Customer Reviews

Short Stories by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

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Many of these fictitious stories were gleaned by the author who lived with, closely observed, and listened to backwoodsmen in the Florida scrub country in the 1930s and 40s. Some are hilarious, others poignant. Even the most tall-tale accounts have a tone of factual basis. Today's reader may well squirm at the racial overtones which Rawlings authentically portrayed, but these give an honest picture of life in her beloved/adopted home. The reader finds that the author relished her experiences with moonshining, cockfighting, etc. These are rich tales. Rawlings' grand desciptions of nature and characters are wonderful. One excellent story,"A Mother in Manville," is out of print elsewhere and worth the price of the book.

Well known as the author of The Yearling and South Moon Under, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was equally capable at the art of the short story as she was for her novels and autobiographic writing (Cross Creek). The varied yarns are crisp works that feature her irony, winsomeness, wit and keen eye for detail. However, what is most beautifully rendered are her picturesque depictions of the lives of the backwoods folks who live in the scrub and hammocks of central Florida.

In such a hard scrabble existence, conniving is often a used attribute from the human personality. However used it may be repercussions often follow suite, as evidenced in the first story "Cracker Chidlings" whereby a slick willy character named Colonel Buxtom takes advantage of a widow in order to steal her property, but he gets his comeuppance for his own folly. Then there is "Jacob's Ladder" a wonderful story depicting the lives of Florry and Mart, two inexperienced youths who march out into the rough and tumble world which they are ill equipped to handle. What they do have is their love for each other and their simple value system, which gives them their profound dignity. This is not a tale of man against nature, but rather, man against man, and who cannot identify with that struggle? Mart and Florry are pummeled by man and nature and with the loss of their baby, but they do carry on. And in the end, they come back to Florry's broken down cabin in the woods. A compromise must be agreed to, and it is eventually reached.

All the tales have a deep rooted earthiness to it, whether it stems from the pleasure of cockfighting, as in the story "Cocks Must Crow" or the struggles of getting a successful bean crop to grow as in "A Crop of Beans." The characters are not endowed with the accoutrements of a luxurious lifestyle, for more often than not, they are struggling for their very lives, but it is their unity as couples against the vanity and materialism of society that makes them all so noble. They have their priorities in place and no matter haw rattled they may get with hunger, varmints, dire poverty and corrupted outside influences, their inherent down-to-earth stick-to-it attitude makes them somehow prevail against the ills of an opportunistic society. And the latter element does breach into the raw Florida wilderness more often than not. It even overpowers the characters, too.

Each story is a classic literary gem, and it is understandable why many writers at the time applauded Rawlings for her shorter fiction, for she did bring the form back into the national literature. Though here themes are universal, and that is how she liked to be viewed, to me, she will always be a regional writer, like Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell. There is a lot to see in a hamlet, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawling really did put the people and environment of Cross Creek under a loving microscope.

I live in Florida and am studying American Literature to teach a high school co-op class next fall, so my attention turned to this author as part of my preparation. Though I was familiar with her as the author of The Yearling, I was completely unacquainted with her short stories. And wow, what a happy surprise this collection was. I enjoyed each story, the way she crafted her characters so realistically and wrote such a variety of stories--some hilarious, some ironic, some serious--with equal skill. I highly recommend this book, especially for those interested in Florida's history, but also for all who enjoy good historical fiction, of the short story variety.