Wolf Whistle (28 page)

What other works have influenced your writing?

DC Comics—I preferred ones that mythologized a world, such as
Superman
with his secret identity that kept people from knowing exactly who he was.

And the rhythms of nursery rhymes influence my writing. I hear songs and rhythms such as jump-rope chants before I ever get the words. I often have to search for the right words to fit the rhythms that are already there in my mind.

Songs and rhythms, especially of blues music, seem important to your books. How does blues music influence your writing?

My feelings about blues music are all tied up with my feelings about black people. In the '40s and '50s when I was growing up in the South, Blues and Rhythm and Blues were forbidden—“race music” they called it then. But for some reason, my parents let me listen to it. And I listened compulsively. I knew the words to the most obscure songs. When I was twelve, I got a harmonica, thinking because I had listened so closely to the music that I would teach myself to play it. But I couldn't do it.

And later I would seek that music out. I remember being the only white face in the black clubs because I wanted to hear that music and be a part of it. And one time my parents took me to a club where a black piano player named Al took me aside and taught me to play an eight-beat measure. He told me that was a “boogie-woogie beat.” He said, “If you listen you'll hear it underneath most of the songs you listen to. And you can probably hear it other places, too.” I took that metaphorically,
to mean I would hear it out in the world. And now I often find myself writing “eight to the bar.” I deliberately tried to incorporate it into the sections of
Wolf Whistle
that include the Blues musicians.

Robert Johnson seems to hold special sway over
Wolf Whistle,
since the Blues musicians are often playing his music. Can you tell us more about that?

The connection is a little mysterious for me, not a direct and easily articulated one. He was a hero for me when I was a kid, and I had so few heros.

In many ways Robert Johnson has become a kind of mythological figure, the quintessential Blues musician. He was said to have bargained with the devil for his talent. He drank a lot, ran with women, and was poisoned by a jealous husband. They recently found his grave near my hometown in Mississippi and I always make a point of going there when I'm down that way. And, of course, Emmett Till was also killed near my hometown, so I'm sure there's some connection my mind is making there.

The murder of Emmett Till had a tremendous impact on the civil rights movement. How did it affect your life?

I had never really thought there was something wrong with black and white schools, white and black water fountains, white and black bathrooms, blacks in the back of the bus, and grown people saying “Sir” to children.

Wolf Whistle
is in some ways an angry book. I still have a hard time talking about my upbringing in the South without a certain anger rising up in me. I feel angry sometimes that I was limited in these ways—although it's nobody else's fault—that I was put in a position of treating a whole race of people like peasants, like animals. And the story I
wanted to tell was what happened to the people in a community where a murder was committed and they suddenly realized it might be their fault. This is the white story of the murder of Emmett Till.

Growing up in the South used to seem like a limitation on my writing. Now it just seems like it's what I was intended to write about. I wasn't able to write about the place when I was there. I have to speak about my characters from a distance, because that way I can do it more lovingly.

1.
Wolf Whistle
is based on an actual racial incident in Mississippi. How does knowing this affect your reading of the novel?

2. The writer makes use of rather unorthodox presentations of events. We experience certain events through the “voices” of pigeons and buzzards, and see them through the magic eye in the swamp. How do these “magical” points of view affect the overall vision of the book?

3. Solon Gregg is as despicable a villain as we are likely to find in literature. Most readers, however, do find points of sympathy. Did you ever sympathize with Solon? Why or why not?

4. Lord Montberclair says, “Decent whitefolks have always needed the likes of you” when he hires Solon Gregg to kill Bobo. Why does a rich, powerful man like Montberclair need someone like Solon?

5. Later in the novel, Lady Montberclair and Alice Conroy seem likely to become friends. What draws them together? How does their bond differ from that of Lord Montberclair and Solon?

6. Bobo, who sets the events in motion in
Wolf Whistle,
is the one character whose point of view is not represented in the novel. Why is that?

7. Though Bobo is the center of events, Alice Conroy is the main character. What was your reaction to her teaching methods? What does she teach the children? What does she learn?

8. Lewis Nordan's writing is greatly influenced by Blues music. Cite some examples of this influence. How does it affect your experience of the story?

9.
Wolf Whistle
is the story of a tragic event, yet it has very comic elements. What is your reaction to this combination of humor and tragedy?

10. In the novel, as in real life, the murderers are acquitted. Do you think the verdict would be different today? What recent events support your conclusion?

If
Wolf Whistle
has roused your interest in the Till murder, you can read more about the case in the following sources, suggested by Lewis Nordan.

A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till
by Stephen J. Whitfield, 1988.

This is the definitive work on the story of the murder and the trial.

Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years 1954-1965
by Juan Williams, 1987.

The relevant part of this book was made into a popular segment for public television.

“Reflections on the Emmett Till Case” by William Simpson, in
Southern Miscellany,
edited by Frank Allen Dennis, 1981.

Between the Lines: A Reporters Personal Journey through Public Events
by Dan Wakefield,1966.

Wolf Whistle
by William Bradford Huie, 1959.

