was within the bounds of the plantation tradition-glorifying a civilized stability in the Old South and minimizing its violence” (Wilson 1487).

The effects of modernization and urbanization might have contributed to the great significance of the Southern literature during the 20th century. ‘Violence’ started to be widely used in literature in the first half of the century in the works by novelists and poets of the ‘Southern Renaissance’, particularly William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Truman Capote.

The literary beginnings of William Faulkner (1897 - 1962) were not easy. By 1943, after he had written the majority of his great writings, it was only Sanctuary (1931) that was in print.

One can ask why Sanctuary , the darkest of all Faulkner’s books, gained such popularity. One of the reasons could be the naturalistic description of sex and violence. The main theme, when impotent gangster Popeye rapes young Temple Drake with a corncob, was so shocking and provocative for literary audience that they could not resist reading it. Faulkner himself admits that the primary purpose of writing the book was to make profit. He therefore wanted to attract the attention of an ordinary, middlebrow southern reader. Memphis in the 1920s was an ideal setting with its murders, lynch law, and corruption scandals. The novel really helped Faulkner become financially independent, partly due to the Hollywood film that followed. It is well seen on the example of this novel how brutal theme and the use of terror can bring the book and the author popularity.

Flannery O’Connor (1925 – 1964) is known mainly due to her short stories, despite writing a few novels as well. In her books, she was influenced by the

20 Roman Catholic faith; and by the South, particularly by her native place, Georgia. Nevertheless, her characters are rarely Catholic. O’Connor makes a connection between horror and humour. Her sarkastic, ironic, and grotesque pieces of writing always include an element of violence, and could fall into the category of gothic grotesque. Hilfer confirms that her “fiction is very funny and very violent” (67). He further suggests that O’Connor “cares less how her characters live than how they die – in what state of the soul” (68). This can be well seen in her short story, ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’. A pleasure trip of Mr Bailey’s family quickly changes to a nightmare journey when they meet Misfit, a dangerous criminal. Misfit gradually kills all the family members. O’Connor focuses on the last moments of a little hypocritical, but generally kind grandmother who does not want to believe that somebody is able to commit such a horrible crime. She finally realizes that her good manners are irrelevant and can not help her solve the situation.

Characters in O’Connor’s writings are driven to violence. However, the description of violence in her books differs from the naturalistic depiction of violent scenes in Faulkner’s Sanctuary .

Truman Capote (1924 - 1984) is considered to be one of the most important southern writers after World War II and belongs, as well as Flannery O’Connor, to the second generation of ‘Southern Renaissance’. He spent a great part of his life in New York, but chose various topics from the West and from the South. His short story ‘Handcarved Coffins’(1975) appears to be a nonfiction account of an American crime. Although it is set mostly in a small western city, one can also learn about the southern state of Alabama due to the author’s retrospection. The story is written in the form of dialogue between Capote and a detective, Jake Pepper. Pepper investigates the series of murders which have one thing in common; the victims had received little wooden coffins before they were killed. Violence used in the story is described neither in naturalistic nor in grotesque way. Since Capote is considered to be the master of nonfiction, he tries to give a true account of the subject. As in newspaper style, violent scenes in ‘Handcarved Coffins’are presented as facts.

21 Besides physical terror, the story partly deals with psychological abuse. This results from the main theme. The victims feel totally desperate when receive the hancarved coffin as a present.

Violence and terror have always played important role in the southern literature. Fiedler talks about the South as the “preferred literary arena of terror”, particularly in the last three decades, that is the 1930s-1960s (497). This is, according to him, in great part the achievement of Faulkner but also “a product of the spirit of the times.” One can speculate that the use of violence in Southern literature arose from historical conditions; particularly hard living conditions in the poor agricultural Southern environment, complicated race relations, and an awareness of the lost Civil War.

CHAPTER 3

Comments on Popular Literature

Scholars, critics, and publishers have distinguished between high, artistic, literature; and low, popular, literature. While high literature is generally presumed to have greater artistic merit and is intended for a small amount of readers, popular literature has lower cultural value and appeals to masses.

Since I deal with popular fiction in my thesis I intend to provide the paper with the general characteristics of popular literature. I expect that these characteristics will help me find the reason why the Czech market focuses primarily on popular literature.

It is important to say that the terminology associated with the topic is not unified. Czech scholars use rather negative terms in connection with popular literature - ‘braková literatura,’ ‘pokleslá literatura,’ ‘nízká literatura,’ ‘škvár,’ and ‘kýč.’ In English, the terms ‘highbrow’ and ‘lowbrow’ often replace ‘artistic’ and ‘popular’. Furthermore, publishers and editors distinguish between ‘literary fiction’ and ‘genre fiction’, as Marcel Arbeit suggests in “Creeping into Every

22 Literary Work: Four Forms of Subliterature” (80). ‘Subliterature’, another possible term for popular literature, is primarily used by Leslie Fiedler in What Was Literature?: Class Culture And Mass Society (1982) (Arbeit, “Creeping…” 80).

The term ‘genre fiction’ indicates that popular literature is typically connected with the use of genres. This means that certain books share similarities of character, theme, setting, layout, and style, and have been tested to appeal to particular groups of readers (“Formula Fiction” 1). Some of the main genres which are used in contemporary publishing are romance, fantasy, science-fiction, western, horror, crime fiction, and detective fiction.

‘Crime’ fiction may or may not mean the same as ‘detective’ fiction. In the “Introduction” to The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction , Martin Priestman suggests that the genre of ‘detective’ or ‘mystery’ fiction depended for a long time on rules which “stressed the figure of the detective and the author’s fair handling of clues” ( I). In crime narratives, “detection is not the chief or only interest”; and “criminal milieux and outlooks are often explored from the inside” (Priestman pp. iv-v). In other words, while the term ‘detective fiction’ is often applied to the books which focus on an investigator of the crime, ‘crime fiction’ stories usually center on criminal enterprise and are told from the point of view of the perpetrators.

Many scholars, such as Oldřich Sirovátka and Jiří Poláček, have counted ‘genre’ among typical features of popular fiction. It might be argued that the term is used in high art as well. J.A. Cuddon identifies “the major classical genres . . . : epic, tragedy, lyric, comedy and a satire, to which would be added novel and short story” (366). The problem is in terminology. In this chapter, genre is understood as a literary type related to popular literature.

Nowadays, many features of popular literature appear in high literature. This is particularly due to postmodernism, the dominant mode of art between 1960 and 1990, which rejects the distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art. As Fredric Jameson says in “Postmodernism and Consumer Society” (1983), “the writers and

23 artists of the present day will no longer be able to invent new styles and worlds … only a limited number of combinations are possible” (qtd. in Lewis pp. 125-126). Consequently, according to Berry Lewis many contemporary novels have to “borrow the clothes of different forms (for example: the western, the sci-fi yarn and the detective tale)” (Lewis 126).

Despite the unclear boundary between popular and artistic literature, certain features are used to distinguish one from another. Popular fiction is designed primarily to entertain and therefore avoids mentioning anything that could disturb the reader. In his Understanding of Popular Culture , John Fiske comments on the popular culture in general. He points out that it “denies the social, and in particular avoids the political” (121). This can be applied to popular literature as well, since popular fiction rarely focuses on contemporary politics and does not take social classes into consideration. Such topics could discourage readers from buying and reading the book. Similarly, Tomáš Kulka in Umění a kýč suggests that literary kitsch is not disturbing and is characterized by happy ending (117).

The terms ‘popular’ and ‘low’ literature’ do not typically occur in any dictionaries. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory deals only with the term ‘popular novel’. Cuddon defines it as “a loose term for a novel which has a wide readership; it often carries slightly pejorative connotations which suggest a middle- or low-brow- ‘audience’ and imply that such a novel may not possess much literary merit” (729).

Although it has always been ignored by critics, popular literature has become attracted to much bigger audience than high literature. This could be caused not only by writers but also by publishers of popular fiction. Both, writers and publishers, are interested in profit and try to do their best to make the books attractive for readers. For example, publishers can provide the book with interesting jacket, while writers, characterized as ‘great narrators’, choose attractive and exotic setting. The result is not a book of artistic merit but a book of commercial goods image. Typical popular book has a simple form and content with only one way of interpretation, works with readers’ emotions, reflects immediate topic of the day, and makes use of stereotypes, i.e. a heroine of a

24 romantic novel always finds true love at the end. The typical features of popular literature were briefly discussed in a course on Popular Literature led by Irena Přibylová in Masaryk University Brno in autumn 2005.

