I'm reading Paul Theroux's Deep South (2015) and though only halfway through, I'm already convinced Theroux has written the first Great American Novel. The scope of the work is incredible. Theroux quotes older Americans who've lived through Jim Crow and sharecropping, the illegitimate daughter of a prominent politician, and ordinary people with incredible stories, all while sharing his prodigious knowledge of other American writers. I've always said everyone has one amazing book, song, movie, or poem inside them, but I never thought much of Theroux's international writing. I suppose in some cases, it takes 75 years to midwife your great work.
I'll leave you with one paragraph where Theroux indirectly predicts the outcome of the 2016 presidential election: "The whites felt like a despised minority--different, defeated, misunderstood, muddled with, pushed around, cheated. Blood mattered, so did history and old grievances and perceived injustices..."
My only quibble is Theroux's repeated comparison between (inadequate) federal government funding for rural development vs. international aid. The two are not comparable. America spends less than 1% of its annual budget on foreign aid, much of it to employ American overseas workers; to gain footholds in countries that would otherwise be inclined to grant infrastructure projects to China or Japan; to keep the peace (Kosovo, Jordan, etc.); or--let's be honest--indirect bribery to gain the trust of foreign leaders who might otherwise be hostile to American interests. Though it's true the federal government funded the development of national highways, which benefited rural communities, such domestic aid was done in the national, not local, interest. Regardless of this flaw, Theroux's Deep South (2015) should be required reading in every American history college class, and its chapter on Faulkner required reading in every 12th grade English course.
I'll leave you with one paragraph where Theroux indirectly predicts the outcome of the 2016 presidential election: "The whites felt like a despised minority--different, defeated, misunderstood, muddled with, pushed around, cheated. Blood mattered, so did history and old grievances and perceived injustices..."
© Matthew Rafat (2018)
Bonus I:
"That seemed to be the theme in the Deep South: kindness, generosity, a welcome... I found so much of it here that I kept going, because the goodwill was like an embrace."
“America is accessible, but Americans in general are not; they are harder to know than any people I’ve traveled among.”
“We [Americans] tolerate difference only when we don’t have to look at it or listen to it, as long as it doesn’t impact our lives. Our great gift as a country is its size and its relative emptiness, its elbow room. That space allows for difference and is often mistaken for tolerance.”
“All air travel today involves interrogation, often by someone in uniform who is your inferior.”
"He [John Lewis] had distinguished himself by his insistence on ethical behavior in Congress--an uphill task, given the number of crooks, sneaks, junketers, opportunists, liars, tax cheats, adulterers, sexual stalkers, senders of selfies of their private parts to perfect strangers, and unembarrassed villains in that tainted assembly."
"'The South gives indications of being afraid of the Negro. I do not mean physical fear,' Frank Tannenbaum wrote ninety years ago in Darker Phases of the South. 'It is not a matter of cowardice or bravery; it is something deeper and more fundamental. It is a fear of losing grip upon the world. It is an unconscious fear of changing status.'"
Bonus II: "When will we learn that the white man can no longer afford, he simply does not dare to commit acts that the other 3/4s of the human race can challenge him for, not because the acts themselves are criminal, but simply because the challengers and accusers of the acts are not white in pigment... Have we, the white Americans who can commit or condone such acts, forgotten already how only fifteen years ago what only the Japanese, a mere 8 million inhabitants of an island already insolvent and bankrupt, did to us? How can we hope to survive the next Pearl Harbor, if there should be one, with not only all peoples who are not white but peoples whose political ideologies are different from ours arrayed against us after we have taught them, as we are now doing, that when we talk about freedom and liberty, we not only mean neither, we don't even mean security and justice and even the preservation of life for peoples whose pigmentation is not the same as ours... Because if we in America have reached that point in our disparate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what or what color, then we do not deserve to survive and probably won't." -- William Faulkner, September 6, 1955
Bonus I:
"That seemed to be the theme in the Deep South: kindness, generosity, a welcome... I found so much of it here that I kept going, because the goodwill was like an embrace."
“America is accessible, but Americans in general are not; they are harder to know than any people I’ve traveled among.”
“We [Americans] tolerate difference only when we don’t have to look at it or listen to it, as long as it doesn’t impact our lives. Our great gift as a country is its size and its relative emptiness, its elbow room. That space allows for difference and is often mistaken for tolerance.”
“All air travel today involves interrogation, often by someone in uniform who is your inferior.”
"He [John Lewis] had distinguished himself by his insistence on ethical behavior in Congress--an uphill task, given the number of crooks, sneaks, junketers, opportunists, liars, tax cheats, adulterers, sexual stalkers, senders of selfies of their private parts to perfect strangers, and unembarrassed villains in that tainted assembly."
"'The South gives indications of being afraid of the Negro. I do not mean physical fear,' Frank Tannenbaum wrote ninety years ago in Darker Phases of the South. 'It is not a matter of cowardice or bravery; it is something deeper and more fundamental. It is a fear of losing grip upon the world. It is an unconscious fear of changing status.'"
Bonus II: "When will we learn that the white man can no longer afford, he simply does not dare to commit acts that the other 3/4s of the human race can challenge him for, not because the acts themselves are criminal, but simply because the challengers and accusers of the acts are not white in pigment... Have we, the white Americans who can commit or condone such acts, forgotten already how only fifteen years ago what only the Japanese, a mere 8 million inhabitants of an island already insolvent and bankrupt, did to us? How can we hope to survive the next Pearl Harbor, if there should be one, with not only all peoples who are not white but peoples whose political ideologies are different from ours arrayed against us after we have taught them, as we are now doing, that when we talk about freedom and liberty, we not only mean neither, we don't even mean security and justice and even the preservation of life for peoples whose pigmentation is not the same as ours... Because if we in America have reached that point in our disparate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what or what color, then we do not deserve to survive and probably won't." -- William Faulkner, September 6, 1955
