Anna O Sparkles and Thrills

 

 

 

 

Anna O (2024)

By Matthew Blake

Harper, 421 pages (seems shorter than that!)

★★★★★

 

You might recall from a psychology course that Anna O was the case that led Sigmund Freud to develop his theories of psychoanalysis. Freud never actually met  Anna O, her real name being Anna Pappenheim (1853-1936); she was a patient of Freud’s mentor Josef Breuer, in the years 1880-82, but Freud was fascinated with the case. Anna O became to poster child for hysteria and exhibited symptoms such as eating and speech disorders, vision problems, headaches, partial paralysis, hallucinations, and amnesia. The question Breuer did not probe to Freud’s satisfaction was the root cause of Anna’s illness. Freud famously (and controversially) linked it to frustrated sexual desire.

 

Novelist Matthew Blake updated and altered the case in his stunning mystery/thriller Anna O. Forensic psychologist Ben(edict) Prince has been working in a quiet private residency clinic in London, where he, with the help of mentor Virginia Bloom, became an expert on sleepwalking and a frequent court witness. His life is about to become more interesting intellectually and traumatic politically and emotionally. This novel has all the twists, turnabouts, danger, and enigma of a Dan Brown book, though Blake is a far better literary stylist.

 

Much of the book is set in the early 21^st century. Ben is divorced from his wife Clara and has limited contact with his daughter Kitty. For good and ill, this gives him plenty of time to become a workaholic. He and the clinic are approached by the Ministry of Justice to take on a patient about whom they can say nothing and must swear to abide by the Official Secrecy Act. She is Anna Ogilvy–code-named “Anna O”–who has been asleep for four years. She is the presumed murderess of her two friends, Indira and Douglas. Just before the big sleep (!), Anna found them in pools of blood and a dripping knife in her hand. She left a distressed message saying, “I think I killed them.” She also had a motive: the two were conspiring to wrest control of a magazine Anna started and squeeze her out of a deal to sell it to a larger firm. Open and shut case? Not quite. Her mother Emily Ogilvy is  a former Minister of State for Mental Health. Plus, Ben’s task goes against the grain. Doctors are supposed to cure people, but his marching order is to wake her up any way possible so that she can be put on trial for murder.

 

It seemed odd logic at the time. Why intervene in the murder of two unknowns with no connection to state security? Plus, Anna has been diagnosed as having “resignation syndrome," a form of amnesia mixed with mental illness. Wouldn’t this make an awakened Anna innocent by reason of insanity? (In legalese, to be guilty of a crime the prosecution must prove both actus reus, a criminal action, and mens rea, intent to commit it.) Are politics at play more than state security? Maybe. Years earlier Britain was convulsed by horrific killings, including the infamous “Stockwell Monster” case in which Sally Turner murdered her two stepsons. Is there some sort of connection? Not that Ben can determine, nor Clara, a police detective, who discovered and investigated the deaths of Indira and Douglas. It is to shut up the tittering conspiracy nuts?

Will Ben awaken Anna? I’d be a spoilsport to tattle. Suffice it to say that Anna’s disposition and mystery serves mainly to unlock others. Don’t fall asleep (joke intended) as you will find out about Anna roughly three-quarters of the way through, and Blake has just gotten started throwing deflecting blows before he delivers the knockout punch. Among the things that must be resolved are multiple identities (most not in the psychological sense), a drug nicknamed Devil’s Breath, implanted false memory syndrome, a massive conspiracy, the role of Internet trolls, a leaked secret, a tell-all memoir, Ben’s arrest, more code names, maternity mysteries, and a dish of revenge served so cold you’ll need gloves to turn the pages.

 

I adored this book and was indeed chilled by its revelations. I read a lot of mysteries, but few are as intelligent, complex, and detailed as Anna O. Time management warning: “I couldn’t put it down” is a phrase so shopworn it’s trite. Nonetheless, I zipped through all 421 pages in just three sittings during one of my busiest weeks in years. I missed enough sleep to be a suspect in Anna O.

 

Rob Weir

 

Black Cherokee a Good Debut, But Leaves Too Much Unexamined

 

 

 

 

Black Cherokee (Releasing August 3, 2025)

By Antonio Michael Downing

Simon and Schuster, 272 pages.

