Food and Feast in Modern Outlaw Tales 9780429061301, 9780367183899

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Food and Feast in Modern Outlaw Tales

This collection of scholarly essays presents new work from an emerging line of inquiry: modern outlaw narratives and the textual and cultural relevance of food and feasting. Food, its preparation and its consumption, is presented in outlaw narratives as central points of human interaction, community, conflict, and fellowship. Feast scenes perform a wide variety of functions, serving as cultural repositories of manners and behaviors, catalysts for adventure, or moments of regrouping and redirecting narratives. The book argues that modern outlaw narratives illuminate a potent cross-cultural need for freedom, solidarity, and justice and it examines ways in which food and feasting are often used to legitimate difference, create discord, and manipulate power dynamics. Alexander L. Kaufman is the Reed D. Voran Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Professor of English at Ball State University, where he teaches in the Honors College. Penny Vlagopoulos is Assistant Professor of English at St. Lawrence University.

Outlaws in Literature, History, and Culture Edited by Lesley A. Coote (University of Hull) and Alexander L. Kaufman (Ball State University)

Outlaws in Literature, History, and Culture examines the nature, function, and context of the outlaw and the outlawed—­people, spaces, practices—­in the pre-­modern world, and in its modern representations. By its nature, outlawry reflects not only the outlawed, but the forces of law which seek to define and to contain it. Throughout the centuries, a wide and ever changing—­and yet ever familiar—­variety of outlaw characters and narratives has captured the imagination of audiences both particular and general, local and global. This series seeks to reflect the transcultural, transgendered, and interdisciplinary manifestations, and the different literary, political, socio-­ historical, and media contexts in which the outlaw/­ed may be encountered from the medieval period to the modern. Series Advisory Board: Sayre N. Greenfield (University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg) Kevin J. Harty (La Salle University) Valerie B. Johnson (University of Montevallo) Stephen Knight (University of Melbourne) John Marshall (University of Bristol) Joseph F. Nagy (University of California, Los Angeles) Thomas H. Ohlgren (Emeritus, Purdue University) W. Mark Ormrod (University of York) Helen Phillips (Cardiff University) Graham Seal (Curtin University) Linda Troost (Washington and Jefferson College) Charles van Onselen (University of Pretoria) Robin Hood and the Outlaw/­ed Literary Canon Edited by Lesley Coote and Alexander L. Kaufman Food and Feast in Modern Outlaw Tales Edited by Alexander L. Kaufman and Penny Vlagopoulos For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/­ Outlaws-­in-­Literature-­History-­and-­Culture/­book-­series/­OUTLAWS

Food and Feast in Modern Outlaw Tales Edited by Alexander L. Kaufman and Penny Vlagopoulos

First published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Alexander L. Kaufman and Penny Vlagopoulos to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Kaufman, Alexander L., editor of compilation. | Vlagopoulos, Penny, editor of compilation. Title: Food and feast in modern outlaw tales / edited by Alexander L. Kaufman and Penny Vlagopoulos. Description: New York : Routledge, 2019. | Series: Outlaws in literature, history, and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018057727 (print) | LCCN 2019004079 (ebook) | ISBN 9780429061301 () | ISBN 9780367183899 | ISBN 9780429061301 (ebk.) Subjects: LCSH: Outlaws—History. | Food—History. | Outlaws in literature. | Food in literature. | Outlaws in popular culture. | Food in popular culture. | Food—Social aspects—History. Classification: LCC HV6441 (ebook) | LCC HV6441 .F77 2019 (print) | DDC 364.101/4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018057727 ISBN: 978-­0-­367-­18389-­9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-­0-­429-­06130-­1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Acknowledgmentsvii Introduction

1

ALEXANDER L. KAUFMAN AND PENNY VLAGOPOULOS

1 ‘Bred Up a Butcher’: The Meat Trade and Its Connection with Criminality in Eighteenth-­Century England

12

STEPHEN BASDEO

2 The Fare of ‘Sanguinary Devils’: Feast and Storytelling in The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta

28

JASON HOGUE

3 ‘I’d Dream of Feasts’: Reading Southworth’s The Hidden Hand as a Dual Outlaw Narrative

56

ANN BEEBE

4 Breaking Bad While Baking Bread: The Cereal Politics of Belle Starr’s Outlaw Reputation

81

JENNA HUNNEF

5 The Twentieth-­Century American Outlaw Feast: Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-­Aid Acid Test

101

W. B. GERARD

6 Food Fight!: Excess and Deficiency in National Lampoon’s Animal House ALEXANDER L. KAUFMAN

123

vi  Contents 7 Post-­Apocalyptic Outlaws: Weaponizing Food and Community in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games

148

JEFF BIRKENSTEIN

8 Succulent Texts: Desire, Outlaws, and Consumption in Popular Romance

167

KRISTIN NOONE

List of Contributors188 Index191

Acknowledgments

A collection such as this would not be possible without its contributors, and the editors would very much like to thank them for being a part of this volume, crafting their illuminating essays, and maintaining patience while the volume took its shape. The editors would also like to thank the anonymous external readers for their guidance and suggestions; their comments helped to mold and refine this collection for the better. Alexander L. Kaufman would like to express his gratitude for the work of the faculty and staff at Ball State University’s Bracken Library, especially the Interlibrary Loan Department. Alex would also like to thank Dr. John Emert, Dean of the Honors College at Ball State University, for his endorsement of research and scholarship, which was beneficial towards the completion of this volume. Mitchell Kissick at Ball State University was kind enough to help read the page proofs. Lastly, Alex would like to thank his family, especially his wife Mandy, who has been the architect of many feasts, and whose love and support over the years has been unwavering. Penny Vlagopoulos would like to thank St. Lawrence University for its generous sabbatical leave policy, without which the necessary time to work on this volume would have been elusive. She would also like to thank her friend and mentor of many years, Ann Douglas, whose rebel spirit guided her own literary quests. Finally, Penny would like to thank her son, Orion, a most authentic and inspired outlaw, and her parents, whose feasts are always adorned with endless reserves of support.

Introduction Alexander L. Kaufman and Penny Vlagopoulos

This collection of scholarly essays presents new work in an emerging line of inquiry: modern outlaw narratives and the textual and cultural relevance of food and feasting. Food, its preparation, and its consumption are presented in outlaw narratives as central points of human interaction, community, conflict, and fellowship, providing readers with opportunities to examine and analyze agricultural practices as well as trade, economics, and the social standing of its producers and consumers. Feast scenes perform a wide variety of functions, serving as cultural repositories of manners and behaviors, catalysts for adventure, or moments of regrouping and redirecting the narrative, for instance. This volume focuses on the presence and function of food and feast in modern outlaw narratives with an eye to considering how instances of food preparation and eating in these tales can be said to display, develop, or subvert the conventional ideas of community and fellowship. This volume builds upon a growing body of scholarship that points to the centrality of food in the modern world. Some twenty-­five years after Susan Leonardi’s landmark 1989 PMLA article, ‘Recipes for Reading: Summer Pasta, Lobster à la Riseholme, and Key Lime Pie,’1 scholars such as Allison Carruth, Denise Gigante, Anita Mannur, Kyla Wazana Tompkins, Psyche Williams-­Forson, and Doris Witt, to name a few, are continuing to redefine the field of food studies, turning, in particular, to marginalized populations and the global implications of food and foodways. Outlaw studies, which emerged as a sub-­field within medieval studies, has similarly expanded in recent years, with groundbreaking work by scholars such as Thomas Ohlgren, Stephen Knight, and Helen Phillips, yet this volume purposefully reaches beyond the Middle Ages to demonstrate that outlawry is an enduring phenomenon, one that is present in a variety of literatures, languages, and cultures in the post-­ medieval era. As medieval scholars have turned increasingly to scrutiny of food practices—­the Twenty-­Third International Medieval Conference at the University of Leeds had for its 2016 theme ‘Food, Feast, and Famine,’ for instance—­uses of food and feasting in the realms of outlawry offer rich terrain for new analysis, and the essays that constitute this

2  Alexander L. Kaufman and Penny Vlagopoulos collection mark a significant juncture in both arenas. This is the first collection to focus on the social, political, and cultural implications of food and feasting, as well as on how the gustatory informs textual elements, in modern outlaw narratives. Significantly, the majority of the essays also break with the pre-­existing notion that outlaws are European. It seems that now is the opportune time for a re-­examination of the transgressive world of outlaws through a broader, more far-­reaching lens, one that brings new life to the oft-­quoted nineteenth-­century dictum by French gastronome Jean-­Anthelme Brillat-­Savarin: ‘Tell me what you eat and I shall tell you what you are.’2

The Modern Matter of the Greenwood The outlaw narrative has its origins in the twelfth century during the European Middle Ages. These verse and prose stories often told of the deeds of real-­life individuals (such as Hereward ‘The Wake,’ William Wallace, and Owain Glyndwr) as well as the exploits of legendary figures (Robin Hood, Gamelyn, and Adam Bell, for example). Historian Maurice Keen, in his landmark volume Outlaws of Medieval Legend, realized that these medieval outlaw tales shared a number of unique narratival elements, and so he created a fourth ‘matter’ of medieval literature, which he called the Matter of the Greenwood.3 These greenwood narratives featured a central protagonist, who at times exhibited qualities of an epic hero. Indeed, these tales themselves remain difficult to place within a single, generic category, as the corpus of medieval outlaw tales contains elements of heroic epics, family romance, chivalric romance, fabliaux, and exempla. Nevertheless, despite these variations in genre, the outlaws who inhabited these tales often shared a similar disposition: they were good persons, sometimes social avengers, who were summarily declared an outlaw by noble decree or formal legal procedure; they were exiled or retreated to a forest or fen, a zone in which they recruited followers and planned their attacks against their enemies; and they were often pardoned or inlawed by the king, with whom the outlaw held no real grievance, for his chief enemies were often corrupt, lower-­level bureaucrats, religious officials, and lesser nobility. Similarly, outlaws of our modern age are oftentimes deemed as a danger to the dominant, ruling order and status quo. Class, gender, race, sexuality, and ethnicity have all become greater markers of Otherness in more recent tales. Narratives tell of the exploits of individuals who are living outside of the law or, more frequently in modern outlaw tales, outside of the normative construction of the society in which they live. Modern outlaws, thus, are often declared outlaws less so by legal means and more so by their place (or lack thereof) within the boundaries of acceptable behavior and what constitutes an acceptable social self. These ‘newer’ outlaws, however, are still very much indebted to their narratives

Introduction 3 of old, for, as with their pre-­modern counterparts, these tales involve a number of shared greenwood motifs and tropes: the outlaw hero meets his match, new recruits who are sympathetic to the cause (or are outlaws themselves) are brought into the gang, the forest is not a zone of danger and evil but a safe haven for the outlaws, the chief enemy of the outlaws is often lured into the greenwood and captured, and disguises and other elements of subterfuge are employed to trick and better the enemy, to name but a few. One of the more common greenwood themes of the medieval tradition is the importance of food and feasting. Robin Hood and his merry men poach deer and other highly prized game, and they often dine on high-­end fare in a ceremonial, quasi-Second Estate atmosphere. Old Norse-­Old Icelandic outlaw sagas (and family sagas, too) feature extensive drinking contests that serve to unite familial and kin bonds while identifying those individuals who are not worth their mettle. As Kaori O’Connor correctly observes, feasting, then and now, involves a significant amount of reciprocity, one that is bound within Marcel Mauss’ concept of the ‘gift’ as being a social contract that has three obligations: to give, receive, and pay.4 These feastial moments within cultures are thus often used to strengthen social bonds within a family or kin system. However, feasts can also lead to disagreement among parties, especially if social rules and obligations are not followed or are broken. Just as food in outlaw narratives can serve as an ingredient for disruption and an example of difference, feast scenes can often work in the same manner. Outlaws—­then and now—­are often marked by what and how they consume; thus, textual examples of food and feasting remain an important method of uncovering characteristics of outlaw action. Aesthetically, authors of medieval and modern outlaw tales often use scenes involving food and feasting as ways in which to organize and structure their tales, with gastronomic events often serving as critical plot point moments.

