SINOPSIS ESTADO DE LA NACION

Nordan has several recurring characters throughout his texts, Sugar Mecklin, Gilbert Mecklin, and Runt Conroy being some of the most memorable. Each of these characters is disabled in some way by his geography. We’ve already seen how Sugar is trapped by the

idioculture he is a product of. But, because he is most often portrayed as a young boy, he is easy to empathize with. Gilbert and Runt, two adult men, are more difficult to forgive and understand. But, Nordan makes it clear throughout his work that these men deserve the same understanding so freely given to their sons.

Gilbert Mecklin, Sugar’s father, is perhaps the more sympathetic of the two. Gilbert is an extension of Nordan himself in the same way Sugar is. Claiming Sugar as his son gives Gilbert an easier path to an in-group, since throughout the paper we’ve seen how Nordan uses Sugar as a point of relation for readers, especially in Music of the Swamp. Sugar, like many children, is often a source of hilarity, and because he is a child his missteps are forgivable. Furthermore, because Nordan views Sugar as an extension of himself, he is sentimental when it comes to writing about his moments of growth, which, like on the train in Music of the Swamp, often arise from his mistakes.

Grown men like Gilbert present a challenge for Nordan, especially because describing Gilbert’s shortcomings, as he describes Sugar’s, is more likely to result in Gilbert being written off as a drunk and a racist. Which, of course, he is. But, as we will see, Nordan makes it clear

that readers cannot reduce Gilbert to solely these adjectives. Despite this, Nordan gives readers a clear picture of Gilbert’s flaws. He is an alcoholic who wears “white painter’s overalls and a billed cap all day and then [gets] dressed up to drink,” he stares at himself in mirrors

remembering a woman he used to love as a young man while his wife tells him “if his heart had to break she wanted it to break inside her own chest,” and his son “grieves” and “celebrates” his “invisibility” in his father’s eyes (“Sugar, the Eunuchs” 32). It’s very clear throughout Nordan’s literature that Gilbert’s family is suffering because of him.

Yet, Nordan feels a profound empathy for Gilbert, perhaps more than he extends to any of his characters. In an interview with Blake Maher, Nordan discusses how readers will often ask him “Are you Sugar?” Nordan agrees that he is Sugar, but goes on to say that nobody has ever asked him, “Are you Gilbert?” Nordan says he believes he is Gilbert even more than he is Sugar, and finds that people empathize with him for having an alcoholic father even as

they forget to say it must have been hard for you to be an alcoholic and know that your children suffered the same way Sugar did…So there is a great deal of love I have for Gilbert even beyond the love I have for Sugar…I feel very deeply for him (Maher). Gilbert is the quintessential example of the white southern man “far along the line of bad choices and mistakes,” that Nordan wants to create an understanding for with his work (Maher).

Nordan’s “deep feeling” for Gilbert is obvious throughout his work both as he writes about him with a degree of tenderness often reserved for Sugar, and as he uses caricature based humor to build social understanding.

Nordan’s use of caricature in regard to Gilbert is especially apparent in “The All Girl Football Team,” a short story collection that focuses largely on Sugar’s relationship with his father. Gilbert gets his true introduction in the second short story of the collection: “The Talker

at the Freak Show.” The story is told in first person from Sugar’s point of view and details his desperation to go to the freak show with Gilbert in order to feel connected to him. Gilbert agrees to take his son but abandons him at the door.

Throughout this story, Nordan establishes that Gilbert is in the out-group. As Sugar looks around at the men waiting to enter the freak show tent, he decides his mother had been right about the audience. He is surrounded by drunks, “violent stupid men some of them, with Mama’s boy names” (“The Talker” 21). Furthermore, though Sugar tries his best, he is just not able to view these spectators the way Gilbert does, “as doomed and tragic men, romantic as explorers for their hidden pistols and whiskey-ruined, sun-ruined faces and lives” (“The Talker” 23). Throughout this scene, all Sugar can see is drunk men, so Gilbert’s fanciful imaginings of himself as a tragic hero becomes humorous to the outside observer. Especially because as the story progresses, Nordan makes it apparent that Gilbert is just another one of the many drunks in attendance. In short, the story illustrates the way Gilbert is entirely a part of the idioculture that surrounds him, one of many drunks. The story culminates with Sugar feeling so betrayed that he runs home to tell his mother that his father “ain’t worth it” (“The Talker” 27-8). Yet, despite Gilbert’s shortcomings Nordan makes it clear that Sugar and his Mama are trapped by their overwhelming love for Gilbert despite the fact that he continuously disappoints them. Though Sugar proclaims that his father “ain’t worth it” and his mother agrees, they cannot help but love him too much to leave (“The Talker”).

So, Gilbert is well established as a member of the out-group by final story in the

collection, “The All-Girl Football Team.” He is the perfect example of a man it is easy to write off as a good-for-nothing. Especially because he disappoints his son again in the other story he is the focus of: “Sugar, the Eunuchs, and Big G.B.” In this story, Gilbert fails to take his son

hunting, and Sugar begins pretending G.B. is his father. But, he returns to Gilbert in the end, once again overpowered by his deep love for him (“Sugar, the Eunuchs”).

