David Payne's first novel, Confessions of A Taoist on Wall Street, debuted to critical and commercial success. He was compared to Charles Dickens (Business Week) and John Barth (Washington Post Book World). In a nice pun, The Dallas Morning News said his "stock is bound to rise."
So it has. Ruin Creek, Gravesend Light, and Early From the Dance have belied Tom Wolfe's admonition at the recent North Carolina Festival of the Book. Wolfe decried the typical route of well-written first novels that so often are followed by far lesser second works. To paraphrase Wolfe, these novelists pour all their experiences into the first novel. The second contains only their experience since the first, and is of much lower quality.
Back to Wando Passo blows that generalization out of the water. Annie Dillard says the novel is "Southern down to the molecular level." Pat Conroy says it "quivers with authentic life" and enhances "a literary reputation that burns as brightly as that of any writer o his generation."
So it has. Ruin Creek, Gravesend Light, and Early From the Dance have belied Tom Wolfe's admonition at the recent North Carolina Festival of the Book. Wolfe decried the typical route of well-written first novels that so often are followed by far lesser second works. To paraphrase Wolfe, these novelists pour all their experiences into the first novel. The second contains only their experience since the first, and is of much lower quality.
Back to Wando Passo blows that generalization out of the water. Annie Dillard says the novel is "Southern down to the molecular level." Pat Conroy says it "quivers with authentic life" and enhances "a literary reputation that burns as brightly as that of any writer o his generation."
Essence Distilled
Back to Wando Passo soars! Payne captures the essence of two distinct eras in the South, imbuing them with so much reality that we need a fan for the heat and passion of the place and a swatter for the mosquitoes. He brings all this together in an ethereal miasma of vividly remembered stories.
It is fitting that such a mystical element permeates the novel and provides a major impetus to the plot. In a recent talk Payne explained that a vision came to him as he was mowing his yard. He "saw" a white man with a gun and a black man confronting one another in a room. Each was from a different era yet they had time traveled to this final reckoning. Somehow the death of one was the death of the other metaphorically and literally. But, how was he to get them, separated by 150 years, into the same room?
Magic Moves Plot
Payne's use of a prenda, an iron pot, as a concrete link between the two is inspired, for it enables him to add a realistic element to the Civil War portion of the novel that very few novels have. This element is the magic associated with Palo Mayombe, a Congolese form of voodoo, which came into its present form in Cuba and was transported to the South ancillary to the slave trade.
Back to Wando Passo soars! Payne captures the essence of two distinct eras in the South, imbuing them with so much reality that we need a fan for the heat and passion of the place and a swatter for the mosquitoes. He brings all this together in an ethereal miasma of vividly remembered stories.
It is fitting that such a mystical element permeates the novel and provides a major impetus to the plot. In a recent talk Payne explained that a vision came to him as he was mowing his yard. He "saw" a white man with a gun and a black man confronting one another in a room. Each was from a different era yet they had time traveled to this final reckoning. Somehow the death of one was the death of the other metaphorically and literally. But, how was he to get them, separated by 150 years, into the same room?
Magic Moves Plot
Payne's use of a prenda, an iron pot, as a concrete link between the two is inspired, for it enables him to add a realistic element to the Civil War portion of the novel that very few novels have. This element is the magic associated with Palo Mayombe, a Congolese form of voodoo, which came into its present form in Cuba and was transported to the South ancillary to the slave trade.
Ransom Hill, the modern protagonist, finds a buried prenda in his yard and the world as he knows it begins to unravel. "When you buy a pot, you have intentions of doing bad…. You have to know how to control that thing so that it doesn't control you," according to a modern Oyotunji, South Carolina woman quoted in Rod Davis's American Voudou. So, while Ransom tries to recapture the magic of his 19-year marriage, there is strong magic working against him, magic that originated 150 years before.
Payne employs a standard literary device of presenting two parallel stories, two different books as he characterizes them. Both are set near Charleston, South Carolina - even in the same house. Ransom Hill is 45, a rock and roll star well past his prime who struggles to resurrect his failing marriage with Claire DeLay. This is contrasted with the Civil War story of Harlan and Addie DeLay (great, great, great grandmother of Claire) whose marriage is also suffering. She is a 33-year old spinster who married for convenience - read "desperation." There is a love triangle in each story.
Payne employs a standard literary device of presenting two parallel stories, two different books as he characterizes them. Both are set near Charleston, South Carolina - even in the same house. Ransom Hill is 45, a rock and roll star well past his prime who struggles to resurrect his failing marriage with Claire DeLay. This is contrasted with the Civil War story of Harlan and Addie DeLay (great, great, great grandmother of Claire) whose marriage is also suffering. She is a 33-year old spinster who married for convenience - read "desperation." There is a love triangle in each story.
Addie falls in love with Jarry, half brother to Harlan. Jarry's mother was a slave so he is officially "black," but their dying father accepts him fully, a fact which Harlan abhors. Ransom suspects that Claire is having an affair with Marcel, a childhood friend who is black and head of the department where she works. Love and race propel this novel but without the usual cliches. It all comes together in the Wando Passo house after two decaying skeletons are discovered in a shallow grave.
Cooking the Book
This novel has it all - credible characters, history, mystery, music. The tension pulls the reader going, wondering how this story will end. The fullness of this novel is the result of a process of reduction, according to Payne. "Writing is like cooking." You boil raw tomato juice 4 hours then add something and boil again. This reduction gives the cook something new. "By the tenth or fifteenth rewriting, there was a critical density; the novel was 'ready to serve,' " Payne said. The images and characters become more focused as he continues to write. This story demanded mystery, for example. "I had to determine how the past related to the present."
Cooking the Book
This novel has it all - credible characters, history, mystery, music. The tension pulls the reader going, wondering how this story will end. The fullness of this novel is the result of a process of reduction, according to Payne. "Writing is like cooking." You boil raw tomato juice 4 hours then add something and boil again. This reduction gives the cook something new. "By the tenth or fifteenth rewriting, there was a critical density; the novel was 'ready to serve,' " Payne said. The images and characters become more focused as he continues to write. This story demanded mystery, for example. "I had to determine how the past related to the present."
