McPHERSON, James A(lan)

Nationality: American. Born: Savannah, Georgia, 16 September 1943. Education: Morris Brown College, Atlanta, 1961-63, 1965, B.A. 1965; Morgan State College, Baltimore, 1963-64; Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, LL.B. 1968; University of Iowa, Iowa City, M.F.A. 1971. Family: Married in 1973 (divorced); one daughter. Career: Instructor, University of Iowa Law School, 1968-69; lecturer in English, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1969-70; assistant professor of English, Morgan State University, 1975-76; associate professor of English, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1976-81; professor of English, University of Iowa, from 1981. Guest editor of fiction issues of Iowa Review, Iowa City, 1984, and Ploughshares, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1985, 1990. Since 1969 contributing editor, Atlantic Monthly, Boston. Lives in Iowa City. Awards: Atlantic Firsts award, 1968; American Academy award, 1970; Guggenheim fellowship, 1972; Pulitzer prize, 1978; MacArthur Foundation award, 1981; Award for Excellence in Teaching, University of Iowa, 1991; Green Eyeshades Award for Excellence in Print Commentary, The Society of Southern Journalists, 1994; Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, 1997-98; O. Henry prize; Playboy Fiction award. Honorary degree: Morris Brown College, Atlanta, Georgia. Member: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1995.

Publications

Short Stories

Hue and Cry. 1969.

Elbow Room. 1977.

Other

Railroad: Trains and Train People in American Culture, with Miller Williams. 1976.

Crabcakes. 1998.

Fathering Daughters. 1998.

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Critical Studies:

"Antaesus Revisited: James A. McPherson and Elbow Room" by Ruthe T. Sheffey, in Amid Visions and Revisions: Poetry and Criticism on Literature and the Arts, edited by Burney J. Hollis, 1985; "James Alan McPherson" by Joseph T. Cox, in Contemporary Fiction Writers of the South: A Bio-Bibliographic Sourcebook, edited by Joseph M. Flora, 1993.

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The short stories of James Alan McPherson first appeared in such periodicals as Playboy, Atlantic Monthly, Harvard Advocate, Iowa Review, Massachusetts Review, and Ploughshares. Along with additional stories published for the first time, his stories have been reprinted in two collections. McPherson's first collection, Hue and Cry, contains 10 stories, with a remarkable commentary by Ralph Ellison appearing on the dust jacket. Ellison wrote, "Indeed as he makes his 'hue and cry' over the dead ends, the confusions of value and failures of sympathy and insight of those who inhabit his fictional world, McPherson's stories are in themselves a hue and cry against the dead, publicity-sustained writing which has come increasingly to stand for what is called 'black writing."'

Ellison's assessment of McPherson's talents as a writer of short fiction is supported by the wide range of issues his stories explore and the many awards they have received. For those published in Hue and Cry, for example, McPherson won the O. Henry Prize, the Playboy Fiction Award, and a grant from the American Institute of Art and Letters. It is not just craftsmanship, however, that makes his stories so successful at breaking the boundaries of "the dead, publicity-sustained writing" that Ellison deplores. McPherson's stories are about people whose lives and actions can rarely if ever be encapsulated or contained within easy and convenient generalizations or explained away on the basis of race or gender. McPherson writes about all kinds of people, including blacks, whites, men, women, janitors, lawyers, criminals, prostitutes, gays, and homophobics. His insights are those of an intelligent and informed observer who seeks to render life as he sees it rather than offer judgment or condemnation. This perspective, however, is not without its problems, since the reader sometimes feels bewildered by McPherson's distancing himself from his characters while at the same time making astute, highly particularized observations. The result occasionally produces rather flat, two-dimensional characters whose actions seem to warrant further exploration. The story "Hue and Cry," from which McPherson's first collection draws its title, serves as a case in point.

