PUSH COMES TO SHOVE
Wesley Brown's Reading at the Spencertown Academy Arts Center
Fran Heaney
ccSCOOP News
05-09-09 - On Saturday, May 2, Wesley Brown, read from his new novel, Push Comes to Shove, as part of the Spoken Word: Writers & Readers Series at the Spencertown Academy Arts Center. Brown is the author of two pervious novels, Tragic Magic and Darktown Strutters; and three produced plays, Boogie Woogie and Booker T., Life During Wartime, and A Prophet Among Them. He is Professor Emeritus from Rutgers University and currently teaches literature at Bard College at Simon’s Rock.
Push Comes to Shove is a tale told in a three-person narrative. The novel begins with Muriel, an African American woman who experienced the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South and, in 1969, describes herself as “horny with idealism and foolishly believed that throwing my body in the path of injustice was enough to stop it.” She meets the observant Raymond at the Far Out Café. Raymond, a reflective and cautious historian, is drawn to Muriel because she is a doer. The third voice is the narrator—perhaps Brown himself.
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Brown read a description of their collective Jimi Hendrix experience on December 31, 1969, at Fillmore East. The piece certainly brought back memories of the turbulent era of civil rights and anti-war demonstrations and memories of Jimi Hendrix concerts.
Concord Free Press editor-in-chief, Stona Fitch, joined Brown on stage, and together they fielded questions from the packed house. Fitch described the Concord Free Press as the Robin Hood of publishing—something new in the time of the end of books. He printed 40,000 copies of Push Comes to Shove, half to be sold on Concord Free Press.com and half to be given away at bookstores. The caveat: “By taking a copy, you agree to give away money to a local charity, someone who needs it, or a stranger on the street. Where the money goes and how much you give—that’s your call. When you’re done, pass the novel on to someone else—for free of course—so they can give. It adds up.”
Brown was introduced to Stona Fitch by Russell Banks. Brown said, “I’m not going to get paid? I’m in.” He felt it was an interesting project from New Hampshire, the “Live Free or Die” state. “It was the best offer I had.” |
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Concord Press editor-in-chief Stona Fitch with Wesley Brown |
The book has had a long gestation period. Brown began thinking about his novel in 1985: a story about the late sixties, when the country was unraveling and the bloom was coming off of the rose of idealism. In 2000, he received a residency at the Patton Institute and spent a month in a cabin on Lake Champlain. He remembered, “the sounds of nature were deafening.”
The novel is part autobiographical. Brown was involved in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1965. He became a member of the Rochester Black Panther Party in 1968. He remembered the images of the brutal beating of Emmet Till in 1955 and the Little Rock students in 1957. He had heard his father’s stories of his grandparents’ life as slaves in the Deep South.
In 1965, as the Vietnam War was escalating, Brown applied to the draft board as a conscientious objector. At that time the draft board only considered men with religious training as conscientious objectors. A personal moral code was not grounds for a deferment. Brown had to face induction into the armed services or time in a federal penitentiary. In 1972, he was sentenced to three years in the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary and served 18 months.
Around that time, he had a visit from some FBI agents because of an incendiary phrase he had used in a letter. In reference to his conscientious objector status, he wrote, “If you can’t relate to that, you can walk chicken with your ass picked clean.” That line got a big laugh from the Spencertown Academy crowd.
Brown described his writing process as a way “to find out something that is troubling me and take a journey.” He waits for surprises that prove ”I am not in control.” On writing about events that occurred forty years ago, he said that his reflections, too close at the moment, were a way to come to terms with events that have shaped us.
May Gordon offered her praise: “Push Comes to Shove achieves the rare and difficult feat of evoking a historical moment, a political atmosphere, and a fully realized emotional climate. It brings us back to a time when the stakes were high, the world was dangerous, and everything mattered—perhaps too much.”
Brown received a big hand from his neighbors and friends, and then we all went down stairs to make a donation to the Spencertown Academy in exchange for a copy of Push Comes to Shove. We all enjoyed the charming reception and Jerry Berger’s delicious guacamole, while Brown signed autographed copies of his book. It was a very good day.
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