Lightning Song Lewis Nordan’s
A READER’S GUIDE Allen Loibner-Waitkus
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Table of Contents
Introduction....................................................... 5
Characters.......................................................... 7
Vocabulary......................................................... 9
About the Author........................................... 10
About Magical Realism...................................12
Editorial Reviews.............................................14
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Introduction Students, This guide for readers is designed to help you better understand the novel. It is broken into five sections: 1. a list of characters 2. vocabulary 3. information about Lewis Nordan 4. information about Magical Realism 5. a selection of editorial reviews The list of vocabulary words is included as a quick reference guide, and I suggest you look over the terms ASAP. That way you won’t have to look them up when you’re reading. The section on Magical Realism is a must-read. It is imperative that you understand Magical Realism to understand the novel. Nordan, who died in 2012, is one of a handful of writers of Southern (U.S.) Magical Realism. I really love this book, and I hope you will too. If you have any questions about it or would like to discuss it with me, give me a call or text me. Best, ALW
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Characters MISS ALBERTA—a teacher of the history of Mississippi BELLE TRUDY—Uncle Harris and Swami Don’s foster mother J.L. BORGES—(real person) an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish-language and universal literature CAPTAIN WOODY—Uncle Harris and Swami Don’s foster dad ROSALYNN CARTER—(real person) the First Lady of the United States from 1977 to 1981 and wife of President Jimmy Carter DARLA (aka ROXANNE)—a Native American woman who works as on screw machine at Swami Don’s night job ELSIE DEARMAN—Leroy’s mother LAURIE DEARMAN—Leroy’s 8-year-old sister who curses like a sailor LEROY DEARMAN—Lightning Song’s 12-year-old protagonist MOLLY DEARMAN—Leroy’s 3-year-old, bed-wetting sister SWAMI DON DEARMAN—Leroy’s father EVIL QUEEN—a friend of Leroy’s mother GARY GILMORE—(real person) an American criminal who gained international attention for demanding the implementation of his death sentence for two murders he committed in Utah HANNAH—Uncle Harris’s estranged wife HERNANDO—an older Mexican man who shines shoes INSURANCE MAN—the New People’s insurance agent IRENE—an unknown woman (possibly his wife) Old Pappy mentions HOT MCGEE—a customer in Mr. Sweet’s store
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SCREAMER MCGEE—Hot McGee’s son who is Leroy’s age ALDO MORO—(real person) the 38th Prime Minister of Italy (from 1963 to 1968 and 1974 to 1976 who was kidnapped on 16 March 1978 by the Red Brigades and killed after 55 days of captivity MIFANWY MOSER—a girl in Leroy’s baton-twirling class who has a fin instead of a left hand NEW GUY (HUDSON)—the Dearman’s new male neighbor NEW LADY (EVE)—the Dearman’s new female neighbor OLD PAPPY—Leroy’s dead grandfather LOLLY PINKERTON—the postmistress RAFE—a former acquaintance of Old Pappy RUBY RAE—the majorette who teaches the baton-twirling classes Leroy, Laurie, and Molly attend NEWGENE STICK—a name of an unknown person Old Pappy talks about during a dream MR. SWEET—the owner of the local store UNCLE HARRIS—Leroy’s uncle who moves into the Dearman’s attic
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Vocabulary ascot—a broad neck scarf that is looped under the chin bos’n’s pipe—a pipe or a non-diaphragm type whistle used on naval ships by a boatswain brake—rough or marshy land overgrown usually with one kind of plant callow—lacking adult sophistication cane—any of various slender woody stems canebrake—a thicket of cane cuckold—a man whose wife is unfaithful din—a loud continued noise Dobro—(brand name) an acoustic guitar with a metal resonator escarpment—a long cliff or steep slope separating two comparatively level or more gently sloping surfaces and resulting from erosion or faulting falsetto—an artificially produced singing voice that overlaps and extends above the range of the full voice especially of a tenor Ficciones—a collection of short stories by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges
gremlin—a folkloric mischievous creature that causes malfunctions in aircraft or other machinery grog—alcoholic liquor incantation—a use of spells or verbal charms spoken or sung as a part of a ritual of magic indolence—inclination to laziness lee—of, relating to, or being the side sheltered from the wind lightning rod—a metal rod mounted on a structure and intended to protect the structure from a lightning strike; if lightning hits the structure, it will preferentially strike the rod and be conducted to ground through a wire, instead of passing through the structure, where it could start a fire or cause electrocution
tailored coat for men or women, with a mandarin collar, and with its front modelled on the Indian achkan or sherwani, a garment worn by Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India from 1947 to 1964 pissant—one that is insignificant (used as a generalized term of abuse) pith helmet—a lightweight sun helmet made from the dried pith of the sola or a similar tropical plant snake doctor—a term used in some areas of the South for dragonflies swami—a senior member of a religious order; pundit; seer swamp elf—a fictional animal created by Nordan described as “two-legged, three-toed beasts with long necks and wide, wild innocent eyes”