Theorizing Food The study of food and all of its matricies continues to be an interdisciplinary endeavor. Sociologists, anthropologists, archeologists, historians, scientists, semiotitians, and literary scholars have all investigated the importance of food on both micro and macro levels: studying isolated case studies of specific moments in time, or following changes and trends over longer historical periods and through different cultures. Collectively, these critics have solidified food studies as both an interdisciplinary field of study and an organizing principle, led by sociologists, who have been pioneers in quantitatively and qualitatively studying food and foodways, initiating a number of important—­and often opposing—­ theoretical frameworks for discussing the systems of food.

4  Alexander L. Kaufman and Penny Vlagopoulos In 1982, Jack Goody provided a classification scheme that outlined the three main ways to theorize food: formalist, structural, and cultural.5 Later, Mennell, Murcott, and Van Otterloo initiated a similar schema that included functionalism, structuralism, and developmentalism, with scholars mostly agreeing that the cultural category is not necessary as all studies of food and eating are inherently cultural in nature.6 Alan Beardsworth and Teresa Keil, in Sociology on the Menu, provide a useful and critical overview of these main approaches in regards to theorizing the food system.7 Briefly, the functionalist approach is ‘based upon an analogy between society and an organic system, [where a f]unctionalist analysis consists essentially of examining particular institutions with a view of describing their functional significance.’8 In contract to the functionalist approach, the structuralist method ‘claims to look below these “surface” linkages into the “deep structures” which are alleged to underpin them.’9 Thus, structuralist theorists such as Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes seek to ‘analyse the very structure of human thought, even of the mind itself . . . the structuralist gaze [in relation to food and eating] is directed toward the rules and conventions that govern the ways in which food items are classified, prepared and combined with each other.’10 Stephen Mennell is perhaps the scholar most commonly associated with the developmental approach; his own contributions, moreover, are greatly informed by Norbert Elias’ magisterial two volume study The Civilizing Process.11 Developmentalists argue that in order to understand current food and eating constructs, we ‘must take into account the ways in which these are related to past forms. Thus, social change becomes a primary focus, in terms of its directions, its processes, and its origins.’12 Mennell, in his own study of cooking and eating in England and France from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, believes that ‘it is necessary to look carefully at the jumbled historical record to see if it is possible to discern not constraints beneath the flux, but an order of a different kind, a sequential order constituting structured processes of change.’13 The changing nature of outlaw bodies, the rhetoric of outlawry, and the ways in which the outlaw/­outsider is contextualized and identified in modern contexts of food and feasting can be a process of development, one that is not necessarily positive or negative, but merely indicative of change. A critical juncture, and one developmental change that separates the medieval from the modern—­and thus modern concerns with food and feasting from those of the Middle Ages—­is the birth of the capitalist economy and with it the rise of the bourgeoisie class. The modern, Western, capitalist (and late-­capitalist) systems may have shed their former feudal systems, but nevertheless boundaries remain, and how different classes and groups see and understand food has been explored by a number of scholars. Pierre Bourdieu, for example, contrasts the ‘[p]lain speaking, plain eating’ of the working-­class meal, one that is ‘free-­and-­easy’ with the formal nature of the bourgeois meal, one ‘which implies expectations, pauses, restraints.’14 For Bourdieu, we are, with

Introduction 5 respect to food and eating, within a world of binaries—­between form and substance—­and these antagonistic relationships therefore play out on a moral level where there is no neutral viewpoint; what for some is shameless and slovenly, for others is straightforward, unpretentious; familiarity is for some the most absolute form of recognition, the abdication of all distance, a trusting openness, a relation of equal to equal; for others, who shun familiarity, it is an unseemly liberty.15 At the heart of Bourdieu’s assessment, of course, rests the importance of relativity in regards to social class. Those who are within the working class may not see themselves as such. The outlaw, the outsider, or the exile is often placed within that category by outside means: she is more often deemed an outsider by someone else’s codes, views, or laws. E. Melanie DuPuis discusses this difference as a new understanding of solidarity, freedom, and belonging, one that queries the traditional boundaries between ‘nature and culture, civilization and barbarism, purity and danger, cleanliness and contagion.’16 DuPuis continues thus: This new way of looking at freedom abandons the civic republican notion of citizenship, of the autonomous, intact, virtuous, immune, liberal Enlightenment individual in personal control. Seeing the individual as embedded in a ‘mangle of resistance and accommodation,’ in Andrew Pickering’s words, describes our current transitions and transformations better than viewing the world as divided into categories of purity and danger and erecting a protective barrier between the two.17 The modern outlaw, perhaps more so than her medieval precursor, is therefore a liminal figure. This outlaw is one who glides, passes and infiltrates into and out of spaces of freedom and incarceration, safety and danger, with a notable degree of subtlety and nuance.

Scope of This Volume Outlaws, food, diets, food production, and societal manners are all in flux. And while food patterns and attitudes shift over time, the symbolic and ritualistic nature of food cannot be underestimated. As Beardsworth and Keil state, [W]hen we eat, we are not merely consuming nutrients, we are also consuming gustatory (i.e., taste-­related) experiences and, in a very real sense, we are also ‘consuming’ meanings and symbols. Every aliment in any given human diet carries a symbolic change along with its bundle of nutrients.18

6  Alexander L. Kaufman and Penny Vlagopoulos Imaginative texts have the unique ability to fold such abstract systems of meaning into interpersonal registers. Focusing on the ways in which literary texts reflect and shape their various cultural milieus, the contributors in this volume illuminate the significance of food and feasting in a wide range of modern outlaw narratives. The lead essay in this collection is Stephen Basdeo’s ‘ “Bred Up a Butcher”: The Meat Trade and its Connection with Criminality in Eighteenth-­Century England,’ which examines the presence of food in popular eighteenth-­century English criminal biographies, such as Alexander Smith’s A History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Noted Highwaymen (1714), Charles Johnson’s Lives and Exploits of the Most Noted Highwaymen (1734) and his Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals (1735), and The Newgate Calendar (published in several editions between 1775 and 1825). The chapter shows how criminals who had at some point in their lives been involved in the preparation of food were assumed to be inherently wicked. Notorious highwaymen, such as James Hind (1616–1652) and Dick Turpin (1705–1739), as well as many minor criminals, all had been apprenticed to the Butchers’ trade in their youths. Their willingness to cut animal flesh contributed to their ‘bloody and barbarous disposition.’ Moreover, Basdeo highlights the dichotomy that exists between the status of food in ‘official’ publications, such as The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, and criminal biographies. Official publications reveal that food was an all too scarce necessity for many of the offenders who found themselves in the dock accused of theft, and that lack of food induced many people to commit theft. Seeking to overemphasize the offender’s depravity, these biographies also presented the need for food as a harbinger of criminal behavior. Thus, while food and feasting serve as symbols of fellowship and community in early outlaw texts such as A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode (c. 1495), in the eighteenth century, food—­obtaining it and preparing it—­was seen as a marker of inherent criminality. Jason Hogue’s essay, ‘The Fare of “Sanguinary Devils”: Feast and Storytelling in The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta,’ brings us to North America. Enshrined in Mexican folk song and in California lore, the story of the ruthless, Anglo-­punishing Joaquín Murieta became popular in 1854 when John Rollin Ridge (known among his Cherokee kin as Yellow Bird) published his highly fictionalized account of the outlaw, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta. Ridge’s Murieta parallels traditional outlaw heroes such as Robin Hood, but Ridge paints Murieta as particularly bloodthirsty, motivated only by revenge. Despite this characterization, Murieta maintains folk hero status for many. Ridge’s novel portrays a culture of pioneer feasting that not only complicates John Lowe’s claim that Murieta speaks for the oppressed but also questions the sustainability of envisioning American opportunity as feast-­like. The feast in Ridge’s novel structures the rest of the work: the ‘bloody narrations’ of ‘daring

Introduction 7 deeds’ that circulate among the men as they eat epitomize the novel’s bid to romanticize acts of masculine bravery in frontier culture. In this space where the distinction between outlaw and frontiersman is blurred, the novel critiques the ravenous hunger of American opportunism so embodied in the Gold Rush. Ann Beebe’s ‘ “I’d Dream of Feasts”: Reading Southworth’s The Hidden Hand as a Dual Outlaw Narrative’ is a study of food culture in The Hidden Hand or, Capitola the Madcap (1859) by E. D. E. N. Southworth, which is rightfully acknowledged to be one of the author’s best works, and one of the most provocative novels of the nineteenth century. When recounting her adventures in New York City as a cross-­dressed newspaper boy to her new guardian, Capitola defends her transgressive behavior by emphasizing her hunger and desperation: ‘I’d dream of feasts and the richest sort of food, and of eating such quantities!’19 Usually categorized as a sensational novel within the larger sentimental tradition of mid-­century novels, The Hidden Hand might be more productively read as a dual outlaw narrative. The work features one self-­identified outlaw, Black Donald, who plots his adventures and crimes around a heavily laden kitchen table surrounded by his devoted band of outlaws. The feasts he provides his followers ensure their continued loyalty, as well as confirm his identity. Black Donald, alone among all the characters, recognizes the other outlaw in the novel, Capitola, who is not the demure and pious heroine of most sentimental novels. Capitola has known hunger; she has had to shift her very identity from a genteel young girl to an enterprising newspaper boy surrounded by a gang of boys in order to survive in the city. Southworth’s novel is an exploration of food and feasting in relation to power dynamics in nineteenth-­century literature and culture. Southworth removes the need to force this outlaw character into the mold of the typical nineteenth-­century sentimental heroine and allows readers to explore the ways in which her character subverts gender identity, as well as definitions of a healthy community. Jenna Hunnef continues the discussion on female outlaw narratives with her contribution ‘Breaking Bad While Baking Bread: The Cereal Politics of Belle Starr’s Outlaw Reputation.’ American outlaw narratives have often been strategically mobilized as a means of laying claim to Indigenous lands through the invocation of nationalist rhetoric and the administration of violence. Drawing upon several apocryphal accounts of the life of Belle Starr (1848–1889), the ‘bandit queen’ of the Indian Territory, Hunnef’s essay argues that outlaw narratives are as capable of challenging the nation’s claims to territorial or imaginative title as they are of asserting them. To elucidate this thesis, she examines three instances in which Starr’s outlaw mythos is expressed through the preparation, consumption, and ritualistic function of bread and grains. Inasmuch as these specific representations of food have contributed to the aggrandizement of Starr’s otherwise dubious reputation as an outlaw, the connotative

