Sherry Chandler

When I lived in Chicago in the 70s, people I worked with used to tell me how frightened they were of the South. I found some irony in that, living as I did in Hyde Park where we heard gunshots every night, witnessed daylight robberies. and every woman I met had her rape story. I wasn’t allowed to walk alone the half block from my friend’s apartment to my own. Good hosting meant providing a male escort for that distance.

Fear of the South seemed mostly based on two highly popular movies, Easy Rider and Deliverance.

The latter is being issued on DVD, an event which prompted James Dickey’s son Christopher, Newsweek’s Middle East expert, to write a longish meditation , War and Deliverance.

I remember reading Deliverance on a long camping excursion into the woods of Canada, an excursion that brought its own unexpected difficulties, though none of them were caused by half-civilized humans. The novel made quite an impression, the movie perhaps less of one. It tended to make me more afraid of Atlanta businessmen, however, than of half-witted backwoodsmen. At any rate, when I found this link on War and Piece, I clicked right through.

Here’s a little of what Dickey has to say:

The basic plot of “Deliverance” is simple enough. Four suburbanites from Atlanta go canoeing up in the mountains. (”This is the weekend they didn’t play golf,” as the movie’s original publicity campaign put it.) Then they find that the wild river and the people around it are much more dangerous than they’d ever bargained for. One of the men from Atlanta is raped, one is killed and the others learn to kill.

The instigator of the expedition is Lewis Medlock (Burt Reynolds in the movie), and while he talks about getting back to nature and testing himself against the wild, he’s really more of a country-club Friedrich Nietzsche: a would-be “übermensch,” or “superman,” riffing on the 19th-century German philosopher’s conceits, constantly training his body and mind to excel, reinventing himself to lead. His destiny—to survive against all odds—will be a triumph of his will. Or so he thinks.

In the end, though, it is not the übermensch who offers deliverance from the nasty, brutish horrors of the river and the men of the forest. It is the perfectly ordinary man, the just-getting-by guy, Ed Gentry (Jon Voight), who transcends himself to survive. He is not inspired by a vision of the future, he does not aspire to be tested by man and nature. He’s motivated by fear, pure and simple, and his desire to return to his normal life without that fear.

In the early parts of the story, Ed thinks Lewis is a little nuts, but he’s fascinated by the idea that Lewis might be right about—something—he’s not sure what. Obsessions like those of Lewis Medlock can create their own charisma, inspiring fear while pretending to resist it. Untested ersatz fortitude often looks impressive. The other businessmen from Atlanta, the soft-spoken Drew (Ronny Cox) and porcine Bobby (Ned Beatty), think Lewis is a lot nuts. In fact, they think he’s dangerous. And they’re right.

Me, I think Lewis is Vice President Dick Cheney’s closet fantasy of himself, and as such, a sort of model for the Bush administration as a whole. And Ed, he’s about the rest of us, just scared and trying to get by. And the river? That’s the war in Iraq.

…

Normally, the role of government—of civilization—is to curb our sense of personal license when civilized society is under pressure from anger and fear. Government is supposed to put a brake on cynical, self-serving calculation, especially at times of great danger and confusion. Nobody knows that better than professional soldiers, who are trained to understand the laws of society and of war. But the core coterie around Bush and Cheney, who never were soldiers, pushed for war with Iraq at all costs and as an end to almost all constraints.

Read the article in its entirety.

And speaking of white boys with an übermensch complex, while you’re at Newsweek, you might also want to read this profile of Erik Prince.

In his NEWSWEEK interview, Prince, 38, wanted to rebut the suggestion that he is building a private army that is beyond the control of the American government and answerable only to him. He argues that his thousand-odd men in Iraq are not trigger-happy, and blames trial lawyers and congressional staffers for hyping false stories. But his own story suggests a restless search for higher forces and powers, for a kind of martial and religious purity that is not sullied or bogged down by bureaucrats and nosy reporters

In fairness, there are some dissenting comments to this profile that should also be looked at.

The Heartland Review’s Third Annual Short-short Fiction Prize

1st Place - $100 and publication in The Heartland Review’s winter issue
2nd Place - $75 and publication in The Heartland Review’s winter issue
3rd Place - $50 and publication in The Heartland Review’s winter issue

Submissions should be no longer than 1000 words, typed, and double-spaced.

There is a $5 entry fee for each story. (Checks should be made out to The Heartland Review.)

Send cover page with name, address, and word count. Name and address should not appear on the pages of the story. Submissions are juried blind by The Heartland Review’s Editorial Board.

Post-mark deadline for entries is November 20, 2007.

Winners will be announced in December and invited to read at the Morrison Gallery Poetry Series.

Include Self Addressed Stamped Envelope for results.

Mail entries to:

The Heartland Review
Short-short Fiction Prize
c/o Mick Kennedy
Elizabethtown Community & Technical College
600 College Street Road
Elizabethtown, KY 42701

For more information e-mail Mick Kennedy at
mick.kennedy@kctcs.edu or call (270) 706-8407