THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 12, 1996 TAG: 9605130177
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY NAN EDGERTON
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
SUGAR AMONG THE FREAKS
LEWIS NORDAN
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. 308 pp. $9.95 paper.
Lewis Nordan is a Southern writer with absurdist leanings who is recognized for his black humor and tragicomic tales about his native Mississippi. He has published five books in all, and is best known for Wolf Whistle, a retelling of the 1950s lynching of Emmett Till.
Sugar Among the Freaks is a reissue of Nordan's first two story collections, Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair (1983) and The All-Girl Football Team (1986), both now out of print. This anthology testifies to Nordan's growing critical reputation, and reveals the beginnings of the parodistic humor, magic realism and absurdism that mark his later novels.
Sugar Among the Freaks also adds depth to Nordan's subsequent work by providing early glimpses of title character Sugar Mecklin and of Arrow-Catcher, Miss., the mythical county where Sugar lives.
We first meet Sugar in ``The Sears and Roebuck Catalog Game,'' a dramatic and shocking story, in which he witnesses his mother's suicide. An affectionate 11-year-old, Sugar is trapped in his mother's crazy imagination. Though aware of her condition, he is torn ``between the wonderful melodrama .
Sugar loves his mother deeply, though, and she reappears in later stories, calling into question her apparent suicide and Sugar's reliability as a narrator.
Sugar's relationship with his father, Gilbert Mecklin, is the focus of another excellent story, ``Sugar, the Eunuchs, and Big G.B.''
Like his crazy mother, Sugar loves Gilbert Mecklin, ``the Marlboro Man of alcoholism,'' even as he struggles to break ``free of my daddy, (and) his magic if there was magic.'' Sugar steals Big G.B.'s gun and shoots but does not hit his father. Gilbert Mecklin thus becomes a town celebrity, and Sugar develops a relationship with Big G.B., who gives him the love and safety that Gilbert can't.
Sugar says: ``I loved Big G.B., who gave me love without pain.''
Nordan brilliantly captures a child's ambivalence toward an alcoholic parent - making effective use of the bizarre. The eunuchs, for example. We never know who the eunuchs are, but they travel the Mississippi Delta and appear at Episcopal Church events. Their fanciful presence underscores Sugar's helplessness and reflects the volatility of an alcoholic home.
Sugar makes his last appearance in the title story, which Nordan writes almost entirely as interior monologue. Few events occur, and Sugar lashes out at two ``freaks,'' a quadriplegic and his attendant, in a bitter internal discussion laced with self-hatred. The ``freaks'' are Sugar's friends, but he is too crazy to realize this, and he fumes: ``America the beautiful! I almost want to sing it. Land of the freaks and home of the strange.''
By placing the title story at the end of the collection, Nordan puts an accent on his complex and sympathetic portrait of Sugar Mecklin. We understand Sugar's despair and unstable mind, and also what brought him to this state.
In another strong story about self-development, ``John Thomas Bird,'' insecure Molly dates John Thomas, or J.T., a ``magnificent golden statue of a man.'' Molly wants to tell J.T., ``I love you! . . . Take me! Take me now, then kill me and my life will be complete.''
Instead, they go swimming in a lake.
J.T. loves his own physique, but Molly, although full of sexual longing, is self-conscious about her body. Molly's interior dialogue is hilarious, especially when the swim goes terribly awry for J.T., and she must save his life. The role reversal is stunning, and Nordan successfully integrates erotic imagery with a gloomy setting.
Lewis Nordan first developed his voice in these early stories, which overflow with poignant characters and daring imagery. His later work truly fulfilled the promise of Sugar Among the Freaks, a richly detailed and sometimes startling collection. MEMO: Nan Edgerton is a free-lance writer who lives in Virginia Beach. by CNB