Twilight: William Gay's Novel of Madness and Murder “There’s folks you just don’t need. You’re better off without em. Your life is just a little better because they ain’t in it.” William Gay, October 27, 1941-February 23, 2012, Hohenwald, TNI had the good fortune to meet William Gay on two occasions. The first was on his book tour with Provinces of Night. I had read The Long Home when it appeared in paperback, recognized there was a special voice that had burst on the scene, and acquired a first edition of his first novel. When his anthology of short stories, I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories appeared I bought that too. Each work was an exceptional read. At the time I bought those first works by Gay, I had no idea if I would ever meet him or not.Gay always struck me with his easy going way. His form of dress was unconventional. Both times I met him he was wearing carpenter's overalls, rough boots, and either a shirt of insulated underwear or a river neck shirt. I imagine it was a simple underwear shirt.The last time I saw Gay was on his tour with Twilight. He sauntered in The Alabama Booksmith in Homewood, Alabama. He had added a checked flannel shirt to the outfit I had seen him in previously. Jake Reiss, the owner, asked him if he was about ready to get started. "Right after I go to the bath room and step outside to burn one. I waited for Gay to approach the door to the porch outside and asked if he minded company. "Naw. Come on." We went outside and burned a cigarette. I've never escaped that vice, nor apparently did he.We talked a little about his books. I told him I had "The Long Home" and "I Hate to See that Evening Sun Go Down." He nodded. "I'm happy to sign them." Then he looked over and said, "Wait until you meet Sutter." I told him I'd be looking for him. "You can't miss him," Gay said. We went inside. The signing began. Some folks didn't know what to make out of William Gay. He wasn't what they were accustomed to seeing at a book signing. I suppose that's one of the things I liked the best about him.For what it's worth, "Let's burn one" entered my phrases of Southern idiom. I reserve it for my smoking friends. There are a few of us left. We huddle on the screened porch in the winter. A cup of hot coffee helps. If it's night time and the mercury's really dropping, a shot of whiskey in the coffee helps a little more. We sweat on the screened porch in the summer, trying to catch a breeze from old time oscillating fans. A glass of lemonade goes down good. We recognize we are persona non grata, and try to spare our non-smoking friends and loved ones the second hand hazards of our vice that we know is probably shortening our lives.Call it a recognition of "twilight," an intimation of mortality. We are rather resigned to it. At one time or another all of us have said, "None of us is gettin' out of here alive."When you read "Twilight" by William Gay, the image of twilight is repeated a number of times at key sections of the book. The timbre of the light changes, too. At times, the light is so obscured by mist you can't tell which way is up or down, or what direction you're headed. You're lost. Whether good or evil is going to prevail is any body's guess almost to the last page. Are you comfortable with the twilight of your life?My grandmother always told me there's people in this world that just don't look quite right out of their eyes. Over the years, I learned she was right. There are those people you look into there eyes, and there's nothing behind them. There's no conscience, no sense of remorse. Fact is, they'd just as soon kill you as look at you.William Gay draws you into a page turning frenzy. His prose is spare, lean, and devoid of words unnecessary to propel his story forward. Then the man can amaze you with vivid imagery that is more poetry than prose. You get the sense that each word has been carefully parsed from every other possible synonym that might have been dropped into the same place. But without that careful parsing, the words wouldn't have been right.The novel is divided into two parts. For the sake of brevity, I'll call the first part "The Town, and the second part "The Harrikin." Each is a setting unique unto itself. Peopled with characters that you would not find in other than the place Gay put them. They wouldn't fit. That is, no one but Granville Sutter and Kenneth Tyler who become parts of both worlds.The story line is fairly simple and straight forward. However, as you read it, you realize you are in the hands of a master writer.THE TOWN “The bodies of the newly dead are not debris nor remnant, nor are they entirely icon or essence. They are, rather, changelings, incubates, hatchlings of a new reality that bear our names and dates, our image and likenesses, as surely in the eyes and ears of our children and grandchildren as did word of our birth in the ears of our parents and their parents. It is wise to treat such new things tenderly, carefully, with honor.” --Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade The time is 1951 in a small Tennessee Town.Kenneth and Corrie Tyler, the offspring of bootlegger Moose Tyler have made a startling discovery. Fenton Breece, the town undertaker, got good money from the Tyler family to put Moose away right, including an expensive vault. At Corrie's insistence, she's had Kenneth dig up the grave. The vault's gone. Moose only has half a suit on. He's naked from the waist down. Somebody has mutilated him, taking his male unit and family jewels. The inspection of other graves yields further proof that Fenton Breece has some peculiar notions for dealing with the dead, male and female alike. Breece is the butt of jokes of the town's men. His weak efforts of showing interest in women are rebuffed by raucous laughter. One citizen says, "You know Fenton Breece isn't lying when his mouth isn't moving."Corrie makes it her mission to extract justice from Fenton Breece. Kenneth questions what she expects to accomplish. After all, Kenneth isn't that interested. His Daddy had been a terror to him when Kenneth was a child.