About Small Town Stories (Sling Blade, Faulkner, etc...)
Post 689:
Some of the biggest stories—by big I mean hugely impactful—at times transpire in small and seemingly insignificant places. Tucked away places. The sticks. Between nowhere and never mind. Forgotten patches of dirt, three turns and a hundred miles from anything resembling modernity and all its grandeur. You get it. A goodly chunk of these massive tales are set in the American South. I’m not a scholar, but as far as the last century or so, this seems to be a trend that either started with William Faulkner or, more likely, started with the folks he was copying. Probably a bunch of people living out in the boonies. Wait a minute…
No. Just fooling. Totally original, that Faulkner.
He truly was. And I jest, mostly because I’m not a huge fan of some of his stuff. He was uniquely brilliant, but there are times when his style and form make it hard for me to pay attention. I know, he didn’t use traditional methods for a reason… we get it. And dang it if we don’t appreciate the heck out of the guy. He wanted it that way, all challenging and gnarly. A true artist. Like most true artists, a pain in the butt.
Anyway, when I get beyond the weird writing, the meat of his stories come to the fore. Some really dark, crazy frigging stuff happens in those books. And forget about keeping it in the American South. Small town stories in general are where it’s at. Ever notice that Stephen King is all about setting his weirdness in isolated New England hamlets? Totally a thing, and it’s for a reason.
Narrowing the setting allows you a small stage. This helps the writer create a streamlined narrative with deep characters and moments that can really snap you awake. You’re lulled. Then snap. Sounds horrible when I describe it, but that’s because I’m not good at things. Getting back on point, the small-town stage almost unconsciously does the job of focusing the reader or watcher on those few characters that are integral to the story; it’s common sense—who the hell else are we going to care about? There’s nobody else in this one-horse town.
I’ll give some film examples. Mud is about as rural as it gets. There’s deep character development, and then boom, violence. Real dramatic crap, but crap that could actually happen. It’s more visceral and perhaps more throat-clearing because the setting and the characters seem so ordinary, lives so uneventful. Sling Blade is another; very Faulknerian, in my opinion. So deliberate, with very pronounced characters. It takes place in the South, but any rural area would’ve done. A place we don’t want to think about, with people we don’t want to think about.
And that’s the beauty. When we discover that these out of the way people are more interesting than the pretty people on magazines and on TV, it hints at some sort of truth. It also can force the writing to be more sophisticated; if you’ve got a cast of ten, the plotting and backstories have to be dang engrossing to keep people invested.
Tell me Sling Blade isn’t interesting. When he first tells the girl why he’s been in the institution. Geez. When he tells the boy he loves him. Tears. The horrific thing with his brother. Utterly gutting. These are landmark moments in story, for real. Dwight Yoakam, one of the best villains ever. You think he’s just some hayseed jerk. Nah. He’s El Diablo. It’s a good thing he’s a honkytonk man. I might not have been able to listen to his music again otherwise.
Whatever. Going off the rails.
Here’s the deal. Instead of over-the-top special effects or pithy humor, it’s steadily hitting you with something that is either totally crazy, dark, or strangely heartwarming. My contention is that the parochial backdrop adds sharpness to these pronouncements, these punctuation marks. It’s to keep things interesting. And it reminds the reader or watcher that insane and beautiful and wonderful and horrible things happen to everyone, everywhere. That’s what the small-town story does. Pretty sure that’s some of what Faulkner was after. I better go. There are people with degrees from the nerdery that are charging my way to do battle with my half-hatched opinions.
Cheers. See you after.
