Celebrate
The Sinner
by
Steven Merle Scott
Gambling with an
Unsympathetic Protagonist
Bikers
should recognize the feeling of being misunderstood. They know what it means to
get a bad rap based on first appearances. When a wind-blown, longhaired,
leather-clad biker rumbles down the road with his pipes throbbing, many onlookers
choose not to take a second look. Is that fair? Is it reality?
The
unsympathetic protagonist assumes a similar risk of being dismissed without being
given a second chance. Friends, parents, concerned pastors, agents and
publishers offer the same counsel: Don’t do it! Don’t spend years of your life
creating a character the reader will hate. You might get away with it in a
short story, but not in anything longer—and for God’s sake, don’t expect Hollywood
(or even Sundance) to bid for the film rights.
And
yet, authors still do the deed, and why is that? Is it because they’ve never
known anyone nice? Have they only
encountered abusive parents, cranky teachers and crooked politicians? Have they
grown up without a single positive role model during their pathetic lives? Dostoyevsky
is a perfect example of an author with a miserable outlook. When he wrote Crime
and Punishment, his
life had fallen into the sewer: he’d gambled his way his family’s fortune and
was overwhelmed with debt, faced with bankruptcy and forced to hock what he had
owned. When Dostoyevsky sat down to write the novel, he hated just about everyone.
Consequently, his protagonist, Raskolnokov, didn’t stand a chance. The poor boy
turned out to be a cold, arrogant misanthrope who saw himself as being superior
to everyone and justified in ridding the world of vermin. There is nothing
remotely likeable about Raskolnokov, and yet Crime and Punishment has endured as one of the
great novels in Western literature.
Given
a choice, most of us choose to cozy up to nice guys (or not-so-nice guys that
become nice by page 346). However, that character type does not represent the
totality of people out there. The author who gambles with the unsympathetic
protagonist has a right and a responsibility to honestly describe his seamy
character, but the author must find a way to do so without alienating his reader.
And by the end, there has to be a huge payback for asking the reader to spend
time with such a sordid individual. After all, without the payback, what’s in
it for the reader? Why should she pay good money to live with the creep without
a reward?
In
my novel, Celebrate the Sinner, Ted is not a likeable old man—I’ll leave it at
that. Although he is a main protagonist, the larger story is the novel’s attempt
to explain the man. He didn’t start out that way. When we first meet young
Teddy, he is the innocent boy seen on the cover. As we share the life of the boy,
if I’ve done my job, we should able to identify with him and sympathize with
why he turned out the way he did. The reader does not have to like the main character, but she
should care about what happens to him, at least on some level. Sympathizing with
the protagonist isn’t the same as liking, but it calls for understanding the
choices being made and the consequences that ensue. If the author is able to
give the reader that insight, the reward may be great enough to forgive him for
time spent cozying up to a creep.
About
The Author:
S.M.
Scott was raised and educated in Oregon, Alaska, France and Africa.
Born in the Willamette Valley, his father, grandfather and great
grandfather were Oregon lumbermen. When he was eight, his parents
packed up the family and their portable sawmill and moved to
Anchorage, Alaska where they began cutting homesteader timber in the
summers and teaching school each winter.
He later returned to
Oregon to pursue undergraduate studies at Linfield College. Along the
way, he has studied economics, biology, French and medicine. He
attended medical school in Colorado, undertook surgical training at
the University of Utah and completed his cancer training at the Mayo
Clinic in Minnesota. He and his family now live in Salt Lake City in
the warm company of Saints and sinners. He is a practicing
orthopedist and cancer surgeon.
Genre:
Historical Fiction
Publisher:
Blue Amber Press
Release
Date: January 30, 2013
Book Description:
“Unsettled
conditions anywhere give rise to fear,” Old Ted remarks. “Fear
finds scapegoats and easy solutions.”
In
1924, Marie walks through the Waverly Baby Home and chooses Teddy
because he looks like the child she deserves...but the boy has hidden
defects. Five years later, against a backdrop of financial ruin, KKK
resurgence, hangings and arson, Marie's husband, Merle, struggles to
succeed, Marie loses her way, and troubled seven year-old Teddy
begins to see what he and his family are missing.