“What do you think we ought to do? she asked. Do? Put his sorry ass away. Tell the law and let them open the graves themselves. Put him away forever in some crazyhouse. They’d have to. You think they would? I know they would. What would you do with him? There’s supposed to be respect for the dead. It’s the way we evolved or something. It’s genetic. This man here…he wouldn’t cull anything. He’d do anything.”Corrie's about right. Folks in these parts hold great respect for their dead. Go messin' with a cemetery or desecrating the corpse of a beloved ancestor is worse than stepping into a nest of yellow jackets. Out in the country in the churchyards there are old sagging dinner tables that have been there most likely for generations. Attend a dinner on the grounds. Listen to the hymn singing and watch the living attend to the graves of their dead. In my county one old cemetery was vandalized. Ancient tombstones turned over and broken. Young people obviously. They had the bad sense to leave spray painted pentagrams identifying themselves as devil worshipers in the minds of the aggrieved. "No, we can't give'em the death penalty." Dinner on the GroundsCorrie confronts Fenton Breece.“You buried my father, she began. He nodded unctuously. He couldn’t wonder what this was about. He remembered the girl, and he remembered the old man, but he couldn’t fathom what she wanted unless someone else was dead. He kept glancing at the purse, and he couldn’t remember if it had all been paid or not. Maybe she owed him money. Mann Tyler, she said. He had an insurance. We paid for an eight-hundred-dollar steel vault to go over his casket, and it’s not there anymore. The room was very quiet. She could hear rain at the window. Breece got up and crossed the room. He peereddown the hall and closed the door. He went back and sat down. His hands placed together atop the desk formed an arch. He was watching her and she could see sick fear rise up in his eyes. Just not there, she went on. And that’s not all. He’s buried without all the clothes we bought for him, and he’s been…mutilated. She just watched him. A tic pulsed at the corner of one bulging eye like something monstrous stirring beneath a thin veneer of flesh.” “What do you want? You’re finished. You don’t begin to suspect how finished you are. When all these people hear about what you’ve done to their folks, they’re just going to mob you. They’d hang you, but you won’t last that long. They’ll tear you apart like a pack of dogs.”Fenton sputters that he'll make things right. That he'll replace the vault, that he'll make reparations.Tension ratchets up when Kenneth steals Breece's briefcase which holds the demented mortician's ugly secrets. There's an ugly stack of photographs. Fenton Breece is a necrophiliac. Fenton is capable of committing acts that raise the hair on the back of your neck. But he lacks the spine to get his own dirty secrets covered up.As Gay said, "Wait till you meet Sutter."Granville Sutter is one of those men my grandmother would have said didn't look right out of his eyes. He's gotten off of a murder charge on a lesser included offense. He has the knack of terrifying the populous of the entire town. When Sutter tells anyone he'll see them later, nothing good will come of it.Breece cuts a deal with the devil. Get his photographs back, he'll pay Sutter $15,000.00. Sutter has no compunction about killing Corrie and Kenneth Tyler. They just don't know a hell hound is on their trail, yet.Even Breece recognizes he's made a dangerous deal.“It was the first time they had ever talked face to face and Breece divined in a moment of dizzy revelation something about Sutter that no one had noticed before. Why, he is mad, Breece thought. He’s not what people say about him at all. He’s not just mean as a snake or eccentric or independent. He’s as mad as a hatter, and I don’t know how they’ve let him go so long.”Something happens to put Corrie into the clutches of Fenton Breece. Don't ask me. I'm not telling.The HARRIKIN “When Tyler fled and Sutter pursued him, this was the closest thing to a wilderness there was, and there was really no thought of going anywhere else, and as these fugitives, mentor and protégé, fled from a world that still adhered to form and order they were fleeing not only geographically but chronologically, for they were fleeing into the past.” Mentor and protégé? Wait. Are you feeling a bit uneasy? The Harrikin, where a man gets lost, where a compass won't show true northIt's a one on one contest between Kenneth Tyler and Granville Sutter. Kenneth is on his way to Ackerman Field where there's a Sheriff Bellwether who can't be bought. There's a District Attorney itching to bring Sutter to justice, too. All Kenneth has to do is cross the Harrikin, a tangled wilderness, where it's so easy to lose one's way. People have gone in there and never come out of there again. Folks who live there now don't want to be found. They don't have social security numbers, don't care for the government, and the government long ago lost interest in them. It started in 1933 with a storm, a tornado or hurricane that blew into Tennessee up from Alabama.It is a world that might have been the creation of the Brother's Grimm. Perhaps, Hieronymous Bosch. It is haunted by abandoned towns. It is a world of abandoned mines with shafts overgrown by weeds, where a man might step, slip, and never be heard to hit the bottom. A witch woman lives deep in the heart of the Harrikin. Nearby is the old Perrie Mansion, formerly the scene of many a ball and party. Until a balcony filled with merrymakers were spilled from it when it collapsed. Now the witch woman tells Kenneth that on some nights you can still hear the music, the laughter, and then the screams.The witch woman advises Kenneth,“There’s somethin about you. Some folks say more than they know. You say considerable less. There’s