Grits and Grunts: Folkloric Key West (review)

During Stetson Kennedy's long and storied career, he faced the necessity as a young writer of indefinitely shelving his early book manuscript because of lack of funds. Grits and Grunts: Folkloric Key West should have been Kennedy's first book, but Palmetto Country (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce [American Folkways Series], 1942) was first out of the gates. In referring to the latter, Erskine Caldwell, editor of the American Folkways Series, told Kennedy "it's a book to be proud of" ("Sezme: Caucasian Sketches, Footnotes of a White Boy from the Deep South," p. 3 [Kennedy Papers, Stetson Kennedy Foundation Archives, Jacksonville, Florida]). The same can be said about Grits and Grunts. In dusting off the manuscript, "some seventy-five years after I started it," Kennedy gives credit to his wife Sandra Parks, and he acknowledges his first wife, Edith Aguilar Ogden, who introduced him to Conch and Key West culture when they were married there in 1937 (197).

Kennedy brings his stock-in-trade to Key West in the juxtaposing of folkloristic insights and oral histories with scholarly opinings, photographs, songs, and tales. It was his first foray into doing oral history consciously under the aegis of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a period later described by Kennedy as gathering "deliberate oral history" that has obviously withstood the test of time. Many of the recordings for the songs and tales in the chapter called "Key West Songbag" he passed along years ago to the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, thus insuring their preservation and access.

In Chapter 3, "Stuff 'n' Such," Kennedy focuses on being employed as Florida's State Director for folklore, oral history, and ethnic studies by the Federal Writers' Project as a young twenty-year-old researcher in 1937. He supervised his fellow "junior interviewer," Zora Neale Hurston, paid $37.50 every fortnight. Dr. Benjamin Botkin, folklore director for the WPA Writers' Project, noticing that young Kennedy had an ear for dialect and a passion for Key West folklore, directed him and his field workers to collect "everything folkloric" they could find on the island, also known as "The Rock." Kennedy admits that while Key West might have been small during the 1930s, it "was still a large order" to collect material for a projected WPA book to be entitled Folksay, later called Folkstuff (123). So while Kennedy and others amassed the materials, much of it remained unpublished, along with numerous other Kennedy projects. Fortunately, Kennedy, his wife, and editors at Pineapple Press decided to take on this publication project, which is thoroughly researched and rich in content and style. Wonderfully illustrated with photographs and a 1930s map of Key West, Kennedy's objective was to depict "The Rock" in words and find an artist to paint it as such.

The book consists of eight chapters, providing an analysis of folklore, personal observations, and a collection of oral histories concentrating on occupational lore ("Anything for Living"), "Key West Characters and Places," foodways ("What's to Eat"), tall tales ("Stuff 'n' Such"), and "The Key West Songbag." His first chapter, "Folks on the Rock," describes the geographic dimensions of the island and its unique isolation (similar to the Galapagos) which "gave rise to a distinct Florida Keys culture" (3).

What distinguishes Grits and Grunts is the pairing of Kennedy (the writer) with the paintings and illustrations of Mario Sanchez (the folk artist). Kennedy interviewed Mario in 1988 about his depictions of Key West street scenes, which Kennedy uses to profusely illustrate the book. Although each painting and mural is worth a thousand words, it would have been useful to include Kennedy's oral history interview, or excerpts, with Sanchez. In "Mario Sanchez: Key West in Bas Relief," Kennedy writes of Sanchez's significance: "the integrity and dignity of the 'common man' stand out in Mario's murals" (99).

Kennedy also includes other oral histories in this chapter. One features Edward "Fried Egg" Fryberg, recorded in 1988, in which Freyberg recalls...