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Dancing by the River
Marlin Barton
Frederic C. Beil
ISBN Number: 1929490305
Reviewer: Elizabeth P. Glixman
It is hard to describe what makes a good piece of writing work or what makes a piece of fiction great. The language, the plot, the characters, the author’s voice—all play a part in creating the mystery of its quality. But the ability of a writer to so completely capture a reader’s attention that the stories resonate in the mind days after the book is closed is beyond analysis. Whatever the intangible element is that separates the men from the boys, the better from the best, Marlin Barton has it. His short story collection, Dancing by the River, offers examples of the short story form at its best.
Marlin Barton grew up in the seventies in the small town of Forkland, Alabama in the area known as the Black Belt, where the soil was ripe for cotton and plantation life in the eighteenth century, a place still replete with history, tradition, and poverty. His family roots are firm in this soil. As a boy he worked at his grandfather’s general store and witnessed the indignities, complexities, and joys of small-town life. Barton’s writing demonstrates his ability to observe human interactions and get at the heart of human relationships. In Dancing by the River, a collection of twelve interrelated stories, readers meet friends and family of five generations of the Anderson Family, who live in the fictionalized southern town of Riverfield from 1865-present.
There is Conrad Anderson Senior, owner of the general store, old and ill in his deathbed, watched over by his devoted wife, May, and Joseph, a black man who comes to pay his respect to Conrad after many years of separation, prompted by a conflict between the two, the nature of which the reader discovers in “Beneath A Dark Window."
We meet May, Conrad’s wife, again as a young girl in “Gypsy At the Door," a story about her mothers’ fear of gypsies and about the day a gypsy passed through town:
“Mother pushed me a little farther behind her and that’s when I saw the butcher knife she held at the small of her back. It was what she used to cut up the chicken with and I had never really thought of it as being anymore dangerous than a large spoon or ladle. It was just something Mother used in the kitchen. But now I saw how thin and bright its edge was and my mother gripped the wooden handle so tightly that her fingertips turned red" (130).
There is Seth, Conrad Anderson Junior’s son, who falls in love with a troubled woman sixteen years his senior while attending college (“Another Story for Catherine").
There is Rafe Anderson, a confederate soldier introduced in “Final Spring," who witnesses his fellow soldiers killed in an ambush.
And then there is the man in “Falling" whose relationship to the family I can’t figure out. His attempts at healing his broken marriage are desperate and filled with humorous moments.
“I must have been a fool like no other in Demarville Alabama to think that I could save my marriage to Juanita by chasing after the grand prize at the Belmont Chicken Drop, but I guess I was just as desperate as those chickens must have felt as they dropped out of that airplane door from three hundred feet above ground, all of them looking like a string of feathered sky divers without parachutes. You’ve got to remember, that chickens or at least game chickens, can fly when they absolutely have to" (34).
The characters in Dancing by the River come to life. No matter how reprehensible their actions or how inept their decisions or how strong their emotions, they illicit the reader’s empathy. People may not be whole, yet they are in search of cohesiveness and a connection to others, no matter how silent their voices. No one wants to admit weakness or defeat. But these characters must, in order to come to terms with life and claim their own hard-won grace.
There is no question that these stories are about small-town southern life, but strip the characters of their heritage and they become universal figures with whom the reader deeply empathizes. Barton is adept at creating this sense of empathy. He creates distance, doesn’t intrude in his characters’ lives. He simply tells their stories. From the book jacket: “… Marlin Barton’s writing is as clear as a fine pane of glass. Correctly described as unobtrusive, his style is so simple and powerful that it seems scarcely to be exercising his craft."
The stories in Dancing by the River travel back and forth in time. Barton gives us a panoramic view of the history of generations. The stories are dark and comforting, subtle and direct. They move slowly like a winding river in the heat of the day. Don’t let the speed fool you. They have an intensity that transcends the dictates of time.
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