“The All-Girl Football Team,” the collection’s titular story, focuses on Gilbert and his son’s experiences dressing in drag, and begins by reaffirming Gilbert’s position in the out-group. Gilbert is at first “all-man,” “defined” by his maleness to Sugar and inaccessible to him (“All Girl” 113). This becomes even truer when Gilbert dresses in drag. Sugar, the first person narrator and a young boy desperate for his father’s love, is in the in-group of this story because of

proximity, and because he often plays the straight man as Gilbert’s actions become more and more bizarre.

For instance, when Gilbert helps Sugar dress in drag to participate as a cheerleader in the school’s “all-girl football game” his actions do not mirror any readily accessible social script dictating father-son interaction. As Gilbert helps his very uncomfortable middle-school aged son get dressed up he says:

“I will dress you in a skirt and a sweater and nice underwear and you will feel beautiful.” I [Sugar] said, “Uh…”

He [Gilbert] said, “You have never felt beautiful,” I [Sugar} said, “Well…” (“All Girl” 118).

This is obviously not an interaction that would calm down a young boy, especially not one who is insisting that he does not want to dress as a girl. Gilbert’s caricatured oddity in conjunction with Sugar’s bluntly weirded-out attitude create a great deal of situational comedy here and as the story continues. This reaffirms the social group Sugar shares with readers, as both are laughing at or uncomfortable with Gilbert’s oddity. Sugar feels more and more “like a fool,” as he puts on more pieces of his costume pushing his father further into the out-group as a bizarre

caricature (“All Girl” 119). Despite the humor, this is one of the only moments in the text during which Gilbert is attentive to his son’s needs. He, in a non-traditional fashion (especially for the 1960s Mississippi Delta) is the most fatherly he has ever been at this point. This sudden

softening towards his son allows readers a point of access to Gilbert. He is bizarre, but he loves his child.

Once Sugar acclimates to drag, Nordan begins to use the same type of caricature-based humor he did with Gilbert to describe Sugar’s reactions. Sugar, dressed as a cheerleader, walks down the road and suddenly believes with absolute certainty that he is a lesbian. He says: “I felt like a fool for not having noticed before” (“All Girl” 124). Eventually, overcome with emotion Sugar begins to cry. The scene is both sentimental and comical. Of course Sugar is not a lesbian. In fact, he believes he’s a lesbian because he feels attracted to Tony Pirelli, another boy in drag. It’s hilarious. But, in this moment Sugar is so caught up in the experience, that much like his father, he stops acting logically. Suddenly Gilbert’s perception of reality is no different than Sugar’s. The difference between their viewpoints (bisociation) has disappeared, and the joke disappears with it. So, this is not a moment that pushes Sugar in to the out-group with Gilbert. Rather, the moment of matching perspectives pulls Gilbert into the in-group. Sugar’s new understanding of his father translates to readers as well. It is in this moment, walking down the street in drag, that Sugar realizes and makes peace with the fact that he is his “father’s child” (“All Girl” 125). This is a moment of deep connection and the sky fills with “magic” or

“meaning” for Sugar as he understands that his father, in his own way, is trying to love him (“All Girl”). Since Sugar has been in the in-group for the entire collection, this connection extends out to readers as well.

shortcomings, is just as worthy of empathy as his son is. If Sugar, as a young boy, can succumb with “spite” to the idioculture around him, surely his father, who has been inundated in the culture for far longer, is having an even more difficult time escaping the negative pieces of his heritage (Music). Nordan’s use of caricature on Sugar during this experience in drag illustrates this. If it is possible to understand Sugar, it is possible to understand Gilbert. He is both a man who will drink in the bathroom with his son is watching and a man who will carefully make-up his son’s face so he can experience what it is to be beautiful (“Freak Show” 20, “All Girl”). Nordan insists that we cannot throw out the good with the bad when it comes to Gilbert.

Furthermore, Nordan offers Gilbert chances at redemption in texts like Wolf Whistle. Gilbert plays a minor role in the novel, appearing more as scenery than an actual character. But, after Solon’s murder trial, Gilbert, like the rest of the town, is so deeply affected by the horror of Bobo’s murder that he attempts to become a better person and quits drinking. In response, the distraught bartender Red insists, “Gilbert’s too good a friend. Gilbert wouldn’t do that to me” (Wolf Whistle 264). This one-liner, which paints Red as self-absorbed, pushing him into the out- group and Gilbert into the in-group, emphasizes the idioculture Gilbert is a part of. For Gilbert, sobriety is a chance to be a better father and husband. Yet, the majority of his life until this point has been spent inside Red’s Goodlookin Bar and Gro, and the men there aren’t willing to let him go. He can’t hang out with drunks without being one himself. And these men are his best friends. Nordan uses their dismayed responses to illustrate how difficult it will be for Gilbert to change his ways. Nordan wants readers to empathize with the fact that he is trying, despite it all. His humor, whether directed at Red, Sugar, or Gilbert, helps readers reach this point of empathy. Taken together, Nordan’s passages on Gilbert reflect a full understanding of both his shortcomings and his value. His caricature of either Gilbert or the men (like Red) surrounding

him serves to illustrate both his failures and successes as a man in a way that creates an entire picture. Gilbert outgrows the stereotype of the poor alcoholic Mississippian over the course of Nordan’s work, which is exactly what Nordan intends for all his characters to do.