Kulka provides his chapter on the literary kitsch with the following summary: Firstly, the kitsch is very emotional and describes only the things that are generally accepted by particular society. Secondly, the language used in such writings is very simple and explicit. Finally, the literary kitsch does not bring anything new; the reader is familiar with everything that happens in the book in advance (pp. 119-120). In the last point, Kulka emphasises the aspect of predictability. Popular literature can be characterised as predictable due to the frequent use of stereotypes in popular genres.

To sum up, popular literature is considered to be simple and stereotypical; it loses its significance with the passage of time; and its primary purpose is to entartain. On the other hand, artistic literature is complex, experimental, long-lasting, and demanding.

CHAPTER 4

The Analysis

In this chapter I will analyse the contents of several novels. I intend to focus on the southern themes that I suggested in Chapter 1. Among the discussed themes are people, religion, outdoors, language, music, and violence. I will try to find out which of the themes typically occur in the novels and which of them are omitted or not given special importance.

It is important to say that the choice of the analysed texts was based on a short survey which preceded the analysis. Three criteria were necessary to clearly define the survey. Firstly, I searched for the books which were set in the South. Seconly, I was interested in the books published recently; that is not before the

25 1980s. Finally, I focused only on the books or the writers the Czech reader is familiar with.

The result was surprising. I found out that the majority of contempory southern literature translated into Czech fell into the category of popular literature, especially to the genre of crime and detective fiction.

The analysis will include In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead (1993) and Jolie Blon’s Bounce (2002) by James Lee Burke; Under Cover of Daylight (1987), Tropical Freeze (1990), and Hard Aground (1993) by James W. Hall; Maximum Bob (1991) by Elmore Leonard; and Jack and the Beanstalk (1984) and Puss in Boots (1987) by Ed McBain.

I will work with the translated versions of Puss in Boots by Ed McBain and the three novels by James W. Hall. Quotations from these four novels are translated by myself except for two extracts taken from the Internet.

4.1 In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead (1993) by James Lee Burke

The Plot In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead is part of The Dave Robicheaux Series. Lieutenant Dave is a Vietnam veteran and homicide detective from New Orleans. While investigating the murder of a young girl he accidentally meets Elrod Sykes, an actor who takes part in the shooting of a Civil War film in New Iberia, Louisiana. Sykes tells Dave about the skeletal remains of a black man that he has seen in the Atchafalaya swamp. This takes Dave back to the murder that he witnessed in 1957. As he searches for the answers to the present case, he tries to solve the past as well. He is supposed to collaborate with special Agent Rosa Gomez from FBI, but it seems that he prefers to talk with a dead Confederate soldier, General John Bell Hood. It is never clear whether or not these conversations are real. This makes the athmosphere of the book mystic.

26

Outdoors Throughout the whole book the descriptions of Lousiana‘s landscape and weather provide the main story with an interesting background:

“The sky had gone black at sunset, and the storm had churned inland from the Gulf and drenched New Iberia and littered East Main with leaves and tree branches from the long canopy of oaks that covered the street from the old brick post office to the drawbridge over Bayou Teche at the edge of town. The air was cool now, laced with light rain, heavy with the fecund smell of wet humus, night- blooming jasmine, roses, and new bamboo.” (1)

The depiction of the outdoor sports activites contrasts with violence and brutality. There are good conditions for fishing as well as boating and other water sports in Louisiana. When Robicheaux is not at work, he takes care of his bait shop. Such activity is a good complement to Dave’s difficult and stressful job.

The climate of the region - its frequent rains, storms and mists- and geographical feautures-swamps and bayous-prevail within the description of outdoors. They suit the book’s dark athmosphere:

“The rain fell through the canopy of oaks as I drove down the dirt road along the bayou toward my house. During the summer it rains almost every afternoon in southern Louisiana. From my gallery, around three o’clock, you could watch the clouds build as high and dark as mountains out on the Gulf, then within minutes the barometer would drop, the air would suddenly turn cool and smell like ozone and gun metal and fish spawning, the wind would begin to blow out of the south and straighten the moss on the dead cypress trees in the marsh, bend the cattails in the bayou, and swell and ruffle the pecan trees in my front yard; then a sheet of gray rain would move out of the marsh, across the floating islands of purple hyacinths in the bayou, my bait shop and the canvas awning over my boat-rental dock, and ring as loud on my gallery as marbles bouncing on corrugated tin.” (pp. 40-41)

Black People Race relations and racism play significant role in the book, which is obvious from the beginning when Robicheaux learns about the remains of a black body in the swamp. Dave recollects the black man’s murder that was commited by two whites when he was young. He finds out during his investigation that the murdered man was a lover of his boss’s white wife. Dave questions Hogman Patin, a black, who

27 is supposed to have known the murdered one. Hogman is convinced that “the Lord made people a different color for a reason” (75). He is the embodiment of a rather primitive “nigger” who is aware of the different privileges of the two races. Burke’s black characters tend to use typical informal black English, which is also obvious from the extract below:

“White folk call it rape when it fit what they want,” he said. “They see what they need to see. Black folk cain’t be choicy. They see what they gots to see. They was a black man, no, that ain’t right, this is a nigger I’m talkin’ about, and he was carryin’ on with a white woman whose husband he worked for. Black folk knowed it, too. They tole him he better stop what he doin’ befo’ the cars start comin’ down in the quarters and some innocent black man end up on a tree. I t’ink them was the bones you drug up in that sandbar.” (75)

James Lee Burke is very keen on history, as he says in one of the interviews, and this is reflected in the plot. Besides the fact that Hollywood’s film crew shoots the Civil War film, one can encounter the past and the athmosphere of the War “for real” due to Dave’s hallucination. Robicheaux discusses with the general the past as well as the present. If one denied the possibility of time warp and the reality of the Confederate soldier, it would be possible to come to the solution that the General represents Robicheaux’s inner voice. The general’s question “ How many lives would have been spared had we not lent ourselves to the defense of a repellent cause like slavery? ” (315) could have been Dave’s question as well. Robicheaux, similarly to the black Hogman Patin, knows about the dark side of the southern past. He himself says: “We live today on what people elect to call the New South. But racial fear, and certainly white guilt over racial injustice die hard” (152). The author devotes attention to the history of race relations in Louisiana:

“Although southern Louisiana, which is largely French Catholic, has a long and depressing record of racial prejudice and injustice, it never compared in intensity and violence to the treatment of black people in the northern portmon of the state or in Mississippi, where even the murder of a child, Emmett Till, by two Klansmen in 1955 not only went unpunished but was collectively endorsed after the fact by the town in which it took place. There was no doubt that financial exploitation of black people in general, and sexual exploitation of black women in particular, were historically common place in our area, but lynching was rare, and neither I nor anyone I spoke to remembered a violent incident, other than the one I witnessed, or a singularly bad racial situation from the summer of 1957.” (177)

The description of the police and juridical methods as well as those of journalists show how the blacks were treated in the pre-civil-rights era:

28

“Every good cop who spends time in a newspaper morgue, particularly in the rural South, knows how certain kinds of news stories were reported or were not reported in the pre-civil-rights era. “The suspect was subdued” usually meant that somebody had had his light switch clicked off with a baton or blackjack. Cases involving incest and child molestation were usually not treated at all. Stories about prisoners dying in custody were little more than obituaries, with a tag line to the effect that an autopsy was pending. The rape or attempted rape of a white woman by a black man was a more complicated issue, however. The victim’s identity was always protected by cops and prosecutors, even to the extent that sometimes the rapist was charged with another crime, one that the judge, if at all possible, would punish as severely as he would rape.” (178)

The following passage, precisely Doucet’s own reaction, reminds the practices which were typical for segregation. Suspect Murphy Doucet, former security guard of the Hollywood’s film crew, makes an inept comment on a black man’s note at the court. He highlights that blacks feel discomfortably in leading position:

“Inside the foyer, when the bailiff was about to walk the men on the chain to the front of the court room, the black man froze and jerked at the manacle, made a gurgling sound with his mouth while spittle drooled over his bottom lip. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” the bailiff said. “Want to be on the end of the chain. Want to set on the end of the row, “the black man said. “He’s saying he ain’t used to being in the front of the bus,” Doucet said.” (305)

Religion Religion does not play an important role in the book. There are only few references to Bible and Lord, which are usually said by black people. Robicheaux’s daughter Alafair once incidentally asks her father “What’s an ark?” (308). She gets a simple answer- “a story in the Bible” (308)- without any further explanation.

