美国国家公共电台 NPR 'The Line That Held Us': Noir In Appalachia

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LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

David Joy's new novel begins with a terrible accident. Darl Moody¹ is looking to poach a deer in the woods when he accidentally kills another man, Carol Brewer², who is poaching himself rooting around for ginseng. That shooting leads to a cover-up that spins out of control. Along the way, we learn about the struggles of life in rural Appalachia. And we meet a fascinating and ferocious³ character Dwayne Brewer, a giant of a man who will not rest until his brother Carol's death is avenged⁴. David Joy's book is called "The Line That Held Us." And he joins us now from Blue Ridge⁵ Public Radio in Asheville, N.C. Welcome back to the program.

DAVID JOY: Yeah. Thanks for having me again.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: This world is so vivid. It's populated by people who are living on the margins⁶. Tell us about the characters we first meet, Darl Moody, who accidentally shoots Carol Brewer.

JOY: Yeah. Darl Moody and Carol Brewer are both, you know, working-class, rural people who are just kind of doing what they have to do to survive. Darl Moody's coming out of a family. His father's gone. And he very much feels a responsibility to take care of not only his mother but to take care of his sister and her children, as well.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: This is a world where family and friends are deeply important, which is how Darl Moody's best friend Calvin Hooper gets pulled in to help hide the killing⁷. And Calvin's sort of torn about what he should do.

JOY: One thing that's kind of indicative of this area is that people are still very much rooted to family and rooted to place. And so this is not just your everyday friendship. This is very much - it might as well be his sibling⁸. It might as well be blood. And so when he calls on Calvin Hooper, Calvin would have done anything in the world for Darl. And so very early on, you know, we've got this relationship building where the question is, how much do you love someone, you know? How much of yourself are you willing to risk in order to protect the ones you love?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And that's sort of the central question of this book. I think I've waited long enough to bring in the man whom I suspect will be most readers' favorite character in the book. And that's Dwayne Brewer. He is Carol Brewer's brother - who was killed. Tell us a little bit about his backstory, who he is.

JOY: Dwayne Brewer and his brother Carol grew up kind of in an abusive home. And he also - he grew up at the very, very bottommost levels of poverty to the point that, you know, kids at school made fun of him because of the shoes he wore. Or they made fun of him because his - where his mother worked. And Dwayne has always protected his brother, you know, because Dwayne - he's a lot more physical. He's a lot more violent than Carol ever was. You know, Carol was very much a turn-the-other-cheek-type of guy. And when Dwayne looks back on his life, there's not really anything good that he can look back on except for his relationship with his brother. And he's always felt this dire⁹ need to protect his brother. You know, I think that's ultimately what eats him alive over the course of this novel - was the fact that he couldn't protect him.

But I think what makes Dwayne so interesting - is that he's the antagonist¹⁰, but he has a very strict moral code that he's following. One of the scariest things that can happen with a bad guy is when you find yourself completely agreeing with them, you know, when they make total sense. And I think there are multiple places in this novel where you find yourself nodding your head to do the things that Dwayne thinks and the things that Dwayne does.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You've written about this area before. These are your people. You know, as a matter of fact, you and I spoke¹¹ last year about your essay "Digging In The Trash," in which you kind of lament¹² about how rural Southerners are often portrayed¹³. This seems to be sort of very personal for you.

JOY: Yeah. I think it is. And I think part of that just has to do with the misportrayal that happens oftentimes. I think a lot of times, rural, working-class people are stripped of their humanity. And I'm very much trying to give that humanity back. Another side of that, I think, is that I'm trying to document some of the things that I think are disappearing. You know, I think that we're within a generation of a lot of the old mountain ways being gone.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You know, this novel is part of a grand Southern tradition, once called Southern gothic, now called Southern noir. And I guess the South Appalachia, this tradition of men on the land, you know, with guns that you write about, you know, hunting to survive - it's been so fetishized now in our popular discourse¹⁴. These characters, though, are very nuanced. It seems very pertinent¹⁵ to this political moment.

JOY: Yeah. You know, I've talked about that as well in the sense that, you know, I cannot imagine any American writer creating any anything right now where you don't have violence, where you don't have misogyny, where you don't have racism¹⁶, where you don't have xenophobia, where you don't have a perversion¹⁷ of faith. I think it's impossible for anyone to look at what's going on around us right now and ignore those things, you know? And writers and artists are very much sponges, you know? We soak up everything. And so I do think that's one of the reasons that that's so prevalent in my work.

And then, at the same time, you know, I think it's also always kind of been - those have been major themes in Appalachian literature and in Southern literature and Appalachian culture. I mean, when I think about, you know, the old murder ballads¹⁸ that they played in bluegrass, it was that same type of thing, those same types of stories. And that history - I'm not sure why that history exists. But as far as how it relates to what's happening nationally right now, I think maybe it's more pertinent right this second than it's ever been.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: David Joy's new novel is called "The Line That Held Us." Thank you so much.

JOY: Yeah.

(SOUNDBITE OF MOUNTAIN HOLLOW MUSIC'S "APPALACHIAN RAIN")