How to tell a story

How to tell a story

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Two more reworked novels



Here's one of the best passages I've ever written, Red's black friend explaining the logic behind the development of the LA freeway system in 1954:
Butch said, “If she wants to live in the best neighborhoods, man, the lady got no choice but to pass for white. Nobody’s gonna let Negroes move around at will. Why the hell do you think they’re building all these new freeways? Think about it.”
I don’t see what this has to do with freeways.”
Come on, Red, open your eyes!”
He pulled a ballpoint pen out from a pocket and began drawing on a napkin, all the while continuing with greater excitement.
What do the white City Fathers fear most of all? The expansion of Negro neighborhoods, man. The darkies infiltrating good white neighborhoods. I’m not jiving. Looky here.”
His diction was changing as he spoke, so that now he was sounding more like Lovin’ Dan the Sixty-Minute Man, with his hip vernacular, than like the cultured Butch I knew. He turned the napkin around so I could see what he’d drawn so quickly, a pattern of lines with a circle in the middle.
This is the Freeway Grand Plan, okay? They even published it in the newspaper. Now this here is Watts, man. So more Negroes have been moving into Watts, so it’s expanding to the west, right? Oo-ee, we got to head off them niggers at the pass! And so we start building this here Harbor Freeway to block them off, and this here Santa Monica Freeway to catch and trap all the ones that slip over the boundary before we can finish up the Harbor. But now Watts is expanding east, man, cause it’s got to go somewhere, and so we got to head off them damn niggers again, oo-ee, baby, let’s build ourselves the Santa Ana Freeway, only this time a whole mess of niggers got so far east we got to come down with another one, too, the Pomona Freeway -- look at it, Red. All these freeways ain’t nothing but fences to keep the niggers from getting too close to good white neighborhoods. You mentioned South City. Well, what’s South City, man? A town because people want it to be a town? Hell, no. It’s nothing but the part of Watts that got over the Santa Ana but got cut off with the Pomona. It ain’t a freeway system, Red, it’s the walls of a prison!”
I stared at the napkin.
You’re saying,” I began slowly, “That the purpose of the freeway system is to contain Watts?”

Butch laughed. “Shit, man, I think I’d better pay the check, you so dumb.”