Music Burke has a great appreciation for music and some of his characters are even active musicians. He emphasises the connection between the South and music when he says in an interview that “a person who writes about blue-collar America, about the Southeast, ultimately he or she is going to have to write about the music of the people” (Rainone 1). Burke is aware of the fact that southerners have

29 always been surrounded by music. A character in the book, an old black, Hogman Patin, presents several songs in the novel:

I ax my bossman, Bossman, tell me what’s right. He whupped my left, said, Boy, now you know what’s right. I tole my bossman, Bossman, just give me my time. He say, Damn yo’ time, boy, Boy, you time behind. (156)

People: Cajuns and Creoles Patin’s song could be presented in any other southern state since it resembles one of the many plantation songs from the era of slavery. Accordingly, the topic of white versus black relations, which was described previously, is a general southern topic to discuss. The southern themes, such as black music and race relations, mingle with the themes which are typical for Louisiana—Cajuns and Creoles.

Cajun connotations, such as ‘Cajun accent’ (43), or ‘provincial Cajun world’ (93) are widely used in the novel. Robicheaux describes his encounter with a fisherman: “When I introduced myself, his handshake, like most Cajun men’s, was effeminate” (81).

Mardi Gras, a famous carnival which is celebrated along the central Gulf Coast portions of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, is also mentioned in the novel. This traditional Roman Catholic festive occasion also marks the region’s difference from the rest of the South.

Language Besides English, French can be heard in Louisiana due to the ethnic background of many of its inhabitants. This is documented by the frequent occurence of French language in the book: ““It’s Batist,” she said, and handed it to me. “ Qui t’as pr’est faire ?” I said into the receiver.” (47). Similarly, French personal names, such as Robicheaux or LeBlanc, are common.

Violence

30 The novel deals with racial as well as sexual violence. Murders, fights, and the usage of dirty words are frequent. 4.2 Jolie Blon’s Bounce (2002) by James Lee Burke

The Plot In Jolie Blon’s Bounce , Detective Dave Robicheaux investigates the murder of a young girl Amanda Boudreau. The suspect is Tee Bobby Hulin, a black junkie who never committed a violent crime. Robicheaux does not believe that the black boy killed the girl until a local prostitute Linda Zeroski is also murdered. Tee Bobby, who is out on bail, becomes suspect for that homicide too. Robicheaux seeks more information. When he questions Tee Bobby’s grandmother Ladice, he finds out that she is connected with rich LaSalle’s family. As a former employer Ladice met Legion Guidry, an overseer on LaSalle’s plantation. Legion is the antagonist of the book. Ladice says that he used to treat the black workers badly at the farm and rape black women whenever he wanted. Robicheaux blames Legion for commiting the two current murders that he investigates, although there is no evidence for it. Other characters make the whole process of investigation more complicated. Jimmy Dean Styles, a club owner, is found guilty of the murder of Amanda Boudreau. A door-to-door seller of Bibles, Marvin Oates, is not accused of killing Linda Zeroski, although he had probably done it. However, he is charged with another murder at the end. Finally, Dave manages to prove at least one Legion’s crime which happened 30 years ago.

The South It is clear from the beginning that the plot is set in Louisiana due to various place- names which are mentioned in the book. As in the previous Burke’s book, In the Electric Mist of Confederate Dead , the themes specific for the region are common in Jolie Blon’s Bounce : “But she thought about New Orleans, the streetcars clattering down the oak- and palm-lined avenues, the parades during Mardi Gras, the music that rose from the French Quarter into the sky at sunset” (60).

31 Since Louisiana is geographically part of the southern region it is not surprising that the remarks about the South in general also appear. The description of the South is stereotypical and is influenced by the notion of benighted South. The collocation “rural South” (35) is used. Similarly, Louisiana, as a southern state, is depicted by Robicheaux’s friend Clete Purcel as a place in Latin America: “This is Louisiana, Dave. Guatemala North. Quit pretending it's the United States. Life will make a lot more sense,” he said (45). It seems that belief in the South as a conservative and provincial region prevails in the novel.

Robicheaux often thinks of the past. Because of his memories one can make a picture of Lousiana and the South in general:

“I wanted to get in my truck and bang down corrugated roads, grind gears, thunder across plank bridges. I wanted to drive deep into the Atchafalaya Swamp, past the confines of reason, into the past, into a world of lost dialects, gator hunters, busthead whiskey, moss harvesters, Jax beer, trotline runners, moonshiners, muskrat trappers, cockfights, bloodred boudin, a jigger of Jim Beam lowered into a frosted schooner of draft, outlaw shrimpers, dirty rice black from the pot, hogmeat cooked in rum, Pearl and Regal and Grand Prize and Lone Star iced down in washtubs, crawfish boiled with cob corn and artichokes, all of it on the tree-flooded, alluvial rim of the world, where the tides and the course of the sun were the only measures of time.” (pp. 181-182)

Black People It is particularly the dark past that brings to light relations between whites and blacks. The answers to the questions that detective Robicheaux wants to find seem to be hidden on La Salle’s plantation. Robicheaux attempts to find anything which would be useful to accuse Legion of murder. When he questions an old black woman he learns much more about former relationship between the labourers and Legion:

“People always thought your daughter was fathered by Mr. Julian. But I think the father was actually Legion Guidry. He raped you, didn’t he? I suspect on a repeated basis.” “People didn’t call it rape back then. The overseer just took any black woman he wanted. Go to the sheriff, go to the city po-lice, they’d listen while you talked, not saying nothing, maybe writing on a piece of paper, then when you was gone they’d call up the man who had raped you and tell him everything you’d said.” (298)

32 Race relations and the way the black people were treated in the past can also be seen in the description of Batist, an old black, who works in Robicheaux’s bait shop:

“But he was still a powerful, large man who was confident in himself and took pride in his skill as a boatmate and fisherman and was proud of the fact that all of his children had graduated from high school. He had grown up in a time when people of color were not so much physically abused as taken for granted, used as a cheap source of labor, and deliberately kept uneducated and poor. Perhaps an even greater injury done to them came in the form of the white man's lie when they sought redress. On those occasions they were usually treated as children, given promises and assurances that would never be kept, and sent on their way with the feeling that their problems were of their own manufacture.” (pp. 29-30)

Outdoors One can learn a lot about the southern countryside from this novel. Burke mentions Louisiana’s scenery often, especially its landscape with mossy oaks and cypresses. These plants are typical for the Atlantic as well as the Gulf Coast and are closely linked to southern culture. As Neil Letson says, “there is a “Live Oak Street” in every southern coastal state” ( Encyclopedia 385). Spanish moss is “associated with Gothic imagery of the Deep South, suggesting romantic, mysterious, and sometimes menacing events” (Bell, Wilson; Encyclopedia 394). Similarly, cypress “can create an eerie impression” (Wilson, Encyclopedia 380). Louisiana is also characterised by bayous and swamps. People in this region are keen fishermen and boatmen:

“I got in the truck and drove full-bore down the four-lane, the frame shaking in the Gulf wind, until I saw the bridge spanning the Atchafalaya River at Morgan City and the network of adjoining bayous and canals and the shrimp and pleasure boats moored in the moss-green, softly muted tropical ambience that defines almost every unimpaired waterway in southern Louisiana. I turned into a clapboard bar that looked like it had floated out of the mist onto the road, one window scrolled with a green and gold Dixie beer sign.” (182)

Music Burke’s great interest in music is presented in the novel. The presence of music shows that the theme is undoubtedly connected with the southern environment. Tee Bobby Hulin, a black junkie, proves to be a talented young musician. When Robicheaux listens to Tee Bobby’s playing at an outdoor concert, he is reminded

33 of the great New Orleans bluesman Eddie ‘Guitar Slim’ Jones: “The lyrics and the bell-like reverberation of Guitar Slim’s rolling chords haunted me.” (30).

