"A Triumph Of The Spirit" by Lee Maynard--Book Review

 

Over the last few years on this blog, I have written extensively about the writing of Lee Maynard.  In fact, I have written about every book the man ever published except this one and one more, very minor book about life in the outdoors which was his first published book and is now nearly impossible to find at a price which can be afforded by anyone except the proverbial Philadelphia lawyer.  "A Triumph Of The Spirit" is likely to be Lee Maynard's last book since he died on June 16, 2017, at the age of eighty after producing a total of nine published books including that very small edition of the outdoor book.  This book was published posthumously by an entity  named Western Door Publishing which appears to be an entity which might be owned by Amazon Books.  The copy I own is a publication on demand type book which is, in my estimation, another short coming of the computer age.  The book was published posthumously.  It may or may not have been in the editing and publication process before Maynard died.  It might or might not have been published by his heirs and primarily edited by them and an editor at Western Door Publishing although actual editing work is a chimera in the publication on demand business.  Whatever the actual answers are, the book was not published by the University of West Virginia Press which had published six of his previous books.  This book is composed of   numerous sections of his previous books and several other previously unpublished short stories and memoir pieces.  But it is well worth reading despite the nature of the editing and publication process and the flaws which that process allowed to escape a higher quality editor.  

 Lee Maynard loved motorcycles, rode them all his life, and a great deal of his writing was a courtship with motorcycles.  He apparently loved to ride Triumph motorcycles, hence the title which is, of course, a double meaning which also addresses a life well lived and produced success in several areas for Maynard including his writing career, work as an administrator for the state of West Virginia, time as the CEO of a major outdoor experience company, and a brief stint as a university president.  The book loosely follows a timeline of Maynard's life and writing career with sections republished from all his major books including the well known and, at times, notorious "Crum Trilogy" which is comprised of "Crum", "Screaming With The Cannibals", and "The Scummers", all of which I have read and written about on this blog at the links provided.  Maynard also produced and I have previously read and reviewed "The Pale Light of Sunset Scattershots and Hallucinations in an Imagined Life".  He also wrote and I have read and appreciated but failed so far to write about a novel called "Cinco Becknell" which is set in New Mexico and is about a man in the homeless population with whom Maynard worked as the founder and board member of a food bank in the area.  I will attempt to correct my error in never writing about that book in the near future.  But, right now, let's discuss the work in question, "A Triumph Of The Spirit".  

 

While significant portions of the book are material which, to my knowledge, never previously saw the light of day, much of it is sections of Maynard's previous half dozen books.  Admittedly, most of those previously published sections contain some of his best known and appreciated work.  Several other short stories, and one story which can best be described as a novella, are also included in the book.  Whoever edited the book, appears to have made a conscious attempt to do some chronological ordering of the sections but that work is not absolute.  It does not fully provide a comprehensive timeline of either Lee Maynard's life or his published works.  But, it is still well worth reading, especially if you have already read any of his work and appreciated it.  Four of the stories in the book, including the novella I alluded to earlier, are good, high quality fiction.  It is impossible to know if Maynard had any intentions, as he wrote those stories, of either producing a complete book of short stories or, perhaps, publishing the novella as such or expanding it into a full length novel.  

There is one short anecdote about riding with a friend in Maine on motorcycles, being caught in bad weather, taking shelter in what they believed was an abandoned service station, and having the local sheriff called to remove them.  The story ends with the sheriff responding to the call, as the elderly female owner requested, and then transporting the two and their motorcycles on a trailer the sheriff brought along with an obvious preconceived plan to his jail where he fed them, gave them dry clothes, and housed them comfortably for the night in his warm, and apparently empty jail, all without any animosity and a good deal of hospitality.  The novella, titled "The Corn Princess" is set in a native American pueblo in New Mexico where the main character, based on Maynard himself as nearly all of his protagonists are, is an Anglo man who visits the village at times to spend time recuperating from the road and lusts after a beautiful young native woman who has a boyfriend of less than positive character.  This story deserves to have become  a full length novel and I honestly suspect that might have been Maynard's original intent if life and old age had not caught up with him before the job was done.  Another of the better new pieces in the book is called "Scorpion" and is a somewhat long short story about a male, Anglo motorcycle rider and a Hispanic woman whose beloved grandfather has been murdered by other, less decent motorcycle riders.  This story contains some of Maynard's best writing about the sexual attraction, sex, human interaction, and the potential cruelty of human nature.  It also could have easily been expanded into a better than average novel.  

My final conclusions about this book are these: 1) it is a shame that it is not more cohesive and chronological; 2) it is a shame that Maynard did not live to fully oversee the publication process; 3) it is a shame that Lee Maynard never published an actual collection of short stories; 4) it is a shame that Lee Maynard did not live to expand at least two of these stories into novels; and 5) I will always miss knowing that another good Lee Maynard novel is about to come hot off the press.  

But, for the average reader, especially one who loves motorcycles and riding, this is a book worth the time and expense of reading. 

