"Mysteries Of Winterthurn" by Joyce Carol Oates, Some Responses to Reading It!

In the past, I have read and written on this blog about at least one of Joyce Carol Oates' books, "Where Is Here" which is a collection of short stories which I liked a lot. I have also read some of her short stories which have been published independently elsewhere. I have to say that this book, "Mysteries Of Winterthurn" which is generally described as a novel is an interesting book. There are parts of it which I like a lot. There are other parts of it which fail to impress me. First and foremost, I would not say flatly that I see it as a novel. I think of it much more as a Short Story Cycle which is generally described as a collection of short stories with several common aspects including common characters, common setting, a rational timeline which is evident across all the stories, and in most short story cycles all the stories are viable if viewed as being independent of the others. The book is composed of three stories which are also arguably novellas ranging in length from 150 pages to almost 200. The stories have a common protagonist, Xavier Kilgarvan, who is a young man of about 20 or so years in the first story and a man of nearly retirement age in the third. The stories progress across his lifespan in a rational timeline, but there is a sizeable gap of time between each subsequent story and the next. All three are set in Winterthurn a rural,small town in New England. All the stories share a common cast of lesser characters. Each story involves murders which Xavier works to solve since all are unsolved at the time of his initial involvement. The writing style in these stories is very different from the style in the short story collection which I mentioned above. That writing style is reminescent of the work of Edgar Allan Poe or other major writers of early American mystery or detective stories. I believe that Oates set herself the task of emulating as closely as possible the writing style which is generally seen in early American murder mysteries or the English examples such as the work of Conan Doyle. The language is cumbersome, verbose, and replete with words and terms which have nearly fallen out of use in spoken English in America today. I commend Joyce Carol Oates on that effort to emulate the earlier style of writing. She did an excellent job of making the book appear to almost be a 19th century work in the genre. But it is a cumbersome read in today's world. I have to admit that as I read the book I was unmotivated to read it straight through from beginning to end. I had to take a break between the stories, read other works by other authors which were written in more modern styles. After reading another book following each of the stories, I was able to motivate myself to return and complete the book. I have to admit that I rarely, if ever, begin a book which I do not finish reading. I firmly believe that if I begin a book I owe the author an obligation to complete it. That author has spenta sizeable chunk of their time writing the book,obtaining a publishing contract, and marketing the book with public appearances, book signings, and other promotionial work such as radio and television interviews. If you are a devoted reader of murder mysteries, you might love this book. If you are not such a reader, you might stop long before you reach the end.

Reflections On "The Hawk's Done Gone and Other Stories" by Mildred Haun

A recent Facebook message exchange with another lover of the short story cycle genre has reminded me that I have never written specifically on this blog about "The Hawk's Done Gone and other Stories" by Mildred Haun.  I have thought about it numerous times and have even reread the book at least once since I began this blog.  I was first exposed to this book about 1974 in Beckley, WV, by the great Appalachian poet and educator, Robert "Bob" "Billy Greenhorn" Snyder.  Bob loved this book and rightly so.  It is one of the most truly Appalachian books in all of Appalachian Literature.  It is also one of the finest works in Appalachian Literature which utilizes dialect writing.  I have said before in this blog that I do not generally attempt to write in dialect because it is very difficult to do appropriately and can be quite laughable and, yet, demeaning when it is done poorly whether the dialect being written about is Appalachian, African American, southern, or nearly any other dialect which is depicted as the dominant manner of speech for any minority group.  

This book falls squarely into the genre of literature known widely as the short story cycle.  I, like many other students of American Literature, was not even aware of the term until fairly recently.  Yet, I had also known literally since the days I was first exposed to the book that it has often been the subject of an ongoing argument as to whether it is a group of short stories or a novel.  Other well known books which also fall within that genre include "The Nick Adams Stories" and "In Our Time" by Ernest Hemingway, "Winsesburg, Ohio" by Sherwood Anderson,  "Go Down, Moses" by William Faulkner, and "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan.  "The Hawk's Done Gone" was written primarily in an undergraduate short story writing class at Vanderbilt University when the author was completing her bachelors degree and needed one more course to fulfill the requirements.  It was originally published in 1940 and a later edition with a few extra stories was released in 1968 two years after the author's death.  It has been the subject of much readership and discussion primarily by students of Appalachian Literature.  But it has also often been a point of argument in the discussion of the short story cycle.

The book is comprised of twenty-two interconnected short stories and a Prologue.  As is generally universal in the short story cycle, most, if not all, of the stories are capable of standing alone as highly readable, well crafted short stories.  But the stories are all set in a small community in East Tennessee which is based on Haun's own homeland in the Hoot Owl District of Cocke County where she spent most of her life.  Most of the stories are about various members of the White and Kanipe extended family and its matriarch Mary Dorthula White who also serves at the narrator of most of the stories.  Mary Dorthula White is a granny woman or midwife who delivers most of the local babies, prepares the dead for burial, and is sometimes suspected of being a witch.  I have written about the book in a comparison with "The Patron Saint of Ugly" by Marie Manilla in an article which has been published online in the "Mildred Haun Review Journal" at Walters State Community College in the area in which Mildred Haun spent her life.   In that article, I discussed how the book exemplifies several of the Appalachian cultural values which Loyal Jones wrote about in his seminal book, "Appalachian Vaules".  "The Hawk's Done Gone" is an excellent illustration of several of those cultural values including Love of Place; Independence, Self Reliance, and Pride; and Religion.