The title of the book was named after the song ‘Jolie Blon’s Bounce’, which is Tee Bobby Hulin’s favourite one. There have been a lot of songs based on the character of Jole Blon, Jole Blond, or Jolie Blonde. The first recording of the song Jolie Blon was made in 1928 and since then various versions have emerged, both in French and English language (“Clarence’s Lyrics of Cajun Recordings . . .” 1). The song is often reffered to as the Cajun nathional anthem.

Language French is widespread in Louisiana, especially in the southern part. In Jolie Blon’s Bounce , many French expressions and personal names document the vast settlement of French speaking Americans in this region: ‘sac-a-lait’ (21), ‘naïveté’ (57), Robicheaux, Boudreau, and LaSalle.

Typical southern personal names, which are often diminutives and end in y or ie , can be also found. The name of Tee Bobby Hulin is a good example. ‘Tee Bobby’ is a characteristic doublet, where ‘Tee’ is a shortened form and ‘Bobby’ diminutive. Another typical southern name could be the name of a club owner, Jimmy Dean Styles, or the name of ‘Jolie’ from the title.

Violence As Burke’s previous book, Jolie Blon’s Bounce is closely associated with violence. Detective Robicheaux is once ferouciously beaten by Legion Guidry. Guidry also humiliates Robicheaux by sticking his tongue in the detective’s bloody mouth. The horrific description of killed bodies appears in the novel as well.

34 4.3 Under Cover of Daylight (1987) by James W. Hall

The Plot As a small baby, Thorn survives the hit-and-run accident that kills his parents. He seeks revenge for that death and in his youth, he intentionally causes car accident which results in the death of the parent‘s killer, Dallas James. Many years later, Thorn still can not escape that moment and avoid the feelings of guilt. Neither his best friend, Sugarman, nor his girlfriend, Sarah Ryan, know the truth. One day, Thorn’s foster mother Kate, a good Sara’s friend, is found murdered in her boat. Sugarman, who works as a policeman, tells Thorn that police found drugs in that boat. Thorn realizes that Kate and Sara used to spend a lot of time together, and begins to suspect his girlfriend of smuggling drugs. She admits it. Sara explains that Kate and she needed a large sum of money in order to buy a particular piece of land which they wanted to save from being destructed by urban sprawl. As Thorn looks for Kate’s murderer, he learns a lot about Sara too. In the end, he finds out that his girlfriend is the daughter of Dallas James, the man that Thorn killed. Despite these circumstances, Sara and Thorn remain together. They manage to find Kate’s murderer as well as get the piece of land which they intended to buy.

Outdoors James W. Hall’s Under Cover of Daylight first introduced the character of Thorn and the southern Florida landscape. Thorn, who does not have another name, is a simple, tough man who makes a living by tying flies in his house in Key Largo, a small flat island which is part of the Florida Keys. Hall himself describes Thorn as “a guy who fishes for a living and scrapes by in a kind of Walden Pond existence” (Hall, “On Writing Under Cover of Daylight” 1) Thorn, like many Key-dwellers, lives on an island in order to escape the pressures of the mainland.

Hall knows the novel’s setting very well, since he was living in the Keys for a long time. He admits that he spent hours exploring the mangrove canals, fishing, and working part time in a local bait shop. It is obvious that he is concerned about

35 environmental damage of the Keys which is caused by the arrival of many newcomers.

Hall provides the novel with a detailed description of the whole area. One can learn that the Keys are mainly coral and limestone islands which can be easily destroyed by several strong hurricanes or water from melted icebergs and glaciers (469). It is also interesting to find out that there is not drinking water in the Keys and everything except fish and air has to be delivered (471). Key Largo is depicted as a place without highway system, a town hall, and a park. It has only four-way road, gas stations, parking lots, motels, bait shops, and billboards which invite drivers to Key West, the southernmost point of the United States (531).

In the Keys, the athmosphere is relaxing, the pace of life is slow, and people are easy-going. They seem to be interested either in fishing or drug smuggling. It is more normal to break the law in the Keys than anywhere else.

Conchs and People from the Carribean As Irvin McMann, the book’s antagonist, says, there are only turists, Conchs, and homosexuals in Key West (559). James W. Hall describes old Conch houses, mentions a hotel called ‘La Concha,’ and presents the Conchs’ customs in the novel. When being born out of the Keys, the Conchs are advised to bring a newborn child to the Keys as soon as possible:

“Thirty-nine years before, Quentin and Elizabeth had been driving home to Key Largo from the Homestead Hospital. Thorn was twenty hours out of the womb, still four hours left to get him back to the Keys so he’d be officially, by local custom, a Conch. To give the boy roots. Maybe roots was wrong. Suction was a better word. This island didn’t grant much purchase. Limestone and coral just under the couple of sandy dirt. It was just a long, narrow strip of reef really. And with a little melting at the North Pole, one good force five hurricane, it would be reef again. But Conch had suction. They could hold on to places where no roots could burrow in.” (“Under Cover Of Daylight” at Amazon.com p. 5).

Immigrants from the Caribbean, who are another minority in the Keys, appear in the novel too. Haitian shops, Caribbean music, and fried bananas (556) create the typical Latin American athmosphere. Furthermore, Father Monahan, a friend of

36 Sarah’s mother, is forced to preach in Spanish due to a large minority of Cubans in his parish (528).

Violence The plot summary shows that even the main hero has commited a crime. Murder appears to be the basic topic of the novel.

4.4 Tropical Freeze (1990) by James W. Hall

The Plot Thorn’s oldest and best friend Gaeton Richards, an FBI agent, disappears in suspicious circumstances. Thorn tries to find him together with Gaeton’s beautiful sister, Darcy. A strange man, Ozzie Hardison, tells them that Gaeton was killed. As Thorn and Darcy look for the killer, they get to know about illegal activities of Benny Cousins, a former FBI agent. Benny smuggles people to the United States and gives them new identities. Thorn and Darcy, who become lovers, finally manage to find enough evidence to convict Benny Cousins of Gaeton’s murder. Furthemore, they find out that Cousins killed many clients of his illegal business.

People and Outdoors Since the setting of James W. Hall’s Tropical Freeze is the same as the setting of his Under Cover of Daylight -the Florida Keys; the themes are generally very similar. One can imagine the southern Florida’s landscape characterized by heat, palms, mangroves, cypresses, and alligators; and learn about the ethnic minorities such as Cubans and Conchs.

People from all over the country go to the Keys to have fun and a rest, the majority of them being interested in fishing and sailing.

Hall also focuses on the topic of environmental protection. As in his first novel, he shows that people as well as nature cause the extensive damage to the original

37 environment of the Keys. However, except for a very few volunteers there is nobody interested in the problem.

“…she was shocked by the decay of the coral and the degrading of the water. The damn locals were doing a lousy job of protecting the ecology. This place was a national treasure, and they were letting it get ruined. Thorn nodded,…” (“Hard Aground at Amazon.com p. 4)

Violence Many characters of the second Hall’s novel go to the Keys in order to break the law or escape their problems. Benny Cousins’s clients want to start new lives and pay large sums of money for new identities. However, they are killed and buried under the palms trees in Benny’s beautiful tropical garden. James W. Hall admits that at the time he was writing Tropical Freeze he “was struck with the incredible audacity of government officials who flaunted American foreign policy and ran their own secret operation funded by various illegal activities” (Hall, “On Writing Tropical Freeze” p. 1). As a former FBI agent, Benny has many powerful and influential friends among members of police. They are willing to participate in Benny’s illegal business.

Music The theme of ‘music’ is striking in the novel. Ozzie Hardison, a jealous lunatic, is keen on playing the guitar and composing songs. He wants to become a famous musician, better than Johny Cash and other southern stars. However, Ozzie does not show a musical talent. He is a daydreamer, a person with a great desire to play and sing well. His girlfriend, Bonnie, tells him that he will never be a real Southerner with a southern voice (312). The songs that Ozzie composes are vulgar and amateurish.

