From Journeyman to Tobacco Road
I first encountered Erskine Caldwell in graduate school. The year was 1999 and I was in a particularly unhinged mental state. Having recently moved back home after spending two years in Connecticut, I'd been dumped by a tall teenager with tattoos and developed an unhealthy obsession for a sneaky little tart with a flattering tongue. I lived in a god forsaken apartment atop a mountain ridge-- where the quiet and the woods separated me from my sanity. Between raging drunks and tossing furniture off of my balcony, I read Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Hemingway, wrote papers in the wee hours of the night and began to hone my skills as a first rate bullshit artist.
It's safe to say, I didn't do well that semester.
I recently logged into my old ASU account to make sure I was getting my dates straight-- and right there, I could see the numbers, er, letters. My first semester was rather impressive after having been out of school for two years. That second semester, though…
It's not an exaggeration. I took three classes that spring: Shakespeare, Victorian Literature, and 20th Century American Literature. When my students now complain about reading twenty pages in a week, I think back to this-- when I had to read a Shakespeare play, a modern American novel, and a portion of a Victorian novel (or 100 pages of Victorian poetry) each week. I distinctly remember calling Time Warner Cable on a Saturday to ask them to turn off my cable.
"Shut it down," I said.
"Why?" someone asked.
"Because I have to finish Middlemarch."
All of this is to say that the landscape of that spring was fraught with contradictions, trials and tribulations. And it was amidst this turmoil that I read the first line of Erskine Caldwell's novel Journeyman:
"The mud-spattered rattle-trap of an automobile rolled off the road and came to a dead stop beside the magnolia tree."
I was hooked.
I later wrote a quirky essay about voyeurism in the novel. After that, I've often thought of returning to
So I was surprised and excited when Triad Stage in
When I looked out over the set of Tobacco Road, I couldn't help thinking about Semon Dye and Clay Horey. I couldn't help thinking about the cartoonish absurdity, mixed with heat, sweat and truth, that is Erskine Caldwell's gift to American letters. And from the moment the actors took the stage-- to the bitter, bitter end-- I couldn't help but think about the complexity of
On the cover of my copy of Journeyman, there's a quote from the Chicago Sunday Tribune about
The problem is that "strikingly" is so easily misunderstood. And so, Erskine Caldwell is often misunderstood. Hell, I can't help but think that a large portion of yesterday's audience is still confused by the performance. Amused, yes. Disturbed, yes. But deeply affected? Well… I imagine that many of them would liken the performance to watching Deliverance. A noticeable horror evoked-- but one not necessarily deeply pondered. How else can we explain the continual recitation of that famous line about a squealing pig? This is the glory of humanity.
I want to dissect that thought.
According to director
In response to the play’s polarizing ability,
Southern stereotypes? Satire? Truth?
His answer:
You decide.
My decision involves a bit of assumption and typing of my own: The truth about stereotypes is that they come from somewhere. They do not spring whole from the ground. When enough human beings group together and start exhibiting similar cultural traits, then we can begin to make some small assumptions about that group. The problem comes in, though, when we mistake the individual for the whole. That is, we might all exhibit similar traits, but ultimately, we are individuals. My dear friend Gerald has been ruminating on the problems inherent in the current court decision about desegregation.
I would argue that these are them.
What I mean by that is that typing serves a certain function: It’s what allows us to form effective groups to right social wrongs-- organizations, if you will. It goes without saying that the flipside is true as well. But the point here is that without the group, we are only individuals-- and human beings are social animals. We need the group. As such, we will always be typed.
The problem comes in with the fact that we are lazy. Damn lazy. And we begin to lose the individual in the group. We privilege (or denigrate) those common traits and the others fall away.
When we bring this back to Tobacco Road, what we get is this: The culture fattened on the charming stereotype (Jeff Foxworthy and Blue Collar T.V.) and horrific stereotype (Deliverance) alike is predisposed to draw conclusions at face value. This is not news.
And so, we took our seats in the fabulous Pyrle Theatre. We looked out at a well-dressed stage. Overgrown vines surrounded a rusted-out trailer, complete with a rebel flag draped over a window. The hammered, rusted tin that covered the stage could have been salvage from a field of junk cars. A broken fence. A water pump and a flat tire.
