Cross Creek

DEAR MRS. RAWLINGS: -
Instead of writing a review of your new book, I think I’ll write you a letter about it. It is hard to see how anybody can read Cross Creek (do you call it Crick? I hope so) without pleasure amounting to glee. But here and there will be readers to whom it is more than pleasant and interesting.

After I had read a little of it in the Atlantic I was afraid that within the next year a large part of the population of the country would arrive in your orange grove; but as I read the book I saw that you had headed off the migration very neatly. That chapter on foods and cooking, for instance, would entice anyone from anywhere; but you shrewdly put it after the one on ‘toadyfrogs, lizards, antses, and varmints,’ which would make almost anyone anywhere think twice about coming. For most people, too, the beauty of your magnolia tree would hardly be noticeable while they were nervously looking for a cottonmouth in the vicinity. In other words, you have so skillfully mixed light and shadow, bitter and sweet, that, although I have seldom found the beauty, mystery, and terror of nature more lovingly but honestly described, I think that most readers will be satisfied with your say-so, without wanting to enter actively into your experience.

But this is not what I mainly wanted to say. There are two faults that most nature lovers have that make me impatient with them. One is that they pretend that nature is always kind and beautiful, and the other is that their love of her seems to stop short of human beings. I suppose it really is easier to love a tree or a bird than some kinds of human beings, if only because the latter require so much more understanding. And yet I have never taken much stock in ‘nature lovers’ who rhapsodize over a butterfly but shudder over a tomato worm, or who treat nature as if it were a picture gallery in which there was no Hals, Hogarth, or Breughel. Now your books give me great satisfaction because they express a love of nature so sound and strong that it embraces pigs and varmints and turtles and buzzards and swamps and freezes as well as redbirds, deer, sunset, and spring flowers, and can moreover include such dubious specimens as Samson and ‘Geechee and Mr. Swilley. The chapter on snakes, which some readers may prefer to skip, seems the most characteristic of all, because of your determination to overcome irrational fears.

That is one thing I wanted to mention, and another is this. I don’t remember that anyone has ever said so, but I think that the people who have the finest time in this world are those who make up their philosophy as they go along. Perhaps ‘philosophy’ is too solemn a word for what I mean. I am only using it in its oldest sense of ‘love of knowledge or experience,’ and have in mind the fact that too many of us are philosophic only about what we think will advantage us or promote some assumed future utilities or interests. People who, on the other hand, are philosophic in the old sense refuse to be afraid of life: they just welcome it, come bitter, come sweet; are curious about everything and ready to accept anything, and, not having preliminary fixed notions, have no snobbery or prejudices. Whatever comes, they learn from it; and after a while begin to discover some sort of pattern in it. Too many people take so long getting ready to live that they never live. I suspect that you didn’t know what you were in for when you went to Cross Creek; and your book certainly shows that you found yourself in for some pretty raw deals. And yet, whether you are aware of it or not, you suggest the philosophy of taking life as you took cooking — trying it out at least once, and accepting the consequences as they might happen to be. To do this requires courage, but it certainly makes for happiness.

It’s this that makes us love your books. If we are thoughtful we perceive after a while that Cross Creek is everywhere — wherever we happen to be — but we must make it for ourselves. And to make it we have to learn to conquer caution, circumspection, and fear. Shortsighted people may wonder what life in Cross Creek has to do with life as it is today during a world war, not perceiving that life is all of a piece. Every populated bit of ground is a little world in which nature, both benign and malign, is reflected in the original sin and the virtue, original or acquired, of the inhabitants. If humor, sympathy, and courage work in Cross Creek, they will work anywhere. Gratefully yours,

ROBERT M. GAY

In accordance with Atlantic policy, Atlantic Monthly Press books are not included in the Bookshelf. Readers will find their presentation elsewhere in each issue.