38 4.5 Hard Aground (1993) by James W. Hall

The Plot Hap Tyler, a 38-year-old descendant of a famous pioneer, commodore Randolph Tyler, works as a tourist guide in his old family house in Miami, Florida. One day, his more succesful brother, an archeologist Daniel Tyler, is killed, and Hap decides to find the murderer. The suspect is Daniel’s girlfriend Marguerite and her mother, Senator Garnetta Rawlings. As Hap tries to solve his brother’s murder, he collides with a 450-year-old secret: the disapperance of treasure from a sunken Spanish ship Carmelita. He finds out that the Senator owns some precious objects from the ship. Hap begins to take an interest in the buried treasure. Ray Alvarez, a former policeman, intends to find and get hold of the treasure. Alvarez persuades rather simple Glenn Hollings to work for him, and also hires a dangerous Cuban killer Martina. Martina is a transsexual whose original name was Martin Phelps. During his investigation, Hap learns about his family’s history, and befriends Marguerite, who becomes his ally and his lover. The two finally manage to find and kill Daniel’s murderer.

The South James W. Hall used to live in Miami for a long time. It can be well seen in Hard Aground that he has a fascination for the city history and landscape. The emphasis is put on the development of Florida and Miami which dates back to the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, to the time when Hap’s as well as Marguerite’s ancestors became Florida’s pioneers. One can learn about Henry M. Flagler whose railroad caused that the area of the peninsula was easy to reach for tourists and newcomers.

The novel also shows how the goals of newcomers differed. There were some people, such as Marguerite’s great-grandmother, who wanted to save the original natural Florida’s environment and fought against drying up the area of Everglades and building the railroad. However, there were also businessmen and enterprisers who did not care about nature at all, and were interested only in profit. Such people were able to hurt or even kill anybody who wanted to thwart their plans.

39

Florida in 1878 is characterised by “mosquitoes, heat, snakes, Indians, lack of comfort and city life” (35), and a meandering river.

The Miami River plays a very important role within the plot, since the treasure, according to an old map, is supposed to be placed nearby. Hall intends to show that the shape of the river has changed a lot during one hundred years. He describes the original river as “a lazy stream that meandered through the center of the city and was shaded by mossy oaks. A beautiful river, so unlike the straight and sludge-filled thing today that is called the Miami River” (Hall, “On Writing Hard Aground” p. 1).

Outdoors Many plants typical for Florida’s environment appear within the description of the landscape in and close to Miami. Hap lives in a building which he calls ‘Mangrove house’ according to a tropical tree that grows in or near water. Mossy oaks as well as various kinds of palms which characterize the region are also mentioned.

People: Native Americans Hap Tyler emphasises the presence of few Seminoles near his place of living but he remembers that he used to meet more of them when he was young. The Seminole Indians developed a prosperous lifestyle in Florida but by World War I their social and economic status had declined. According to Harry A. Kersey, Jr., drainage projects in the Everglades depleted animal life and brought about the collapse of the Seminoles’s important market for pelts and hides. Furthermore, the arrival of railroads in the 1890s brought the waves of settlers who took up the lands of the Seminoles (Encyclopedia 441).

People: The Caribbean It is not surprising that the Cubans are highly present in the book. Since their arrival in the late 1950s the Cuban immigrants have had a great impact on the landscape and have formed an important minority of Miami. Hall describes a

40 typical Cuban district with small concrete houses, many parking lots, and the statuettes of catholic saints or Jesus Christ placed in display cases in front of every house (208).

Other immigrants from the Caribbean appear frequently throughout the book as well. The Haitians together with the Cubans are described as people who like to get hold of old things which were thrown away, such as cars. They are also characterized by spicy food, typical music, and the use of more vibrant colours (132).

Language To know Spanish seems very important in Miami. The book’s antagonist Ray Alvarez is of Cuban origin but was born in the United States. There is nothing strange about the fact that his son does not speak English. One can learn from the book that Spanish is predominant in Miami.

Violence Some characters, such as transsexual Martina Phelps and former policemen Ray Alvarez, behave in an extremely violent way. Martina is even able to kill her former girlfriend.

4.6 Maximum Bob (1991) by Elmore Leonard

The Plot Judge Bob Gibbs, called Maximum Bob, is known to take the maximum sentence allowed by law in Palm Beach County, Florida. He has obviously many enemies and when the attempts to kill him appear, it is not easy to find suspects. Bob is attracted to Kathy Diaz Baker, a young probation officer. One of Kathy’s clients is a psychopatic Elvin Crowe who has completed Gibbs-mandated sentence recently. Crowe agrees on the Gibbs’s murder with a former doctor Vasco sentenced to house-arrest by Bob.

The South

41 Florida has been for a long time an ideal setting for crime thrillers. It is the wealthiest state in the Deep South and it therefore attracts various criminals and outlaws from the neighbouring states as well as those from the Caribbean. The novel shows the life of the people from the bottom of the society, such as drug addicts, criminals, and whores. It also dramatizes problems with the judicial system, and presents a group of capable, honest policemen, assistant district attorneys, and probation officers.

Outdoors There are not many passages which describe the country and nature, and if they appear they are usually short. Gibbs, for example, says to Kathy that she “could not get closer to nature than in the Everglades,” (114) which is a wilderness area in southern Florida. The only larger passage gives an account of wide range of tropical vegetation. It is not connected with the main plot.

“They went out to a yard full of dark shapes, the judge stopping to sniff the air. “You smell it? Night-blooming jasmine.” Kathy sniffed, looking at Australian pines, a scraggly mahogany tree against the sky. “You like tropical plants and flowers?” “When I can see them.” “Look it here.” The judge flashed his light over foliage, vines, identifying bird’s- nest fern, staghorn, Vanda orchids. “See the bloom spikes?” Here, a white Cattleya with a yellow throat. The lavender orchid was Dendrobium. He had orchids climbing trees and hanging from moss pots. “I deal with ugliness all day long and come home to beauty.” (111)

Concerning animate beings, a typical animal of southern coastal areas, an alligator, plays much more important role. It represents threat and danger. Elvin’s brother has only one leg due to gangrene which followed an alligator bite; and Bob’s wife Leanne, who claims to have a second personality of a 12-year-old black girl, has been scared of alligators since an accident in her former job as a mermaid. An alligator appears in Bob’s and Leanne’s house and the investigation of the case seems to play a significant role within the plot. It is obvious that local people, especially policemen, know a lot about the alligators’ life. Gary Hammond, a policeman and Kathy’s lover, is able to easily recognize that an alligator at Maximum Bob’s house could not appear there by accident: “I can’t see a gator that size climbing the spoil bank and coming all this distance through your orange grove away from water” (70).

42

People and Fishing Maximum Bob is shown as an arrogant and big-headed womanizer who often tends to judge others according to their race and status. He has a big power and many people are afraid of him. Kathy Baker seems to become desperate when she has to work with him. She feels unimportant and almost humiliated in his presence. Despite her first impression, Kathy soon discovers the other side of judge’s personality. “Out of his robes” (18) he reminds her of a simple, old countryman. Bob is described as an elderly, retired Southerner, keen fisherman and alligator hunter:

“What he looked like now, sitting behind his desk, was a farmer. The top of his forehead, where it disappeared into the dyed hair, was lighter than the rest of his face. A farmer or an Okeechobee fishing guide dressed for town in a short-sleeve white shirt and red patterned tie. He even had the cracker sound of those boys from the country. Old Bob Isom Gibbs, known as “Big” to his buddies. He sat with his hands behind his head, leaning back in his chair. From deep in the office sofa facing the desk, all Kathy could see of the judge were his raised arms, elbows sticking out, and his head, his hair shining in fluorescent light. On the wall behind him were framed photos of the judge posing with several different men holding strings of bass and what looked like speckled perch. No doubt taken at a fishing camp on the lake. In another picture the judge was standing in an airboat holding a two-foot alligator in each hand, by the tail.” (19)

People: Cubans Katherine Baker is a young woman of Cuban origin, and these factors bring her into contact with the problem of race as well as sex discrimination. Particularly race relations between immigrants from Hispanic countries and Anglo-Americans are a typical theme to discuss in Florida. Judge Gibbs highlights the race diversity at the court when he realizes that the two women at the prosecution table are Cubans: “He said, “Buenos días, ladies. I see we have the Latinas versus the Anglos today. Good luck, boys. You’re gonna need it.” (pp. 11-12). Gibbs pays Kathy a ‘compliment’ when he says that she does not “look especially Latin.” (p. 18). Kathy seems to be more accepted after the judge and other people discover that she is not an immigrant but she was born in Miami: “He seemed relieved. “Sure, Cuban, but born and raised here.” (20). Nevertheless, Kathy can not avoid a feeling that everyone is interested in her nationality.

