{"id":167539,"date":"2024-05-16T10:31:36","date_gmt":"2024-05-16T14:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=167539"},"modified":"2024-05-16T11:20:36","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T15:20:36","slug":"the-poetry-of-fact-on-alec-wilkinsons-moonshine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/05\/16\/the-poetry-of-fact-on-alec-wilkinsons-moonshine\/","title":{"rendered":"The Poetry of Fact: On Alec Wilkinson\u2019s Moonshine<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Abandoned shack in rural North Carolina. Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith, via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>. Public domain.<\/p><\/div>\n

The quantity and quality of consternation caused me by the publication of Alec Wilkinson\u2019s Moonshine<\/em> in 1985 is di\ufb03cult to articulate. This utterance should prove probative. If we are in a foreword, an afterword, or perhaps ideally a middleword, we will shortly be in a model of muddle at the very end of the clarity spectrum away from Moonshine<\/em> itself, with its amber lucidity, as someone said of the prose of someone, sometime, maybe of Beckett, maybe of Virgil, who knows, throw it into the muddle. The consternation caused me by this book is even starker next to the delight of reading the book itself before the personal accidents of my response are \ufb01gured in. I will essay to detail those accidents, but I would like to \ufb01rst say something about the method of the writing. <\/p>\n

Alec Wilkinson is one of two literary grandsons of Joseph Mitchell, the grandfather of the poetry of fact. \u201cThe poetry of fact\u201d is a phrase I momentarily fancied I coined, but the second literary grandson of Joseph Mitchell, Ian Frazier, corrected me, and I have assented to his claim that he coined the phrase. One\u2019s vanities are silly and dangerous. It is a vanity to think to say there are but two grandsons of Joseph Mitchell as well. There are doubtless dozens and, of course, granddaughters, too; what I mean is that Alec Wilkinson and Ian Frazier are the grandsons with whom I am most familiar, and most fond, and so it is convenient to sloppily say they are it.<\/p>\n

What is the poetry of fact? Good question. Since I am not the coiner of the term and, at best, a dilettante in its practice, I may be excused, I hope, if my answer is wanting, but I vow to do my best. I, alas, have brought it up. When the justice of the peace who conducted my marriage, Judge Leonard Hentz of Sealy, Texas, asked if anyone objected to the imminent union, he looked up and said, of our sole witness, \u201cWell, hell, he\u2019s the only one here, and y\u2019all brought him, so let\u2019s get on with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The poetry of fact is the ordering for power of empirical facts, historical facts, narrative elements, objects, dialogues, clauses, phrases, words\u2014it is the construction of catalogues of things large or small into arrays of power. The power of the utterance is the point. The preferred mode of delivery is the declarative sentence, simple or compound, without subordination or dependent clauses\u2014without what Mr. Frazier has called \u201criders.\u201d Power in this instance\u2014in any writing, really\u2014is to be understood as a function of where things are placed. The end of a series or sequence or catalogue or paragraph or chapter or essay or book is the position of what we will call primary thrust. It is what will linger in the brain uppermost because it is lattermost. The beginning of an array, large or small, is the position of secondary thrust: the \u201c\ufb01rst impression\u201d that gets lost but never quite recedes. The middle of an array is the tertiary thrust\u2014the middle gets lost in the middle, ordinarily. This is the middle\u2019s job. Games can be played with these positions of emphasis. A sockdolager, to employ Twain, can be buried in the middle where, because it is a sockdolager, it is not exactly buried and may constitute a surprise. The emphatic middle, let us call it, installs an irony, raises an eyebrow whether anyone realizes it or not. An \u201cunemphatic\u201d end also installs an eyebrow. Strunk and White\u2019s The Elements of Style<\/em> is onto but the very tip of this iceberg with its Elementary Principles of Composition #18: \u201cPlace the emphatic words of a sentence at the end.\u201d Were it \u201cThe words at the end of a sentence are emphatic,\u201d they\u2019d have been closer to the nuanced complexity of the poetry of fact, but let\u2019s move on.<\/p>\n

The poetry of fact requires interesting facts. The best-case scenario for interesting facts is an interesting person doing interesting things. Once such a person is located, if it can be the case that he or she can speak well about the doing, we are in a second power\u2014colorful deeds performed by a colorful person, colorful squared.<\/p>\n

