Movement to heal Civil War wounds grows; St. Louis a good case in point

Sadly, falsehoods justifying Confederacy symbols persist

Some of the myths (falsehoods) sown by Southern planters—and cultivated from the antebellum period and Reconstruction to Jim Crow—stubbornly cling to some perceptions of this pivotal upheaval in American history. These include the myth of the "happy" slave and the "benevolent" master, and the notion that the Civil War was not fought over slavery, but over states’ rights and secession. These are specious arguments.

What states wanted was the right to own slaves!

Still an emotional and controversial issue 150 years after the Civil War, the movement to remove Confederate war symbols (monuments, statues, as well as flags) from our public places, thankfully, has grown, reawakening passions and awareness of what these symbols mean and the reasons behind them, and creating front page news from South Carolina to Texas. [The New York Times: “Calls to Drop Confederate Emblems Spread Nationwide.”]

Monument moved from Forest Park in St. Louis to the Missouri Civil War Museum at Jefferson Barracks.

The St. Louis Example

Nothing could be a better barometer of times a-changin’ than here in Missouri, technically a Union state during the war, but with strong Confederate leanings. Recently in St. Louis, moving a Confederate war memorial from the city’s Forest Park to the Missouri Civil War Museum at Jefferson Barracks, an active military post during the Civil War, drew some outrage, with one letter to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch claiming: “over fifty thousand blacks fought for the Confederacy. “ [The St. Louis American, U.S. News & World Report]

This is nonsense.

The truth is, with the war lost, Gen. Robert E. Lee attempted to have the Confederacy draft slaves to fight the Union, offering them freedom in return for their service. This proposal, however, drove Confederate state legislatures into an uproar, one prominent senator declaring: “If we allow this, the war has had no point.” [Daily Beast]

Was maintaining racial superiority more important than victory?

Historically, on a rare occasion when a black Confederate company was formed and marched through a town, they were hardly met with cheers and roses. Rather, citizens actually threw rocks at them. Black Confederate soldiers never did get into battle, although there was some shooting: more a warning “don’t come this way” than an actual battle.

On the other hand, over 100,000 black soldiers and sailors, including many free blacks, did fight for the Union to free their people and to established their full manhood in the country in which they were born.

A great book on the trials and challenges of black Union soldiers is A Grand Army of Black Men, Edited by Edwin S. Redkey. [See MELUS article.]

This “principle” is demonstrated in my upcoming Civil War novel, Honor Among Outcasts, the second in my DarkHorse Trilogy (October release). Here, the war is raging, and the DarkHorse men (former partners from Book 1, The Lies That Bind) have joined the Union army to fight Confederate guerrillas in western Missouri. Since “colored” (black) regiments were required to have a (superior) white officer, this role is played ironically by their partner, pacifist/abolitionist/foolhardy Durksen Hurst.

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Note: An important element of the DarkHorse Trilogy, and my most personally compelling reason for writing it, is to debunk these hurtful falsehoods by showing the values, hopes, fears, ambitions—and flaws—we all share as human beings, and our equal right as Americans, white and black, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

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Stranger than Fiction: The Intersection Between History and Imagination

The other day I was thinking about why so many of us love historical fiction. Why historical fiction, an adaption built upon past reality, as opposed to literary fiction, mystery or thriller genres, wholly based upon creative or imaginary constructions? (Some historical fiction is, in fact, quite literary.)

For one, history is much richer than most writers’ imaginations. As human actions are so varied and unpredictable, actual history is, therefore, far stranger than fiction. Yet, if you think of the figures of the past as real people—flesh and blood creatures with fears and desires like our own—then even their most improbable actions make perfect sense. We know what they did—that part is history. But deducing their motives, understanding the conflicts inherent in their times—and writing about them in a way that shows them to be parallel to the issues of our time in a meaningful way—takes imagination.

We writers tend to sculpt history’s icons to fit narratives that justify our own belief systems, to use the real struggles of historical figures to prove that our own ideas are somehow the inevitable result of humankind’s progress. But the men and women of the past were not chess pieces moved by the grand hand of history. They were people as complex and contradictory as you or I, living in what was not really a simpler time. Far from it.

