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The Holy Ghost in Arkansas
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11242 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1993 |
2,188 Words |
| Author
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Tom Pilkington
Tom Pilkington is University Scholar and Regents Professor of
English at Tarleton State University, Stephenville, Texas. He
is the author or editor of thirteen books, including Critical
Essays on the Western American Novel and State of Mind: Texas
Literature and Culture. He is a former president of the
Western Literature Association. |
LIVING IN LITTLE ROCK WITH MISS LITTLE ROCK
Jack Butler
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993
655 pp., $25.00
With Clinton relatives and FOBs (Friends of Bill) installing themselves in the nooks and crannies of the White House, Arkansas chic continues to infiltrate the national culture. How many Arkansas novels are currently in the works at the major commercial publishing houses? Quite a few, I would guess.
Jack Butler--who has worked at jobs ranging from actuarial analyst to English teacher and is now an associate dean at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas--claims he began Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock long before Bill Clinton committed himself to the presidential sweepstakes. Probably he is telling the truth. (Governor Bill, by the way, appears as a very minor character in the novel.)
Butler is author of the highly praised Jujitsu for Christ (1986) and other fiction and poetry. He is a respected writer, and his dense, convoluted new novel, weighing in at close to seven hundred pages--large pages with small type and narrow margins--is not likely to reap a sales bonanza simply because there is an Arkansas fellow at the nation's political helm.
Still, Knopf, perhaps the most prestigious American publisher at the moment, will not renounce whatever modest bonus may accrue from the country's curiosity about Arkansas. The dust jacket announces that the story is set in "Bill Clinton country." Butler is unflinching in his depiction of Arkansas character and customs; nevertheless, he says that Little Rock is intended as "a tribute to the city and to the state," and so, for the most part, it is.
Heavenly Hog
"Howdy, I'm the Holy Ghost. Talk about your omniscient narrators." Little Rock is narrated by the Holy Ghost--or, as He (She? It?) prefers, "Hog." Now hogs are sacred animals in Arkansas. Worshiping at the shrine of the University of Arkansas Razorback sports teams is a statewide mania that transcends sex, race, class, and levels of intelligence.
Take it from someone who has been present in stadiums and field houses where the Razorbacks have played: It is an awesome sight to look around and see that one is
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