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The Sharpshooter Blues
This heartbreaking novel from award-winning Mississippi writer Lewis Nordan is a meditation upon guns and love, all kinds of love -between fathers and sons, husbands and wives, gay lovers, friends.
398 pages, Paperback
First published January 10, 1995
About the author
Lewis Nordan
24 books72 followersFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lewis Nordan (August 23, 1939 – April 13, 2012) was an American writer.
Nordan was born to Lemuel and Sara Bayles in Forest, Mississippi, grew up in Itta Bena, Mississippi. He received his B.A. at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, his M.A. from Mississippi State University, and his Ph.D. from Auburn University in Alabama. In 1983, at age forty-five, Nordan published his first collection of stories, Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair. The collection established him as a writer in the grotesque Southern tradition of William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, and Flannery O'Connor. It also established a place for Nordan’s fiction, the fictional Arrow Catcher, Mississippi, a small town in the Mississippi Delta based loosely on Nordan’s hometown of Itta Bena.
After the short-story collection The All-Girl Football Team (1986) followed Music of the Swamp (1991), a novel/short-story cycle featuring Nordan's spiritual alter ego, the young Sugar Mecklin, as the protagonist. The book features aspects of magic realism that would become one of Nordan's trademarks, along with a peculiar mix of the tragic and the hilarious.
Wolf Whistle (1993), Nordan's second novel, was both a critical and public success. It won the Southern Book Award and gained him a wider audience. The book deals with one of the most notorious racial incidents in recent Southern history: the murder of Emmett Till.
The novel The Sharpshooter Blues (1995) is a lyrical meditation on America's gun culture, as well as another portrait of the grotesque lives in Itta Bena. With the coming-of-age novel Lightning Song (1997), Nordan moved from Itta Bena to the hill country of Mississippi. The novel still features Nordan's magic Mississippi realism, complete with singing llamas and poetic lightning strikes.
In 2000, Nordan published a "fictional memoir," Boy With Loaded Gun.
Before retiring in 2005, Lewis Nordan lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he taught Creative Writing at the University of Pittsburgh.
Lewis Nordan (August 23, 1939 – April 13, 2012) was an American writer.
Nordan was born to Lemuel and Sara Bayles in Forest, Mississippi, grew up in Itta Bena, Mississippi. He received his B.A. at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, his M.A. from Mississippi State University, and his Ph.D. from Auburn University in Alabama. In 1983, at age forty-five, Nordan published his first collection of stories, Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair. The collection established him as a writer in the grotesque Southern tradition of William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, and Flannery O'Connor. It also established a place for Nordan’s fiction, the fictional Arrow Catcher, Mississippi, a small town in the Mississippi Delta based loosely on Nordan’s hometown of Itta Bena.
After the short-story collection The All-Girl Football Team (1986) followed Music of the Swamp (1991), a novel/short-story cycle featuring Nordan's spiritual alter ego, the young Sugar Mecklin, as the protagonist. The book features aspects of magic realism that would become one of Nordan's trademarks, along with a peculiar mix of the tragic and the hilarious.
Wolf Whistle (1993), Nordan's second novel, was both a critical and public success. It won the Southern Book Award and gained him a wider audience. The book deals with one of the most notorious racial incidents in recent Southern history: the murder of Emmett Till.
The novel The Sharpshooter Blues (1995) is a lyrical meditation on America's gun culture, as well as another portrait of the grotesque lives in Itta Bena. With the coming-of-age novel Lightning Song (1997), Nordan moved from Itta Bena to the hill country of Mississippi. The novel still features Nordan's magic Mississippi realism, complete with singing llamas and poetic lightning strikes.
In 2000, Nordan published a "fictional memoir," Boy With Loaded Gun.
Before retiring in 2005, Lewis Nordan lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he taught Creative Writing at the University of Pittsburgh.
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February 28, 2015
The Sharpshooter Blues: Guns, Loving and Loss, a Half Bubble off Plumb
Slightly more than three years ago I founded a group On the Southern Literary Trail. It is not a "moonlight and magnolias" site. Here readers choose works by iconic authors of Southern literature and new voices in what I call the Southern choir. Along the way, my fellow moderators and I added an alternative read, The Moderator's Choice, usually an author previously unread by the group. I chose The Sharpshooter Blues by Lewis Nordan for February, 2015, the "Trail's" introduction to the works of Lewis Nordan.
I have loved the writing of Lewis Nordan since I discovered him on a summer trip to the crystal shores of the southern coastline of my home, Alabama, more than fifteen years ago. Having read all of his work since that time, I'm pretty sure that Nordan would appreciate that folks around these parts refer to that area as "The Redneck Riviera." He would also appreciate it because it is a place where it's not hard to find magic if you take a little time to look.
Nordan came to writing relatively late in life, not deciding to pursue it until age thirty-five. He graduated from Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, served a two year hitch in the Navy. Took a Masters Degree from Mississippi State and finally a PhD from Auburn University. Along the way he taught high school, was a college instructor, was a night watchman, an orderly in a hospital. Life didn't come easy. Two marriages. The first one failed. But it was his first wife who recognized his desire to write. He began with short fiction, was awarded the John Gould Fletcher Award for fiction in 1977 from the University of Arkansas. The hardest part of life was the death of two children, one at an early age, the other a suicide at the age of twenty.
Lewis Nordan was a likeable man. His friends called him "Buddy." All of his friends. He was a careful writer, constantly revising, getting the words right. He followed in Faulkner's footsteps creating his own little "postage stamp size piece of soil" as Faulkner called his Yoknapatawpha County. But Nordan's was Arrow Catcher, Mississippi.
Arrow Catcher came to life in his first collection of short stories printed by LSU Press in 1983, Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair. It was such a short print run, it is now a choice collector's item for the bibliophile. I can't touch it. Can't even come close.
Nordan returned to Arrowcatcher with his second collection of short fiction in 1986 with The All-Girl Football Team: Stories, again published by LSU Press. It is as equally rare as the first Arrow Catcher anthology.
Nordan said in an interview with Blake Mahler, "writers will find a little postage-stamp size plot of land, their spiritual geography and a handful of people that live there, and they will write those people’s stories over and over again.… I’ve just invented out of pain and joy a family and a place they live and have watched them move in love through that place.” Sounds a lot like Faulkner, doesn't he?
And on magic, we can't forget magic, this is what Buddy Nordan had to say: “Magic is the imagination” [something that} “seems to be both necessary and evil and destructive in these characters.” Comments made after Nordan had been signed by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, NC. The novel was immediately recognized with best fiction awards from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters and the Prize for Notable Fiction from the American Library Institute of Arts and Letters.
Lewis Nordan would go on to become a professor of Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas. From there, he would become the professor of Creative Writing at the University of Pittsburgh where he ended his professional career.
Nordan died of complications of pneumonia in 2012. His last work was [book:Boy with Loaded Gun: A Memoir|672273] published in 2007. In an interview conducted at the 2006 Faulkner Conference at the University of Mississippi, Nordan said he planned on returning to Arrow Catcher, Mississippi. I wish he had. But he never did. I miss the writing of Lewis Nordan. When you read him, if you read him, you will grow to miss him too.
The magic place I discovered Lewis Nordan was a little book shop, long gone. It was called Just Books. The owner's appearance was deceiving. Not who you would expect to carry the eclectic selections on the tables and shelves. She was elderly, quite prim, coiffure that perfect bluish white. Always dressed in a dark navy suit, crisp white blouse, hose, matching navy pumps. I never caught her name. However, I expected to see her at a tea celebrating an upcoming marriage, or at early church service on a Sunday morning. She dressed as though the temperature was a cool spring afternoon, not a humid summer afternoon, where the pavement was hot enough to burn the soles of your feet through your shoes.
This particular day I found first editions of Music of the Swamp, Lightning Song, and Wolf Whistle. I read the dust jackets. Perused the first chapter of each of the books. I was immediately lured into the world of Lewis Nordan. I was puzzled. Curious. I had never heard of him. The lady waited patiently at the register.
I took my purchases to the counter. Her voice was not that of an old woman. More of a siren's song. A southern siren, her tones soft and honeyed. "You have found something quite special. If you can believe in magic. Can you?"
