A Cuban in Mayberry: Looking Back at America’s Hometown by Gustavo Pérez Firmat (review)

What does it mean when the format changes in the middle of a book, suddenly and subtly moving from right and left justified formal margins to a left-justified essay section titled, “Interlude”? Is it just a cut-and-paste error that the typesetter didn’t catch? Did the author decide to insert an afterthought as the book was going to print? I don’t read this as a printing lapse, I see this seven-page section at the end of Part I, titled “The Place,” as the central character sketch of A Cuban in Mayberry. That Cuban is the author Gustavo Pérez Firmat himself. Like the margins of this mis-aligned short chapter, the little Cuban boy has been cut-and-pasted into the square margins of American society. Even though he was about the same age as Opie of the TV series, as a Cuban immigrant, Gustavo was displaced into the middle of the southern United States as a youngster, and ended up smack dab in the middle of a new place.

The entertainment value of A Cuban in Mayberry transports us to a fictional place that never existed except in the collective imagination of a generation of television watchers who can still whistle the happy tune that accompanies Andy and Opie on their way to the fishing hole at Myer’s Lake at the start of every episode of The Andy Griffith Show (called “TAGS” by aficionados). The book’s introduction begins with this bucolic image, situating the series amongst other situational comedies of the time: family sit-coms where you can sit for half an hour and be a part of another family—Father Knows Best, Make Room for Daddy, Leave It to Beaver, The Donna Reed Show and Ozzie and Harriet.

Format follows function. With its less formal margins, the interpolated “Interlude” between “The Place” and “The People,” does not offer a complete break, and does not reflect the complete marginalization of the author. It just doesn’t quite fit, reflecting his need to make a place for himself and his perspective in the middle of a space where he doesn’t belong. Whether this is a printer’s mishap, a cut-and-paste essay afterthought, or a purposeful format-follows-function visual device, we readers are left with the text, so how it lands on the page is part of what we analyze, and its appearance contributes to the formation of the central character. This interlude section, just like Gustavo in his little cowboy boots and slicked-down gomino hair when he lands on the US shore, looks almost right, but seems slightly out of place and doesn’t quite fit in.

Even though the setting is Mayberry, the main character of A Cuban in Mayberry is Cuban. He is interpolated in the interlude and he is the lost little boy of the epilogue. Very self-aware, and very much the resident Cuban in Mayberry, Gustavo forms an American childhood he never had by watching reruns of programs he never saw the first time. He writes himself into the script and becomes a resident alien—lost (for an afternoon) in Mayberry and found in Mayberry. He is from Cuba and is from North Carolina.

The second half of the volume, “The People” offers a series of character sketches, divided into short chapters. The principle players have individual sketches, with roughly eight pages each: Andy, Barney, and Opie all merit one sketch each. Women get less individual attention; all the single women (Aunt B, Helen Crump, and Thelma Lou) are grouped together as “Mayberry Maidens,” and the “Trashy Women” (Daphne and Skippy) are only allowed four paragraphs. The rubes of the rube-com (Gomer, Goober, and Howard) together form the bachelor’s line. Making up the bulk of the volume, these character sketches serve as a scrap book of the imaginary town’s residents, full of snapshots of...