When the actors hit the stage, they all looked like they hadn’t bathed in ten years. From Jeeter Lester's torn overalls, to Dude’s red running shorts, to Ellie May’s stained underwear, this tableaux screamed white trash and all the baggage and jokes that come with that moniker. The audience thought of Deliverance, “you might be a redneck if,” and Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel. A million prejudices raged in our brains.
The resultant play was shocking brutality mixed with bits of humor.
What the rest of the audience got out of it is questionable, especially since I would have to employ typing in order to make sweeping generalizations. But, in talking with my wife after the show, I am inclined to believe that I might be justified in my assumptions.
I forget what I said to provoke her response, but I distinctly remember Mandy saying, “There was nothing funny about that play.”
I have to agree. But I did laugh.
Here’s the thing, the laughter that the play evokes is of a nervous nature. It escaped occasionally like air being bled from a too full tire. The tensions that built in the play needed the release promised by humor.
And to be fair, the absurdity of the characters actions does invoke reactions to that of good satire. That is, Jeff Foxworthy’s classic bit relies on the prior knowledge of the stereotypes he invokes. Tobacco Road works in much the same way (I’ve already alluded to this): The humor comes from knee-jerk reactions to types laid bare before us. We laugh almost involuntarily.
It’s in the aftermath that we realize the horror of what that laughter represents.
And that’s the part that I worry about. That’s the turn that I fear a majority audience doesn’t get. The humor serves a dramatic purpose. And so, my wife quoted again, the play is not funny. We are not supposed to be happy leaving the play. We are not supposed to like, or enjoy, the play.
We are not supposed to go home and joke with our friends about “squealing like a pig.”
When Dude Lester, quite possibly the most vicious character I’ve ever seen in a play, throws his deflated pink ball against the side of the trailer for the last time, we jump back at the sound of it--- the loud smack of limp plastic against metal. It’s much like the sound of a leather belt against flesh.
The truth of it all is that so much goes into making these characters that we cannot simply call them dumb rednecks and laugh. This is not a silly horror movie that satiates like a tic tac our darker sides. Instead, we are left to ponder the elements that brought the Lesters low.
Was it because they were dumb? Was it because they were ignorant? Was it because the world changed and they didn’t want to change with it? Was it because the good lord curst them? Was it blind fate? Was it the heat of a southern climate? Was it because the economic force of capitalism was too strong for a common sharecropper?
These people are trash. Do not mistake that. Kirkland (and Caldwell, for that matter) doesn’t necessarily expect our sympathy. We are not asked to feel sorry for them. And anyone who left the play looking for that kind of resolution (“Y’all, it’s so sad.” vs. “They got what they deserved”? Think of
Our sympathy, then, should come from looking at the very elements left steaming like a gutted pig on the stage.
Southern Gothic
I don't know if I am well equipped to define "southern gothic," but I do know I've read-- and talked about-- a lot of what is typically marked as such. I immediately think of Flem Snopes. I think of John Wesley and The Misfit. I think of freaks and geeks in corn fields. And for me, this is the heart of southern literature. I could care less for the pastoral fluff of Jan Karon. For me, the greatest contributions of the south to literature come in the grotesque coterie of desolation, hellfire and brimstone, that writers like Faulkner, Caldwell, O'Connor, Welty and McCullers brazenly tossed out at us.
Great southern literature deals with god's broken children.
We should expect as much from the most conflicted portion of the country. This is where the American dream turned to nightmare-- where fortunes were won and lost, slaves bought and sold, Native American Indians driven out and murdered. This is where good people were (and still are) beaten down, manipulated, duped, etc. We need only look at the economic shifts that have left the south without viable employment-- from the loss of farming to the lost of industry. Cotton fields, tobacco fields, corn fields…
And so we should expect a certain oddity in the literature. God's broken children, indeed. The great engine of capitalism works wonders for a portion of our great countries population-- but one need only look to the south to see what happens to the rest of us.
But I don't mean to blame, especially since what makes much of great southern literature more than just damn depressing is that there's a vibrant, if often misguided, life in the south. The sheer energy with which Jeeter Lester avoids work is comic, yes, but passionate. Here is a man who believes whole-heartedly in his vision of the world. While he may lack much else, he certainly does not lack conviction.