Nordan’s writing about Runt Conroy runs a similar course. Runt is Arrow Catcher’s town drunk. Nordan writes about him extensively in Music of the Swamp, and as he does with Gilbert, he does not shy away from detailing his failings as a father and husband. In the words of Nordan, Runt is “white trash” (Music 89). It is not desirable to relate to a “weasely” gravedigger who works only when he is “sober enough,” so Runt begins in an out-group (Music 89). Yet, Nordan moves him slowly into the in-group with caricature. Just as he caricatured Sugar to build

understanding with Gilbert, Nordan caricatures the entire Conroy family to build sympathy for Runt. Nordan uses the Conroy matriarch, Fortunata, as the butt of these jokes. Runt’s children include:

twin girls, Cloyce and Joyce, children who spoke in unison. There was a misfit child named Jeff Davis who believed his pillow was on fire. And, of course there was the boy near my age, Roy Dale, and a very young child, about four, named Douglas, whose only ambition when he grew up was to become an apple (Music 89).

The children themselves are giggle inducing, but it is Fortunata who makes the family truly laughable. Fortunata is angry…

She seemed especially angry at Douglas, the child of low ambition. She berated him for it. She encouraged him to want to be something finer than an apple. She threatened to beat him if he did not change his mind. “You will always be white trash,” she said to this four-year-old child. “You will never amount to anything…” (Music 89-90).

herself to sleep because her son decides he’d like to be a cork when he reaches adulthood (Music 90). Fortunata’s reminder to her son here, that he’ll “always be white trash,” and “never amount to anything,” is necessary to take note of. Like Douglas, many of Nordan’s characters, including Gilbert and Runt, have been told by everyone from their mothers to men at a bar that they are nothing but white trash. This sentiment seems to take root in many of these men’s minds, and eventually many of Nordan’s characters truly believe that they will never, or have never, amounted to anything. This reflects in their actions, especially in their alcoholism.

Runt, for instance, truly believes his wife when she berates him. We watch one instance of this through Sugar’s perspective when he attends a sleepover at Roy Dale’s house. Since Sugar is the narrator and Roy Dale is his peer and confidant for the chapter, he and Roy Dale can be assumed to represent the in-group. Sugar enters the Conroy house and watches Runt “the way normal children watch television” (Music 94). As Sugar watches, Runt desperately tries to please Fortunata, who believes their home stinks, by washing the basement with pine-sol. Unfortunately for Runt, “This place stinks!” is a refrain that Fortunata uses to accuse him not only for the smell in the house, but also for, “his alcoholism, his birthright, his genes, his occupation, his adulteries real or imagined, his very breath” (Music 94). In other words, the smell can’t be scrubbed away with a little pine-sol. Yet, Runt miserably crawls around his basement floor, desperately trying to clean it up. The moment is a reflection of both his belief that he, in simple terms “stinks,” and an example of one of many times he tires to fix the problem.

As Runt scrubs, Nordan moves Fortunata farther into the out-group with a callback. She walks into the cellar, in a bad mood after work, ready to fight with Runt. According to Nordan, “God had denied Fortunata two gifts and Fortunata is here to prove it” (Music 97). Fortunata often tells her young students that God has denied her a pleasing voice and face, so the mention

of it both recalls the humor of the classroom scene and emphasizes Fortunata’s position in the out-group because of her bizarre classroom antics earlier. Nordan has made a joke about

Fortunata just as he begins to paint Runt; whose son has just told him the pine-sol “stinks” worse than the cellar did, in a sympathetic light (Music 95). It is clear in this moment that the world is against Runt. He is trying to atone for his past mistakes, whether they are adopting a cat that pees all over the basement, or failing as a husband, but it is too-little, too-late.

Nordan refers to the deflated Runt as a “wounded man,” here inspiring pity and pushing the real reasons for Fortunata’s anger off of center stage (Music 95). At this point, despite the fact that, “Runt is probably drunk, has probably already betrayed [Fortunata] today with another woman, or several,” is less relevant (Music 97). Readers have laughed at Fortunata and her children and are starting to pity Runt, who really is doing his best.

Nordan then places Runt into the in-group with the help of his son. As Fortunata begins to scream at Runt for the smell, which Runt believes he is guilty for, Roy Dale says “I like the way it smells,” hoping to end the fight (Music 99). Since Roy Dale is in the in-group with Sugar, and readers have been laughing at Fortunata already, this pushes Runt into relatable territory. The world is making it impossible for him to atone for his mistakes, and that is something easy