COME AGAIN NO MORE
David Wesley Williams
JackLeg Press
196 pages
David Wesley Williams’s third novel opens with a motley crew of newspaper reporters having a wake of sorts at a Memphis bar, lamenting most of the newsroom having just gotten laid off, including the narrator, one Charley Hull. This sets the central tone of the book being equal parts elegy and love letter to their beloved profession and its devoted practitioners, with the unmistakable ring of someone who’s actually lived through it to write the tale.
It’s even part of the book’s dedication:
To my newspaper colleagues over three states and four decades. We thought we’d change the world. We thought it would last forever. What were we thinking?
It also works as commentary in the larger sense about the overall state of journalism and news these days, maybe even America itself. So we’re instantly bonding right there in that bar with Charley and them, commiserating the downfall of a once noble profession at the hands of rich, soulless barbarians.
It’s a little sparse on plot. A subplot later in the book gives it a little more conflict and dramatic heft, but most of the book is Charley struggling to cope with this full-blown existential crisis and concerns about his former co-workers and what comes next. It is testament to Williams’s writing that he deftly balances the depression and anger with a lot of charm and wry humor and keeps things moving along with great wit and insight. None of these characters feel sorry for themselves, just somewhat bemused and annoyed and trying to keep each other’s spirits up.
And the characters are indeed indelible and memorable. They are smart, talented, witty, and some rather eccentric. So even the wake quickly becomes a raucous, legendary party that will live on in their collective lore.
In particular, Wick, a local consultant, is not only Charley’s cynically funny best friend but also serves as a sort of sparring foil and grounding conscience, often reminding Charley that his lamented profession really wasn’t quite so lofty, and that he is more than capable of finding something even better. They can trade jokes and barbs, discuss sports and seminal ’80s music, argue and insult each other, and then still crack each other up over drinks. Wick eloquently calls him on his bullshit as only a close friend really can:
“Ah, you all and the truth. Like the truth was some unstable element or mummified pharaoh, and only you all were fit to handle it. The truth. Ha! You’d parade it out like it was a real thing. The most cynical lot of people on this great rock, you newspaper types—don’t believe in God, or that Babe Ruth called his shot, don’t believe in anything except the truth. But your truth, Charley, the newspaper truth, was never quite the true truth was it? How many times did I hear you say it—that you couldn’t write but a fraction of what you knew? That what you did write was half the truth, or less. Was a fraction. And a fraction of the truth is a fraction of a lie. That’s what you’d say.”
“I said a lot of things when I was drinking, Wick.”
“Yeah, and that’s when I found out what was really going on in this town—the story you knew but couldn’t write.” He raised his glass and tipped it. “Alcohol is better for getting the truth than ink, my friend.”
Their exchange continues a couple more minutes, ending with this:
“It was all very noble, I’ll give you that. You wrote stories and gave them headlines big as tombstones and brought down some crooks, it’s true. But are there less crooks in the world because of it?”
“Fewer, not less.”
“You’re still pedantic.”
“Fuck the Clippers,” I said, “and fuck you, too.”
We laughed. We leaned in and hugged. We settled back and let the wake swell all around us.
Williams’s rich, evocative writing elevates this from a mere dude-having-a-midlife-crisis story to something that nudges at life’s larger questions, all the while slipping in wisecracks, fleeting insights, entertaining asides, and literary whiffs of Joyce, Portis, Faulkner, and so many others, as well as Dylan, Alex Chilton, R.E.M., and more. The book’s title comes from a Stephen Foster parlor song from 1854, “Hard Times (Come Again No More).” Speaking of literary greats, in one spot he also riffs a hilarious little imagined spat between Fitzgerald and Faulkner.
We also follow Charley around to a few bars, record shops and bookstores, giving rise to more of these bits and mini-homages. In one such scene, Charley causes quite a scene in a bookstore when he gives two customers his unwelcome opinion of memoir as a genre. Lots of moments like that leave you snickering and dog-earing the page.
All in all, it’s an elegiac ode—and staunch love letter—to ink-stained wretches everywhere and scribes of every stripe, as well as avid readers and music buffs. It’s also a testimonial to the healing power of Southern soul and blues, fine literature, true friends, and good bourbon.
–L.J. Gouveia