Mr. Howard Bahr paid us a visit last night to sign and read from his new novel, Pelican Road. Bahr, a native of Meridian, Mississippi, has made his name in publishing with three previous novels set during and following the Civil War, all regarded for their authentic detail and eloquence — The Black Flower, The Year of Jubilo, and The Judas Field. (He is pictured at left signing books with Turnrow regular and local writer Mary Carol Miller, top, and below an out-of-town guest whose name we didn't catch.)
The author has stated in interviews that he was born in the wrong era, and from his work you might discern that his head and heart have settled a few generations back. He speaks fondly of the people from that older time and shakes his head at the prospect of what they might make of our time, a world in which he seems a bit unsettled. And yet he is not old-fashioned nor affected, and his chief concern as a writer, he explains, is not to romanticize history, but to represent it as truthfully as he can.
Mr. Bahr's pursuit of historical accuracy in his work is a result of his explorations in the chasm between the past and the present. He spent many years as a Civil War re-enactor, and in fact his prior visits to
Greenwood were in this capacity. He admitted it
got weird occasionally, play-acting as Confederate soldiers while curious throngs in sunglasses and fanny packs looked on, but
he was more interested in the verisimilitude — the sights, sounds, smells and tastes that soldiers would have experienced if the re-enactors had recreated the scene as painstakingly close as possible. Putting himself in these situations lent his novels their historical credibility.
The same can be said of Pelican Road. As a young man, Mr. Bahr worked on the railroads in south Mississippi, both as a yard clerk and as a brakeman. He felt he had witnessed the last vestiges of the railroad era. He learned the lingo and the dangers of this work. He saw men maimed and killed. Today, of course, one person could run a train, the author said.
Mr. Bahr has delivered the world of railroad men during the early 1940s, as the country balanced on the brink of war and a new world, with an uncommon immediacy, and while he took pains to present this time authentically, he writes first and foremost about people and how they react to difficult circumstances. Come for the trains, stay for the characters.
One of the book's characters, Frank Smith, is a friend of the author's, put right in the book without disguise. Smith turned Bahr onto the works of William Faulkner while working on the railroads, and his subsequent love for Faulkner's works compelled him to attend Ole Miss and eventually to find work as curator of Faulkner's home, Rowan Oak, now a museum under the University's auspices. At one time, Bahr confesses, his writing was a cheap imitation of Faulkner. Like all Southern writers, he had to learn to stay out of the great writer's way. Nothing else can be said about the South pre-1950, he said. My book could have been set anywhere. It's set in south Mississippi because that's what I know.
He read a grand excerpt from Pelican Road, and upon completing the passage remarked, "Damn, that's good writing." He did not say it with conceit, but with a sort of amazement that he had written it. You can read the excerpt here, and if you'd like to experience more of his world, order a signed copy here or write for signed copies of his previous books.