★★★

 

Is there an American conundrum any more vexing than race? Black Cherokee shows just how complicated it is. It is easy to say that race is a matter of self-identity, but that’s too pat. Do we define it by physical characteristics? Nope. That won’t work either. Is it a status conferred by others? To some degree it is, though Mark Twain demonstrated its overall artificiality in his 1894 novel Pudd’nhead Wilson. Is it cultural? Maybe, but which culture does the labeling?

 

The central dilemma in the debut novel of Antonio Michael Downing is embedded in its title. Historians have known for quite some time that some Native Americans owned Black slaves. Perhaps you associate the Cherokee with the Trail of Tears. That’s right, but only to a point. The Cherokee were once primarily a “Western” tribe, but in the early days of the American Republic that meant the highlands of the Appalachians and beyond. Yet, shortly after the United States became independent, many Cherokee had begun a transformation into one of the so-called “Five Civilized Nations.” Many had converted to Christianity, developed a written language, embraced a settled agricultural life, and had a central government. In the South, another marker of being “civilized” was acceptance of slavery. About 60,000 Cherokee were sent to the future Oklahoma as a result of the 1830 Indian Removal Act, but quite a few managed to stay and even fought with the Confederacy during the Civil War. There was an added level of tragedy in that before the American Revolution, Natives gave refuge to enslaved peoples who escaped bondage. They were the so-called Black Cherokee, as were those freed before and after the war who settled among Native Americans.

 

Downing’s fictionalized account of this begins in 1992, when his protagonist, Ophelia Blue Rivers is six years old. She is an orphan being raised by her activist grandmother Blue who has been fighting a local corporation polluting Etsi, South Carolina, for quite some time. Ophelia sees herself as Cherokee, has played with Cherokee children, and is largely ignorant of her Black heritage except when others insist she’s not Cherokee. As she grows older, more and more Natives insist that she’s “Black” and mean it in a disparaging way. Part of the reason is that Etsi is in crisis; it has been deregistered as a reservation which, among other things, alters the region’s economic base. Ophelia is rejected though Blue is acknowledged as a Black Cherokee Freedman because she was married to Etsi’s last chief.

 

This coming-of-age tale of sadness, defiance, place, poverty, and identity takes Ophelia to unexpected places, beginning with her move to be with her flamboyant and assertive Aunt Oba. She’s something of an enigmatic character who on one hand helps Ophelia embrace her Blackness, though it’s not entirely clear if this is out of pride, or simply that she doesn’t care what people think.

 

Ophelia is brighter than most of the other kids in her mostly White schools, but there’s nothing like high school to make you uncertain of who you are or what you want to be. Sizeism plays a part in the novel, as does Downing’s dig at Southern piety. Ophelia immerses herself in an evangelical youth group led by a charismatic (in both senses of the word) minister. Suffice it to say that the church and minister are filled more with raging hormones and hypocrisy than with the Holy Spirit. Later she will meet a free-spirited White boy who tells her that she is beautiful. They have a torrid affair and he seems akin to a grunge devotee crossed with a 70s throwback hippie. Or is he just slumming it? Does he care about Ophelia or just want easy sex?

 

The book comes around full circle and returns to Grandmother Blue. In many ways, she’s the most interesting character in the novel. She is certainly the most self-actualized. Ophelia’s encounters with White culture disappoint because it’s too easy to see what Ophelia does not and Downing plays too close to formula. Nonetheless, Blue and Ophelia are both well-developed and likable. I wonder if the book’s cultural issues could have been equally well-developed had Downing written a slightly longer book.

 

It's a very good debut, though, and I anticipate hearing more in the future from Downing. Thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for an advance copy of this book.

 

Rob Weir

 

July 2025 Recent Releases: Guy Clark, Little Falls Trophy, Jack Barksdale, Lisa Crawley, Paranoid Larry

Late spring and summer are often slow for new releases. Perhaps that explains why compilations and remixes hit the market about this time.

