The African American Presence in Walker Percy's "The Moviegoer"

One of the first posts on this blog focused on Walker Percy's Lancelot (1977) and his portrayal of African Americans in that novel. Since then, I have written about the African American presence in novels such as The Great Gatsby and also about the white presence in Gaines's Catherine Carmier. Today, I would like to write briefly about the African American presence in Percy's debut novel The Moviegoer (1961) which chronicles Binx Bolling's "search" for his own identity in a declining South during the post war years in the mid-twentieth century. The novel takes place over Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and as Marcia Gaudet notes, Binx's search is a type of "internal carnivalesque," upending societal hierarchies for a period of time and reveling in the grotesque. I could discuss this aspect of the novel some, but I will not do so today. Instead, I will focus on Percy's portrayal of Mercer and other African American characters.

Binx's description of his Aunt Emily's African American butler Mercer presents him as the remnant of a by-gone era and also partly as a movement away from that era. When Binx arrives at his aunt's house in the Garden District, Mercer opens the door for him. Immediately, Binx notices that Mercer thoughtfully weighs how he will greet his white employer's nephew. Binx notes, "Today he does not say 'Mister Jack' and I know that the omission is deliberate, the consequence of a careful weighing of pros and cons. Tomorrow the scales might tip the other way (today's omission will go into the balance) and it will be 'Mister Jack'" (21). Mercer, like Procter Lewis in Gaines's "Three Men," consciously weighs how he will address this white man. Emily moved from Feliciana Parish to New Orleans, and Mercer followed her, continuing to serve as her butler. In describing Mercer, Binx says, "He is thought to be devoted to us and we to him. But the truth is that Mercer and I are not at all devoted to each other" (22). For Binx, Mercer wears a mask. Mercer does not "serve" the family; instead, through his actions, the family serves Mercer providing him, ultimately costing him the ability to define himself.  Lucinda H. MacKethan points out the effect that the city has on Mercer: "In Aunt Emily's house in the city he has changed, has become a 'city man,' although still a product of a racist system that makes him a consummate maskwearer. He is defined by but also dissolved in a role of 'devotion' that is placed upon him as the beneficiary of a country family's benevolence" (34). Mercer allows the paternalist Binx family to support him, providing him with material accouterments; however, by allowing them to support him, Mercer maintains the racial hierarchy that existed within the South, rejecting his ability to create his own identity.

Binx's identity exists in relation to Mercer's. The novel traces the story of  Binx, a man from a legitimate Southern family, and his gradual degradation of Southern manhood. Part of that decay can be seen in the form of changing race relations that appear to occur on the periphery. No mention of race relations, or changing times, really appears in the novel in regards to race. However, a closer look at Mercer seems to point to changing times on the horizon. When describing Mercer in more detail, Binx says that the way Mercer breathes reminds him of the rural, agricultural Feliciana Parish, an image of the plantation or Jim Crow South. Binx reminesces, "We might be back in Feliciana. Here is the very sound of winter mornings in Feliciana twenty years ago when cold dark dawns were announced by the clatter of the handle on the scuttle and Mercer's strangled breathing" (23). Discussing Mercer's history with Aunt Emily, Binx continues by saying, "Mercer has dissolved somewhat in recent years. It is not so easy to say who he is any more. My aunt truly loves him and sees him as a faithful retainer, a living connection with a bygone age" (23). Here, Mercer appears to be an artifact of the South, one whose time has come to an end. He has "dissolved" and exists as a "connection with a bygone era." In essence, his time has passed, and the role of African Americans being treated as inferior has begun to dissolve as well.