loam—a soil consisting of a friable mixture of varying proportions of clay, silt, and sand macadam—a road paved by laying and compacting successive layers of broken stone, often with asphalt or hot tar The Mikado—a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations Nehru jacket—a
hip-length
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About the Author
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ewis Alonzo “Buddy” Nordan, a novelist and short story writer, was born on 23 August 1939 in Forest, Mississippi. Nordan grew up in Itta Bena, a Delta town whose landscape and residents provided much of the raw material for his three short story collections, four novels, and a memoir. Nordan’s childhood home appears in his fiction as a realm of mystery and magic where the lines between the grotesque and the beautiful, the comic and the tragic are always blurry and indistinct. His work has drawn comparison not only to southern chroniclers of the gothic and grotesque, such as William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, but also to Latin American magic realists, such as Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges, and comic writers, such as James Thurber. Nordan’s father, Lemuel Bayles, died when the boy was eighteen months old. His mother, Sara, married Gilbert Nordan, and for much of his life Lewis believed that Gilbert was his biological father. Nordan’s early family life in Itta Bena, especially his complicated relationship with his stepfather, plays a major role in his fiction, particularly the stories about Sugar Mecklin, who bears Nordan’s childhood nickname and whose stepfather, like Nordan’s, is a loving but distant alcohol-
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ic housepainter named Gilbert. As Nordan put it, “I’ve been writing about wanting a father all my life.” His frequent visits to blues bars as a young Deltan exposed him to the music that so powerfully informs both the style and theme of his fiction and that he has called “a visceral and early literary influence.” After leaving Mississippi for a two-year stint in the navy, Nordan enrolled at Millsaps College, where he met his first w i f e , M a r y Mitman. T h e i r troubled marriage and the deaths of two of their t h r e e s o n s — one as an infant, one from suicide— contributed to Nordan’s careful examination of t o r t u re d family relations in his fiction. Nordan gradu a t e d from Mill-
saps in 1963 and taught public school in Titusville, Florida, from 1963 to 1965 before returning to his home state to pursue a master’s degree at Mississippi State University. He went on to receive a doctorate in 1973 from Auburn University, where he wrote a dissertation on Shakespeare’s dramatic poetry. Dissatisfied with literary scholarship, Nordan decided in 1974 to pursue writing as a vocation. Nordan’s first notable suc-
cess came with his story “Rat Song,” for which he received the University of Arkansas’s John Gould Fletcher Award. Continuing to write, Nordan soon took a position teaching creative writing at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. In 1983 Nordan’s first collection of short stories, Welcome to the Arrow Catcher Fair, appeared, and he accepted a job as professor of creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh. In these
stories and those included in his next collection, The All-Girl Football Team (1986), Nordan explored the fictional Delta town of Arrow Catcher, a richly imagined hamlet to which he would often return in his fiction, populating it with fantastic creatures, such as freshwater swamp dolphins and talking parrots, as well as human citizens both freakish and ordinary. All of them struggle with the awareness that “we are all alone in the world.” In Music of the Swamp (1991), a novel in stories about Sugar Mecklin and his family, Sugar “senses the tragic limitations of a society defined by racial hatred and alcoholism and geographical isolation.” Wolf Whistle (1993), perhaps Nordan’s finest achievement, reimagines the 1955 murder of Emmett Till from the perspec-
tive of the white community, probing the social and personal traumas that drive some individuals to horrific acts and others to sit silently by. Nordan’s 1995 novel, The Sharpshooter Blues, a meditation on grief and loss and an investigation into the American preoccupation with firearms and outlaws, tells the story of hydrocephalic Hydro Raney, who, traumatized by the events surrounding his shooting of two would-be thieves, eventually takes his own life. Sugar among the Freaks appeared in 1996 and collected all but three of the stories in his first two volumes of short stories. Nordan’s next novel left Arrow Catcher behind: set on a hill country llama farm, Lightning Song (1997) follows twelve-year-old Leroy Dearman’s sometimes comic, sometimes terrifying initiation into the mysterious world of love and sex amid the near collapse of his parents’ marriage. Nordan published a memoir, Boy with Loaded Gun, in 2000, chronicling the misadventures and tragedies of his Delta boyhood as well as his adult life. However, he cautions readers that “the ratio of fiction to nonfiction is about the same, in inverse proportions, as in the novels.” Nordan retired from the University of Pittsburgh in 2005 and lived there with his second wife, Alicia Blessing Nordan, until his death on 13 April 2012.