 

I won’t complain if I get a Guy Clark release. Clark (1941-2016) is sometimes considered the granddaddy of outlaw country, not because he was the first, but because his devil-take-care attitude and his propensity for drawing like-minded rebels to his home and tours made him seem like the leader of a Texas gang. And, most importantly, because his songs were covered in trail dust. Dublin Blues is a 30^th anniversary re-release of his 1995 album of the same name. Some have said it was best. I’m not sure about that, but you could make a great case for it. If you don’t know, “Dublin Blues” is not Irish. It’s a staple of country music, a heartbreak song. (There is a Dublin, Texas, so maybe that’s the inspiration, though there’s a reference to the Spanish Steps, which are in Rome.) Clark could fashion a song out of anything. There’s a lesson about growing up and but not appreciating things until it’s too late in the talking blues “Randall Knife” and the (ahem!) longevity of “Black Diamond Strings” (with Emmylou Harris).  I doubt there’s anyone who can’t relate to “Stuff That Works.” My personal favorite is Clark’s “The Cape,” his venture into a Pinocchio-like refusal to grow up if it means a cessation of dreaming.

 

 

New Jersey’s Little Falls Trophy, Doug Albregts’ one-man band, put out LPs in 2021 and 2023, but decided to mine them and release material more in tune with the grunge scene of the 1980s/90s, the driving energy of The Who, and a few other things he liked (The Beatles, B-sides). The result is Rehashed. If you like things layered and plugged in, this one’s for you. You can listen to or scroll through the album here. My favorites are “My Little Sunshine,” “Armstrong Park,” and his cover of “The Weight.”

 

Before he was 12, Jack Barksdale made a huge splash for his guitar/piano/mandolin prowess and mastery of the blues, folks, and country music. He was praised for his maturity, his songwriting, and his deep understanding of multiple genres. He’s 17 now, but maybe growing up fast wasn’t the best thing for this Fort Worth performer. I found his new LB Voices disappointing. It is filled with too many sound-alike tracks and his gravel, smoke, and spit vocals more of an affectation than compelling. I liked “The Man, the Myth, the Legend,” a song about a musician out of place with the now. The problem is that that too many other tracks have the same dolorous tone, vocal style, and slow pacing. Listen, for example, to “Entropy,” eight minutes that could be three; or “God is Dead, I am Dead, and So Are You.” Put simply, the album needs more changes of pace. In each track there are terrific guitar runs and licks, but only a few like “Martyrs” stand out, and it mainly because of the presence of Sarah Jarosz. Barksdale will become a major country music star one of these days, but let’s call this one his sophomore slump.

 

Lisa Crowley is a New Zealand singer/songwriter who labels herself an indie pop performers. Her latest EP, New Girl Syndrome, is infused with pop, but with a bit soul and torch singing mixed in. “Gatekeeper” is a romantic Chicken Little-like track about a man who has come knocking at her door a few times too many and she’s laying down the law. “Call it a Night” has some of the same vibe, though Crawley’s voice is more vulnerable on this one. It’s a heck of a voice, no matter how she casts it. On “Don’t Wanna Be” she also shows she can tickle the ivories.

 

Okay, did you actually expect I’d turn down a chance to review Paranoid Larry and His Imaginary Band? (It really is a band headed by Larry, his friend Sam Kulik, and a bunch of friends.) Larry’s persona is that of a man with a long white beard, and a full mane of snow white curls, though it could be a wig for all I know. He  promises that the music will make you feel a little bit better. “or a little worse.” Did I mention that the new record is titled Wombat Mating Calls? Larry’s voice is best described as robust and unusual. His band consists of expected guitars, keys, and bass, but also clarinet, trombone, sax, tuba, and bongos. (Yes, I said bongos!) “Never Buys Back” is about what buying someone a drink won’t get you. “Water Under the Bridge (Over Troubled Water)” opens with I got a mailbox full of bills overdue/I got an old horse whose name is Glue… He’s got a million of them. How about “Jesus Shaves” or “Breakfast is the Most Important Beer of the Day?” It’s all a lark, of course, but these guys don’t let satire get in the way of laying down skillful grooves. Paranoid Larry invites comparisons to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, though I’m more inclined to say Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. Who says you have to be serious to be a serious musician?

