Bell Hammers: The True Folk Tales of Little Egypt, Illinois, by Lancelot Schaubert - JUL 2020 LTER
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This is the story of Wilson Remus Broganer – “Remmy”, a man who spent his life wanting to build a Camelot and people it with Merry Men, with himself as the Robin Hood who stuck up for the little guy. And – mixed metaphor or not – that was what he spent most of his life striving to do.
Set in the southernmost part of Illinois, a region long known as “Little Egypt” because it began as a grain-growing region that supplied the northern part of the state, the story begins at a time when the glory days of farming have been subsumed by the coming of Big Oil. Texarco, the mover and the villain and the Sheriff of Nottingham to Remmy’s Robin Hood, has, in one way or another, pretty well taken over the life and livelihood of the population. In Remmy’s world, there are “people” and there are “oil people. Even though he exists uncomfortably with a foot in each camp, he is by inheritance and inclination, compelled to stick it to The Man in any way possible – from a six-year-old expressing contempt via his bladder, to an adult expressing it via one of the wildest guerilla assaults ever written. (Edward Abbey would have been proud.) Remmy’s quick mind and love for pranks will lead him astray in more ways than one, even though The Good Lord frequently tries to herd him back to the side of the angels.
Though listed as fiction, the tale is heavily based on Schaubert’s family history, liberally larded with what the author refers to as honest b*s*. There are a fair number of family stories in it that are too unlikely to be made up – the day Mamma sewed her shirt into the curtains, the day Remmy realized (too late) that chickens can’t fly, and the kinds of pranks that appeal to adolescent boys, most of them involving bodily secretions of one type or another. Though there are some stories that seem almost too set-up to be true, it’s easy to forgive them in service of the book’s underlying honesty. The anecdotes wander around through a little over 300 pages before things begin to come together and Remmy takes his stand against big-money corporations who run roughshod over the people and the land.
Schaubert uses the vernacular voice here, dangerously close to the point of self-caricature. His casual structure and the inclusion of what appear to be random bits of family history may lull the reader into thinking this is the work of a rambling amateur. Then he pulls the rug out from under those assumptions with a conclusion that soars like cathedral arches. He does let his artistry peek out near the front of the book when a character reflects that “sometimes the only way to get to the whole of a man is to listen to the songs everyone else sang about him.”
These are the songs of Remmy Broganer, chorus and verse, strung through with laughter and tears, blood and sweat, and the honest life of a working man.
Set in the southernmost part of Illinois, a region long known as “Little Egypt” because it began as a grain-growing region that supplied the northern part of the state, the story begins at a time when the glory days of farming have been subsumed by the coming of Big Oil. Texarco, the mover and the villain and the Sheriff of Nottingham to Remmy’s Robin Hood, has, in one way or another, pretty well taken over the life and livelihood of the population. In Remmy’s world, there are “people” and there are “oil people. Even though he exists uncomfortably with a foot in each camp, he is by inheritance and inclination, compelled to stick it to The Man in any way possible – from a six-year-old expressing contempt via his bladder, to an adult expressing it via one of the wildest guerilla assaults ever written. (Edward Abbey would have been proud.) Remmy’s quick mind and love for pranks will lead him astray in more ways than one, even though The Good Lord frequently tries to herd him back to the side of the angels.
Though listed as fiction, the tale is heavily based on Schaubert’s family history, liberally larded with what the author refers to as honest b*s*. There are a fair number of family stories in it that are too unlikely to be made up – the day Mamma sewed her shirt into the curtains, the day Remmy realized (too late) that chickens can’t fly, and the kinds of pranks that appeal to adolescent boys, most of them involving bodily secretions of one type or another. Though there are some stories that seem almost too set-up to be true, it’s easy to forgive them in service of the book’s underlying honesty. The anecdotes wander around through a little over 300 pages before things begin to come together and Remmy takes his stand against big-money corporations who run roughshod over the people and the land.
Schaubert uses the vernacular voice here, dangerously close to the point of self-caricature. His casual structure and the inclusion of what appear to be random bits of family history may lull the reader into thinking this is the work of a rambling amateur. Then he pulls the rug out from under those assumptions with a conclusion that soars like cathedral arches. He does let his artistry peek out near the front of the book when a character reflects that “sometimes the only way to get to the whole of a man is to listen to the songs everyone else sang about him.”
These are the songs of Remmy Broganer, chorus and verse, strung through with laughter and tears, blood and sweat, and the honest life of a working man.
