Of Words and Water Literature and the Bay (On Literature and The

Research, Education, Outreach July-August 1998 or centuries the Chesapeake has SPOTLIGHT ON LANGUAGE inspired those who have settled F on its shores. Native Americans of the Algonquian nation poetically Of Words and Water called it “Chesepiooc,” meaning “Great Shellfish Bay” or, according to some, “Mother of Waters.” Early Spanish explorers named it “Madre Literature and the Bay de Dios,” the Bay of the Mother of God. Beginning in 1607, the estab- BY JACK GREER lishment of large, English-speaking colonies brought a rich heritage of written language to the New World and to the Bay region, a tradition “Wonder lies in the bay and that continues to the present. From the effusions of Captain its watershed in full measure. John Smith to the gripping narrative It is nothing alien or mystical, of escaped slave Frederick Douglass to the contemporary ironies of John or reserved for the expert.” Barth and the lyrical descriptions of William Warner, the Chesapeake has — Tom Horton inspired powerful writing in both fiction and nonfiction. Writers have Bay Country drawn on the Bay for physical setting, dialogue and character, and in so doing have created a literature that deepens our understanding of cultures that have themselves been shaped by their relationship to this special place. The News Literature Brings Literature is language that, as William Faulkner says, “lives.” It is news that stays news. But exactly what news does literature try to give us? How does it differ from other news — the news of science, for example, or the news of environmen- talism or history? To paraphrase the Roman poet Horace, “The purpose of literature is to delight and to teach.” It is not enough to “teach” (as would, say, history or science); or to “delight” (as would, say, some forms of popular culture) — literature does both at once. And, one might add, it must Please turn page M.E. Warren A Maryland Sea Grant Publication Literature, continued accomplish this in a way that gives “He wonders if . something back to our culture, some- he’s ever asked himself, what it’s for, living here on this thing we would be poorer for not land just barely afloat on fragile banks of clay and sand.” having. To say this in another way, a work of literature takes its substance — Christopher Tilghman and meaning from the culture from In a Father’s Place which it derives, but it also helps to shape our understanding, and our culture, in new and lasting ways. In his book The Modes of Modern Writing, novelist and literary critic David Lodge argues that literature involves the creative use of selection (of language) and combination (of language). Easy to say. Hard to do. Lodge posits that all writing, from en- cyclopedias to novels, involves this process of selection and combination, though he reserves the term “literature” for creative language (poetry, fiction, nonfiction) that employs lin- chives guistic devices to take the reader beyond the purely literal to more complicated mental capacities. In contrast to rhetorical argument, for example, which may aim to clarify through re- Maryland State Ar duction, literature often aims to en- vate psychologies, nor does it aim to. to the action, is J.R. Salamanca, au- lighten through amplification and One might say that Michener’s ap- thor of several novels written during evocation. proach, a very appealing one, is “top- the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Lilith, though In literature, in the words of nov- down”: he begins with a framework set in rural Maryland and not in a elist Henry James, “There are depths.” of events and ideas and uses charac- Bayside community, is perhaps Sala- In what ways have Bay writings ters to bring them to life. manca’s best known novel, popular accommodated these richer, more Other Bay writers compose their enough to have been made into a complicated literary forms? Has the stories from the bottom up, starting feature film. In other novels, Salaman- Chesapeake, among the shallowest of with more realistic characters and set- ca focuses on the Chesapeake Bay — estuaries, inspired writers to give us tings — sometimes drawn from per- in Embarkation, for example, he dra- the “depths” James refers to? sonal experience — and building the matizes the life of a boat builder and narrative on them. In such writings as his family in Solomons Island, Mary- The Bay As Setting The Lord’s Oyster, for example, East- land. Unlike the novels of Michener Of all the recent fictional works ern Shore author Gilbert Byron re- or even Gilbert Byron, Salamanca about the Bay, James Michener’s lates stories steeped in firsthand ex- tells his stories from the “inside,” Chesapeake may well be the most periences of growing up and living through characters whose actions