"In Mississippi there is a lot still to be written. When I had taken these photographs, for a while I lost interest in writing stories that took place in Paris...in one year I seem to have got my bearings. Now to sound them out."
— Eudora Welty.
It is fitting that Miss Eudora's artful storytelling began with work in 1933 for the Works Progress Administration. Charged to collect stories and interviews, the English Literature graduate found the best method to capture these artifacts of culture was through photography. Not another outsider looking into our fair state, Welty's photos ("One Time, One Place" (1971) and "Photographs" (1989)) often provided the foundation for her short-story writing. Traveling the state during the Great Depression in the Thirties, Welty found a very humanizing manner for other eyes to see the poor and desolate in our state.
Welty was dealing with her loss. Her father died of leukemia in 1931, just she began to show a significant interest in writing. By 1936, Welty was writing and readying tales for publication. Her first, for "Manuscript" encapsulated the ongoing battle in The New South, modernity v. tradition, "The Death of a Traveling Salesman."
R.J. Bowman, a shoe salesman, has been traveling these roads for fourteen years. Never missed a day of work until a recent bout of influenza. Driving in the deep woody rural part of the state where he quickly realizes that he is driving the only automobile on the "rutted dirt path," Bowman is lost. First in the sense that he has no real idea where he is. Second, his life is suddenly proving to him that he is not a "comfortable soul" like his dear departed grandmother.
Welty is building a character based on our familiarity. Yet, the recent illness has forced change on Bowman. We see that he regularly does not recognize himself in the mirror. On one hand, this provision could be a James Thurber-ish Walter Mitty-esque wish ("in the wavy hotel mirrors had looked something like a bullfighter.") On the other, and perhaps more significantly, a dramatic change in his point of view.
This forced change is the essence of Welty putting Bowman through the escalating problems of being lost. Yet like her photography, she is eager to demonstrate that not all visions are one-sided. For example, knowing this road is completely unfamiliar and even the signposts are gone, Bowman looks to the locals while passing. His reasoning, though sound, is insulting, "these people never knew where the very roads they lived on went to." So he purposefully sees them as distant, "looking like leaning sticks or weeds." Welty wisely gives the "stick-people" their say, as they stare at him as "impenetrable" and "followed him solidly like a wall."
The question here becomes "Who is the dreaded "other?" They both are.
The path runs out. Before Bowman knows it, he is on the edge of a ravine (much like the end of Flannery O'Connor's classic "A Good Man Is Hard To Find.") A life that is suddenly out of balance has driven to the point helplessly watching as the car disappears over the edge. Before his vision of life in hotels and the company of lavish women had faded into those being characterized as "stuffy" and "drafty." His survival instincts simply told him that all the cities and their inhabitants were the same. With only his bag and sample case, Bowman must sell himself.
With his heart beating through his chest and still staving off the last hints of sickness, he approaches a "shotgun house" and the old woman inside. She knows that he needs help to get his car out of the ravine. However, her strong son is not there - but he is coming back. In waiting, Welty gives us a huge chunk of Bowman's inner monologue where temperatures even deceive him and a quilt reminds him of a painting his grandmother once did of Rome burning.
What is odd here is that despite knowing that help is on the way and even being reminded of the "comfortable soul" that was his grandmother, Bowman cannot address the woman away from his shoe-selling script or voice. It is as if we are experiencing one of the "fever dreams" Bowman likely had while under the weather. This pattern of discomfort is finally broken by the return of Sonny. Yet Bowman is powerless to say anything. In his body, his heart is leaping around - in Welty's naturalistic descriptions - "like a little colt invited out of a pen" and "leapt like a trout in a brook." We are not made aware of how completely urban Bowman's life has been. However, Welty as the narrator is using her understanding of nature to encapsulate how unfamiliar Bowman is feeling.
In just a few pages, Welty has given us broad strokes of characterization almost without any dialogue at all. Bowman, a born communicator, at its most helpless, is unable to utter a syllable for reasons of either shame or unfamiliarity. The inhabitants of his shotgun house have never once said a discouraging word, but could seem to be only focused on getting Bowman back on the road after his unplanned incursion into their world. Such is the battle unfolding as the modern world encroaches on the ways of life that have kept those off the main roads alive this whole time. Welty managed to ease into Southern Gothic early on, yet began to "sound out" the true mythology of The New South.