The poetry of fact does not permit of the coy. By coy<\/em>, I mean overt withholding that arrests the reader\u2019s neutral expectations. The reader is not compelled to say \u201cWait\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u201d or allowed to ask \u201cAnd?\u201d The reader certainly need never ask \u201cWhat?\u201d The reader is not working to follow. The reader is not tightroping in grammatical suspensions\u2014or worse, logical suspensions\u2014for the logic or the thought or the drift to evolve. The stu\ufb00 is coming easily and naturally (seeming). The reader sees this, this, and this. The reader does not see if that, this, or while this, that. Withholding of a fact to achieve \u201csuspense\u201d is perhaps the cardinal sin. The stu\ufb00 must come timely in a straight (seeming) line, and if done right, it is powerful largely because<\/em> there is no frustration or di\ufb03culty of perception. The root scheme is what Hemingway was after. He wanted to strip writing of rhetoric and \u201cthinking.\u201d It is a pointillist technique that, as it goes, assembles a large, strong, obvious, digestible portrait. It is a pointillist technique that, as it goes, assembles a digestible, strong, obvious, large portrait. It is a pointillist technique that as it goes assembles a strong, digestible, large, obvious portrait. It is a pointillist technique that as it goes assembles a digestible, strong, obvious, large portrait. As it goes, it assembles a strong, large, digestible, obvious portrait via a pointillist technique. A strong, large, digestible, obvious portrait via a pointillist technique is assembled as it goes. Quod erat demonstrandum, and not well.<\/p>\n

The poetry of fact does not permit opinion or comment or instruction toward inferences to be made by the reader. Inference is a function solely of the manipulations of the facts and the facts themselves.<\/p>\n

Let us see now how this actually works when it is not being cartoonishly parodied. Here is the opening of Mr. Wilkinson\u2019s Moonshine<\/em>:<\/p>\n

For more than thirty years Garland Bunting has been engaged in capturing and prosecuting men and women in North Carolina who make and sell liquor illegally. To do this he has driven taxis, delivered sermons, peddled \ufb01sh, buck danced, worked carnivals as a barker, operated bulldozers, loaded carriages and hauled logs at sawmills, feigned drunkenness, and pretended to be an idiot. In the minds of many people he is the most successful revenue agent in the history of a state that has always been enormously productive of moonshine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Three declarative sentences, each with an orienting beginning, a buried middle, and a hard, elevated end. The ordering of the sentences themselves demonstrates this secondary, tertiary, and primary emphasis. (This id\u00e9e \ufb01xe of mine, I assure you, is about to bother us no more. I will break down this paragraph now and as a reward for your indulgence release us immediately to the book itself. A good introduction to a good book should release us in the \ufb01rst sentence\u2014certainly a bad one should.)<\/p>\n

These three sentences, remembered for their \ufb01nal thrusts alone, a hazy kind of natural default recall, announce together that liquor is sold illegally, that this selling is policed by a man who has pretended to be an idiot doing it, and that our idiot-seeming cop may be the best there is \u201cin a state that has always been enormously productive of moonshine.\u201d This is a curious phrase, asked to bear the weight of the entire opening paragraph of the book. \u201cEnormously productive\u201d is a fact, but it is rendered in a hue some distance away, on the palette of diction, from \u201cmoonshine.\u201d Why Mr. Wilkinson ends his paragraph opening the book Moonshine<\/em> with \u201cmoonshine\u201d is comparatively easy to explain next to why his penult is \u201cenormously productive.\u201d Moonshine is funky and nefarious even in antonym, as in \u201cPut it where the moon don\u2019t<\/em> shine.\u201d What I mean by shift in hue with \u201cenormously productive\u201d might more commonly be called a shift in register; to stay in register with \u201cmoonshine,\u201d we might expect \u201cin a state that has always made a lot of moonshine.\u201d Why has Mr. Wilkinson played with the paint, or the diction, like this? No one in this market would be expected to say, \u201cI am in a state that has always been enormously productive of moonshine.\u201d He would say, \u201cWe make a lot of moonshine here.\u201d \u201cNorth Carolina is full of moonshine and bootleggers.\u201d \u201cYes, Hyram, we are enormously productive of moonshine.\u201d \u201cWhy are you talking like a dick, Cecil?\u201d \u201cBecause I am a poet. Do you want to \ufb01ght?\u201d I have taken us down what parlance today demands we call \u201ca rabbit hole,\u201d and I did not mean to. The di\ufb00erence in register constitutes a joke, a small one that is funny, as jokes should be, but that also in this instance says something about what we will call the code, which may be called instruction on how to read a book. The code here says, \u201cThis little play in hue of tone or in register of diction means that I am in charge here and aware of what I am doing and if I want to sound for a second a tad pedantic with an arch sound that makes of moonshine<\/em> an even more heavy-landing word than it is, I will.\u201d Wilkinson announces: Despite its \ufb02at-looking declaratory simplicity of a\ufb00ect, this is a thoughtful and intimately controlled book you hold, Reader. Watch it.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get out of the rabbit hole.<\/p>\n

