TheMaterialismofBiologicalEncounters 145
full of portent: "Far off in the distance, well beyond the waters of the
Mississippi River, across the steel-colored Atlantic, a ship had set sail.
Onboard,hundredsofmosquitoeggslayreadytohatch"(33).
I find the term "rhetoric of dark rumblings" (Ronell 99) quite
suitabletodescribethenarrativestrategyatworkhere.Thetextisinfact
saturatedwithrumblingsofthissort,insidethenarratedworld,aswhen
the Memphis clergy is quoted chiding the faithful for taking part in the
"debauchery" of Mardi Gras (62), and outside in descriptions such as
this: "In this stillness, tree limbs cast ominous shadows... and in the
deepest hours of night, the city seemed to drone with the sound of
dirges" (67). The explicit reference to the metaphoric character of the
description ("seemed to") makes the presence of the narrative voice
palpableandremindsusofHaydenWhite'sobservationthat"narrativeis
not a neutral discursive form" (Contentix) but one that fashions events
toparticularstructuresofmeaningavailableinthearchivesofculture.
This at times intrusive (35, 45) presence of the narrative voice is
itself an expression of non-neutrality and the persistent attempt to bring
the events narrated into the fold of the author's preferred models of
meaning.Crosby's tale thus is shadowed by another story, one thatruns
deeper, one might say, than the mere "what happened then" of the
chronology of epidemic events. For this underlying narrative, or what
sheherselfcalls"thegreaterschemeofthings"(45),Crosbyreliesonan
ur-American cultural script, a religious one to be sure, namely the
Jeremiad which we are seeing at work here in an updated form.^92 Its
canonicalformisofcourseJonathanEdwards's"SinnersintheHandsof
an Angry God" (1741). In this text, Edwards expatiates on the biblical
prophecy of impending doom to offer a timely warning to his
contemporaries: "their foot shall glide induetime: for the day of their
calamities is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make
haste" (Holy Bible,Deut. 32-35). It does not take a stretch of the
(^92) The authoritative discussion of this genre is of course Sacvan Bercovitch's
1978 book by that title. For the purposes of the present argument, the second
element in his three-tiered model deserves special consideration, the fall "from
theidealofcommunitytotheshortcomingsofcommunitylife"(16).Asidefrom
thereflectionsonMardiGras,the"fallfromideals"storylinecanalsobefound
inthefrequentreferencestoslavery(21,92).