"Screaming With The Cannibals" by Lee Maynard---Book Review

Maynard, Lee: Screaming With The Cannibals (Morgantown, WV Vandalia Press 2003)

Lee Maynard Photo by Huntington Herald-Dispatch

Until Lee Maynard's recent death on June 16, 2017, I had never read any of his work.  Maynard was, and will always be, a controversial figure in the world of literature in West Virginia and Appalachia.  His first published work, "Crum", was actually banned from sale for a time at the Tamarack Center in Beckley, WV, due to its perceived extreme negativity to Crum, WV, Maynard's hometown, and to West Virginia and Appalachia in general. Most of the West Virginia and Appalachian writers who have been my mentors and friends also held Maynard in contempt for the same reason.  We rarely, if ever, discussed him or his work.  And generally, to a person, we never bothered to read his work. Coincidentally, Maynard's death occurred just a few days before my 25th anniversary with my wife Candice and we had already planned a three day trip to West Virginia where we had been married.  I made a commitment to read some of the work of Lee Maynard based on some positive comments my friend, Cat Pleska, had made in an obituary which was published in the Huntington Herald Dispatch the week of his death.  Luckily, the first of his books which I read was "The Pale Light of Sunset: Scattershots and Hallucinations In An Imagined Life", a collection of essays and selections from other books which I consider to be some of his best work.  It also lacks much of the negative discussion of West Virginia and Appalachia which is prevalent in much of his other work including "Screaming With The Cannibals" which is actually the work we are discussing in this review.  I will repeat my prior statements and say that I might well have not read any more of his work if "Crum" had been the first of his books to receive my attention.  

"Screaming With The Cannibals" is the second work in the "Crum" trilogy which has generally been conceded to be fictionalized autobiography.  As the novel opens, the protagonist, Jesse, is hitchhiking out of Crum, West Virginia, Maynard's home town on the banks of the Tug River.  I will also repeat my disclosure from earlier blog posts that I know that area quite well since I lived for about five years in Williamson and Logan in Mingo and Logan Counties and worked that entire time as a door to door salesman in nearly a dozen counties in Southern West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky on both sides of the Tug River.  Maynard's character leaves Crum to be picked up by a man driving a farm truck across the bridge on the two states' border at Williamson.  It is a bridge I crossed countless thousands of times.  Jesse is offered a job on the Kentucky farm on which his newly met friend is employed.

Lee Maynard Photo by WVU Press

Maynard's tendency to disparage West Virginia is spread equally well over Kentucky during the time the character is working there.  But somehow, I have managed to overlook Maynard's attacks on Appalachia based on the quality of much of his writing.  His work is well worth reading.  It falls short of great literature but it is genuine literature and deserves its place in the pantheon of Appalachian Literature.  The thought has suddenly occurred to me that I might have come to appreciate Lee Maynard for the same reasons that, as a mental health and substance abuse therapist, I was a fan of the Gestalt Therapy of Fritz Perls.  Both men and their works tend to raise the ire of many of their readers.  They generate reactions which are impossible to conceal.  They are cathartic.  The title of "Screaming With The Cannibals" comes from Maynard's discussion of some fundamentalist or Pentecostal  religious believers with which his character interacts in the novel.  I also must disclose that I have spent numerous hours in the company, the homes, and the churches of serpent handling believers in Appalachia and understand Pentecostalism and Holiness religion quite well.

Lee Maynard Photo by Herald Dispatch

Jesse becomes involved with the wife of a neighbor who lives near his employer.  The employer has previously given Jesse an aged and abandoned motorcycle which a former farm hand left in his barn.  As the affair becomes common knowledge, Jesse manages to get the motorcycle to run and leaves Kentucky for coastal South Carolina where he is befriended by the residents of a small African American community.  This section of the novel exposes the reader to two subjects about which Maynard often produces his best work: sex scenes and motorcycles.  The protagonist and the housewife have a highly unusual encounter on a running farm tractor and the character leaves Kentucky riding an aged and limping motorcycle.  Life in South Carolina also goes awry involving conflict with a local personification of the old fashioned, abusive, and dangerous small town police officer and Jesse heads west. The conflict with the South Carolina law man is precipitated in large part due to the local racism and Jesse's close relationships with the African Americans. In this section, Maynard takes a clear stand against racism and discrimination and is probably the most political writing in his entire body of work.

In some ways, this book will inflame the devout Appalachian loyalist.  But it will also have moments that make you glad you read it.  Take it on with an open mind, read it and the other two portions of the "Crum" trilogy in sequence, maintain an impartial attitude, and take me at my word that if you read enough of Maynard's works you will come to understand that, in spite of his periodic defamation of West Virginia and Appalachia, he did actually love the state and the region.  But it was a love, like that of many family members toward each other, which was based on a lifetime of interactions not all of which had been positive.  But Lee Maynard did, in my professional opinion, long for a family dinner on the holidays somewhere in Southern West Virginia and did, in actuality, sometimes ride his motorcycle home from the Desert Southwest to visit his home state.  He always attended the annual West Virginia Writers Conference and was well respected by those who knew him well in Appalachia.  He did think of himself as a West Virginian.  So should you!