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Plotted: A Literary Atlas

Page 5

by Andrew DeGraff


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  foundly not at home. And so we write our

  letters insisting that this is not us, this is not

  where we live, this is notwho we are. But we

  tend to protest a bit too much. is book re

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  mains hugely popular in schools (when it’snot

  banned) for exactly this reason.

  But to say that “e Lottery”

  means such-

  and-such or condemns so-and-so is to miss

  the true source of its power.is town is not

  named. is place is not visible on a map.

  And the trajectories of the various characters

  can only really be understood in relationto

  the ultimate tragedy here. ey all converge

  on the black spot because those are the rules

  and that is what these people do and that is

  what they have always done. is is the nature

  of their community, and once that black spot

  is eradicated the community loses its coherence

  and disappears. What that black spot “means”

  means less than the fact that it is there at all. In

  the meantime, we will continue to write our

  letters and ban our books. We are not them,

  we promise.

  •

  91.

  Journey to Nowhere

  From

  Invisible Man

  By Ralph Ellison

  1952

  A

  side from perhaps Benjamin Franklin and

  Frederick Douglass, it’shard to think of

  an American gure who has participated more

  fully in American life than Ralph Ellison. Born

  into relative poverty in Oklahoma City in ,

  Ellison was able to attend a good school and

  had people around him who encouraged his

  interests in music, literature, and technology.

  (roughout his life he remained an endlessly

  curious human being.) He attended the Tuske

  -

  gee Institute on a music scholarship, but left

  the school to head to New York in . Once

  there, he quickly became familiar with Alan

  Locke, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright,

  and began writing and publishing book reviews

  at Wright’s suggestion. His career had begun.

  During his time in Depression-era New

  York, Ellison also worked with the Living Lore

  Unit(part of the Federal Writers Project) on

  gathering urban folklore, and began work on

  some ction projects as well. During World

  War II, he worked in the kitchen of a merchant

  marine ship, and at war’send he began work

  on

  Invisible Man

  , which won the National

  Book Award for ction the following year. He

  wasn’tdone, of course, and taught, wrote, trav

  -

  eled, and lectured until his death in ; but

  InvisibleMan

  remains, by far, his masterpiece.

  Ellison has much in common with his main

  character, and his book draws heavily from

  American art and culture of the time. But the

  book itself weaves inuence and inspiration

  together so adeptly that the resulting work is

  something entirely startling and unique. It is,

  without a doubt, a great American novel (and

  speaks to the fact that it’sunreasonable ever

  to talk of one such champion) — but it’salso

  an American tragedy. Huckleberry Finn nds

  himself on the river by book’send; Ishmael

  rises again from the sea after the Pequod sinks;

  but our narrator here ends where he begins:

  invisible still, and underground.

  Tragedy, then, may not be quite the word,

  as tragedies require a fall. Ellison’snarrator does

  not fall so much as he abides, and his “aw”

  is not his own. Heis not invisible, but others

  make him so. In“Notes from Underground,”

  Dostoevsky’santi-hero lives underground in

  an exclusively metaphorical sense. His psyche

  is what lies beneath (a fact in which he nds

  a perverse elation). Ellison’sunderground is

  literal, though it has similarly large metaphori

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  cal implications. In America, the Underground

  Railroad served as a route to freedom — but

  freedom wasn’tguaranteed, and the manner

  of survival that it oered in the meantime was

  imperiled and oppressed. It was born of a lack

  of other opportunities. And here, in Ellison’s

  hands, that underground has become real —

  and permanent.

  e liberation that life underground oers

  to our narrator is a liberation of voice. His un

  -

  derground dwelling, like Dostoevsky’s under

  -

  ground of the mind, is a place of greater truth.

  But the vitality of the world aboveground, a

  place both black and white, with heroes, vil

  -

  lains, cowards, and a teeming mass of people

  and life, is something that will always draw us

  out. e lights burn brightly underground —

  all , of them — but they oer a sadly arti

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  cial ame. Like the song on the recordplayer,

  they oer a lament.

  •

  95.