"Why, I think I can."
"Tell me something you've seen that was magic."
"The lillies blooming in the Cahaba River. Trilliums on the forest floor. Scarlet Buckeye in flame along a back road in spring."
Cahaba Lillies in bloom, Cahaba River, June, 2009, photograph by the reviewer. The largest stand of these rare flowers in the world.
Red Trillium, Mount Cheaha, highest point in Alabama, mountain hiking trail, May, 2008
Scarlet Buckeye, April, 2008, outside Ashville, Alabama
"Oh, I think you and Buddy Nordan will get along just fine."
I have often wondered what became of her. She clearly knew her stock. And she knew Nordan's books.
I never got to meet Lewis Nordan. I hate that. I loved his books. I love this one. Welcome to Arrow Catcher, Mississippi. It does not exist. However, it stands in for the Mississippi town in which Lewis Nordan grew up, Itta Bena. Nordan laughingly said in an interview he wanted to title his memoirs, "Don't Cry for Me, Itta Bena." However, he refrained for fear that readers wouldn't know how to pronounce it. Yes, it rhymes with Argentina.
Were Nordan to be reading over my shoulder, he would tell me he doesn't like being compared to Flannery O'Connor. To him, her world is too stark, her characters too cold, and her God too harsh. Buddy Nordan believed that humans could save one another through their love. He acknowledged critics' comparison to O'Connor. Yet, he preferred to consider himself descended from Faulkner and a much closer relative of Eudora Welty.
So, what of The Sharpshooter Blues? Nordan's work is one of love, loss, and humanity. Yes. He is closely akin to Eudora Welty. However, freaks abound in this novel. They live in all his work. There is a great degree of the grotesque in Nordan's work.
Meet The Prince of Darkness, Arrow Catcher's mortician, resurrected from the Dead by Aunt Lily, the local Hoodoo Woman. The Prince can throw a funeral like nobody's business.
Then there's The Sharpshooter, Morgan, a trick shot artist. It's fitting he's the offspring of two circus workers who abandoned him, left him floating in the swamp around Arrow Catcher, to be retrieved and raised by a black woman, the same Aunt Lily who resurrected the Prince of Darkness from the Dead.
Preacher Roe likes to go down to the William Tell Grocery and take the sordid confessions of those like Leonard, who tries to resist the urge, but can't resist a tryst with the truckers down at the truck stop.
And down at the William Tell, the cashier is Hydro Raney, the hydrocephalic son of Mr. Raney, widowed since his wife died giving birth to Hydro.
Hydro and his father live in the fish house out in the swamp. There are no other houses there. Mr. Roy, the postman brings the mail by boat, once a week.
However, it is magic in the swamp. The trees are filled with parrots and monkeys. The water splashes with dolphin and porpoises. Hydro's father calls him "Peaches," "Honey," and loves him dearly.
It is a tale of father and sons. Those who clearly love one another. Those who seem to be completely detached.
It is a tale of husbands and wives. Those who clearly love one another. Those whose marriage is on the rocks.
There is definitely magic in Nordan's world. However, it goes beyond what we commonly know as magical realism. It seems more akin to the "Marvelous Real," a concept deeply ingrained in the works of Latin American authors. One thinks of the opening line of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.
This is a world where love and death are separated by an instant. Where the grotesque lives beside the apparent normal. Where swift, unexpected violence alters life in a second.
What occurs in The Sharpshooter Blues is what happens when guns come out on a summer day and two "lovely young children" decide to rob the wrong grocery store. They run into a sharpshooter.
The question is just who is the sharpshooter and why is he singing the blues?
No, I've already told you about Morgan, the trick shot. He shot a cantaloupe off Hydro's head. Then he invited Hydro to shoot one off of his.
Morgan's got the blues. He's been putting the wood to Doctor McNaughton's wife, Ruthie. Even the Doctor knows it and has become rather detached over the whole idea. However, Ruthie may be done with Morgan. Morgan may have a death wish and hopes Hydro just puts him out of his misery. But Hydro turns out to be a crackshot, too. Morgan's still got the love sick blues.
When the two lovely children robbers all dressed in black come rob the William Tell Grocery, they end up dead for their trouble. Morgan ends up in jail.
Young Louis McNaughton says Morgan did it. But did he?
Hydro disappears. Why?
Can the McNaughton marriage be saved?
Will Louis ever feel acknowledged by his own father?
How come "Having a pal with a firearm is a blessing?"
What's up with all these parrots?
Where did all these porpoises come from all the way from the Gulf?
This is a novel that will enchant you. Nordan will make you laugh. He will make you cry. As one of my great reader friends, Diane Barnes, Co-Moderator on "The Trail" said, "Start a sentence with laughter and end with tears." Buddy Nordan will leave you with the belief that love does save us. Forgiveness frees us. And, no, we are not meant to be alone. That is, if you have the ability to look for the possibility of magic in this world. It's not just in Arrow Catcher, Mississippi. All those folks that strike you being a half bubble off plumb? They're not all that different than you and me. Nordan will make you squirm. But life is a little easier when you can laugh at yourself and know when to cry with your neighbors.
EXTRAS!
Lewis Nordan on the Marvelous Real:
Lewis Nordan and Parrots: It just so happens that Lewis Nordan liked parrots. When Thomas Bjerre interviewed Nordan at his home in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 2001, he noticed a number of Parrot prints on the walls and commented on them. Rather glibly, Nordan answered, "I really like parrots." See:
Interview with Lewis Nordan, at his home in Pittsburgh, May 19, 2001, Thomas Bjerre, Mississippi Quarterly Summer 2001, Vol. 54 Issue 3, p365.
Of course, parrots and their ancestors and relatives in the United States are not that rare. Five and a half million years ago, what we know as the Carolina Parakeet made famous in Audobon's Print ranged from the southernmost point of the North America to what is today's New England. They became extinct in 1918 as a result of man's gradual deforestation of the east coast.
The last Carolina Parakeet died in a Cincinnati Zoo in 1918.
Print by Audobon
A species of parrot is native to the mountains of Arizona. Another is native to Louisiana.
Porpoises in the Mississippi Rivers? No, Nordan's trolley didn't slip the tracks. The presence of Porpoises and Dolphins in inland Mississippi Rivers are routinely studied by Mississippi scientists. See Writing in the Caribbean with a Mississippian Accent: Lewis Nordan and the Magical Grotesque,MANUEL BRONCANO,University of León, Spain, Mississippi Quarterly. Fall 2007, Vol. 60 Issue 4, p661-675.
What's the significance of guns in The Sharpshooter Blues Lewis Nordan Speaks!
"Guns are a metaphor for power, and sometimes power is expressed just in a hoop or a shout or a celebratory yell. And that's in a way what shooting a gun is. It's yahoo. bang-bang! oh-boy ain't life great. I'd hate to see that statement taken out of context, but in fact that is a part of what the people in The Sharpshooter Blues are doing; they're saying life is great and these gunshots are a kind of shouting. Not only have I done this thing but I have betrayed the whole idea of guns as something celebratory."
See: Interview with Lewis Nordan, at his home in Pittsburgh, May 19, 2001, Thomas Bjerre, Mississippi Quarterly Summer 2001, Vol. 54 Issue 3, p370-371.
Some of my fellow readers have questioned whether Nordan takes on America's fascination with the gun culture. In this and other comments within this review, Nordan flatly states he confronted the issue of gun violence and its consequences.
Slightly more than three years ago I founded a group On the Southern Literary Trail. It is not a "moonlight and magnolias" site. Here readers choose works by iconic authors of Southern literature and new voices in what I call the Southern choir. Along the way, my fellow moderators and I added an alternative read, The Moderator's Choice, usually an author previously unread by the group. I chose The Sharpshooter Blues by Lewis Nordan for February, 2015, the "Trail's" introduction to the works of Lewis Nordan.
First Ed., Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, NC, 1995
“Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one...Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature.”― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional ProseMystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
Lewis Nordan, b. August 23, 1939, Forest, MS; d. April 13, 2012, Pittsburgh, PA
I have loved the writing of Lewis Nordan since I discovered him on a summer trip to the crystal shores of the southern coastline of my home, Alabama, more than fifteen years ago. Having read all of his work since that time, I'm pretty sure that Nordan would appreciate that folks around these parts refer to that area as "The Redneck Riviera." He would also appreciate it because it is a place where it's not hard to find magic if you take a little time to look.
