Yoknapatawpha Blues: Faulkner's Fiction and Southern Roots Music PDF
Preview Yoknapatawpha Blues: Faulkner's Fiction and Southern Roots Music
Southern Literary Studies Scott Romine, Series Editor FAULKNER’S FICTION SOUTHERN 1 ROOTS MUSIC TIM A. RYAN Louisiana state university Press Baton rouge Published by Louisiana State University Press Copyright © 2015 by Louisiana State University Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First printing Designer: Barbara Neely Bourgoyne Typeface: Ingeborg Printer and binder: Maple Press Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ryan, Tim A., 1971– Yoknapatawpha blues : Faulkner’s fiction and southern roots music / Tim A. Ryan. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8071-6025-1 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8071-6026-8 (pdf) — ISBN 978-0-8071-6027-5 (epub) — ISBN 978-0-8071-6028-2 (mobi) 1. Faulkner, William, 1897–1962—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Music and literature—United States— History—20th century. I. Title. PS3511.A86Z965276 2015 813’.52—dc23 2014038730 THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL New Words and New Music Adaptation by Huddie Ledbetter Collected and Adapted by John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax TRO—©—Copyright 1936 (Renewed) 1959 (Renewed) Folkways Music Publishers, Inc., New York, NY Used by Permission DEAD SHRIMP BLUES Words and Music by Robert Johnson Copyright © (1978), 1990, 1991 Standing Ovation and Encore Music (SESAC) Under license from The Bicycle Music Company All Rights Reserved Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation Portions of chapter 2 appeared previously, in a somewhat different form, in The Faulkner Jour- nal 27.1 (Spring 2013). Copyright 2014 by the University of Central Florida. Used by permission. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. in MeMoriaM: Stuart Kidd James M. Mellard Johanna Rushing Leslie Scott and Mary Winterson Scott Alisa Smith-Riel Jake Adam York This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Acknowledgments . . . . ix Introduction: The Rise of the Boll Weevil . . . . 1 1. Homers of the Cotton Fields: William Faulkner and the Blues in Twentieth-Century America . . . . 13 2. Backwater Rising, Men Sinking Down: The Great Mississippi Flood in “Old Man” and “High Water Everywhere” . . . . 43 3. See My Baby from the Other Side: The Ghosts of Lynching in “That Evening Sun” and “Last Kind Words Blues” . . . . 80 4. All My Shrimps Was Dead and Gone: Male Sexual Dysfunction in Sanctuary and “Dead Shrimp Blues” . . . . 123 5. Lost Lightning: Self-Reflexivity and Southern Nostalgia in The Back Door Wolf and The Reivers . . . . 155 Conclusion: A Long Loop Down into the Delta . . . . 177 Appendix: Blues Lyric Transcriptions . . . . 201 Notes . . . . 217 Works Cited . . . . 239 Index . . . . 265 This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The ideas underlying this book date back to my undergraduate years at the University of Reading in England in the early 1990s, a place quite unlike Mississippi between the two world wars, but where I nonetheless first en- countered both William Faulkner and the country blues. By day, I became enchanted with the history, literature, and culture of the modernist era, the Great Depression, and the Deep South, courtesy of the brilliance and passion of those monumental professors in the (now sadly defunct) Ameri- can Studies Department, particularly Christine MacLeod, Lionel Kelly, and the late, great Stuart Kidd. In the evenings, outside the classroom, Pete Mitchell opened up a wealth of vital musical avenues to me—not least the blues—through his extensive record collection and performances with contemporary R&B ensemble Crawfish Thompson. It was, then, in a gray, suburban, and unimpeachably English commuter town that I began to imagine the interconnections between the works and worlds of Faulkner and Charley Patton. My first journey below the Mason-Dixon Line in 1992 contributed fur- ther to my appreciation of the relationship between southern vernacular music and fictional Yoknapatawpha County, particularly when I visited Elvis Presley’s alleged birth-house in Tupelo and Faulkner’s home at Rowan Oak on the same Saturday. I am grateful to Julian Pettifer (long before he became Julian Barratt or Howard Moon) and Sherone Rogers for being such sterling companions on that excursion. On my most recent sojourn in Oxford, Mississippi, in 2013, Larry Wells proved to be the very essence ix
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