All:
I can’t sleep, or I don’t sleep well on these Joe-Turner’s-Come-And-Gone (JTCG) weeks. (It might be the mid-afternoon tea.) This week has been no exception. The imagery and the action is so alive it sets my imagination into overdrive. I can’t sleep until I’ve finished and until we’ve met to discuss it, although I know the ending like the back of my hand. Plus, it’s my favorite play in the cycle. Anyway, here we go.
First of all, JTCG is the second of the plays in what I like to call the Bearden period, the three August Wilson plays inspired by Romare Bearden collages. See excerpts from the three day short course that focus on the Bearden collaboration here: https://raymondmaxwell.substack.com/p/august-wilson-american-century-cycle-f1d.
The play was originally named for the Bearden collage which inspired it, Mill Hand’s Lunch Bucket. The play’s title was changed in the third draft to reflect Herald Loomis’ period of court-ordered peonage at the turn of the century, just 35 years after emancipation. You all know the story. There were two blues personalities with the name Joe Turner. There was the song about the benevolent Santa Claus-like figure, Jim Turner, who brought wood and fuel to houses after flooding and fire wiped out a western Pennsylvania town. And there was Joe Tunney, brother of Tennessee governor Pete Tunney, who would capture “vagrant” black men and use court proceedings to lock them up and force them to do farm work for seven years. You have to listen carefully to the blues song to know which is being referred to. It’s almost a “double-consciousness” thing, and definitely a play on words that requires digging beneath the surface of things.
I want to say just a few words about Seth Holley. Entrepreneur and craftsman, Holley was born to free blacks in Pennsylvania who accumulated enough capital to build and run a three story boarding house, which he inherited. The boarding house becomes a meeting place and a transfer point for blacks migrating from the South to the North during the Great Migration. It also serves as the setting for the play. Seth warns tenants in a couple of places that “this is a respectful house.” We will hear a similar refrain much later in Gem of the Ocean, set one decade earlier about Aunt Ester’s home, “a peaceful house.” While Seth may be far removed from southern culture, though, he is the one who initiates the Juba on Sunday afternoons after dinner, demonstrating that the down home culture is still in his DNA.
Bynum plays the role of the oracle, the spirit man, but a person still in search of his own personal fulfillment. It’s why I included those Maslow articles in the syllabus. Dialing the clock back a few decades, which happens often, thematically, in JTCG, an enslaved person could never attain self-actualization, because he was a slave. But he (or she) could reach a state of self-transcendence, which is why it is so important to understand how Maslow got it wrong and how he tried to fix things in his later writings. A different conversation, but an important one in understanding the depth of Bynum’s character development. By the way, I think Bynum has some of the most poetic lines in all of August Wilson’s plays. My suspicion is that Wilson identifies closely with Bynum in his search for his “Shiny Man.” Attached is a paper written by a graduate student and presented at the 2018 August Wilson Society Bi-annual Colloquium that focuses on Bynum’s search.
Herald Loomis is foreshadowed in a conversation between Bynum and Selig about the meaning of life. Bynum relates a story his father told him about the “Shiny Man,” referred to as “One Who Goes Before and Shows the Way.” Isn’t that the meaning of “herald?” Well. Also sounds like John the Baptist. But that’s a much different story.
“Heralds are messengers sent by monarchs or noblemen to convey messages or proclamations—in this sense being the predecessors of modern diplomats.” So says Wikipedia. Perhaps a different angle from which to understand the Loomis character.
So when we meet Herald Loomis later in Act 1, we know by his name that he is going to be someone special with respect to Bynum, and by extension, to the plot development of the whole play. Loomis wears a long black coat, just like Solly Two Kings, the retired underground railroad conductor who continues smuggling family members from down South in Gem of the Ocean. Herald is recovering from unspeakable horrors during his kidnapping and forced servitude on Joe Turner’s farm for seven years. He seeks to reunite his family and especially, to reunite his daughter with her mother. He is a strange bird, always moody, always in a funk. Wouldn’t you be if you had seen the world through his eyes? But Herald Loomis becomes Bynum’s project, and through him, Bynum figures out the true “meaning of life.”
Selig is an interesting character. Seller of house wares door to door, Selig travels throughout the region. On his travels out of town, he often carries folks with him to nearby destinations. Bertha is convinced that’s how he knows people’s locations and can find them for other people. Selig, however, says he is in the People Finding business, claims there is an art to it, and rationalizes charging a fee for doing it. Selig also claims connections to blacks through his father who worked with slaveowners to find and capture runaways, and through his great-grandfather, who was a crewmember on trans-Atlantic slave trade ships.
