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Booker T's Coming Home and Alice's Soulbath

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Booker T's Coming Home and Alice's Soulbath BOOKER T'S COMING HOME AND ALICE'S SOULBATH: TWO NOVELLAS by LAURA PAYNE BUTLER, B.A., M.A. A DISSERTATION IN ENGLISH Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved Accepted May, 2001 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe a debt of gratitude to my dissertation committee, particularly Dr. Jill Patterson. A talented writer. Dr. Patterson has given more to my writing than she will ever be able to know. An acknowledgement page can do little to express the admiration 1 hold toward her as a writer, an editor, a teacher, and. most of all, a friend. She taught me to be patient and hopeful, while remaining the kindest of mentors throughout the entire writing process. Without her knowledge and guidance, I know absolutely that this dissertation would not have happened. 1 also wish to thank my other committee members. Dr. Doug Crowell and Dr. William Wenthe. Both of these talented writers and teachers have helped guide my academic and writing career through the past many years. Dr. Wenthe taught me to listen to the Blues in language, and Dr. Crowell taught me to reach deep inside for the writer within. 1 respect both their ideas and work and feel honored that they agreed to work with me on this writing project. Thank you to Dr. Lady Brown. She has been a mentor to me through the past several years. 1 will strive to live up to her standard of decorum and intellect, style and presence. She is, perhaps, the strongest woman 1 have ever met, and her happiness is infectious and inspiring. Drs. Donald Rude and Wendell Aycock also deserve many thanks for being advisors, teachers and great friends throughout my entire academic career. Both of these men have treated me as a colleague and a daughter, and 1 will constantly use the memory of my relationship with them as a model in the future. 1 owe a dept of gratitude to the Graduate School. The 2000 research grant gave me the resources to write this dissertation. Thank you to Dr. Aaron Meskin for agreeing to take time out of a busy schedule to act as Dean's representative at my defense. Most of all. I ha^e to thank m> family—both the one down in North Florida and the ones with me here in Texas. When 1 moved out to Tallahassee, Florida, the Olives— especially Bob and Mary—took me in and taught me so much about living in the southern wa\. I will always feel a closeness to them and will forever return to the South as a "coming home." Thank you to my parents, Beck>' and Ron Payne, and to my husband's parents, Gayle and Tom Butler, for all the help. They have come and taken over my life when 1 needed it the most and ha\e never made me feel as if that was bad. Best of all, they each maintained such a bright interest in m\ work; this does more to keep me going than they could ever imagine. I dedicate this writing to my husband. Brad, and to my son, William. Thank you both for understanding when 1 could not be all the way "there"" with you, when I was tired and distracted. I hope someday I can read m> stories to my son, and he will know them as depicting a wonderful place and a good people, and I hope that my husband will know that this writing is always for him and about him. Ill The stories in this dissertation have appeared—in greatly different forms—in The Distillery, New Stories from the South, 1999, and South Carolina Review (upcoming). IV TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1 PART ONE: BOOKER T'S COMING HOME 17 fl. MAMA ELEANOR'S CHILDREN 19 III. ROCHELLE 35 IV. BILLYBOY 48 V. BIG JIM 66 VI. LOU 83 Vn. SISTER VYRJE 101 Vin. ALICE'S EULOGY 118 PART TWO: ALICES SOULBATH. 123 IX. SCRATCHING UP HELLHOUNDS 125 X. SWIMMING AGAINST THE UNDERTOW 147 XI. ONLY HORSES RUN WILD IN CLOUDS 165 Xn. THE BIRTHING OF JUST GETTING BY 182 XIII. ALICE'S SOULBATH 198 XIV. GROWONG OLD IN THE MAIZE 213 WORKS CITED 228 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The poet '.f voice need not merely be the record of man. it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. — William Faulkner In his Nobel Prize address given in Stockholm, Sweden, on December 10, 1950, William Faulkner did not embark on a discussion of his writing or works specifically; instead, he accepted the award as one he claimed was given to "a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before" (723). The remainder of the speech was dedicated to a discussion of how future writers must continue to search for "problems of the spirit" (what he called "the problems of the heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing . worth the agony and the sweat") instead of letting external social problems outweigh these spiritual concerns (723). Of course, that was more than half a century ago, but as I read this speech, I realize over and over again that Faulkner's simple hopes hold so true and right for writers of my generation. The impetus behind Faulkner's speech is the fact that he believed emerging writers in his day were overcome by a "general and universal physical fear'' that overshadowed matters of the human spirit in their writings (723). 1 agree this fear is certainly an influence in our time as well. The universal for Faulkner meant internalization of motivation rather than externalization of happenstance, although his concern was for the universality of spirit. 1 have approached the writing of this dissertation by attempting to employ distinct techniques which I hope follow Faulkner's advice and transcend the physical concerns of my world in order to render images of the human spirit that are timeless and, therefore, universal, all the while writing within the constructs of the southern genre. Two of these techniques are the use of voice and the development of character. They are both distinctive and necessary in regional fiction because they set the color and tone essential for the creation of place and theme. I write voices determined on how I "hear" them. The voices in my mind become voices of my characters, and this is a great challenge, because many of them are so culturally different from my own; however, it is the creation of these voices that is my agony and joy in writing. Voice is more than simply dialogue and narration. Voice comes out of happiness and frustration, dreams and deaths that I imagine my characters experienced. These happenstances dictate the spirit within each character, and that, in turn, shadows the manner through which a voice is drawn. Hearing voice is a mystery to me. I sometimes think that the ability to hear voice comes from reading southern literature or from listening to people talk then remembering. Occasionally I think voice is sheer luck. But the complete answer to the mystery of voice lies in the fact that, when I sit down to write a character. 1 create voice in my mind first, placing myself within the thoughts of my character and attempting to unravel his or her emotional and intellectual workings. It is there, in the heart and in the soul of an individual character, where 1 find actual voice. Many years ago, I was gassing up my car outside the Suwannee Swifty gas station just off Interstate 10 in north Florida. The day was stifling hot—in that repressive way that humidity sticks to your skin like dirt. The gas meter clicked, and the pump turned off, but Just as 1 was turning to go inside to pay, this ancient, brown Impala literally rattled to a stop next to my car. The door creaked open, thudded shut, and a small, stooped Black man got out. He strutted—as best he could with that stoop—over to me, flashed a gold-toothy smile, and said, "1 be getting your gas, baby,"' while shaking his pocket full of change. This man became Booker T Goldwire, a name I stole from The Gadsden County Times ' dead subscription files. To this day I still hear his voice and see that smile. Any time I get a hankering to write Booker's stories, 1 start there, remember his voice, and simply write. I've been lucky that way—1 have a wealth of voices in my head through happenstance and place. The technique of writing Booker T is a bit more complicated: but his character is the one that moves from novella to novella and, thus, is developed the most thoroughly while functioning as a memory only. He does not actually possess his own voice, rather is rendered through the voices of the other characters. I decided from the onset that 1 wanted Booker T to be complicated in the sense that his heart is both giving and self- centered. He takes in other characters (Lou, Big Jim, Alice), but refuses to take on familial responsibilities. He claims to be free, to live by the river, but he is heart-broken when he is scorned by the white society at Lou's marriage party. I wanted Booker T to ring true throughout both novellas because his character risks becoming a cliche through goodness and badness.
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