We Eat This Gold Christopher Drew University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations August 2014 We Eat This Gold Christopher Drew University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the American Literature Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, and the Fine Arts Commons Recommended Citation Drew, Christopher, "We Eat This Gold" (2014). Theses and Dissertations. 683. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/683 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WE EAT THIS GOLD by Chris Drew A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee August 2014 ABSTRACT WE EAT THIS GOLD by Chris Drew The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, 2014 Under the Supervision of Professor Liam Callanan We Eat This Gold is a novel set in a small coal mining community in southwestern Indiana. Centered around a son’s return to his father’s house after a failed music career in Nashville, the novel explores the subtle social structures of rural America, the slow decline of modern coal communities, and the often oversimplified beliefs, worries, and biases found in small towns. It also seeks to provide a realistic portrayal of the inner workings and broader culture of an active underground coal mine, as well as explore the ramifications, both economic and psychological, of serious workplace injuries sustained in such an environment. This dissertation also includes a critical introduction analyzing the particular concerns involved with approaching rurality as both subject and setting in American literature, and how noted American novelists have chosen to characterize and present rural settings. ii © Copyright by Chris Drew, 2014 All Rights Reserved iii DEDICATION Many individuals were instrumental in the creation of this dissertation. My heartfelt thanks go out to the following people: BROOKE DREW—for helping me make time, for supporting me when I grew frustrated, for being excited when I was, for listening when I needed an ear, and for loving me through it all TIM BARRETT—for listening to my ideas as the novel took shape, for giving me better ones sometimes, for helping me bridge the gap between reality and fiction, for being my sounding board regarding all things Pike County, and for being my first reader SAVANNAH BOULWARE and ESME DREW—for putting up with Dad disappearing into the basement for hours at a time STEVE DREW, LIZ WARD, MIKE DREW, and CLINT DREW—for teaching me everything I need to know about fathers, mothers, sons, and brothers LANNY SIMMONS and BOB TURPIN—for showing me the inside of a coal mine, and for answering so many of my questions about mining life DAVID YOST, JOSEPH REIN, and TRENT HERGENRADER—for giving the second draft the close, thoughtful, critical read it needed to shed some pounds and come out leaner and better TEVIS BOULWARE and REBEL BOULWARE—for babysitting while I wrote, for reading the early draft, and for making me feel like a writer KIN WARD, SANDY DREW, ASHLEY WARD, BRITTANY HANAUER, and DEXTER HANAUER—for the sort of unconditional support that’s not easy to find BOB DREW and DOTTIE DREW—for setting me on the straight path many years ago LIAM CALLANAN—for helping shape my creative voice, for helping me navigate the labyrinthine university bureaucracy, for being my advocate in a variety of situations, for keeping his office door open, and for guiding this dissertation to its present form TRACY DAUGHERTY, MARJORIE SANDOR, KEITH SCRIBNER, and GEORGE CLARK—for various and sundry guidance in the craft of writing fiction MIKE WILSON, JASON PUSKAR, and PAT RICHARDS—for taking the time to serve on my committee, and for their invaluable guidance during my time at UWM iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter One 30 Chapter Two 36 Chapter Three 48 Chapter Four 61 Chapter Five 83 Chapter Six 99 Chapter Seven 113 Chapter Eight 133 Chapter Nine 160 Chapter Ten 188 Chapter Eleven 213 Chapter Twelve 240 Chapter Thirteen 262 Chapter Fourteen 281 Chapter Fifteen 304 Epilogue 340 Curriculum Vitae 349 v 1 Introduction In addition to typical novel-construction challenges such as character creation, plot momentum, and thematic layering, writing We Eat This Gold has presented a difficulty that occurs throughout my writing and continues to require focused attention. In all of my fiction (and most of my nonfiction), I have chosen to write about the same geographic place at different times and from disparate points of view. This has been done before, of course, and by more accomplished writers. William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County is generally analogous to what I have attempted, with its limited geography and knotted ball of recurring characters, though I also find literary kinship with the works of Louise Erdrich. Her repeated and changing characterizations of the upper Midwest and Plains states in her novels go about the same work I am interested in—capturing the essence of a place and presenting it as a something approaching a character. Where I have (perhaps incautiously) broken with the approaches of writers such as Faulkner and Erdrich is in my decision to set We Eat This Gold, as well as my other fiction, in the real place where I was born and raised—Pike County, Indiana. I appreciate the freedom that comes with focusing on loosely fictional places such as Jefferson or Argus, but the decision to write about the real Pike County, full of towns and roads that can be found in Rand McNally, felt necessary when I began writing. One of the early bon 2 mots handed to writers is to “write what you know.” I took the advice literally. At first, I did so because it felt safer, but soon I found that the details I embedded in stories about an unremarkable and occasionally backward patch of the Midwest delighted my workshop mates and other non-Hoosier readers. For example, the idea of “corning cars” (hiding near highways and throwing hardened field corn onto the windshields of passing vehicles during the Halloween season) had ceased to fascinate by the time I went to college. To readers, though, it revealed an oddly specific bit of culture from a region they usually flew over. It also fascinated them more than the flattish characters in my early fiction. Seeing an opportunity, I used these details to buoy my craft as I continued to refine my work into complex fiction. By the time I wrote the first story I considered successful, I found that Pike County had moved from entertaining detail-provider to fully established character in an ongoing project I had only become aware of after writing several linked stories. As I continued writing, I read craft essays by writers similarly interested in place, and I quickly found Eudora Welty, whose essay “Place in Fiction” asks an important question: Should the writer, then, write about home? It is both natural and sensible that the place where we have our roots should become the setting, the first and primary proving ground, of our fiction. Location, however, is not simply to be used by the writer—it is to be discovered, as each novel itself, in the act of writing, is discovery. Discovery does not imply that the place is new, only that we are. Place is as old as the hills. Kilroy at least has been there, and left his name. Discovery, not being a matter of writing 3 our name on a wall, but of seeing what that wall is, and what is over it, is a matter of vision. (55) Here, I found articulation of the purpose I had been stumbling toward—not simply sharing the place where I grew up, but working through a process of discovering (or rediscovering) it, both for myself and for my reader, whether they had been to Indiana or not. Each time I sat down to write a new Pike County story, I attempted that discovery from different angles, through the eyes of children, women, men, sons, daughters, farmers, miners, and widows, all existing at different moments and locations in the history of the county. This discovery began to shape my larger project, limiting it in ways, but also bringing the focus that comes with limitation. By the time I began drafting We Eat This Gold, I knew much of what I wanted to accomplish in the novel. I wanted to provide a broader sense of the places in and around Pike County, both geographically and atmospherically, much more so than the brief characterizations in my other stories. I wanted to give the reader a sense of the unique coal mining culture of the region, which is neither as oppressive as those found in Appalachia, nor as professional and modern as those found west of the Mississippi. I wanted to capture the cultural moment of the place and its inhabitants—a moment in which the lone, dominant industry of the region has faded, and nothing can replace it. I wanted to hang the weight of place on the characters, showing that they are who they are because of (or because of resistance toward) Pike County. Considering these goals, I began to feel a similar weight. Specifically, that of accurately characterizing a place that someone can visit and verify. Yoknapatawpha is 4 Faulkner’s South, not the historian’s or the cartographer’s. My Pike County is on the map, and though I have taken strategic liberties with it, I can’t stray too far.

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