Nights with Uncle Remus

Table of Contents

 

 

NIGHTS WITH UNCLE REMUS

JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS was born in Eatonton, Georgia, in 1845. Setting type and learning to write under Joseph Addison Turner's mentoring at nearby Turnwold Plantation, Harris later worked for newspapers in Macon and Forsyth. He served as Associate Editor for the
Savannah Morning News
(1870-1876) and for the
Atlanta Constitution
(1876-1900). Harris earned reputations as a literary comedian, a talented and resourceful amateur folklorist, a local-color fiction writer, a children's author, and a major New South journalist. He wrote 185 Uncle Remus tales, seven volumes of short fiction, four novels and six collections of children's stories. Harris's portraits of poor whites and his socio-logically and rhetorically complex Brer Rabbit trickster stories have influenced generations of writers, from Mark Twain to Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Julius Lester. Harris's creation of highly animated, believably anthropomorphic animal characters also helped reinvent the modern children's story, from Rudyard Kipling's jungle tales to Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit stories. Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby have also become popular culture icons. Harris died in 1908.

 

JOHN T. BICKLEY earned his B.A. in Literature from Florida State University and his M.A. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is currently working as a fiction editor and completing his Ph.D. in Medieval English Literature, with a minor in Film, at Florida State. He has published fiction as well as articles on film, the humanities, and Native American anthropology.

 

R. BRUCE BICKLEY, JR., Griffith T. Pugh Professor of English at Florida State University, received his B.A. in English from the University of Virginia and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Duke University. He has published
The Method of Melville's Short Fiction
and six books on Joel Chandler Harris.

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First published in the United States of America by James R. Osgood and Company 1883
This edition with an introduction by John T Bickley and R. Bruce Bickley, Jr.,
published in Penguin Books 2003

 

Introduction copyright © John T. Bickley and R. Bruce Bickley, Jr., 2003

All rights reserved

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

 

 

Harris, Joel Chandler, 1848-1908.
Nights with Uncle Remus / Joel Chandler Harris ; edited and with an introduction by
R. Bruce Bickley and John Bickley.
p. cm.—(Penguin classics)
Includes bibliographical references.

eISBN : 978-1-101-01040-2

1. Remus, Uncle (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Georgia—Social life and
customs—Fiction. 3. African American men—Fiction. 4. Plantation life—Fiction.
5. Animals—Fiction. I. Bickley, R. Bruce, 1942- II. Bickley, John T. III. Title. IV. Series.
PS1806.A2B53 2003
813'.4—dc21 2003050438

 

 

 

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Introduction

In the summer of 1882, still flush with the popular and critical success of
Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings
(1880), Joel Chandler Harris was waiting to catch a train in Norcross, Georgia, twenty miles northeast of Atlanta. Harris explains in detail the unique experience he had that night, and he made sure to include this important episode in his introduction to his second book,
Nights with Uncle Remus: Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation
(1883). The train was late, and darkness had already fallen when Harris overheard several black railroad workers sitting in small groups on the platform and perched on crossties, cracking jokes at each other's expense and laughing boisterously. Harris sat down next to one of the liveliest talkers in the group, a middle-aged worker. After enjoying their banter for awhile, Harris heard someone in the crowd mention “Ole Molly Har'.” Suddenly inspired, and “in a low tone, as if to avoid attracting attention,” Harris narrated the tar-baby story to his companion, “by way of a feeler.”

Harris reconstructs in some detail what occurred next, a folkloristic event any ethnologist today would swap the SUV for. The lively man next to Harris kept interrupting the tar-baby narration with loud and frequent comments—“Dar now!” and “He's a honey, mon!” and “Gentermens! git out de way, an' gin 'im room!” Suddenly, Harris's audience of one grows exponentially into a storytelling community of thirty.

 

Harris notes that some of the black workers told stories poorly, “giving only meager outlines,” while others “told them passing well.” And then he adds that “one or two, if their language and gestures could have been taken down, would have put Uncle Remus to shame.” Harris, always the astute observer, stresses that a storyteller's language and gestures must interact with the audience's emotions to create a truly memorable oral performance.