{"id":6658,"date":"2014-01-26T20:55:49","date_gmt":"2014-01-27T01:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/?p=6658"},"modified":"2014-01-26T20:55:49","modified_gmt":"2014-01-27T01:55:49","slug":"midnight-at-20-john-berendts-book-continues-to-resonate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/2014\/01\/26\/midnight-at-20-john-berendts-book-continues-to-resonate\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Midnight&#8221; at 20; John Berendt&#8217;s book continues to resonate"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"e26b170012445c56d240655bdd03f7bf\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: left; margin: 10px 10px 10px 0;\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-5595881567027133\";\r\n\/* Medium Rectangle *\/\r\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"8584504377\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 300;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 250;\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>Before I launch into a few thoughts of my own, I want to plug <a href=\"http:\/\/multimedia.savannahnow.com\/media\/Midnight\/home.html\" target=\"_blank\">SavannahNow&#8217;s really interesting multimedia package<\/a> about the 20th anniversary of the publication of John Berendt&#8217;s <em>Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p>Kim Wade&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/savannahnow.com\/news\/2014-01-25\/midnight-garden-good-and-evil-brings-cash-tourists-coastal-empire#.UuWu42Qo6iY\" target=\"_blank\">feature piece<\/a> touches upon many aspects of the legacy of &#8220;The Book&#8221;, as it has been called by locals. <\/p>\n<p>How much longer will it just be called &#8220;The Book&#8221;? Hard to say. It&#8217;s clear that many younger Savannahians have no direct connection to it all. Only a handful of my dozens of students at Armstrong have read it; many haven&#8217;t heard of it.<\/p>\n<p>But Sunday&#8217;s coverage is a good reminder that the stories in <em>Midnight<\/em> are still rich in many ways. I especially like a portion of Kim&#8217;s piece that touches upon the experiences of Lady Chablis:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was the first time Savannah was thrown into the spotlight. Along with \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMidnight,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 which a lot of Savannahians didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care for, here comes this black, loud-mouthed, and as far as they are concerned, drag queen who was a big character in the book and was getting more popular.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Savannah didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how to deal with it, but they had to, so they had to learn.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Chablis says she left Savannah after the book became popular. She feared for her safety and never moved back.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Like for two years I became a recluse. If I had to fly somewhere, I would fly as \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcincog-negro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 (Chablis\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 catch phrase) as possible so no one would recognize me. Finally I just had to own it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And this snippet about the late Jack Leigh, photographer of <em>Midnight<\/em>&#8216;s iconic cover:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[Susan] Laney says Leigh was given the keys to the cemetery gate and permission to stay there for two days. On the second day, he wandered around until almost all the light was gone and happened upon the statue. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153He went into a dark room with the negative and enlarged it and worked with it for three days, working with different filters,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Laney says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He used a method he was known for called burn and dodge technique.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153He did about a hundred passes of light. \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Now you wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to work so hard but at the end of 1993, it was not that way. He really created something that wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t in reality.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And this from bookseller Esther Shaver:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nothing evokes Savannah like that book. I mean you feel it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If you have never been here, you read it, and you feel it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There is a whole lot more in Wade&#8217;s piece and in that multimedia package &#8212; it&#8217;s all definitely worth a look, no matter what your interest in or appreciation of Berendt&#8217;s book.<\/p>\n<p>I was working at the Borders bookstore in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood in Philadelphia when <em>Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil<\/em> came out. <\/p>\n<p>The power of that cover was palpable. Shoppers wanted to hold it &#8212; and so did the employees. I&#8217;ll confess, though, that it took me a long time finally to decide to read it. For all the buzz about the book, I never heard that much talk about the story itself &#8212; the discussion was all about the mood, the atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>I finally read <em>Midnight<\/em> over the course of a couple of afternoons sitting in the sun in the backyard of my sprawling attic apartment in an old home in Fort Washington. I was struck by the guardedness of Berendt&#8217;s narrative voice, which reminded me so much of Nick in <em>The Great Gatsby<\/em>. He&#8217;s a witness to the passionate moments of others, but does he share them? People open up to him in a heartbeat, but does he open up to them? Do they even want him to?<\/p>\n<p>I was struck, too, by the way the entire story is driven by the short life of Danny Hansford, who was shot to death at age 21 by Jim Williams. There&#8217;s a real tragedy at the heart of <em>Midnight<\/em>, and it&#8217;s worth noting that Hansford&#8217;s story remains largely untold. Had Hansford&#8217;s family gone public and talked to Berendt, we&#8217;d have a different text. Had he lived, Danny Hansford would be 54 this year. <\/p>\n<p>My first reading of <em>Midnight<\/em> also confirmed for me that Savannah was as fascinating as I thought it was after a very brief visit in the late 1980s. I had been teaching fulltime before working at Borders for a while and doing some traveling; when I saw a job listing at Savannah Country Day School in 1995, it was a no-brainer to apply for the position even though I didn&#8217;t know anyone in Savannah. I applied for other positions up and down the East Coast at the same time, but I had a job offer from SCDS before I even interviewed anywhere else. I took it.<\/p>\n<p>In his public remarks in 2008 at the Savannah Book Festival, Berendt referred to the &#8220;spiral effect of eccentricity&#8221; in Savannah. It&#8217;s a place of just the right size, with enough overlapping social connections, that oddness becomes prized. Without even really gossiping, those of us with rich public lives learn about other residents through so many avenues that we feel a part of their lives. <\/p>\n<p>I hear a lot of Savannahians say that the world of <em>Midnight<\/em> is dead &#8212; that there&#8217;s too much money, too much technology, not enough dive bars, not enough space for artists, and on and on. <\/p>\n<p>Sure, the city has changed radically since 1994, but I&#8217;m often struck by how much has remained the same. Many of those complaining about the changes in the city don&#8217;t seem to be reckoning with the simple fact that they themselves are 20 years older too. They haven&#8217;t been willing &#8212; or able &#8212; to be carried in new directions as the urban landscape has shifted. Just today, for example, my friend Allison Hersh has a fascinating column in the Savannah Morning News about another friend, theyoung photographer Emily Earl, a Savannah native whose latest body of work is &#8220;Late Night Polaroids&#8221;. From <a href=\"http:\/\/savannahnow.com\/accent\/2014-01-25\/art-soul-artist-finds-muse-savannahs-nightlife#.UuVdcmQo6iY\" target=\"_blank\">Allison&#8217;s piece<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Like Savannah itself, Earl\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s photographs are mysterious, inviting, sensual and seductive. For this talented photographer, the camera serves as an ideal tool to document the city\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s offbeat nightlife scene.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so much great stuff going on here that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get enough attention,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important we embrace the different things happening in Savannah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s arts and music scene.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"e26b170012445c56d240655bdd03f7bf\" data-index=\"2\" style=\"float: none; margin:0px 0 0px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:inline-block;width:300px;height:250px\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-5595881567027133\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"4374909701\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before I launch into a few thoughts of my own, I want to plug SavannahNow&#8217;s really interesting multimedia package about the 20th anniversary of the publication of John Berendt&#8217;s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Kim Wade&#8217;s feature&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/2014\/01\/26\/midnight-at-20-john-berendts-book-continues-to-resonate\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[20,1112],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Screen-shot-2014-01-26-at-8.48.38-PM.png?fit=103%2C159","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gN9R-1Jo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6658"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}