For more than thirty years Garland Bunting has been engaged in capturing and prosecuting men and women in North Carolina who make and sell liquor illegally.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Five words into the book, the odd and weirdly theatrical name Garland Bunting<\/em> establishes the subject of the book up front (if it had not been coined better by my betters, I could have called the poetry of fact the art of up front), and \ufb01ve more words in, buried in the middle of this sentence, we see that Mr. Bunting captures<\/em> and prosecutes men and women. Capturing men and women is an ironically emphatic element to be buried in a sentence; note that Mr. Wilkinson cannot responsibly say \u201ccapturing\u201d without addending \u201cprosecuting,\u201d or we\u2019d be misled into thinking Mr. Bunting up to illicit rather than licit engaging. Facts are not left out to achieve cheap e\ufb00ect. We have it established that we have a subject who does interesting things; all we need for the cherry-on-sundae ignition is Mr. Bunting\u2019s capacity to talk well about what he does. The \ufb01rst thing we see him say is that he is shaped like a sweet potato: \u201csmall at both ends and big in the middle. It\u2019s hard to keep pants up on a thing like that.\u201d A self-deprecating fellow who captures people and can talk. Mr. Wilkinson discovered him in a newspaper article and called him up and asked if he could come down for a week to write about him. Mr. Bunting said, \u201cA couple days maybe, but nothing like no week.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second sentence of the book is an orthodox catalogue, which is, really, the catalogue, all that is meant by the lofty \u201cpoetry of fact.\u201d Good catalogue. Good catalogue is the correct elements allowed to coil for power. The coiling requires patience. The secondary\/tertiary\/primary infrastructure, to get Marxian about it, must be back-burnered in the brain while things logically and visually and sonically adjust themselves, like a snake settling in a box. When the snake is comfortable and on guard, draw a picture of him.<\/p>\n

To do this he has driven taxis, delivered sermons, peddled \ufb01sh, buck danced, worked carnivals as a barker, operated bulldozers, loaded carriages and hauled logs at sawmills, feigned drunkenness, and pretended to be an idiot.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note, beyond the traditional placing of our sockdolager at the end\u2014the pretending to be an idiot\u2014the two longer phrases in the middle of the catalogue, longer and perhaps less visually immediate:<\/p>\n

worked carnivals as a barker . . . loaded carriages and hauled logs at sawmills . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And note the separating of these arguably more diffuse elements with the strong, clean \u201coperated bulldozers\u201d\u2014perhaps the literal center of this catalogue; the truest and lostest middle of it is a policeman on a bulldozer in pursuit, somehow, of a bootlegger. On a bulldozer! In a phrase trying to be concealed! It\u2019s a world\u2014this book\u2014of paradox, structurally and otherwise. All that this inessential bloviation of comment I have expended at it does is demonstrate the \ufb01ne control of quiet paradox Mr. Wilkinson writes with.<\/p>\n

I have committed all this gobbledy trying to stop short of the gook<\/em> in gobbledygook. It was hoped that you as reader would say to yourself at some point, You\u2019d better cease this nonsense and get to the book. If you did, good. If not, we now approach with relief an end.<\/p>\n