Nordan came to writing relatively late in life, not deciding to pursue it until age thirty-five. He graduated from Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, served a two year hitch in the Navy. Took a Masters Degree from Mississippi State and finally a PhD from Auburn University. Along the way he taught high school, was a college instructor, was a night watchman, an orderly in a hospital. Life didn't come easy. Two marriages. The first one failed. But it was his first wife who recognized his desire to write. He began with short fiction, was awarded the John Gould Fletcher Award for fiction in 1977 from the University of Arkansas. The hardest part of life was the death of two children, one at an early age, the other a suicide at the age of twenty.
Lewis Nordan was a likeable man. His friends called him "Buddy." All of his friends. He was a careful writer, constantly revising, getting the words right. He followed in Faulkner's footsteps creating his own little "postage stamp size piece of soil" as Faulkner called his Yoknapatawpha County. But Nordan's was Arrow Catcher, Mississippi.
Arrow Catcher came to life in his first collection of short stories printed by LSU Press in 1983, Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair. It was such a short print run, it is now a choice collector's item for the bibliophile. I can't touch it. Can't even come close.
Nordan returned to Arrowcatcher with his second collection of short fiction in 1986 with The All-Girl Football Team: Stories, again published by LSU Press. It is as equally rare as the first Arrow Catcher anthology.
Nordan said in an interview with Blake Mahler, "writers will find a little postage-stamp size plot of land, their spiritual geography and a handful of people that live there, and they will write those people’s stories over and over again.… I’ve just invented out of pain and joy a family and a place they live and have watched them move in love through that place.” Sounds a lot like Faulkner, doesn't he?
And on magic, we can't forget magic, this is what Buddy Nordan had to say: “Magic is the imagination” [something that} “seems to be both necessary and evil and destructive in these characters.” Comments made after Nordan had been signed by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, NC. The novel was immediately recognized with best fiction awards from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters and the Prize for Notable Fiction from the American Library Institute of Arts and Letters.
Lewis Nordan would go on to become a professor of Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas. From there, he would become the professor of Creative Writing at the University of Pittsburgh where he ended his professional career.
Nordan died of complications of pneumonia in 2012. His last work was [book:Boy with Loaded Gun: A Memoir|672273] published in 2007. In an interview conducted at the 2006 Faulkner Conference at the University of Mississippi, Nordan said he planned on returning to Arrow Catcher, Mississippi. I wish he had. But he never did. I miss the writing of Lewis Nordan. When you read him, if you read him, you will grow to miss him too.
The magic place I discovered Lewis Nordan was a little book shop, long gone. It was called Just Books. The owner's appearance was deceiving. Not who you would expect to carry the eclectic selections on the tables and shelves. She was elderly, quite prim, coiffure that perfect bluish white. Always dressed in a dark navy suit, crisp white blouse, hose, matching navy pumps. I never caught her name. However, I expected to see her at a tea celebrating an upcoming marriage, or at early church service on a Sunday morning. She dressed as though the temperature was a cool spring afternoon, not a humid summer afternoon, where the pavement was hot enough to burn the soles of your feet through your shoes.
This particular day I found first editions of Music of the Swamp, Lightning Song, and Wolf Whistle. I read the dust jackets. Perused the first chapter of each of the books. I was immediately lured into the world of Lewis Nordan. I was puzzled. Curious. I had never heard of him. The lady waited patiently at the register.
I took my purchases to the counter. Her voice was not that of an old woman. More of a siren's song. A southern siren, her tones soft and honeyed. "You have found something quite special. If you can believe in magic. Can you?"
"Why, I think I can."
"Tell me something you've seen that was magic."
"The lillies blooming in the Cahaba River. Trilliums on the forest floor. Scarlet Buckeye in flame along a back road in spring."
Cahaba Lillies in bloom, Cahaba River, June, 2009, photograph by the reviewer. The largest stand of these rare flowers in the world.
Red Trillium, Mount Cheaha, highest point in Alabama, mountain hiking trail, May, 2008
Scarlet Buckeye, April, 2008, outside Ashville, Alabama
"Oh, I think you and Buddy Nordan will get along just fine."
I have often wondered what became of her. She clearly knew her stock. And she knew Nordan's books.
I never got to meet Lewis Nordan. I hate that. I loved his books. I love this one. Welcome to Arrow Catcher, Mississippi. It does not exist. However, it stands in for the Mississippi town in which Lewis Nordan grew up, Itta Bena. Nordan laughingly said in an interview he wanted to title his memoirs, "Don't Cry for Me, Itta Bena." However, he refrained for fear that readers wouldn't know how to pronounce it. Yes, it rhymes with Argentina.
Were Nordan to be reading over my shoulder, he would tell me he doesn't like being compared to Flannery O'Connor. To him, her world is too stark, her characters too cold, and her God too harsh. Buddy Nordan believed that humans could save one another through their love. He acknowledged critics' comparison to O'Connor. Yet, he preferred to consider himself descended from Faulkner and a much closer relative of Eudora Welty.
So, what of The Sharpshooter Blues? Nordan's work is one of love, loss, and humanity. Yes. He is closely akin to Eudora Welty. However, freaks abound in this novel. They live in all his work. There is a great degree of the grotesque in Nordan's work.
Meet The Prince of Darkness, Arrow Catcher's mortician, resurrected from the Dead by Aunt Lily, the local Hoodoo Woman. The Prince can throw a funeral like nobody's business.
Then there's The Sharpshooter, Morgan, a trick shot artist. It's fitting he's the offspring of two circus workers who abandoned him, left him floating in the swamp around Arrow Catcher, to be retrieved and raised by a black woman, the same Aunt Lily who resurrected the Prince of Darkness from the Dead.
Preacher Roe likes to go down to the William Tell Grocery and take the sordid confessions of those like Leonard, who tries to resist the urge, but can't resist a tryst with the truckers down at the truck stop.
And down at the William Tell, the cashier is Hydro Raney, the hydrocephalic son of Mr. Raney, widowed since his wife died giving birth to Hydro.
Hydro and his father live in the fish house out in the swamp. There are no other houses there. Mr. Roy, the postman brings the mail by boat, once a week.
However, it is magic in the swamp. The trees are filled with parrots and monkeys. The water splashes with dolphin and porpoises. Hydro's father calls him "Peaches," "Honey," and loves him dearly.
It is a tale of father and sons. Those who clearly love one another. Those who seem to be completely detached.
It is a tale of husbands and wives. Those who clearly love one another. Those whose marriage is on the rocks.
There is definitely magic in Nordan's world. However, it goes beyond what we commonly know as magical realism. It seems more akin to the "Marvelous Real," a concept deeply ingrained in the works of Latin American authors. One thinks of the opening line of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. —Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)
This is a world where love and death are separated by an instant. Where the grotesque lives beside the apparent normal. Where swift, unexpected violence alters life in a second.
What occurs in The Sharpshooter Blues is what happens when guns come out on a summer day and two "lovely young children" decide to rob the wrong grocery store. They run into a sharpshooter.
The question is just who is the sharpshooter and why is he singing the blues?
No, I've already told you about Morgan, the trick shot. He shot a cantaloupe off Hydro's head. Then he invited Hydro to shoot one off of his.
Morgan's got the blues. He's been putting the wood to Doctor McNaughton's wife, Ruthie. Even the Doctor knows it and has become rather detached over the whole idea. However, Ruthie may be done with Morgan. Morgan may have a death wish and hopes Hydro just puts him out of his misery. But Hydro turns out to be a crackshot, too. Morgan's still got the love sick blues.
When the two lovely children robbers all dressed in black come rob the William Tell Grocery, they end up dead for their trouble. Morgan ends up in jail.
Young Louis McNaughton says Morgan did it. But did he?
Hydro disappears. Why?
Can the McNaughton marriage be saved?
Will Louis ever feel acknowledged by his own father?
How come "Having a pal with a firearm is a blessing?"
What's up with all these parrots?
Where did all these porpoises come from all the way from the Gulf?
