African-American literature

He tells his own story, which Murray idealizes as
being mythical and epic in proportion. The blues
hero rises from the singularity of his own narra-
tive to tell a tale that is concerned with the state
of the human condition. Singing of life itself, of
its loves and joys alongside its abysmal pains, the
blues hero purports to speak for everyone.
Such universalism is not ethereal, but earthy,
Murray insists: “All of this is nothing if not down-
home stuff. Which brings us to our chorus: it is
precisely such southern ‘roots’ that will dispose
and also condition my protagonist to function
in terms of the rootlessness that is the basic pre-
dicament of all humankind in the contemporary
world at large” (17). And, he concludes in From the
Briarpatch File, the blues hero narrates his or her
story from a “frame of acceptance” of life’s hard-
ships rather than from a “frame of rejection.” This
latter, which he deems to be reflective of so much
black “protest literature,” gives voice to a discourse
of victimhood.
A return to his southern roots, which is also,
paradoxically, recognition of the “rootless” na-
ture of human existence, forms the occasion for
Murray’s second book, South to a Very Old Place
(1971). This memoir-cum-travelogue, fictional-
ized in some instances, serves as a portal through
which we might read Murray’s approach to the
writing of fiction. Murray has composed a trilogy
of autobiographical novels: Train Whistle Guitar
(1974), The Spyglass Tree (1991), and The Seven
League Boots (1995).
In South, where Murray’s oft-used stream-
of-consciousness technique, which he inherited
from Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce, two
of his strongest influences (Thomas Mann, Ken-
neth Burke, and William Faulkner are three more),
sometimes lapses into a bluesy, down-home idiom
that is nothing short of eloquent. Here he iden-
tifies himself with Hank Aaron, a Mobile home-
boy whom Murray spies coming out of the Alibi
Lounge in Atlanta:

I see you, Mobile; I see you man, and me, I just

happen to be the kind of homeboy that can smell

glove leather, red mound clay, and infield grass

all the way back to the days of Bo Peyton and

Bancy and Tanny, who, as Chick Hamilton must

have told you, was without a doubt the fanciest

first baseman who ever did it. I see you, Mobile

and I don’t even have to mention old Satchel

Paige, who is not only still around but right here

in Alana to boot. I see you, Hank. Three hun-

dred and seventy-five miles from Mobile by way

of Boston and Milwaukee plus the time it took

Atlanta to make it out of the bushes. What say,

home? (94–95, italics in original).

This passage fairly sings with the vernacular

rhythms of home—warm, earthy, relaxed, and

easy.

Murray’s project is the illustration of the omni-

American ideal: that America (itself a composite

culture—Murray calls it “mulatto”) is the home of

those who have walked its soil and worked its land

through the generations, and this is especially true

of African-Americans. He reiterates this image,

fraught as it is with a subtle nationalism that Mur-

ray himself might deny, in his first novel, Train

Whistle Guitar. Here, he introduces the character

Luzana Cholly, a blues-playing Charlie from Loui-

siana who is adored by Scooter, Murray’s alter-ego

protagonist:

Because the also and also of all of that was also

the also plus also of so many of the twelve-bar

twelve-string guitar riddles you got whether in

idiomatic iambics or otherwise mostly from

Luzana Cholly who was the one who used to

walk his trochaic-sporty stomping-ground

limp-walk picking and plucking and knuckle

knocking and strumming (like an anapestic

locomotive) while singsongsaying Anywhere

I hang my hat anywhere I prop my feet. Who

could drink muddy water who could sleep in a

hollow log. (4–5)

The beauty of Train’s prose arguably marks

it as Murray’s strongest fictional effort. Scooter’s

story continues in The Spyglass Tree, which depicts

his college years, and The Seven League Boots, as

he joins a jazz band. Each sequel retells portions

of the novels preceding it, but with markedly less

intensity.

Murray, Albert 377