8  Alexander L. Kaufman and Penny Vlagopoulos associations between bread, home, and community—­coupled with the novelty of a female outlaw—­nonetheless subvert conventional notions of femininity and domesticity. Bread, in these instances, is a metonymy of alternative femininity and, indeed, alternative nationhood. As an intermarried citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Starr, in ‘communion’ with her neighbors through the breaking of bread, situates the outlaw’s popular energy within the context of Cherokee community, thus challenging the privileged position of the American outlaw in the US national imagination. With his essay ‘The Twentieth-­Century American Outlaw Feast: Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-­Aid Acid Test,’ W. B. Gerard brings a new course to the table, the feastial outlaw counter-­culture of post-­World War II America. Ken Kesey, the author of the novels One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) and Sometimes A Great Notion (1964), used his early experimentation with psychedelic drugs to further foster an already rebellious spirit, and these drugs became integral to his outlaw group, the Merry Pranksters, as well as to his followers nationally. On a local level, LSD in particular assumed a central role within group gatherings, most prominently in a series of events in 1965–1966 called the Acid Tests. Central to these events, which were rebellious acts defiant of social and political norms, was the ingestion of LSD, a virtual shared meal which helped broadly to define outlaw status, a rebellion further delineated through unique visual and audio expression. Gerard’s essay uses Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-­Aid Acid Test (1968) to argue that Kesey and the Pranksters’ counterpart of actual feasting, the communal ingestion of LSD at the Acid Tests, served as the climatic expression of their outlaw status, celebrating their distance from society and offering an evangelical experience that promised to enlarge their movement. Decades after the last cup of electric Kool-­Aid was finished, the Grateful Dead would perpetuate the experience of the Acid Tests, the continued popularity of their concerts serving as an argument for the lasting reverberations of this particular type of outlaw ‘feast.’ Modern American outlaws, and men behaving poorly, is the focus of Alexander L. Kaufman’s piece, ‘Food Fight! Excess and Deficiency in National Lampoon’s Animal House.’ The commercial 1978 blockbuster film at first glance may appear to hold very little in common with outlaws and outlawry, medieval or modern. The movie was based loosely on Chris Miller’s own experience as a college student at Dartmouth College in 1960 and as a member of the fraternity at the heart of the film, Delta Tau Chai. Miller, along with fellow National Lampoon writers Harold Ramis and Douglas Kenney, crafted the screenplay, and the subsequent film is often cited as one of the funniest films ever made. Animal House has a relatively simple plot: it is 1962, and the underdog members of Delta Tau Chai fraternity at Faber College are at the receiving end of attacks from the rival fraternity, Omega

Introduction 9 Theta Pi, who have the support of the Dean, the head of the ROTC on campus, and the mayor of the city; they want to expel the Deltas from college. The Deltas fight back and win the day. Upon closer examination, not only are Animal House and its characters closely tied to the genre of the outlaw, but the film also embraces one of the significant, unifying tropes of the Matter of the Greenwood: food and feast. The film, with its sophomoric humor, uses food and feast to help define the outlaws and to differentiate them from their adversaries. In doing so, it underscores the divisiveness that exists between the outlaws and their overlords: the former, the Deltas, are gluttonous, jovial, and amorous good outlaws who are able to locate the middle way and reintegrate into society; while the latter, the Omegas, are teetotalers, who are vindictive, sexually deficient, and incapable of finding the golden mean. The humorous exploits of the Animal House outlaws give way to more desperate times in Jeff Birkenstein’s chapter, ‘Post-­Apocalyptic Outlaws: Weaponizing Food and Community in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.’ Food and foodways have long been present in American fiction, of course, but inadequate critical attention has been paid to food used as a substantial plot or other literary device, where it assumes a crucial narrative role. Food in these two books is often the source of conflict, and yet critics have subordinated it to other issues, thus squandering opportunities to better understand its influence on each of these works as integral to their literary expression. McCarthy’s novel is centrally concerned with the fact that a society, to be successful, must at minimum produce and distribute enough food. If, as Barthes argues, food is ‘perhaps the functional unit of a system of communication,’ then McCarthy’s book represents the inherent struggles present when the system has disappeared.20 Exploring consumption and community on multiple levels, Birkenstein examines why, for instance, post-­apocalyptic cannibals cannot achieve positive community and why the endless battle between father and son—­whether to share or to not share food, and with whom—­undergirds any chance they might have of rebuilding society. Food may seem an obvious realm of exploration in a book with the title of The Hunger Games, but extant criticism has mostly focused not on food per se, but on the gender and power relations of the violent Games themselves. And yet weaponized hunger in this world is ubiquitous, pitting commoner against commoner. The search for adequate food for the outlawed majority is the omnipresent struggle. Ironically, decadent food used significantly by the government will not ensure its survival, as it believes. While both The Road and The Hunger Games end with some sense of hope, salvation is distant for these outlaws, and dependent on radically altering the food calculus. In ‘Succulent Texts: Desire, Outlaws, and Consumption in Popular Romance,’ Kristin Noone closes this volume with a study of twenty-­ first century popular romance novels that feature outlaws, including

10  Alexander L. Kaufman and Penny Vlagopoulos Suzanne Enoch’s 2008 Regency romance novel Before the Scandal, whose heroine, Alyse, steals and hides food in order to avoid starvation, while the highwayman who sweeps her off her feet does so in part with promises of material comforts, including seductive meals and strawberries. In this and other romance novels, Noone examines the ways in which the presence and absence of food becomes a prime concern for romance protagonists within these outlaw narratives. Linking embodiment, desire, and queerness to practices of consumption, she concludes that feasts and feasting foreground the outlaw’s ability to provide sustenance when society has failed to do so. These essays showcase the growing interest in outlaw studies and outlaw literature, emphasizing that while the outlaw narrative has its origins in the Middle Ages, the tales about (and the plight of) outlaws continue into the twenty-­first century. Defining and contesting outlawry in the context of food consumption and feasting, these modern outlaw narratives illuminate shared histories and affiliations, and shed new light on ways in which outlaws legitimate difference, create discord, and manipulate power dynamics.

Notes 1 Leonardi, ‘Recipes for Reading,’ 340–47. 2 Brillat-­Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, 15. 3 Keen, Outlaws of Medieval Legend, 1–8. The original main matters of medieval literature include the Matters of Britain (and the tales of the Arthurian tradition), France/­Charlemagne, and Rome/­Troy. 4 O’Connor, Never-­Ending Feast, 19. 5 Goody, Cooking, Cuisine and Class. 6 Mennell, Murcott, and van Otterloo, Sociology of Food. 7 Beardsworth and Keil, Sociology on the Menu, 56–69. 8 Ibid., 57–8. 9 Ibid., 60. 10 Ibid., 61. 11 Elias, The Civilizing Process, Volume 1: The History of Manners, and Volume II: State Formation and Civilization. 12 Beardsworth and Keil, Sociology on the Menu, 65. 13 Mennell, All Manners of Food, 15; emphasis in original. 14 Bourdieu, Distinction, 194, 196. 15 Ibid., 199. 16 DuPuis, Dangerous Digestion, 5. 17 Ibid. See also Pickering, ‘The Mangle of Practice,’ 567. 18 Beardsworth and Keil, Sociology on the Menu, 51; emphasis in original. 19 Southworth, The Hidden Hand, 34. 20 Barthes, ‘Toward a Psychology,’ 29.

Bibliography Barthes, Roland. ‘Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption.’ In Food & Culture: A Reader, 2nd ed., edited by Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, 28–35. New York: Routledge, 2008.

Introduction 11 Beardsworth, Alan, and Teresa Keil. Sociology on the Menu: An Invitation to the Study of Food and Society. New York and London: Routledge, 1997. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984. Brillat-­Savarin, Jean-­Anthelme. The Physiology of Taste: Or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy. Translated by M. F. K. Fisher. New York: Vintage Classics, 2011. Carruth, Allison. Global Appetites: American Power and the Literature of Food. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013. DuPuis, E. Melanie. Dangerous Digestion: The Politics of American Dietary Advice. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015. Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process, Volume I: The History of Manners. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. –––. The Civilizing Precess, Volume II: Power and Civility. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982. Goody, Jack. Cooking, Cuisine and Class. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Keen, Maurice. The Outlaws of Medieval Legend. Rev. ed. London: Routledge, 2000. Leonardi, Susan. ‘Recipes for Reading: Summer Pasta, Lobster à la Riseholme, and Key Lime Pie.’ PMLA 104, no. 3 (1989): 340–47. Mennell, Stephen. All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present. 2nd ed. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996. Mennell, Stephen, Anne Murcott, and Anneke H. van Otterloo. The Sociology of Food: Eating, Diet, and Culture. Special issue, Current Sociology 40, no. 2 (1992). O’Connor, Kaori. The Never-­Ending Feast: The Anthropology and Archaeology of Feasting. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Pickering, Andrew. ‘The Mangle of Practice: Agency and Emergence in the Sociology of Science.’ American Journal of Sociology 99, no. 3 (1999): 559–89. Southworth, E. D. E. N. The Hidden Hand or, Capitola the Madcap. American Women Writers Series. Edited by Joanne Dobson. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988.

1 ‘Bred Up a Butcher’ The Meat Trade and Its Connection with Criminality in Eighteenth-­Century England Stephen Basdeo In May  1685, two men named Thomas Blanke and Edward Gardner were convicted of robbery and sentenced to be hanged at Tyburn in London.1 On 5 December  1707, Edward English was executed at St. Stephen’s Green, in Dublin, likewise for the crime of robbery.2 On 21 January 1727, also at St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, another man named John Dobin was hanged for having committed a similar crime.3 All of these men’s cases are relatively unremarkable, but the one thing that they have in common is the fact that all of them were involved, at some point in their lives, in the butcher’s trade. In light of such cases, the neo-­Marxist historian, Peter Linebaugh, argues that ‘in Tyburnography, we found that among those who had been hanged a disproportionate number had been butchers.’4 The reason for the over-­representation of butchers in contemporary criminal accounts, according to Linebaugh, can be explained solely in terms of economics and the rise of capitalism; the erosion of the butchers’ guilds’ monopoly on meat meant that they were undercut by people who sold sub-­standard meat.5 It is no surprise that many butchers turned to robbery in order to support themselves when business was bad, as the highwayman William Johnson did in 1711.6 Some of them, if they did not themselves rob, acted as fences for local poachers, as Henry Cook, a butcher-­turned-­highwayman, was forced to in the early part of his criminal career.7 Linebaugh’s data is taken from court records and he says little about the contemporary cultural reasons that highwaymen were seemingly predisposed to criminality, apart from citing a poem by John Gay entitled Trivia, or The Art of Walking the Streets of London, which implies that butchers were violent people: ‘Butchers whose hands are dy’d with blood’s foul stain,/­And always foremost in the hangman’s train.’8 He rarely references literary accounts of crime such as Alexander Smith’s A Complete History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Notorious Highwaymen (1719), Charles Johnson’s Lives and Exploits of the Most Noted Highwaymen (1734), and Johnson’s Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals

‘Bred Up a Butcher’ 13 (1735). These books were collections of short biographies of the most notorious criminals, with a particular emphasis upon highway robbers. These were more popular and reached a wider audience than the Proceedings, and they were reprinted frequently throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.9 This chapter argues that we must look beyond social and economic factors towards more cultural factors to find out why butchers were viewed as potentially criminal by some contemporary writers. The declining economic status of the trade intersected with wider cultural fears regarding violence and depravity, and animal cruelty.10 Yet as we shall see, sometimes membership of the butchers’ trade was viewed as immaterial, and it was crimes that were committed as a result of overindulgence in alcohol which were blamed for their criminality. Master butchers, additionally, often worked with apprentices. In the case of butchers’ apprentices, fears surrounding butchers’ apparent predisposition for violence was often overshadowed by other moral panics, such as the figure of the unruly and idle apprentice who spent his nights in taverns and chocolate houses. However, far from being depraved, the sources examined here also highlight occasions where apprentices shunned the meat trade because it physically disgusted them. The discussion of apprentices is particularly useful because the history of the lives of supposedly unruly apprentices before the nineteenth century is difficult to investigate fully due to the lack of records available, a contributing factor to which is the fact that contemporary court papers and newspapers rarely make reference to any offenders’ ages.11 Clearly, when it comes to assessing eighteenth-­century butchers’ criminality, it is too simplistic to say that those involved in the preparation of meat were criminal because their businesses took a turn for the worse and they were already desensitized to violence. Butchers could hardly be classed as members of polite society. Their appearance was unseemly: they were usually stocky and overweight, and descriptions of them from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries refer to the blood-­stained aprons, which contrasts with the fine laced clothing that polite gentlemen would have worn.12 Furthermore, the environment that they worked in was unpleasant. Nowadays, when animals are slaughtered, it is generally not the local town butcher who carries out this task, for it is a job which is carried out in an abattoir or slaughterhouse. During the eighteenth century, however, most animals were carried ‘on the hoof’ to towns to be slaughtered and then sold. This was often done at the butcher’s stall and, if in London, it was likely done at Smithfield Market, a site which had facilitated the slaughter of animals and the sale of meat since the medieval period.13 The practice continued until the 1850s.14 It was only c. 1900 that the slaughter of animals began to be hidden from public view.15 Butchers shops were often spoken of as being