Binx has admiration for Mercer, and to an extant, sympathy for him. Knowing that Mercer takes kickbacks and steals, Binx says that he can't be called a thief because "Mercer has aspirations" (23). Those aspirations, though, become muddled in the system that still exists. Binx refers to Mercer as a "remarkable sort of fellow" and as a person "who keeps himself well informed in science and politics" (24). Even with these aspects, Mercer still lacks a solidified identity. Binx finds Mercer uneasy to talk to because of his knowledge, and his feels sad for him because he notices the way that Mercer views himself, "neither [as] old retainer nor expert in current events" (24). At those moments, Mercer's "eyes get muddy and his face runs together behind his mustache" (24). In effect, he becomes stuck in between what Southern society expects of him and what he expects from himself. The conflicting expectations cause him to lose his own identity, conforming and wearing the mask in order to survive in a racist system.  

At the end of the novel, as Binx and Kate sit outside a church on Ash Wednesday and discuss the possibility of marriage, a car pulls up behind them and "a Negro gets out and goes up into the church" to receive ashes (233). Binx notices the gentleman and starts to speculate on why he is there at that church. Binx notes, "He is more respectable that respectable; he is more middle-class than one could believe" (233). The man exudes "respectability" and appears to be the opposite of Mercer, an African American man who has found his identity. As the man leaves the church, Binx observes him again. This passage is worth quoting at length:

The Negro has already come outside. His forehead is an ambiguous sienna color and pied: it is impossible to be sure that he received ashes. When he gets in his Mercury, he does not leave immediately but sits looking down at something on the seat beside him. A sample case? An insurance manual? I watch him closely in the rear-view mirror. It is impossible to say why he is here. Is it part and parcel of the complex business of coming up in the world? Or is it because he believes that God himself is present here at the corner of Elysian Fields and Bons Enfants? Or is he here for bother reasons: through some dim dazzling trick of grace, coming for the one and receiving the other as God's importunate bonus? (234-235)

A couple of items stand out in this quote. One is that Binx notices that the man looks down at his seat, and he speculates about what the man be looking at. For Binx, the man looks at a sample case or insurance manual, two items that would place the man as a salesman. If this is the case, the man appears to be making his own way in the world, not tied down to the past as Mercer is, or, as I have not really discussed, as Binx is. The other point appears when when Binx asks in the man's presence goes hand in hand with "the complex business of coming up in the world." Again, this very question points to the man having a clear idea of his identity and what he wants to do in his life, unlike Mercer who remains tethered to the past.

What are your thoughts on this topic? What other characters appear in the novel that are similar to Mercer and the man at the end? Let us know in the comments below.

MacKethan, Lucinda H. "Redeeming Blackness: Urban Allegories Of O'Connor, Percy, and Toole."
Studies in The Literary Imagination 27.2 (1994): 29-39. Print.
Percy, Walker. The Moviegoer. New York: Faucet Columbine, 1996. Print.

The Whitney Plantation and Remembering Slavery

Last Tuesday, I attended a lecture by Dr. Ibrahima Seck, Director of Research at the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, LA. The plantation is the first of its kind in the United States because instead of focusing on the masters of the property and the architecture and grandeur of the "big house" it focuses on the lives of those who made the masters prosperous and the big house even possible, the chattel slaves who worked the land and sustained the economy of the plantation. I've written about this subject on this blog before, briefly, when talking about Attica Locke's The Cutting Season, a novel which takes place on a plantation that now hosts weddings, tours, and events causing it to become a place where the South gets remembered not for those who built it with their hands but for those who benefited off of that work.

