Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone, by Nadine Cohodas. Pantheon Books, 2010. 449 pages.

The first time I ever heard Nina Simone sing, I was in one of those pretentious “high fi” stores in Atlanta back in the early ’60’s where all of the clerks wore lab coats, which suggested that they were trained specialists who had access to highly arcane knowledge. They used terms like “woofers” and “tweeters” and were constantly adjusting the “decibel levels” on a row of gigantic speakers. In order to demonstrate the merits of the speakers, one of the “specialists” picked up a Nina Simone record and dropped it on the turntable, saying, “Listen to this.”

The recording was “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair,” and it is still one of my favorites. Suddenly, the speakers vibrated, and Nina Simone’s deep, dark contralto literally made the hair stand up on my neck. I had never heard a voice like that before, and I was fairly certain that all of the high tech equipment wasn’t responsible for the aching, near-painful beauty of this woman’s voice. I became an instant fan.

In all of the years that I listened to Nina Simone sing (1960-2000), I knew very little about her personal life except what I gleaned from liner notes and album covers. I knew that she had been born in Tryon, N.C., and had been proclaimed a “musical prodigy” by the time she was nine. I saw references to Carnegie Hall concerts,and I knew that she had marched with Martin Luther King. I knew that she had become a kind of deified goddess in Europe as she blazed a trail that was both inspiring and troubling due to her bizarre and unpredictable behavior on stage. There were magazine articles about her confrontations with her fans and promoters in the concert halls of London, Paris and Nassau where she frequently refused to perform because of imagined slights and repeatedly walked out of performances.

I received something of a shock when I read her autobiography several years ago (I Put a Spell on You), for it revealed the troubled life of a woman who readily acknowledged her mental instability but seemed incapable of accepting the blame for conduct that wrecked her marriages and alienated her friends, family and fans. However, Nadine Cohodas has now published a painfully detailed biography, Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone, that finally reveals all of the bitterness, vanity, fears and guilt that haunted this gifted and tragic woman.

Nina Simone was born Eunice Waymon on Feb. 21, 1933. Eunice’s mother was a minister and musician, and although the family was poor, J. D. Waymon provided for his family by operating both a barbershop and laundry. Although most of the region remained segregated for another 25 years, Tryon’s artistic and cultural community proved to be exceptionally tolerant. In fact, when Eunice’s musical talents became common knowledge (she was playing hymns at the age of 3), some of the town’s prominent residents established the “Eunice Waymon Fund” to pay for her music lessons. In addition, a noted musician, Muriel Mazzanovich who had retired to Tryon, taught the budding prodigy, training her to be a classical concert pianist.

Nina Simone’s biographer, Nadine Cohodas, provides significant evidence that the obsession to be a black classical pianist was the seed of discontent that would provide the basis for Nina’s mental illness. Subjecting herself to rigorous training, Eunice attended the Allen School of Music in Asheville (1949) and was given a scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music in New York with the goal of being eventually accepted at the prestigious Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Throughout these years of training, Eunice Waymon developed a reputation as a solitary young woman who denied herself any distraction (no boyfriends, no parties, etc.). Indeed, many felt that her determination and fervor were detrimental to her character.

When the Curtis Institute rejected Eunice’s application, the blow was devastating. In later years, Nina often noted that the Institute’s rejection was motivated by racism. The broken-hearted girl vowed to apply again, but in the meanwhile, she needed to make a living. Then, one of her friends recommended that she apply for a position in one of the numerous bars or nightclubs in Atlantic City where many young musicians found summer work.

It was at this point that Nina Simone was born.

When the owner of the Midtown Bar asked her for her “stage name,” Eunice told him to call her Nina Simone. “I always liked the name Nina, and I saw the name Simone on a movie poster” (probably the French actress Simone Signoret).

For many years, Nina told her friends that her work as a jazz and blues pianist was temporary. However, within a few months she had developed an ardent following. Her audiences were fascinated by the unusual blend of classics like Bach and contemporary jazz. At first, Nina resisted singing, but when the club owners insisted, she began to sing in the dark, dramatic contralto that would make her famous. When she became a sensation in New York, she finally stopped her strenuous training sessions and gave up her dream of being admitted to the Curtis.

However, her nightclub performances were the beginning of Nina’s conflict with her audiences. She refused to sing if there disturbances (laughter and talking) in the club, and would often stand staring resentfully at the crowd until she had total silence. “I expect and deserve respect,” she often told them. Other times she was more direct. “Shut up!” she would say, pointing at the offending party.

When fame came to Nina Simone, it was both disconcerting and exhilarating. An early bad marriage left her embittered. In addition, a series of relationships with unethical recording companies — which had issued many of her records illegally — had cheated her out of millions of dollars. Her subsequent financial problems produced a growing sense of paranoia and the feeling that she was being victimized by everyone.

Although her career flourished during the next 40 years, Nina’s mental illness grew steadily worse. She was finally diagnosed as schizophrenic, but due to her mounting debts and lavish lifestyle, she continued to perform in folk festivals, Carnegie Hall concerts and the performance centers of Europe and Africa. Even when she began arriving late for concerts and initiating shouting matches with irate audiences, her performance would frequently turn the tide and the same audiences that booed her tardiness and provocative speeches would end up give her standing ovations.

During the civil rights movement, Nina marched with Martin Luther King, writing and singing hundreds of protest songs. Among her best friends who rallied to her side during her tumultuous final years were the writer James Baldwin; Lorraine Hansbury, the playwright who wrote “Raisin in the Sun;” and the poet, Langston Hughes. When she died on April 20, 2003, she was living in a small seaside village in France where a group of devoted friends tended to her every need.

During my first year at Western Carolina Teachers College (now Western Carolina University) in 1953, I managed to offend my grandfather so severely that he banished me. “Out of my sight!” he said, and sent me to Brevard to spend the summer with Uncle Albert. Albert was the bookkeeper for the Silverstein Tannery and got me a job there. “Good,” said my grandfather. “Maybe he will develop a sense of what it means to earn a livelihood.”

