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It can really grab your
attention when a 6-foot-4 man in the 240-pound weight class, his face
a shade between purple and red with anger, thumps your chest with
a 4-pound finger and says, "I'm going to deck you and then punch
you out from here to eternity."
Your first impulse is to either break and run or else grab the nearest
available club, but either of these alternatives would look rather odd
at a book autograph party right in the middle aisle of a crowded department
store.
So instead you look up at the man and say, "What have I done
to bring all this honor to myself?"
A scene from fiction? Nope. This happened to me several years ago
at an autograph party for my novel "Angel City," which tells
the story of how some independent labor contractors in South Florida
(and elsewhere) actually enslave migrant workers. Although fiction,
the novel is based on real-life fact.
This guy's complaint was that he had grown up in South Florida; he
had been in every migrant camp in South Florida; he had never seen
a substandard migrant camp; he had never seen or heard of a migrant
being mistreated in any fashion; that all migrants are no-account
sot drunks anyway and that I had blackened the image of his beloved
South Florida and therefore should be tarred and feathered for even
suggesting in print that something is amiss in some migrant camps.
(The migrant camps he visited must have been on some planet besides
earth.)
The above experience is just part of the game when you write fiction
based on real life rather than fantasy. I had similar experiences
when I wrote about the needless and senseless destruction of nature
in "Forever Island." No matter what you put into such a
realistic novel -- and no matter how strong the truth is in your favor
-- someone will disagree.
So why write this kind of novel at all? Why not take the easy, safe
route and create only fantasy or whodunits or some good pot-boiling
sex books?
The answer to this depends upon why a person writes at all. There
are many reasons -- money, fame, self-satisfaction, creative compulsion.
But also, there is among some a desire to create what is fast becoming
a lost art form -- classic literature.
In my own case, I have a rather old-fashioned view of the art of writing
and of the mission of a writer. I grew up in a small rural town in
Mississippi during the depression -- no TV or such -- and the main
forms of entertainment were the fields and woods and streams -- and
books. Writers were my heroes, and I read everything from the Hardy
Boys series to the classic works of Charles Dickens. I helped track
Moby Dick through countless sessions, and my skin turned to goose
pimples with Edgar Allen Poe.
And I believe that writing ability was a scared trust and should be
used as such -- that writers should not only entertain but should
also use their talent to illuminate the unfortunate and unjust things
in life and to thus enlighten the human heart.
And old-fashioned and outmoded view? Perhaps. But that is why I have
chosen to write books about the lowly and the meek and the underdogs
in life -- Pearl River swamp rats and poor whites and blacks in the
South during the struggles of the 1960's and downtrodden Indians and
migrant workers. These are things many people know little about but
should. And they are real people and real situations.
I realize, too, that I am in the vast minority among writers. Many
writers today are using their talent solely to create so-called "blockbuster"
fiction designed only to sell books -- books that I classify as pure
junk and trash. Profanity, violence and explicit sex are used not
to illuminate situations in real life but simply for shock value.
Scenes from many current novels (supposedly based on modern society)
are about as realistic as strawberries growing on Mars. And the unfortunate
thing is that many young people take for absolute truth all they read
in print -- and thus they believe such things are the norm in life
and they try to imitate them.
I also believe the pendulum is swinging away from "trash books"
and back to literature with value. Many people have had enough --
both in books and in movies. Perhaps someday soon, writers will again
become what writers are supposed to be -- chroniclers of the human
experience. And then once again they will become worthwhile heroes
to young people.
As for that guy who was going to punch me out -- he didn't. He finally
left in a huff. And my next novel will also be one based on real life.
In order to expose the Angel Cities of the world, I'm willing to take
my chances.
About Patrick D. Smith,
a true Florida writer
Patrick D. Smith's "Angel City" was published in 1978
and was made
into a CBS Movie Of The Week the following year; it is available
on video. As Smith pointed out in his article, the novel deals with
a fictitious migrant camp in South Florida. In researching the story,
Smith bought used clothes and shoes and set out to find himself
a job as a migrant worker. And when the movie was filmed, Smith
had a bit part as a man on the streets selling okra.
Among his stack of published books is "Forever Island,"
a tender
story about an ancient Seminole Indian who battles "progress"
in the form of bulldozers and chemical poisons; this book was published
in 17 foreign countries. In the book, Charlie Jumper lectures: "Do
not kill the creatures unless you have need of them. When you kill
them without need you destroy a part of yourself. The dragon flies
are eating the mosquito... then the bird will eat the dragon fly,
and the bird will help spread the seeds of the plants and trees.
The deer will eat the plants, and then we will eat the deer. We
all have need of each other here in the swamp."
Smith's book, "Allapattah," also deals with the Seminole.
The fierce crocodile is, in the Seminole language, Allapattah. They
are the symbol of the white man's destruction of nature and the
Indian's anger and despair.
"A Land Remembered" is a multi-generational saga set on
the Florida
gold coast. It is said to be in the tradition of John Jakes and
Louis L'Amour.
Smith is a native of Mendenhall, Mississippi. He received his B.A.
and M.A. degrees from the University of Mississippi. He currently
lives in Merritt Island,
Florida, with his family.
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