That The Far Music is a boy’s tale, or rather,
the bildungsroman of a boy blooming into manhood, does not diminish the impact
of the story. Labor’s extensive and finely drawn interest in both the
educational and class systems of his day make the memoir compelling. His connection
of nature, humanities (literature), and social justice keeps him from seeming
self-absorbed and narrow-minded and seems, in fact, not only retro, throwing
back to Thoreau, but also prescient—looking forward to the his own career as a
Jack London scholar and to the field of environmental humanities. The narrator’s mature voice treats both the
characters and the country—both naďve with more vim and vigor than wisdom—with
compassion.
That two English majors—inspired by Thoreau—would set out
from Dallas Texas, travel north and west across the continent into
Canada—working odd jobs along the way in order to spend a year in a cabin they
would build seems like a privileged kids’ improbable day dream in this age.
That is why Labor’s rendition of just such a plan—drawn from his own memory and
the notes of his companion, Pink Lindsey--is important. His was not the fancy
of the privileged but rather the polishing of one facet of the American Dream,
as a working class guy who went to a vocational high school finds himself—through
university education--able to meld working class roots with literary
aspirations into the adventure of a lifetime.
Labor relates how the years 1945 – 1950 were defined by the country’s
World War II victory and influenced by radio and film. He describes a sanguine period,
simultaneously self-congratulatory, nostalgic, and expectant, an epoch
entranced and entrenched with/in its own “auroral haze” (xvii). In short, this
memoir could be paired beautifully with James Lee Burke’s post-war Dave Robicheaux
novels or with Kerouac’s On the Road—a
more rambunctious memoir from the same decade. Labor names the period, “the Era
of Bright Expectations (xvii),” and with the increasing access to higher
education and the promise of greater social equality that education promised,
it is easy to see why the era seemed special.
As a chronicle of its time, Labor’s text is appropriately
full of name-dropping—from classmates, to football heroes, to academic advisors
and professors, to college presidents. His extroverted embrace of both people
and experiences during the road trip gives the text an immediacy and
exuberance.
It was Labor who proposed “The Plan” (28).” At the end of
his undergraduate career, he craved “adventure” as he decided whether to
continue with academics or enter the business world (28). In his vision, Labor
saw the two eating “fish and game,” with “time for relaxing and communing with
Mother Nature” (29). His friend Pink is
the one concerned about finances, but Labor reassures him with the plan to
follow and work the wheat harvest (20). Labor admits, “We hadn’t a clue about
our limitations. That would come later” (30).
Those clues and some wisdom do come in the next ten
chapters, as three friends, Howie (who lasted until September), Pink (who remained
about a month longer), and Labor (who lasted longest—into Kansas City’s
December) head out. While Labor tells a
great tale, he also intersperses reflection, his own and Pink’s (in italics). “I
believe that in the final tally a reckoning would be that with the slow and
subtle attrition of time the pen shall me mightier than the sword, but of one
thing I’m fairly certain: he shovel is mightier than both” (59).
In “Dream’s End,” Labor recounts how he and Pink returned
the following year to work a second summer in Oklahoma. That trip and the
harvest were less inspirational than the first, “Pink and I finished our final
harvesting job the last week in June and headed back to Dallas—not to
Canada—thus bringing final closure to any remote possibility of resuming our
idyllic escape to the northland wild” (221).
Labor laments their dream’s end, which “coincided” with the
“traumatic collapse” of the idea of permanent peace, “an even greater illusion”
(229). During the same week that the
guys headed home, Truman deployed U. S. forces to help South Korea.
“Last Refrain,” the
memoir’s final chapter, reveals the pair’s ultimate destinations: Pink, who
suffered PTSD and other health issues, settled in Gilmer, Texas, worked
construction, and wrote on the side, while Labor went on to enjoy a long career
at Centenary College in Shreveport, “embracing lifetime adventure with my soul
mate and family—complemented by sharing my love of literature in the classroom
with bright young minds and in publications with my professional colleagues
(224).
Earle Labor’s The Far
Music (Dallas: DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist U, 2016) is memoir at
its best. It offers a slice of life: a picture of the times and a mind-tap into
a period.