Whitney Plantation's focus provides a unique opportunity for its visitors because it shows them the horrors of the peculiar institution. Visitors listen to the voices of former slaves, gathered in the 1930s by workers for the Federal Writers Project. All of these individuals, of course, were only children during slavery, so they recall bondage through the eyes of a child. Because of this, the plantation contains numerous sculptures by Woodrow Nash, some of which you can see in the video above and the picture below. They are all children, not adults, because the voices you hear as you walk through the grounds are those of people who were children before 1865. Along with the sculptures, the plantation contains memorials to the thousands of slaves who lived in Louisiana. One memorial, The Field of Angels, is dedicated to the 2,200 slave children in Louisiana who died before their third birthday. Unlike the monuments like the Wall of Honor (dedicated to slaves on Whitney Plantation) and the Allées Gwendolyn Midlo Hall (dedicated to the 107,000 enslaved people in Louisiana appear in the "Louisiana Slave Database"), the memorials in the Field of Angels are low for children to read the names. When hearing about this section, and the fact that some of the children did not have names or that their mother's name did not appear in the records, I could not help but recall Toni Morrison's Beloved , which was inspired by the case of Margaret Garner, a slave who escaped and upon being surrounded by slave catchers killed her two year old daughter by slitting the girl's throat with a butcher knife. I wondered, as Dr. Seck spoke, how many of the children on that wall experienced something similar or if they all died of diseases, neglect, and other maladies of the day.

Another thing that I started to ponder during Dr. Seck's talk was the actual land and the "rules" that allowed the plantation owner's brother, Antoine Haydel, to rape a slave named Anna who conceived a baby named Victor. Information about Victor and his lineage can be found on the Wall of Honor page. Upon hearing the story of Antoine and Anna, I immediately started to think of Tee Bob and Mary Agnes in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and about Bonbon and Pauline in Of Love and Dust. I also began to ponder the land. Last spring, I took a class to New Orleans for a literary tour. I've been to New Orleans numerous times, and whenever I am there, or in another city, I think about who may have walked the streets before me. In New Orleans, that list would be very large. In fact, during the tour, the guide pointed out two buildings, both of which I had visited earlier that same day, where literary salons with Sherwood Anderson, Tennessee Williams, and others took place. I never would have guessed it. When I walk the land on River Lake Plantation, the thoughts about who walked here before me become stronger. The numbers decrease because of the rural setting, and I know that those who populated the land were either the perpetrators or recipients of oppression. I know that the people that Ernest Gaines writes about lived there, and are buried there. The connection is stronger. John Callahan has mentioned that on that land you can feel the spirit of the people. They are there. Even though I haven't been to Whitney Plantation yet, I imagine it is the same feeling. I know what occurred there, Super Bowls didn't, conferences didn't, huge Mardi Gras parades didn't, music festivals didn't. What occurred there is something we still live with, and something we must remember. I think Dr. Seck summed it best when he said the purpose of the plantation is "not to have anyone feel guilty but to teach people about the legacy of slavery." It is something that needs to be taught because its effects can be seen, as Gaines mentions, throughout the twentieth century and into our own. That is a discussion for another day.

To me, the Whitney appears akin to the Holocaust Museum. After you go, you cannot think about things the same way again. It also contains similarities to art and literature. These things bring us close to reality even though they are fabrications of it. They make us empathize and ponder the quandaries that surround us daily. I have written about this topic before, and I urge you to go back and read what I have to say about art's power over an audience.

I want to leave you with a couple of links about Whitney Plantation:

• Interview with Dr. Seck (KRVS)
• "Building the First Slavery Museum in America" (New York Times)
• "New Museum Depicts the Life of a Slave" (NPR)
• "The Whitney Plantation: Looking Back to Look ahead" (NBC12)

If you went to Dr. Seck's lecture or have been to the Whitney Plantation, what are your thoughts? Please share them below.

Banned Books Week and Ernest J. Gaines

Since this week is Banned Books Week, I thought it would be good to briefly discuss an instance where administrators removed Gaines' books from a school. In 1995, administrators removed copies of Gaines' The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman from the seventh-grade shelves in Conroe, TX. They removed the book because of racial epithets in the novel, specifically the use of the word "nigger." A group of about eight people pushed for the book to be removed from Travis Junior High because they "felt the descriptions of blacks and the use of a specific racial epithet [nigger] embarrassed black students in class." What makes this incident even more interesting is the fact that the leader of the group did not have a child at Travis Junior High; his nephew attended the school.

