And Second Comes the Son Matthew Hip Llips University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected]
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University of Texas at El Paso DigitalCommons@UTEP Open Access Theses & Dissertations 2016-01-01 And Second Comes the Son Matthew hiP llips University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd Part of the Creative Writing Commons Recommended Citation Phillips, Matthew, "And Second Comes the Son" (2016). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 725. https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd/725 This is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UTEP. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UTEP. For more information, please contact [email protected]. AND SECOND COMES THE SON MATTHEW ROBERT PHILLIPS Master’s Program in Creative Writing APPROVED: ____________________________ Jeffrey Sirkin, Ph.D., Chair –––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Tim Z. Hernandez, MFA –––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Marion Rohrleitner, Ph.D. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Charles H. Ambler, Ph.D. Dean of the Graduate School “You can’t talk to a man/ with a shotgun in his hand.” —Carole King, “Smackwater Jack” “The story,” Sanders would say. “The whole tone, man, you’re wrecking it.” “Tone?” “The sound. You need to get a consistent sound, like slow or fast, funny or sad. All these digressions, they just screw up your story’s sound. Stick to what happened.” —Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried “…The forms we must see, now that the bones are dust.” —Raymond Williams, The Country and the City AND SECOND COMES THE SON by MATTHEW ROBERT PHILLIPS, BA., MFA. THESIS Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at El Paso in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF FINE ARTS Department of Creative Writing THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO December 2016 Table of Contents PAGE Table of Contents ...........................................................................................................................iv Critical Preface ................................................................................................................................1 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................1 2. Rebellion and the Hangman’s Noose ..........................................................................................7 3. Make Me a Man (Again) ...........................................................................................................16 4. Sons of Liberty ..........................................................................................................................20 5. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................23 Works Cited ..................................................................................................................................25 Chapter 1 .......................................................................................................................................26 Chapter 2 .......................................................................................................................................30 Chapter 3 .......................................................................................................................................42 Chapter 4 .......................................................................................................................................51 Chapter 5 .......................................................................................................................................63 Chapter 6 .......................................................................................................................................66 Chapter 7 .......................................................................................................................................75 Chapter 8 .......................................................................................................................................85 Chapter 9 .....................................................................................................................................105 Chapter 10 ...................................................................................................................................109 Chapter 11 ...................................................................................................................................112 Chapter 12 ...................................................................................................................................120 !iv Chapter 13 ...................................................................................................................................123 Chapter 14 ...................................................................................................................................135 Chapter 15 ...................................................................................................................................138 Chapter 16 ...................................................................................................................................148 Chapter 17 ...................................................................................................................................165 Chapter 18 ...................................................................................................................................172 Chapter 19 ...................................................................................................................................183 Chapter 20 ...................................................................................................................................191 Chapter 21 ...................................................................................................................................200 Chapter 22 ...................................................................................................................................211 Chapter 23 ...................................................................................................................................216 Chapter 24 ...................................................................................................................................218 Chapter 25 ...................................................................................................................................227 Chapter 26 ...................................................................................................................................236 Vita ..............................................................................................................................................246 !v Critical Preface 1. Introduction When I began writing And Second Comes the Son I wanted to craft an entertaining narrative, to create compelling characters, to inspire an emotional response, but I also wanted to examine American life, particularly American masculinity and its influence on men and boys; this notion of masculinity—and it is solely American—elicits specific concerns, fears, shortcomings, and strengths. Masculinity operates, like femininity, within a structure of capitalist patriarchy, and I found this oppressive element a catalyst for many of my characters’ actions— American men and women act, for the most part, within a patriarchal structure; and, while Americans often consider themselves rebellious, our lives can veer into rote behavior influenced by capitalism and the patriarchal system which supports it (marriage, stay-at-home mom, enrollment in the armed services, etc.). Grappling with these thoughts and ideas influenced my writing; the resulting book—part noir thriller and part literary novel—revealed, of course, my own uncertainties and fears regarding masculinity, American-ness, and fatherhood. And Second Comes the Son tells the story of Sam Carl, a short order cook in a rural high desert town. Sam has a wife and son, but he is ashamed of himself and, in truth, does not see himself as a man. His best friend, Hayes Simms, has completed several war tours as an American soldier in Afghanistan, and it’s this disparity—between Sam’s life and that of Hayes—that creates a friction between Sam’s desires and his personal truth. He is a lot of things, but Sam is not—to himself or to the world—a real American man. This ‘real-ness,’ for Sam, is related to his earning power and potential—the tension between Sam’s reality and expectations for himself !1 makes him feel less than worthy. What is his self-worth, and what is his worth to his wife and son, if he cannot earn ‘enough’ money by selling his labor, body, or mind? To explore these emotional and situational aspects, I crafted my book in the tradition of post war noir and crime fiction. These genres are descendants of both the quest-for-vengeance tale (like, say, Moby-Dick) and the popular legends of American gunslingers and outlaws. These kinds of stories look deeply at what it is to be a self-made man in capitalist society; it is this notion of male identity which shapes, infects, and determines masculinity’s manifestations and practices in America. The self-made man—even above the tough-as-nails ‘manly’ man—lords over American life, whether it be male, female, or any other gender/non-gender.