Yoknapatawpha Blues: Faulkner's Fiction and Southern Roots Music

293 Pages·2015·2.518 MB·English

by  Tim A. Ryan

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
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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
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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