From the Appalachians to England to the Somme: books

Following the Silver John short stories collected in JOHN THE BALLADEER, Manly Wade Wellman wrote several novels featuring the wandering folk singer. Having decided to reread them, I figured I’d start off by rereading the collection and it holds up well (it’s been more than a decade since I last read it).

John — no last name — is a Korean War veteran wandering the Appalachian South (I’m guessing as Wellman lived in North Carolina, that’s the heart of it) to learn more folk songs, playing for anyone who’ll put him up for the night. Invariably wherever he wanders there’s someone vicious, often getting their way with magic. John’s no sorcerer but he’s brave, pure-hearted and the silver strings on his guitar are poison to evil magic. While there’s a degree of formula, the stories are so vivid, eerie and absorbing I don’t care.

The series originally ended with “Nine Yards of Other Cloth,” in which John saves a woman, Evadare, falls for her, but runs away — how can he ask her to live his wandering life? Of course, Evadare has a few thoughts on that … Then in 1979, Wellman takes up their tale right after the end of that story, marrying the couple off in “Trill Coster’s Burden.” Several more short stories followed but Evadare up and disappears from the series; I don’t know why Wellman didn’t set them before she met John, which would make more sense (they’re clearly set after). Still, this is a wonderful collection, probably Wellman’s best work and definitely what he’s best known for.

FAMILY BRITAIN: A Thicker Cut by David Kynaston follows Certainties of Place, taking England into the middle of the 1950s. It opens as the influx of black immigrants from the Caribbean is raising hackles among British whites, one of many resemblances to America in that era. There’s also rock-and-roll taking off, the birth of commercial TV as competition for the BBC and debates over a woman’s place (and just how much housework was required to meet the standard of “a good wife”) and worries about just how many homosexuals were lurking. Other matters are distinctively British: the end of rationing, the end of Britain’s standing as a Great Power, absolute opposition to joining that European Union that got started on the continent. There are also multiple references to people who’d be famous down the road, from Margaret Thatcher to Christine Keeler (her affair with cabinet minister John Profumo would be a major scandal in the early 1960s), though as usual Kynaston doesn’t explain who these people will be in the future. I look forward to reading more of this series.

I’ve heard many people say the British strip CHARLEY’S WAR by Pat Mills and Joe Colquhon is one of the great war comics. After reading V1, I’m in agreement. The story starts out with Charley Bourne enlisting at 16; the recruiting office pegs him as too young but hey, they need men …

Once in France, Charley gets to experience group loyalty, danger from poison gas and snipers, more danger from officious, incompetent superiors, and the German horror when Britain introduces a new weapon of mass destruction — a rolling armored nightmare machine called a “tank.” I’m not a war comics fan but this was amazing stuff. A shame my library doesn’t have the rest of the series, as it’ll take longer if I have to buy it.

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