 

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Florida Palms a Gritty New Novel

 

 

 

Florida Palms (July 2025)

By Joe Pan

Simon and Schuster, 480 pages.

★★★★

 

Perhaps you've read gritty Florida crime novels from Carl Hiaasen, Tim Dorsey, Elmore Leonard, or Randy Wayne White. I'm here to tell you that their work is akin to The Muppets Go to Miami Beach compared to Florida Palms, a new novel from Joe Pan.

 

The Florida Space Coast is easy-viewing for Cape Canaveral launches, but that's about all that's easy about it. You might recognize 2009 as a tough recession year. That's when three young friends–Eddy, “Cueball” (Heath), and Jesse­–graduate from high school. The three of them have part-time work moving furniture, but mostly they fish, smoke pot, and listen to the biker gangs talk smack. It's already been a tough year for best friends Eddy and Cueball; five members of their friends died before graduation. The future doesn't hold much promise. Eddy is smart enough to go to college, but on what? His more realistic dream is to one day open his own tattoo studio.

 

It's not a nice term, but most of the beach crowd qualifies as “poor white trash except that several–notably Jesse and his twin brother Draco–are mixed race. Poor Draco. He was intelligent until he held two sheets of LSD to his face and burned out his brain to the point of being monosyllabic. Another local guy gets his jollies by keeping baby alligators in a septic tank and glass cages of poisonous snakes and frogs in his garage. Even Eddy's job is tenuous; the moving company is a used van owned by Bird, Cueball's father, a former biker whose handle comes from having done time in San Quentin for drug running; he went from jailbird to free bird.

 

You'd think that Bird would be done with drug dealing, but you'd be wrong. Bird took the fall for Seizer, probably a misspelling of Caesar. However you arrange the letters, he's a big-time criminal who shows up in Florida with a scheme: Use young guys to move drugs up and down the East Coast under the pretense of moving furniture. Cueball and Eddy are among the first recruits, though Eddy is reticent. After all, he’s never been north of the Georgia border and realizes the inherent dangers. Plus, he has his eye on Gin, a tough young lady whose AWOL father was a Deadhead and a mother, Colt, who is now the partner of Del Ray, another biker turned hoodlum.

 

Before you can say “palm tattoo,” the bikers and teens are in cahoots. They know who's on the “team” by the inked palm trees on their hands designed by Eddy. Bird, assisted by Del Ray, are Seizer's heads of operation and many of the bikers work in camouflaged “factories” tucked into the swamps. In a warped way, everyone is a capitalist. The drug they are manufacturing–nicknamed shank–is all the rage. It's like crank (crystal meth) in a time- release formula that eventually chills out the user. Never mind that toxic chemicals are used or the fact that it's addictive. Seizer's not wrong, but perhaps you see flaws in the plan.

 

First of all, there's a lot of money involved. If you think young athletes and big money are a bad mix, what about guys barely shaving? Add anarchistic bikers, rival gangs, ethnic tension with Cuban drug runners, too much sampling of the product, old scores to settle, jealousy, and a power vacuum and it's easy for chemical dreams to become chaos, megalomania, suspicion, arson, and murder. 

 

Will either the insightful Eddy or dumb-as-a-rock Cueball break from a life of crime? The novel's ending is simultaneously ambiguous and chilling. Pan’s novel makes your skin crawl and run to the shower. Why read it? If you think the purpose of a good book or movie is to take you places you're not likely to visit, Florida Palms is your ticket. You will enter the minds of some truly dangerous individuals. Social class issues come into play. Who buys the shank being produced by people you'd rather not know? Finally, it implies the answer to the old question of what happens when hope vanishes.

 

A few critiques. Florida Palms is overly wrong and suffers from the difficulty of keeping straight who is on what side in a tale that relies upon shifting alliances. Its moral is clear, though: Crime does pay, but don't wait too long to spend ill-begotten loot!

 

Rob Weir

 

Shy Creatures: Heartwarming (despite tough subjects) and Well-Constructed

 

 

 

 

Shy Creatures (2024)

 By Clare Chambers

Mariner Books, 390 pages.

