Thu
Apr 9 2009
10:17 am

By way of explaining a first-person scene he’d written in which a mother drowns her baby girl in a bathtub, the late great John Updike told me once in an interview, “In a novel of any length you should be able to enter some other character's mind. The genius of the novel is to demonstrate different points of view…”

It’s not a notion favored by those who demonize enemies in order to make short work of them. Anyone who’s tried to publicly analyze motives and psychology of terrorists knows how quickly such missionary work draws down the wrath of inflamed citizens.

That attitude extends not only to those who would understand terrorists, political foes and culture warriors, but especially those who express any empathy for the crooks, liars and greed mongers who perpetrated our current economic fiasco.

But those who would try and take the measure of their humanity as we march our Bernie Madoffs to guillotine or country club prison could do worse than read Inman Majors’ novel, The Millionaires (W. W. Norton, 2009, $24.95.).

It’s a book I loved reading two or three weeks ago, and one that I’ve thought about almost daily since.

continued...

The novel’s more than loosely based on what’s known as the Butcher banking empire of East Tennessee. It’s a sort of true-life tale of would-be kings who lose their Midas touch or—to mix my myths a bit—fly too close to the sun, like Icarus, and fall from glorious heights. Flying ever higher, they find themselves out of their element, borrowing outrageously and moving funds around in a desperate, possibly well-intended effort to leave a mark on the landscape.

And leave one they do. Like Jake and C.H. Butcher, who were seminal in bringing the 1982 World’s Fair to Knoxville, as well as a pair of gleaming towers still pointing to the heavens above our ever-fairer city, Roland and J. T. Cole bring a world-class exhibition to the fictive town of Glennville where they build their own towers.

If asked to describe the towers in one word, you might be tempted to say phallic. A truer word might be crystalline, for the real life towers not only mirror the skies and mountains of Tennessee, they’re like crystals in which an astute observer might've caught glimmerings of the future—a future of greed and corruption we’re experiencing still.

A quarter-century after the real life Butcher banking scandals, their crimes have been rendered almost quaint by a litany of scandal and mismanagement, including the Savings & Loan fiasco, Enron, Madoff, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, AIG, bank after bank, and a fistful of Bush Administration political scandals.

One could look at the Butchers as canaries in the coal mines—or gold mines—of an era that thought it was building towers to the heavens when, in fact, it was digging itself ever deeper into a pit of moral and financial despair that brought multitudes of investors, pensioners and others down with them.

And yet… Inman Majors has managed to render his similarly bereft brothers sympathetic, even lovable. He shows us their kids, their hard-scrabble past, the banal beginnings of their banking deals, their brotherly chemistry and competitiveness that got out of hand. Some critics have misunderstood what Majors is up to here, and write his book off as humor or satire. But what Majors is really up to in this 475 page book—which does contain formidable humor in the Tom Wolfe tradition—is tragedy.

In that way he resembles the great social realism novelists of the twentieth century. His protagonist brothers could be seen as hill country versions of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, Robert Penn Warren’s Willie Stark in All the King’s Men or Rabbit Angstrom in Updike’s Rabbit is Rich. Yet the Coles are richly defined by their own quirks, visions, vices and manners, and so rise above stock comparisons. We meet their lovable children, wives, lovers, advisers, bartenders, friends, foes, employees and the townspeople who knew them when.

There’s something humbling yet bracing about watching such rich and powerful men get their comeuppance, because most of us at one time or another have envied such people. I’m reminded of pithy words from commentator William Safire.

“Nixon looked down on the Kennedys with utmost envy.”

So true. And yet, J.T. and Roland Cole are rendered more real than even the Kennedys because they’re like us—especially those of us who hail from south of the Mason Dixon line and west of the Appalachian Trail.

Underneath their wool-blend suits they’re scruffy and country, and rooted in a community that’s in turn rooted in the earth. They’re the pride of an outlying community still based in large part on cattle and corn and hay and tobacco.