My title is taken from this book, of course. There is a fifty-page essay in this book that was written from a paid interview given by the murderers. I spoke with Emmett's mother recently about this essay, and she disputed some of the statements they present as fact. She said that her son had such a serious stammer that it would have been impossible for him to have spoken the words put into his mouth by the killers. She also ridiculed the idea that Emmett would have bragged of sleeping with white women. She said that he was an innocent child who had slept with no one, and that there were no white girls or women in their lives for him to have slept with in any case. This book is out of print.

Available from Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Lightning Song

“
Portnoy's Complaint set on a llama farm in Mississippi.” —
Self
magazine

When twelve-year-old Leroy Dearman's Uncle Harris arrives, life on the family llama farm takes on an entirely different flavor. Equilibrium tilts, lightning strikes, and Leroy finds himself kissing his innocence good-bye.

Fiction • Paperback edition: ISBN 978-1-56512-220-8

The Sharpshooter Blues

“This is not just a good book, this is a marvelous book.” —
Voice Literary Supplement

One fateful day in the Delta town of Arrow Catcher, an orphaned teen, known as The Sharpshooter, shows off his fancy moves at the William Tell grocery, but when Hydro Raney, the sweet, simple hero of the book, tries his hand, the results are cataclysmic.

Fiction • Paperback edition: 978-1-56512-182-9

Music of the Swamp

“Lordy, Lordy, can Lewis Nordan write!”—
Los Angeles Times Book Review

The summers Sugar Mecklin turns ten, eleven, and twelve are a time “in which magic might prove once and for all to be true.” It's a time when he discovers singing mice in his mattress, hears Elvis on the Philco, and dreams of mermaids in the swamp.

Fiction • Paperback edition: ISBN 978-1-61620-257-6

Sugar Among the Freaks

“Mr. Nordaris stories are splendid.” —
The New York Times Book Review

Fifteen stories for which the incomparable Lewis Nordan has plundered his own prodigiously rich stores of imagination and memory to give birth to his magnificent—and ongoing—creation, the mythical town of Arrow Catcher, Mississippi.

Stories • Paperback edition: 978-1-61620-258-3

Boy with Loaded Gun

“The Huck Finn-like tale of an irresistible oddball turns into a heartrending account… A must for fans of Nordan's quirky fiction.” —
Entertainment Weekly

“The best thing Nordan's ever written. It's also the most honest, painful, unexpected and powerful sharing of a life.” —
The Jackson (MS) Clarion-Ledger

“Tracking a wild youth to a redeemed adulthood via a hilarious, tragic path,
Boy with Loaded Gun
is a spiritual autobiography about a determined kid forging an identity in a confusing world … Your own life may seem more incredible after you read it, your vision of what it means to be alive never quite the same.”—
Men's Journal

Memoir • Paperback edition: ISBN 978-1-61620-259-0

L
EWIS
N
ORDAN
grew up in Itta Bena, Mississippi, and was fifteen when Emmett Till was murdered. A professor of creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh for many years, he was the author of seven books of fiction and a memoir. His many awards include three American Library Association Notable Book citations, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for fiction, the Mississippi Authors Award for fiction, and the Souther Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.

Published by

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Post Office Box 2225

Chapel Hill, N.C. 27515-2225

a division of

Workman Publishing Company, Inc.

225 Varick Street

New York, New York 10014

Copyright © 1993 by Lewis Nordan.

All rights reserved.

First paperback edition, March 1995. Originally published in hardcover by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 1993.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Story magazine, where
Chapter 1
of this novel appeared as “Get Well Soon.”

“I Just Want to Make Love to You,” written by Willie Dixon, © 1959, 1987 Hoochie Coochie Music. Administered by Bug. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person is intended or should be inferred.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

eISBN 978-1-56512-913-9

“Nordan bathes his characters with an ornery love, made all the more remarkable since his aim is high comedy. By ‘high comedy,' I mean to imply Shakespeare and Zora Neale Hurston, Calderon and Eudora Welty … for his goal is to get us to laugh at the whole of human existence — the pity, the horror, the vanity, the courage — and leave us with a more profound sense of it all.”

— Randall Kenan,
The Nation

“A stunning and translucent novel, a gem. Nordan's take uncannily transforms the Till murder into universal experience.”

—Willie Morris, author of
North Towards Home
and
New York Days

“Lewis Nordan has come as near as any writer yet—maybe nearer—to displaying the naked heart of this country's embedded racism.”

—Reynolds Price, author of
Kate Vaiden
and
Blue Calhoun

“Approaches the beauty and emotional reverberations of a cantata.”

—Alan Cheuse,
Dallas Morning News

“Wolf Whistle
is flat-out wonderful.”

— Leon Rooke,
Washington Post Book World

“Races down the track like the Dixie Flyer.”

—
Newsweek

“A high-wire act — of surprising tenderness — that can only enhance Nordan's reputation.”

—
Kirkus Reviews,
starred review

“Why does
Wolf Whistle
succeed against all odds? Nordan has an exceptional ear, a tightrope walker's balance and, most important, a decency so certain it disarms us.”