On McGrother

It is often the case that fiction is truer than philosophy. By truer I mean, truth that raises the hackles of your soul or causes you to feel the very walls of you heart collapsing and expanding as if it had climbed up into your mind. When I read Wendell’s words that define his view of exploiter and nurturer I think, yes, your right Wendell. I understand. Damn those bastard exploiters. When I read The Memory Of Old Jack and Sims McGrother rides up to the ridge where Jack stands, his weather worn mules mismatched and dirty, I see the man and I am he.

No, I’m not such an impeccable archetype but what I mean is if I can know a man and know his character, then in this knowledge I can know myself a little more. McGrother is far from a dynamic character but he serves his role well and he is not an impossibility. He is not a faceless corporation blowing the tops off mountains and grinding up farm animals. He is not abstract and unknowable. He’s a man and as such I can compare myself to him.

Big talker and waster – Check. (Well maybe a small to midland talker.) Love cash – check. (Spend forty hours a week working for it and another many hours spending it.) Missing three fingers – not yet but working on it. Kill an automobile, buy another one – check. Abuse self with McCrap, fiberglass insulation, sheetrock dust, and moonshine – check. Be an ass to my fellow man – check. (Just got that one fine tuned today at work.)

I don’t mean to say I’m McGrother's bastard son reincarnated. I don’t think I am. But he represents a certain mindset that needs to be defined and he defines it in his character quite well. He defines it well enough for me to recognize it in my own character. What I do with that is a different question. A lot of it is cultural and generational. I’ve not been presented with an alternative to wastefulness in my time nor do I have much of an alternative to cash. I’d say my “love” for it is more out of necessity and desire than out of love. If I could live without it I probably would. Some of it is just how I am. I’m an ass at times and I recognize that which I guess gives it a flavor of grace. That could be said for all these things I suppose. And so that may be what separates McGrother from me: grace and hope.

Over the next couple weeks I’d like to look at two other archetype characters in The Memory of Old Jack. One of them, Gladston Pettit, will really strike home and make you sick of yourself. The other, Will Wells, is a man of a different sort but I still see much of him to be admired and mourned. Till then.