THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 31, 1996 TAG: 9603280573
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY PIERCE TYLER
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
THE LEGEND OF THE BAREFOOT MAILMAN
JOHN HENRY FLEMING
Faber and Faber. 216 pp. $21.95.
Reading The Legend of the Barefoot Mailman is like reading a comic-book version of late 19th-century American history. Characters and plot twists are more whimsical than real. Events that unfold are only marginally plausible. In the end, adult readers are likely to be left wondering why they should care. This is a book better suited to a younger audience.
First-time novelist and Wilmington, N.C., resident John Henry Fleming has set his yarn in the frontier past of his native Florida, where pirates and Indians and alligators roam.
The action takes place on the southern coast, in and around the tiny settlement of Figulus. At the heart of the narrative are two opportunists - turned pioneers - whose lives intersect at the local post office.
Earl Shank is the postmaster. Not originally from Figulus, he arrives as a young man when the ship he is crewing on, the SS Seaworthy, wrecks in the waters off the coast.
The crew survives the disaster. But when it's suggested that they all return to civilization, Earl decides to remain behind. He is a youth in search of his fortune. And he sees in the outpost of Figulus the opportunity he has been looking for - the place has never been exploited.
Drawing on his experience as a vaudeville publicity manager, Earl launches a bogus advertising campaign designed to lure unwitting settlers to the region. He prints flyers announcing that a major shipping port is planned, and that untold natural riches are available to all residents. Settlers come, but few stay after they realize it's all a hoax.
Earl's campaign is only a partial failure, though. The population does increase a bit. As a result, he convinces the U.S. government that it needs a post office in Figulus. Not surprisingly, when it opens he becomes the town's first postmaster.
One of the settlers who decides to stick it out is Josef Steinmetz. An Austrian immigrant who arrives via Brooklyn with his wife Lena, Josef is a vigorous but naive young man. He plans to get rich by starting a citrus grove on a tract of barren land outside town.
What Josef doesn't anticipate, though, is that his wife will grow disenchanted with the enterprise. After a few weeks of living with spiders and snakes, Lena's ready to head back to Brooklyn. Josef tries to convince her to stay, but she won't hear it. Her bags are packed and she takes the first boat going.
Her departure devastates Josef - so much so that he burns down his citrus grove. Distraught, with nothing left - not even shoes for his feet - he turns to Postmaster Earl Shank. Earl takes pity on his barefooted neighbor and hires him as a rural mail carrier. And thus begins the barefoot mailman legend.
What ensues are the adventures of Josef the mail carrier. Each chapter presents a kind of diorama of imagined history. There's Josef among the coastal flora and fauna. Here he is captured by the Seminoles. Next we see him rescued by some pirates. Then he's escaping on the open sea - all the while never losing track of his trusty mail bag.
Mixed in with these adventures are Fleming's social commentaries, in which he satirizes the American Dream and the Florida tourist economy, among other subjects.
The story is so mercilessly plot-driven, though, that it's difficult to feel sympathy for the characters. One wishes Fleming would slow things down, give us a chance to know his characters. But he doesn't. And so, as in a comic book, they come off seeming flat and two-dimensional. MEMO: Pierce Tyler teaches composition and literature at Old Dominion
University in Norfolk. by CNB