res- widely read. Michener has done for by the Bay. Here one can “see” the onate with significance. the Bay what he has done for Hawaii, boats, the towns, the people of the Embarkation’s boat builder, Joel Texas and Alaska. He has taken on a Chesapeake as they once were, and Linthicum, is a husband and father place and described it in detail from many students of the Bay have, un- who will stop at nothing to pursue its beginnings in geologic time derstandably, a strong affection for his heart’s dream — building beauti- through the course of natural and hu- Byron’s intensely regional work. By- ful yachts — even if it means driving man history. The story of unfolding ron’s writing has charm — though it his family to ruin. Like a possessed generations is set within that context does not create or evoke complex artist, he cannot help himself. Sala- — and Michener paints a vivid pic- symbolic or archetypal design, nor manca evokes this “artist’s studio” ture. If one wants to learn about the does it reach deeper levels of psycho- when the son, returning home after region, Chesapeake is a place to start. logical complexity. many years because of the drowning But the Jamesian depths are not here: One novelist who evokes the re- death of his father, enters the Bayside Michener’s broad canvas dwells on gion by probing characters for whom boatyard: society — it does not penetrate pri- the Chesapeake, as place, is integral 2 • MARYLAND MARINE NOTES I opened the door and went in and dle. Here Nature shows a dark side; Barth’s focus is not on the physical switched on the light and stood the descriptions of the Bay, of boat Bay, but rather on the process of fic- there once again embraced as if by building, not only reveal a close con- tion-making itself. In some ways like my father’s arms in the reek of nection with the real world, with a another Bay-area writer, Edgar Allen clean redwood and pitch and Chesapeake that we all recognize, but Poe, Barth sets his works in the land- hemp and oakum, shellac and cre- osote, the litter of sawdust and ten- there is — as Joseph Conrad writes of scape of the imagination, though we drils of shaved mahogany, tarry literature — “something more.” That can easily recognize at the same time buckets and casting ladles and lad- something more has to do with the the marshy terrain of the Chesapeake. ders and sawhorses and jumbled human condition. Unlike Poe, Barth is very conscious paint lockers and drill benches and Sadly, Embarkation, and all of of his Chesapeake connections. In lumber racks of fragrant teak and Salamanca’s books, are out of print. such essays as “Historical Fiction, Fic- spruce and afromosia and white titious History, and Chesapeake Bay pine, and beyond, in the shadowy Barth and the Bay Blue Crabs, or About Aboutness” (in vault of the shop, tall and royal as Perhaps no novelist has worked a collection entitled The Friday Book) a harp, the skeleton of a ship that and “Goose Art or, the Aesthetic Ecol- he was building. the Bay into fiction more inventively than the Cambridge, Maryland-born ogy of Chesapeake Bay” (in Further Fridays), Barth explores the relation- Salamanca seeks out and follows writer, John Barth. Barth began his lit- ship between “Bay” writing and “liter- the lyrical structures of the language. erary career at the age of twenty-four, ary” writing (which must finally quali- Beyond this, he draws on the power when he wrote The Floating Opera fy as “art,” regardless of its subject). of the Bay itself as symbolic force in (1956), followed quickly by The End Speaking of Bay literature in his the narrative. In a key description of of the Road (1958). In 1960 he pub- essay “Goose Art,” Barth notes that a squall rising on the Bay, Salamanca lished The Sot Weed Factor, a ram- while “a rising tide floats all boats,” it joins a sailor’s eye for nautical detail bling eighteenth century-style histori- also floats all kinds of other stuff, in- with the charged threat not only of cal novel set in colonial Maryland that cluding “garbage, untreated sewage the storm but of the father’s obses- rivals Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones for and suchlike. ..” He reminds us that sion, which threatens to destroy the expansive satire and libido. the most important consideration for family. In a powerful turning point, But while books like The Floating Bay literature, as for all literature, re- one reckless moment places the Opera (and, much later, Sabbatical mains quality. And when it comes to builder’s young son in the destructive and The Tidewater Tales) draw on quality Barth gives a critical nod to path of a wildly spinning winch han- the Bay for their concrete moorings, “I recommend three Maryland beaten biscuits, with water, for your breakfast.

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