This is a novel that will enchant you. Nordan will make you laugh. He will make you cry. As one of my great reader friends, Diane Barnes, Co-Moderator on "The Trail" said, "Start a sentence with laughter and end with tears." Buddy Nordan will leave you with the belief that love does save us. Forgiveness frees us. And, no, we are not meant to be alone. That is, if you have the ability to look for the possibility of magic in this world. It's not just in Arrow Catcher, Mississippi. All those folks that strike you being a half bubble off plumb? They're not all that different than you and me. Nordan will make you squirm. But life is a little easier when you can laugh at yourself and know when to cry with your neighbors.
EXTRAS!
Lewis Nordan on the Marvelous Real:
The idea of the "marvelous realist" strikes me as exactly right, better than "magical realism," for sure.... The idea of just plugging in magical elements to reality is not what I do; it is a way of seeing reality, which is completely different, it is from the inside rather than from the outside.... When I look at the world, I can understand what other people are seeing, but I am seeing something else at the same time....It is entirely a matter of vision, and that vision can be described as comic, or can be
described as grotesque, or otherworldly.... When somebody says, "What does this mean, and how can this be?" I just have to say, maybe this world is not the real world, maybe this is another planet, maybe this is some other dimension of life that we can't see clearly. Because for me it is as real as anything, though I understand that they [the stories] do not actually happen in this world.' See: An Interview with Lewis Nordan, Russell Ingram and Mark Ledbetter, Missouri Review Volume 20, Issue 1 (1997): pp73-89.
Lewis Nordan and Parrots: It just so happens that Lewis Nordan liked parrots. When Thomas Bjerre interviewed Nordan at his home in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 2001, he noticed a number of Parrot prints on the walls and commented on them. Rather glibly, Nordan answered, "I really like parrots." See:
Interview with Lewis Nordan, at his home in Pittsburgh, May 19, 2001, Thomas Bjerre, Mississippi Quarterly Summer 2001, Vol. 54 Issue 3, p365.
Of course, parrots and their ancestors and relatives in the United States are not that rare. Five and a half million years ago, what we know as the Carolina Parakeet made famous in Audobon's Print ranged from the southernmost point of the North America to what is today's New England. They became extinct in 1918 as a result of man's gradual deforestation of the east coast.
The last Carolina Parakeet died in a Cincinnati Zoo in 1918.
Print by Audobon
A species of parrot is native to the mountains of Arizona. Another is native to Louisiana.
Porpoises in the Mississippi Rivers? No, Nordan's trolley didn't slip the tracks. The presence of Porpoises and Dolphins in inland Mississippi Rivers are routinely studied by Mississippi scientists. See Writing in the Caribbean with a Mississippian Accent: Lewis Nordan and the Magical Grotesque,MANUEL BRONCANO,University of León, Spain, Mississippi Quarterly. Fall 2007, Vol. 60 Issue 4, p661-675.
What's the significance of guns in The Sharpshooter Blues Lewis Nordan Speaks!
"Guns are a metaphor for power, and sometimes power is expressed just in a hoop or a shout or a celebratory yell. And that's in a way what shooting a gun is. It's yahoo. bang-bang! oh-boy ain't life great. I'd hate to see that statement taken out of context, but in fact that is a part of what the people in The Sharpshooter Blues are doing; they're saying life is great and these gunshots are a kind of shouting. Not only have I done this thing but I have betrayed the whole idea of guns as something celebratory."
See: Interview with Lewis Nordan, at his home in Pittsburgh, May 19, 2001, Thomas Bjerre, Mississippi Quarterly Summer 2001, Vol. 54 Issue 3, p370-371.
Some of my fellow readers have questioned whether Nordan takes on America's fascination with the gun culture. In this and other comments within this review, Nordan flatly states he confronted the issue of gun violence and its consequences.
February 3, 2015
I loved this book, but I have to disagree with the Goodreads book description. I don't see this as a book about "America's love affair with guns and bullets" at all (did the blurb writer even READ the book?). I thought it was a book about people, and love, and humor, and life and death and how to break into show business, with a few canaries and ghosts thrown in for good measure. Some of the funniest conversations I've ever read were in this novel; outlandish, yes; absurd, most certainly; but very real and believable even so.
At one point near the end of the book, a father was speaking to his 10 year old son about what a geek was, not our modern definition having to do with technological knowledge, but the original version of a geek as a circus performer who ate live chickens. The son commented that there should be a comic book about geeks, and his father replied that there were books about geeks. "I'll read you some Faulkner sometime. I'll read you some Eudora Welty, some Flannery O'Connor. Geeks, midgets, anything your heart desires. Better than comic books."
This book puts you right square in the middle of a Mississippi bayou, with the rotting, fishy smells of the mud and the sweat rolling off your brow in the swampy heat, right among the people who live in Arrow Catcher. It's a one of a kind place, but then again, maybe not. If we're lucky, there's a little bit of Arrow Catcher in most of us.
At one point near the end of the book, a father was speaking to his 10 year old son about what a geek was, not our modern definition having to do with technological knowledge, but the original version of a geek as a circus performer who ate live chickens. The son commented that there should be a comic book about geeks, and his father replied that there were books about geeks. "I'll read you some Faulkner sometime. I'll read you some Eudora Welty, some Flannery O'Connor. Geeks, midgets, anything your heart desires. Better than comic books."
This book puts you right square in the middle of a Mississippi bayou, with the rotting, fishy smells of the mud and the sweat rolling off your brow in the swampy heat, right among the people who live in Arrow Catcher. It's a one of a kind place, but then again, maybe not. If we're lucky, there's a little bit of Arrow Catcher in most of us.
May 24, 2017
I read Wolf Whistle and thought it was brilliant. By comparison I found this average at best. A 3 rating because I'm not encouraging friends to read, but a 4 rating because I learned a little about Arrow Catcher, Mississippi and the people there. Nordan's fictional town and landscape interest me, but I'll probably not benefit until I read another of his books. On this particular book I had issues with his concept, didn't care for the construction, and it never fully captured my attention. I loved Wolf Whistle enough that I'll read one or two more by this author, but I suspect I may have already read his best. My humble opinion, nothing more than that.
February 26, 2015
While I don't think this is a gun-lesson novel the way the publisher describes, I enjoyed this depiction of life in a small delta town. Obviously this is pre-Katrina, and I wonder how much of these people's lives would remain if they weren't fictional.
The characters stick with you - the family living in a bayou treehouse, the encephalitic head and what he becomes, the sharpshooter, the doctor and his wife, etc. That seems to me to be the strength of Nordan's writing. I hadn't heard of him before this book was selected as the moderator's choice for the On the Southern Literary Trail group, and I'm glad I got a chance to read it.
The characters stick with you - the family living in a bayou treehouse, the encephalitic head and what he becomes, the sharpshooter, the doctor and his wife, etc. That seems to me to be the strength of Nordan's writing. I hadn't heard of him before this book was selected as the moderator's choice for the On the Southern Literary Trail group, and I'm glad I got a chance to read it.
October 16, 2022
A mad, mad world, one that Nordan creates in the same lightning storm as Wolf Whistle. Again, nothing about this should work, and again, so help me, it does. It’s good and evil, it’s love and tragedy, it’s madness and grace. “It might just be a story,” as the sweet, doomed Hydro muses, “like so much else in the world.”
But, in Arrow Catcher, Mississippi, as everywhere: “As long as there was a story, that’s all that really mattered.”
But, in Arrow Catcher, Mississippi, as everywhere: “As long as there was a story, that’s all that really mattered.”
January 6, 2022
I got the book only because the French edition was a gorgeous hard-cover. I then discovered it was taking place in the Mississippi River Delta and I LOVE stories taking place in the bayou, the atmosphere is always unique and fascinating. BUT I wasn't ready for this ride.
At first, the story is absurd. The inhabitants of Arrow Catcher are all completely stupid, out-of-their-mind, guns-obsessed, grotesque caricatures. It is absolutely captivating to read about their daily nonsense, especially because it has no limits : when you think people shooting at their refrigerators is enough, they start shooting at watermelons -balanced on the head of one another-, then we're introduced to a character known as The Prince of Darkness to the whole town etc. You can't help but to laugh at them and to despise them a bit.