How many people like that have we encountered in our lives?
And here's a broader idea I keep circling back to in regards to the play: What happens to those unfortunate souls who are ill-equipped to deal with change?
This is a complicated question to answer because there are so many factors to consider. Those of us who have been educated to anticipate and expect change often bemoan those who cannot accept it. We hawk out phrases like "Deal with it!" because we see the inevitability of change. But recognition and acceptance of change are practiced traits. These are things that we are taught.
Remove that teaching and you've got a frightening (and frightened) lot.
Having taught at a school with a large population of laid off workers seeking education (new career pathways), I can relate immensely to this notion. I have been baffled by the sheer lack of knowledge I've faced in any given classroom. But do not mistake me: My bafflement always turns to deep empathy. What else should I expect? My expectations were built in a foreign land. My students did not ask to be laid off. And while the bourgeois can tisk-tisk and pronounce, "Well, they should have planned for this," I cannot hold that line. A world without options does not breed social mobility. At least not consistently.
As I write this, I am afraid of being misunderstood: See, I keep going back to that question about change-- and variations of it. What if you don't want change? What if you are not in a position to afford change? What if the change that’s a-comin' contradicts everything you've ever known?
The middle-class man shakes his head, shrugs his shoulders.
I should also point out that the same faction of the population that often harkens back to "the good old days," or the "old time religion," is the same faction that expects the have-nots to accept change. Here again, I am struck by the power of Caldwell's portraits of the south: The absurdity, the morbidity, he presents is only an extreme version of what exists further up the socio-economic ladder. And it is extreme not because Caldwell wishes to exploit it, but because the circumstances of his characters are extreme-- extreme poverty, destitution does not typically lead to informed decisions, lofty notions, and upward mobility.
Do you hear the smack of Dude's duck-taped ball again? I do.
Change, then, is an integral part of the southern gothic. Well. I think I may have written elsewhere that it's the true province of all art… So let me qualify: Horror in the face of change is the heart of southern literature.
Let me say something else: Caldwell (Kirkland in the play) employs a site gag that is indicative of the Lester character. It involves Dude's new car. Here again we are backed up against humor in a way that's dangerous. The play begins with Jeeter Lester trying to repair a tire for his car. The car, not present on stage, we can imagine bears resemblance to their trailer. This bit circles with talk about the car's horn and how Jeeter's young 'uns loved to blow the horn, especially Dude.
Cut to Dude agreeing to marry for a new car. Off he and his intended go.
Later, his return is trumpeted with a flurry of horn blasts. Cue laughter.
Now, this doesn't seem very peculiar. It's expected. But I do think we are expected to wonder what that horn represents to Dude. I'll leave that one be.
Instead, I'll turn to Dude's emergence back onto the stage carrying the bumper to his new car. Cue more laughter. When asked about it, Dude gives us the kind of story that we might expect. Yeah, he wasn't watching where he was going, but it wasn't his fault.
This sight gag reveals itself two more times in the play. Another time, Dude returns with a busted headlight in his hand. Shortly thereafter, he wheels in a slashed tire (which he then, and comically, proceeds to try to blow up like his leaking pink, duct-taped ball).
We might, then, expect the unexpected running over of his mother, which speeds us to the catastrophic ending of the play.
This seemingly comic interlude is nothing of the sort-- especially when Dude's irresponsibility leads to his mother's death. But beyond that, we are introduced to the idea that this "brand new" car has essentially been destroyed in a matter of a couple days.
What's the moral here?
I'll let that one hang and move on.
Okay, no I won't. I'll parallel it with the meteoric rise of celebrity. I hate MTV Cribs with a passion, a passion bred from despair. On Cribs we see celebrities parade their things with a kind of false glory. Mansions, expensive furniture and televisions. Fleets of expensive cars. What has always struck me as sad is the fact that so many of these "cribs" look like they haven't been lived in. Sterile. I do not think this is a trick of the producers. I think this is a sad fact of celebrity. Meteoric change rarely leads to wise and lasting decisions. What should we expect from someone who goes from just above or below the poverty line to instantaneous wealth?
