words
The English poet Philip Larkin once remarked, “Form is nothing. Content is everything.” Sounds straightforward enough—except that Larkin was famous for writing poems that are both formally pleasing as well as chock full of substance. The cheeky bastard was just trying to be clever.
Most readers would stand by the notion that good writing involves a dynamic partnership between the content and the way it’s presented. Nevertheless, most readers would also concede that books do come along that demand attention despite their surface flaws.
 Law and order in Charlottesville: William A. James, Sr. uses fiction to cut straight to the core of racial tension in his latest novel, In The Streets of Vinegar Hill. |
Such a book is Charlottesville resident William A. James, Sr.’s novel In the Streets of Vinegar Hill. Through the eyes of Gabe Owens, a Fluvanna County teenager who moves to Charlottesville, it tells the story of the buildup to the demolition of the Vinegar Hill neighborhood in 1963, precipitated, according to James, by the murder of a UVA student, which was essentially blamed on all the blacks living on “Hill.” The demolition, planned by City Council, was less about the murder and more about a thinly disguised excuse to get rid of a “slum” that was so close to the Downtown area.
Who ever talks about this event anymore? No one but James, it seems, and casting the past as fiction is the best way to light a fire in our city’s consciousness.
James is the author of several nonfiction books and one other novel (a prequel of sorts, the introduction rather awkwardly informs us) to Streets, and there’s a forcefulness to his writing that can be compelling—he knows what he wants to say and cuts through all the fog and just says it. But discerning readers may see his approach as coming at the expense of technique. A lack of fine detail leads to sentimentality; scenes come and go quickly with little scene painting; the sentences at times seem hurried, built on clichés rather than painstakingly chosen images or ideas.
Still, James has put a lot of intelligent work into creating a vast panoramic of a bygone era in 150 fast-moving pages. More importantly, in terms of illuminating this city’s identity, the content he’s nurtured is not just something—it’s everything.