Shadow Country in Around the World in 80 Books

Jan 19, 2020 Steve rated it it was amazing

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Shadow Country, which won the 2008 National Book Award, is basically three novels boiled down to one 900 page beast. It tells the story of Mr. E.J. (or E.A.) Watson, a real historical figure. He was a south Florida sugar cane planter around the turn of the century, who was gunned down by twenty of his neighbors in October of 1910. That said, Mr. Watson was more than just a planter, but also a suspected killer with a violent temper who had a murky past that may have included (among many others) t Shadow Country, which won the 2008 National Book Award, is basically three novels boiled down to one 900 page beast. It tells the story of Mr. E.J. (or E.A.) Watson, a real historical figure. He was a south Florida sugar cane planter around the turn of the century, who was gunned down by twenty of his neighbors in October of 1910. That said, Mr. Watson was more than just a planter, but also a suspected killer with a violent temper who had a murky past that may have included (among many others) the assassination of Belle Starr. Watson was a feared man. But he was also a respected man, who was hard working, often friendly, helpful, and very resourceful -- even visionary when it came to the development of south Florida. He was also a crack shot.

I read the first novel in the sequence, Killing Mr. Watson, back in 1990 when it first came out. I remember really liking it, though it seemed a bit too cluttered with Matthiessen's environmental history of south Florida. The other two volumes (which I did not read in their original forms) would continue the story of Watson, with the second volume () exploring (via Watson's historian son, Lucius) the aftermath of Watson's death, his various reported crimes (most of which Lucius doesn't believe), as well as the backstories of various characters (which were mostly in volume 1). The third volume (Bone by Bone) is told from Watson's point of view.

For the most part, Matthiessen's reworking of these books into one is a success. The first volume is modeled, with its various voices, after Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. This south Florida chorus of sorts, does much to increase the sense of dread. These characters all have stories to tell about Watson, some of them surprisingly positive. But as the years go by, and people die or disappear, the shadow over Watson grows, until a there's community-wide revulsion over an explosion of violence at Watson's place. Ironically, Watson was probably, technically at least, innocent of the seven or eight deaths that would lead to his own death by a neighborly firing squad. I thought this section was quite well done, with its flow improved by Matthiessen's cuts, which seemed come from the considerable environmental stuff in the original novel. Oh, it's still there. The butchery of the egrets, gators, etc., is all there, but with an economy that, if anything, increases those tragedies, while better serving the overarching story.

The second part of the "novel" is the story of Lucius Watson. He is Watson's second son from his second marriage. He is a historian as well as a son. He seeks, through his interviews with many of the characters from the first book, to peel back, and ultimately disprove, the dark stories surrounding his father. He has some success, but not nearly enough to whitewash his father's reputation. This section of the book is the least successful. Evidently Matthiessen cut 300(!!!) pages from the original book, and it shows. The flow of time is compressed, confusing, and you are often puzzled by the various relationships, as characters reconnect in a few pages, in what was probably meant to be a number of years. Some context is definitely lost with those lost pages. Thus the second section serves as something of an information dump, but Matthiessen knew what information to dump, since much of the various backstories will resonate later on in Book Three -- Watson's own story.

Book Three is probably the easiest of the three to read, and is, as much as I admired Book One, the best of the three. Watson's own story is quite revealing. Watson's own story begins in South Carolina, as the son of a Civil War veteran, who was also a coward and brutal father. Edgar "A." Watson had violence baked and beaten into him by the time he is fifteen, when he is finally old enough to return the favor. Still, Watson is also an unreliable narrator. You can't trust "Jack" Watson's word when it comes to his crimes. When people die or reported dead or missing, you find Watson's accounts of his own involvement more than murky. Or he just outright blames someone else. By book's end, he really only confesses to three murders. One, a killer in a bar, and two black workers, who he considers "communists,"and an agitating threat to his completing his sugar cane harvest. The only reason he probably confesses to these crimes was that the bar killing was such a public affair, and that there was simply no way to explain away the discovered bodies of his executed workers. In a contrasting example, he seems to have, despite denying involvement, a lot of specific details regarding the death of Belle Starr, right up to her last words before a shotgun blast to the head. It's like he's kind of proud of that one since it ensured Watson a bit of lifelong notoriety. Anyway, when he denies his involvement to his dying wife she doesn't believe him, and neither did I. Starr or no Starr, one feels pretty sure that Watson earned each of those 30 or so bullets from his neighbors.

(Note that Shadow Country is currently only $4.99 on Kindle.) ...more

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