I Poet

ans who are more often analyzed than heard. -John Glen Chappell, Fred. Brighten the Corner Where You Are. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989. $15.95. Reading Fred Chappell's new novel, Brighten the Corner Where You Are, is a little like eating turkey and dressing with chocolate ice cream on top: all the flavors are delicious, but how startling to find them together! The book is fufl of poetic descriptions, cynical philosophizing , tall-tale fantasies, and references to real-life tragedies. Parts of it are very funny, parts very sad; as Chappell remarks himself, 'Take away the stuff of tears, there is nothing to make laughter of." His incongruities are deliberate; it would be insensitive not to notice them, and maybe impossible to live comfortably with them. The book would not work if the reader failed to realize that the writer is pulling diverse human experiences together and mixing them roughly. At times the activity seems almost crudely energetic and attentiongetting . It's a showoff's book. The book details one day in the life of Joe Robert Kirkman, a farmer turned teacher, who is in trouble for presenting Darwin's theory of evolution in a rural North Carolina high school. His story is narrated by his son Jess, who sleeps through the action, dreaming of Aeneas carrying his father out of the smoking ruins of Troy; his vision of his father-a true American original, a hero from a folktale, a philosopher and coon hunter, teacher and "fool"-is a dream of character taking shape from legends and lore of the Appalachian mountains, from Plato and Darwin, from mysterious presences like the philosophical goat on the roof of the school and the dark custodian in the schoolhouse basement who maintains a wall of souvenirs from the war dead: from Virgil's epic. Brighten the Corner Where You Are, no ordinary book, avoids being stereotypically 'Appalachian," even though typical mountain humor is one of its finest elements. The scene where Joe Robert bamboozles his fellow coonhunters with a description of a DevilPossum which he then encounters in the flesh (his big lies come to life) is hilarious . Actually, Chappell's hyperbole stands beside his classical allusions admirably well. After all, the folksy expression about "cutting Didoes" (throwing a fit) may have derived from Dido's supremely tragic temper tantrum in Virgil's Aeneid. (I made that etymology up; as far as I know, no dictionary contains it: but what I just did is what Chappell does all the way through his book.) Chappell's writing is skilled and graceful , his imagery frequently very effective , his plotting rather loose and relaxed . Those aspects of Brighten the Corner ... are reason enougli to read it, but its primary excellence is the creation of Joe Robert Kirkman-a very irrational , reasonable man; a sophisticated, folksy man; an heroic, trivial man whose character is sprightly, diverse, and convincing. All the pieces of this variegated narrative fit together into the characterization: an Appalachian crazy quilt-step back and it makes a beautiful pattern. -Richard Sears I Poet I sit and semi-dream' then write about experience from my point of view; a ledger-book of hunger, and war, and love and sometimes nonsense toothen of life, of what is left and things I haven't done and then of the final box: The end to point of view. -Paul Lee 72 ...