  The Waiting Room

  From

  Waiting for Godot

  By Samuel Beckett

  1953

  H

  umans are small, but ideas are big. at

  is somewhat inspirational, but it’salso

  something of a design aw. Our minds outpace

  ourselves, and then, before weknow it, we arrive

  at the universal, the all-encompassing, the ab

  -

  solute. Before we know it, we come face-to-face

  with Elohim, Allah, Buddah, Jehovah, God,

  and… Godot? Or do we? Historically speaking,

  it’shard to deny that these deities (or this de

  -

  ity, depending on one’s outlook) appear quickly

  and consistently wherever humans congregate,

  but are these truly gods that we encounter, or

  are they simply concepts? is simple question

  (which often serves as a punchline) is central

  to Beckett’siconic play.But there’salso much

  more to it than that. (ank God.)

  As the Gospel of John famously relates, “In

  the beginning was the Word, and the Word was

  with God, and the Word was God.” But words

  (to say nothing of God — Old Testament or

  New)are deceitful things. ey are full of con

  -

  notation and promise but are also nearly impos

  -

  sible to capture in their entirety.Godot, for its

  part (or his? hers?), is a meaningless word, but

  as a name it is beyond poignant. We hear the

  echo of “I am” in the name of this gure who

  is destined to be forever without. His name

  appears as a kind of covenant. But then again,

  he is not here. Like all the faithful everywhere,

  we remain in wait.

  Godot is as loud as he is distant. Weare

  small beside the enormity of what we imagine

  him to be (even s
hould he prove nonexistent).

  And we heed our imaginings of Godot even as

  reality (via time, for instance, and the changing

  of the seasons) imposes itself upon the stage.

  Pozzo leads Lucky in the beginning, and Lucky

  leads Pozzo at the end. e circular natureof

  time itself echoes the circularity (not to say

  solipsism) of human thought. ere are some

  distant, cultural resonances — of the Sphynx

  and the ages of man, for instance — but this

  is also

  the

  play of modernism. Itis bare in the

  extreme, and urgent.

  e play is words and little else (a tree here,

  a bowler hat there), but it is also a living docu

  -

  ment. is is a play about the thing that we are

  waiting for. And it’s a reminder that waiting is,

  in itself, an escape. Godot — like the idea of

  Godot, like the hint of Godot, like the shadow

  of Godot — remains a threat. Toee him is to

  live, but then the question remains: to livefor

  what? (Good luck answering that one.)

  •

  101.

  I

  n cinematic terms, “AGood Man IsHard to

  Find” is an ensemble piece. It has no main

  character to speak of, just as it has no “good

  man” at its core. What we get instead is a ragtag

  bunch of self-involved mediocrities: a grand

  -

  mother who acts like a child (and who nds her

  equal in her grandchildren); a son, Bailey, who

  lacks the strength to resist either his mother or

  his presumed executioners; and a killer who

  seems to resent his past as much as he reviles

  the present. As far as family vacations go, this

  is a bad one.

  “AGood Man IsHard to Find,” like “e

  Lottery” (see page ), is a staple of high school

  English classes. is makes sense. Both of the

  stories are haunting, incriminating, and deeply

  ambiguous. But the ironic fact (given the au

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  thors’divergent religious inclinations) is that

  while Jackson’sstory seems to speak to a sort

  of original sin, O’Connor’sfable hones in on

  a particularly American crime. O’Connor’s

  story is told with a blandness that heightens

  the banality of its various evils. is blandness

  is shocking, given the story’scontent, but it is

  also apt. e family’sutter lack of interest in the

  moral component of America’shistory is echoed

  in the amoral tone of the narration; in the way

  the family car glides past the Civil War monu

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  ment; in the “joke”that the grandmother tells;

  and in the anecdotes that e Mist relays.

  ese characters are not interested in ethics or

  morals, but this remains a deeply moral tale.

  e journey of “A Good Man” is a journey

  through the American South, and the goal is a

  plantation of the mind — the grandmother’s

  mind, as it happens. Her memory,in fact, is

  one of the most reliable clues that this story

  will end badly,despite its blandness. e reve

  -

  lation of the memory’sfalsehood is provided in

  ominous ts in starts, but in the end we learn

  the truth: e plantation in question does not

  exist, and the resulting wrong-turn takes our

  less-than-beloved family into a far deeper reck

  -

  oning than they ever anticipated.

  e grandmother sets the stage for this nal

  reckoning in her conversation at Red Sammy’s.

  is is where the “good man” makes his appear

  -

  ance. We see remnants of this good man’sfad

  -

  ed glory in the idealization of the plantation,

  in the grandmother’srecollections of “better

  times,” and in the notion of “good blood.” e

  grandmother, with her progeny behind her,

  refuses to believe that e Mist, a man who

  looks and sounds like the kind of people she

  grew up with, could be a cruel sadist. As she

  puts it, “Why you’re one of my babies!”