Bringing History Alive
In every crisis throughout history, the result was in grave doubt at the time it transpired. Thus, the real drama that makes a good story already exists. It is up to the writer to bring it alive. Further, not all the historical forces we admire today succeeded. Look at Athens, its Golden Age snuffed out by military force. Or consider the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. The so-called “Good Guys” sometimes lose; and their cause, if not lost entirely, can be delayed, often for centuries.

Even when the Good Guys triumphed, it was often only by a razor’s edge. Take the American Revolution. Was democracy certain to survive against the powerful British world empire? Not at all. Was the Union destined to win the America Civil War? In fact, was slavery necessarily destined to end in the Nineteenth Century? Perhaps without Abraham Lincoln’s personal predisposition against the South’s “peculiar institution,” 1865 might have been just another year.

Literature is Character
And that gets to my main point—that historical figures were real people, with depth, personal quirks, and dimensions that even the greatest writers would have difficulty creating. Think of Abraham Lincoln as a fictional character. Problems with depression. Burdens that would crush most humans—including the loss of two beloved children! And his wife who had deep problems of her own. Not to mention he had a chaotic war to manage. Yet, his wisdom soared above his time. His mercy and foresight are justifiably legendary. And the whole poor boy/self-taught/log cabin background? How about rising from a country lawyer to represent the powerful railroads? And taking a stand against slavery, with his great Cooper’s Union speech, and then becoming president?

And Lincoln’s wit and storytelling? He was a great writer himself, not merely his speeches, but also his use of simple country humor to explain very complex issues.

How could you possibly conceive of a greater character than that?

Two Categories
There is more than one type of historical novel. One type takes actual events and, through good writing, dramatizes them. This is what Michael Shaara has done in The Killer Angels, one of the novels in his trilogy in which he dramatizes battles of the Civil War.

Then there is the imaginative use of the past to create an entirely new story, an alternative history, with deep themes. Joseph Conrad does this in Heart of Darkness, which makes an important statement about imperialism. Or E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, which mixes historical figures and fictional characters to reveal issues surrounding racism, marriage, women’s rights, and more.

My novel, The Lies That Bind (Book 1 in my DarkHorse Trilogy), is this second category of fiction. Using some unusual twists and concepts, The Lies That Bind attempts to create a new experience for the reader, even though it is set in a familiar place and time, a rural hamlet in antebellum Mississippi. Using this method enabled me to offer the reader different perspectives on race, gender, family dysfunction, friendship and brotherhood, power lust, economic markets, and a host of other issues. Precisely because The Lies That Bind isn’t tied to actual events, I was free to add in surprising plot twists, as well as pathos, irony, humor, really anything that I felt fit the story.

There is much good reading out there to fulfill and enlighten historical novel readers of all kinds. For me, I’m re-reading Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose.

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Historical Novel Society Review of The Lies That Bind: “The action and drama are compelling from the first page to the exciting conclusion. The animosity between the French plantation and Hurst builds to an exciting and surprising climax. Antoinette is so mysterious, one doesn’t know of her mission until the end. Highly recommended, and I am anxious to read the next installment.”

The Book Title: Doorway to the Story

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Saw the Steven Spielberg film “Bridge of Spies,” this weekend, which vividly reproduced the paranoia of the post-WWII/Cold War era. The Soviets were hardliners, no doubt;, but we had many of our own hard cases, too. Both the U. S. and the Soviets had a long slug to victory over the Nazis. And, naturally, hardliners in both camps were in the ascendancy after VE Day. That’s the way it works.

As a writer, reflecting on “Bridge” got me thinking of the importance of titles, both of movies and books. That, of course, led me to thinking about the title of my own forthcoming novel, The Lies That Bind (TouchPoint Press, November 2015): a dark, ironic, and twisted tale of intrigue in the antebellum South.

I’ve been asked by other writers how I came up with the title, and I can honestly say it was a major headache–until it appeared in a flash of light. The challenge was how to encapsulate the story’s many elements, overall mood, themes, and time and place. Do you try to elicit mood or do you get specific?

That’s a lot to pack into a few words, and still try to entice a reader to wonder about its meaning and to pick the book off the shelf.