★★★★★

 

When numerous friends tell you a particular novel is wonderful, the only thing left to do it read it. I’m delighted to report that I too think that Shy Creatures, the latest novel from British writer Clare Chambers, is indeed terrific. Adjectives such as moving and heartwarming spring to mind even though Chambers’ protagonist led what many would consider a sad life.

 

Shy Creatures opens in 1964, when social workers are dispatched to a fusty, decaying Victorian home. Women’s clothing has been hurled from an upstairs window, but the most shocking thing is that the home is occupied by an unwell elderly woman and a naked man with long hair and an even longer scraggly beard. Louisa Tapping insists he is her nephew, who got angry because she disposed of a dead magpie he had placed in the refrigerator. This may be true, but it can’t be verified because Louisa dies and the man is uncommunicative. He is taken to Westbury Park, a psychiatric facility in Croydon.

 

Dr. Gil Rudden, the psychiatrist in charge of the strange case. assumes the man is of low intellect and mute. Helen Hansford, the staff art therapist and Gil’s mistress, suspects Gil is wrong.  After a shave, a haircut, and some detective work they discover that their new patient is William Tapping, age 37, but they need to find someone who can tell them more. Helen also finds out that William is literate and has a talent for drawing. He depicts birds with precise detail in their feathers. Was this why he was upset when his magpie was trashed? Maybe, but what 37-year-old thinks it’s a good idea to stick it in the fridge?

 

Chambers takes us back and forth in time and has several narrative threads at work: the mystery of William Tapping, the problematic affair of Gil and Helen, Gil’s ambition, and those out of synch with changing mores. The novel’s ending date (1964) is significant. It’s roughly the time in which the legendary ”Sixties” began. Think Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Carnaby Street, rising hemlines, mod hairstyles, and challenges to authority. But what if you grew up with Sinatra, swing, the Blitz, and post-World War II rebuilding and conformity? And what if, in the case of William, you’ve not been outside of your home since 1938? William’s life was marked by childhood trauma, war (for the UK, World War II began in 1939), and three overly protective aunties who became his custodians when his parents were killed in a car crash.

 

Most book covers for Shy Creatures sport a badger, a beast that can be fierce but is notoriously timid. Young William (“Billy”) was fascinated by the badgers he saw at the vacation cottage owned by Basil and Marion Kenely, the parents of his school friend Harry. Billy was, indeed, a sensitive, shy boy who was easily bullied, upset by the killing of a mouse, and reluctant to make friends, though he was once lauded for his cricket skills. Helen’s efforts to track down the Kenelys leads to the further revelation that William is not mute, though his boyish voice suggests that his social skills were frozen after his single year of private school. Gil doubts William can ever live on his own.

 

Gil and Helen are also out of synch with social changes. Gil prescribes too much medication to his patients, understandable given that chlorpromazine was relatively new. Less understandable is his overbearing ego, overactive libido, and sexism. He and his wife have several children with another on the way, but Gil maintains Helen as his mistress and perhaps her niece as well.

 

If this sounds dire rather than uplifting, rest assured that it’s not. William may be socially ignorant, but he’s totally lovable, indominable, well-read, and talented. As the novel’s major “shy” creature, he is also the character through which other characters come to understand themselves. In good Dickensian style, he even attracts a benefactor.

 

Among the virtues of Chambers’ novel is that it keeps readers on their toes. She does so through delayed revelations that are consistent with her characters, not the random episodic treatments one finds in too many books these days. Shy Creatures is a charmer from start to finish.

 

Rob Weir

 

Footnote: I suspect Chambers snuck in a pun. The Tappings were heirs to a grocery fortune and one of William’s progenitors was named Samsbury. Sainsbury’s is Britain’s second largest grocery chain.

 

 

 

Hang on St. Chrisopher: Adrian McKinty's New Irish Crime Drama

 

 

Hang on Saint Christopher: A Sean Duffy Novel (2025)

By Adrian McKinty

Blackstone publishing, 296 pages.

★★★★

 

Hang on Saint Christopher, with the hammer to the floor

Put a highball on the case, nail across the door...

There's a 750 Norton busting down the door.

