James Lee Burke

Every time I read something by James Lee Burke I tell myself, “You really need to read more James Lee Burke.” This year I’m finally getting around to it, and it’s made my reading time richer and more rewarding. I just finished PEGASUS DESCENDING after reading CADILLAC JUKEBOX in March and JOLIE BLON’S BOUNCE in December. I don’t like him more each time anymore; he’s who I come back to when I want to be reminded why I love to read.

His characters walk in off the cane break as fully-formed people, with lives beyond the glimpse we catch through the window Burke provides. He uses the Cajun, Creole, and Confederate background of New Iberia Parish like Rembrandt choosing a precise color from a palette of his own creation. The names are eccentric to a northern ear; PEGASUS DESCENDING includes Cesaire Darbonne, Koko Hebert, Monarch Little, and my personal favorite, Bellerophon Lujan. Maybe those who don’t live along the Bayou Teche don’t think twice about them, but they set the tone and atmosphere better than five pages of description.

Which, come to think of it, Burke also does as well, or better, than anyone. It’s fashionable today to skip non-essential description in the interest of moving the story forward. Nothing wrong with that; the quicker pace fits better with contemporary readers’ expectation and attention spans. Burke’s descriptions come from another, more leisurely time, before television and movies denied us the privilege of drawing our own mental pictures. The astute reader quickly forgives the lessened pace, thanks to descriptions of such beauty you don’t want him to cut to the chase. An example from PEGASUS DESCENDING:

The transformation that took place in Whitey’s face was like none I had ever seen in another person. The eyes didn’t blink or narrow; the color in them did not brighten with anger or haze over with hidden thoughts. The jawbone never pulsed against the cheek. Instead, his expression seemed to take on the emotionless solidity of carved wood, with eyes as dull and cavernous as buckshot. I believe I could have scratched a match alight on his face and he wouldn’t have blinked.

The same counter-contemporary tendency is shown in Burke’s scenes of violence. It’s not that he lingers over them for prurient or gratuitous purpose; he lets them unfold, like watching in slow-motion. The suspense builds as he ramps up the tension a sentence at a time, holding back the climax like a classical composer’s delayed cadence, so when the release comes it’s quick and you have to wait for your blood pressure to return to normal before going on to the next page. The pressure is never completely released; enough always remains to sow the seeds of the next crescendo.

It takes a singular talent to be able to fight the tendencies of modern culture and win as Burke routinely does, and what I say may read like the pabulum of hero worship. Those who are unfamiliar with his work should try him, then draw their conclusions. Those already acquainted with Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel are already wondering which one they should read next.

What is a Liberal?

“Liberal” has become a dirty word in American politics, for two primary reasons. Liberalism has allowed its leftmost wing to set its public agenda, while allowing conservatives to frame the discussion. In this quote from a 2002 interview with Reese Fuller, author James Lee Burke lays out the most accurate, and eloquent, definition of what a liberal is. If only more liberals would read it. (Read the entire interview; it’s well worth the time.)

Do you consider yourself a liberal?

I consider myself pretty traditional, really. People of my generation, who were born in the Depression, tend to be traditionalists. If I had to call myself a name I'd say I was a Jeffersonian liberal. But, see, something has become askew in American thinking. Liberals now are tarred in every way by people who want to associate in the popular mind liberalism with some kind of fanatical movement.

Traditional liberalism has involved certain kinds of movements that gave us Social Security, minimum wage, public healthcare, environmental and consumer protection, the civil rights acts of the 1960s, the fair hiring act, the equal employment act, public education. What is it that is so objectionable about Medicare for God's sake?

I remember on many occasions when liberals, or people who were supposed to be liberals, were called liberals and they shrink. It's beyond me, absolutely beyond me. I mean, do people think that the right wing gave us Social Security, collective bargaining, clean water? I don't know. I think it's one of those deals where you say it enough times, people began to believe it.

Now, there are people, to my mind, who are libertine, who have taken on the guise of being liberals and they are not liberals. They are involved in something else. I'm not knocking them, but this stuff about correctness in language, this hyper-sensitivity about ethnicity and the notion that people are not accountable for what they do, this is not liberalism.

Liberalism is founded on the Jeffersonian notion that ultimately the individual deserves the protection of his government, that the government has to give power to and protect those who have no voice, who are disenfranchised. The government is there to make the society work in an equitable and just way. That's the spirit of and the tradition of the liberal movement in this country. This other stuff has nothing to do with it.

Empowering an adult bookstore to open up shop in a neighborhood filled with elderly people who lack political power, whose finances are immediately compromised and their property values plummet, that is not, in my mind, enforcement of the First Amendment. It has nothing to do with the First Amendment. This is a misinterpretation of the constitutional views of people like Adams, Jefferson, Franklin and all these other early guys. They weren't there to protect pornographers who create victims out of defenseless people.

The libertine view of life has much more to do with fashion than it does politics. There's nothing liberal about Hollywood. That's just nonsense. The Disney Company violated minimum wage laws in Haiti. I mean, you've got to really work to violate sweatshop laws.


Thanks to Reese Fuller for graciously allowing this partial reprint.