Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
What a
thoroughly enjoyable read of a character-driven book. On my Vintage paperback
edition (signed by Berendt – Yes!) – there is a short quotation presumably from
a longer review by Edmund White: The
best non-fiction novel since In Cold Blood and a lot more entertaining. I absolutely concur with the last
part of his sentence. Whereas I became increasingly uncomfortable with Capote’s
book (and Capote himself), I was immensely entertained and relaxed when I read
Berendt’s.
Berendt
seems such a humane author, more interested in the people he was writing about
than himself. Although the first person pronoun is used throughout the book, it
does not drive or dominate it (he claims he is ‘shy’ at one point). He is more
of a detached observer than Steinbeck (whose account I also admired, but
whose aim was polemical) or Capote (who may just have called himself ‘the
reporter’, but whose personal hang-ups defined his work). No; we are drawn,
through Berendt’s voice and eyes into a kaleidoscope of fantastic, but
eminently real people. It really didn’t bother me this time, if he embroidered
or used, as he says in his Author’s Note, certain
storytelling liberties. It made for a flowing narrative.
I recall
vividly, from my youth in the West Indies, looking out of my bedroom window
onto a brilliant Flamboyant Tree – Berendt’s array of characters are so alive,
flamboyantly so! What a start
(describing Jim Williams) with eyes so black they were like the tinted
windows of a sleek limousine – he could see out, but you couldn’t see in.
There’s the eventual victim, Danny,
with sapphire-blue eyes blazing and
with tattooed arms - a Confederate flag
on one arm, a marijuana plant on the other; Mandy Nichols – crowned Miss BBW (Big Beautiful Woman) in Las Vegas
and watching television whilst driving; Joe
Odom – what a life force! [Whilst I was reading about Joe, I also broke off
to read The Times of Thursday,
February 2. One story headline sprang out at me: “Poet’s bohemian guests are causing
a scandal in Belgravia”. Neighbours of Linda Marinelli Landor, 81,
complain that her flamboyant guests come and go noisily at odd hours and hold
soirées including a flamenco dancing evening that set their chandeliers
swinging. You
couldn’t make it up! I wonder she was a cousin thrice-removed of Joe’s?! I hope
it wasn’t The Caledonian Club who complained].
Then there’s Luther Diggers, ordering eggs, bacon, a Bayer aspirin, and
a glass of spirits of ammonia and Coca-Cola each morning at Clary’s drugstore;
Serena Vaughn Dawes, once an icon of upper-crust glamour; Emma Kelly, colliding
with her tenth deer as she sped along the highway; and, in some ways above all,
Chablis: I dance, I do lip sync, and I
emcee…. Her name before that? Frank.
My signed Vintage paperback copy of 1995
The mini
stories – of Conrad Aitkin and Johnny Mercer; of ‘Jack the One-eyed Jill’ and
his boss; William Simon Glover and his ‘Come
on Patrick’, to the long-dead dog following him; Sonny Seiler and his big
white bulldogs – a line of Ugas; all add to the rich tapestry of Berendt’s
narrative. One chapter deserves the accolade of ‘Masterpiece’: Black Minuet – the tale of the black
debutante ball. Here a sense of place and of period march together with the
characters. Chablis delivers her best performance, with her increasingly
embarrassed white chauffeur (Berendt) desperate to escape!
Berendt does
not just excel at character drawing and building; he portrays an acute sense of
place. Whether it is his descriptions of the various Squares in Savannah; the
court room scenes; or accompanying Minerva (another great character) past the ghostly drapery of Spanish moss to the
eerie Bonaventure Cemetery.
Whereas Capote
was disliked in Kansas, Berendt is seemingly fêted in Savannah. As Joe Odom rather
succinctly, and these days politically incorrectly, put it: So now we have a murder in a big
mansion…we’ve got a weirdo bug specialist slinking around town with a bottle of
deadly poison, We’ve got a nigger drag queen, an old man who walks an imaginary
dog, and now a faggot murder case. My friend, you are getting me and Mandy into
one hell of a movie. AND a great book. Perhaps it was because the Clutters
were ‘of their own’, cf. Williams who, whilst belonging to clubs etc., was still
really an ‘outsider’ (Nazi paraphernalia etc.), as was Danny. The Savannah folk
took to Berendt.
“I was beguiled by Savannah”, Berendt wrote.
By the end of his book, so was I.
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