  Although O’Connor has her nger on the

  pulse of the s here, her story is also note

  -

  worthy for its understanding of place. After all,

  it isn’thard to followthis family.eir starting

  point is known and their destination is not far

  away.(“It took them twenty minutes to reach

  the outskirts of the city.”) en as now, Mists

  abound, and good men are hard to nd.

  •

  Flannery O’Connor’s

  Family Vacation

  From “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”

  By Flannery O’Connor

  1953

  105.

  .

  .

  TheWrinkled

  TimeContinuum

  From

  A Wrinkle in Time

  By Madeleine L’Engle

  1962

  A

  Wrinkle in Time

  is unique in a lot of ways,

  but for science-ction lovers it’s

  hard not

  to nd L’Engle’sreliance on knowledge

  (rather

  than technology) especially charming. ere

  are no phasers here, no spaceships, no thrust

  -

  ers; instead, what our young protagonists have

  is a tesseract — that is, a fairly abstract phenom

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  enon that allows them to travel through space

  and time. L’Engle’slack of interest in gadgetry

  is important because its result is just one less

  veil over the things that really matter: mystery,

  romance, drama, and wonder.

  e simplicity of the tesseract as a narrative

  device results not only in a lack of technological

  clutter (in the map, as in the book), but also in

  a coherent, if massive, universe. Wecan take in

  L’Engle’senormous spaces in a single glance. But

  that coherence does not result in alack of awe.

  e magic is there despite L’Engle’sfocus on sci

  -

  ence. In a way, math

  is

  magic. Knowledge

  is

  what

  drives our heroes across the galaxy.But we may

  be getting ahead of ourselves.

  As in any great adventuretale for younger

  readers,

  A Wrinkle in Time

  possesses both an

  intimate human drama and an epic cosmic

  war. Charles Wallace, Meg, and Calvin may

  start out in search of Mr. Murry,but it doesn’t

  take long before that quest is wrapped up in

  the larger mission of defeating “IT” and “e

  Black ing.” Despite the looming presence of

  these antagonists, the focus is never far away

  from the family at its center. Wecare about

  their battle with these dark forces because we

  care about them, we want them to be together,

  we want them to love one another. In these re

  -

  spects, the story sounds almost absurdly maud

&nbs
p; -

  lin, but of course it doesn’tread that way.In

  fact,

  A Wrinkle in Time

  is actually quite dark

  (not to say stormy) and takes care to really

  reckon with disappointment, disillusionment,

  and death. IT has the frightening power to

  change people’snatures and obscure the stars

  — a threat that nds ready analogues in the ex

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  perience of childhood, a time when the world

  is porous and unstable. Even if the enemies are

  ctional, the threat here is recognizably real.

  All this talk of darkness though does a dis

  -

  service to L’Engle’sequally fascinating con

  -

  sideration of loveand light. In her world, the

  stars are our angels — a metaphor that seems

  central to the book. Angels are, of course, a tra

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  ditionally religious conception, whereas stars

  are real, physical things. Stars are the subject

  of science, and for two millennia now we have

  been learning about them by using perhaps the

  most ancient human science there is: the art of

  Geometry.But then again, stars arebeautiful,

  impossibly distant things. We wish on them as

  well. L’Engle’sworld is a deeply ordered world

  — but it’s also a magical place. No wonder it

  remains so beloved.

  •

  109.

  I

  t’scommonly said of great books that they

  show us a new way of looking at the world.

  In RichardAdams’s(incredibly adult) children’s

  classic, that is literally the case. He took an area

  that he knew extremely well — the area that

  surrounded his home in the English country

  -

  side — and then made it home to an entirely

  new world, where rabbits talk and reason a lot

  like humans do but also remain, in a very real

  sense, rabbits. ere is verylittle else like it in

  this regard. And perhaps that’sthe reason why

  so many publishers turned it down beforeit

  was nally released, won the Carnegie Medal,

  and sold millions upon millions of copies.

  e humanish rabbits (or rabbity humans

  — whichever you prefer) of

  Watership Down

  show us a world that is both utterly recog

  -

  nizable and yet entirely new,with plants that

 

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