A Southern Exposure.
St. Andrews, B.A.
In A Southern Exposure, her ninth novel and arguably among her best,
Alice Adams focuses away from contemporary San Francisco and takes her
readers on a tour through time and place. Wearied by the Great
Depression and hounded by creditors, Harry and Cynthia Baird escape with
their daughter Abigail to exchange the social and fiscal confines of
privileged Connecticut for those of North Carolina. Seeming to have
strayed away from a cocktail party hosted by Jay Gatsby, the Bairds find
themselves at an equally bored, equally dangerous Southern fete.
This comparison to Fitzgerald is meant as a tribute to the quality of
Adams's prose; precision and lyricism balance her style and, in
turn, elevate these characters and their dilemmas. Like Gatsby, the
Bairds posture at times; their air of sophistication, real and imaginary
by turns, distances them from their own immediate displacement. Like
daughter Abigail, the Bairds seem capable of no more than petty
vengeance and self-absorption, but the stay at Pinehill and the backdrop
of World War II help even Cynthia evolve from sexual coquetry to a
budding awareness of civil rights.
Adams strategically paces the novel; the Bairds slowly dig deeper
into the rigid hierarchies of Pinehill, which welcomes them, albeit
suspiciously, as "these Bairds . . . Bads, whatever they call
themselves." While they accept their partly royal, partly dubious
status as outsiders, the court into which the Bairds have blundered is
filled with easily labeled characters: poet Russell Byrd, socialite
bigot Dolly Bigelow, antifascist Esther, sycophant Jimmy High-tower,
innocent temptress Deirdre Yates, and all-seeing servant Odessa.
The Bairds and the Byrds sound vaguely akin to "the birds and
the bees," and Adams manipulates these lusty possibilities. The
illusions, ennui, and obsessions that complicate life in any small town
enliven Pinehill, but Adams's powerful rhythms and restraints vault
almost every character and event over the abyss of mere bathos. Even so
stock a character as the pivotal Russell Byrd, the testosterone-driven
poet, rises above type while busily if not merrily serving more women
than his forgiving Muse. Caught in some notable female machinations -
and those of his own making seem sufficiently damaging - the poet
assumes a kind of mythic yet pitiful stature. His doomed wife
comprehends his real demons: "It's always the next place with
Russ. The thing ahead. The new poem." And, she could have added,
the new woman. Loving women but not liking them much, Russ seems a
failed Pygmalion who rechristens wife Sally Jane into a still woefully pedestrian Brett. By novel's end, he seems an Orpheus figure torn
to psychic pieces by the Maenads he himself has summoned forth.
While the writing seems a bit rushed in the novel's final
section - as if bio notes or snapshots were being offered to telescope
each character's fate - this technique may underscore the
encompassing idea of "exposure": examining what does and does
not come to light in these lives. Even with this small and hardly fatal
flaw, A Southern Exposure advances Adams's stature as a rare breed:
a social satirist within whose icy breast beats a warmhearted observer
of shared human foibles.
B. A. St. Andrews SUNY Health Science Center, Syracuse
