Reading the South
New Fiction by Regional Authors, April 2003
by Hal Jacobs
for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Ty Cobb is part Hamlet, part Raskolnikov and part Stonewall Jackson in Patrick Creevy's Tyrus (Tom Doherty Associates, $25.95), a fictional account of Cobb's rookie season.

Only weeks before joining the Detroit Tigers in the late summer of 1905, Cobb's mother killed his father with a shotgun in their genteel north Georgia home. While she claimed it was a tragic accident, many people, including her 19-year-old son, speculated that she murdered her husband after he caught her with a lover.

When we first see Cobb, he is on a train headed north for the first time in his life. But instead of celebrating his dream of reaching the big leagues, he's struggling with family pride and shame. His father, a state senator from Royston, had much higher aspirations for his son than being a ballplayer, "a synonym for a drunk and an ungentlemanly, brawling rowdy, the whore's game, and the gambler's easy touch."

As the train steams north, Tyrus must also deal with his intense hatred and fear of all Yankees, not just those wearing pinstripes on the Polo Grounds.

Throughout the novel (which covers his first season and mother's murder trial), Cobb keeps his distance from family and teammates, while venting his pain in long, inner dialogues filled with bitterness and self-loathing. Although he shares a few quiet moments with his sweetheart, his finest moments occur on the playing field when he displays the dazzling speed and agility that will eventually make him one of baseball's greatest hitters.

"In Cleveland, at least, they'd be afraid now of his quickness," Creevy writes. "And that was what he wanted. He wanted it spreading everywhere, the red, bloody fear of him. And maybe up in The Show he'd have enough time after all to create some real sweet terror, which was by a long, long mile the most forceful weapon on a battlefield."

In "Tyrus," Creevy portrays the inner life of an athlete who played the game like "a man driven by the terrors of the earth." Cobb may have been a Southern gentleman, but he understood that baseball was "as gentlemanly as a kick in the crotch."

Creevy is the author of a previous novel, "Lake Shore Drive," and teaches English at Mississippi State University.

***

Claybird Catts is a young boy who slowly unlocks his family's dramatic past in Janis Owens' The Schooling of Claybird Catts (HarperCollins, $24.95). These are pivotal adolescent years for Claybird, growing up in North Florida of the late 1980s. First, he must grapple with the lingering illness of his father, a successful local businessman. Then he must handle his father's death and the withdrawal of his once-lively mother.

Soon enough, Claybird also must figure out the mystery behind his Uncle Gabe, his father's brother, who returns home after a long absence and, intriguingly, brings love back into his mother's life.

As Claybird learns over the next several years, the Cattses have an attic full of family secrets known to everyone but him. And while his Harvard-educated Uncle Gabe brings a burst of intellectual energy to the household, his presence also raises new questions about the meaning of family forgiveness.

Owens' young Southern narrator is in the tradition of warm-hearted, slightly eccentric storytellers who are blessed with the gift of gab. When Claybird reflects on the last time he saw his father alive, he remembers how instead of kissing him goodbye, he chose to go to bed.

Now, I have to take a moment to defend this idiotic lapse by pointing out that I was terribly sleepy and had been up a long time -- and anyway, this isn't any ordinary bed we're talking about, but a king-size wrought-iron canopy, draped with tulle and tassels and even a few peacock feathers, with a squashy feather mattress on top (Mama's contribution) and an insanely expensive Posturepedic beneath (for Daddy's bad back).

Owens has written two previous novels and lives in rural north Florida.

***

In John McManus' story collection Born on a Train (Picador, $14 paperback), the Virginia mountains provide a bleak setting for characters who share a common affliction: living hard. In "Broad," a teenage girl dances along the edge of desperation with her mother, a serial Internet romancer. Mom's latest chat session has landed them in the arms of a backwoods Appalachian man (a "Hiram" posing with the help of his son as an online "Wheatboy") and his three redheaded sons. Despite the viciousness of this world, the girl's intellect and dark humor shields her from complete despair.

When I turned to go inside the house, the dog stood up and walked around in a circle and lay back down in Hiram's lap. They call it 'she,' although it seemed to have a penis. In many species the male is bright and colorful. Sometimes the female can be identified only when one knows the male. They've all been dumb, I said to Mother when we were alone, but this one's stupid.

In "Mr. Gas," a disabled mother tucked away in a remote cabin plays "hook up minds" with her son as he walks through the woods to the distant convenience store. In this way, she imagines she can see and feel the outside world, but little does she know this includes homoerotic activities with another teenager.
In "Natcher Mountain," a slow-witted boy watches his friend shoot down a rival's dogs and comments, "He come from purebread mountain stock, it clogged him full of meanness."

McManus' stories often reveal young people who want their youth taken away because life has already rubbed them raw. They're tired of feeling. When they talk, their words have a crude, primitive force because they are the words of the dying who no longer know where the words are coming from.
McManus was raised in Tennessee and lives in Austin, Texas.

***

Also check out these new novels by regional writers. . .

Louis Edwards' Oscar Wilde Discovers America (Scribner, $24) tells the story of Oscar Wilde's tour through the United States in 1882 from the eyes of his black valet, William Traquair, who is every bit as witty and dashing as his English employer. Edwards is the author of two previous novels and lives in New Orleans.

Opening lines: Blood, coursing through William with a curious heat, burned his cheeks. Baxter was going to Europe tomorrow, and he was not. Just as, four years earlier, Baxter had gone to Harvard, and he had not. William brought his hands up to his face and felt the warmth of his envy pulsing there. Such emotion would have ruddied the face of a fairer man -- Baxter would have been blushing -- exposing his fury, but William, sitting across from his observant, judgmental father, enjoyed the refuge of his brown mask.

Karen Stolz's Fanny and Sue (Hyperion, $22.95) depicts the early years of twin sisters who grow up in St. Louis during the 1930s. Told in alternating voices, Stolz writes about the world of childhood, freshly laundered dresses and homemade fudge. The author of 2000's "World of Pies," Stolz lives in Austin, Texas.

Opening lines: In 1920, as the twins were born, Sue grabbed on to Fanny's foot to come along -- Fanny always had to be first in everything! In birth, and in death, as time would prove. In 2003, when Fanny complained of a clutch in her heart, and fainted, Sue telephoned the ambulance, then tried to pound on her sister's chest. But she could only bear to tap lightly, as if coaxing the end of a flour bag, the soft white flour drifting into a sifter.

An edited version of these reviews appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sunday, April 6, 2003.

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