In "Hue and Cry" Eric Carney, who is white, has been jilted for a black man by Margot Payne, who is also black. It would be easy to approach the story as one focusing on the problems of maintaining a relationship between a black and white couple. As the story progresses, however, it becomes clear that the ethnic identity of any one of the characters and the presence of an interracial relationship have more to do with the cultural malaise of the 1960s that McPherson explores in his other stories than with a hue and cry against a racism that might make this particular relationship untenable.

In the story Margot refuses to marry Eric and instead begins to develop a relationship with a rather shy black man named Charles. He showers her with attention because she is one of the few women who have ever been attracted to him. After Charles's success with Margot, he finds that other women also are attracted to him. At the beginning of their relationship Charles wants to marry Margot, who responds by being aloof and who tries to put him off by saying that she is not ready. In the meantime Charles learns to play the field by capitalizing on his new popularity. Because of Charles's interest in other women, Margot changes her mind and decides to accept Charles's proposal of marriage. He then puts her off because of his desire to play the field, but his affairs with other women finally catch up with him. In the end Margot abandons Charles and ends up by sleeping with a rather repulsive character named Jerry, who was not only Eric's roommate but is also a man she had earlier despised.

With all of the changing of partners and all of the jealousy, and with what at times appears to be a complete lack of feeling on the part the characters, the reader searches in vain for a character or a moral perspective to endorse. The last page of the story offers a commentary between the narrator and his audience on the events of the story. The commentary is not particularly helpful unless one is a Zen master whose expectations do not include a resolution of conflict in any recognizable fashion. The key to approaching events in the narrative is to be found in the quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche that appears on the story's title page: "A joke is an epigram on the death of feeling." The characters appear flat, superficial, and two-dimensional because they are unraveling rather than becoming. The story is about loss of feeling, personality, motivation, and character.

McPherson's second collection, Elbow Room, contains 12 stories dealing with the same wide range of black and white characters in rural and urban settings, interracial relationships, and a similar line of experimentation developed in the story "Hue and Cry." As in the first collection, the short story from which the collection takes its name is printed last. "Elbow Room" concerns a marriage between a black woman named Virginia Valentine and a white man named Paul Frost. Despite the potential for symbolic value suggested by the characters' names, which is never developed, of interest here is McPherson's inclusion of commentary, presumably by an editor who notes the lack of clarity and focus on the part of the author. The commentary is given at the beginning and end and at various other points in the story.

The story's conflict revolves around the fact that Paul's and Virginia's parents are not willing to accept the marriage of a white man to a black woman, who is soon to give birth. Paul assumes that he can hold out against his parents objections or just ignore them until they come around to his way to thinking. Virginia is caught between trying to support her husband and maintaining her sense of pride and personal dignity. The story ends with Paul and Virginia and their child in Kansas, with Paul's family apparently willing to accept the situation. The events in the story are not particularly interesting or imaginative, but the conflict takes place on a different level—between the author and his subject matter or, more specifically, between the narrator and his interactions with the two central characters.

The narrator journeys to the West Coast to "renew my supply of stories," and his personal interactions with the characters reflect a detached skepticism mingled with an impersonal curiosity. He offers advice in rather vague and unclear ways and eventually becomes alienated from Paul, whom he seems to care for. What becomes evident from the narrator's comments and actions is that he values these people and their experiences only because of their potential for being assimilated into a work of fiction. After a conversation with Virginia, the narrator finally reaches a conclusion: "I did not care about them and their problems anymore. I did not think they had a story worth telling." The story continues with Paul's rejection of the narrator, and a period of time elapses before a photograph of Paul and his wife and child arrives through the mail. In the final paragraph the editor asks the narrator to comment on the inscription written on the back of the photograph: "He will be a classic kind of nigger." The narrator responds, "I would find it difficult to do. It was from the beginning not my story."

One might well wonder if "Hue and Cry" is not McPherson's swan song, suggesting the impossibility of assimilating the experiences of others into works of fiction. If so, the many excellent stories collected in both anthologies should be highly valued and reread. The richness and variety of the experiences portrayed produce a feeling that, even if "it was from the beginning not my story," they are, nonetheless, true to human experience.

—Jeffrey D. Parker