Literary Fictions

The Neon Bible ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

John Kennedy Toole was a New Orleans writer who was born in 1937. He was unable to get his famous novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, published during his lifetime. Through the persistence of his mother, Thelma Toole, the novel was finally published in 1980, more than ten years after John Kennedy Toole ended his own life in 1969. His only other (known) work is the novel The Neon Bible, which he wrote when he was only sixteen years old.   

For a sixteen-year-old writer, The Neon Bible is remarkably polished and accomplished. It demonstrates a raw writing talent that has to be extremely rare in adolescents in their mid-teens. The characters are well-drawn and believable, the dialogue crisp, the humor subtle, the story logical and rounded out to a satisfying conclusion. You never have the impression, while reading The Neon Bible, that here is a person who shouldn’t be writing a novel because he’s too young and doesn’t know enough.   

The lead character in The Neon Bible is a boy named David living in a small Southern town with his dysfunctional family. There’s a mother and a father, but the most interesting character is David’s Aunt Mae. She is an older woman past sixty who used to be “on the stage” singing and performing. She comes to live with David’s family because she has no place else to go. She can’t cook or do any of the domestic things most women do. She talks all the time about the men who used to be in love with her and about her experiences in show business.

David’s father loses his factory job, so the family has to go live in an old house out of town on a hill where the soil is bad and there are lots of trees. Every day David walks down the hill to school. Aunt Mae makes curtains for the house out of her old theatrical costumes. The people in the town don’t like her because she comes from some other place and she’s not like anybody else living in the town. She goes out on dates at night with men, frequently staying out all night. One of her men friends in particular is a musician and gets her a few singing engagements, which brings in a little money for the family to buy food.

David graduates from eighth grade and decides to quit school, while most of the other people in his class go on to high school and then to college. He gets a job in a drug store in town and has a girlfriend for a while, but she’s only in town for a little while and leaves, seriously jilting him.   

World War II intrudes and David’s father enlists. You get the impression he’s glad for the escape. He is sent to Italy, where he is eventually killed. David’s mother can’t handle the death of her husband, even though we got the impression when he was alive that she didn’t like him very much and the marriage was not a happy one. She gradually loses her mind and becomes like a ghost. Aunt Mae takes care of David’s mother during the day while David is working at the drug store.

Aunt Mae once again succumbs to the lure of show business and goes off to Nashville with her boyfriend to pursue fame and fortune as a singer. David can’t leave his mother unattended all day long, so he must quit his job at the drugstore. Aunt Mae tells him she will send for him and his mother in a “couple of weeks,” but we don’t believe her. Neither does David.

The story does not end well for David, as you might expect. He ends up running away on  a train. You have to read the book to know why he is running away and where he is going. If you are a fan of Southern fiction and coming-of-age stories, you are certain to enjoy the trip.

Copyright © 2021 by Allen Kopp

Andersonville ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Andersonville, Mackinlay Kantor’s Pulitzer Prize novel, was first published in 1955. Though it is fiction, it is based largely on historical record, diaries, letters, witness accounts, etc. (At the end of the novel is a lengthy list of sources that the writer used.) Some of the characters in the book are real people, while others are fictional constructs.

The prison camp, Andersonville, was so-named because the nearest train station was the small town of Anderson. The camp was built in the state of Georgia by the Confederate Government of the Southern States to contain prisoners of war from the Northern States in the bloody conflict known as the War of the Southern Rebellion or the War Between the States.

The camp (also called the stockade) was ill-conceived, hastily built and inadequate in every way. As soon as it was opened to accept prisoners, it was poorly managed and inhumane. It was simply an enclosed area of about 27 acres with 15-foot walls, containing over thirty thousand prisoners of war (it was intended to hold half that many). There was no real shelter for the prisoners other than what they were able to devise on their own. They used old coats, quilts, parts of tents, or whatever they had on hand or could scrounge, to keep themselves out of the rain, the cold or the blazing Georgia sun. They were given barely enough food to sustain life and the food was of the poorest quality, not suitable for human consumption. No latrine or toilet facilities were provided, so there were over thirty thousand men using the swamp to relieve themselves. If the men got sick—and most of them did—they had no medicine and no treatment. Scurvy and malnutrition were rampant, as were diarrhea and a condition known as dropsy. Due to the filthy and unsanitary conditions, a small sore or an insect bite could turn into gangrene, and in just a few days the victim would be mortally ill. Worst of all, the military brass responsible for the running of the prison were callous and uncaring, if not downright cruel. The prevailing notion was that Yankees deserved to suffer and die because they were the enemy and were less than human.

The fictional plantation owner, Ira Claffey, and his family, represent the civilian view of Andersonville prison camp. Ira Claffey is a character we rarely see in fiction, a kind and benevolent slave owner who feeds his slaves well, takes care of their needs, and is concerned for their happiness and welfare. But the Claffeys pay a heavy price for the war, as so many people did; they lose three sons in battle and the mother, Ira Claffey’s wife, dies of grief.  

There are other memorable characters, both inside and outside the prison. The Reverend Cato Dillard and his wife, Effie, take Christianity seriously and put it into practice whenever they can. Captain Henry Wirz is the Swiss-born officer who serves as the commandant of Andersonville. He is in constant pain from a war injury and seems temperamentally unsuited to his post. Providing much-needed comic relief is the widow Tebbs, a prostitute who conducts a thriving business in an outbuilding near her home that she calls “the crib,” and her brood of mismatched bastards (Coral, Floral, Zoral and Laurel), each with a different father. Coral is an embittered 18-year-old who returns home from battle minus a leg. Floral, a not-very-bright 14-year-old, longs to be a guard at the prison.  

Andersonville is a long novel, 726 dense pages (a lot of words per page). It’s not difficult to read, except for its length. I wasn’t exactly getting tired of it before I finished it, but I was glad when I came to the end. If you have the time and determination to read it, you will find it a rewarding experience, not soon to be forgotten.

Copyright © 2021 by Allen Kopp