43 Elvin Crowe, a criminal who intends to take revenge on Maximum Bob, is the embodiment of a racist. Due to his remarks it is clear that he can not stand Hispanic immigrants. Elvin’s racist opinion resembles Bob Gibbs’s view and probably also the view of many other ‘respectable’ citizens of Florida. However, Elvin is the only character in the book who presents his attitude toward the different race truly openly, directly, and in a vulgar and a rude way:

“Elvin and Dale had to wait before the door was opened by a stocky little guy Elvin judged to be light-skinned colored, except he had a big honker on him and maybe was trying to pass. He looked out at Dale’s pickup in the drive sucking at his teeth, giving the truck a careful inspection before saying, “What is it you want?” With just enough accent that Elvin had to change his appraisal . This was some kind of Hispanic booger with a big nose, Cuban-looking now. There was all kinds of them.” (pp. 53-54)

Elvin refers to the problem of increasing immigration from the Caribbean which could result in the lack of working opportunities for others.

“Now it crept down the main drag of storefronts, Elvin always amazed at the sight of cane cutters, hundreds of black faces on the street buying Walkman radios and little TVs to take back to Jamaica, their season almost done. Elvin said, “I ain’t gonna say nothing but, Jesus Christ, how come we bring all these people here when our own niggers could be doing the work? I know it’s a filthy dirty job and you can get hurt swinging them machetes, but they could at least try it, shit. Don’t let me get off on that, the invasion of the boogers. You think they’re gonna be happy staying only six months? Pretty soon they’ll be living here, as the Cuban and different other kinds are, taking our jobs.” (pp. 165-166)

Although Florida is a wealthy state and many people associate it only with the image of relaxing holiday, it is well seen in the book that it has the other side of the coin as well. The unproblematic life of the rich judge Gibbs is contrasted with the poor people who are very often immigrants and lowlifes.

“They were passing migrant housing now, two-story concrete barracks, wash hanging to dry on the upstairs rails. “Day off, they drink rum and chew sugarcane. You go inside there, everyone of ‘em’s playing a radio. I never saw people liked radios so much.” Dale said, “When’d you ever go in there?” Looking for an argument in his frame of mind. “I worked one time for a guy ran the bolita. You know, the numbers? I’d have to go in those places they lived, be the only white person in there, boogers looking at me like they wanted to cut my balls off with a cane knife. Ugly people but, man,

44 did they love to play the bolita. They’d love this car too, wouldn’t they? They’d keep house in it.” ”( 167)

Violence Violence is primarily connected with Elwin Crowe who intends to kill Maximum Bob. Elwin manages to kill Kathy’s boyfriend and some other characters of the novel.

4.7 Jack and the Beanstalk (1984) by Ed McBain

The Plot A young Jack McKinney asks an attorney Matthew Hope to handle a real-estate transaction. However, Jack’s intention to plant snapbeans between Calusa and Ananburg, Florida, seems suspect in these geographical conditions, and after the boy is killed Hope starts to investigate the case together with the detective Morice Bloom of the Calusa Police Department.

Neither McBain nor his character Matthew Hope were born in the South. Matthew continues to stress that he used to work in Chicago and although he has lived in Florida for a long time, he does not know the whole state well and seems like a newcomer to himself in some places. The fact that both the author and the protagonist are from the North did not cause the book to lose the element of southerness. The opposite is true. It seems that some southern stereotypes are more emphasised in Jack and the Beanstalk than in the books written by contemporary southern authors.

The Title The title of the book is based on the name of an old English fairy tale “Jack and the Beanstalk”. It is a story about a young boy Jack, who swaps his cow for magic beans which change into a big beanstalk during the night. Jack manages to climb up the beanstalk and steal a golden hen which lays golden eggs from the giants’ house. This makes him and his mother rich forever. Similarly, Jack McKinney is supposed to become highly rich due to his ‘beans’.

45 The South The plot is set in Calusa County, Florida, and in the neighbouring De Soto County. The latter is mainly agrarian area and people specialize in cattle-breeding there. It contrasts with a modern, nautically oriented town of Calusa.

“You did not have to drive very far past the Sawgrass River State Park to realize how important cows were to Florida’s economy.The McKinney ranch was still within the confines of Calusa County, some twenty miles from the center of town, and only one of a handful of ranches before you crossed the border into de De Soto County. No sign marked the dividing line between the two counties. Nothing said Welcome to De Soto County . But you knew at once that this was true cow country, and the moment you drove through Manakawa, the only town on the way to Ananburg, you felt you’d crashed through some sort of geographic time warp to find yourself in what appeared to be a mixture of Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana – the deep South blending imperceptibly with the Southwest.” (53)

As Matthew Hope travels to the town of Ananburg, which he calls “the heart of Central West Florida cow country“ (54), he takes notice of dialects, food, and clothes. Everything is very different from Calusa.

“The regional dialects in Calusa were largely Midwestern tourist, harsh and flat and somewhat abrupt, with here and there an off-American dollop of Canadian English thrown in. But here in the boonies the accent was pure Dixie, and the inhabitants looked like anyone you might find on a dusty back road in Georgia. The men wore bib overalls here, and straw hats, and they chewed tobacco and rolled their own cigarettes. The women wore those patterned cotton things my mother used to call house dresses. The road side restaurants in Manakawa featured ‘home cooking,’ which invariably meant country ham and black-eyed peas, green beans and fatback, hominy and collard greens, corn bread and fried catfish. Forsaking the restaurants offering down-home fare, I found a greasy spoon across the street from what appeared to be a courthouse, ordered a hamburger, a side of fries, and a cold beer, and was on the road again at two- thirty.” (53)

Generally, a cow country is connected with cowboys. Matthew Hope finds a lot of them in Ananburg, which is famous for All-Florida Championship Rodeo. It is obvious from the extract below that Matthew does not feel comfortable in such a different place.

“They clattered along the dusty sidewalks, bowlegged in their boots and jangling spurs, straw ten-gallon hats shading leathery brown faces, hand-rolled cigarettes dangling from sun-cracked lips. They called each other ‘Clem’ and ‘Luke’ and ‘Shorty,’ and they slapped each other on the back a lot, and they had pint-sized whiskey bottles in brown paper bags stuffed into the back pockets of their tight, faded jeans. This was Charlie-and-Jeff country, and I felt a certain amount of

46 uneasiness as I walked up the main street looking for the address Harry Loomis had given me.” (54)

Hope encounters a mother of killed Jack McKinney, Veronica, as well as his sister Sunny. They live in a cattle ranch which differs from those in Texas only in the occurrence of typical Florida plants, palms. During his investigation, Matthew learns a lot about cattle-breeding, and about the activites which are connected with it, including rustling: “Rustling, I thought. In Florida. I suddenly felt a long, long way from Chicago, Illinois.” (35).

The topics of farming and cattle-breeding are used in the old fairy tale, “Jack and the Beanstalk”, as well as in the novel. In McBain’s Jack and the Beanstalk , they help characterize Florida’s economy. This can be proved by a short passage: “The state of Florida, in fact, counts cattle-breeding as among its chief sources of revenue, ranking it fifth after narcotics, tourism, manufacturing and farming” (6).

People: Cubans and Rednecks The Cubans, who very often appear in the books which are set in Florida, are present in Jack and the Beanstalk only occasionally and they do not play a significant role in the book. This could be caused by the fact that the plot is set in small towns and countryside, whereas the Cubans are more likely to be concentrated in big cities, especially Miami.

Southern countryside is characterized by presence of rednecks, undereducated members of the Southern lower-middle class or working class. These are well depicted in the book. Hope meets two redneck cowboys in a nautical lounge when he returns home with his girlfriend from a formal party in honour of Calusa’s resident artists. These rednecks, as it is typical of the majority of them, do not speak in an accurate way and seem to be interested only in alcohol and country music in the jukebox. Nevertheless, the men start to ask Matthew inappropriate questions in order to make him feel angry: “‘What kinda music was they playin’ at the prom?’ Jeff asked. ‘Did you do a lotta dancin’?’Charlie asked.” (9). They begin to behave rudely to Matthew’s girlfriend, and then beat Matthew in a very violent way.