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Mik Davis is the record store manager at T-Bones Records & Cafe in Hattiesburg.
NEW MUSIC This Week
ARIANA GRANDE - Eternal Sunshine [RUBY LP/CD](Republic) • For her seventh album, Ariana Grande worked exclusively on "Eternal Sunshine" for three months in late 2023. Like "Sweetener," Grande is eager to capture the waves of her life in these songs. However, "Sunshine" will probably discover deeper valleys in mood than previous albums. Writing mostly with Max Martin and ILYA, Grande is shifting her vision of Pop Star to occupy a much more adult world.
BLEACHERS - Bleachers [BLUE LP/CD] (Dirty Hit) • Now the leader of his own band and a married man, 11-time Grammy-winner Jack Antonoff embarks on his first album for Dirty Hit. With some assistance from Florence Welch, Kevin Abstract, and an uncredited Lana Del Rey, "Bleachers" continues Antonoff's mining of the Eighties for evocative Pop. "Me Before You" finds a way to be tense yet not fast, "Tiny Moves" builds on Antonoff's gift of repetition (see also: 'Chinatown") and "Modern Girl" even updates Billy Joel. As a collaborator, Antonoff knows how to bring out the best in his artists. As a producer, Antonoff knows exactly how to create and produce songs where the mix is never too obvious and the changes only add - not deduct from the overall experience. As part of Bleachers, "Bleachers" is his dream amount of lushness. However, his perfectionism may be squeezing his songs to the point of not sounding as joyous as he truly is.
BRUCE DICKINSON - The Mandrake Project [2LP/CD/DLX CD](BMG Rights Mgmt) • Two months into the year, the best Metal album so far is a surprise throwback to the Nineties (and classic Maiden) from Bruce Dickinson. It would have been easy for Dickinson to make a more uptempo, dun-da-dun album after Maiden's very downtempo "Senjutsu." "Afterglow of Ragnarok" is a Prog-ian shape-shifter that soars on his voice. "Rain on The Graves" could have easily been on an early 90's Seattle album with its giant-size fills and guitar chug. However, it is the blinding "Resurrection Men" that fuses galloping drums, and twang guitar before thundering into a riff that shifts from Seventies Hard Rock to Soundgarden-esque grind. The lyrics are almost as heavy as the riffage, but Dickinson manages to recall Sabbath, UFO, and Scorpions but never sounds for one minute like he is tumbling into the pit of legacy acts.
JUDAS PRIEST - Invincible Shield [RED LP/CD](Epic) • While they may never make another "Painkiller," you have to give credit to Halford and company for trying. Their nineteenth album shows no signs of turning back. Halford's highs may not soar like they used to, but his middle growl (the Metallica-esque "The Serpent and The King") sounds awesome. The counterattack is led by Richie Faulkner who has quietly become a Metal guitar god. His soloing and tangling with longtime guitarist Glenn Tipton is making Priest sound as melodic as they did in their MTV heyday (the ballad "Crown of Horns") and ready to rip one apart ("Panic Attack.")
NORAH JONES - Visions [ORANGE LP/ CD](Blue Note) • TAJ MAHAL SEXTET - Live at the Church Studio in Tulsa [GOLD LP/CD](Lightning Rod/New West/ Redeye) • The multiple Grammy winner Norah Jones has never slowed down since the wave of "Come Away With Me." However, she changes styles like she changes her hair. On her ninth, Jones works with Daptone producer/performer Leon Michels on a Sixties-style New Soul-flavored Pop album. As great as the swishy drums and deep snares sound, Jones continues to rewrite the same songs again and again ("Staring At The Wall") or fit into textures where her writing simply does not fit ("Running.")
Taj Mahal already has a legacy. Already has a sound. Coming off of a swingin' almost Tin Pan Alley style record, Mahal reconvened his live band at the hallowed studio of the late Leon Russell to literally reshape several of the best-known songs in his deep catalog ("Mailbox Blues" and "Queen Bee") with a group that adds Hawaiian lap steel and dobro to an intimate set. This live album manages to highlight Mahal's contributions to adding Reggae, Blues, Folk, Gospel, Cajun, and African music to his repertoire but never lose the vision of his all-important first four albums.