somethin about you, and I don’t know if it’s a great good or a great evil. Well. You being a witch and all, looks like you’d know. I would if you wadn’t blockin it out. You’re hidin somethin.”There's things in this world better let alone. Things sealed away and not meant to be looked upon. Lines better not crossed, and when you do cross 'em you got to take what comes."There is Bookbinder, the old man who raises goats and keeps them as pets. He shares coffee with Kenneth.There is a family, mother, father, daughter, son. They feed Kenneth.On the chase for Kenneth, Sutter will encounter many that Kenneth has met. Some will live. Some will die.From time to time Sutter will sleep. His sleep is troubled by dreams."After a while he slept or thought he slept. He dreamed or dreamed he did. Anymore the line between dreams and reality was ambiguous at best. For years he'd felt madness sniffing his tracks like an unwanted dog he couldn't stay shut of. He'd kick it away and it would whimper and cower down spinelessly and he'd go on, but when he looked back over his shoulder it would be shambling toward him, watching him with wary apprehension but coming on anyway."A reckoning is coming. William Gay's prose drives you relentlessly to a haunting conclusion. When you've reached the end, ask yourself a question. If one contends with evil too much, too long, can you escape without being caught in its tendrils? Gay leaves the reader much to ponder.One last word of advice. If a 1950 Black Buick Roadmaster pulls up and you're hitchin' a ride, keep walkin'. EXTRAS! EXTRAS! William Gay's NYTimes Obituary, February 29, 2012 William Gay (1941-2012) A Tribute from Oxford American, March 8, 2012 So Lost: At Home with William Gay William Gay talks about his life and reads at the Clarksville Writer's Conference, 2010 William Gay reads from Twilight at the Clarksville Writer's Conference, 2011
William Gay’s Twilight is the one teenage girls aren’t raving about. Thing is, it didn’t impress me much either. The plot is a simple cat-and-mouse chase game: Set in the 1950’s, siblings Corrie and Kenneth Tyler want revenge on the town’s undertaker, Fenton Breece, for plundering their father’s grave. When Kenneth Tyler steals the undertaker’s briefcase, he finds photographic evidence of necrophilia, but before fully getting to bribe him, Breece sets hired murderer Granville Sutter loose on the young siblings. Though it’s a fairly mainstream premise, one that I readily enjoy, Gay executes the plot in a literary Southern Gothic style, and it’s not hard to hook his influences back to Cormac McCarthy and Flannery O’Connor among others. The language is beautiful and slothful parts of the plot are often overcome by Gay’s craft. Still, for all his linguistic ability, there are just too many lines of dialogue and plot segments that only exist inside of lackluster books. Though the main characters are well formed, hardly any of the minor characters work well. They know how dangerous Granville Sutter is, the cost of helping anyone in his sights, but no one acts like it because the plot wouldn’t advance otherwise. There is little sorrow or sense of loss in the novel either, not even when there really should be. Additionally, Gay uses a hook device that leaves little surprise to the first third of the book. Though I came to appreciate this device more for the tension it creates later in the novel, it still does more damage than good. Though Twilight ends well and contains scenes of violence that evoke winces of admiration, the storytelling doesn’t feel natural, leaving it in the genre box without much resistance. I wanted to like it more, but Twilight fell short of my expectations, both self-contained in the novel and under the banner of its independent publisher, MacAdam/Cage. Two stars, but reaching higher.
What do You think about Twilight (2006)?
Gay writes a chilling southern gothic fairytale with elements of Little Red Riding Hood, Night of the Hunter, No Country for Old Men, and early Nick Cave. Gay’s prose is clearly influenced by Cormac McCarthy and points can be derivative and near parody at times, but for the most part is a more fluid and readable take on the master (reminds me of the similar William Carlos Blake). But Gay has his own story to tell, a mad funeral home director setting a deranged criminal on two innocents. Lots of mayhem, necrophilia, and a hunt through a surreal wilderness ensue.
—Adam
There is a fantastic bookstore in downtown Franklin, TN, called Landmark Books, owned by an extremely knowledgeable lover of books named Joel. He specializes in First Edition, and talked me into buying this author signed First. William Gay is not for the faint of heart. He deals with the darker sides of humanity through the southern gothic tradition. He does this while telling a great story, ie Steinbeck. Stephen King said in his year end review that this is the best book of 2007. I recommend it if you can handle a very dark subtext.
—Drew
"It is true this world holds mysteries you do not want to know."My God, what a good book this was! I am quoting another reviewer with that statement, but that speaks my feelings perfectly. Impossible to speak of plot, but William Gay takes us into the minds of madmen, and the relatively sane, perfectly normal people forced to deal with them. He does this in words and sentences so beautiful and intricate that, even when reading furiously to see what happens next, you must slow down to appreciate his craft. And yet his characters say and think just what is necessary for them."I learnt somethin right then and there. I was learnin it late, but I reckon that's better than never. There's folks you just don't need. You're better off without em. Your life is just a little better because they ain't in it."See what I mean? I gave this book a 4 star rating immediately upon finishing, but changed it to a 5 right away. Because this book will stay with me for a long time, and it's characters will haunt me.
—Diane Barnes
