TR Fuller as magical negro

[David Morris]

These are examples of the Primitive in Fuller.  And those
unsophisticated belief systems may be associated with Magic, but not
necessarily.

The individual in TR that seems most Magical to me is Wyatt's
grandfather,  the Town Carpenter.  He is deaf, but can answer
insightfully in deep conversations.  He is a source of "country"
wisdom:

"Do you know what happens to people in cities? I’ll tell you what happens to
people in cities. They lose the seasons, that’s what happens. They lose the
extremes, the winter and summer. They lose the means, the spring and the fall.
They lose the beginning and end of the day, and nothing grows but their bank
accounts. Life in the city is just all middle, nothing is born and nothing dies.
Things appear, and things are killed, but nothing begins and nothing ends […]
you don’t get heroes out of the cities."   (The Recognitions 418)

David Morris

On Sat, Jul 9, 2011 at 3:38 AM,  <edmoorester at gmail.com> wrote:
> TR Fuller as magical negro
>
> p260
> Having written REKTIL BROWN on a piece of paper and put it into his drawer
> some time earlier, Fuller sat on the edge of his bed in the windowless room,
> in sagging white underclothes, rubbing a yellow figure (drawn against the
> prospect of a cross) with his moist palm in the darkness.
>
> p328
> Dawn, somewhere beyond the incinerator plant which had won first prize in
> functional architecture a decade before: Fuller was busy in Mr. Brown's
> bathroom, picking up every piece of Mr. Brown's hair he could find and
> putting it into an envelope.
>
> p346-7
> Yes sar, Fuller answered and withdrew a step. -These problems continue to
> vex me, sar, he went on. —Like the mermaids, sar.
>
> — Fuller, Fuller . . . keep your mermaids, if they please you.
>
> —Yes sar. But it remain complex, sar, for if they mermaid womans they got to
> be mermaid mahns too. For the first time the face which Fuller was, by now,
> staring directly at, turned to him with a smile
>
> ed