My favorite of the stories in the book is "Barshia's Horse He Made, It Flew" which I believe is Haun's masterpiece.  The story is narrated by Mary Dorthula White and the character for which it is entitled is her step-son Barshia Kanipe who can be described as being somewhere between odd and mentally ill.  Barshia uses the hide of a dead mule and other items to construct a winged horse which he hauls to the top of the family barn in an attempt to fly.  It is one fine piece of fiction and I won't spoil the story or the book by disclosing the entire plot and ending.

Many of the stories are at least partially involved with death and Mary Dorthula White actually maintains a family record in the family Bible which is the one personal antique she is able to prevent being sold by her shiftless husband, Ad Kanipe, and his sons from a previous marriage.  This book is one of my favorites in all of Appalachian Literature and I believe if you read it you will agree. 

"The Contemporary American Short-Story Cycle The Ethnic Resonance of Genre" by James Nagel--Book Review

 Nagel, James:  The Contemporary American Short-Story Cycle The Ethnic Resonance of Genre (Baton Rouge, LA. LSU Press, 2001)

 Over the last several months, I have become more and more interested in that genre, or more appropriately sub-genre, of American Literature known as the short story cycle.  The short story cycle can be described as "...the collection of a group of independent stories that contain continuing elements of character, setting, action, imagery, or theme that enrich each other in intertextual context." (Nagel, p. 15)  To put it a bit more simply, a short story cycle is a collection of short stories which have common characters, settings, or other elements such as a common conflict, plot, or theme which is discussed in multiple stories by a single author.  Some of the best known examples of short story cycles which my not have been previously billed as such would include "The Nick Adams Stories" by Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck's "The Pastures Of Heaven" or "Tortilla Flat", Flannery O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge", or Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg Ohio".  I have to confess that I have not read all these books although I have long been in love with "The Nick Adams Stories" and wrote about them at the link above.  I have also been a devoted fan of the work of Flannery O'Connor and John Steinbeck since I was in my early teens and have read nearly everything both of these wonderful authors have published.  But the short story cycles which James Nagel so ably writes about in this book which we are discussing here are more recent and, perhaps, more popular among modern American readers.  

In his book, Nagel devotes lengthy and scholarly chapters to each of the works he has chosen.  Those works are: Louise Erdrich's "Love Medicine"; "Monkeys" by Susan Minot; Sandra Cisneros's "The House on Mango Street"; "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brian; Julia Alvarez's "How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents"; "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan; and a second collection about Viet Nam and the Vietnamese people, "A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain" by Robert Olen Butler.  I suspect that "The Joy Luck Club" is the best known of the collections discussed in the book.  I must confess, as I did about a few of the books listed above, that I have not read any of the works studied in Nagel's excellent work.  When I bought the book and read it, my interest was in the genre and not the work of any specific author.  I am writing and have already completed several short stories in my own version of a short story cycle.  At the bottom of the front page of this blog, I have a section or list entitled "Links To Other Sites About Appalachia".  At the top of that list are several links to some of my short stories which fall into my own short story cycle which I have tentatively entitled "Tales From Widespot".  I read Nagel's book to further inform myself about the short story cycle and to hopefully improve my own work.  Like many of the writers and readers which Nagel discusses, I had read quite a few short story cycles without even knowing what a short story cycle was.  In a few places in the book, Nagel writes about other reviewers who have reviewed various of the books he discusses without knowing the term short story cycle, or at least without having made it known to their readers if they did know.  

I realize that for many readers the concept of the short story cycle and Nagel's book might seem a bit arcane and not worth the time or bother.  But I can assure you, if you are a lover of literature, that Nagle's book is well worth reading and so are many of the short story cycles he discusses at length or only mentions in passing such as the works of O'Connor, Hemingway, and Steinbeck.  At times, short story cycles come so close to being a novel that they are generally billed as being novels.  My other favorite short story cycle which Nagel does not even mention in his book is "The Hawk's Done Gone" by the Appalachian author Mildred Haun.  In a non-fiction article which was published in "The Mildred Haun Review Journal", I compared Haun's book with "The Patron Saint of Ugly" by my friend Marie Manilla.  If you are a fan of Appalachian Literature and have not read Mildred Haun's book, I strongly encourage you to do so.  It is a fine introduction to the concept of the short story cycle.  So are "The Nick Adams Stories" and  "Tortilla Flat".  

But to get back to my discussion of Nagel's book, it is a wonderful way to learn about the short story cycle and to dig deeper into the histories of some of the more modern books which you might have already read such as Amy Tan's book or Louise Erdrich's.  I will be doing the same over the next few weeks and months and I promise that I will be writing about them on this blog when I do.  I will also be working to publish my own short story cycle collection and to add to it.  For me, the short story has long been my favorite form of writing.  It allows for few mistakes if the author is attempting to produce high quality work.  The books which Nagel disusses are all obviously high quality work and so is his discussion of them.  If you are student of literature, and particularly the short story, this is a book which you should consider reading.  If you do not enjoy reading scholarly books, you might not enjoy his book or even wish to read it.  I leave that choice to you but rest assured  I found the book well worth reading and writing about.