I worked in the “buffing room” which was next to the “green hide room,” a place where decaying (green) flesh was stripped from hides; the hides were then hung up to season. The resulting stink hung like an evil fog over the whole place, including the Green Fly Cafe (also owned by the Silverstein Tannery) where we all ate each day. Eventually, I became inured to the smell that permeated everything near the tannery; I even reached the point where I could eat the Green Fly’s diet of collard greens, pintos and cornbread with a reasonable amount of gusto.

The buffing room was in the loft of a large, barn-like structure, and its purpose was to convert inferior hides into acceptable shoe leather. This was done by placing hides (which were spotted with holes and possessed areas that were so thin they were semi-transparent) on a great table and coating them with a nauseous, yellow gunk. Four workers stood at each table with huge brushes strapped to their forearms and alternately dipped the brushes in the yellow gunk and then spread it, like lemon cake icing, over the hide.This process was repeated several times, and then huge metal rollers beat the gunk into the hide until it was absorbed. This was repeated until the hides acquired an acceptable thickness.

A bucket of water set by each table and when the brushes became clogged, we would clean them in the bucket. The water level in the bucket was always a little over half-full, because the buffing machines actually caused the floor to shift beneath our feet, like the deck of a ship. The water sloshed n the bucket in rhythm with the buffing machines. The deafening noise of the buffers rendered conversation impossible, and we learned to communicate with a kind of “buffing room mime.”

It was mind-numbing work, and we quickly fell into a repetitive routine that lasted for two hours. We received a 15-minute break — one in the morning and one in the afternoon — between each shift (which was deducted from our pay). During break, workers would go to the toilet, go smoke on the loading dock, or sit on the floor next to their work station. One colorful fellow would climb on the idle buffing machine and preach to his fellow workers to “find Jesus.”

In addition to me, my work station consisted of Lil, a gigantic blond woman who resembled Boris Karloff; a small man named Westley who hummed country-and-western songs, and a fellow named Manard who talked constantly about hunting, fights and epic drunks. During the breaks, Lil laid on the floor and slept while Westley, Manard and I fled to the loading dock. While Westley yodeled and did a passing imitation of Eddie Arnold’s standards (“Cattle Call,” and “ A Big Bouquet of Roses”), Manard talked about his Saturday nights which he spent driving around Brevard with a bottle of John Paul Jones whiskey and a paper sack full of cherry bombs. His greatest joy in life consisted of lighting cherry bombs and pitching them out the window when he passed a crowd in front of a church or theater.

Sometimes when the buffing room was going full blast, the owner paid us a visit. He wore riding pants, carried one of those little jockey whips and was usually accompanied by two white poodles. Sometimes, he would stop and watch us spread gunk. He would say something like “Faster, faster,” and the dogs would bark at us. Then he would pop his whip against his pants’ leg and walk away.

I lasted two months at the Silverstein Tannery. When I received word my grandfather would let me return home, I collected my last check ($12) and boarded a Trailways bus to Sylva. During my last week, Manard broke the buffing room monotony by taking two days of “sick leave” and then showing up with the lower part of his face encased in adhesive tape.

During our break, I followed Manard to the dock and watched while he carefully poked a cigarette in a slit above his lip and lit up. “So what happened to you?” I said. It was a little hard to understand Manard because he had lost most of his teeth, but this is the gist of what he said:

“Well, last Saturday after drawin’ my pay, I drove down to the South Caroliny line whar I bought a fifth of JPJ and a sack of cherry bums. I come on back to Brevard, cause I knowed that there was a big church revival down on Carver Street. I set outside that church til almost midnight, sipping JPJ and listenin’ to WNOX in Knoxville. Drunk that whole fifth and it was close to midnight afore them folks come pouring out of that church. Then, I rolled a winder down, and using my cigarette, I lit one of them cherry bums, and I throwed my cigarette out the winder and put that cherry bum in my mouth.”

Recently, I read that a historical society in Brevard was soliciting personal reminisces from former employees. Suddenly, it all came back: The Green Fly, the buffing machines, the white poodles and Lil asleep by her work station. I have serious doubts as to if the historical society really wants to know how I feel about the old Silverstein Tannery. However, I will admit that every time I think of Manard with a cherry bomb in his mouth, I laugh.

(Gary Carden can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Doubleday, 2009. 470 pages.

A few days after completing The Shadow of the Wind, I discovered a copy of Carlos Zafon’s new novel, The Angel’s Game. When I sampled a few pages to see if it had the same extraordinary imagery and cadence of its predecessor, I found that its setting was the same: Barcelona in the ‘20s, a visit to the “Cemetery of Forgotten Books,” treks through fog-shrouded graveyards, and the wonderful Sempere Bookstore, the place where star-crossed love, madness and murder converge.

However, The Angel’s Game is not a sequel. Daniel Sempere, the protagonist in The Shadow of the Wind is relegated to the role of a minor character in this tale of unholy alliances, paranoia and obsession. It is as though while Daniel Sempere’s anguished tale of love and redemption was unfolding, another doomed protagonist, David Martin (who just happens to lives nearby) is also beginning his own dark journey through “the city of the damned.” Although the two men are friends, they have very little in common ... except a love of books.

Zafon, a master of provocative beginnings, lets David tell his own story which begins with a badly beaten child who enters the Sempere Bookstore clutching a blood-stained copy of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. The child (David Martin) begs Sempere Senior to keep the book safe since Martin’s abusive father intends to destroy it. Sempere not only hides the book; he also becomes David’s protector and advisor, assisting the boy in achieving his wish to become a writer.

In time, David Martin becomes a journalist and a successful writer of a series of blood-and-thunder pot-boilers, The City of the Damned. Although the books are extremely popular, David feels that they are cheap melodramas and dreams of writing a work that will win the respect of the literary world. David confides his dream to his friend, Pedro Vidal, a highly successful journalist, and in time, he begins work on his great opus, The Steps of Heaven. When he meets Christina, the daughter of Vidal’s chauffeur, David feels that he has an established career. He decides to terminate his contract with the shady publishing firm that distributes The City of the Damned and devote himself to his new friends and his writing. It is at this point that something goes terribly wrong with David’s life.