Yet somehow they’ve managed to fly to the sun, as symbolized by an architectural bauble that defines Glennville much as the Sunsphere has come to symbolize Knoxville.

There’s a scene in The Millionaires that, purposely or not, invokes Gatsby reaching with arms stretched to embrace the light at the end of Daisy’s pier. It comes toward the end of the book at a lavish party on a lighted lawn brimming with food, drink, laughter, orchestra and beautiful people.

Standing on the fringe of the party talking to Mike Teague, the true protagonist of this book, Roland stretches out his arms and as if to embrace the whole estate, the very stars in the sky and asks, "I mean, am I really standing here? Tell me. Am I?" And you feel the wonder of how far he’s come and just how bitter his fall will be.

Like the best of books, The Millionaires grants its subjects their humanity and leaves you pondering the imponderable, not only about the Coles, but about real life counterparts. What if they’d been able to stave off inspectors for six more months until some of their investments came to fruition? What if Roland had won the governorship? What if the fictive counterpart to the real-life President Carter, a close friend of close friends, had won re-election in 1980? What if they’d gained acceptance from old money in Glennville?

Many novels resonate in mind thanks to a a line or two, like those quoted above. In All the King’s Men, the lines I remember most are, “It could’ve been all different, Jack… you got to believe that.”

Like Fitzgerald, Warren, Wolfe and Updike before him, Majors makes you believe it.


Don Williams is a prize-winning columnist, short story writer and the founding editor and publisher of New Millennium Writings, an annual anthology of literary stories, essays and poems. His awards include a National Endowment for the Humanities Michigan Journalism Fellowship, a Golden Presscard Award and the Malcolm Law Journalism Prize. He is finishing a novel, "Orchid of the Orchid Lounge," set in his native Tennessee and Iraq. His book of selected journalism, "Heroes, Sheroes and Zeroes, the Best Writings About People" by Don Williams, is due a second printing. For more information, email him at donwilliams7@charter.net. Or visit the NMW website at www.NewMillenniumWritings.com.

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R. Neal's picture

Thanks, Don. I just beamed

Thanks, Don. I just beamed this book down to my Kindle...

citizenX's picture

Not Impressed

I ordered the book from Amazon and was very disappointed.

R. Neal's picture

How come?

How come?

citizenX's picture

Millionaires

The book seems to "ramble" too much for my taste. It wasn't at all the book I had hoped it would be. I liked Whirlwind....also about the Butcher family.

Bbeanster's picture

I read "Wonderdog," and was

I read "Wonderdog," and was somewhat disappointed as well. I had real high hopes for it, but it rambled too much for my taste. I'm willing to give him another shot, though, because I love the idea of one of the Majors boys writing books. His daddy, Joe, was a buddy of mine when I worked in Nashville. Joe was a big-time, major lobbyist who died a few years back. Good guy, even if he did go to FSU.

R. Neal's picture

Hah. Just saw this review on

Hah. Just saw this one-star review on Amazon:

"Violates every literary rule in the book and then some..."

I'm liking the sound of it more and more. Can't wait to read it. If nothing else, the Butcher connection should be interesting.

redmondkr's picture

I have read about ten

I have read about ten percent so far on my Kindle and it's pretty good.

I have a few questions though. Has today's economy produced a shortage of quotation marks? Are modern writers just too damned lazy to use the punctuation of their parents when depicting conversation? Are we destined to reduce all future literature to Twitterese?

I know the Kindle is capable of reproducing these little markings for I have seen them in other works.


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redmondkr's picture

This book has made me wish I

This book has made me wish I had taken advantage of Amazon's first chapter download feature although that much of it may have sold me on it. I started skipping chapters with the dumb sister on the bicycle and the tour of Corrine's walk-in closet.

I have now given up and gone back to reading The Great Bridge by David McCullough.


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Nobody's picture

I live in Union County

I live in Union County --where the Butchers are from-- and here you'll not find many at all who will speak ill of them. In fact, many will tell you that politics, nothing more or less, are what brought Jake down.