What prompted the removal and examination of Gaines' novel from the school? It turns out that the racial epithet was the main impetus; however, there is more to the story. The makeup of Travis Junior High in 1995 was 10% African American, 17% Latino, 72% white, and 1% other. In class, a teacher asked her students to read passages from the novel aloud. During these readings, the word appeared and caused some of the African American students to become embarrassed. Thinking about 12-13 year old children in this situation, it should come as no surprise that this would occur. As Donna Britt put it when covering the incident and speaking about herself at that age, "I was once a self-conscious seventh-grader in mostly white classes. I remember feeling on display, certain I was being studied by white classmates - whom I studied right back." Being asked to read passages that contain the word may not have been the best decision; however, did that warrant the removal of the book? 

Later, in the same article,  Britt thinks about what her mother would've said to her if she went home after school and informed about reading passages with the racial epithet aloud in class. She asked her mother, and her mother replied, saying, "I would have explained to you the history of that word and that ignorant people . . . made it very derogatory. . . . I'd have explained that many things in literature are derogatory. But Miss Jane Pittman's is a powerful story - in the end, that word wouldn't matter. . . . I can understand how people don't want to hear that word - I don't. . . . But it's the story of a woman who overcame. And anyway, (kids) run around calling each other that and pay no attention to it."

In another article, the anonymous author simply states, "This novel has been removed while a school district committee assesses the novel's appropriateness. Perhaps the committee will see what the handful of complaining parents has failed to see. That is, the novel is a valuable contribution to American literature. It tells a uniquely American story, one that seventh graders should be exposed to and expected to study." What this article fails to mention, though, is the reason why some asked for the novel to be removed. The author goes on to say, "Of course 'nigger' is an offensive word. But hiding from it and ignoring the time in which it was so commonly used is a disservice to young people. The term is as much part of our collective history as lynchings, the Klan, civil rights, and Dr. Martin Luther King. Shielding young people from the lessons of history only dooms them to ignorance and to repeating mistakes of the past." 

What does all of this mean? Should the Conroe Independent School District have removed the book and investigated its content? Should they have reacted so quickly when, as Britt argues, the incident could have been circumvented by not having students read passages aloud from the novel that contain the racial epithet? These are questions that should be discussed. I agree with both Britt and the anonymous author who argue, I would say, two separate points,but they both come to an agreement that the book is important because of the story it tells. The incident also provides us with an opportunity to discuss the way we teach and approach the subject of race in the classroom, specifically the junior high or high school classroom. Should we shield students from such language? Should we shield them from images that many of us find disturbing? Should they be allowed to read Morrison's The Bluest Eye even though it contains sexually graphic images of incest? Should young students be allowed to read Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian? I would argue yes. We can, of course, continue this conversation below.  

I would like to end with something Sherman Alexie said about his book being challenged. In his 2011 article "Why the Best Kids Books Are Written in Blood," from the Washington Post, Alexie writes,

When some cultural critics fret about the “ever-more-appalling” YA books, they aren’t trying to protect African-American teens forced to walk through metal detectors on their way into school. Or Mexican-American teens enduring the culturally schizophrenic life of being American citizens and the children of illegal immigrants. Or Native American teens growing up on Third World reservations. Or poor white kids trying to survive the meth-hazed trailer parks. They aren’t trying to protect the poor from poverty. Or victims from rapists.

For the Donna Britt and Sherman Alexie articles I provide links above. For the other articles, they came from the Ernest J. Gaines Center's archives. There is not information for bibliographic citations, so I am just leaving the quotes above as is.

"Idle White Rich" in Catherine Carmier

Map of False River in Pointe Coupee Parish. 