Within a few short weeks, David discovers the following: he is entangled in a lawsuit with his former publishers, Barrido and Escobillas; he learns that Christina is involved with his best friend, Pedro Vidal, and when his new novel is published, the critics judge it to be a hopeless, amateurish work. At the same time, Vidal publishes a novel (written by David) and it is declared a literary masterpiece. Finally, when recurring headaches and nausea force David to consult a doctor, he is told that he has a brain tumor which will kill him in a few months.

When David Martin is at his lowest point, he meets Andreas Corelli, a mysterious publisher “of religious texts,” who offers to solve all of David’s problems if he will agree to write a book in accordance to Corelli’s dictates. Martin agrees and suddenly, miraculously, the deadly tumor is gone. Corelli gives David 100,000 francs “as a starter.” Shortly afterwards, David learns that the lives of Barrido and Escobillas have been snuffed out in a mysterious fire which had also destroyed all documents and contracts. David moves into an abandoned but luxurious mansion in the heart of Barcelona ... a house that he has always coveted, and begins work on Corelli’s book.

Obviously, David Martin has made a Faustian bargain, and although there is much in Corelli’s demeanor to suggest the demonic (he appears to be ageless and his eyes are reptilian), the division between Good and Evil wavers and changes frequently. In time, Martin discovers that he is only the latest of Corelli’s “authors for hire,” and that each of his predecessors has died tragically — in fact, one of them lived in the same house that Martin now occupies. Nor are the authors the only victims. All that they love, including wives, lovers and children are doomed.

But what about the book? What is the subject? The strange mythical tale that David creates is a kind of religious fable; the kind of “folk tale” that can serve as the basis for a religious belief that has the power to capture the imagination of millions. As David writes, he often appears to be a conduit, a mere instrument for verbalizing a fiendish tale that is being dictated by Andreas Corelli. At other times, Zafon suggests that perhaps Corelli exists only as projection of David Martin’s own corrupt soul. Regardless, David senses that the book he is writing may have the power to plunge the world into an apocalyptic war.

Regardless of who is responsible, someone is definitely creating havoc in David Martin’s world. The Angel’s Game is filled with hapless victims who are driven mad or die in random accidents. In addition, as the action of this novel accelerates, the narrative is littered with corpses: murdered policemen, mutilated lawyers, drowned paraplegics and lovers. As this Grand Guignol of a novel winds down, the reader is left with a singular suspicion. Is it possible that David Martin and Andreas Corelli are one and the same? If not, is it possible that the protagonist is “becoming” Corelli?

Without a doubt, The Angel’s Game contains one of the most remarkable “poetic chapters” that I have encountered in recent literature. This one deals with the death of Sempere Senior, the bookstore owner who is a major character in both The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel’s Game. As Sempere’s friends gather (mostly patrons of his bookstore), the funeral service turns into a kind of eulogy for all book lovers... those people who avoid churches and religious cant, but treat books with the kind of respect and awe that is normally expended in churches. Sempere is buried with David’s copy of Great Expectations beneath his clasped hands.

Although I liked this book tremendously, I was occasionally distressed by melodramatic passages characterized by a kind of hysterical rant that appears at odds with Zafon’s usually superb style. David Martin frequently shreds the scenery like a ham actor, posturing and proclaiming cliches. I was especially distressed by his constant use of the words “venomous” and “poisonous,” and the tremendous number of unpleasant waiters, desk clerks, and government officials that populate Barcelona. Given the remarkable quality of Zafon’s writing in The Shadow of the Wind, I can only conclude that the patches of bad writing in The Angel’s Game are the result of a bad translation. I learned recently that The Angel’s Game will be reissued with a new translation this year. I sincerely hope that is true.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Penguin Books, 2005. 487 pages

Let’s begin with a marvelous story — one of those timeless fables that is charged with mystery and magic — the kind that provides the basis for great novels. Somewhere on a dark and lonely street in Barcelona, there is an ancient, locked building called the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. If you know the password, or if you have a friend who is willing to take you as his “guest,” you may gain entrance and wander through a labyrinth of echoing corridors of abandoned books until you become lost like the legendary Theseus. When you are finally rescued (if you are!), then you will be allowed to select a single volume with the understanding that you will return it some day — perhaps, after it has altered your life in significant ways. When Daniel Sempere, the protagonist of The Shadow of the Wind, comes to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books with his father, the 10-year-old boy takes a book entitled ... The Shadow of the Wind.

So begins an incredible journey that carries Daniel through a strange city, filled with abandoned mansions, exotic cafes, fantastic bookstores, spirit-haunted graveyards and sinister prisons from which no inmate ever returns. Zafon’s novel is populated with a cast of characters that resemble the tortured, guilt-ridden lovers of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the obsessed killers of Jorge Luis Borges and the doomed and solitary eccentrics of Charles Dickens. The Shadow of the Wind is an epic tale that alternately reads like Dante’s nightmarish descent into the underworld and Candide’s trek through a venal, corrupt and cruel world. In short, this is a hell of a book!

Daniel’s most memorable encounters include an infatuation with Clara Barcelo, a beautiful blind girl who plays the piano ineptly (her rendition of Mozart sounds like a macaw randomly pecking piano keys); Don Federico, a watchmaker with a penchant for dressing like female opera stars; Javier Francisco Fumero,a deranged policeman, who in addition to murdering his own mother has devoted his life to tracking down Julian Carax, the author of The Shadow of the Wind — a mission that amounts to a terrifying obsession (much like another “relentless policeman,” Javert in Les Miserables).

Lain Courbert, a ghostly figure with a leather mask that hides a face burned beyond recognition, proves to be another deranged creature. Courbert has devoted his life to finding ... and burning every existing copy of The Shadow of the Wind. (Is it possible that he might really be the Julian Carax? If so, why?)

In addition, there are multitudes of minor characters, including “La Pepita,” an elderly matron with a gift for pistol-shot flatulence that is rumored to be so deadly it stuns sparrows on her balcony and sends them plummeting, senseless, to the pavement below; a horny, dying octogenarian who bargains with Daniel for one last lusty encounter, and a host of saintly nuns who devote their lives to protecting Zafon’s most foolish and/or helpless characters, including Bea Aguiler, the love of Daniel’s life.

