Lewis Nordan: Boy With Loaded Gun

With the panache and shiny wet patina of Southern Gothic, Lewis Nordan’s memoir Boy With Loaded Gun (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2000) reads like an entertaining tragi-comic mix of Erskine Caldwell, Larry Brown, John Dufresne, and Carson McCullers, among others.

The earliest settings are in and around Itta Bena, a small town in the Mississippi Delta where Nordan grew up. The sudden death of his father when he was eighteen months old is a central fact of “Buddy” Nordan’s life; this loss and void inspires crazy impulses like pretending to be Superman and flying off his mother’s porch, cracking his head open, on the day of the arrival of their first TV. Buddy’s stepfather is an alcoholic who prefers drinking at Shiloh’s Store, a seedy hangout, to keeping his mother and son company. One day, the former love of this man’s life arrives, and turns out to be a traveling midget, with the stage name Mitzi Hayworth; Buddy’s mother hits it off with her, and the boy himself falls in love; the stepfather goes to pieces. Later, Buddy gets tired of his stepfather and tries to shoot him, but the gun fails and he’s relieved. On another whim, Buddy saves up for a bus ticket and travels to New York City to see if he can find some Beatniks. He ends up naked in a cheap hotel hallway but is saved by a terse midget bellhop.

Nordan’s childhood segues into the romances and disasters of adulthood. He meets his first wife and has a car accident; another person is killed in the wreck. After Buddy recuperates, he runs off with Elizabeth, a fellow student at a small college, and they get married in Alabama. They remain married for twenty years, move around, he begins his first serious efforts at writing; Elizabeth takes in Twyla, a married hippie student, and Buddy has an unsettling affair with her. They take in a nutty boarder named Ramon, complications follow, and they have three kids: one dies in childbirth, one later disappears and commits suicide, and the lone survivor, Erik, joins the Army and later serves in the first Gulf War.

Buddy turns increasingly to alcohol for comfort while trying to become a successful writer. At one point, the story of Buddy and Elizabeth Nordan seems eerily similar to that of Ray and Mary Burk Carver (compare with her 2006 memoir, The Way It Used To Be). Buddy hits bottom, leaves Elizabeth, and ends up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on skid row.

Slowly, rockily and almost miraculously, he begins to find traction as a writer and a chance at a new life. (Nordan’s first story collection was published in 1983, when he was 45 years old). At AA “Don’t Drink” meetings, he meets Annie, his second wife, but at 48 has a crazy romance with Susan, a lost 20 year old soul. More complications. One of my favorite parts is Annie throwing him downstairs in the basement where he has to set up shop and write studiously because they can’t afford to split up – she can’t cover the mortgage without his help, and he couldn’t pay rent elsewhere. He decks out his new underworld digs with IKEA furnishings and keeps at the writing. They hang in there and somehow seem to make this odd arrangement work. Eventually, Annie is mysteriously rewarded with an inheritance, and for the first time ever, they can live relatively well. In the end, they muse about buying firearms. Buddy wants an AK-47, Annie wants a chrome-plated pearl-handled Derringer. And so the circle is complete: boy with loaded gun grows into man wanting new guns, and he’s met his match in Annie.

Lewis Nordan (b. August 23, 1939 in Forest, Mississippi) retired from teaching Creative Writing classes at the University of Pittsburgh in 2005. We await new books by him, and new issues from his fan club sponsored by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Boy With Loaded Gun is hard to find: I had to special order it, even though it's excellent and should be in more bookstores.

Today's Rune: Opening.

Ciao!