14  Stephen Basdeo pictures of barbarity. For example, an essay written by Alexander Pope in the Guardian in 1713 says that, I know nothing more shocking or horrid than the prospect of [butchers’] kitchens covered with blood, and filled with the cries of creatures expiring in tortures. It gives one an image of a giant’s den in a romance, bestrewed with the scattered heads and mangled limbs of his victims.16 One writer in The General Entertainer put a more poetic slant upon the fear that he imagined some animals would have felt before their slaughter: Against an elm a sheep was ty’d. The butcher’s knife in blood was dy’d; The patient flock, in silent fright, From far beheld the horrid sight; . . . With purple hands and reeking knife, He strips the skin yet warm with life: Your quarter’d fires, your bleeding dams, The dying bleat of harmless lambs, Call for revenge.17 Other writers expanded upon the description of the suffering endured by animals in butchers’ shops, speaking of how these tradesmen ‘mangle [the] bodies’ of Oxen, and of how after they have been slaughtered, the animals retain ‘a Sensation of Life three times longer than any known Creature in the Creation.’18 Allusions to the grim interior of butchers’ shops are made in accounts of the legendary highwayman and murderer Sawney Beane, who is said to have flourished in Scotland during the reign of King James VI (later James I of England). His biography was one of the most disturbing narratives to appear in the annals of the highwaymen, for he was not only a thief but also a cannibal (his story was adapted by Wes Craven for the 1977 movie entitled The Hills Have Eyes). That the story has no basis in fact was beside the point for criminal biographers, who often invented stories, drew upon folklore, or adapted fictional criminals’ stories.19 In Johnson’s account, Sawney and his family, which number over forty souls who are all the product of incest, live in a cave in the highlands of Scotland, and prey upon lonely travelers. Eventually, they are hunted down when King James VI leads an army into the area. Upon entering Sawney’s lair, The soldiers were shocked to behold a sight unequalled in Scotland, if not in any part of the universe. Legs, arms, thighs, hands, and feet,

‘Bred Up a Butcher’ 15 of men, women, and children, were suspended in rows like dried beef. Some limbs and other members were soaked in pickle.20 Johnson is clearly using the imagery of the butcher’s private slaughterhouse to describe the cannibals’ lair. The humans who fell into Sawney’s captivity must have been terrified, much like the animals some writers at the time recognized.21 Butchers’ willingness to kill helpless, harmless animals was assumed by some writers to have been easily transferable to humans, and allegedly contributed to the development of a ‘bloody and barbarous disposition.’22 Johnson’s Remarkable Criminals illustrates this point: John Hewlet was born in Warwickshire, the son of Richard Hewlet, a butcher, and though not bred up with his father, he was yet bred to the same employment at Leicester, from which, malicious people said he acquired a bloody and barbarous disposition.23 Early advocates of vegetarianism, such as Thomas Tryon (1634–1703), argued that shedding animal blood awakened ‘poysonous fires’ which, once released from the carcass, would infect those exposed to it, principally butchers, with all manner of wicked inclinations.24 Tryon, in fact, was quite vehement in his arguments that butchers were potentially violent and criminal. In a letter to a friend, which he titled ‘Of the Employments Arising from the Fountain of Darkness,’ butchers, as well as other people involved in food preparation such as poulterers and even fishermen, ‘are toucht [sic] with the like pernicious evil.’25 Perhaps the idea of these poisonous fires released from the spilling of animals’ blood contributed to the butcher/­ highwayman Whitney’s irascible and sometimes unhinged temperament: he was prone to violent outbursts and acted without any form of civility or politeness when he was robbing his victims. For example, in Smith’s Highwaymen, when Whitney, a former butcher-­turned-­highwayman, met a gentleman on the road, he commands the latter to stand and deliver, ‘or else I must be obliged to send a brace of balls through your head.’26 This is in stark contrast to the idealized and gentlemanly highwayman, Captain Macheath, found in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728), who gives the following caution to his fellow highwaymen: ‘act with conduct and discretion. A  pistol is your last resort.’27 Perhaps Whitney’s former trade had made him desensitized to violence, unlike the gallant and heroic Macheath. Towards the end of the century, the antiquary Joseph Ritson (1752–1803) argued that butchers were often desensitized to violence: The butcher knocks down the stately ox with no more compassion than the blacksmith hammers a horse-­shoe, and plunges his knife into the throat of an innocent lamb, with as little reluctance as the tailor sticks his needle into the collar of a coat.28

16  Stephen Basdeo As Ritson implies, the butchers’ profession meant that its practitioners had to, on a daily basis, harm and kill animals. This view of butchers as having potentially vicious inclinations likely stemmed in part from the fact that, generally, cruelty to animals had been a marker of potential criminality since at least the mid-­seventeenth century. For example, in Richard Head’s The English Rogue (1665), the protagonist, Meriton Latroon, tells the reader how in his youth he beat the brains out of a poor turkey and enjoyed the experience so much that it ‘tryed the weakness of mine eyes and so strain’d the optick nerves, that they ran a tilt at one another, as if they contended to share with me in my victory.’29 A notable example of the supposed link between animal cruelty and criminality is given in William Hogarth’s The Four Stages of Cruelty (1751), in which, in his youth, the protagonist, Tom Nero, is seen torturing defenseless animals. By the time of the events depicted in The Third Stage of Cruelty, Nero has progressed from cruelty to animals to committing theft and murder. Many of the highwaymen-­butchers in the annals of Smith and Johnson had only been associated with the meat trade in their youths when they were apprentices. The terms of service for an apprentice could begin when a child was as young as 7, but more often than not, it usually commenced around the age of 12 or 13. A  legally binding document was drawn up by a clerk and signed by a Justice of the Peace, which obliged the master to train the child and provide him with shelter, food, and clothing for a minimum of seven years.30 While many boys would have undoubtedly completed their apprenticeships without issue, unruly and rebellious apprentices certainly have a special place in the history of eighteenth-­century crime. The figure of the idle apprentice, made famous in another of William Hogarth’s works, entitled Industry and Idleness (1747), was just as worrying a figure for eighteenth-­century moralists as a depraved butcher, and fears of butchers’ ‘bloody and barbarous dispositions’ converged with anxieties surrounding unruly apprentices. Contemporary writers assumed that apprentices who turned to crime were simply idle and potentially criminal merely because they did not want to work, preferring ‘a good life.’31 This is certainly the case in the account of the highwayman John Addison, whose criminal career began because he absconded from his master’s service and began mixing with bad company in taverns.32 Some butchers’ apprentices may indeed have had a propensity for violence, which could develop due to their involvement in the trade, but there were also those who simply did not like the type of work with which they were involved. Many of these butcher/­ highwaymen apprentices never completed their terms of service, and the reasons for this are various and are not reducible to being a simple case of juvenile depravity and unruliness. Butchery was so foul a trade that Tryon said that it was only as a last resort that boys should be apprenticed to it.33 In such a context, it is unsurprising that we find that many

‘Bred Up a Butcher’ 17 apprentices disassociated themselves from the meat trade because they found it unpleasant. Thus, in Smith’s biography of Robin Hood that is found in his Highwaymen volume, as we saw earlier with other descriptions of butchers, we are told that Robin was ‘bred up a butcher, but being of a very licentious, wicked inclination, he followed not his trade, but in the reign of King Richard the First, [associated] himself with several robbers and outlaws.’34 While Smith does not give the reasons for Robin Hood’s having cast aside his trade, Johnson’s words in a similar account are more interesting, for he says that Robin Hood was ‘trained to the occupation of a butcher, but his mind was soon disgusted with that industrious employment.’35 ‘Disgust’ is an interesting choice of words here, for when apprentices turned away from their trade, it was usually as a result of their idle nature. The fact that Robin was disgusted with the trade suggests that he found it abhorrent. The young felon, James Filewood, sheds further light on this matter: born of honest and respectable parents, he was brought up to the trade of a poulterer (a profession related to that of a butcher but one which specifically dealt in chicken and turkey). As we have seen, being in the meat trade was not pleasant work, so why would young Filewood get his hands dirty in the scalding, picking, and gutting of chickens when to pick pockets was so much easier and less gruesome? Thus, he cast off his profession and went robbing upon the highway.36 As such, butchers’ apprentices may indeed have had a propensity for violence, which could develop due to their involvement in the trade but there were also those who simply did not like the type of work with which they were involved. Not every butcher’s apprentice in Smith and Johnson’s books was an unruly apprentice who turned away from his trade because he was inherently wicked. Some were subject to what might now be termed child abuse at the hands of their masters, and such is the case with James Hind. Unable to bear his master any longer, he ran away, with the assistance of his mother, to London. And it is in London that he first became acquainted with the criminal underworld.37 Another highwayman named Stephen Gardiner (d. 1724) was similarly beaten by his master on a regular basis, although Johnson depicts these as necessary beatings that were undertaken in order to curb the young Gardiner’s ‘passion for liberty and idleness.’38 The common perception that many apprentices were naturally idle was indeed a convenient excuse for moralists such as Smith to write about. The meat trade, as well as being unpleasant work, was often a hard life for apprentices during which they worked long hours for very low pay, which would have undoubtedly been much more unpleasant if they were bound to an overbearing and cruel master; naturally, they would have sought a distraction from the work that they were bound to, and for apprentices in London, there were many taverns and other ‘low’ establishments for them to enjoy the few leisure hours they managed to get. However, many

18  Stephen Basdeo apprentices had to find ways of enjoying themselves in such a way that their masters did not notice, and there was plenty of entertainment on offer in London at the time. People in eighteenth-­century Britain knew how to enjoy themselves, and the capital had a variety of attractions to suit the rising urban bourgeoisie. Among these were the coffeehouses and taverns, or public houses. Coffeehouses suited the tastes of politically informed members of polite society who gathered to read and debate the news of the day in periodicals.39 As we will see ahead, however, while members of polite society visited coffeehouses and chocolate houses, it does not mean that these venues were necessarily considered polite. Public houses provided alcoholic refreshment as well as food, and in most towns, the tavern had a place in the life of those who lived there, whose patrons could obtain admittance as long as they could pay for their drink.40 These venues’ customers were typically artisans, laborers, farmers, and shopkeepers.41 These were the professions that most likely had in their small businesses an apprentice or two and sometimes it was the masters themselves who induced their apprentices to follow the ways of vice by setting bad moral examples, as expressed in The Criminal Recorder (1804–1809): The evil habits of masters are in a great degree the means of corrupting apprentices. No sooner does an apprentice advance towards the last year of his time, then he thinks it incumbent on him to follow the example of his master by learning to smoke. This accomplishment acquired (according to his conception), he is a fit associate for those who frequent public houses.42 Visiting public houses in the eighteenth century was not an inherently bad thing, but the same writer argues further that, although the master may visit respectable public houses, the apprentice, in order to avoid meeting with the master on a night out, must necessarily visit places where he knows that his master will not venture, which tend to be places of ill repute where the apprentice ‘meets with depraved company.’43 In such places, they could become addicted to vice. Whether it was a desire to avoid his master when visiting public houses which induced the butcher’s apprentice, Jack Addison (d. 1711), to visit places of ill repute it is impossible to say. Nevertheless, he did visit such places throughout the term of his apprenticeship, where he met the prostitute Kate Speed who encouraged him in the ways of vice.44 Many trades are represented in the histories of highwaymen. Butchers could potentially be prone to developing a bloody and barbarous disposition as a result of the activities that they carried out daily, namely the butchering of animals. But what ultimately mattered to criminal biographers was how a person conducted his or her life, whatever his or her profession had been. This is because, as Lincoln B. Faller argues, in the eighteenth century, the commonly held view was that all people were

