Reflections On Reading "Accordion Crimes" by E. Annie Proulx

E. Annie Proulx, or Annie Proulx as she is sometimes known, is one of America's best known and most successful authors.  She is the author of the short story on which the movie "Broke Back Mountain" was based and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for her novel "The Shipping News" in 1994.  This is actually the third of her works which I have read and yet I have not yet written about any of them on this blog which is an unjustifiable error.  At times, she is a wonderful writer and her prose can flow smoothly, interestingly, and in a manner which consistently draws the reader deeper into her works.  But, in my opinion, at times her work falls measurably short of her best.  I like this book as much or better than either of her others which I have read.  But I have to admit that I enjoyed the earlier reads enough to go back for another dip in this one. Perhaps part of that higher level of pleasure on my part comes from the fact that, as a child in grade school in Knott County Kentucky, I was exposed on a monthly basis to live gospel accordion music from Alma Heibert, of the two "Bible Women" who were allowed to visit each small, rural grade school in the county on a monthly basis as a part of their missionary work with Camp Nathaniel in the county.  As always when I mention my experience with these two women and that fact that missionaries were allowed to visit public schools in the county, I am morally and ethically bound to state that the fact that they were allowed to do so in public schools was a clear cut violation of the Separation of Church and State and never should have been allowed to happen. But, yes, I do have fond memories of having known those women and of accordion music.  

The main character in this novel is not a person but an accordion, hand made by a native of an Italian native who emigrated to the United State with the instrument he had made and eventually sold it.  The human characters come and go in the novel as the accordion passes from hand to hand, being used by members of different ethnicities to play the particular music of each culture as the instrument passes along its life.  The accordion is variously owned and played by Mexican Americans, African Americans, Polish Americans, Irish Americans, and other members of other cultures. Along the way during the story, Proulx weaves in a great deal of historical and musical information about accordions, their instrumental relatives, and many of the cultures which are historically connected to accordion music.  along the way, the instrument is loved, played, admired, and sometimes abandoned much as a human character might have been.  It is an interesting and unique method of constructing a novel and, I believe, is some of Proulx's best work.  In my opinion, the language and written structure of the novel is more skillful than that in either "The Shipping News" or "That Old Ace In The Hole" both of which I have also read and will, perhaps, also write about on this blog.  The accordion becomes a living, breathing character in the book.  It is more than just a musical instrument.  It is a delivery vehicle which deposits musical and cultural history at the reader's doorstep. It becomes the glue which brings all the other characters, cultures, and histories together.  And those histories are both documentations of cultures and of people, families, and individual and shared lives.  It is a book well worth reading, especially if the reader is not familiar with the work of Proulx it is a fine place to begin a relationship with the author and her work. 

"Milky Way Accent & Selected Work" by Robert "Bob" Snyder--Book Review

 

Nearly two months ago, on October 2, 2020, I received in my mail as a total surprise a copy of the new posthumous poetry collection, "Milky Way Accent & Selected Work" by Robert "Bob" Snyder which had been gifted to me by Bob's widow Peggy.  She and Bob's sister, Yvonne Snyder Farley had worked with Dos Madres Press to get the work published on which Bob had apparently been working when he died twenty-five years ago.  First and foremost, let me say that I have always thought that Bob Snyder was one of that very small handful of poets for whom it could be argued that they were the best the state of West Virginia had ever produced.  Bob had self-published several small collections of poetry, both individually and in joint works with former National Book Award Finalist P. J. Laska and Joseph Barrett.  Bob had also published numerous non-fiction articles during his lifetime in a variety of journals including "Appalachian Heritage", "The Journal of Appalachian Studies", and others.  But this is his first, and, sadly, probably his last book from a recognized publisher of poetry.   

Just as Bob Snyder was a complex and multi-talented man, this is a complex book of poetry. Bob was an aficionado of jazz, blues, scat, and Bluegrass music.  He loved the rural areas and small milltowns of West Virginia along with the mean streets of Appalachian Cincinnati where he lived and listened to bluegrass while finishing his masters degree at the University of Cincinnati.  As you read his book, you will hear scat riffs, blues laments, and fiery hot Bluegrass runs straight from the hills of Appalachia which Bob Snyder loved.  Two of my favorite older poems from Bob are included in this work: "Aubade" which was imprinted on a limited edition broadside shortly after his death in 1995 and is considered by many of his admirers as his poetic masterpiece, and "Grandma", a subtly powerful poem written from the viewpoint of a grandson who found his grandmother's old purse "...stiff as a weed in winter with a fading goldengold  clasp..." and, in a moment of connection, grief, and respect "...from your very last pack smoking one of your Phillip Morrises...".  That, my friends, is poetry from West Virginia, born and bred in those green, fog shrouded mountains both pristine and ravaged depending on which creek or branch you travel up or down, which ridge you cross or simply can't find anymore in the silt working its way down the Kanawha River. The other poem, "Aubade" which I consider Bob's masterpiece is paean to love in rhythmic, flowing, trilling syllables which worm their way into your brain and never leave..."if thieves come baby and steal the chairs we won't get up    won't go nowheres".  It captures that moment all lucky people have or have hoped for when love was ripe, young, fervid, and articulate requiring nothing except the presence of that one you love in a quiet room where memories are made for an entire lifetime.  

If you love Appalachia, West Virginia, flowing language, and sweet, bucolic phrasing which can turn suddenly into the sound of a neighbor's barking, biting dog tied on a short chain to a porch post in the head of a holler where you have to walk by on your way home while hoping the chain holds, this is the book of poetry for you.  If you love to see a brilliant poet who could carry on a lucid conversation with Rilke or Sappho just minutes after drinking Raleigh County moonshine with the man who made it in the middle of a moonlit night, this is the book of poetry for you.  If you love language, linguistic tricks, subtle phrasing mixed with sledge hammer blows, sweet words scattered through a lover's quarrel, or just damn fine, down home poetry, this is the book for you.  If you do not know the poetry of Bob Snyder, you need to meet the man as he appears on the pages of this little jewel.  You need to imagine spending an evening listening to Bob read his work in a Vine Street bar or watching him perform great scat without a musical instrument.  Buddy, you need to read this book.