The most remarkable character in the book, Fermin Romero de Torres, embodies the traits of both Cyrano de Bergerac (romantic and linguistic excesses), and Don Quixote (the man with the “impossible dream”). Saved from poverty and almost certain death by Daniel Sempere, Fermin becomes Daniel’s protector, advisor and confidante. In addition, much of The Shadow of the Wind’s wit and charm is the result of Fermin’s outrageous pronouncements on art, human frailty and sex. Fermin’s enthusiasm for American movies and stars such as Cary Grant, Veronica Lake and Carol Lombard prompts him to mimic the “noir” movies that he adores. In fact, the irrepressible Fermin sometimes comes dangerously close to dominating this novel!

Beneath the novel’s colorful facade is a touching story of Daniel’s relationship with his father, the proprietor of a highly respected bookstore that is barely surviving in a world where readers are decreasing at an alarming rate. When Daniel finds a copy of The Shadow of the Wind, he becomes fascinated by the book’s mysterious author, Julian Carax. Daniel begins a search to find Carax only to make the disquieting discovery that the author’s life bears an eerie resemblance to his own. In addition, as he meets Carax’s former lovers, enemies and acquaintances, he also encounters not only a marked resistance to his search, but a growing hostility. Time and time again, he is told to abandon his search or he may uncover a horrifying truth.

An increasing amount of evidence indicates that Carax is dead but Daniel comes to believe that the author has achieved a kind of immortality in his novels. When the warehouse in which the remaindered copies of The Shadow of the Wind are stored mysteriously burns, Daniel suspects that someone is determined to extinguish this last vestige of Carax’s memory. Is it possible that Carax is not truly dead as long as copies of his novels exist? Could it be that Lain Courbert, the man who has devoted his life to burning all of Carax’s novels, believes that he is carrying out a kind of “cleansing?” What is the basis for Javert Francisco Fumero’s hatred of Corax? Why is that hatred eventually transferred to Daniel Sempere?

Before all of these questions are answered, Daniel will learn the truth about Carax’s love with a young woman named Penelope Aldaya. When The Shadow of the Wind begins a descent into madness, vengeance and murder, all of the disparate pieces of this epic (and highly sensual) novel converge into a thundering, blood-drenched denouement. This is a marvelous book that will provide fodder for your fantasies for months to come.

(Gary Carden is a writer, playwright and storyteller who lives in Sylva. He can be reached This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and maintains a blog at www.tannerywhistle.net/books.)

eoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales: a Retelling by Peter Ackroyd. Viking Press, 2009. 436 pages

Being an old English teacher, I am aware of a literary tradition regarding classical works of literature: every generation of so, “masterpieces,” such as The Iliad, The Odyssey, the plays of Sophocles and Euripides and ancient epics such as Gilgamesh and The Decameron are translated (again) by a new group of prominent scholars. The purpose of these translations, according to the translators, is to make the classics more “relevant” to modern readers. For example, a careful translation of “Antigone” may reveal subtle similarities between King Creon’s military policy and Germany’s Third Reich. Recently, a new “interpretation” of Gilgamesh uncovered marked similarities between the fate of an arrogant tyrant 3,000 years ago and the invasion of Iraq during George Bush’s presidency. No doubt, similar reasons were given for a new translation of the Greek Bacchae during the height of San Francisco’s “hippie movement” when Timothy Leary’s fans ran amuck.

However, this time out, we have a modern translation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales by Peter Ackroyd - a translation designed to make this venerable 14th century literary work relevant to “the audience of today.” Ackroyd tells us Chaucer’s poetic (but archaic) language has rendered this marvelous collection of stories obscure and/or meaningless to the modern reader. Why not “translate” the entire work into conventional modern language? To illustrate his point, Ackroyd “retells” the passage that introduces this review (“The Prologue”) as follows:

“When the soft, sweet showers of April reach the roots of all things, refreshing the parched earth, nourishing every saplings and every seedling, then humankind rises up in joy and expectations. The west wind blows away the stench of the city and crops flourish in the fields beyond the walls. After the waste of winter, it is delightful to hear birdsong once more in the streets. The trees themselves are bathed in song. It is a time of general renewal and restoration. The sun has passed midway through the sign of the Ram, a good time for the sinews and the heart. This is the best season of the year for travelers. That is why good folk then long to go on pilgrimages.

Now, admittedly, Ackroyd’s passage is much easier to read since he has removed all of the archaic words and spelling. However, he has also removed Chaucer’s poetry (his meter and rimes) which has been replaced by... conventional prose. Is it better?

When I encountered The Canterbury Tales in my sophomore year at WCU (with my Cliff Notes firmly in hand), I discovered that there were 28 pilgrims who intended to make a leisurely journey from London to Canterbury to the tomb of Thomas a’Becket, and that Chaucer originally intended for each of them to tell four stories — two going and two coming back — a total of 112 tales. In actual fact, Chaucer only completed 24 tales. However, it is am amazingly varied collection, which ranges from bawdy fabliaux (dirty joke) to anti-Semitic rants and high-minded moral sermons.

Despite the fact that it has been over fifty years since I read Chaucer for the first time, it is amazing how vividly many of these characters live in my memory. Both the gap-toothed Wife of Bath, with her obsession with sex and the sleazy Pardoner with his jar of “pig bones” (which he sells as holy relics along with his “papal indulgences”) are morally corrupt - yet Chaucer’s descriptions of them give them a kind of literary immortality. In addition, despite the repulsive nature of speaker, “The Pardoner’s Tale” remains one of the great cautionary tales of literature.