‘Bred Up a Butcher’ 19 capable of becoming criminals because all men were sinners, tainted by original sin.45 This is why young butchers/­highwaymen are depicted more often than not as Hogarthian idle apprentices. A significant portion of these apprentices were indeed butchers, but they are guilty of small misdemeanors which progress, in the fullness of time, to a criminal career. In the case of Jack Withers, an apprentice butcher, these small sins include taking coins out of the collection basket in church during the offertory.46 Withers did complete his term of apprenticeship, but as soon as it was over, it appears that he very quickly fell in with the wrong sort of crowd. It was after his apprenticeship that he began to indulge his sinful inclinations, and commenced his profligate career, which brought his life to an early end on the gallows.47 This is recorded of another robber named Robert Crouch in Johnson’s Remarkable Criminals, in which it is said that he was apprenticed to a butcher and served his full term, ‘but as soon as he was out of it he addicted himself to gaming, drinking, and whoring, and all the other vices which are so natural to abandoned young fellows in low life.’48 Membership of the butchers’ trade here is of little consequence in these accounts. These lads might have cut respectable figures in the world, having been successful in their apprenticeships, were it not for the fact that they had indulged their sinful inclinations. Thus, it was a slippery slope: once a person had committed a small sin that intersected with his or her criminality and predisposition towards barbarism, he or she could become addicted to a criminal way of life.49 Yet it was not only young apprentices who had to be on their guard against the temptations of the town, for there are a few cases of adults recorded in the works of Smith and Johnson whose lives end at the scaffold after squandering their income through drinking, whoring, and gambling. In fact, sometimes it was not their background in the meat trade which induced them to commit crime, but simply the fact that they were drunk. William Gordon, another butcher/­highwayman, is a case in point: This malefactor was brought up to the business of a butcher; but, for twenty years previous to his execution, had been a reputed highwayman . . . he was, however, afterwards convicted, at the Old Bailey, of a highway robbery, between Knightsbridge and Hyde Park Corner, on Mr.  Peters, under-­treasurer of the Temple, whom he robbed of his hat, wig, watch, and a gold ring; and, being at the time in a state of intoxication, he was soon apprehended, and had no other plea to offer other than that he was drunk.50 Similar circumstances are recorded in the Newgate Calendar’s entry for Abraham Wells, a thief: He was the son of a carpenter at Enfield, who bound him to a butcher at his native place, where he engaged in business for himself, and sold

20  Stephen Basdeo considerable quantities of meat, by wholesale, at the London markets. He paid his addresses to a widow of some fortune, whom he married; but she prudently reserved a part of her property to her own use. When Wells had been married some time, he became uneasy that his wife opposed his extravagance and, being unhappy at home, he kept bad company.51 The word ‘extravagance’ in many accounts is synonymous with drinking, whoring, and gambling, which highwaymen were well known to engage in. This is illustrated in the following exchange between Peachum and Mrs. Peach in The Beggar’s Opera: Mrs. Peach. Pray, my dear, is the Captain rich? Peach. The Captain keeps too good company ever to grow rich. Marybone and the chocolate houses are his undoing.52 Marylebone was famous for its seemingly genteel pleasure gardens by the eighteenth century but they were places where members of the polite classes could indulge in certain vices. Patrons would pay a fee to enter and they would be able to enjoy polite entertainment such as music, as well as partaking of refreshment and entertaining ladies.53 Many of the ladies whom the gentlemen in the pleasure gardens entertained were mistresses, and prostitutes were known to frequent them as well.54 Such profligacy even developed in chocolate houses, as in the case of Macheath. As a result of trade with the Americas, imports of luxury cocoa beans led to the establishment, in the seventeenth century, of chocolate houses. The famous diarist, Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), who refers to it in his diaries as ‘jocolatte,’ was fond of visiting chocolate houses because for him, hot chocolate was the perfect hangover cure.55 While chocolate in this period was a drink which mainly the rich could afford, high prices did not mean that venues such as the ones that Macheath visits were genteel or polite places. White’s Chocolate House had, by the early part of the eighteenth century, become the coffeehouse to visit, which Jonathan Swift described as ‘a place to be fleeced and corrupted by fashionable gamblers and profligates.’56 This is probably why Richard Steele’s fictional Isaac Bickerstaff in The Tatler (1709–1710) authored pieces on ‘gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment . . . under the article of White’s Chocolate-­house.’57 As the reference to Swift’s words suggests, gambling was one of the most common activities to participate in at the chocolate houses. Prostitutes were a common sight in most chocolate houses, as well.58 Thus, chocolate and chocolate houses were associated with extravagance, drunkenness, and gambling, which has contributed to modern perceptions of the consumption of chocolate being associated with overindulgence and decadence.59 It is through living such an extravagant life that some people fell into a life of crime because they needed to fund their

‘Bred Up a Butcher’ 21 lifestyle. Let us take the example of another butcher/­highwayman named Nicholas Wells (d. 1712). He was compelled to commit crime, not so much because of an innate ‘bloody and barbarous disposition,’ but from a love of good living. He was a respectable butcher by trade, and married well: his wife came with a dowry of £120, which is the approximate equivalent of £10,000 today. He soon squandered his sizeable income, however, at the gambling table and various alehouses, until finally he had to take to robbing upon the highway to defray his debts.60 Thus, in ‘Tyburnography,’ or the social history of crime, there was indeed, as Peter Linebaugh points out, a relationship between the meat trade and criminality for butchers are overrepresented in court records. Yet Linebaugh’s socioeconomic explanation for the over-­representation of butchers in court records does not translate neatly to more literary sources, such as Smith’s and Johnson’s histories of the highwaymen. The evidence presented here suggests in some cases that membership in the butchers’ trade could be seen as a potential marker of criminality, with a willingness to harm small animals pointing to a ‘bloody and barbarous disposition.’ While it is useful to study the demographics of the condemned, there were also cultural factors at play in contemporary explanations of criminality. Their predisposition towards barbarism could be exacerbated through visiting taverns, becoming inebriated, and associating with disreputable characters. Furthermore, the butchers-­turned-­ highwaymen who appear in the annals of Smith and Johnson were often apprentices who absconded from their masters. In some respects, they should be viewed more as typical Hogarthian idle apprentices who shunned industrious employment and took to robbing, yet some of them found the trade disgusting and left of their own accord. Criminal biographers such as Smith and Johnson are evidently aware that there are social and economic reasons which explain why butchers have a predisposition towards criminality, but to their stories they attach other cultural factors as well. Thus, in literary sources, a number of contemporary fears surrounding predisposition to violence, animal cruelty, and juvenile delinquency converged in accounts of robbers involved in the meat trade.

Notes 1 Ordinary of Newgate Prison: Ordinary’s Accounts: Biographies of Executed Convicts 6 May 1685. 2 The Last Speech and Dying Words of Edward English, Butcher. Who was Executed at St. Stephen’s-­Green, for Robbing of one Mr. at the Green-­Hills, on Friday 5th of December, 1707. 3 Speech, Confession and Dying Words of James Dealy Constable, John Dobin Butcher, and Edward Dunn; Who are to be Executed near St. Stephen’s Green, this present Saturday being the 21st of this Instant January 1726–7. 4 Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged, 184. ‘Tyburnography’ means the demographic study of the condemned as it appears in the crime-­related print culture that flourished during the eighteenth century.

22  Stephen Basdeo 5 Linebaugh, The London Hanged, 198–99. What once had been a proud industry with its own guild during the medieval and early modern periods, had by the eighteenth century had its monopoly on the production and sale of meat broken by the emerging capitalist free market, and the guilds, in general, were no longer able to control entry into their respective trades. Crossley and Erlington, The City of Oxford, 316. The new free market in meat led to inferior produce being sold by many butchers. In eighteenth-­century Oxford, the Association of Oxfordshire Butchers, established in 1294, petitioned the local corporation to stop non-­associated butchers from ‘hawking all kinds of meat in the city.’ See The Cheating Traders Garland, 4. Contemporary ballads likewise warned purchasers about the poor meat that was often sold by the new unregulated butchers: ‘The butcher is likewise a fly cunning knave, /­ He’ll cheat you with flink, when good meat you should have.’ 6 The Newgate Calendar; or, Malefactor’s Bloody Register, 2, 81. 7 Linebaugh, The London Hanged, 185–86. The citation to the original case is as follows: The Ordinary of Newgate, his Account of the Behaviour, Confession, and Dying Words, of the Malefactors, who were Executed at Tyburn, On Wednesday the 16th of September, 1741, 4–5. 8 Linebaugh, The London Hanged, 184. The citation to the original poem is as follows: Gay, Trivia, or The Art of Walking the Streets of London, 16. 9 Relevant scholarship on eighteenth-­century criminal biography includes the following: Lincoln B. Faller, Turned to Account: The Forms and Functions Century Criminal Biography; of Late Seventeenth-­and Early Eighteenth-­ Hal Gladfelder, Criminality and Narrative in Eighteenth-­Century England: Beyond the Law; and Richard Ward, Print Culture, Crime and Justice in 18th-­Century London. 10 Additional note on methodology: I will focus principally upon the compendia because, although there were numerous shorter books and pamphlets available, their content is representative of a larger body of more popular crime literature that the public was reading at the time, and Smith and Johnson often plagiarized contemporary accounts of criminals and inserted them into their own narratives. Furthermore, I will focus principally upon highwaymen because as Faller, Turned to Account, 74 says: each type of crime elicited a different response from the public and the press; murder was viewed as a sin against God, whereas robbery was a sin which resulted as a result of people succumbing to their inner depravity. And although this collection is focused upon outlaw narratives, I shall focus upon accounts of highwaymen because, as Hobsbawm, Bandits, 44–5 says: the eighteenth-­century highwayman was early modern England’s rather poor substitute for the idealized medieval outlaw. 11 Gray, Crime, Policing and Punishment in England, 1660–1914, 178: one possible reason for this is that, from the seventeenth century until 1933, the age of criminal responsibility in England was 7 years old, being raised to 10 thereafter. 12 Cockayne, Hubbub: Filth, Noise and Stench in England, 42, 72–4. 13 Williams, ‘City of Beasts: Horse and Livestock in Hanoverian London,’ 205. In 1488, an Act (4 Hen. VII, c.3) prevented the killing of beasts within the walls of London but following petitioning by the butchers, this was repealed in 1532 (4 & 5 Henry VIII, c.3). 14 Otter, ‘Civilizing Slaughter: The Development of the British Public Abattoir, 1850–1910,’ 29–51. 15 Otter, ‘The Vital City: Public Analysis, Dairies and Slaughterhouses in Nineteenth-­Century Britain,’ 518.