47

“He grabbed her wrist and started pulling her out of the booth. Charlie stepped aside to give them room. I started to get up, but Charlie, with his weight lifter’s muscles, slapped out at me effortlessly, backhanded, and I sat down again on the high-backed wooden bench. I thought, This isn’t happening . This encounter with two redneck cowboys in a shitty little lounge was as far removed from the ordered reality of my life as would have been an elephant hunt in darkest Africa.” (p. 9)

Language Matthew meets a lot of people who have at least several characteristics of rednecks. The most striking feature that he notices, when he comes into contact with people from the countryside, is the speech.

“‘Matthew Hope.’ I said into the phone. ‘Mr. Hope?’ he said. ‘This here is Avery Burrill.’ Redneck farmer voice, Southern accent you could cut with a machete. ‘Yes, Mr. Burrill,’ I said. ‘I’m the man sellin’ that farm to your client.’” (23)

Southern accent can be seen in the speech of an attorney Loomis from Ananburg. Harry Loomis’s client Avery Burill sold his snapbean field to Jack McKinney. He was later, as well as Jack McKinney, murdered. Loomis talks with Hope and comments on Burill’s daughter’s inheritance.

“. . . What she is, Mr. Hope, is a prostitute down there in N’Orleans, is what she is. Hester Burrill. Talked to her early this morning, I think she had a sailor in bed with her, way she kept callin’ him ‘Ensign,’ though that mighta been the man’s name, they got funny names in N’Orleans, comes from the French infl’ence, I suspeck. Point is, Mr. Hope, I’m a Good-fearin’ Baptist who don’t want no more truck with prostitutes than’s necessary. . . .” (147)

Religion Prostitutes and other low-life characters are very often mentioned in crime fiction including the southern literature. On the other hand, religious remarks seem to be rare in this kind of literature. The note about religion-“I’m a Good-fearin’ Baptist” (147)-is exceptional in the novel.

Drugs , a supplement to Violence Drugs are connected with crime fiction in general, and it is therefore not surprising that they play a significant role in the detective story which is set in the

48 narcotics’s state Florida. Jack McKinney owned a big sum of money which enabled him to buy a large piece of land. This fact seemed to be suspicious to the detective Bloom who tried to find a solution in an illegal action:

“‘Big money,’ Bloom said thoughtfully. ‘What’s the first thing that comes to your mind, Matthew?’ ‘Inheritance,’ I said. ‘That’s the difference between a lawyer and a cop,’ Bloom said, ‘first thing comes to my mind is narcotics.’ ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Only because this is Florida, and the kid was murdered. . .” (21)

Futhermore, drugs provide the book with a logical ending. It is discovered at the end that Jack’s intention to grow snapbeans was untrue. The young boy was planning to grow hemp instead.

4.8 Puss in Boots (1987) by Ed McBain

The Plot Cartlon Barnaby Markham, Matthew Hope’s client, is suspected of killing his wife, Prudence Markham, who worked as a film director. Matthew believes that Carlton is innocent and helps to investigate the case. He and a private detective Warren Chambers find out that Prudence was linked to the porn industry. They finally manage to identify her real murderer.

The South Whereas McBain’s Jack and the Beanstalk focuses on the Florida’s countryside, Puss in Boots depicts mainly the city life. The plot is set in Calusa County, Florida, in the town of Calusa. Calusa is described as a place which has changed and developed recently. It is obvious that the fast change from a small village to the town with a population of 53 000 has attracted a lot of criminals, drug dealers, and prostitutes. Matthew Hope considers Calusa to be “an American Midwest which moved on the coast of Gulf of Mexico.” (107).

49 Language The fact that Florida is part of the southern region is emphasised several times in the book. The main indicator of southerness is the typical southern speech. Matthew Hope, who comes originally from Chicago, often takes notice of it in the book, because it seems very significant to him. He describes his client Carlton Markham as a person with “a soft southern accent” (19).

The southern speech also causes a crucial misunderstanding in the novel. Two men, who are not originally from the South, intend to find a porno actress. They get information from a young southern woman who tells the men that the actress’s name is Margaret Dill. The men discover much later that the actual name is “Deal”.

Black People Matthew Hope’s family matters are used as a complement to the main storyline. It is well seen in the book how Matthew and his former wife Susan concern about their new daughter’s boyfriend, who is black. Matthew seems to understand Joanna, the daughter, better. He recalls his own going out with a black girl who suffered a lot because he stressed the fact that she was black. Joanna complains that her mother used the word ‘nigger’ in connection with Joanna’s schoolmates some time ago.

Violence Puss in Boots appears to be the most violent novel from the analysed texts. This is particularly due to a naturalistic description of an excruciating torture of a porno actress formerly featuring in Prudence Markham’s film. It is found out at the end that the actress was tortured and finally killed by her jealous husband. This man is also accused of killing the film director, Prudence Markham.

50 4.9 The Writers’ Biographies

The authors of popular literature are not usually listed in any dictionaries. I searched for information about James Lee Burke, James W. Hall, Elmore Leonard, and Ed McBain on the Internet, especially on their home pages.

James Lee Burke (born 1936, Houston, Texas)

James Lee Burke grew up on the Texas-Louisiana Gulf coast. He attended Southwestern Louisiana Institute and later received a B. A. Degree in English and an M. A. from the University of Missouri in 1958 and 1960 respectively. During his life he has had various jobs; he worked as a Picture 1 landman for Sinclair Oil Company, pipeliner, land surveyor, newspaper reporter, college English professor, social worker on Skid Row in Los Angeles, clerk for the Louisiana Employment Service, and instructor in the U. S. Job Corps. Burke’s novel The Lost Get-Back Boogie (1986) was rejected 111 times over a period of nine years, and upon publication by Louisiana State University press was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. After the “Boogie” Burke started to devote to crime fiction. The Neon Rain (1987) introduced readers to Lieutenant Dave Robicheaux, a Vietnam veteran and New Orleans Police Department homicide detective. In 1997, Burke inaugurated a second series with the novel Cimarron Rose , which introduced the character Billy Bob Holland, a Texas Ranger-turned-lawyer, from Missoula, Montana. Burke now continues to write the novels about both Dave Robicheux and Billy Bob Holland. As his home page says his work has been awarded an Edgar twice for Best Crime Novel of the Year.

51 James W. Hall (born 1947, Hopkinsville, Kentucky)

James Wilson Hall has spent most of his life in Florida. He received a B.A. in Literature from Florida Presbyterian (now Eckerd) College, an M.A. for Creative Writing from John Hopkins University, and his PhD. in Literature from the University of Utah in 1973. He has been a Fulbright Professor of literature in Spain and teaches literature and creative writing at Florida International University. He is the author of four books of poetry, a collection of short Picture 2 stories, a collection of essays, and thirteen novels to date. He began writing crime novels in 1986, and is especially well-known for his Floridian character, Thorn. Several of his books have been filmed. A number of Hall’s novels is expanded nearly every year. His latest book’s name is Forests of the Night (2005).

Elmore Leonard (born 1925, New Orleans, Louisiana)

Leonard’s father, a site locator for General Motors facilities, caused the family to move frequently. In 1934 they finally settled in Detroit, Michigan. Elmore Leonard attended Catholic grade school, and received a Jesuit education at the University of Detroit High School. He graduated in 1944 and joined the Seabees. Picture 3 He was stationed in the Admiralty Islands near New Guinea. After the war, Leonard went to college at the University of Detroit and graduated in 1950 with a major in English and philosophy. Leonard‘s goal was to become a commercial fiction writer so he chose the western as his initial subject matter. He switched from westerns to crime in the late 1960s. Since the publication of the best-seller Glitz (1985), Leonard has written about a book a year. A lot of them were filmed - Get Shorty (1990) in 1995, and Rum Punch (1992) as the film Jackie Brown in 1997. In 1992 the Mystery Writers gave Leonard the Grand Master Award. Leonard has written more than 40 novels so far. His latest novel, The Hot Kid , was published in 2005.