Ackroyd’s “retelling” of such ribald classics as “The Miller’s Tale.” “The Reeve’s Tale” and “The Summoner’s Tale” are probably the original prototypes, of the 20th century “traveling salesmen” jokes since they all deal with cuckoldry, sexual misadventures and flatulence, and all are examples of low comedy. Ackroyd retells all of Chaucer’s “dirty jokes” with a sort gleeful zest that definitely adds to their humor. For example, the college students in both “The Summoner’s Tale” and the “The Miller’s Tale” speak in modern-day “cockney” and use many of the current, four-letter, sexual idioms. This is equally true of the Nun’s Priest’s tale, which gives an earthy account of the barnyard adventures of Chanticleer, the lusty rooster!

Many of the stories are boring (“The Knight’s Tale”), pretentious and/or ridiculous (“The Clerk’s Tale” of the “patient Griselda”), or moral tales filled with religious hypocrisy and anti-Semitism (“The Prioress’ Tale” of how Little Saint Hugh was slain by the Jews and “The Second Nun’s Tale” of Saint Cecilia’s martyrdom). Ironically, Chaucer is not responsible for the literary shortcomings of the tales, for each stands as an insight into the personality of the speaker. For example, Chaucer’s Knight is noble, honest and poor, but he is unable to tell an interesting story. One can imagine the pilgrims nodding off in the saddle as the poor Knight drones on and on. It is interesting that the most morally offensive tales are told by religious personages such as the Nun, the Prioress and the Clerk - all of which unwittingly reveal their own ethical shortcomings.

It well may be that Ackroyd’s retelling of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales may actually create a revival of interest in this 14th century classic. The low humor is still hilarious and Chaucer has a marvelous talent for revealing the pompous self-importance of corrupt 14th century church officials. It is especially important to remember that the opinions expressed by Chaucer’s pilgrims are not Chaucer’s — especially with stories like “The Clerk’s Tale” which is easily the yarn most likely to infuriate a modern feminist. I believe that Chaucer would share her outrage.

Horns by Joe Hill. William Morrow Publishers, 2010. 370 pages.

Ignatius William Perrish (“Iggy” to his friends) awoke one morning to find that, in addition to a headache, he had a very tangible set of horns sprouting from his forehead. Alarmed by his new acquisitions, Iggy takes himself to his family doctor’s office where he makes an alarming discovery. When other people (the receptionist, his current girl friend, etc.) focus on the horns, they not only have an uncontrollable desire to confess their secret sins, they ask for advice and assurance. Should they push their Alzheimer’s-striken mother down the basement steps? Should they continue embezzling funds? Is it time to break off a sleazy affair with a neighbor’s wife? Also, as soon as Iggy becomes distressed by the shocking sins of the people he meets and turns away in horror, the sinners forget what they have just confessed. In fact, they forget Iggy was ever there.

What follows is a nightmarish series of encounters in which Iggy visits those near and dear to him: his mother, his father, his grandmother and his celebrity brother. Poor Iggy learns that most of his family harbors an intense dislike for him. His mother is ashamed of him and is reluctant to attend social events where people know she is Iggy’s mother. His father hopes that he will move out and his grandmother considers him a loathsome pervert. Stunned by this information, Iggy reluctantly confronts his brother Terry, dreading to hear that even the person he admires most in the world probably despises him too.

By this point in Horns, the reader suspects that Iggy is suppressing a few dark secrets of his own; for example, he is a murder suspect. A year has lapsed since Merrin Williams, Iggy’s girlfriend, was raped and murdered on the eve of their departure for college. Merrin’s body is found in a favorite local hangout for courting couples — an abandoned foundry. Iggy is a primary suspect, but the evidence against his is circumstantial; he is never charged with the crime. However, it soon becomes evident that everyone, including Father Mould, the local Catholic priest (who has some pretty loathsome confessions of his own), and Iggy’s family thinks he is guilty. When Iggy finally reveals his new horns to his brother, he braces himself to hear yet another confession of hidden enmity. Instead, Terry reveals that he knows that his brother is innocent; but has failed to give evidence that would clear Iggy’s name because certain details of the crime would destroy Terry’s career (he is a popular TV personality).

Now, admittedly, a novel about a protagonist who has a set of horns on his head is a little bizarre, but this fact is rendered irrelevant by what follows: Horns contains two wildly divergent themes: (1) a deeply moving and poignant love story (Iggy and Merrin) and (2) a dark meditation on the nature of Good and Evil (God and the Devil). Although the novel is essentially a story about a group of teenagers in a small New Hampshire town, it gradually morphs into a morality tale that poses a number of disturbing questions. Is the majority of mankind essentially evil? In our secret hearts, are we all more comfortable with Satan than with God? Do we all nurse bitter resentments, anger and lust even as he communicate with our friends and family?

In addition to confirming Iggy’s innocence, Terry reveals the identity of the real murderer — Lee Tourneau, an enigmatic, handsome young man who just happens to be Iggy’s “best friend.” Now, in the aftermath of Merrin’s death, Iggy learns that Lee’s friendship is a carefully contrived mask to hide Lee’s profound envy and hatred for everyone who is blessed with comfortable lives, material goods and family ties.

It is especially interesting that the only character in Horns who is immune to the strange power of Iggy’s horns is Lee Tourneau. Raised in poverty by parents who are incapable of affection, Tourneau structures an existence designed to “get even” with his privileged peers — all the people he despises for real or imagined slights. When Lee launches a kind of secret war of deceit and betrayal on all of his alleged friends, Iggy and Merrin are fated to suffer the most.

Horns becomes a disturbing study of guilt, envy and suffering. At times, Lee Tourneau’s bitter envy resembles other infamous masters of deceit: Iago, who hated Othello because the Moor’s life had a beauty “that makes me ugly.” Then, there is Claggart’s hatred of Melville’s Billy Budd. Lee burns with a rage to destroy both Iggy and Merrin, simply because they exist.

Joe Hill is definitely his father’s (Stephen King) son. Horns, like his previous bestseller, The Heart-shaped Box, is filled with passages and imagery that causes the reader’s skin to prickle. Especially memorable are a series of scenes in the abandoned foundry where Iggy hides while he attempts to develop a way to defend himself against Tourneau.

As Iggy broods on the injustice of his situation, he begins to change, acquiring all of the traditional trappings of a demon. He discovers that he can mimic the voices of others and has the power to summons them to his hideout. Eventually, he notices that he has attracted visitors — hundreds (possibly thousands) of snakes gather around Iggy like adoring disciples.

