Fred Chappell's I Am One of You Forever

Fred Chappell's I Am One of You Forever comes from the storytelling tradition of the novel. More specifically, Chappell's novel fits into the bildungsroman tradition--the story of the main character's coming of age. Chappell drew on numerous other storytelling traditions in order to tell the story of the novel. The first most obvious influence on Jess's story was the oral tall tale often circulated inside and between families. Uncle Zeno's stories were the most clearly identifiable influence of oral literature on Jess's own storytelling, but episodes he relates mimic Uncle Zeno's storytelling methods. The second less obvious influence on Jess's storytelling was the literature he read, which included classical literature such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. The story of Uncle Luden also demonstrates familiarity with the fabliau, which I am most familiar with from "The Miller's Tale" in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Despite the light heartedness of the narrative, Chappell produced a seriously literary narrative that takes its task of telling a story seriously. In other words, do not let the folksy charm fool you, we are dealing with one smart cookie. Jess and Chappell display their scholarly bents in their desire to remain faithful to their sources, and I think it is difficult to master that kind of storytelling, whether it comes to a novel, humorous anecdote, or essay. In the process of the bildungsroman, Chappell fuses the various sources in the protagonist Jess. Jess experiences some tension between the storytelling methods of his father and the texts he reads, but through his encounters with people like Uncle Zeno, and his final initiation into masculine desire, he experiences a complete integration within the small world of his family and the larger world he encounters through stories and texts.

Jess hid a revealing detail about his own theory of storytelling in an otherwise unremarkable statement about his father's storytelling. His father's performance of the Iliad made a strong impression on him, so that he could remember it vividly. Jess noted, however, the cool detachment of Uncle Zeno who drawled out his stories and his father, who dragged a sofa cushion around as if it were Hector's corpse. Jess characterized his father as a violent storyteller. The stories might be violent, as in the case of the Iliad, but his manner of telling the stories was violent. The dramatic reenactment of the Iliad led Jess to a Victorian prose translation: "I found it less confusing than his [Jess's father's] redaction, its thrills ordered" (103). While a prose translation would change the physical form of the Iliad, the narrative structure made more sense to Jess than his father's frenzied man handling. In addition to the violence, his father's redactions influenced how he perceived Homer's work. Uncle Zeno was the master storyteller in Jess's life, who had the power to pluck people from life so that they only then existed in his stories. Jess's use of his family's dialect came from his desire to remain true to the sources of most of his story--his family. At a young age, Aunt Sam saw the potential for Jess to become a scholar, and his mindfulness of his sources reflects that aspect of his personality. Most of the dialect occurred in dialogue, but it makes regular appearance in Jess's narration: "The first time my father met Johnson Gibbs they fought like tomcats" (7).

Thanks to Jess's discourse on his father's treatment of the Iliad I know he read it. The Odyssey makes a slightly obscured appearance under the guise of the Buford Rhodes story that Uncle Zeno relates. After Elmer, Buford's genius coonhound, took off into the hills, Buford went off in search of his priceless dog. Eventually, Buford encountered a mute Cherokee woman who inhabited a cave. Buford lived with her for two years while she took care of him. The basic storyline closely resembled Odysseus's experience with Circe on her island. Odysseus made love with Circe and stayed on her island for one year. Circe turned some of Odysseus's men into pigs, and when Buford returns home, he becomes the dog of the house. Elmer is smarter than him anyway, so things turned out better with him being the man and Buford being the dog.

I also propose Chaucer's "Miller's Tale" as an influence on Jess's storytelling. The story of Uncle Luden had some of the markers of a fabliau such as "The Miller's Tale." Chaucer's tale involves one employed clerk and one clerk-to-be who both love a beautiful young woman named Alison. Unfortunately for both of them, an old carpenter snagged the beautiful Alison for his wife. One of the clerk's wins her heart, basically, because he lives with the carpenter and his wife. Through an elaborate plot, the young wife and her lover plan a tryst and humiliate the carpenter and the other clerk. "The Posse" chapter of I Am One of You Forever employed a slightly less complicated storyline where Jess's father wrote threatening letters to Uncle Luden, and he and Johnson Gibbs took the right opportunity to scare Uncle Luden out onto the roof in the rain during the night. Both stories dealt with infidelity. In "The Miller's Tale" and "The Posse" the stern hand of justice doled out punishment liberally, except to Alison in "The Miller's Tale." Neither do I see the punishment for the lady who sits on the beehive waiting for the call from Uncle Luden. The somewhat obscured allusions to other texts revealed the very literary nature of a text that otherwise downplayed education. Borrowing, or stealing (depending your perspective) has been a common practice in literature. Homer, Chaucer, and Chappell all underscored the difficulty in determining what aspects of stories are new and which are borrowed from other sources. Respect for one's sources makes the web easier to untangle. They also all engaged in the difficult task of translating oral culture into a written one. As history progressed, books became more plentiful and written culture grew in importance.

