The Gracious Afterward: Delta Stories - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

These stories in The Gracious Afterward: Delta Stories, are of a by-gone era, voices from the deep beginning, are fiction, informed though in very specific and detailed ways by one who lived the times. The period spanned is approximately 1914-1922. The place: Mississippi, Washington County, and the American South. Hearing stories from an original source, to me, is sometimes like the soft hours before waking. There is dream; there is light; there is an awareness of where you are, or possibly are not. Morning is there as iridescent as lighted clock hands. The source and inspiration of these stories lived a long and lucid life, and she wished to remain anonymous. Call it modesty, old-fashioned as it is. But she was, and I hope, will carry her voice to future generations. Truffaut, the French filmmaker, said of director John Ford, “Ford was an artist who never said the word ‘art,’ a poet who never mentioned poetry.” It strikes me that my dear subject who never ascribed the grandiose to her life, never thought of art, never thought of it as anything special, was a wellspring, a fount, a storyteller. I am a conduit, a writer fortunate to have known her, who’s added some language, structure and detail to the oral history. Stories such as these call for only the most cogent of memories and memory. Many of the quotes, even swatches of dialogue, character traits, details, story elements, in fact, come directly from the storyteller. This writing is not necessarily to be construed as a typical plantation or typical representation of the period. Fact-checking over 100 years later isn’t a parabolic path from start to finish. It brings to mind Henry David Thoreau who spoke of what he called the “residual truth.” I trust and hope that essence remains when the story changes to accommodate a form. Certainly, I must take responsibility for any breeches of detail, but I hope that anyone reading the book can feel the flood as we bask in the memories of a youthful, distant world, of some lovely, struggling, people in a distinctive world. - Irv Broughton

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