There is, of course, a final conflict and it has dark grandeur which needs to be read. Consequently, this review will not steal any of Joe Hill’s thunder but merely note that the author does a masterful job of orchestrating an ending filled with drama, thunder and a strange kind of cosmic justice.

There are two voices inside Sylva storyteller and playwright Gary Carden. One belongs to the mountain man of letters whom author Lee Smith coined “the Appalachian Garrison Keillor.” The other belongs to an orphaned child who clung to a pink transistor radio to make it through the lonely nights on Rhodes Cove.

“I was a damned lonely little kid, and I’d turn that radio on and it was like a bright night light,” Carden said, his voice turned sweet on the memories of his favorite ‘50s radio shows.

Carden is one of the most recognized literary voices in Western North Carolina largely because of his ability to communicate the authentic experiences and cadences of a mountain culture that is nearly vanished.

As an artist, the tension in Carden’s work is grounded in the double-consciousness of a man who knows firsthand the feeling of being “found wanting” and who still expresses pride in his heritage.

“I kind of turned into a missionary of some kind because I felt it was my job to communicate my culture,” Carden said. “Can you tell people about mountain dialect and the way my granddaddy lived without communicating ignorance?”

For Carden, the question is personal and not abstract. His father drove an oil truck and played in a mountain band until he was shot dead in his own garage by a loafer drunk on wood alcohol.

“It was an accident that didn’t make sense. That’s the kind that bothers you forever,” Carden said.

His mother, only 18 at the time of the killing, left him with his grandparents and went to Tennessee.

While his story is the type of Appalachian biography that reeks of authenticity, Carden reckons what makes him real isn’t his personal tragedy so much as the shared pain of growing up ashamed of his own voice.

“My granny warned me –– and most mountain people know this –– when I got out of college,” Carden said. “’Garneal,’ she said. ‘When you get out of here, you’ll be weighed and you’ll be found wanting.’ And she was right.”

Last weekend, Carden staged his play “Nance Dude” at Western Carolina University’s Coulter Auditorium to benefit the Friends of the Jackson County Main Library. It was the second performance of the two-part library benefit featuring actor Elizabeth Westall in two one-act plays that draw a line between history and folklore.

“It’s a special category. It’s history becoming folklore,” Carden said of “Nance Dude.” “There comes a time when people start decorating the facts and at some point the history becomes folklore.”

The play showcases two of Carden’s innate gifts: his ear for Appalachian dialect and his ability to normalize the brutality of dark mountain history with humor and humanity. “Nance Dude” re-tells the true story of a Haywood County woman convicted for the murder of her granddaughter.

Carden rem-embers his own grandmother explaining to him why his grandfather “didn’t laugh much.” She told the story of Kirk’s Raiders shooting down his great-grandfather in cold blood and leaving the body on the front porch.

“When my grandmother told me that story, she’d pull me right to her face and say ‘Don’t you forget what they did to Bryant,’” said Carden. “And of course I think that’s one of our greatest flaws as a culture ... the way we carry grudges.”

But “Nance Dude” also gets at the root of why Carden, now in his 70s, still burns hot in quest of his defining work. Carden has won awards as a writer and a storyteller, and honorary degrees as a folklorist, but he has never gotten the one acclaim that would put to rest the prophetic fear his grandmother instilled in him.

“My work has never been considered significant enough to be published,” Carden said.

Carden wonders whether his identity as a storyteller hasn’t limited him.

“Playwrights have a hard time. Poets have it harder. And storytellers have it the worst,” Carden said. “What do you do with a literate Appalachian storyteller? A mountain storyteller is supposed to be a hick with a wooly beard who’s never read a book.”

But Carden’s not making excuses. Instead, he’s still searching for his defining moment as an artist. He recently finished a play called “Signs and Wonders” that casts a light on the damage Pentecostal preachers from Bob Jones University did during their student auditions in mountain towns in the ‘50s. But he thinks there’s something bigger brewing in him.

“I’m kind of in stasis,” Carden said. “I need to do something significant. I’m bored and I’m not content with what I’ve done. I’ve got about 10 plays that need to get done and I know they won’t be.”

Some of Carden’s best written works are published in a collection called Mason Jars in the Flood & other stories. The autobiographical “Harley stories” are his version of Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories, autobiographical tales about growing up that carry both the personal and cultural angst of a moment in time.

Carden grew up in the mountains when the world was turning modern, and the mountain folk were being shut out of their own home. He became a man of letters, earning two degrees from Western Carolina University. When he writes about his childhood, he does it in clear and beautiful prose that hints at a fundamental conflict.

“You have to live in two worlds,” Carden said. “Culture demands it of you.”

Gary Carden, the artist, is still looking for the perfect way to call the world to account for the wrongs visited on Appalachian people since the Civil War and on his heart since his childhood. Like many writers, his thirst for success is fueled by a drive to hold life accountable for the pain it dispenses.

“My strength is the same as my grandparents’ inability to forgive,” Carden said. “I can’t forget things that are wrong. I want to see justice done.”

Requiem by Fire by Wayne Caldwell. Random House, 2009. 335 pages

Dear readers, if you have some slight respect for my opinions about Appalachian literature, I hope you will believe me when I say that Wayne Caldwell has written a remarkable novel — one that we will be talking about for many years. Requiem by Fire, Caldwell’s second work in what may well be a series of novels, is rooted in the history, folkways and culture of a vanquished place: Cataloochee. Whereas the first novel gave breath, blood and passion to the early settlers of that place, this sequel attempts to capture the lives of those same settlers and their descendants (some 1,100 in all) when they are faced with eviction.

If you have ever wondered how the federal government and the U.S. Park Service orchestrated the removal the households in Big and Little Cataloochee, here is a detailed and sometimes heartbreaking account. At its worst, the “presence of the Park” in Cataloochee and elsewhere sometimes resembled occupation by a conquering army, since uniformed and armed officials took up residence in the designated area and began issuing mandates — regulations that stipulated everything from reimbursement for land to deadlines for final departure. From the beginning, the Park stressed a singular dismal fact: This land now belongs to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. You must leave.