 

The new novel from Irish writer Adrain McKinty takes its seemingly odd title from the above lyric from a Tom Waits song. And, yes, 750 Norton motorcycles factor into the mystery. This is another installment in McKinty’s Sean Duffy series, but here's all you need to know to get up to speed. For many people in Northern Ireland the fictional Duffy is a traitor. Not only is he a cop, he’s also a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). Sean is a Catholic boy who in the minds of enemies might as well be a Protestant. When in Northern Ireland Duffy maintains a home in Carrickfergus, which is far enough away from the outbursts of violence in Belfast and close to the ferry dock to Cairnryan, Scotland.

 

Duffy is an RUC part timer required to spend just six days a month in Northern Ireland. This will be his life for the next two years for Sean to accumulate enough time to retire and bid adieu to The Troubles. He has built a new life in Scotland with his wife Beth and their daughter Emma. He has no time for the murderous Irish Republican Army (IRA) and is almost as contemptuous of the RUC. To his mind the RUC is filled with screw-ups and careerists, the latter of whom pass the buck when they make a hash of things but grab the glory when something goes right. As if he couldn't be more conspicuous, Duffy drives a flash BMW. His Carrickfergus neighborhood appears to be upscale in the minds of many, though it’s more safe than posh.

 

He and Frank “Crabbie” McCraven are on the same part-time reserve retirement scheme. They generally manage to keep a low profile by doing paperwork; after all, why hand big cases to guys who are six days on and three weeks off? Sean has even groomed his successor, Lawson. As fate would have it, Lawson is on holiday in Spain and Sean and Frank are sucked into investigating the murder of two IRA gunmen. If Duffy had his way, of course, he'd be happy to spit on their graves. But the fragile truce in Northern Ireland doesn't work that way. The two deaths are high-profile cases and the very truce that has reduced violence has made some areas around Belfast even more tense. That’s because not everyone wants peace and even more radical faction of the IRA has arisen. It falls to Sean and Frank to defuse the situation. Or, should I say to Sean? He's a lot like Robert Parker's Spencer with a brogue, a live-wire loner with attitude and filled with wisecracks and disrespect for official/legal procedures. Why play it straight if you can take matters into your own hands?

 

Like Spencer, Duffy tempers violence with big dollops of humor. There is a set up scene in Hang on St. Christopher that will make you chuckle at how Sean deals with troublemakers in his neighborhood. Moral: Don't mess with the Beamer and don't be a bloody fool!

 

If only the two murderers lent themselves to such out-of-the-box solutions. The humor is there, but add bigger dollops of grit, danger, hairy escapes, and bloodshed. This investigation has a bit of everything: carjacking, bugged phones, motorcycles circling like Indians attacking the cavalry, an art forger, and deep looks at the IRA ‘s influence in the United states and beyond. (Cue the CIA!) Even Iceland gets into this drama. Duffy faces the moral dilemma of whether to cut a deal with a known IRA gunman that he despises in order to stop a potentially worse one. Being that it's Ireland, the two creeps are brothers.

 

Duffy is a pain in the arse, but the thing about rule-breakers is that they seldom get hung up on moral qualms if there's a way to keep devils at bay. One of my favorite Duffy traits is that the man is a musical genius. From classical to classic rock by way of punk, folk music, rap, reggae, and beyond you can't stump Duffy in a game of Name that Tune. And maybe you can't stuff stump him at Know Your Art either. Or can you?

 

Rob Weir

 

Kehinde Wiley and the Last of the Lost Cause?

 

 

Rumors of War, 30' tall

 

The Last of the Lost Cause?*

*This essay/review is part of a larger in-progress project on Civil War mythology.

 

If you don’t follow the art world carefully, you might not know the statue above. It is a work that subverts one of the biggest lies of the past 160 years. The sculptor is Kehinde Wiley. If you can’t quite place the name, I’ll bet you know his presidential portrait of Barack Obama, but first things first. 

 

Wiley portrait of Barack Obama

 

 

Wiley’s equestrian statue is titled “Rumors of War” and is meant to shock. Instead of a wig-topped noble or a dashing solider, Wiley’s defiant figure is a black man with his dreadlocks tied back suggestive of a crown or an Indian sachem’s topknot. The figure is also wearing high-top sneakers, blue jeans, and a warm-up jacket. You can find this statue outside the main entrance to Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Art (VMFA).