But at some point, it changes. Somehow, suddenly, it gets really emotional and bittersweet and humane and so do the characters. Then, my mockery shifted to a deep compassion and I got really attached to every single one of these peanut-brains. I wanted them to be happy, to get better. I couldn't stop reading yet I didn't want the story to end.
4.25/5
At first, the story is absurd. The inhabitants of Arrow Catcher are all completely stupid, out-of-their-mind, guns-obsessed, grotesque caricatures. It is absolutely captivating to read about their daily nonsense, especially because it has no limits : when you think people shooting at their refrigerators is enough, they start shooting at watermelons -balanced on the head of one another-, then we're introduced to a character known as The Prince of Darkness to the whole town etc. You can't help but to laugh at them and to despise them a bit.
But at some point, it changes. Somehow, suddenly, it gets really emotional and bittersweet and humane and so do the characters. Then, my mockery shifted to a deep compassion and I got really attached to every single one of these peanut-brains. I wanted them to be happy, to get better. I couldn't stop reading yet I didn't want the story to end.
4.25/5
September 3, 2009
Thanks to Joe W for recommending this (well for having it on his list). I loved this book. The writing is near perfect - I savored his words and how they went together and the paragraphs and even re-read some of the wonderful wonderful conversations. It is funny (I still smile when recalling the conversation about the bucktoothed cowboy - "and him being dead and all") and it was sad,very sad, and it was poignant and about love and being loved, and there was this great tension as he describes simply and straightforwardly what is happening. Hardly a fake word in the whole book. Surprising, it was also a bit violent although most of it directed at old refrigerators and I can understand that. Oh, and it is southern - if you like Faulkner or Flannery O'Connor you will probably like Nordan - I can't believe I made it this far in life without Nordan.
Goodread friends who might particularly enjoy this book: Abraham, Brian, Diana, probably Ryan
Goodread friends who might particularly enjoy this book: Abraham, Brian, Diana, probably Ryan
May 31, 2011
This is one of those novels that people either don't particularly like or go nuts over. I first learned of it from a friend in my writing group. If it's so goo, I told myself, why haven't I heard of it or of Lewis Nordan, the author.
Don't know the answers to those questions but the book is definitely that good. With equal parts magical realism and very thick description, this eerie tale set way back on the bayous of Louisiana really delivers. I'd say if you really like Flannery O'Connor, you'd like this. There is something subtle and seductive about this novel. The dysfunctional families, the grotesque behavior and violence somehow take a backseat to the mystery and suspense of a tale well-told. I haven't found anything else by the author to be as satisfying, but Sharpshooter Blues is the real deal.
Don't know the answers to those questions but the book is definitely that good. With equal parts magical realism and very thick description, this eerie tale set way back on the bayous of Louisiana really delivers. I'd say if you really like Flannery O'Connor, you'd like this. There is something subtle and seductive about this novel. The dysfunctional families, the grotesque behavior and violence somehow take a backseat to the mystery and suspense of a tale well-told. I haven't found anything else by the author to be as satisfying, but Sharpshooter Blues is the real deal.
May 10, 2012
If you ever think to yourself that you want to feel super cool by reading an author that nobody else has ever heard of and who also happens to write astounding fiction, Lewis Nordan is your guy and The Sharpshooter Blues is your novel.
February 17, 2024
The Sharpshooter Blues is centered on one event in the Mississippi Delta: A boy shoots a pair of siblings as they pass through town on a crime spree.
That story is interesting and well told, but what truly makes the book shine is the way the author sets up a variety of generally odd and unlikable characters, and then takes these tiny moments to crack their shells and show us a glimpse of what's inside: A flash of something heartbreaking or humerous or profound; a hidden talent or desire; some unexpected vulnerability or piece of knowledge. These were characters that I certainly didn't expect to feel warmly towards, which made these intimate moments even more surprising and beautiful.
The novel is filled with these contrasts: Characters seeing people who aren't really there, while others are trying so hard not to see real people right under their noses. Poignant, moving, conversations that happen late in the story are juxtaposed against the dialouge early in the book, where characters were talking past each other and no one was listening; literally talking to closed doors.
The entire plot actually hinges on a contrast: One person says something untrue that everyone believes, while another person says something true that goes unacknowledged, to disasterous consequences. At the start of the book, credibility hinged on who was doing the talking and how that person was regarded-- but there's a turning point in the book that finally allows characters to hear each other, and the pecking order falls away.
The book has too many beautiful moments to name, but there are scenes between Louis and his father: Louis and his sister; Hydro's father and The Prince of Darkness; and Hydro's father and Mr. Roy; that really moved me... not to mention one particularly devastating scene between Katy and her mother near the end of the book that brought tears to my eyes (based on one line of dialogue alone.)
This book was a bit of a sleeper in that the full weight of it didn't really hit me until after I finished reading, but it gets more gorgeous the longer I reflect on it. If you're going to start it, the one piece of advice I would give is: See it through.
That story is interesting and well told, but what truly makes the book shine is the way the author sets up a variety of generally odd and unlikable characters, and then takes these tiny moments to crack their shells and show us a glimpse of what's inside: A flash of something heartbreaking or humerous or profound; a hidden talent or desire; some unexpected vulnerability or piece of knowledge. These were characters that I certainly didn't expect to feel warmly towards, which made these intimate moments even more surprising and beautiful.
The novel is filled with these contrasts: Characters seeing people who aren't really there, while others are trying so hard not to see real people right under their noses. Poignant, moving, conversations that happen late in the story are juxtaposed against the dialouge early in the book, where characters were talking past each other and no one was listening; literally talking to closed doors.
The entire plot actually hinges on a contrast: One person says something untrue that everyone believes, while another person says something true that goes unacknowledged, to disasterous consequences. At the start of the book, credibility hinged on who was doing the talking and how that person was regarded-- but there's a turning point in the book that finally allows characters to hear each other, and the pecking order falls away.
The book has too many beautiful moments to name, but there are scenes between Louis and his father: Louis and his sister; Hydro's father and The Prince of Darkness; and Hydro's father and Mr. Roy; that really moved me... not to mention one particularly devastating scene between Katy and her mother near the end of the book that brought tears to my eyes (based on one line of dialogue alone.)
This book was a bit of a sleeper in that the full weight of it didn't really hit me until after I finished reading, but it gets more gorgeous the longer I reflect on it. If you're going to start it, the one piece of advice I would give is: See it through.
March 31, 2023
So lovely, sweet, funny, tragic, and complex. Each scene was so delicately put together. It's sad, but in a good way.
August 22, 2012
I have to thank my ex for this book. It was given to me as a birthday present, and it has definitely left a mark, albeit how much of one is still to be determined, on me. This could be described as magical realism southern Gothic, but I think tragicomedy would be a more fitting description. There's something ultimately comical about the way this book is written, and above all else, something comical about the characters.
The book can be a tad sentimental, but it's a heartbreaking sentimentality, which gives this book added depth. This is shown in a series of character portrayals following an incident in which the hero of the book, Hydro Raney, shoots and kills a marauding brother and sister team after his rape by the female thug. Yes, she forces him into sex following an odd robbery where he seemingly hands the money over to them without nay real notion of what is going on. He suffers from what I gathered to be hydrocephalus, hence his nick name. Meanwhile an eyewitness to this killing, Hydro's younger friend Louis, is coming to terms with his own unhappy childhood, and of his mother's extra marital affair with an outsider known as the Sharpshooter, real name Morgan. In an instant of vengeance, Louis claims Morgan is the trigger man, although there on out Morgan isn't exactly vilified by the locals because of what was deemed to be an act of saving Hydro's life.
From that point on we follow Louis, his younger sister, Hydro, his loving father, Morgan and his adoptive mother, and several other townsfolk in their own personal stories, and we come to genuinely care for them because of Lewis Nordan's knack for character development. But there's something else to the story: the disconnectedness of the locals to reality itself; it almost seems they're lost and "immune" from it. They just don't appear to be have the same moral code we do and the most extreme seems to be mundane to them. For example firing weapons within closed quarters serves as a form of entertainment. This is a frightening thing, but despite this chaos and lunacy, and despite the grotesque nature of many of the characters, we come to care for them for the human condition they represent. Another aspect of the story I found intriguing was the interplay of sub plots, for example Morgan the Sharpshooter unwittingly plants the idea of robbing the grocery store Hydro works at in the minds of the marauding siblings, during a chance encounter in Texas. Yet ironically it's that moment where Morgan realizes he is one with the world, and deserves the same happiness others enjoy. This story is related to his adoptive mother near the end of the book.