‘Bred Up a Butcher’ 23 16 Guardian, 1:267. 17 The General Entertainer: or, A  Collection of Near Three Hundred Polite Tales and Fables, 1:63. 18 Gent, Carolina, or, A Description of the Present State of that Country and the Natural Excellencies, 30. 19 For example, both Smith and Johnson’s works contain biographies of Sir John Falstaff and Colonel Jack. And criminal biographers criticized each other on occasion, accusing others of writing sub-­par histories by fabricating stories. For example, in The Highland Rogue (1723), a biography of the famous Rob Roy, we read the following criticism of Alexander Smith’s Highwaymen: ‘what an object of contempt and ridicule is Captain Alexander Smith . . . his works are a confus’d lump of absurd lies, gross obscenity, awkward cant, and dull profaneness’ (vii). Likewise, Robin Hood scholar Joseph Ritson had this to say about Charles Johnson in Robin Hood: A Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads (1795): ‘Another piece of biography, from which not much will be expected, is “The lives and heroic achievements of the renowned Robin Hood, and James Hind, two noted robbers and highwaymen, London, 1752” 8vo. This, however, is probably nothing more than an extract from Johnson’s Lives of the Highwaymen, in which, as a specimen of the author’s historical authenticity, we have the life and actions of that noted robber, Sir John Falstaff” (xiv). 20 Johnson, Highwaymen, 28. 21 Agrippa, The Vanity of Arts and Sciences, 246–47; interestingly, one writer also uses the idea of animal cruelty in hunting to criticize the nobility and to draw attention to their ‘beastly’ nature, saying: ‘Hunting hath in itself something fierce and cruel, while the Poor Beast overcome at length by the Dogs, becomes a Spectacle of Delight, in having its Blood shed and Bowels torn out; at which the Barbarous Hunter laughs, while the Foe-­Beast rowted with an Army of Dogs, or entangled in a Toyl, is carried home by the Triumphant Huntsman, with a great Troop at his heels; where the fatal Prey is cut up in bloody terms of Art, and proper words of Butchery, other than which it is not lawful to use. A strange madness of such kind of Men, a most renowned Warfare, where they themselves casting off their Humanity become Beasts.’ Clearly, the ‘beastly’ manner in which people hurt and killed animals for food was by no means limited to the plebeian classes. 22 Brown, Sixty Years’ Gleanings from Life’s Harvest: A Genuine Autobiography, 163. Another interesting illustration of some butchers’ predisposition to violence is given early in the next century when, John Brown, who was recounting his youth in the late eighteenth century, said that butchers often made good pugilists because of their strength and toughness. The sport was condemned as being of ‘a low and brutalizing nature’ in spite of the fact that many respectable tradesmen participated in it, either as pugilists themselves or as patrons. 23 Johnson, Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals Who Have Been ConBreaking, Street demned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, House-­ Robberies, Coining or Other Offences, 211. 24 Guerini, ‘A Diet for a Sensitive Soul: Vegetarianism in Eighteenth-­Century Britain,’ 35. 25 Tryon, ‘Of the Employments Arising from the Fountain of Darkness,’ cited in Cockayne, Hubbub: Filth, Noise and Stench in England, 42. 26 Smith, Highwaymen, 44. 27 Gay, The Beggar’s Opera, 11. 28 Ritson, An Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food as a Moral Duty, 229. 29 Head, The English Rogue Described in the Life of Meriton Latroon, 16–17.

24  Stephen Basdeo 30 Hitchcock, Howard, Shoemaker, ‘Apprenticeship Indentures and Disciplinary Cases (IA).’ 31 John Richetti, cited in Faller, Turned to Account, 45. 32 An Account of the Life, Birth, Death, Parentage, and Conversation, of Mr. John Addison, a Most Notorious Highway-­Man, 4. 33 Tryon, op. cit. 34 Smith, Highwaymen, 408. 35 Johnson, Highwaymen, 70. 36 Smith, Highwaymen, 392. 37 Ibid., 136. 38 Johnson, Remarkable Criminals, 143. However, Levene, ‘Honesty, Sobriety, and Dilligence,’ 183–200 points out that bad relations between masters and their apprentices were not typical, and on the whole, relations between them were harmonious and the majority of young lads would likely have completed their apprenticeships without issue 39 See Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee, and Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Enquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. 40 Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe, 226. 41 Cooke, A History of Drinking, 1. 42 Anon. The Criminal Recorder, 3:11 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid., 243. 45 Faller, Turned to Account, 54. 46 Smith, Highwaymen, 63. 47 Ibid. 48 Johnson, Remarkable Criminals, 439. 49 McKenzie, Tyburn’s Martyrs, 59. 50 The Newgate Calendar; or, Malefactors’ Bloody Register, 1:343–44. 51 Ibid., 394. 52 Gay, The Beggar’s Opera, 5. 53 See Mollie Sands, The Eighteenth-­Century Pleasure Gardens of Marylebone 1737–1777. 54 Coke and Borg, Vauxhall Gardens: A History, 191–92. 55 Beckett, The Science of Chocolate, 2. 56 Chrystal, Chocolate: The British Chocolate Industry, 12. 57 Steele, The Tatler, ed. Alexander Chalmers, 1:3. 58 Lewis and Ellis, Prostitution and Eighteenth-­Century Culture: Sex, Commerce and Morality, 3. 59 Loveman, ‘The Introduction of Chocolate into England: Retailers, Researchers, and Consumers, 1640–1730,’ 37. 60 Based upon the values listed at the National Archive’s Old Currency Converter website: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/­currency-­converter/.­

Bibliography Primary Sources Agrippa, Henry Cornelius. The Vanity of Arts and Sciences. London: Printed by J. C. for Samuel Speed, and sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster, 1676. An Account of the Life, Birth, Death, Parentage, and Conversation, of Mr. John Addison, a Most Notorious Highway-­Man. London: J. Smith, 1711.

‘Bred Up a Butcher’ 25 Brown, John. Sixty Years’ Gleanings from Life’s Harvest: A Genuine Autobiography. Cambridge: J. Palmer, 1858. Gay, John. The Beggar’s Opera. 3rd ed. London: J. Watts, 1729. —­—­. Trivia, or The Art of Walking the Streets of London. London: printed for Bernard Lintott, 1716. Gent, T. A. Carolina, or, A Description of the Present State of that Country and the Natural Excellencies Thereof viz. the Healthfulness of the Air, Pleasantness of the Place, Advantage and Usefulness of those Rich Commodities there Plentifully Abounding, Which much Encrease and Flourish by the Industry of the Planters that Daily Enlarge that Colony. London: Printed for W. C. and to be Sold by Mrs. Grover in Pelican Court in Little Britain, 1682. Guardian. 2 vols. London: Longman, 1801. Head, Richard. The English Rogue Described in the Life of Meriton Latroon, A Witty Extravagant. Being a Compleat History of the Most Eminent Cheats of Both Sexes. London: Henry Marsh, 1665. Hogarth, William. The Four Stages of Cruelty: The First Stage of Cruelty. London: [n. pub.], 1751. Johnson, Charles. Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals Who Have Been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, House-­Breaking, Street Robberies, Coining or Other Offences. Edited by Arthur Hayward. London: Routledge, 1927. –––. The Lives and Actions of the Most Noted Highwaymen, Street Robbers and Pirates. London: T. Tegg, 1839. First published 1734, London. Knapp, Andrew, and William Baldwin. The Newgate Calendar: Comprising Interesting Memoirs of the Most Notorious Characters Who Have Been Convicted of Outrages on the Laws of England. 4 vols. London: J. Robins, 1824. Ordinary of Newgate Prison: Ordinary’s Accounts: Biographies of Executed Convicts 6 May 1685. Accessed August 20, 2017. www.londonlives.org version 1.1. Ritson, Joseph. An Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food as a Moral Duty. London: Richard Phillips, 1802. –––. Robin Hood: A Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads, Now Extant, Relative to that Celebrated English Outlaw. 2 vols. London: T. Egerton, 1795. Sale of Flesh Act, 4 & 5 Hen. VIII, c. 3. Smith, Alexander. A Complete History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Notorious Highwaymen, Footpads, Shoplifts, and Cheats. Edited by Arthur Hayward. London: Routledge, 1927. Speech, Confession and Dying Words of James Dealy Constable, John Dobin Butcher, and Edward Dunn; Who are to be Executed Near St. Stephen’s Green, this present Saturday being the 21st of this Instant January 1726–7. Dublin: C. Hicks, 1727. Steele, Richard. The Tatler. Edited by Alexander Chalmers. 4 vols. London: F. C. & J. Rivington, 1822. The Cheating Traders Garland, Containing Two Excellent New Songs. A Cheat in All Trades; or, the World Turned Up Side Down: Shewing How You may as Well Seek a Needle in a Bottle of Hay, as to Find an Honest Man in this Hard and Wicked World. The Butcher’s Kindness to the Taylor’s Wife, or, the Taylor in a Shitten Condition. York: J. White, 1725.

26  Stephen Basdeo The Criminal Recorder; or, Biographical Sketches of Notorious Public Characters. 4 vols. London: Cundee, 1804–09. The General Entertainer; or, A Collection of Near Three Hundred Polite Tales and Fables. 2 vols. London: H. Slater, 1746. The Highland Rogue: or, The Memorable Actions of the Celebrated Robert Mac-­ Gregor, Commonly Called Rob Roy. London: J. Billingsley, 1723. The Last Speech and Dying Words of Edward English, Butcher. Who was Executed at St. Stephen’s-­Green, for Robbing of One Mr. at the Green-­Hills, on Friday 5th of December, 1707. Dublin: E. Waters, 1707. The Ordinary of Newgate, his Account of the Behaviour, Confession, and Dying Words, of the Malefactors, Who were Executed at Tyburn, On Wednesday the 16th of September, 1741. London: J. Applebee, 1741.

Secondary Sources Basdeo, Stephen. ‘Robin Hood the Brute: Representations of the Outlaw in 18th-­ Century Criminal Biography.’ Law, Crime and History 6, no. 2 (2016): 54–70. Beckett, Stephen. The Science of Chocolate. London: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2008. Chrystal, Paul. Chocolate: The British Chocolate Industry. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Cockayne, Emily. Hubbub: Filth, Noise and Stench in England, 1600–1770. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. Coke, David, and Alan Borg. Vauxhall Gardens: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. Cooke, Anthony. A History of Drinking: The Scottish Pub since 1700. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015. Cowan, Brian. The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Crossley, Alan, and C. R. Erlington, ed. The City of Oxford. Vol. 4, A History of the Country of Oxford. London: Victoria Country History, 1979. Faller, Lincoln B. Turned to Account: The Forms and Functions of Late Seventeenth-­and Early Eighteenth-­Century Crime Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Century England: Gladfelder, Hal. Criminality and Narrative in Eighteenth-­ Beyond the Law. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Gray, Drew. Crime, Policing and Punishment in England, 1660–1914. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Guerini, Anna. ‘A Diet for a Sensitive Soul: Vegetarianism in Eighteenth-­Century Britain.’ Eighteenth-­Century Life 23, no. 2 (1999): 34–2. Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Enquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Translated by Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991. Hitchcock, Tim, Sharon Howard, and Robert Shoemaker. ‘Apprenticeship Indentures and Disciplinary Cases (IA).’ Accessed August 20, 2017. www.londonlives.org version 1.0. Hobsbawm, Eric. Bandits. Rev. ed. London: Abacus, 2000. Levene, Alysa. ‘Honesty, Sobriety and Diligence: Master-­Apprentice Relations in Eighteenth-­and Nineteenth-­Century England.’ Social History 33, no. 2 (2008): 183–200.

‘Bred Up a Butcher’ 27 Lewis, Anne, and Markham Ellis, ed. Prostitution and Eighteenth-­Century Culture: Sex, Commerce and Morality. Body, Gender, and Culture. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016. Linebaugh, Peter. The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the 18th Century. London: Penguin, 1991. Loveman, Kate. ‘The Introduction of Chocolate into England: Retailers, Researchers, and Consumers, 1640–1730.’ Journal of Social History 47, no. 1 (2013): 27–46. McKenzie, Andrea. Tyburn’s Martyrs: Execution in England, 1675–1775. London: Continuum, 2007. Melton, James Van Horn. The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe. New Approaches to European History 22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Otter, Chris. ‘Civilizing Slaughter: The Development of the British Public Abattoir, 1850–1910.’ Food and History: Revue de l’Institut Européen d’Histoire de l’Alimentation 3, no. 2 (2005): 29–51. –––. ‘The Vital City: Public Analysis, Dairies and Slaughterhouses in Nineteenth-­ Century Britain.’ Cultural Geographies 13, no. 4 (2006): 517–37. Sands, Mollie. The Eighteenth-­Century Pleasure Gardens of Marylebone 1737– 1777. London: The Society for Theatre Research, 1987. The National Archives Currency Converter: 1270–2017. www.nationalarchives. gov.uk/­currency-­converter/­. Ward, Richard. Print Culture, Crime and Justice in 18th-­Century London. History of Crime, Deviance and Punishment. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Williams, T. A. ‘City of Beasts: Horse and Livestock in Hanoverian London.’ Ph.D. Thesis, University of York, 2013.

