These Aren't The Spark Notes
Apparently, my study of Florida literature simply must begin with Zora Neale Huston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. How I graduated from an accredited high school in the state of Florida without reading this book is beyond me, but I guess that’s to be expected when your English 10 and English 12 teachers go on maternity leave and the class spends 2 months on adverbial phrases and a seemingly impossible three months on the first four acts of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. When the teacher came back, we never read Act V. The movie sufficed. (Or maybe the problem was that it was a Catholic school. I like to blame Catholicism for a lot of what’s wrong with me.)
I actually have a local connection to Hurston, strangely. Although she claims to be Floridian by birth, she was actually born in Notasulga, Alabama, a town about 20 miles from Auburn. I’ve been there on numerous bike rides. It’s not a destination unto itself, but it does have a convenience store and roads with little traffic, like most of East Central Alabama. The next time I’m in town (and “town” is defined loosely when it comes to Notasulga, Alabama), I’ll have to snoop around for a historical marker or something. I really find it odd that one of America’s best novelists hailed from there. I really need to stop being so judgmental.
Hurston’s birth claim, though, is Eatonville, Florida, the first incorporated black town in the country, and the setting for Their Eyes Where Watching God. I’ll have to do a little looking before the Tour to see if there’s anything worthwhile to see in Eatonville. It seems there should be, but the Internets aren’t providing much info. I’m also a little concerned that Eatonville is so close to (just north of) Orlando, a city not particularly well known for being bicycle-friendly. Actually, it’s downright bicycle hostile. (It’s never made Bicycling magazine’s top-50 bicycle-friendly lists. In related news, the Orlando/Kissimmee metropolitan area has been ranked the most dangerous place in the country for pedestrians.) But again, there’s still plenty time for planning. I won’t bore you with all these mundane details. Just some of them.
Their Eyes was published in 1937, a little late for it to ride on the coattails of the Harlem Renaissance. For that reason, and along with some unfair and harsh criticism by Richard Wright, the book mostly disappeared from the world (as did Hurston herself, falling into poverty and residing in a welfare home), finally experiencing a resurgence of sorts when Alice Walker spread the gospel in the 1960s.
The Walker connection continues. In 1973, she went to Fort Pierce, Florida, to find Hurston’s grave, which was unmarked and overrun with weeds. The grave she found, and it’s probably the correct one, was later inscribed “A Genius of the South.” Now, again, I went to high school in Melbourne, less than 50 miles from Fort Pierce, and I think it’s the pinnacle of literary injustice that I was unfamiliar with Hurston until about twenty years after graduation. At any rate, the Tour will include a visit to the grave. Guaranteed.
I enjoyed reading the book. I don’t think I’d agree that it’s the most important example of African-American literature about the South, but I do think it survives in several contexts. The careful reader will notice the difference between Janie and “man,” so it’s definitely worthy of a feminist approach, even though I found Janie quite pathetic at times. Personally, I think it’s a good snapshot of life in Florida from a relatively unexplored perspective. I see it also as a quest for independence, as Janie seems to grow as a human as she moves from husband to husband to husband. If nothing else, it provides some great Southern dialect that shows Hurston had an ear for detail. Oh, that dialect! If I could program my time machine, I’d go back to that welfare home in January of 1960 and beg Zora to do a reading.
If nothing else, I’m indebted to Hurston for giving me a new way to refer to the deceased, or the people I’d like to soon be deceased after I give ’em a knuckle sandwich: “Cemetery dead.” That’s real-talk, people.
The novel’s opening line is, perhaps, one of the best I’ve read in American literature:
“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”
If I make it to Eatonville on the Tour, I’m sure I’ll see some of the scenery that inspired many of the descriptions in the novel. (Janie also spends considerable time in the Everglades, and Miami, and Palm Beach, so this is a four-fer.) My highlights and dog-ears mainly seem to focus on this description:
“De noise uh de owls skeered me; da limbs of dem cypress trees took to crawlin’ and movin’ round after dark, and two three times Ah heered panthers prowlin’ round. But nothin’ never hurt me ’cause de Lawd knowed how it was.”
And how’s this for a bicycle-friendly quote, even though it had nothing to do with bicycles:
“She had learned how to talk some and leave some. She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels.”
And the Travelogue Humor Award goes to this little gem:
“We’se goin’ back tuh Miami where folks is civilized.”
Ms. Hurston, I’m sorry it took me so long to meet ya.
biciclettalento 