 

Wiley based “Rumors of War” on a statue of J.E.B. Stuart that once sat atop a similar pedestal on the city’s Monument Avenue where it shared company with other “heroes” of the Confederacy. You might recall that those came down during Black Lives Matter protests in 2017. There is but one statue remaining, that of tennis great Arthur Ashe. CSA president Jeferson Davis was among those that pulled down and defiled. Wiley’s statue suggests that the real “war” was/is that of black freedom. That’s not the way the story is usually told.

 

Jefferson Davis vandalized; Stuart statue in storage

   
 

 

The Confederacy was defeated, but you’d hardly know that from the way the Civil War was retold before all the bodies were put to rest. The so-called “Lost Cause” was the ideological precursor to legal and customary segregation that sought to strip newly emancipated enslaved peoples of their political, economic, and human rights. The so-called “Jim Crow” era was the order of things until most of its vestiges were outlawed by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Even then, the “war” Wiley wants you to ponder still rages: the one for black equality and dignity.

 

The Lost Cause did as much, perhaps more, to ingrain racism deeply into American culture. It claimed that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery and invented a host of specious and nonsensical alt.realities. You name it and it was tried: tariffs, the interference of Northern radicals, states rights, attempts to subvert the Southern agricultural system, a Northern political power grab, Southern honor…. Some of these have validity, but it’s simply impossible to fashion an explanation for the Civil War that doesn’t have black slavery at its core. (Tariffs are rising today, but I don’t detect a serious call to arms!) The Lost Cause created myths: the genteel South vs. the money-grubbing and unkempt North, a war of Northern aggression foisted upon the South, Scarlett O’Hara-like plantations marked by easy-going relations between white and blacks, kindly Southern “massas,” illiterate” slaves better off in bondage, evil abolitionists, etc. Some of that has a kernel of truth as well, but it all rests upon a worldview in which all whites were viewed as better than any black person. 

 

Currently in garden by Valentine Museum. Soon to be reinstalled at the Ironworks. 

 

When this statue was placed in front of the Tredegar Ironworks in Richmond, howls of protest erupted and white people committed acts of vandalism against it. Ditto the Arthur Ashe monument. Do we presume they did so genteelly?

 

Looking down Scarlet's stair case

 

For the record, Southern charm is not my thing, but parts of the South retain an air of grace. I might have been just as happy to have some barbecue and listen to the blues, but we had lunch one day at the Jefferson Hotel in down Richmond and it’s quite a place. Scarlett O’Hara even sashayed down its staircase in Gone with the Wind. There are tons of plantation homes below the Mason-Dixon Line that ooze with elegance as long as you don’t think about who and what sustained them.

 

As Bob Dylan put it, though, “the times they are a changing...” (Okay, he dropped the final “g.”) A Richmond friend and I visited the “Southern White House,” where Jefferson Davis quartered during the war. In many ways it’s more democratic that the one in Washington DC. It belonged to a bourgeois doctor who made it a home. Davis did all of his serious presidential duties at the state capital building a block away. The dining room picture is about the biggest thing in the house. Make no mistake, though; Davis was a Confederate and a racist. The good news is that guides no longer try to whitewash that. Nor do they fail to tell you that the house “staff” was comprised of wage-earning whites and white indentured servants, but the vast majority of workers were enslaved black folks. 

 

Not exactly the State Dining Room

 

To circle back to art, Kehinde Wiley is far from the first artist of color seeking to put African Americans back in the historical narrative. He is, though, one of the most successful and clever. He’s a lot of things the hardshell right hates: black, gay, has an Ivy Legree degree (Yale), and possess an impressive grasp of art history. If you wonder what’s up with the flowered backdrops of his portraits, know that his role models are precisely those Old Masters (and Mistresses) venerated by white cultural elites. The VMFA has a Wiley painting titled “Willem van Heythusen Posing with a Sword.” Why the Dutch name? It’s based on Frans Hals painting done in 1625. He has done the same with religious paintings and most of his portraits. Things look a bit different when we replace white bodies with black ones and update the drapery, doesn’t it? 

 

Frans Hals

Wiley