The chapter "The Wish" provides an explanation for why Jess never made a show of his education. The man who rents Jess and his father the boat they use in order to fish tells a story about an ignorant "yankee kind" who acted rudely to him. The man pays a compliment to Jess's father when he calls him educated. The yankee probably had as much education as Jess's father, but the man really referred to a certain personal quality, perhaps humility which caused him to treat other people with respect, unlike the yankee. As Jess's father stated, "there's different kinds of education" (163). In the novel, Jess and Chappell undertake the formidable task of synthesizing the dialectic between formal education and worldliness.

The literary level of the synthesis produces the narrative, but I see the same process unfolding within Jess the character. He learns the process through his family members. Only near the end of the narrative do readers learn the bittersweet hidden life of Jess's matriarchal grandmother. She sacrificed her chance to meet the Queen of England--something marvelous for a common person from the rural south--and her musical talent because her father forbade her from it. The story presented the model of the chastened artist, who either must practice his art subtly or at least make no show of it. Jess's mother placed an emphasis on his grandmother's character in her decision to sacrifice her art: "She'd never do anything without her father's blessing" (171). The grandmother instead taught Aunt Sam how to play, and she went to meet the Queen. Art became a vehicle for other people's enjoyment, fulfillment, and livelihood. Self-denial came before self-aggrandizement.

Jess experienced numerous frustrations in his attempts to learn more from the worldliness of his family and subdue his education to the humility that experience provided to his family members. An important rite of passage for younger people is to discover sexuality and how it functions. His grandmother forbade him to view the postcard with the scantily clad dancing girls that Uncle Luden sent. His father confiscated the binocular device "peep show" that Uncle Luden gave to Jess. He would have to wait until he was older to use it. He imagined that if he were 99 years-old, a boy might come up to him and ask what life was all about. He would reply: "I don't know, little boy. The sons of bitches never would tell me" (33). Knowledge of sexuality becomes the forbidden fruit he desired, but his family sheltered him from. The grandmother is the strongest authority figure in the novel, and usually, transgressions such as Jess drinking wine only occur in the absence of feminine authority. Only through a subtle self-transformation does Jess experience an integration with his family.

Jess's initiation into his masculinity does not occur until the very last chapter "Helen." At first he expresses a sense of alienation from the masculine figures in his life: Uncle Luden, Johnson Gibbs, and his father.

I began to feel a little as a stranger among them. They knew different things than I did. It seemed that they were willing to tell me, but I didn't know what to ask. If they had talked about women I would have had some questions, but they never entered upon the subject. I thought it curious that they hadn't; maybe they were regarding my youth. No, that wouldn't be the reason. (181)

In light of the episodes with Uncle Gurton's beard and Uncle Zeno's stories, the vision of Helen did not seem too fantastic for the novel. Who was Helen? Jess dismissed the possibility that it was a sexual partner that all the men shared. Could it be Helen of Troy? I believe it was, and that she represents something about the feminine that men have difficulty dealing with. Odysseus experienced it when he saw Circe's cave, and Buford Rhodes when he met the Cherokee woman. For the men of the novel, sexuality was a cache of masculine identity, but also a source of danger, as the story of Uncle Luden illustrated. The vision in the cabin initiates Jess into the mysteries of sexuality. Only after it, can Jess answer Johnson Gibbs's question--that he is one of them forever.

Chappell borrowed from various traditions for the creation of I Am one of You Forever. The source texts that I have argued for are the classical epics of Homer, the fabliaux such as Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale," and the more oral tradition of the humorous anecdote. Jess and Chappell took care to include local dialect into the novel, but the allusions to earlier literature belied the simplicity of the narrative. In the course of the novel, Jess realized the multi-faceted nature of education and that character has more of a role in personal formation than making an ostentatious show of one's intelligence. As Jess matures, he experienced deeper connections with his families and the literature that shaped his character. Chappell successfully achieved a subtle fusion of the literary and the personal in his bildungsroman, and allowed Jess to conclude "I am one of you forever." The statement expresses his closeness to his family, but also an identification with humanity in general.

Work Cited

Chappell, Fred. I Am One of You Forever. 1985. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1987.