Understanding Randall Kenan by James A. Crank

Author:James A. Crank
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 2019-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 4

Brother Baldwin and the Shadow of Tims Creek

“What I hate about writing non-fiction is that I can’t tell the truth. Well, of course, you can tell the truth, but you have to find another way to tell it. I mean, if somebody is sitting there and she reminds you of a bullfrog, in fiction you can say: She put him in mind of a bullfrog. But if you know the woman, the woman is living, and you know the woman is going to read it, you can’t say that. That’s one of the problems with non-fiction for me. I can’t be honest on the same level.”

Kenan in conversation with V. Hunt

Randall Kenan’s tremendous success as a fiction writer sometimes obscures his accomplishments in other genres—most notably nonfiction, book reviews, criticism, journalism, and personal essays. This chapter chronologically works through Kenan’s nonfiction writings and pays special attention to his book-length works. Although the writer has yet to publish a novel or fiction collection since the publication of Let the Dead Bury Their Dead in 1992, he has continued to work on a novel that he hopes to publish within the next few years, tentatively titled There’s a Man Going ’Round Picking Names.

“Sorrow’s Child” (1992)

Kenan’s review of Dorothy Allison’s debut novel Bastard Out of Carolina—released the same year as Kenan’s own Let the Dead Bury Their Dead—is unique in that the young author seems to be talking to himself about the subject of much of his fiction—the emotional and economic landscape of poor southerners.1 Calling Allison’s novel both “worrisome and brave” (815), Kenan further explains: “Brave because in so many ways this far more bitter than sweet Bildungsroman’s real subject is not “Trash” (the name of Allison’s prize-winning collection of stories) but the explosive and often difficult to understand world of child abuse; it is also a Faulknerianly bold attempt to plumb the depths of one girl’s emotional acceptance, initially, of such cruelty. Yet so closely linked to this story is a particular environment that engenders this particular tragedy that when this environment fails to convince thoroughly, Allison’s overarching theme comes dangerously close to running aground. Luckily, she pilots her ship if not always masterfully, often with fine skill” (815).

Kenan is especially anxious over Allison’s portrayal of poverty and white trash, which he notes can be tricky to explore without falling into images of “liquored-up, malevolent, unemployed, undereducated, country-music-listening, oversexed, foul-tempered men; and long-suffering, quickly aging, overly fertile, too-young-marrying, hardheaded women” (815). Kenan is especially interested in “the way death functions in the novel—very like the way it functions in Southern life” (816), and a careful reader might find in his obsession with southern death a connection to the author’s own exploration of the subject in his fiction. Kenan’s conclusion is that Allison has made something true out of her own obsessions—with stereotypes of poverty and trash: “pecan pie and gospel music, snuff-dipping grannies and kissing cousins notwithstanding—Bastard Out of Carolina is a singular and important act of art and courage” (816).

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