So there you have it. The human condition. The inhabitants of the fictional Arrow Catcher, Mississippi are as holy as any saint, and we come to realize this. I can only think as to what is happening to some of the inhabitants now, and that's definitely a sign of this book's power.
The book can be a tad sentimental, but it's a heartbreaking sentimentality, which gives this book added depth. This is shown in a series of character portrayals following an incident in which the hero of the book, Hydro Raney, shoots and kills a marauding brother and sister team after his rape by the female thug. Yes, she forces him into sex following an odd robbery where he seemingly hands the money over to them without nay real notion of what is going on. He suffers from what I gathered to be hydrocephalus, hence his nick name. Meanwhile an eyewitness to this killing, Hydro's younger friend Louis, is coming to terms with his own unhappy childhood, and of his mother's extra marital affair with an outsider known as the Sharpshooter, real name Morgan. In an instant of vengeance, Louis claims Morgan is the trigger man, although there on out Morgan isn't exactly vilified by the locals because of what was deemed to be an act of saving Hydro's life.
From that point on we follow Louis, his younger sister, Hydro, his loving father, Morgan and his adoptive mother, and several other townsfolk in their own personal stories, and we come to genuinely care for them because of Lewis Nordan's knack for character development. But there's something else to the story: the disconnectedness of the locals to reality itself; it almost seems they're lost and "immune" from it. They just don't appear to be have the same moral code we do and the most extreme seems to be mundane to them. For example firing weapons within closed quarters serves as a form of entertainment. This is a frightening thing, but despite this chaos and lunacy, and despite the grotesque nature of many of the characters, we come to care for them for the human condition they represent. Another aspect of the story I found intriguing was the interplay of sub plots, for example Morgan the Sharpshooter unwittingly plants the idea of robbing the grocery store Hydro works at in the minds of the marauding siblings, during a chance encounter in Texas. Yet ironically it's that moment where Morgan realizes he is one with the world, and deserves the same happiness others enjoy. This story is related to his adoptive mother near the end of the book.
So there you have it. The human condition. The inhabitants of the fictional Arrow Catcher, Mississippi are as holy as any saint, and we come to realize this. I can only think as to what is happening to some of the inhabitants now, and that's definitely a sign of this book's power.
September 3, 2012
Imagine being in a world filled with humidity, drooping moss, parrots flying, sounds of Robert Johnson singing to the wind and motoring the swampy delta in a boat powered by an evinrude motor. This is the world of Hydro Raney a young man stunted mentally by hydro-encephalitis. Lewis Nordan draws us into this strange and magical world in his book Sharp-Shooter Blues. Every character is deftly created and a pleasure to meet.
Hydro Raney is a gentle and innocent young man who readers will easily takes into their heart. He is a person of simple wants and needs who takes people he meets at face value. His father loves him dearly and sings him to sleep at night. Hydro willingly places a cantaloupe on his head for his sharpshooter friend Morgan to shoot off. While this turns out successfully, Hydro in his innocence is not prepared to deal with everyone who comes his way.
Prepare to meet as well: the Lovely children who are beautiful to look at, but hide behind their looks and beauty; Louis, the young comic book geek who is witness to the darkest moments of the book; the Prince of Darkness the mortician that rose from the dead. The Sharp Shooter Blues is awash with wonderful southern characters that, leave a lasting impression on the reader.
Lewis Nordan is a gifted story teller who has crafted a book of extreme pain and beauty. There is so much life, sadness and depth to the book that I dog eared numerous pages to go back and read again. It is beautifully written and leave the reader with much to think about.
If you have not yet discovered Lewis Nordan do pick up a copy of the Sharp Shooter Blues. It is a story that reads swiftly but that will stay with you long after.
Hydro Raney is a gentle and innocent young man who readers will easily takes into their heart. He is a person of simple wants and needs who takes people he meets at face value. His father loves him dearly and sings him to sleep at night. Hydro willingly places a cantaloupe on his head for his sharpshooter friend Morgan to shoot off. While this turns out successfully, Hydro in his innocence is not prepared to deal with everyone who comes his way.
Prepare to meet as well: the Lovely children who are beautiful to look at, but hide behind their looks and beauty; Louis, the young comic book geek who is witness to the darkest moments of the book; the Prince of Darkness the mortician that rose from the dead. The Sharp Shooter Blues is awash with wonderful southern characters that, leave a lasting impression on the reader.
Lewis Nordan is a gifted story teller who has crafted a book of extreme pain and beauty. There is so much life, sadness and depth to the book that I dog eared numerous pages to go back and read again. It is beautifully written and leave the reader with much to think about.
If you have not yet discovered Lewis Nordan do pick up a copy of the Sharp Shooter Blues. It is a story that reads swiftly but that will stay with you long after.
March 4, 2015
Darkly comedic and grotesque at the same time, this piece of Southern Lit is filled with larger than life characters. My two favorites being The Prince of Darkness (the town undertaker) and Marshal Webber (the law man). The former throws black looks at folk, wears only black and white and enjoys a good Shakespeare play if there are not too many Breck commercial interruptions, The later is a large and nearly seven foot tall lawman who is scared of his own shadow and worried about seeing things that will give him nightmares. I thought about the movie Big Fish a lot when I read this book by little known Southern writer Norton. Lots of tall tales and tall characters like Big Fish - a movie I love though I have yet to read the book.
While I liked Sharpshooter Blues in the end, I can't say I found it to be as great as touted by other reviewers or my book club members. So, my 3 star "likable" rating is where I sign off.
While I liked Sharpshooter Blues in the end, I can't say I found it to be as great as touted by other reviewers or my book club members. So, my 3 star "likable" rating is where I sign off.
September 13, 2014
Why doesn't anybody talk about this book? It's incredible. A riveting plot unfolds when guns and stupidity collide in a Mississippi Bayou town. Nordan pilots us into a magical swamp world of alligators, beavers, fish, turkey buzzards, tropical birds, even dolphins from the Gulf of Mexico. Each chapter brings us into the world of another rich-hearted character. But this shifting perspective isn't hard work for the reader, it's a breeze. The language is simple, direct, and forceful. And the emotional climax comes via the last characters I would have guessed, a beautiful surprise.
May 24, 2018
This profound novel by Lewis Nordan explores life and death in a way that causes the reader to reach inside their inner feelings and think along with the characters in the story, just how one might break into show business. The characters of The Sharpshooter Blues bring out the extremities of emotion that good writing does; we feel angst, hope, disappointment, loss, and redemption along with the population of Arrow Catcher, Mississippi. This is one of the best pieces of fiction that I have ever read, and one can be assured that it will be reread in the future.
May 17, 2015
Another Lewis Nordan book that has no business working that works. A catastrophically funny novel narrated by Robert Johnson at the crossroads and a crazy preacher screaming scripture outside a degenerate Delta carnival. Nordan should replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. Amazing writer.
December 26, 2019
Music of the Swamp meets Pulp Fiction. I wish Lewis Nordan could know how much I enjoyed Sharpshooter Blues and his Music of the Swamp. I love knowing that I have a few more of his books to look forward to.
Southern. Funny. Tender.
Southern. Funny. Tender.
August 7, 2021
Ça se lit tout seul. L’écriture est belle. C’est triste et si doux en même temps. Terriblement humain. Tu en ressors le cœur plein et avec de l’espoir. C’est un peu impossible à résumer, je crois qu’il faut juste se plonger dedans.
March 17, 2009
This is great. Has beautiful language, is funny, heartbreaking, and close to perfect.
July 10, 2017
I really loved this book. It has been awhile since I have really loved a book. When I read the last sentence of the book, I sighed and said, "I loved this book." You may be wondering what I loved about this book or you may not give a shit, but I am going to keep pecking away with my typing, my rambling thoughts and tell you.
