May the Fourth be with you*

Each fourth of May I post a ‘May the fourth be with you’ meme on Facebook because I can’t resist a pun and enjoy the pop culture reference; however my disdain for the Star Wars movies as basically Star Trek meets the western remains. And while we’re talking US genres, it is ironic, isn’t it that the US probably can’t enjoy the joke this date provides our part of the English speaking world because they say ‘May fourth’, not ‘May the fourth’?

This year the fourth of May was general election day in Australia (see footnote) and the Albanese-led Labor government was returned in a surprise landslide. That sparked immediate joy, but just as delightful has been witnessing the disarray and idiocy in the coalition partners in the aftermath. While these events don’t offset the nightmares of Gaza and Trump they do at least provide a little homegrown reassurance that sometimes sense and kindness prevail.

This May the fourth, I went to a life writing workshop in Tarcutta, about an hour outside Wagga, that these days has something of a ghost town feel serving mainly as a stopover location for long haul trucks. On the drive out, morning sunlight made the mustard hued paddocks and mottled gum trunks shine, generating serotonin. The turn off to Mates Gully Road seemed a long time coming and then the road itself meandered for several kilometres. I momentarily panicked that I would be late but arrived for a 9 am start with a few minutes in hand. A free event arranged by the Wagga Library in conjunction with the Tarcutta Country Women’s Association, there was no sense of urgency inside the folksy weatherboard building where about twenty of us gathered over the obligatory homemade slices arrayed on a tea trolley. Every surface in the immaculate room was beige, cream or white; even the ceiling fans were straw rattan and cream. Although still early autumn, the temperature was very cool and, surrounded by rural folk in fleecy lined garments, I regretted my cotton shirt and light jacket. The hum of the reverse cycle air con soon filled the air but it took over an hour to counter the chill.

Trestle tables were arranged in a horseshoe formation. I sat next to Frith, newly arrived in the Riverina, whom I had met at another writers’ function the previous month. Then she had challenged the visiting Irish writer about the thoroughness of his research making for an uncomfortable moment which the author handled with aplomb. She admitted to me this morning that she is hypercritical of any shortcomings she perceives in others and communicates her perceptions in a plain, bordering on blunt, style. Her credo, she stated, is the opposite of looking for the good in people (I wonder how I am faring). Anticipating some ructions during the workshop I adopted my default approach of gentle teasing.  I am sure people thought we had known each other forever, or were related, because of our seeming double act particularly when Frith punched me on the arm during one retort.

The facilitator, Graeme Gibson, introduced himself as a retired horticulturalist and community activist whose own memoir In Life There Is Luck was published in 2023. Graeme distilled what he had learned into a publication called A Pocket Guide to Memoir Writing which he used as a teaching aid throughout the morning. Naturally I purchased a copy (see photo). We did several useful exercises one of which provided the basis for this post.  I have been compiling a list of clichés and generally cringe worthy expressions enjoying currency and am about to employ one, ‘take away’. Amongst the workshop’s ‘take aways’ for me were two quotes (I hope not misquotes) from Hemingway:

The cure for writer’s block is to write one true sentence

Write in a reckless fever then edit in a cardigan

Three from Graeme:

Writing fuels memories

Writing about little things helps you write about big things  

Let the verbs do the work

And one for the guest speakers at our historical society meetings:

Just because it happened doesn’t make it interesting. Just because it is interesting doesn’t mean it belongs in the story.

Graeme’s workshop was compact and energising. The CWA went above and beyond with the catering. Listening to my fellow participants proved yet again that each of us has (at least) one story to tell and a unique voice. I heard about remembered sylvan glades and their association with a loved grandmother, sibling rifts produced by differing recollections and class identification and a fallen log that used to be the main play equipment at the local primary school until safety regulations had it removed.

Afterwards I cast my vote at the Tarcutta Memorial Hall and met Riverina independent candidate Jenny Rolfe's husband – the only person handing out how to votes at this conservative leaning polling station. I guess I helped skew the demographic a little. The Tarcutta streets were almost empty; a few large rigs peppering the carparks, many shops, including the former Halfway Café (built 1926) were vacant and I was the only customer at the handicraft store.