2 The Fare of ‘Sanguinary Devils’ Feast and Storytelling in The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta Jason Hogue

Introduction: Setting the Table for the ‘Feast of America’ The newly arrived party then rode up to the tents under the trees and dismounted. The busy cooks hurried up the fires, and the fresh venison and bear meat was soon smoking on the irons and emiting [sic] a most delicious savor, such as tempts the appetite of a hardy pioneer. Broiled quails and grouse, sweet and oily . . . were hanging in front of the blaze, suspended by their necks to branching sticks driven into the ground. The hot coffee steamed up from the large pot with a most stimulating effect; everything was spread forth in superabundance.  .  .  . Generous wines stood sparkling in their midst with which scarcely any refused to refresh themselves. Conversation flowed freely, and each one had a tale to tell of hair-­breadth escapes and daring deeds.1 –from The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit by John Rollin Ridge (a.k.a. Yellow Bird2)

This scene of luxurious outlaw feasting appears midway through the first edition of John Rollin Ridge’s novella, which was published in 1854, approximately a year after the supposed death of Joaquin Murrieta, the legendary Mexican bandit.3 During America’s Gold Rush period, Murrieta became infamous in California as the fearless leader of a band of marauders and horse thieves, accused of a string of murders and robberies between 1850 and 1853.4 Despite his alleged life of violent crime, Murrieta has become an enduring figure in the Chicano movement, a popular symbol of justice.5 Among scholars of Mexican-­American, Indigenous, and Border studies, many view Murrieta as a good outlaw or social bandit who resists Anglo American oppression.6 Referring to the powerful mythic potential of Murrieta, literary scholar John Lowe, a member of the Cherokee Nation, suggests that ‘Joaquin speaks not only for the poor but also for the racially and ethnically oppressed, all denied “space” at the feast of America.’7 However, Ridge’s Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta, the primary basis for the widely accepted version of Murrieta’s life story, remains controversial and problematic, not only because of

The Fare of ‘Sanguinary Devils’ 29 various details of Ridge’s life and his anti-­abolitionist politics, but also because of racist elements present in the novella.8 Furthermore, the feasts described in Ridge’s novella, like the lavish one beginning this chapter, point to the problem of envisioning American opportunity as feast-­like in the first place. I argue that the imaginary feasts in which Murrieta and his outlaws participate do, in fact, have a decidedly ‘American’ flavor, one that is indicative of the excesses of the American frontier. Ridge’s fantasy of frontier feasting, while it admittedly celebrates Mexican-­inspired culture to some extent, nonetheless accepts and propagates a colonialist vision of America as a ‘land of plenty,’ ripe for cultivating, harvesting, and feasting upon.9 In this essay, I analyze the feasts that appear in Ridge’s book, as well as in the anonymous California Police Gazette version of the story, a popular plagiarism of Ridge’s text.10 I contend that both Ridge’s novella and the Police Gazette are complicit in such fantasies, influenced by a general milieu of excitement over the prospects of new opportunities and wealth in the West. Both texts romanticize acts of masculine bravery in frontier culture, ‘bloody narrations’ of ‘daring deeds’ that circulate among the men as they eat around campfires.11 The voracious appetites, excessive consumptions, and braggadocious storytellings of Ridge’s novella set the stage for even greater excesses in the plagiarized Police Gazette version, which adds a number of outlaw campfire meals, as well as altering and embellishing the one Ridge describes. The Police Gazette also amplifies the outlaws’ hunger for gold and their thirst for blood. The gluttony represented in these feasts thus metaphorically expands into additional ‘deadly sins’ associated with American over-­consumption: avarice and wrath. Although both texts condemn the illegal activities of Murrieta and his outlaws, they simultaneously romanticize and implicitly condone the greed of the Gold Rush, the unrestrained feasting of frontiersmen upon (seemingly) endless game animals in the American West, and the sheer excess of intensely violent crime in California that took place during the  1850s. While these texts served as an important vector for the transmission of Murrieta’s story, a tale of resistance to racial oppression, the co-­opting of the story by Ridge’s novella and, to an even greater extent, the Police Gazette, illustrates the way in which radical voices from the margins can be overwritten and incorporated into hierarchical frameworks that buttress colonialism and racism. In what follows, I  critique the feasting, or over-­ consumption, in Ridge’s novella and in its plagiarized progeny through three different courses. I  begin with a brief contextualizing ‘appetizer’: a discussion of how these texts represent the discovery of gold in California, condoning and encouraging greedy frontier appetites for a desirable material resource. The ‘main course’ of the essay analyzes specific scenes of campfire feasts such as the epigraphical one quoted above, evaluating their preparation, composition, and general proceedings in terms of their

30  Jason Hogue social and environmental impacts. The final ‘dessert’ section critiques the racist bloodlust of Three-­Fingered Jack, Murrieta’s homicidal right-­hand man. Ridge paints Jack as a menace and a terror, who especially likes to kill ‘Chinamen,’ but in the Police Gazette, Jack evolves even further into an inhuman, pathological killer, proclaiming after one particularly horrendous bloodbath that he has enjoyed a ‘luxurious feast of blood.’12 Using this figurative progression through the stages of a meal, I acknowledge the role that literary criticism itself plays in the excesses of storytelling. However, I  also hope to emphasize the importance of viewing the formation of frontier identity in America’s Southwest through the lens of consumptive practices, literal and figurative, historical and literary, which have often coincided with the degradation of the land, the decline of biodiversity, and the unnecessary loss of human life. I take this critical approach to the story of Joaquin Murrieta not to discount his legacy, but to suggest that the fantasies of American abundance depicted in the earliest stories representing him offer the promise of a bottomless buffet that has, unfortunately, been all but consumed.

Appetizer This county [Calaveras] was then, as it is now, one of the richest in the State of California. Its mountains were veined with gold—­the beds of its clear and far-­rushing streams concealed the yellow grains in abundance—­ and the large quartz leads, like the golden tree of Hesperides, spread their fruitful branches abroad through the hills.13

Ridge portrays Joaquin Murrieta as a young Sonoran immigrant who arrived in California sometime around 1850, ‘engaged in the honest occupation of a miner in the Stanislaus placers,’14 only to suffer at the hands of ‘lawless and desperate men, who bore the name of Americans but failed to support the honor and dignity of that title.’15 Ridge explains that this band of ruffians ousts Murrieta and his mistress Rosita from their mining claim, physically beating him and raping her (in the Police Gazette, Rosita is Murrieta’s wife and is murdered by the men). This traumatic event, followed by the lynching of his half-­brother by a mob of white Americans, drives Murrieta over the edge. Adopting a general hatred for ‘the whole American race,’ he vows to avenge these injustices by killing those who perpetrated them.16 At this point in the story, in good outlaw fashion, Murrieta takes to the wild countryside with his banditti: In the rugged fastnesses of the wild range lying to the west of this huge mount [Mount Shasta], a range inhabited only by human savages and savage beasts, did the outlaws hide themselves for several

The Fare of ‘Sanguinary Devils’ 31 long months, descending into the valleys at intervals with no further purpose than to steal horses.17 Of course, they also steal their fair share of gold in the course of the narrative, but Ridge avoids pointing that out at this moment in the novella because he represents gold as part of the naturally occurring beauty of the countryside. Although Ridge implies that such a ‘wild’ location corresponds with a wildness in the character of both the humans and animals living there, he does not attempt to reconcile the tension between the uncivilizing forces of California’s wilderness spaces and the breathtaking beauty of the gold deposits, which radiate out from those same spaces. (I address Ridge’s dehumanizing or animalizing of the outlaws in more detail in the next two sections.) In other words, Ridge does not hold the same standard of ‘savagery’ supposedly characteristic of the animals and outlaws living in this ‘rugged’ terrain to the savagery that surrounded the events of the Gold Rush itself, preferring instead to characterize gold as a natural resource, a beautiful form of wealth rather than a shiny, alluring substance that arouses avarice. In describing California’s plenitude, Ridge combines and conflates the rich beauty of the natural countryside with the material wealth embedded within that landscape, envisioning gold as ‘yellow grains in abundance’ some forty years before Katherine Lee Bates praised America’s ‘amber waves of grain’ in the lyrics of ‘America the Beautiful.’ In Ridge’s rhetoric, land features such as mountains, streams, and hills exist alongside living ‘veins’ of gold, growing like ‘grains’ and ‘branches.’ Ridge’s description of the land in northern California takes on the same language of sprawling superabundance that he uses to describe the luscious banquet that Murrieta’s cooks spread out for the outlaws. Ridge employs superlatives and grandiose modifiers like ‘richest,’ ‘far-­rushing,’ ‘abundance,’ ‘large,’ and ‘spread’ to conjure up the sense of an endless wealth to be had. He marvels before the ‘riches’ of California, its buried treasures, whetting the appetites of his readers for a banquet to come. The Police Gazette packs in even more references to golden riches, mentioning gold or gold dust some twenty-­nine times, compared to the nine times in Ridge’s text. Additionally, the Police Gazette embellishes the gold motive of the outlaws with one of Murrieta’s campfire toasts: ‘This our maxim, wise and bold; /­Naught for naught, and all for gold.’18 Ridge renders California’s Calaveras County as an Edenic paradise, merging its natural beauty with the splendor of its gold, participating in long-­established colonialist fantasies. As Lowe observes: The word California has always had a certain magical poetic resonance with Americans. It is the original dream of the New World garden magnificently magnified and gilded. Indeed the term ‘golden republic’ refers to the native grasses, themselves emblematic of the

32  Jason Hogue state’s general fecundity, but also to the mother lodes of gold discovered in the mid-­1800s, facts that underline the tensions inherent in the state’s identity.19 Ridge simply combines the two notions. Imagining gold as fructal and life-­giving, he compares the gold hiding in quartz deposits to the golden apples of Hera’s mythological orchard which, when eaten, were supposed to bestow immortality (ironically, of course, the gold mined in California would lead to many deaths). Additionally, Ridge not only exalts the vast stores of gold, highlighting the large supply of the material, but he also justifies a desire for the metal by emphasizing its elusive character, all the more tempting because of its elusiveness. Ridge’s description of California’s cache of gold ‘concealed’ by streams tantalizes with its images of gold as a hidden botanical feast waiting to be harvested, reinforcing and reinvigorating colonialist fantasies about the masses of gold to be had in the ‘New World,’ available to those who are willing to look for it and lay claim to it. America is a land of both plenty and opportunity, then, in Ridge’s portrayal of California’s expansive landscapes, but in reality, the gleam of gold brought its share of complications. The avaricious opportunism and rush for fast money fostered short-­term economies whose overflowing consumptive practices resulted in considerable waste, in terms of material wealth and human lives alike. Underlying Ridge’s figuring of gold as a harvestable cereal grain, then, is a secondary notion of gold as granular; that is, gold, when surface-­mined, was often ‘harvested’ in flecks of fine-­ grained gold ‘dust,’ tiny crumbs of gold, which the Forty-­Niners ardently pursued and collected in order to amass their fortunes. As crumbs are known to attract vermin, gold’s conspicuous presence in California led to the establishment of boom towns that included not only hosts of miners and those who supported their efforts but also gambling establishments and thieves who sought to swindle or swipe that wealth for themselves. Historian John Boessenecker relates the general situation: ‘At the time of the gold discovery San Francisco was a tiny village of 800. By 1850 it had exploded into a boom town of 25,000 living in tents and wood frame houses.  .  .  . Dozens of saloons, gambling halls, fandango houses, and bordellos served the transient populace.’20 Not all of these establishments were hotbeds for crime and debauchery, but the sheer magnitude of numbers, primarily men, many without family ties, created an environment susceptible to the depredations of extralegal activity. Murrieta ostensibly filled a number of roles in this frontier setting at various times, dealing monte, dancing at fandangos for recreation, and eventually turning to highway robbery.21 Via their accumulation, the tiny crumbs of gold dust offered great wealth to patient miners and cunning swindlers. Crumbs, of course, signal the possibility of more abundant stores nearby; indeed, the placer mining common in the Southern Mines (where Murrieta was

