Reviewing abandoned plans for ORNERY PEOPLE

26 May 2016

I had totally forgotten a plan to work between my ancestors’ lives and my academic life. What happened is that I put the academic part into MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE.

In 2006 diary:

20 October 2006 Decided to work on ORNERY PEOPLE now for as long as it takes—finishing PUBLISHED POEMS but holding off on the last volume. . . . . But I am not going to die a slave to this project [The Writings of Herman Melville] that causes me so much grief from the reviewers. I want to make ORNERY PEOPLE full of interplays between my brave cussed Regulator, Intruder ancestors & me with my place on the fringes of the Academic World. I want it to tell all about Fredson [Bowers], if that’s appropriate--& Brodhead [& Delbanco]& Co. It’s going to have to be ironic & funny & horrific.


What I need to salvage from this 2006 note is the determination "to be ironic & funny & horrific." Back to Childers and the gay pursuit of a perilous quest. Someone named Scott Carter posted yesterday "Great article! Thanks so much" about the new JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION article "North Carolina Patriot Women Who Talked Back to the Tories." That's the response I have to get. I have to shed the masses of documentation and tell the stories. One story, though, will be about finding documents. I have to go back and see when I first starting to realize that there was some written record of this Okie's American ancestors.