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About Magical Realism WHAT IS MAGICAL REALISM? Magical realism is a genre of literature that depicts the real world as having an undercurrent of magic or fantasy. Magical realism is a part of the realism genre of fiction. Within a work of magical realism, the world is still grounded in the real world, but fantastical elements are considered normal in this world. Like fairy tales, magical realism novels and short stories blur the line between fantasy and reality. WHAT IS THE HISTORY OF MAGICAL REALISM? The term “magischer realismus,” which translates to “magic realism,” was first used in 1925 by German art critic Franz Roh in his book Nach Expressionismus: Magischer Realismus (After Expressionism: Magical Realism). He used the term to describe the “Neue Sachlichkeit,” or “New Objectivity,” a style of painting that was popular in Germany at the time that was an alternative to the romanticism of expressionism. Roh used the term “magischer realismus” to emphasize how magical, fantastic, and strange normal objects can appear in the real world when you stop and look at them. The genre was growing in popularity in South America when Nach Expressionismus: Magischer Realismus was translated into Spanish
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in 1927. During a stay in Paris, French-Russian Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier was influenced by magic realism. He further developed Roh’s concept into what he called “marvelous realism,” a distinction he felt applied to Latin America as a whole. In 1955, literary critic Angel Flores coined the term “magical realism” (as opposed to “magic realism”) in English in an essay, stating that it combines elements of magic realism and marvelous realism. He named Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges the first magical realist, based on his previously-published collection of short stories Historia Universal de la Infamia (A Universal History of Infamy). While Latin American authors made magical realism what it is today, authors had previously written stories about mundane situations with fantastical elements before magical realism was a recognized literary genre. For example, Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis—a novel with themes that today’s critics would consider to be magical realism—was published in 1915, a decade before Roh wrote about magic realism and well before the genre emerged in Latin American literature. WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MAGICAL REALISM? Every magical realism novel is different, but there
are certain things they all include, such as: 1. Realistic setting. All magical realism novels take place in a setting in this world that’s familiar to the reader. 2. Magical elements. From talking objects to dead characters to telepathy, every magical realism story has fantastical elements that do not occur in our world. However, they’re presented as normal within the novel. 3. Limited information. Magical realism authors deliberately leave the magic in their stories unexplained in order to normalize it as much as possible and reinforce that it is part of everyday life. 4. Critique. Authors often use magical realism to offer an implicit critique of society, most notably politics and the elite. The genre grew in popularity in parts of the world like Latin America that were economically oppressed and exploited by Western countries. Magic realist writers used the genre to express their distaste and critique American Imperialism. 5. Unique plot structure. Magical realism does not follow a typical narrative arc with a clear beginning, middle, and end like other literary genres. This makes for a more intense reading experience, as the reader
does not know when the plot will advance or when the conflict will take place. 7 MAGICAL REALISM NOVELS YOU SHOULD READ Read these magical realism novels (especially Midnight’s Children) for a better understanding of the genre. They all blur the line between fantasy and reality and include magical elements that don’t exist in the real world: • One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (1967). A multi-generational story about a patriarch who dreams about a city of mirrors called Macondo
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then creates it according to his own perceptions. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (1981). A novel about a boy with telepathic powers because he was born at midnight the same day India became an independent country. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (1982). A multi-generational story about a woman with paranormal powers and a connection to the spirit world. Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987). A novel about a former slave haunted by an abusive ghost. Like Water for Choco-
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late by Laura Esquivel (1989). A novel about a woman whose emotions are infused in her cooking, causing unintentional effects to the people she feeds. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (1994). A novel about a man searching for his missing cat, and eventually his missing wife, in a world underneath the streets of Tokyo. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (2013). A novel about a man who reflects on his past after returning to his hometown for a funeral.