As Catherine drives Lillian home, Lillian looks out at the river and notices that the calm river soon breaks out in to waves as two motorboats roar over the surface. "In each boat was a boy and a girl waving and shouting at those in the other boat" as they raced towards Bayonne (39). Lillian comments that the occupants of the two boats are "the idle white rich" and they own the land and the river, not allowing the "poor" to fish it because "it's theirs to do what they want with it" (39). The map to the right shows how the land was divided amongst various individuals and families. Later in the novel, Jackson stands outside the store drinking a Coca-Cola and sees "[a] sailboat halfway out [on the river] drifting leisurely toward Bayonne" (174).  On the boat, Jackson can see the whites "diving off the boat, swimming away from it, then back to the boat again" (174). Jackson does not comment and call the whites "idle," but the scene resembles the one with Lillian earlier because in both instances the whites on the river appear to have nothing to do but partake in leisure activities.  

The two moments take up no more than two pages in a novel that consists of two hundred and forty eight. However, they are just as important as the rest of the novel because they point out that even though the novel centers around African Americans, Creoles, and Cajuns, the whites are the specter in the background they play an important role in the lives of the characters. Mack Grover sold land to Raoul, and Bud Grover , Mack's son, as discussed in another blog post, sold the prime farming land to the Cajuns. While they work the land, all Bud Grover, according to Aunt Charlotte, "do is drink. Ain't worth a penny" (29). Bud, like the "idle whites" on the river, has nothing to do except sit around and drink himself into a stupor while others work for him. Bud leases out the land to the Cajuns, who can  produce more crops than the African Americans because of the tractors, and all he has to do is rake in the profits.

Reigning over the land, the whites continually appear fleetingly throughout Catherine Carmier, and the themes that Gaines introduces in this novel recur in A Gathering of Old Men (1983). Here, Jack becomes the next Bud Grover. While everyone on Marshall is concerned about the shooting that happened down in the Quarters, before he can even hear about it, Jack Marshall lounges in a swing on the front galley passed out drunk, before twelve-thirty in the afternoon. Miss Merle tries to wake him up, but it is of no avail. Jack, like Bud Grover, has can idly waste his days away because others work to make him money. Elsewhere, Chimley discusses how Mat and he used to fish anywhere on the river whenever they wanted to. Now, however, they only have one little spot where they can fish because the white people "done bought up the river now, and [they] got nowhere to go but that one little spot" (27). Just as the whites parsed out the best farming land to other whites and to Cajuns, they also took control of the land, regulating where people can fish and where they can't. Chimley and Mat don't come in contact with the whites who "own" the river, but they feel the effects of that ownership hovering over them. Likewise, Lillian and Jackson do not encounter the "idle whites" on the river, except for at a distance; however, their presence is felt in the changing landscape of the Quarters and in the fact that the "poor" can no longer fish on the river.

The presence of whiteness in the background calls to mind Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1993) where Morrison argues that American literature, specifically white American literature, oozes with an African American presence. She talks about this presence in the works of Hemingway, Cather, and Poe. Along with calling to mind Morrison, the fact that the whites appear in the background in these instances, more precisely in Catherine Carmier, makes me think of the African American presence in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925). In a novel that many call a representation of the "Jazz Age," African Americans appear very, very infrequently. The only major appearance comes when Nick and Jay travel to New York. On the bridge into the city, they pass a car of African American revelers and a funeral hearse. Why, in a "Jazz Age" novel, do African Americans only really appear here? Could the revelers be seen as the democratization of the American Dream? As one blogger put it, the scenes in which African Americans appear in the most recent film version of The Great Gatsby by Baz Luhrmann show that the American Dream crosses racial lines. While that statement is debatable, it's worth looking at Catherine Carmier and The Great Gatsby through the same lens, the lens of the presence that is there yet is not there. In Fitzgerald's case that is African Americans; in Gaines', it is the "idle white rich."

As an interesting side note, when preparing this blog post I came across an article from 2000 where Carlyle V. Thompson argues that Gatsby is in fact "black." To a certain extent, this argument is intriguing, considering the proliferation of "passing" novels by African Americans during the 1920s and earlier. I think it is something worth thinking about, especially considering individuals like Jean Toomer as well and the discussions about eugenics that occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century. If you have any thoughts on any of this, feel free to leave a comment below.