I became engulfed in Nordan's description of the landscape of the fictional Arrow Catcher, Mississippi and the island or fishcamp where the main characters live. Immediately, in the the first chapter, Nordan captures you with one of these descriptions. Nordan places these descriptions throughout the novel- and every time I read them, I felt as though I had slipped into a dream- to me they had a magical hypnotic state. I felt light- to me these descriptions of the landscape and animals were calming and evoked the most wonderful imagery. "Turkey buzzards floated above the swamp like prayers and admired their own reflections in the water. Blue herons and cranes and snowy egrets stood on long legs and ate snakes and minnows in the shallows. Cottonmouth moccasins hung in the willow branches, turtles sat on the logs, alligators lounged in their big nests, which smelled of sugarcane and sorghum and rice and fish. Rats the size of yellow dogs clung to the bark of trees by their toenails and yapped like puppies and then dropped into the water and held their noses up above the flood and swam to high ground where they sat and howled at the moon by night."
Not only did I love the magical element Nordan crafted in the novel, but I felt very connected to his characters. To me this book was a story about love- love between a father and son-man and woman- brother and sister. Nordan lets us into the lives of quite of few characters in Arrow Catcher and how their lives were intertwined. The characters are complex, colorful, and deeply human. The characters in the novel experience sorrow and new beginnings.
To me this was a real story and that is what I seek in a book- a true narrative that pulls me into the people, the place, and the problem. I would highly recommend this book.
I became engulfed in Nordan's description of the landscape of the fictional Arrow Catcher, Mississippi and the island or fishcamp where the main characters live. Immediately, in the the first chapter, Nordan captures you with one of these descriptions. Nordan places these descriptions throughout the novel- and every time I read them, I felt as though I had slipped into a dream- to me they had a magical hypnotic state. I felt light- to me these descriptions of the landscape and animals were calming and evoked the most wonderful imagery. "Turkey buzzards floated above the swamp like prayers and admired their own reflections in the water. Blue herons and cranes and snowy egrets stood on long legs and ate snakes and minnows in the shallows. Cottonmouth moccasins hung in the willow branches, turtles sat on the logs, alligators lounged in their big nests, which smelled of sugarcane and sorghum and rice and fish. Rats the size of yellow dogs clung to the bark of trees by their toenails and yapped like puppies and then dropped into the water and held their noses up above the flood and swam to high ground where they sat and howled at the moon by night."
Not only did I love the magical element Nordan crafted in the novel, but I felt very connected to his characters. To me this book was a story about love- love between a father and son-man and woman- brother and sister. Nordan lets us into the lives of quite of few characters in Arrow Catcher and how their lives were intertwined. The characters are complex, colorful, and deeply human. The characters in the novel experience sorrow and new beginnings.
To me this was a real story and that is what I seek in a book- a true narrative that pulls me into the people, the place, and the problem. I would highly recommend this book.
December 6, 2021
I don't get the description of the book up above. That's not how I would describe it nor is it the way it's described on the inside jacket of my book. It's like it's two different stories, the one up above, and the one I read (and in the inside jacket of the book).
The Sharpshooter Blues has been sitting on my bookshelf since 2019. With a rating of 4.14 it shouldn't had taken me 3 years to read it, but it did. I blame that on the many book I own and it's gotten lost in the couple hundred sitting on my shelves.
This story takes place in Delta town Arrow Catcher, Mississippi. Hydro Raney is the main character who is a "sweet and simple boy". A brother and sister, the "two lovely children" come to town and rob The William Tell Grocery where Hydro works. The sister rapes Hydro and he shoots them both dead. Hydro's younger friend, Louis, who is hiding in the closet, witnesses the killing and blames the outsider, also known as the Sharpshooter, AKA Morgan, as the killer because he is the lover of his mother. Louis' father is the town's drunken doctor.
The author takes us into the lives of quite a few of the townspeople including Hydro's younger sister, Louis, his father, his adoptive mother and the Sharpshooter himself, and some of it's just wacky, some of it's sad and tragic, and some of it's funny.
I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed the story.
The Sharpshooter Blues has been sitting on my bookshelf since 2019. With a rating of 4.14 it shouldn't had taken me 3 years to read it, but it did. I blame that on the many book I own and it's gotten lost in the couple hundred sitting on my shelves.
This story takes place in Delta town Arrow Catcher, Mississippi. Hydro Raney is the main character who is a "sweet and simple boy". A brother and sister, the "two lovely children" come to town and rob The William Tell Grocery where Hydro works. The sister rapes Hydro and he shoots them both dead. Hydro's younger friend, Louis, who is hiding in the closet, witnesses the killing and blames the outsider, also known as the Sharpshooter, AKA Morgan, as the killer because he is the lover of his mother. Louis' father is the town's drunken doctor.
The author takes us into the lives of quite a few of the townspeople including Hydro's younger sister, Louis, his father, his adoptive mother and the Sharpshooter himself, and some of it's just wacky, some of it's sad and tragic, and some of it's funny.
I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed the story.
October 31, 2018
Another book that I wanted to enjoy. I did, kind of. Beautiful writing. Poetic, lyrical. I was fascinated by Norden's ability to break "common knowledge" writing rules and make it work. The opening is evocative and powerful.
Unfortunately, I kept reading. That's when problems rose. I found myself bogged down in the slow, methodical writing (normally a boon). Could Norden write this so the story moved faster without upsetting the rhythm? What was entertaining at first became agony, kind of like hearing the same joke repeated 50,000 times. It's funny the first few times and they you want to move onto something else.
I also encountered a few POV errors that threw me out of the story. Not good.
Unfortunately, I kept reading. That's when problems rose. I found myself bogged down in the slow, methodical writing (normally a boon). Could Norden write this so the story moved faster without upsetting the rhythm? What was entertaining at first became agony, kind of like hearing the same joke repeated 50,000 times. It's funny the first few times and they you want to move onto something else.
I also encountered a few POV errors that threw me out of the story. Not good.
September 8, 2018
I found this on a list of "best authors you've never read" and it did not disappoint. The beautiful language dropped me right into the Mississippi Delta and Arrow Catcher, MS with its quirky characters who are as funny as they are heartbreaking. The smart, quiet statement the author makes about America's obsession with guns is quite powerful. (less)
January 20, 2018
Hydro, don’t go!
I enjoyed this book—great story telling, rich plot and character development. The southern gothic themes and faulkneresque Deep South were accompanied by a touch of magical realism.
I enjoyed this book—great story telling, rich plot and character development. The southern gothic themes and faulkneresque Deep South were accompanied by a touch of magical realism.
December 19, 2016
This is the third of Nordan's novels I've read--Wolf Whistle and Music of the Swamp were both books I very much enjoyed and found incredibly moving--and I went into this one fully prepared for Nordan's literary gamesmanship. If you've never read Nordan, his "magical realism" can take you by surprise, and takes a bit of work to give oneself over into the logic of his work and world. And while that same kind of gamesmanship was at work in this novel, I found myself deeply frustrated by it, and ultimately felt that Nordan's commitment to a particular aspect of his craft ultimately got in the way of the deeply emotional aspects of this novel. Nordan knows how to plumb the depths of the human heart, and he does it here, too; he just can't get out of his own way in many places.
Nordan's work always shows that he is fully versed in the myriad stereotypical tropes of the South and its literature, and in many ways his magical realism is a self-aware and ironic send-up of these tropes, so as to make the truths of his characters that much more significant and vital. It's as if he sets out to make his works so bizarrely and intensely stereotypically Southern that we ultimately transcend both the Hollywood movie-stage and overly-romantic versions of the South and enter into a world more real, powerful, and truthful; in other words, a world that is, despite its strangeness, is more in line with the actual truth of life in the South and elsewhere. And while this is often done to great effect--and continues to be done to great effect in many places in this novel--the technique itself becomes obfuscating and confusing here.
