Railroadin, Etc by J. J. Greenbrier (review)

276 Western American Literature situation — both recognize the ultimate tragedy that the Indians no longer qualify as worthy opponents. The novel ends appropriately with the description of a small band of Indians trudging through the snow toward Wounded Knee. JAMES V. HOLLERAN, University of Missouri Railroadin, Etc. By J. J. Greenbrier. (Bend, Ore.: Burnt River House, 1977. 199pages, $7.95.) Railroadin, Etc. is told by the 15-year-old son of John MacGreggor, a jack-of-all who hits the rails to find work in south central Oklahoma in the 1930’s. In and out of boxcars, towns, and scrapes, the early episodes reach a necessary dramatic intensity when Pa MacGreggor cuts down a bee tree. He loads the narrator with the captured hive, loads his other son, Henry, with all their bundles, and loads himself with three lardbuckets full of honey. This sideshow parades through small Oklahoma towns; Pa raves about the beetree and the honey to the crowds while the narrator and his brother sweat and starve because Pa won’t sell any of the honey for food. The boys bear with their heroic Pa, however, since he has a voice big enough to rattle trains and is violent enough to throw other hoboes out of boxcars. But the weight of hunger and the beehive become too much and the narrator finally says, “Oh, My Lord, save us from Pa!” Salvation occurs near Wauriaka when Pa jumps from the train and is knocked out trying to catch the bee hive. Of course, Pa recovers, is an instantly changed man, and the three of them ride back to Lindsay where MacGreggor and his two sons find work on a ranch. They buy groceries, send money off to Ma, and have stew for dinner in their cabin — released from hunger, travel, and Pa’s honey and beehive sideshow. Although the book is billed as Greenbrier’s first novel, it is probably a stylized folk autobiography written by a grandfather whose pen name is J. J. Greenbrier. The lack of artifice is declared by the author’s intro­ ductory statement: “I intend telling you about that ride now. I think it better to put these episodes and times down as near as I can as I heard and saw them.” Stylistically, the book also supports autobiography; it is over­ written colloquial, laden with tedious phonetic spellings, redundancy in narration, overworked malapropisms, extended dull hyperboles, and awk­ ward narrative tricks that seem completely out of place in the story. In short, there is a lack of understanding of the stylistic effects when the spoken language appears on the page. While many of those storyteller’s moves might be humorous when he is present, they tend to fall flat on their faces in print. Reviews 277 Nevertheless, the narrator is faithful to his authentic sources — folk history and narrative. Greenbrier’s little ‘incidents’ along the way become his Etc. — the second part of the title. He tells, often with great skill, about meeting the devil as a goat, a ghost brakeman, a hornless, candyeating bull, suckegg remedies, The Boom Explosion, the No-Belt (Nobel) Prize, and so on. And his catalog of railroad characters, his family vignettes and memories seem to bear the closest scrutiny. Sometimes, his language is superb — witty, brief, honest. It is easy to see the old traditional story­ teller spinning history and folktale together through those Oklahoma hills where he was bom. There is a vitality and authenticity in Pa and the narrator that carry the reader easily from Chapter 14 to the end. Unfortunately, the book is presented with a lot of posturing. For instance, the jacket declares “The People are wise to the praise of critics nowadays,” then prints sixteen opinions by non-critics that praise. Further, the publisher writes that the text has over 50 misprints and was never edited. Finally, Burnt River House wants readers to know, as it told this reviewer, that “our first book won’t have anything to do with the shady side. This is a family-type book, a good clean book, true to life.” That is all nice, downhome talk, but the book is loaded with people who are beaten...