Figuring Things Out

Morning clouds, October

This could be a short post. We'll see! If I were writing about all the things I have not figured out, it would be long, but I’m taking the easy way out. 

Happy girl!

First (because I know that’s why many of you tune in), Sunny and I are making great strides in our agility sessions with Coach Mike. I’m able to keep more of the course in my head at once, and our race from one station to the next is becoming smoother all the time. If there were an indoor agility course in Leelanau Township, I would be more than willing to continue through the winter. 

Scene of someone's adventure glimpsed on our way to agility --

(Parenthetically, in answer to the often-asked question, “How late in the season will you keep the bookstore open?” the answer is that Dog Ears Books will be open all winter. Come November, weeks will be shorter [Wednesday through Saturday], and days will be shorter, too [11 to 3], but weather and roads permitting, the shop will be open four days a week.)

 

I’m pretty sure I have the answer now to why Albert Murray is not better known as a writer of fiction. By now well into the fourth of his semi-autobiographical novels, more and more I realize that while his characters and settings are vivid, the world large and complex (from Alabama to Hollywood to Paris and back to New York), there is simply no conflict. The narrator makes a single mistake as a boy, is saved from the consequences by one of his boyhood idols (an understanding and sympathetic character with the wonderful name of Luzanna Cholly), and from there on there are no obstacles in Scooter's life path. When he learns a secret about his parentage, he takes in the new knowledge without a moment’s angst, and it never troubles him later, either. He is given a string bass and within months is touring the country and the world with one of America’s top dance bands. All women want him, no men are ever jealous, and the woman he wants to marry waits contentedly for his return. Marked out from the beginning for great things, he is the golden boy from start to finish, with everything falling into place for him. 

 

Just as Murray decried interpretations of the blues as music of suffering, he had little patience for stories of Black victimhood. He heard the blues as celebratory, not moans of misery, and he wrote his hero’s progress through the world as a story of success, and that’s great – except that we don’t see Scooter triumphing over anything, because nothing ever blocks his way. There is no agon to make him a protagonist. 

 

I say all this more as explanation than critique because I am still very much enjoying these books and looking forward to rereading them in years ahead. Any one of so many little vignettes, e.g., a scene in a barbershop, is as delightful as many a short story from a less-skilled writer, and discussions between characters about history, literature, and music are endlessly fascinating. I’m no longer troubled by neglect of Murray as a novelist, though, because I see what’s missing in his books as fiction: there is no tension, conflict, struggle, and so no real drama. 

 

It’s hard to believe that Murray’s own life was as velvet-smooth and free of difficulty as Scooter’s road. Life is never that easy for anyone! But he apparently felt free to leave out the bumps in the road, thoroughly covered as they had been by other Black writers. I’ll be interested to read this author’s nonfiction work and see how it compares to the fiction: Next up on my Murray agenda is The Omni-Americans: Black Experience & American Culture.

An already colorful curve in the road --

We should have peak color here in Leelanau by next weekend, although I almost hate to see it build to a climax, knowing that the gales of November will soon follow. And we still need rain! But who can argue with blue skies and the warm, albeit temporary, palette of our upper Midwest trees in autumn? 

So here it is for today – dog, books, outdoors. Because that’s my life. 

Wait for it...

...to turn blue!