I haven’t yet read Strangers on a Train (the book by James B. Donovan the movie was based on), but I’m guessing the “Bridge” in the movie title relates not only to the physical Glienicke Bridge between East and West Berlin, but to the connection bridged between the mutually hostile East and West that brought about the story’s humanitarian Powers/Able/student prisoner exchange. On a human level, “Bridge” also alludes to the respect that developed between Able, the Soviet spy, and Donovan, the lawyer reluctantly representing him, as men of principle, without painting either as evil or enemies in the Cold War.

A good title focuses on a book’s central theme.
Hanks (as Donovan) argued artfully and logically not to put Abel to death so that he might be used a future pawn if an American were captured. Donovan was an insurance wheeler-dealer, a regular guy, not a political hardliner, and diplomacy won out over vengeance and death. Hey, we’re still trying to learn that lesson today, right?

My book title, The Lies That Bind, focuses the reader on the story’s central themes, too. But unlike the phrase “the ties that bind,” which has a positive connotation, Lies shows the dark side of life in Southern slave society, with people held together through deceit, bound by falsehoods: injustice, subterfuge, and outright intimidation. See synopsis.

 Yet, though the novel’s characters must live lies and live with lies, oppression can never be omnipotent. The opposite is true, in fact. This story shows that the only way we can fulfill our highest aspirations is to find the truth deep in our own hearts. It’s a battle we never stop fighting within ourselves.

In a macro sense, too, The Lies That Bind shows that a society built on falsehood and injustice is fated for an upheaval that will bring it crashing down. If you doubt that,  just look at the former Soviet Union and its puppet, East Germany, which “Bridge of Spies” presents so well. And, historically, regarding The Lies That Bind, what was the result of the slavery system? I think my novel dramatizes it pretty clearly.

See you next week. Good reading!

Introducing Big Josh: the Undervalued African-American

Each semester I have the privilege of teaching a writing course for college juniors and seniors at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. This past semester’s was an evening class attended by so-called “non-traditional students,” meaning I had more students who were a bit older, worked full time, and had full family responsibilities, including wives or husbands, children, and even grandchildren to support. And although school is quite a drag on their limited time and energies, they push ahead to get their degrees.

A good percentage of the students were African-American, and their personal sacrifices and drive to excel would open the eyes of any citizen whose perception of them was formed basically through the lens of local newscasts, sensationalized headlines or talk radio, and little to no actual interaction with them as individuals (more in future blogs). On top of their other responsibilities, the adults in my class devote much time to their churches and charities, to helping others when some of them could use a helping hand themselves. Is it any wonder I so greatly admire their work ethic and perseverance in their efforts to better themselves and their families?

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"Uncle Jim" Lawson

Big Josh: Giving Credit Where Due
One of the major characters in my novel, The Lies That Bind (to be published this year by TouchPoint Press), is Big Josh, a man of great heart and intelligence in his fifties who has lived his entire life as a slave. In one of the novel’s major plot streams, Big Josh and his group of enslaved men, hopelessly stranded in the Mississippi wilds, take great risks to form a secret partnership with the visionary charlatan Durksen Hurst to build an egalitarian plantation they will call Dark Horse. White and black share the work—and the deprivation—of building Dark Horse. However, there are limits to well-meaning equality in a society structured to be inherently unequal.

Having run the plantation back home, Big Josh is the real strength and brains behind the success of the farming side of their plantation scheme. He is a deep thinker and peacemaker within the ill-fitting partnership, a man with a tragic past (how many slaves who survived didn't have tragic pasts?). But with Durk serving as figurehead "white master," the town's admiration, and fear, are bestowed solely on Durk—whose only farming experience was busting up clods for his drunk-of-a-daddy. Big Josh and the other partners are virtually invisible. Ironically, Durk, whose incompetence is matched only by his naivete and blind ambition, is the one who puts their endeavor at greatest peril.

This dichotomy exposes one of the deeper meanings of the novel, and one of the currents in our society today. The antebellum South’s wealth was based on agriculture, but the wealthiest elite made their fortunes on the backs of slave labor. And slavery was not a benevolent institution. Don’t the bonded laborers deserve some credit—much less some remuneration—for the South’s extraordinary successes? But whose statues and portraits grace the region?

