Bejan Baran: JAMES THOMAS McAFEE " This Is My Living Room "
McAfee (1928-1982) was a professor, a writer, and a poet, taught creative writing for 29 years in University of Missouri, Columbia, Mo.
This is a short story, taken from his book "Poems and Stories," published by the University of Missouri Press. In this story, a man is thinking (writing) about himself. His thoughts are overheard (read) by the reader. This is equivalent to soliloquies in the theater, except that the man is writing or the author is writing for him. Sometimes
the man is reacting to his immediate surroundings, so his interior monologue tells the story of what is going on around him. An example is his shooting of Ezmo. Sometimes, his thoughts are memories, so, his soliloquy reviews some past events associated with something in the present. His reminiscence of World War I is an illustration. There are times when he mainly reflects, his train of thought does not record a present or recall a past story - it is the story itself. Such is the beginning of the story. Interior monologue technique is flexible, although, generally limited. T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is another example. Although, McAfee is surrounded by intelligentsia, his character in this story is a petit bourgeois, with all its characteristics - mistrust (of people and law), betrayal (of wife), greed (Ezmo's debt of a loaf of bread) and so forth.
In one of his short stories, F. Kafka describes a microorganism who thinks the world is out to get him. He constructs a house with many entrances and exits; arguing whenever the enemy enters through an entrance, he will have ample exits to evacuate before confronting the enemy. He also stores all his food in the central labyrinths of his house. Whereas Kafka's character has built itself a distributed system, McAfee's character, Henry, has lumped in one place a collection of arms.
McAfee's attitude is semi-satirical and matter-of-fact. His indication of purpose and a particular audience is indirectly given in the story through the character's interests and aspirations of petit bourgeoisie. The objects and relationships are simply described rather than analyzed in a lengthy way.
The title of the story suggests naive, possessive characteristics of a petit bourgeois; and, therefore, is an appropriate title. The story is a description of a house, a family, a store, and a few representative people. The story consists of packages titled as, MY LIVING ROOM, MY TWO GIRLS, PEOPLE, MY STORE, THIS LIVING ROOM, PEOPLE, OLD EZMO, and ROSIE. The structure of the story defies a plot. In the story only Henry's views are given, whereas the outlooks of the others, the daughters, Rosie, are not. This looks intentional and the basis for selection or rejection is of course the authoritarian behavior of Henry. It blocks out the opportunity that must be given to all the characters to express their sides. A good example of a dominant character is given in A. Gide's "Counterfeiters."
The context of the story has a central idea that is emphasized over and over, attachment. Henry possesses a house, a wife, two daughters, and a store. Even the town is described as Henry's appendage: "Maybe nobody else in this whole town, which is Pine Springs." The supporting ideas are his way of handling Sam Coates, Sheriff Claine and Old Ezmo. The collateral ideas are the guns and the whores. The setting is in the South, and in the '50's, as indicated by Birmingham News, World War II, TV, and Life Magazine. Henry's character is simple to describe, but the causes for having such a character are complex and are not given in the story. He plays inside the law, which is, following the written morality and defying the unwritten morality. Omar Khayyam in his Rubaiyat says: "Hell is a flame of our purposeless suffering." Or in Dostoevsky's words, "Hell is the absence of love." Henry not only mistrusts others, he dislikes them, too. "The only one to protect you is yourself and if you don't you're a fool." He is secure only in the store where he is damn sure that the customers come and go, while he remains in the vicinity of the familiar smell and relationship with the objects in the store.
The universal contradiction in Henry is the dialectical relation between acceptance and rejection. While he has a whore as a mistress (acceptance), he despises Ellen Jean, his daughter, who may "end up a Birmingham whore," (rejection). "If Rosie ever dies and the girls go off, I'll sell this house (rejection) and sleep in my store (acceptance). All the other characters are subordinated to Henry. The style is informal, in which the tone is vulgar. The approach is simple, direct, and figurative. A few aphorisms are used to stereotype Henry "A man can learn a lot from just watching the TV, if he knows what to watch for and if he listens close." "Women are easier to handle. About the worst they can do is talk and what does that matter?" "People are as mean one place as they are another and they're always out to get you." The diction is Anglo-Saxon and the tone and style fits the subject and the purpose of the author that is recording of the Southern dialect.
Selected Works
Poems and Stories,1960. I'll Be Home Late Tonight: Poems,1967. Rover Youngblood: An American Fable,1969. The Body & the Body's Guest: New and Selected Poems, 1975. The Tempo Changes, the Lights Go Up, the Partners Change, 1978. Whatever Isn't Glory: Stories, 1979.
https://www.alabamaliterarymap.org/author.cfm?AuthorID=128
https://whmc.umsystem.edu/invent/3728.html
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Bejan Baran is an Iranian-American poet and critic. He has published four books of poetry and literary criticism in English and Persian; with two more readied for publication: Four Seasons and The Rain’s Journey. His poems and articles on poetic processes are published in World Literature Today and Iranian Web sites. He has translated into English, Iranian New poems by Nima Yushij (1895-1958), Ahmad Shamlu (1925-2000), Mehdi Akhavan (1928-1990), Forough Farrokhzad (1935-1967). In literary criticism, he discards the traditional periodization of Iranian literature on the basis of monarchical dynasties; opts for literary styles to anchor poets or poems in history. He thinks: Poetry is the capture of the transient moment in an eternal expression for education, pleasure, and history. As Hafez of 14th century said, poetry is the “recording in the World’s chronicle;” a moment that repeats itself whenever a reader looks at the poem.