Lewis Nordan: Humor, Heartbreak, and Hope

8. Happiness Is a Warm Gun: Guns and Love in Lewis Nordan’s Work

8 Happiness Is a Warm Gun Guns and Love in Lewis Nordan’s Work Edward J. Dupuy Love and violence intersect in Nordan’s provocative piece “An American Dream,” which was published in the September 1995 number of Harper’s and made its way into Boy with Loaded Gun five years later as, significantly, the untitled epilogue. Before it appeared in either place, the story was published in the June 1995 Algonkian, a publicity newsletter for Algonquin Press ofChapelHill,Nordan’spublisher.Thereitcarriedthetitle“ViolenceinAmerica.” Nordan’s continued use of the story indicates its centrality to his oeuvre as a whole. In the short fourth paragraph of the story, the husband declares that the couple should buy guns. Recall that the couple has inherited money, and after imagining South Seas vacations and discounting more practical uses for the money—paying off the car, getting the house painted, buying CDs or IRAs—the husband says: “I’ve always wanted a gun.” This declaration leads to an excited and ironic exchange about guns and love: Happiness Is a Warm Gun 65 She said, “Do you remember in Pulp Fiction, when John Travolta left his AK-47 on the kitchen sink?” I said, “I loved that part.” She said, “That was the sexiest part to me. The weapon, the dishwashing detergent, side by side. Oh, man.” (Boy with Loaded Gun 288) Talk of guns leads to talk of bullets, “exploding bullets” and “the conventional stuff too.” The couple makes love on the sofa and then the two return to what they were doing before—watching the O. J. Simpson trial onTV.The problem with the trial, they conclude, resides in the fact that no guns are involved : “It’s not the same without firearms.” In contrast, the Betty Bradley trial was a real trial: “[T]hat was a murder. Guns blazing, empty shell casings, the smell of cordite in the air.”They watch the Simpson trial a bit longer—“It was pretty disappointing”—and then turn off the TV. The story concludes: Finally my wife said, “Anyway, I’m an heiress.” I said, “We’re rich.” She said, “A derringer is just the start. An AK-47 is training wheels. We’ll fill the house with guns.” I said, “I love you. I’ve never loved anyone else.” (289–90) So the story ends with a declaration of love—after a lot of sexy gun-talk (and action) sets the stage for it.This juxtaposition of guns and love runs throughout Nordan’s work, and reveals his unique take not only on the American South but on America in general. The story is remarkable for its brevity, irony, and depth. What philosophers ReneGirard andGils Bailie have taken volumes to explore Nordan does in about five hundred words. It is as though Emily Dickinson had come back from the dead to infuse him with her compression and wit.Or maybe it is just Nordan at the top of his game. In Harper’s the story comes across as one of several occasional pieces Nordan placed in journals around the country, another story by another thoughtful and very funny writer. But those who know and follow Nordan (and who DUPUY 66 likely saw the piece in the Algonkian) pick up on the themes that have haunted him for most of his life. The piece probably helped him come to terms with the violence of the Delta that formed him—something he explores directly in WolfWhistle and TheSharpshooter Blues.And by extension, the piece obviously explores the violence ofAmerica—the connection of guns and love that makes his quasi-fictional couple representative of a nation.The Harper’s title, “An American Dream,” offers us glimpses of ourselves and our long history of not only “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” (as the Second Amendment has it) but also of the larger unalienable rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Guns and violence form the ironic underside of that pursuit as much as, if not more than, the dream of wealth. Hence the couple eschews vacations or paying off loans in favor of a house full of guns. And they love one another all the more for it. The story suggests that in the American psyche, happiness and warm guns are inextricable.And thus in this short burst of brilliance, Nordan captures the American soul as Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman—yes, and...