CELEBRATE
THE SINNER unfolds with the onset of The Great Depression after
Teddy’s father buys a bankrupt sawmill and moves his small family
to an isolated Oregon mill town. Merle feeds his hunger with logs and
production, while his young wife feels like rough-cut lumber,
unworthy of paint and without a future. When a conspiracy threatens
the mill, Merle adds the powerful KKK to his business network.
Untended, Teddy strays as he searches for a connection outside
himself. He loves the machines that take the trees, but he also
worships his new, young teacher. He discovers the Bucket of Blood
Roadhouse and begins spending his Saturday nights peering through its
windows, gaining an unlikely mentor: Wattie Blue, an ancient, Black
musician from Missouri, by way of Chicago, plays the lip harp and
calls out square dances. When Wattie faces the Klan and his past,
Teddy and his family are confronted with equally difficult choices.
Framed by solitary,
narcissistic, ninety-year-old Ted, this story of desperate people
contains humor, grit, mystery and an ending that surprises, even
stuns. "Spines and bellies soften and round off with the
years," Old Ted muses. "Thoughts, too, lose their edge, but
secrets scream for revelation. Perfect people, after all, don't hold
a monopoly on the right to tell their stories.
Excerpt:
YOUNG
Teddy with his mother:
“Teddy,”
Mother called through her bedroom door. “I need you.”
I
left the front window and knocked on her door. She insisted I do
that. If she answered, I could come in. If she didn’t answer, it
meant I should go away.
“Come
in,” she said.
Mother
had just finished bathing. She was at her dressing table, sitting on
the chair with the soft embroidered seat, staring into the mirror,
studying her image. A white towel bound her hair. I stood in the
doorway and watched her pat and squeeze the towel. Her hands traced
its length from top to bottom, working the moisture into the fabric.
As she let the towel fall, with a single hand, she carried her thick
braid forward and laid it beside her breast.
“Sit
here, Teddy, and brush my hair.” She patted the seat cushion and
inched forward. “We can make room.”
I
climbed onto the chair behind her, my legs astraddle her naked hips,
my spine pressed against the hard wooden back. The wet length of hair
seemed to swell against the loose braid that held it. I released the
braid and watched the strands fall apart. As I picked up the
hairbrush and started with the damp ends, I knew that when I
finished, when her hair had dried, it would ruffle and fan out like
the tail feathers of a bright red bird.
I
was Mother’s spectator, her silent confidant, forever held by the
promise of more. Small secret jars, some pink and lavender, some with
gold lids, others with glass stoppers, she arranged across her
dressing table like figurines. She touched a shade of color with her
fingertip and carried it to her cheek with the love of an artist
completing a masterpiece. She reached for a second color, sampled it,
but chose another. Rarely did she move her eyes from the glass in
front. And rarely did I.
Mother’s
eyebrows were slender because she plucked them, but her lips were
full. When she looked down, lids masked her eyes like shades lowered,
but the aching green behind them was always present. She wore her
makeup bright red across the lips for the world to see, but more
subtly along her cheeks and at the angle of her jaw. In her jewelry
box, she kept gold hoops and bobs to wear when she and Father went
out. During the afternoons at her dressing table, I chose the
earrings she wore.
“You
are the best little man,” she told me as I worked the brush through
her hair.
“I
know I am.”
I
carried the brush higher and used it to massage her scalp the way she
had taught me. She tilted her head to the left and then to the right
to change the angle of view, the cast of light, and I followed her
movements, careful not to pull. The thin muscles at the front of her
neck tightened and released and slid beneath her pale skin like silk
ropes under tension.
Held
between the chair back and her spine, I barely moved, the warmth of
her bath rising against me, damp like the rope of hair between us.
“I
am so lucky to have you,” she said.
I
searched her mirror for an echoed smile, a flickered glance, the
small treasures she’d hide for me to find, me alone.
Mother
stood and moved away, but moisture from her thighs remained on the
brocade cushion, altering the color of its fabric from blue to
purple, which, after years, became an imprint that stayed.
“Go
play, now.”
I
left with only the scent of her bath.