An example of Magical Realism in art. (Flight of the Muse by Paul Bond)
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Editorial Reviews from LIBRARY JOURNAL Things have changed since 12-year-old Leroy brought his grandfather Old Pappy back to life: Uncle Harris moved in with his soft-core porno magazines, the New People moved in across the meadow, eight-year-old sister Laurie killed a wild dog, little Molly has begun wetting her pants, father Swami Don has contemplated an affair with a Creek woman, mother Elsie has started drinking, and Leroy himself has had sex with an off-kilter baton-twirler. Just as family life hits rock bottom, one stormy night Elsie jumps into bed with a startled Harris, who is having phone sex, and Leroy is struck by lightning. As his bodily wounds heal, so do the psychic wounds within the family, and Don, justifying his nickname, convinces them that beauty and romance are personal decisions for those who recognize the blessings around them. Nordan handles this coming-of-age novel with grace, charm, and humor; its “American-ness” may remind readers of the work of Wallace Stegner. Recommended for all collections.
from BOOKLIST One of the best yarn spillers writing today continues to delight and entertain his growing readership in a novel about one Leroy Dearman, a kid growing up on a llama
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farm in the South. Leroy verges on manhood, and his entry into that exalted station is not to be pure and smooth—that kind of thing wouldn’t happen in a Nordan novel! No, Leroy’s rite of passage is at the mercy of the rather bizarre people who populate his definitely idiosyncratic world. (Of course, Leroy himself isn’t exactly what you’d call a regular guy; even his own mother says of him, “You are the oddest child.”) In this perambulatory, picaresque tale, the reader watches Leroy interacting with his up-to-something Uncle Harris, the mysterious “New People” in the area, sly Mr. Sweet (the storekeeper), and, the most consequential figure of all, Ruby Rae, the local baton-twirling star. A novel of character over plot, this is a sidesplitting, wonderfully ingratiating story that makes you feel good about good writing.
from KIRKUS REVIEWS The folksy and always entertaining Nordan returns with his latest wild ride of the imagination, this time drawing his knee-slapping laughs from the disparity between a 12-year-old boy’s point of view and the adult events he witnesses one volatile summer in rural Mississippi. The summer lightning storms that strike throughout the novel not only throw everything into a new light, but also seem
to inspire some down-home madness. Odd sexual doings and outpourings of desire and need are particularly amusing when seen through the eyes of Leroy Dearman, an awkward boy given to inappropriate outbursts and off-thewall commentary. He lives on a llama farm with his parents and two younger sisters. His dad, Swami Don, crippled in one arm since youth, is otherwise solid and phlegmatic, a teetotaling, God-fearing farmer and night watchman. Leroy’s mother, Elsie, though, a romantic, is easily charmed by the arrival of Don’s younger brother, Harris, a flashy, handsome, heavy- drinking, trash-talking smoothy just separated from his wife for his infidelities. His cocktail hour repartee and knowledge of the greater world seduce the bored and lonely Elsie, who misunderstands Harris’s compulsive flirtations. While his parents act out their domestic drama, the young Leroy discovers some harsh truths about sexuality himself, first from his uncle’s stash of skin mags, then from his crush on a buxom, baton-twirling highschool girl who actually fulfills his wildest fantasy. With the household in disarray and the llamas threatened by a pack of wild dogs—Swami Don rises to the occasion. Hardly sentimental, Nordan’s idiosyncratic fiction delights in its ragged edges—the tall tales, the wacky set pieces, the flatout bizarre behavior.
from AMAZON REVIEWS Every time lightning strikes in Lewis Nordan’s novel, strange things happen. Lightning strikes, and an old man dies; lightning strikes again and he comes back to life; love affairs begin and end amid the perilous crackle of electrical storms. Young Leroy Dearman inhabits a flat, Mississippi landscape punctuated by singing llamas, wild dogs, and his own eccentric family members: a grandfather who drinks poison, a mother obsessed with the kidnapped Italian politician Aldo Moro, an uncle who seduces his mother, and a father infatuated with an Indian maiden. Leroy himself is tortured by erotic fantasies involving a buxom high school baton twirler. His torment is hardly eased when he discovers his uncle’s cache of skin magazines. When the baton-twirling Circe finally makes Leroy’s dreams come true lightning strikes. All of this could become a cartoon version of rural Southern life in the hands of a less accomplished writer. But Lewis Nordan hits all the right notes in Lightning Song, delving beneath surface eccentricity to expose the loneliness, the confusion, and the longing for love that dwell in the heart of every character. Funny and sad, its atmosphere as emotionally charged as the air just before a thunderstorm, Lightning Song is a rare and wonderful read.
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LOIBNER-WAITKUS
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