MDB's picture

Well, there is that

In fact, many will tell you that politics, nothing more or less, are what brought Jake down.

Plus that silly old "bank fraud" stuff.

Voting is like driving. If you want to go backwards, select R. If you want to go forward, select D.

Nobody's picture

Bank fraud indeed. It's

Bank fraud indeed. It's always nice when folks jump to conclusions regarding another posters intentions. I was simply relaying what people who experienced things rather directly have to say about things not making any judgments as to what happened. However, they're not altogether wrong in the assessment that politics brought the Butchers down. A cursory review of white collar crime throughout American history reveals that much.

DonWilliams's picture

I loved the book, just as I loved Wonderdog,

So I stand by my review, tho I can see why some might not. The Millionaires is a challenging work. Inman Majors uses lots of narrative techniques that don't gel until about 50 or 60 pages in--screenplay, one graf chapters--but for me it was worth the wait. Some works break all the rules and still work. Jim Harrison's "Legends of the Fall" comes to mind. A short little book that spans several wars and several generations. As for quotation marks, Cormac McCarthy doesn't use them either. On balance I've come to prefer books that don't, tho I didn't when I first read McCarthy. Some books take a while for the motor to kick in, but if you stick with them the rewards can be immense. Ken Kesey's "Sometimes A Great Notion," was like that. It's now one of my all time faves, tho I almost put it down after 50 pages. Other classics don't ever quite work for me. "This Side of Paradise" by Fitzgerald was like that, for one of many examples I could name. I realize the book got some bad reviews, and I'm glad I wrote mine before reading them. NPR posted a really favorable one however. I think some readers deduct points because of the jock factor. Others come in expecting a send-up, akin to Wonderdog, but this book is really more serious than that. However, if you were looking to read a book that explains the Butchers, this isn't it. It's fiction. Loosely based on the Butchers but not meant to be a history. There's no accounting for taste, and I respect the opinion of those who didn't like this cup of home brew, but I thought it was excellent, on balance, at times very affecting. It helps if you have brothers.

Up Goose Creek's picture

Bank fraud

Yup, the Butchers were truly "ahead of their time". Today they'd be eligible for a TARP.

____________________________________
"Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult; whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse."

rocketsquirrel's picture

I'm sorry, but regarding the

I'm sorry, but regarding the whole punctuation thing: I realize there are a lot of McCarthy enthusiasts out there, but I would characterize such liberties with punctuation as an affectation. English teachers of mine--who I basically revere more than our dear Cormac--are largely not amused. Nor does it increase the readability of the text. McCarthy may have been able to succeed with it, but for Majors to emulate this is what I would call "trying too hard." For it now to be considered a literary device is unfortunate, at best.

I hope, too, that Twitter "tweets" do not make their way into serious novels. But unfortunately, they probably will.

MDB's picture

Grammatical Liberties

To take major liberties with grammar in a novel, you have to be a novelist on a par with Cormac McCarthy.

To be blunt, Inman Majors isn't on that par.

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Nancy's picture

Majors' book

Don,

I was so happty to read your review. You seem to "get it!" I felt that many of the critiques of the book were wrong - all wrong. It definitely was not a satire. I thought much of the writing was purely poetical and I loved it. I am an old English majors as well as a teacher and I wish more writers were as capable as Majors.

redmondkr's picture

Do old English majors ever

Do old English majors ever proof read their own work?


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StaceyDiamond's picture

book

I read that after UT Johnny actually raised one of his nephews and I wonder if it was this guy. On the Butchers, growing up I vaguely remember the lines when folks pulled their money out of the banks and just that the Butchers were bad people. It wasn't until years later being involved in politics that I found out the raid came as soon as the fair closed and how some think the motivation was political. Very powerful Democrats were sure brought down. For the Best Of Knoxville this year I listed Jake as the person I'd like to be stuck in the Sunsphere with, maybe get inside his mind.

Bbeanster's picture

Johnny raised his grandson,

Johnny raised his grandson, not his nephew.

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