52 Ed McBain (born 1926, New York City, New York; died 2005, New York City, New York)

Ed McBain was born Salvatore Lombino to Italian- American parents. He was educated at Evander Childs High School and studied for a year at Cooper Union art college before he was conscripted into the U.S. Navy in 1944. He received a B. A. degree at Hunter College, New York, in 1950. After several jobs, he finally settled in the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. The writer chose the name Evan Picture 4 Hunter because he did not consider his Italian name to be the proper one for writing. He wrote under the pseudonyms ‘Curt Cannon‘, ‘Hunt Collins’, ‘Ezra Hannon’, ‘Richard Marsten’, and ‘Ed McBain’. As Ed McBain, he focused on crime novels. His 87th Precinct series are set in a fictional city called Isola, which resembles New York. Later ‘Matthew Hope’ novels take place in Florida. His books have inspired a lot of TV series, such as Colombo and Kojak. He is also the author of several screenplays; the best-known is for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963).

McBain received the Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement, from the Mystery Writers of America. He was also given the Diamond Dagger, the British Crime Writers Association's highest award. He wrote more than 70 novels as ‘Ed McBain’ and about 100 books altogether.

53 CONCLUSION

The main aim of my thesis was to find southern stereotypes in contemporary southern literature available for a Czech reader. I also expected to examine whether or not the Czech reader could gather enough information about the South from literature.

First, I made a brief survey in order to find out which of the contemporary southern novels appeared on the Czech market. It turned out that the majority of the books in the Czech bookshops and libraries fell into the category of popular literature, precisely crime and detective fiction.

The next step was the study of theory. I chose themes which were typical for the South and which I intended to analyse in the texts. I also commented on the historical development of southern literature and emphasised the frequent occurence of violence and terror in it. Finally, I collected the theoretical rules to the characteristics of popular literature.

Then I tested the theoretical claims in an analysis of the contents of eight contemporary popular southern novels. The choice of the novels was based on the survey which preceded the analysis. I tried to find southern stereotypes in the novels the Czech reader was familiar with. The focus was on the themes of people, religion, outdoors, language, music, and violence.

The analysis of popular southern detective and crime fiction has shown that some of the suggested themes - people, religion, outdoors, language, music, and violence - are described in detail while the others are not given special importance.

The theme of ‘violence’ is the essential part of crime and detective fiction in general, and it is therefore not surprising that it is included in southern thrillers. The topic of aristocracy connected with ‘people’ is not present in any of the texts, which is in accordance with John Fiske’s statement that popular culture “denies

54 the social, and in particular avoids the political” (121). The presence of working class Southerners called rednecks in the novels is exception to a rule. Typical southern English appears in all the novels. Other languages are also described. Burke’s novels frequently make use of Cajun and Creole French while the novels set in Florida mention Spanish. James Lee Burke and James W. Hall seem to be masters of the description of ‘outdoors.’ Although they deal primarily with violence, they are able to devote long passages to the description of landscape, plants, animals, and climate. Southern outdoors are also mentioned in the novels by Ed McBain and Elmore Leonard. However, they are not so common there. ‘Music’ is mainly included in the novels by James Lee Burke. Elmore Leonard and Ed McBain omit it completely. ‘Religion’ has always been an essential part of southern life. However, this is not shown in contemporary popular literature. Although writers sometimes make a remark about religion, they generally avoid the topic. Taking the characteristics of popular literature into consideration, the writers’ attitude toward religion seems to be logical. Religious topic might be disturbing and discouraging for readers.

Florida is used as the setting for the majority of the contemporary southern novels translated to Czech. According to my survey, the three of the four authors of southern crime and detective fiction - James W. Hall, Elmore Leonard, and Ed McBain - focus on Florida setting. James Lee Burke is the only writer who writes about Louisiana. Other southern states are omitted.

The avoidance of some topics in popular literature can be explained by publishers’ tendency to treat popular books as commercial goods. Similarly, the setting is restricted to the particular areas. Florida remains the most popular setting for crime and detective fiction.

Despite the fact that the writers of popular southern literature avoid the description of some issues, they are able to incorporate many typical southern themes into their novels. I have found that the South is generally well depicted in contemporary popular literature. Moreover, the southern themes are easily recognizable, owing to the simplicity and explicitness of popular literature.

55 I have come across many southern stereotypes in the novels, including white versus black relations, rednecks, southern speech, violent tendencies, and farming.

Finally, the question whether or not the Czech reader is able to learn anything about the South from literature can be answered. It has been shown in the analysis that the South is depicted in vivid details in contemporary literature. Although some topics are not given special importance, there are many others which are well described. I have come to the conclusion that contemporary popular literature can provide the Czech reader with a considerable amount of new information about the South and southern culture.

Popular literature has mostly been described in negative terms. However, I am able to make at least one point in favour of it: Popular novels provide the Czech reader with a good opportunity to learn about the distinctiveness of the American South.

As long as Czech publishing houses ignore contemporary artistic southern literature, popular literature will provide the Czech reader with the only opportunity to learn about the distinctiveness of the American South.

56 SUMMARY

In the diploma thesis I dealt with the topic of the American South and southern literature. My aim was to find certain southern stereotypes in the contemporary popular novels known to a Czech reader. I expected to examine whether or not the Czech reader could gather enough information about the South from literature.

I have found out that the South is generally well depicted in the contemporary popular literature. I have also come to the conclusion that the Czech reader is able to learn much about the South and southern culture from the available literature.

RESUMÉ

V diplomové práci jsem se zabývala tématem amerického Jihu a jižanské literatury. Mým cílem bylo najít určité jižanské stereotypy v současné populární literatuře dostupné českému čtenáři. Snažila jsem se prověřit, zda má český čtenář možnost se z dané literatury dostatečně seznámit s americkým Jihem.

Zjistila jsem, že americký Jih je v současné populární literatuře celkově velmi dobře zobrazen. Došla jsem k závěru, že díky populární literatuře je český čtenář schopen se dozvědět mnoho informací o Jihu a jižanské kultuře.

57 NOTES

Picture 1(The photo of James Lee Burke) taken from “James Lee Burke.” Exclusive to Powell’s Author Interviews . 20 Jan. 2006 .

Picture 2 (The photo of James W. Hall) taken from James W. Hall’s official website. 7 Mar. 2006 .

Picture 3 (The photo of Elmore Leonard) taken from “Elmore Leonard.” Random House, Inc. 2 April 2006 .

Picture 4 (The photo of Ed McBain) taken from “Ed McBain.” Bookreporter.com. 12 Jan. 2006 .

58 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Secondary sources Arbeit, Marcel. “Creeping into Every Literary Work: Four Forms of Subliterature.” Popular Culture and Democracy . Ed. Matthew Sweney

59 and Michal Peprník. Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého, 2004. 79-91. ISBN 80-244-0809-0. Arbeit, Marcel. “Proměny literatury amerického Jihu.” Host . 10. 11. 2003: 49-53. Cuddon, J. A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory . London: Penguin Books, 1992. ISBN 0-14-051227-6. Elliot, Emory, et al. The Columbia History of the American Novel . New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. ISBN 0231073607. Fiedler, Leslie A.. Love and Death in the American Novel . New York: Stein and Day, 1966. (ISBN 081281799) Fiske, John. “Popular texts.” Understanding Popular Culture . London: Routledge, 2001. 103-127. Gove, Philip Babcock, et al. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged . Springfield: Merriam-Webster Inc., 1986. ISBN 087792011. Hart, James D. “South.” The Oxford Companion to American Literature . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. ISBN 0195030745. Hilfer, Tony. “Southern Fiction.” American Fiction since 1940 . New York: Longman, 1992. ISBN 0-582-49350-1. Kulka, Tomáš. Umění a kýč . Praha: Torst, 1994. ISBN 80-85639-17-3. Lewis, Barry. “Postmodernism and Literature (or: Word Salad Days, 1960-90).” The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism . Ed. Stuart Sim. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. 121-133. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English . Longman Group Ltd., 1999. ISBN 0-582-23749-1. Poláček, Jiří. “Triviální literatura.” Průhledy do české literatury 20. století . Brno: Akademické nakladatelství CERM, 2000. 155-188. ISBN 80-7204-162-2. Priestman, Martin. “Introduction: crime fiction and detective fiction.” The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction . Ed. Martin Priestman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. I-VI . ISBN 0-521-00871-9. Rubin, Louis D. The American South: Portrait of a Culture . Washington: United States Information Agency, 1991. Sirovátka, Oldřich. Literatura na okraji . Praha: Československý spisovatel, 1990. ISBN 80-202-0122-X.

60 Wilson, Ch. R., et al. Encyclopedia of Southern Culture . Chapel Hill&London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1989. ISBN 0807818232.

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