The publication of Moonshine<\/em> put me in a world of consternation; this delightful tour de force hurt me because at the moment of its heaving onto the literary horizon in 1985, I was at work on a subject at the other end of Mr. Wilkinson\u2019s and Mr. Bunting\u2019s spectrum. I was at work on a subject who in nearly every way, legally and anthropologically, was in opposition to Mr. Bunting, and who in fact could have been one of Mr. Bunting\u2019s targeted perps. Shortly after publication of Moonshine<\/em>, my subject was busted for distilling liquor and growing marijuana on his swamp property in Red Springs, North Carolina, 168 miles away from Mr. Bunting\u2019s Scotland Neck, and I do not know for a fact that Mr. Bunting did not do the busting but believe that my subject was taken down with lesser and more local force than Mr. Bunting represents.<\/p>\n

Mr. Wilkinson had done with Mr. Bunting what I could not do with my subject. My subject did things as interesting as Mr. Bunting did, things the least interesting of which was the bootlegging and pot growing, and he could talk well about them. He was a native of the Lumbee Tribe with a degree from Brigham Young, by way of Vietnam and the GI Bill, and a Mormon wife and a kennel of dogs that generated the only living ever made by selling pit dogs and a career in Peeping Tomism, and he would, once the local whiskey still and pot charges were adjudicated and the Mormon wife had abdicated and the kennel had bankrupted, go on to do three years federal time for large-scale pot running in rental cars from the border of Mexico into the poor, low, murderous hills of Robeson County, North Carolina. \u201cThe government dudn\u2019t care about the drugs,\u201d he told me. \u201cThey want the money.\u201d (It is not by whim that Mr. Bunting is called a revenue agent and not a liquor agent.) He had \ufb02own with suitcases containing halves of millions of dollars in cash to Switzerland, more at one point than one bank could, or would, accept. He would go down the street with what one bank did not accept to another bank that would. One day he said, \u201cI\u2019mone drop a bomb on you.\u201d I said, \u201cOkay.\u201d He said, \u201cNuclear now.\u201d I said, \u201cOkay.\u201d \u201cNuclear bomb now.\u201d I said, \u201cOkay, drop it.\u201d He said, \u201cBisexual.\u201d I said, \u201cWho? You or\u2014?\u201d He said, \u201cMe.\u201d I said, \u201cWhat does that mean?\u201d He said, \u201cWhat that means, buddyro, is that in the last eighteen years I have sucked six thousand dicks.\u201d<\/p>\n

I had this nuclear bomb, a huge sexual topography to explore,* and was discovering as we went the troubled history of the Lumbee to give it all some scope\u2014and I did not write the book.<\/p>\n

Because what I failed to say in all the maundering above, all the this this this and not if this, then this tertiary schmertiary, all the catalogic explications and the sly pedantic, is: This kind of writing is HARD<\/em>. The gathering of fact alone will kill you. The coiling of the fact will then exhaust the dead. I did not write my book.<\/p>\n

I lazed out on my book about my colorful cheerful bootlegging \ufb01ghting-dog-breeding soldier-seducing Lumbee raconteur. Mr. Wilkinson did not laze out on his book, on his colorful cheerful potato-shaped policeman after my man. I thank him for his industry.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*When I later attempted to verify the six thousand dicks, my man said, \u201cWhat?\u201d I thought he would retract. He said, \u201cI want to revise that count.\u201d I said okay. He took a minute in a chair looking at the ceiling and said, \u201cOne thousand.\u201d That is when I started really paying attention.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From the introduction to the new edition of Alec Wilkinson\u2019s <\/em>Moonshine: A Life in Pursuit of White Liquor<\/a>,<\/u> out from Godine Nonpareil in June .<\/em><\/p>\n

Padgett Powell is the author of six novels, including\u00a0<\/em>Edisto,\u00a0a National Book Awards finalist, and\u00a0<\/em>You & Me. His other books include three short-story collections and the essay collection,<\/em>\u00a0Indigo: Arm Wrestling, Snake Saving, and Some Things in Between. His awards include a Whiting Award in Fiction, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Mary Hobson Prize for Distinguished Achievement in Arts and Letters. He has been a professor of writing at the University of Florida since 1984.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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