Another One Hit Wonder

What is it about novels without a successor? I am infatuated with Ross Lockridge, Jr.'s Raintree County. Others adore A Confederacy of Dunces. If one had to write only one novel then I wish it could be as good as Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Lately, I found out about  Cleo Overstreet’s The Boar Hog Woman through the Paris Review.

Why The Boar Hog Woman isn’t better known today, I’m really not sure. According to Henderson, Overstreet had more than a handful of notable admirers: Taylor and Reed, of course, but also the well-known feminist Kate Millett, the activist lawyer Flo Kennedy, as well as other academics in the Berkeley area. Taylor rates the novel “in the front ranks of Black fiction … alongside of Ellison, Wright, Toni Morrison, Reed, Gaines, Himes, Toomer, Kelley, McKay, way up there.” Henderson also argues that Overstreet’s brilliant depiction of older women (and men) should have seen her more widely championed by the women’s liberation movement: “She used an oral poetic tonality that gave her reader full entry into the main character’s heart and mind. No, love is just not for teenagers, nor the jokes about the old folks doing it in the old folks home, love is eternal and the emotions Cleo Overstreet’s protagonist feels over lost love is universal, is anyone’s heartbreak.” When he hails her use of language—which he describes as “straight out of Mississippi, via Africa, she is not as eloquent as Doris Lessing or as poetic as Anais Nin, but if you go with just the power and energy of the works, then Cleo Overstreet ranks with the highest of the highest”—he’s echoing Taylor’s memorable summation of the novel: “It might hit you like white lightning when your taste runs to Scotch, but you have to give it dues for undiluted strength and character.” To think that this was just the beginning of what she could have gone on to write feels like such a cruelly snatched-away opportunity—stolen from both Overstreet herself, since she’d waited so long to dedicate herself to her writing, and from us, her readers. Whatever string of circumstances arose that contributed to The Boar Hog Woman fading away from view, Overstreet’s tragically early death undoubtedly plays a large part. In the three years between its publication and her passing, the novel went from thrilling debut to poignant swan song.

Which does two things for me - douses any high hopes for the immortality of the written word and makes me want to read yet another book!