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From Huck to John and Jack to Winston by Bob Wallace Three
of my favorite writers are Mark Twain, F. Paul Wilson, and Manly Wade
Wellman. The first everyone
knows, the second, a lot, but not as much as the first, and the third,
unless you are interested in Ozark horror tales and early American music
(think of the song, "Shenandoah,") hardly anyone at all. Specifically,
I am a fan of Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
Wilson's Conspiracies and
The Tomb, and as for Wellman, anything
by him, but especially his tales of Silver John, a singer and guitar
player who wandered through the countryside of America, taking on such
monsters as the Behinder, who one never saw because of course he got you
from behind, and the gardinels, which only look
like houses. It
took me a while to figure out what all three writers had in common: the
desire for freedom, and the quest for it.
And my, how much the times have changed, and how much liberty has
been lost. I sometimes wonder
if we know just how much. But
if you want to see that loss, just read those three writers. Huckleberry
Finn,
one of the most subversive
American novels ever written, if not the
most subversive, isn't only about freedom and the quest for it, it's also
about non-conformity, as all quests for freedom involve non-conformity.
As Emerson wrote, "Whoso would be a man, must be a
nonconformist." It's a
quote Huck would have heartily agreed with.
And Wilson, and Wellman. I
don't think Huck Finn could
have been written by anyone but an American. For
that matter, the same applies to Wilson and most especially Wellman.
How many novels from the rest of the world are about what it means
to be free? The
one theme in Huck is liberty versus slavery, the desire of Huck to
get away from the strictures of society and religion, both of which in his
time supported slavery, a slavery that Huck finally repudiated, even, he
said, if he went to Hell over it. That's
why it's so subversive. But
then, hasn't freedom always been about subversion and non-conformity? Although
slavery could not have existed except through law, getting away from the
oppression of the State doesn't really exist in the book, because there
wasn't much of it in Twain's time. No
Social Security numbers, no IDs, no Now
let's take our Wayback Machine, turn it around, and go forward to now, to
F. Paul Wilson's popular "Repairman Jack" novels.
All nine of them are about Jack getting
away from the State. In
fact, every one of the novels is about him falling off the screen and his
attempts to stay off it. Jack
has no IDs and deals only in cash and gold.
If he was to ever be checked out by the police, nothing would come
up. He
wouldn't come up. Now
compare the life of Huck to that of Jack, of a boy who doesn't give any
thought to the State because it barely exists, to a man whose life
consists of trying to hide from it because it's everywhere.
And it's the same country, in a span of less than far less than 200
years. I
repeat: how times have
changed, and how much liberty has been lost.
The Repairman Jack novels wouldn't have been written in Twain's
time, because no one would believe the government could get that big or
intrusive. They'd be appalled
and outraged, and consider Wellman?
His Silver John character is in-between Huck and Jack.
Although it's never clearly pointed out, I believe John fought in
World War I, so he would live in a world much freer than our own.
The only thing John has to occasionally deal with are the police,
since he by choice is pretty much a nearly-penniless hobo who wanders with
his guitar from adventure to adventure. He
carries a bedroll, sleeps under the stars, and generally has about two
dollars in his pockets. But
that's the life he wants, because he's free.
He's even free from the worries of money: once, after winning a
contest, he gives away a solid-gold trophy.
The only thing he's not free of are the various witches and devils
and haints that are always pestering him.
Of course, he pesters them back. Huck
and John, both from the past, are free both in body and spirit.
Jack, from today, is free in spirit but only in body because
he hides from the State. He's
continually apprehensive, a feeling that always comes from dealing with
that bloated Black Thing whose nature is to steal and murder and oppress. But
what happens when you cease to be free in both body and spirit?
Then you end up with Brave New World,
1984, and Ira Levin's little-known, This Perfect Day.
You end up like Winston Smith in 1984, when Big Brother got so deeply inside his head Smith ended up
loving him. Czeslaw
Milosz, in his remarkable book, The Captive Mind, details what happens when the State has gotten so big it absorbs
nearly everything, not only body but spirit.
His, too, is a horror tale, a true one of people who have lost
their souls. That's what
happens when the State gets inside you: it will steal your soul.
To keep your soul as your own, you must always oppose the State,
and never, ever let it get inside your head, no matter what kind of
propaganda it uses. Especially
if you're told it's for your own good. We
pine for a time when we could float down the Mississippi
in a raft and sleep on an island.
We wonder about the modern days, and we dread the future. From Huck, to John to Jack. What's the next stop for this choo-choo train we're on? The captive mind of Winston? And if so, when? In less than 200 years? Or even less than that?
discuss this column in the forum Bob Wallace is the author of I Write What I See. Please visit his Shameless Book Promotion Page. And here is his Page Full o' Fun. And this is where he blogs.
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