For instance, we know from the opening pages that this novel concerns the murder of "two lovely children," a murder that has been witnessed by "Hydro," a mentally handicapped young man. Yet, as we move further into the novel, we learn about the children, we learn the details of the murder, and the "lovely children" seem neither lovely nor child-like. They are presented as something like a Hollywood Bonnie-and-Clyde, with black French berets and a predilection for solipsistic violence and abusive nymphomania. The "girl" is especially confusing, as Nordan's descriptions of her physical self presents her as being a child from the waist up and some sort of perverse matron from the waist down, as if two different selves exist in her body. And maybe this is the point; maybe Nordan wants us to face the instability of identity or something of that sort, the ways in which who we are is defined by others, or something like that. And while this is a real possibility--the novel is very much interested in how popular culture, like comic books and pop music especially, shape how we understand ourselves and engage others--the bizarre, dreamlike way several characters are presented blurs any sort of real engagement with them and what truths they may hold. This is especially the case with the main plot, as it surrounds Hydro, his father, and the murder of the "two lovely children." The character of the undertake (a sort of warmed-over Norman Bates) and the reveal of Hydro's alter ego late in the book are similarly perplexing; at some point, Nordan's technique just gets too far ahead of his purposes, and dream-like magical realism dissolves into bizarre nonsense that left me wondering if the book was worth finishing.
This is frustrating, as I thought several times of calling the book a failure and quitting; if I would have done that, I would have missed the many places where the book truly shines. At its best, The Sharpshooter Blues rehearses the tried-and-true territory of the interconnections between self, death, and sex (although a chapter devoted to a same-sex affair between two characters of no consequence to the novel on the whole seems shoe-horned in for no other purposes than checking an identity-politics box). The stories that spin off from the main plot are where the novel is strongest, and where Nordan's ability to write black comedy that is achingly gorgeous and tragic and true via his magical realism technique shines brightest. A young brother and sister dealing with the consequences of their mother's alcoholism and adultery and their father's emotional distance is masterfully done, especially in a series of scenes connected to the children's rescuing of half-drowned wild parrots that reveals a full complement of emotions inside the children. A lawman who confronts violence with the image of possible loss and present alienation from some of those whom he loves is powerful, and the stories of a self-created sharpshooter and his hoodoo-woman adoptive mother are wonderful, and the afore-alluded-to cuckold and his alcoholic wife are sad, beautiful characters. The main plot builds to a final scene of a funeral, and that may be one of the finest things Nordan ever wrote.
All this is to say, then: this is a good novel. But Nordan gets in his own way in several places here, keeping it from being a great novel. This is all the more frustrating because of the presence of some of his finest scenes and most intriguing characters.
Nordan's work always shows that he is fully versed in the myriad stereotypical tropes of the South and its literature, and in many ways his magical realism is a self-aware and ironic send-up of these tropes, so as to make the truths of his characters that much more significant and vital. It's as if he sets out to make his works so bizarrely and intensely stereotypically Southern that we ultimately transcend both the Hollywood movie-stage and overly-romantic versions of the South and enter into a world more real, powerful, and truthful; in other words, a world that is, despite its strangeness, is more in line with the actual truth of life in the South and elsewhere. And while this is often done to great effect--and continues to be done to great effect in many places in this novel--the technique itself becomes obfuscating and confusing here.
For instance, we know from the opening pages that this novel concerns the murder of "two lovely children," a murder that has been witnessed by "Hydro," a mentally handicapped young man. Yet, as we move further into the novel, we learn about the children, we learn the details of the murder, and the "lovely children" seem neither lovely nor child-like. They are presented as something like a Hollywood Bonnie-and-Clyde, with black French berets and a predilection for solipsistic violence and abusive nymphomania. The "girl" is especially confusing, as Nordan's descriptions of her physical self presents her as being a child from the waist up and some sort of perverse matron from the waist down, as if two different selves exist in her body. And maybe this is the point; maybe Nordan wants us to face the instability of identity or something of that sort, the ways in which who we are is defined by others, or something like that. And while this is a real possibility--the novel is very much interested in how popular culture, like comic books and pop music especially, shape how we understand ourselves and engage others--the bizarre, dreamlike way several characters are presented blurs any sort of real engagement with them and what truths they may hold. This is especially the case with the main plot, as it surrounds Hydro, his father, and the murder of the "two lovely children." The character of the undertake (a sort of warmed-over Norman Bates) and the reveal of Hydro's alter ego late in the book are similarly perplexing; at some point, Nordan's technique just gets too far ahead of his purposes, and dream-like magical realism dissolves into bizarre nonsense that left me wondering if the book was worth finishing.
This is frustrating, as I thought several times of calling the book a failure and quitting; if I would have done that, I would have missed the many places where the book truly shines. At its best, The Sharpshooter Blues rehearses the tried-and-true territory of the interconnections between self, death, and sex (although a chapter devoted to a same-sex affair between two characters of no consequence to the novel on the whole seems shoe-horned in for no other purposes than checking an identity-politics box). The stories that spin off from the main plot are where the novel is strongest, and where Nordan's ability to write black comedy that is achingly gorgeous and tragic and true via his magical realism technique shines brightest. A young brother and sister dealing with the consequences of their mother's alcoholism and adultery and their father's emotional distance is masterfully done, especially in a series of scenes connected to the children's rescuing of half-drowned wild parrots that reveals a full complement of emotions inside the children. A lawman who confronts violence with the image of possible loss and present alienation from some of those whom he loves is powerful, and the stories of a self-created sharpshooter and his hoodoo-woman adoptive mother are wonderful, and the afore-alluded-to cuckold and his alcoholic wife are sad, beautiful characters. The main plot builds to a final scene of a funeral, and that may be one of the finest things Nordan ever wrote.
All this is to say, then: this is a good novel. But Nordan gets in his own way in several places here, keeping it from being a great novel. This is all the more frustrating because of the presence of some of his finest scenes and most intriguing characters.
May 4, 2018
When I first started this book I didn’t think that I’d enjoy Nordan’s style but my god did I fall in love with his characters. This book is a study in grief, fear of losing something, and life not working out the way you’d want. This was perfect across the board. Great story, great characters, and great style. The real strength is how Nordan captured emotions and pain so well.
February 19, 2018
This review's going on my blog.
http://summerhoodisland.blogspot.com/...
http://summerhoodisland.blogspot.com/...
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March 9, 2017Lewis nordan has this great way of creating unreal spaces where characters can speak their deepest fears and pathologies like jokes, in this book more than anywhere, which makes his novels seem to take place exactly where and when you read it, and that's great
October 14, 2021
Voilà un roman que j’ai dévoré en quatre jours, happée que j’étais par son atmosphère singulière, ses descriptions de nature envoûtantes et ses personnages tous plus touchants les uns que les autres. L’écriture est sublime et la traduction particulièrement soignée, au service d’un texte poignant qui étudie l’impact d’un événement déclencheur, le braquage d’une station-service, sur les membres d’une petite communauté du Sud profond des Etats-Unis. La mort des deux braqueurs a des conséquences dévastatrices pour certains, alors qu’elle permet une certaine forme de rédemption chez d’autres. Mais ce qui est sûr, c’est que personne n’est épargné, ce qui montre bien à quel point nous sommes tous interdépendants, surtout dans un endroit où tout le monde se connaît.
La mélancolie de celui qui vise juste raconte le chagrin, l’amour, l’amitié, la différence et la tolérance et illustre parfaitement cette capacité que nous avons de faire des choix et de nous élever au-dessus de nos plus bas instincts. La tragédie se tisse au fil des pages dans la moiteur du bayou et pourtant, même si on est triste pour un personnage en particulier, on referme ce livre le cœur empreint de tendresse et d’espoir. Certes, Lewis Nordan ne nous épargne pas la noirceur de l’humanité, mais il nous la montre aussi dans ce qu’elle a de plus beau, et c’est pour ça que je vous recommande vivement son roman !
La mélancolie de celui qui vise juste raconte le chagrin, l’amour, l’amitié, la différence et la tolérance et illustre parfaitement cette capacité que nous avons de faire des choix et de nous élever au-dessus de nos plus bas instincts. La tragédie se tisse au fil des pages dans la moiteur du bayou et pourtant, même si on est triste pour un personnage en particulier, on referme ce livre le cœur empreint de tendresse et d’espoir. Certes, Lewis Nordan ne nous épargne pas la noirceur de l’humanité, mais il nous la montre aussi dans ce qu’elle a de plus beau, et c’est pour ça que je vous recommande vivement son roman !
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