The Discovery Of Kentucky by Wendell Berry, 1991
The magic trick:
Setting up the story’s prank by first giving the reader a character who is the prank’s deserving target
Many of Wendell Berry stories are funny – family legends passed down through the years; capers and cutups from years gone by. But this one is especially rollicking in its humor. The Port William characters in this one – and it’s narrated in the first person by Berry regular Jayber Crow – are not getting into ridiculousness by accident; they’re looking to cause trouble.
Why? Well, mostly because of the character we meet on the story’s first page. John T. McCallum is intolerably self-absorbed, full of himself, and completely without a sense of humor. It’s a great way to set up a story. Now we have someone from the start who we, as a reader, would love to see get his comeuppance. A good prank is in order, and it’s a delight to watch it play out through the rest of the text.
And that’s quite a trick on Berry’s part.
The selection:
The theme of the parade this year, he said, was to be “Kentucky for Progress.” The various floats would all be captioned: “Forward with Kentucky Agriculture” – or coal or timber, or whatever. “We,” John T. said, were going to have a float that would be a covered wagon drawn, of course, by four splendid black mares, and surrounded by armed men dressed as pioneers who would represent the discovery of Kentucky.
“But what has that got to do with progress?” I asked.
“It was progress one time,” John T. said. “And how can you progress if you ain’t ever been discovered?”
“I see. Kentucky Pioneers Look Into The Future – is that the idea?”
“That’s it,” he said. “We’ll write that on the side.”
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