The biggest known secret in the whole play is that everybody knows the woman Herald Loomis is looking for, and her location, but nobody will tell Herald. And I suspect Herald has figured that out before the end of Act 1. And I suspect that is why he acts up at the act’s closing, both acts, though no one mentions that he may have a hidden cause for his behavior because then they’d all be caught in their collective lie.
Going slightly below the surface, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is a tale about people in motion and transition. There are no static characters in this play. There is forward motion and backwards motion, there are combinations formed and recombinations. And yet, there are no drama queens in this, the largest ensemble of any Wilson play. There are no divas. The lack of a central protagonist, like Troy Maxson in Fences, may cause theater-goers to see this as a rather boring story. But they would be mistaken. This play seethes and overflows with elements of real human drama, the stuff, Shakespeare would say, “that dreams are made of.”
OK. I’ll stop here.
Ray
p.s. It’s not easy arranging your schedule to find time to sit down and read a play each week for ten weeks. But I think it is worth it, “vale a pena” as the Portuguese would say. First, you get important bragging rights for the rest of your life. Just like me reading all 100 Cantos of The Divine Comedy. But most important of all, you get initiated into this August Wilson view of the world, which, in these times, I believe, is both a meditation and a medication for our ills, or as Wilson says in The Play, “a song which is both a wail and a whelp of joy!” Please stick with it. And with us.
Consolidated session notes (long read!): https://raymondmaxwell.substack.com/p/fieldnotes-on-joe-turners-come-and
Post-session notes
We talked about how Herald Loomis and Martha Pentacost hardly exchanged words when they were united. It was obvious that both had moved on. Perhaps, I speculated, their separation began before Loomis’ kidnapping. We noticed how, when Loomis began to “act up” at the play’s end, Martha tried to talk him down and back from the edge, using biblical scripture, the 23rd Psalm, but to no avail. But revealingly, Martha showed no fear of Loomis, even after he brandished a knife, and I suggested that perhaps she was accustomed to that type behavior from him. Meanwhile, even before Martha’s return, Loomis made a strong play for Mattie Campbell, demonstrating again his willingness to move on.
Here is the Youtube video of our discussion: https://youtu.be/sjTzuq3Oa4E
Scene-by-scene synopsis
Act 1, Scene 1: We meet Seth and Bertha, owner/operators of the boarding house. Bynum enters, resident rootsman. local voodoo guy. Selg enters. Retail merchant who sells housewares that Seth makes – pots, pans, dustpans. Long discussion between Selig and Bynum about Bynum’s vision and a man he hopes Selig will help him find. Jeremy enters. Young, recently arrived from North Carolina. Loomis arrives with his daughter, Zonia, in search of his wife. Mattie Campbell arrives in search of her ex who left her. Seeks assistance of Bynum and his rootworking. Jeremy connects with Mattie who lives in a different location. Zonia connects with Reuben.
ore interactions. We learn of Selig’s ancestry. Father helped located and return runaway slaves. Great grandfather worked on trans-Atlantic slave ships cruises.
Act 1, Scene 3: Molly Cunningham enters and becomes a resident. Jeremy tries to connect with Molly and forgets Mattie. IN the sate directions, Wlson describes Molly with the words of a blues classic, Walking Blues: “She is about 26, the kind of woman that could break in ona dollar anywhere she goes.”
Act 1. Scene 4: After Sunday dinner, Seth leads the group in a Juba. Loomis walks in and acts up/goes off. Bynum talks/walks Loomis back from the edge. Loomis says his “legs won’t stand up.”
Act 2, Scene 1:Seth decides to evict Loomis, but allows him to remain until Saturday. Molly seeks to understand BYnum’s voodoo. Molly and Mattie confer about men and life. Jeremy makes a play for Molly.
Act 2, Scene 2: BYnum reveals to Loomis he knows Loomis is a Joe Turner alum. Best lines in the play.
Act 2, Scene 3: Bertha mentors Mattie bout men. Mattie and Loomis connect.
Act 2, Scene 4: Reuben and Zonia romance and plan for the future.
Act 2, Scene 5: Mattie connects with Zonia. Loomis leaves the house. Bertha mentors Mattie. Martha Pentecost arrives (returns). Loomis returns to the house, confronts Martha, accuses Bynum and starts acting up again. Martha tries to calm Loomis down, to no avail. Loomis cuts himslef, self-baptizes. Loomis leaves and Mattie follows behind him.
August Wilson's American Century Cycle 