David Liss: The Whiskey Rebel

Even today, though I’ve read it more times than I can count, I sigh a bit to name it. It was called Amelia, and it was a novel. Inevitably, I had come across references to novels in my reading-in magazines and occasionally in pamphlets and works of philosophical discourse-but they were always dismissed as frivolous things for silly women, composed by silly women or disreputable men. So conditioned was I to regard novels as trivial nonsense that when my father put Fielding’s three volumes in my hand, borrowed from a merchant he knew in town, it took considerable will to smile and act, in some small way, appreciative. My efforts proved insufficient, however, for my father’s countenance fell.

“Don’t ye like it?” His eyes went wide and slightly moist. He was a proud man, broad-shouldered, with strong though strangely flat hands and more than his share of physical courage, but he found my reading mysterious and vaguely frightening. I could see he thought he had made a foolish error, embarrassed himself before his clever daughter, perhaps even offended her, or even-for who knew how these matters of books worked?-done her harm.

“I-I don’t know, not having read it,” I said. Then I smiled at him, smiled as he deserved. “I shall let you know anon.”

Had he not looked so sad, I should almost certainly have set it aside as something unworthy of my notice and returned it unread after a few days. Now, however, I felt obligated to give Fielding my attention. So it was I began to read. Perhaps it was my good fortune that the first novel I read should be so unusual of its kind. Novels so often concerned women looking for husbands, but in this book, the principal couple was already married. The hero, William Boothe, endures debt, imprisonment, the temptation of lust, and the guilt of adultery, while Amelia, his loving wife, struggles to preserve her family in the face of ruin and reprobation. I wept for its pathos, and I wept upon its conclusion, not only for the depth of the emotion it produced in me but because it was over.

By the time I finished reading, my father knew he had brought me something I loved. I recall that I sat in the field behind the house, the sun warm though not hot on my face, the completed final volume on my stomach. I stared at the misty blue of the sky, and I had the strangest thought of my life. Never before, as I read books produced by the ancients, books of philosophy or history, essays written by men of this very century, had the notion of writing myself ever possessed me. What could I write about when I knew nothing but what I read? Now everything was different. Why could I not write a novel? I could not hope to produce anything of Amelia ’s majesty, but I could surely produce something.

I set my too-willing and indulgent father upon his task. He was to borrow every novel he could find. I read them all: Fielding’s other, lesser works, Joseph Andrew and Tom Jones; Richardson ’s Pamela and Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison. I read the bawdy humor of Smollett, the social explorations of Burney and Heywood and Lennox, the sentimental nonsense of Henry Brooke and Henry Mackenzie. I made copious notes on each, quantifying what I loved and what I hated. When my empathy for a character led me to weep or laugh or fear for her safety, I spent hours determining by what means the novelist had effected this magic. When I cared nothing for suffering and loss, I dissected the want of craft that engendered such apathy.

By the time I was seventeen, I believed myself ready to write a novel of my own. The only obstacle was that I had not, myself, experienced enough of the world to describe life with the novelist’s verisimilitude. I had read, but I had not lived. I was determined that I should do so, not only for the sake of my craft but because I was now old enough to understand that books might not, by themselves, be enough for me forever.

One afternoon, near the end of the war, before the peace was made official but subsequent to the surrender of Cornwallis, I was in town with my father and Theodore, my elder brother, when I happened to see a pair of gentlemen emerging from a tailor’s shop. One was older, clearly the father of the younger, for they shared the same long face, patrician nose, and penetrating eyes-though I could not see their color from the distance, I marked their glowing intensity. The younger man moved stiffly and with the aid of a cane. He seemed to wince with each step. Despite these grimaces, however, I knew he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen, with his fair hair and kind face, angelic in its proportions, both revealing and reflecting the world around it like a cold, still lake. Granted, when I say his beauty exceeded all others, I own my life had been sheltered, having come of age during a war in which many young men had been off fighting, or hiding that they might not be made to fight, or imprisoned upon suspicion of fighting for the wrong side. I had not seen many young men, and fewer still in other than a state of desperation, but this one was indeed beautiful, and had I gazed upon a hundred thousand of the finest specimens of the sex, I do not know I should have seen one I liked better.

I asked who he was.

“That,” my brother said, “is Andrew Maycott.”

I remembered him, for their farm was not far from ours. He had been four years younger last I saw him, hardly seventeen, and I had been thirteen, no more interested in men than I was in military tactics. He had matured in those years, and I even more so. Perhaps he felt a stranger’s eyes upon him, for he turned to look at me across the street, and our eyes met. He leaned upon his cane and tipped his hat to me-to us-and I felt-well, I hardly knew what. I became light-headed and weak and terrified, and yet I was determined to know him better.

I thought to speak of it to my father. He was indulgent and should no doubt have done all in his power to arrange a meeting of the Maycotts and our family, but I had no wish for that sort of introduction. I had no mind to make small talk with his farming parents. More to the point, such a conjoining of two farming families did not seem to me sufficiently novel -like, at least not in the best sense. I did not want my story to begin with a quotidian gathering of Squires B, and Western. Far better I should do something of note, something replete with adventure and strong feeling and new sentiment.

To that end I took Atossa, a spotted mare who was my favorite, and rode the five miles to the Maycott farm. Perhaps I ought to have been apprehensive, for I knew what I planned was quite scandalous and would anger my parents. I was calm, however, for even at its worst my parents’ anger was mild, and I spent my time imagining how, when I returned home, I would makes notes that would later provide detail for my novel.

I arrived at the farm and approached the house. The Maycotts had more land and wealth than we did, and if it was not a great deal more, it was enough for them to hold themselves above us and for us to consider ourselves humbled in their presence. The house itself was a large and handsome thing of two stories, all recently whitewashed, neatly tucked in a sheath of sheltering maples. None of us had fared well during the war, for it was hard to profit when there was so little money in circulation, and it was a sorry thing to grow crops when they might be appropriated by the enemy to feed its army or appropriated by our own troops and paid for with worthless promises. Nevertheless, the Maycotts had kept up appearances, and as I approached the house I felt like a frumpy rustic approaching the lord’s manor. My dress, a homespun nut-colored thing, was clean enough, and my plain bonnet was neat and not overly discolored, but indifferent for all that. I had longed for a new ribbon to wear on such an auspicious occasion, but there were no new ribbons to be bought-and if there had been, we would not have had the money. Under my bonnet, such as it was, my mass of unruly brown hair was pinned as neatly as nature and impatience would allow. I had been careful to wash my hands before leaving, and my fingernails were free of dirt.