I am reminded of something I heard recently about lottery winners. Something like 70% of the big winners eventually find themselves worse off than before they won because of their inability to manage the money.
Do I need to say more?
I'm going to move on to my last point…
Preston Lane writes, "Tobacco Road is a brutal and satirical indictment of ignorance, poverty and fundamentalist religion run amok." I've talked about brutality, satire, ignorance and poverty. That leaves fundamentalist religion. For that, let's turn to Journeyman.
Halfway through Journeyman, one of the characters asks the preacher what he's going to preach about. Semon Dye's answer is pure gold:
"Preach about? About sins. I always preach about sins, Tom. There's nothing else the people will put up with, for any length of time. And the more sins, and the worse sins, and the reddest sins, I can preach about, the better the people like to listen. I believe in preaching about the things the people want to hear. I've found out what the people want to hear, and I give it to them."
I made this comment earlier: The absurdity, the morbidity, he presents is only an extreme version of what exists further up the socio-economic ladder. I made this comment in regards to economics, but it also bears the weight of sin as well. And this ties back into even earlier comments about general audience reactions to the brutality of the play.
We're all sinners. We love being absolved of sin so we can go out and do it some more.
And, frankly, we enjoy hearing about other people's sins just about as much as we enjoy sinning.
Semon Dye may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he's right.
Stephen King's great little essay about horror movies ("Why We Crave Horror Movies") would have us believe that we all have the capacity for real brutality and the lines of decent society that separate sane from insane are guarded by all manner of things-- but primarily religion and art. We watch horror movies to get our gory ya-ya's out so we don't axe murder our neighbors. And in this assertion, King is not alone. I think we can all agree that we have urges-- and that managing them is a crucial part of our existence.
But here's the problem: If a bad horror movie is the only thing keeping some people from axe-murdering, then… We in big trouble, boss.
Anyway. My point: On some level, we might have to acknowledge that the success of Tobacco Road-- both the novel and the play-- comes from a public that delights in the misery of others. We laugh at the follies and sins of others so as to absolve ourselves of our own sins and follies.
"At least we're better than the Lesters," the upper middle-class man says.
However, the beauty of Tobacco Road is that it twists us up. It tricks us.
It's like a rat-trap: We smell the cheese, launch in for it and smack! Caldwell, like Semon Dye, gives us what we want. Hell, he gives us so much of it that the sheer volume of it, in the end, is deafening.
And again, I say the beauty of Tobacco Road is its ability to so closely skirt the absurdity of caricature that it seems like fun and games but isn't.
This play is not funny. We may not realize this until it's too late.
The emotional gut punch comes at the end.
As I mentioned above, the sight-gag-ery of Dude's slow dismantling of his new car culminates in a way that seems obvious in retrospect. But the sounds from the crash off stage are horrifying--are almost as horrifying as witnessing such an accident first hand. When the characters re-emerge on stage, we're too shocked to look away. I think now of George Carlin's joke about rubber-necking an accident ("Excuse me, officer, but could you bring the bodies closer? My wife has never seen a man shaped in quite that manner."). Here, where we might expect to not see the violence, it is brought to us-- to see it up close. And sure, it is just a bit of fake blood. But it is no less real for being fake.
But what does this have to do with religion?
Well, it's about sinning. It's about the how of it all. How can we sit through this grotesque tableau without being affected by it? Not only that, how can we let this kind of culture of depravity exist in "the greatest country in the world."
The playbill for the show quotes a review of Caldwell's novel from The Gastonia (NC) Gazette: "The most uncouth, repulsive novel I have chanced on in many a day."
When it comes to religion in the play, we get the comical deity channeling of Sister Bessie. We get Jeeter Lester's frequent supplication to god. We get a sense of that "old time religion" as filtered through the lens of poverty. What we see is a joke (a bad joke).
"But it's all a show," the upper middle-class Christian says. "It's not real religion."
Well, there in lies the rub.
The playbill also quotes Erskine Caldwell: "There is nothing obscene or dirty in the book, because the people in it did not live consciously obscene lives."
Take that middle-class man!
And so, what we're left with is a play (a book) that exposes the horrors of Tobacco Road. The ultimate horror, though, is that what it really exposes is our own false piety.
I think that's it.
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