In one of the greatest American novels, William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, Thomas Sutpen builds Sutpen’s Hundred on the backs of slave labor; yet Sutpen becomes the legend. Isn’t this skewed slant symbolic of the antebellum South? Why shouldn’t Big Josh—or so many like him—get at least a public mention? As in my novel, slaves would have been satisfied to simply not be slaves, allowed to eat what they grew, to be warm when they could earn enough to buy a blanket, to live in a house they built for themselves—and to not live in constant fear.

But 700,000 men, white and black, would have to die before slaves could even come close to achieving that minimum condition. And even today, a skewed view of the African-American community by too many continues to hold them back.

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Next Up: A campaign to require a disclaimer on hate speech.

To be announced soon: Publication date of Ed Protzel’s novel, The Lies That Bind, a darkly ironic antebellum mystery/drama set in Turkle, Mississippi, 1859-61, (TouchPoint Press, 2015).

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Ed Protzel’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone. Blog copyrighted by Ed Protzel © 2015.

The Manipulative Missus French: Caïssa in Eternal Shadow

Grandmaster Garry Kasparov, arguably the greatest chess player of all time, played a delightful exhibition match last week at the St. Louis Chess Club. St. Louis has become the chess capitol of the U.S., hosting the last six U.S. championships at the club’s great facility, and the World Chess Hall of Fame across the street—free of charge to visitors. The third floor Bobby Fisher exhibition is something to behold for any Fisher fan—which I have always been. Check them out when in town.  St. Louis loves you, Garry! My picture shaking hands with you sits in an honored place on my dresser.

Chess Adds Spice to My Fiction

I mention chess because it is a heavy spice I use to flavor all of my fiction. In my novel, The Lies That Bind (TouchPoint Press, to be published later this year), chess plays a large part in depicting the manipulative nature of Missus Maria Brussard French. The richest woman in the hamlet of Turkle, Mississippi, the townsfolk believe she sits in her mansion suite “playing chess against God.” Well, maybe she is—in a manner of speaking.

Despised and feared by the town, Missus French is definitely reclusive—a tendency of some chess masters—preferring to spend these years of her life sitting in the dark at her chess board, controlling the region’s bankers, lawyers and cotton brokers. There she is surrounded by her dust-covered art and gold—priceless valuables she completely ignores in deference to her chess. Pointedly, her set’s kings are female. Is she merely expressing her power...or something more?

So, too, does she manipulate her son, Devereau French (April 15 blog post), called by everyone “the loneliest person on Earth.” Why so lonely? The main reason is that Devereau and his mother share potentially fatal secrets. The two Frenches are constantly at each other’s throats, both trapped in an explosive mortal mutual enmity. As the pair quarrels, the Frenches’ deceptions unravel, lie by painful lie, secret by turgid secret, propelling many of the novel’s twists and turns. 

Know this: Missus French was once a great beauty. Now in her early sixties, even today, she’s still beautiful. Think an aging Cleopatra Yet, she chooses solitude.

Caïssa is the "patron goddess" of chess players, so named from a poem written in 1763 by English poet Sir William Jones. And Missus French is just that, a chess goddess moving people around like chess pieces—especially Devereau. And this is where her obsession with solitude hurts her more than anything. She badly needs to play chess, from which she derives unearthly pleasure. Indeed, in her youth she won handsome purses gambling on chess against wealthy gentlemen. Unfortunately, she finds it impossible to attract high-stakes gamesmen to a backwater nowhere like Turkle. And certainly not to play against a woman.

And this social gender prejudice of the time is a major source of the Frenches’ problems, as you will discover in the story—big time. Readers may not like Missus French, especially because of the way she exploits poor Devereau. However, once you have learned Missus French’s secrets, while you still may despise much that she has done to get where she is, perhaps you will a gain at least a little sympathy for her.

 Next Up:  We’ll look at a central element of the novel—the unlikely, and risky, partnership between protagonist Durk Hurst and his slave partners, led by Big Josh, and how it speaks to idealized race relations.

In a future blog: I’ll write about the game I invented, St. Louis Chess, a Suzuki-like-method to teach attack and defense strategies to novice and intermediate players. St. Louis chess advances new players’ understanding of the game quickly.

The Lies That Bind:
Published by TouchPoint Press
Represented by Loiacono Literary Agency
www.edprotzel.com
Release date to be announced soon!

Ed Protzel’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone. Blog copyrighted by Ed Protzel © 2015.