May the fourth was very much with me this year and writing about it is fuelling more memories.

*My friend Kathryn Halliwell has pointed out that I have ascribed all these events to 4 May 2025 when they in fact took place on 3 May 2025. Obviously I don't let the facts get in the way of a good story/tagline. 

Dem/them; Jim/James

Percival Everett’s James has just won the Pulitzer Prize for literature. It was previously short listed for the Booker.  We read it for our book group last month. The novel is a reimaging of Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s (James’) perspective and is a searing critique of racism and conventions in the depiction of African Americans in literature.  Our book club convener, David Gilbey, summarised our response to Everett’s device of having his characters use 'double language' i.e. speaking one way amongst themselves and another in response to or within the hearing of white Southerners:  

We discussed James' 'double language, some of us thinking it was overdone, others thinking it was nicely sustained… James …  teach(es) and reinforce(s) his children's understanding of the roles they needed to play to survive and to communicate meaningfully with other blacks in different instances

and indeed schools his children in ‘masking’ effectively in front of their masters to sustain an illusion of ignorance and deference.

I was the dissenter in our group thinking that the instances in the book where James draws the reader’s attention to this masquerade were too numerous and not handled particularly subtly. James’ subterfuge is established from the outset when Everett recreates a scene from Twain’s novel where Tom and Huck take Jim’s hat and hang it on a tree limb (a nail in the reworking) certain he will attribute its movement to witches.

“Lak I say, I first found my hat on a nail. ‘I ain’t put dat dere’ I say to mysef. ‘How dat hat get dere?’ I knew ‘twas witches what done it.  I ain’t seen ‘em, but it was dem.  And one dem witches, the one that took my hat, she sent me all da way down to N’Orlins. Can you believe dat?” My change in diction alerted the rest (his fellow slaves) to the white boys’ presence.  So, my performance for the story became a frame for the story. My story became less of a tale as the real game became the display for the boys.(Page 13, James)

In Huckleberry Finn Jim profits in reputation by recounting this story to his credulous peers. It is designed to illustrate his and their superstitious, naive natures. However, while Tom and Huck have duped Jim they are not immune to superstition either; a few pages prior Huck indulges in a complex ritual to ward off the bad luck that may attend him after accidentally killing a spider.

Everett brings twenty first century sophistication and a political agenda by not only shifting the agency so that his protagonist is now outwitting the boys but elevating James to the status of a highly (self) educated man who can quip about the difference between proleptic irony and dramatic irony and conduct debates on social inequality (especially slavery) and hypocrisy with the likes of Voltaire and Locke.

While I could enter into the general spirit of Everett’s revisionist narrative I found it heavy handed and preachy in places and was unable to suspend disbelief in the face of James’ learnedness and atheism which seemed more like a projection of Everett’s own characteristics than the credible recreation of a literary character.  For me the novel was strongest when it dealt with the picaresque flow of events,  the emotional impact of slavery itself and the actions of the various opportunists, villains and beneficiaries James encounters among them  Emmett, the King and Bilgewater  and Judge Thatcher. For a book challenging stereotypes I found the tropes of the doomed young girl, Sammy, rescued from rape and slavery only to drown in the Mississippi and the ‘yes, Huck I am your father’ revelation cloying and a bit cheap.  Not to mention the abruptness and somewhat improbably heroic sounding ‘I am James’, ‘Just James’ that end of the book.

Percival Everett has an impressive body of work and I caught the adaptation of his novel Erasure (filmed as American Fiction) a few months back. That too deals with the question of authentic African American language and characterisation in literature but perhaps because of its contemporary setting and many subplots I found it more satisfying than James.

I am no expert on what earns a work a prestigious literary award but I would hazard the suggestion that in this case the stature of the author and the mission he undertook to reclaim Huckleberry Finn and purge it of racism for a modern enlightened readership may have weighed significantly in the judges’ minds.