For many of the aged residents such as Silas Wright, the coming of the Park was a death notice. In response to petitions from landowners who refused governmental reimbursement and requested permission to stay, the Park relented but issued restrictions that were so rigorous most landowners felt that they could not comply. No hunting, no cutting of trees (firewood was restricted to deadfalls) and severe limits on gardens and fishing. Although there was considerable dissatisfaction with the Park and its dictates, the majority of the people finally loaded their belongings and left. Silas Wright, the oldest member of the community, chose to stay.

Many of the elderly “exiles” did not survive for long. Like some of the plants many of the families attempted to transplant to their new homes in Saunook, Maggie Valley or Waynesville, these displaced souls faded and died — as though they had been deprived of some vital nutrient that could only be found in the soil of Cataloochee. There were suicides and many suffered psychological damage. There were exceptions, like the family that moved to Saunook, bought an old garage and converted it into a mercantile store that specialized in “mountain crafts.”

Noting that their customers were fascinated by such antiquated items as sun bonnets, quilts, corncob pipes and rustic chairs, they quickly became “real mountaineers” (or at least what the visiting public perceived them to be), and in the process provided an income for other Cataloochans who could whittle, sew, hew and weave.

Much of Requiem by Fire deals with the trials and tribulations of Jim Hawkins, a young native of Cataloochee who readily accepts the job of warden for the Park. In essence, Jim must enforce the unpopular rules and regulations devised by the Park. Hawkins accepts his job with a sort of religious fervor. His love for Cataloochee and its people motivates him to see if he can ease the pains of their transition. Since the Park authorities have quickly developed a reputation for insensitivity and arrogance, the local residents accept Hawkins who is “one of their own” and who has a talent for acting as a buffer between the Park and the disenfranchised residents.

Certainly, he has a knack for defusing explosive situations. He also knows when to look the other way.

However, Hawkins has made one serious mistake that causes him considerable suffering. He has married a “town girl.” Born in West Asheville, Nell comes with Jim to Cataloochee and is immediately distressed. No telephone. No movie theater. No restaurants or social life. Although she endures several years of discomfort and boredom, she does not adjust but becomes increasingly resentful. Where Jim sees beauty and solitude, Nell sees discomfort and isolation. Nell’s departure is inevitable and comes at a time when Hawkins is beset with serious problems ... one of which is a pyromaniac.

Willie McPeters is an unforgettable character. Although he has much in common with other mentally deranged characters in southern fiction, such as Flannery O’Conner’s Hazel Motes or Faulkner’s degenerate Snopes family, McPeters is more elemental, a kind of embodiment of mindless and bestial destruction. McPeters begins to burn abandoned buildings in a sexual frenzy and as his destruction in Cataloochee increases, Jim Hawkins finds evidence of Willie’s presence near his home (McPeters leaves an acrid stench where ever he goes).

Ironically, as Hawkins struggles to save his marriage and track down the elusive firebug, the Park announces its new edict. All of the vacated buildings in Cataloochee are to be burned. Nothing is to be left that would detract from the Park’s mission: to return Cattaloochee to a wilderness state. Consequently, this sets the scene for the most heartrending section of Requiem by Fire — Hawkins is ordered to officiate at the burning of the place where he was born:

Destroying the place where as a baby he had padded in knitted booties. The place he’d learned fire burns and ice is cold, and that nothing is better for the sniffles than a mother’s love and warm VapoRub.The place he’d broken windows with homemade baseballs.The place that had kept him dry during storms and wet in the tub on Saturday night. The place where his father had read the Bible out loud every night and where Jim had learned about alcohol when he was caught sneaking from Mack’s jug and where his punishment had been to keep drinking until he retched. His place.

As Hawkins stands watching the inferno destroy even the boxwoods and the maple tree in the front yard, he is joined by the lonely and stubborn Silas Wright, who now believes that Cataloochee is truly gone. Silas also encounters a group of campers from the flatlands and their behavior and opinions presage the coming of vast hordes who will perceive Cataloochee as a “vast outdoor playground.” Silas senses that it is time for him to go as well.

Requiem by Fire begins and ends with dreams — Silas Wright’s dreams. The first fire is one that Silas and his friends deliberately set when Silas was a young man. They had burned the old Cataloochee school because they believed that the only way they would get an adequate school for their children was to burn the old one. Now, at the end of his life, Silas dreams of fire again. However, this time the fire is multi-faceted. It both cleanses and obliterates, destroys and renews. In Cataloochee, a way of life has perished, but a new world is approaching by a paved road. The tourists are coming.

Two plays crafted by Sylva writer Gary Carden will be presented at Western Carolina University in March to benefit the new library fund of the Friends of the Jackson County Main Library.

Carden’s “Birdell” will be staged at 7 p.m. Friday, March 12, in the auditorium of WCU’s Coulter Building, while “Nance Dude” will be presented Friday, March 19, at the same time and location. Both presentations will feature actress Elizabeth Westall and are being co-sponsored by WCU’s Mountain Heritage Center and School of Music, the Jackson County Arts Council and the library Friends.

The Friends organization is engaged in a fundraising campaign to raise $1.6 million to purchase the furniture, fixtures and equipment for the new Jackson County Public Library Complex, currently under construction on Courthouse Hill in Sylva. The campaign has collected more than $1.4 million so far, and among the contributions is a $250,000 challenge grant from the State Employees Credit Union Foundation.

Both plays are one-act monologues that portray the authentic voices of Appalachian women. “Birdell” is based on the lives of families who lived on Hazel Creek in the Great Smoky Mountains until the coming of the national park, and is told from the perspective of the fictional character Birdell as she reflects on her long life. Carden based his play “Nance Dude” on the book, “The Legend of Nance Dude” by Maurice Stanley. Both play and book depict a Haywood County woman who was convicted of killing her granddaughter in 1913.

