Journal Entry for Ideas Journal
The first and third are lifted, with a little editing, from Chesnutt’s journal – page 180 or so, in which he’s jotting down interesting phrases, stories, ideas, dialogue that inspires him. This is in some ways a response to the A. Pitwurst’s move: I recognized the dream foreboding an important/disruptive letter from House of the Cedars, which in turn echoed the note made in Chesnutt’s journals (in the original, it’s a telegram).
I also thought about the ways in which dreams are a kind of “conjuring” – and what Chesnutt has “conjured” for Pitwurst: anxieties about transformation, demarcation, the color line. Hence the germ of the story of the “Gray Wolfs Ha’nt.” Also playing with ideas of Chesnutt, the conjurer, and Uncle Julius all being involved is the same act of creation, transmutation, a kind of bringing-forth.
The last one I included just because it was so wonderful and evocative (the original is on 181). Ran with this idea, thinking about the role of roots/growth in “goophering” (and also the root given to Douglass!) and how this connects the site of the body to the site of the land – making the body a place that things can be “put into,” and how that can generative, and again, creative. This connects to a bunch of stuff for me: I’m thinking about bi-racial identities (one-drop rule as something that “enters”), the “body” of the canon and the “wedge” into the publishing world that Chesnutt talks about and we discussed on Thursday.
Also, quickly: I realized that I hadn’t given you a citation, in my last rationale, a citation for the letter I used as a kind of template. It’s on page 39 in the book of his letters (can’t remember the proper title at the moment).