The death of sensational Mississippi author Greg Iles last week after a long battle with cancer and the realities of the aftermath of a near-fatal 2011 car accident in his hometown of Natchez stills one of the state’s most courageous and meaningful literary voices.
Iles, 65, had battled multiple myeloma since his diagnosis in 1996.
Multiple myeloma is a rare and incurable blood cancer in which blood
plasma is impacted and begins to turn normal blood cells into abnormal
cells that ultimately affect bones, platelets and
red blood cells, and the kidneys. The novelist described his battle in
living and working with the disease in a published note to readers on
his website:
“Against all odds, I became one of the luckiest patients alive and
survived more than 20 years with a “smoldering” form of the cancer,
without terminal progression. During these years, I watched the illness
take people like Geraldine Ferraro, Roy Scheider,
and, more recently, Colin Powell and comedian Norm McDonald.
“Two years ago, however, my extraordinary run of luck ran out, and my
myeloma ‘switched on.’ I nearly died before I was even aware that the
disease had reawakened.”
After the 1996 cancer diagnosis, Iles was nearly killed in a two-car
accident on Hwy. 61 in Natchez. That accident saw the writer ultimately
put into an induced coma to save his life, but at the cost of the
amputation of his crushed right leg below the knee,
among a litany of injuries, including broken ribs, a shattered left
foot, and a fractured pelvis.
Despite fighting cancer and battling back from his injuries, Iles rose
from his health challenges to begin to focus in earnest on shifting his
writing focus to complex issues of race, class and socioeconomic
barriers in Mississippi and the greater South.
Iles first found literary success in historical fiction that centered on
World War II and Nazi intrigues in his first novels, “Spandau Phoenix”
(1993) and “Black Cross (1995).”
But beginning with 1999’s “The Quiet Game,” Iles introduced the Penn
Cage series of novels that led to the “Natchez Burning” trilogy, which
included “Natchez Burning” in 2014, “The Bone Tree” in 2015, and
“Mississippi Blood” in 2017.
“Southern Man” was Iles’ final novel and is focused on the same
Mississippi–Louisiana terrains as the “Natchez Burning” trilogy, but
moves some 15 years into the future as the nation faces familiar
political, social, and moral divides that might well have been
torn from recent headlines.
Iles' literary masterpiece was the “Natchez Burning” trilogy, which was
based on a particularly heinous civil rights murder — in which Black
shopkeeper Frank Morris died as the result of an apparent nighttime
arson fire in his shoe repair shop in Ferriday,
Louisiana, in 1964, at the hands of a virulent group of Ku Klux
Klansmen who identified themselves as the “Silver Dollar Group”.
The trilogy of books examines the Morris murder and the ensuing cover-up
of the shocking activities of December 10, 1964, when a gang of
Klansmen allegedly showed up with guns and gasoline and burned Morris
alive in his shoe repair store. Morris, hospitalized
with severe burns, died four days later. Iles’ fiction drew heavily
from the investigations of crusading journalist Stanley Nelson of the
Concordia Sentinel newspaper in Ferriday. Ferriday is five miles across
the Mississippi River from Natchez.
Ferriday became the focus of the fascination of Southerners enamored
with the stories of cousins Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimmy Swaggart and Mickey
Gilley.
Born into poverty in 1935 in Ferriday, Jerry Lee’s parents sacrificed to
buy Lewis a piano — recognizing his preternatural talents. As a boy,
Lewis shared a love of music and talent on the piano with his double
first cousin, Jimmy Swaggart, also born in Ferriday
in 1935.
Swaggart’s mother and Lewis’s mother were sisters. They shared another
first cousin with musical talent, country music icon Mickey Gilley.
Gilley was born in Natchez in 1936.
Greg Iles was a talented writer and had succeeded as a novelist long
before settling into his searingly honest accounts of life in the deep
South in the 1950s and 1960s that will define his literary status – work
that was perhaps more important to Mississippians
than it was to the nation. He will be mourned and missed.
Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.
11 comments:
The Natchez Burning trilogy truly was his greatest work, although I REALLY loved The Devil's Punchbowl. That being said "Southern Man" was absolute garbage. The epitome of white liberal guilt disguised as "social commentary".
Isles was a great writer. I especially enjoyed his earlier writings. Before he became angry.
Not sure how Sid went from an article about Isles to a story about cousins Lewis, Swaggart, and Gilley.
I enjoyed Isles' books. He could really weave a detailed story with multiple plots. He was very talented. You did have to ignore his agenda he wanted to push down your throat (white man kills black man because white man is racist - black man kills white man because white man is racist - blacks looting stores is okay because slavery happened many years ago). The Natchez Burning Trilogy was certainly good reading.
What a loss.
As a non-native Mississippian, learning about Greg Iles years ago while in Natchez was quite the moment in my reading life.
I have heard that The Devil's Punchbowl is exceptional. I need to read that next.
Loved Greg Iles. Like many others, I got hooked on the Natchez Burning trilogy and then read all of his others. And @9:12, he portrayed those white men killing black men as racist because they were self-avowed racists. Many of the killings in the Penn Cage trilogy are based on real-life civil rights murders. The Silver Dollar group was real.
Southern Man was a step back. It did just seem bitter. No one likes to see someone trash-talk the people he grew up in such a public way as through a novel.
But the man was wasting away from cancer. He gets a pass from me (as if it matters) for a little bitterness.
Jsut as a clarification @10:04, Devils Punchbowl is a few books deep into the Penn Cage story line. Please read them in order for maximum enjoyment.
@8:56. I thought that was odd. He had probably been drinking and lost his train of thought.
Had not read him before so when I was in the Dogwood B&N, I bought Southern Man as I saw it out on display. Had heard about him for years.
He made his politics quite known as it was immediately clear where he was going. All conservatives or white folks who were not enlightened like him were klukkers. He had nothing but contempt for those on the opposite side, made it clear he thought of them as subhuman filth. Penned a great turn of phrase but his words dripped with the acid of his contempt.
By the way, the new B&N store is really nice.
I grew up in Natchez. Have roots there going back to the 1780s and have direct family links to the Ibrahima story. Google that if you don't know about it. Greg's "writing house" was in the same semi-rural neighborhood I lived in.
If the Natchez Burning trilogy interested you, read Devils Walking by Stanley Nelson; it's the actual story. Natchez is a complicated place historically. Greg understood that and tried to make it OK to talk about. Trust me, the things that happened in Natchez and Concordia Parish during the 1960s were not discussed openly for quite a long time.
I agree with @841 and others about Southern Man. I put it down and didn't finish reading. RINO and Boomer here.
The Trilogy is a page turner. I couldn’t put it down without waiting to get back to it.
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