A native of Sylva, Carden earned two degrees at WCU and for more than four decades has presented traditional mountain culture to the public as a teacher, storyteller, novelist, historian, screenwriter and playwright. WCU recognized Carden’s body of work in presenting him with an honorary doctorate of humane letters in 2008.

Westall, a Yancey County native who earned degrees at Berea College and Duke University, taught English and drama before her retirement in 1985. Since then, she has acted and directed in numerous regional productions.

Tickets prices for the shows are $15 for adults, $10 for senior citizens and $5 for students.

Volunteers are needed to help set up, sell tickets, act as ushers and perform other jobs. E-mail Betty Screven at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to sign up. For more information about the March 12 and 19 presentations, contact the Friends of the Library at 828.507.0476.

The Turnaround by George Pelecanos. Little, Brown and Company, 2009. 320 pages

 

On a sweltering summer night in 1972, three white teenagers in Washington, D. C., decide to cruise through a black neighborhood called Heathrow Heights. On a dare, the driver, Billy Cachoris, yells a few racial slurs at three black teenagers while his companion, Pete Whitten, throws a cherry pie. Alex Pappas, the third teenager, is in the back seat and does not participate in this dangerous prank. Belatedly, Cachoris discovers that he is in a turnaround with no exit. His only choice is to turn around and go back to where three very angry blacks stand in the middle of the street waiting. Billy stops the car, gets out and attempts to apologize. He is sucker-punched and while he is lying in the street, he is shot in the back. Pete jumps from the car and runs. Alex is badly beaten and scarred for life.

George Pelecanos, who calls The Turnaround his most autobiographical novel, provides extensive information about the three black teenagers. James and Raymond Monroe are brothers and both have recently heard their mother describe how she had been subjected to racial slurs by some white teenagers just a few nights earlier. Charles Baker, several years older than the Monroe brothers, has a reputation for violence and drugs. He strikes Billy Cachoris and attacks Alex Pappas, leaving him with mutilated eye (Alex says that he looks as though his damaged eyes is perpetually weeping.) A witness later testifies that one of the Monroe brothers fired the fatal hot. Eventually, James Monroe confesses and is charged with murder.

The Turnaround is about consequences. When Pelecanos moves the action forward 35 years, we discover that the lives of all of the participants in that tragic night in 1972 have been altered; the lives of numerous others (children, wives, relatives, etc.) are affected in varying degrees. The central character, Alex Pappas, had once planned to go to college, but ends up operating his father’s Greek diner. Alex is haunted by that night in Heathrow Heights, and he often wonders if he could have changed the outcome. He sees his role in the tragedy as an example of his role in life. He is “the guy in the backseat,” someone who is not really involved in the action, but sanctioning it with his silence.

Recently, his sense of being powerless to shape his life has been intensified by the death of his own son in Iraq. James Monroe does not fare well in prison and ends up serving a total of 20 years. Out of prison, he drinks too much and ekes out a living as an underpaid mechanic. Charles Baker, who had testified against James Monroe in the trial in exchange for a light sentence, has become a hardened petty criminal who preys on the weak. Only Pete Whitten, a local WASP from a privileged family, and now a local lawyer; and Ray Monroe, who works in a military rehabilitation center assisting maimed veterans; and Alex Pappas have managed to create meaningful and economically secure lives complete with wives and children.

When a chance meeting between Alex Pappas and Ray Monroe occurs, Pelecanos handles this confrontation as a kind of moral “turnaround.” Thirty-five years after the tragedy of Heathrow Heights, all of the survivors find themselves facing a personal crisis. Alex feels that he has sacrificed his personal dreams for the benefit of his family; Ray Monroe has lead a fulfilling life of service to others, but is haunted by guilt (he harbors a secret about the death of Billy Cachoris); James Monroe, trapped in a dead-end job, a tendency to drink too much and an inability to make friends, has unwittingly become involved with Charles Baker in an extortion scheme. Finally, there is Charles Baker, who bitterly resents the material wealth of everyone and spends much of his time developing schemes to take advantage of others. Unfortunately, one of his plans involves taking control if a lucrative drug operation run by a syndicate of ruthless dealers.

The Turnaround represents yet another example of a “new theme” in the recent works of George Pelecanos. Many of his earlier novels (Down Where the Dead Men Go, Shoedog, A Firing Offense) although skillfully written are noted for their darkness and brutality. In recent years, a new theme has emerged in works such as The Night Gardener, Drama City and Hard Revolution: the theme of redemption. In recent works, Pelecanos develops characters who find meaningful lives through family, sacrifice and work. Indeed, this is the trinity that dominates in The Turnaround.

In the latter part of The Turnaround, there are two significant confrontations: the chance meeting between Raymond Monroe and Alex Pappas, which evolves into a series of meetings in which these two men strive to find a way to bring closure to the bitterness and resentment that both parties have harbored for 35 years. It is through the initiative of Pappas that the two factions finally merge in the creation of “a project” that will redeem them all. The second significant confrontation is between Charles Baker and Pete Whitten (and later repeated between Baker and Alex Pappas) and is tainted by Baker’s use of threat and intimidation. In the final analysis Baker’s schemes are counterproductive, and, produce yet another tragedy.

What is interesting about this change in themes in Pelecanos’ novels is his passionate presentation of the redeeming aspects of family, work and sacrifice. In The Turnaround, Alex Pappas and Raymond Monroe survive because of them. Characters (like Charles Baker), who are without family or meaningful work are often doomed. For several years now, Pelecanos has been active in book-signing circuit, and he frequently delivers lectures to his fans that resemble fervent sermons. (See Pelecanos on YouTube.)

No review of a Pelecanos novel would be complete without acknowledging the author’s remarkable ability to capture and/or encapsulate the atmosphere of a specific time and place. With Pelecanos, it is Washington, D. C., and the area around Dupont Circle, circa 1970. The Turnaround resonates with crisp dialogue that contains vivid references to that era’s music, sports, radio personalities and popular cars. Many reader may relish the feeling of cruising through D.C. in a Monte Carlo listening to Wilson Pickett do “In the Midnight Hour” on WOL. I agree with Alex that, compared to what is now on the radio, those were good times.