Alan Ackmann

The Master Butcher's Singing Club

I’m working on a novel right now dealing heavily with music, and was originally attracted to Louise Erdrich’s The Master Butcher’s Singing Club based on its content—I wanted to see how another writer handled music, in both its description and technical aspects. I quickly discovered, however, that MBSC was only about music on the surface; it is actually a multi-generational family saga. The novel takes place in a developing North Dakota town between the two world wars, following Fidelis Waldvogel and his four sons as they move through their lives with Delphine Watzka, the strong, progressive heroine who befriends the boys’ mother. I also discovered, quickly, that MBSC was fantastic, a fact that many other people already seemed to know. For example, while I was carrying MBSC around the AP English reading, matronly high school teachers kept grabbing me enthusiastically, even violently, by the arm and exclaiming, “Isn’t it incredible?!? I thought it was INCREDIBLE!!!” I nodded in agreement and self-preservation, but now my accolades are more sincere.

The story in MBSC is both grand and intimate, creating moments as periodically pulse-pounding as they are emotionally dense. The characters—Delphine especially—are complicated and rich, their beauty conveyed by lush, supple prose. Furthermore, the book is remarkably deft in its handling of time; Erdrich can devote pages to an instant in the character’s mind, and then propel time forward for years in the very next chapter—and if that sounds disorienting, I assure you it’s not. I’ve read some books recently that had very little effect on me, and so it was fantastic to be moved, multiple times, to chills or tears. So while the book is not perfect (a great deal of early attention is devoted to episodes with only scant influence on the overall plot, and Delphine enters a kind of emotional stasis towards the beginning of the third act, which makes the narrative sag) there is much more to applaud here than to nitpick. I liked the book so much, in fact, that I’ll put it in a course someday.

In the meantime, the book fulfilled its purpose of teaching me something about writing music, in that it mostly doesn’t write about music. The singing club (which was founded by Fidelis, a butcher, and attracts many of the men in town) is predominantly an artistic motif and occasional plot device, providing unity between the three decades and bringing together otherwise separate characters. It never takes center stage until the end, however, when it becomes an almost —almost— heavy-handed metaphor. Otherwise, the singing is in the background, which lets Erdrich put appropriate attention on other elements of the story. Songs are named, but described only when scene or characterization merits the attention—and even then such description wears thin surprisingly quickly. Also, nowhere were there any theoretical or technical discussions of music, which makes sense, based both on the character’s level of actual knowledge and on the fact that many readers find that kind of thing tiresome. Erdrich’s restraint in this respect was a useful reminder. So the book, without question, provides some helpful bits of instruction—although that isn’t why I recommend it. I recommend it because, for the first time in a while, a book reminded me why I wanted to be a writer. That’s some of the highest praise I can offer.

Posted by Alan Ackmann - Monday July 21, 2008.
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Fast Food Nation

I don’t usually focus on non-fiction, just like I don’t usually mention million-seller books. But Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser, warrants an exception. Part of this posting is sentimental—my wife and I resolved to read more books together, and this is the first we’ve completed—but it is also out of respect for a well-crafted piece of literature, which I’ve been curious about since teaching an excerpted chapter (“Why the Fries Taste Good”) for freshman composition at Arkansas. That chapter was a lighthearted romp around the New Jersey flavor industry, which fast food requires since freeze-drying destroys its natural flavor. The chapter’s relative escapism implied that its parent text would be similarly toned. Fast Food Nation, however, is a scathing critique of fast food’s impact on landscapes, property values, cinema marketing, politics, human rights, and cultural imperialism (to name only a few aspects), and Schlosser’s portrayal is honest and horrifying in sometimes unexpected places.

For example, the poll describing how Chinese grade-schoolers love Ronald McDonald because (to use the kid’s words) “he understands what’s in children’s hearts” was almost as disquieting as the bloody description of America’s slaughterhouses, many of which, Schlosser claims, exploit a poorly educated, frequently illiterate workforce with the same boldness that they flaunt health and safety codes. Schlosser has an axe to grind—and grinds it well.

That isolated chapter, however, also did not reflect the rhetorical sophistication of Schlosser’s argument. His opening chapters recount the infancy of fast food, evoking car hops and bubblegum, when fast food was novel and joyous. He then describes how fast food targets children, so readers remember how much they loved Happy Meals, sparking tremendous affection that Schlosser then manipulates. The scope of his anger sneaks up gradually, so by the end of the book, when he describes how fast food populates all corners of the globe, the reader is seething along with Schlosser, begging other countries to maintain their own identity (“Pick up your Schnitzel, little German!”, I wanted to scream) instead of settling for the quick and easy choice. Beyond this, the book is engaging on a sentence level, with marvelously well-turned phrases and conceptual transitions throughout.

It’s also, apparently, effective. With my good metabolism and shaky impulse control, I’ve always had a weakness for fast food. Since finishing this book, however, I haven’t eaten at a fast food restaurant once (as of this writing). This isn’t a conscious choice; I simply haven’t wanted it. That’s powerful writing.

Posted by Alan Ackmann - Wednesday April 9, 2008.
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Poachers

By Tom Franklin

Listen to Alan Read This Article Here!

I learned a lot at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. One thing I learned, for example, is that apparently everyone—at some point in their writing career—will meet and like Tom Franklin. Whether they interviewed him for an article, heard him at a conference, or met him as a visiting writer, the guy’s name just kept coming up, and always in glowing terms. It makes sense, though. A friend of mine once described Tommy as “more willing to hug another man than anyone I’ve ever met.” That’s high praise for an author whose first novel, Hell at the Breech, was turned down as a movie option by no less than Clint Eastwood on the grounds of it being too violent. And when Dirty Harry thinks you’re toeing the line, you know you’ve accomplished . . . well . . . something, at least.

And if you enjoyed Hell at the Breech (which for the record is quite good), you might also enjoy Franklin’s debut collection Poachers, which I believe was named by Esquire as one of the best books of the year when it came out in 1999. It hits some false notes, but it is quite engaging to see the defining traits of Hell at the Breech (fascination with the South; emphasis on plotting; clarity of scene), emerging from Franklin’s early writing in vestigial form. During a guest lecture at Arkansas Tommy once mentioned that when he started writing he struggled with plotting, producing stories that were elegant and sometimes moving, but essentially inert portraits with little narrative engine. I suspect that some of those early stories—“Shubuta”, “Blue Horses, and “Instinct”, perhaps—made their way into Poachers. During this same visit, though, Tommy also mentioned that as a consequence of these early struggles he now has an occasional over-reliance on plotting at the expense of other elements. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but there is a distinct contrast between stories like “Shubuta” and stories like “Grit”, where the narrative tension is palpable. The centerpiece of the collection, though, is the novella “Poachers”, which reads a bit like Hell at the Breech with training wheels. You can see the first signs of Southern culture mixing with noir/western mythos (think of a drawling Raymond Chandler narrator wading through a swamp) as well as the fascination with anti-heroes and physical detail. Poachers is more than an exercise in literary anthropology, however. It is a fine, cohesive collection, and worth reading if it crosses your path.

Incidentally, Tommy once said that—for reasons unknown to me—it was a personal ambition of his to kill at least one armadillo in every book he writes. Well the curious might be interested to know that in this goal—as well as many others—he succeeds with Poachers.

Posted by Alan Ackmann - Tuesday August 7, 2007.
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