The Fare of ‘Sanguinary Devils’ 33 reportedly forced off his claim) would give way to more industrialized, underground mining in the Northern Mines, which contained even richer deposits.22 The taste of gold at the surface would prove not to be satisfying; it only served to stir up an appetite for larger quantities of gold at greater depths. Both Ridge’s novella and the Police Gazette version of the story set the tone for Murrieta’s adventures by drawing on the excitement and energy that accompanied the discovery of gold in California, mimicking and reinforcing the voracious appetite for this precious metal that drove the mass influx of immigrants into the United States during the Gold Rush. This obsession over gold, as seen in the sensationalized portrayal of Western outlaws like Ridge’s Murrieta, reflects real obsessions for gold among young miners and entrepreneurs of the time, outlaw or not. As Boessenecker points out, ‘The California Gold Rush was more than just a movement of people onto a mining frontier; it was a state of mind.’23 This obsessive appetite would prove to be insatiable, prompting men to steal gold from one another and kill for it, leading to the highest murder rate in American history during peacetime to this day.24 Ridge generally condemns the killings and thefts that he represents in Life and Adventures, but his giddy appreciation for the material wealth and power inherent in the yellow substance considerably weakens that stance. Among readers of sensationalized criminal biography, Ridge whets an appetite for gold that would increase with the Police Gazette publication, an increasing appetite that parallels the voracity of the outlaws’ appetites for frontier game meat, another ‘superabundant’ resource perceived to be up for grabs in the fertile regions of California.25

Main Course This region was, in one respect in particular, adapted to the purpose for which it was chosen, and that is, it abounded in game of every kind—­elk, antelope, deer, grizzly bears, quails, grouse, and every species of smaller animals most desirous for food.26

The portrayal of the outlaws’ voracious appetite for gold in Ridge’s novella and the Police Gazette corresponds to the texts’ depiction of the outlaws’ physical appetite, showcased mainly in carnivorous feasts in which the participants eat and drink to excess, dancing, singing, and telling stories around a campfire. The outlaws’ diet of large quantities of game meat overlaps with that of the American frontiersman or pioneer, feasting upon the abundant wildlife all around, which, according to both Ridge and the Police Gazette narrator, is practically offering itself up for consumption to humans passing through the region. As with the descriptions of gold, the emphasis of both texts on the sheer vastness of this

34  Jason Hogue raw material resource and its desirability invites readers into a colonialist celebration of this excessive wealth of the land, embodied in the proceedings of the campfire feasts.27 Additionally, the excessive abundance invites readers to witness a mode of careless abandonment in which partakers in the feasts quickly devour all, consuming anything they can get their hands on, cashing in on the promise of America’s limitless plenty—­a promise that Murrieta was ostensibly denied. Sadly, around the same time that the Police Gazette plagiarist was multiplying the number of feasts and increasing the consumption of animals in the Murrieta story (an imaginary increase of biomass), many real animals in the West were being hunted and killed to the extent that some of them were becoming nearly extinct, most notably the American bison and the grizzly bear.28 Early in his novella, Ridge refers to these abundant game animals, large and small, as ‘most desirous for food.’ Like his tantalizing descriptions of ‘harvestable’ California gold, his description of the grazing wildlife of California’s Central Valley represents animals as a harvestable resource, something to be consumed pleasurably and without consequence. Both the quantity and the variety of animals seem to justify their evidently sole purpose of providing a large and eclectic smorgasbord for humans. Written out in list form, the animals begin to look less like individual species populating the plains and more like an extensive menu of ‘desirous’ food items. The narrator effectively creates a sense of appetite for this food source, an appetite that will be temporarily satisfied in a glut of consumption later in the text, during the campfire feast when Murrieta and his crew gorge themselves on game meat, swilling coffee and wine while recounting violent stories of their bravery and cunning. To a certain extent, this fantasy was realizable for some of the pioneers (and outlaws) in America’s frontier lands, for a limited period of time at least, because of the widespread availability of game meat through hunting. The representation of large quantities of food being consumed would not have seemed peculiar to many American readers at the time. Joseph R. Conlin notes: They were a very well fed people, the Americans. They were far and away the best-­fed people in the world in the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1849 the mean daily energy consumption of Americans was a little more than four thousand calories, a third in excess of what today’s nutritionists recommend for a fair-­sized and moderately active male in the prime of life.29 Nor would it have been unlikely that among those four thousand calories, a significant portion of them would have been comprised of meat—­a symbol that conveyed for American eaters prosperity and status.30 Jennifer Jensen Wallach discusses the carnivorousness of the fledgling American diet, characterizing Americans from the early colonial period onward

The Fare of ‘Sanguinary Devils’ 35 as ‘a nation of enthusiastic carnivores.’31 Even frontier families and Forty-­Niners managed reasonably well, the miners and pioneers traveling to California by land faring much better than those who arrived by sea; in fact, the overland pioneers were more likely to die from injury than from hunger.32 Furthermore, the consumption of game meat was not a rare indulgence by any means. Much of the meat consumed, particularly in the rural South and on the Western frontier, consisted of a variety of game animals, comparable to the animals that Ridge’s outlaws devour. At the time of the Gold Rush, consumption of game meat was actually quite common for rural and urban eaters alike.33 As Conlin reports, ‘When a country-­bred forty-­niner turned to the wild for his food, he was indulging himself in no novelty.’34 Contemporary cookbooks aimed at urban readers featured a large variety of venison recipes, not to mention recipes for game animals such as hare, wild duck, quail, grouse, and many others.35 This list of game meat potentially on an American dinner menu corresponds to the menu items enjoyed by Murrieta and his gang. Of the types of game animals Ridge mentions that ‘abounded’ in the Arroyo Cantua region (Ridge spells it ‘Cantoova’), we find the outlaws eating four of them at their extravagant feast: deer, bear, quail, and grouse. A  1904 Spanish translation of Life and Adventures, attributed to Ireneo Paz and based on the Police Gazette version, embellishes Ridge’s campfire feast even further, adding roasted rabbits and hares into the mix, as well as wild turkey.36 While Ridge may not have been exaggerating about the quality and quantity of wildlife in California, the feasts in the sensational Murrieta texts still engage in a kind of colonialist fantasy in relation to the unexplored ‘West’ that imagines an unrealistic, merry men-­like community of self-­sufficient outlaws/­frontiersmen thriving in the wilderness. The lust for abundant food and its extravagant consumption soars to new heights in Ridge’s depiction of the American frontier and its providential offering of animal life. In medieval outlaw tales, this absurd abundance draws upon the utopian conception of the Land of Cockayne, a dreamland that imagines a world so far removed from want that it engages with the comically indulgent and excessive. Ridge’s campfire feast for Murrieta, although similar in its superabundance—­its carefree consumption of meat and intoxicating beverages, its associations with violence, and its remote location hidden away from civilization—­modifies and updates the European medieval feast with its Californian context and environment. One of the most notable of these changes is the menu, much more varied than the typical Robin Hood feast in the medieval greenwood. Stephen Knight explains, ‘The three elements of the meal—­bread, venison, and something to drink—­recur regularly in the medieval texts. It is rare that the meal is more elaborate than this.’37 Moreover, although Ridge mentions deer among the game meat consumed by the Mexican outlaws, venison consumption would have resonated very differently with nineteenth-­century

36  Jason Hogue Americans than it would have for medieval English audiences reading or hearing tales of Robin Hood and his merry men, who would have been seen as defying the authority of the king by poaching deer off land reserved for the royal hunt.38 However, there is already more than a trace of Ridge’s prodigal attitude toward game meat in the early poem ‘Robin Hood and the Monk,’ in which Little John instructs the merry men to ‘spare non of this venison,/­That gose in thys vale.’39 While this injunction could be construed as simply promoting a particularly aggressive policy of defiance toward authority, the command to ‘spare non’ suggests a profligacy that seems to carry forward to the behavior of Ridge’s insatiable outlaws in their colonialist conquest of a harsh but survivable landscape. If indeed these California outlaws had hidden in the mountains, on the run, they would have faced certain hardship. Dietary complications often arose for pioneers, especially for rugged trappers or ‘mountain men.’ Despite the abundance of game meat, sunny days could ruin meat if it was not salted down quickly enough.40 Additionally, for frontiersmen facing winter in the mountains, ‘there was a painful “withdrawal” period from an all-­meat, protein-­intensive diet into one of leaner fare, usually camas root, pine bark, moss, juniper berries, and salmon.’41 However, Ridge’s fantasy positions Murrieta and his outlaws close to nature in this uncivilized wilderness, free from the constraints and injustices of Anglo-­dominated society, even at the same time as they are apparently susceptible to the inhuman, animal instincts characteristic of inhabitants of such places. Sarah Harlan-­Haughey observes that in medieval literature, English outlaws like Robin Hood are ‘hunted, tracked, and at times slaughtered by humans, much as they themselves might track and slaughter animals.’42 This situation is definitely the case for Murrieta and his men, who are tracked and hunted down on multiple occasions, eventually slaughtered when California ranger Harry Love and his posse attack the outlaws at the end of the Murrieta story.43 But they also live off of the land while they are being hunted, enjoying in festive and massive consumption the animal ‘wealth’ provided by the countryside. In this way, Ridge’s feasts oscillate between elements of historical realism and romantic fantasy. The feasts of Murrieta in the California countryside draw upon traditional outlaw sources that depict forest festivities, incorporating them into the comparable wilderness setting of the American West. Ridge portrays to a certain extent the historical phenomenon of increased crime surrounding the Gold Rush terrain but also imaginatively participates in and builds upon the greenwood fantasy space of Robin Hood tales.44 Thus, Murrieta’s feast is a variant of what Harlan-­ Haughey calls the ‘absurd feast’ of medieval outlaw tales, ‘a world of dinnertime nonsense, a nonsensical realm of food and topsy-­turvy violence, a Mad Tea Party eternal in the depths of the forest.’45 For Joaquin and his band, ‘the rugged arroyos are their Sherwood Forest,’46 in Lowe’s words, but nonetheless their escapes to the ‘depths’ of the mountainous regions

The Fare of ‘Sanguinary Devils’ 37 and arroyos of California enable their riotous feasts that blur the realistic settings into fantastical realms. Harlan-­Haughey emphasizes that the literary outlaws of Robin Hood’s absurd feast enacted a kind of fantasy that would not have been available to the real, historical outlaws of England around that time, ‘a wishful fantasy of more food, a riotous dream of plenty, which would have been impossible for a real outlaw, as well as for many real people who enjoyed these rymes.’47 Many of the readers of Ridge’s novella and the Police Gazette, though, did live in various degrees as frontiersmen who consumed sufficient, if not large, quantities of game meat, the absurdity of such consumption related not to its actual occurrence but to its participation in the fantasy of ‘settling’ America’s wilderness, incorporating the ‘wild’ West into ‘civil’ America, in no small part via the killing and consumption of its wild animals. Although venison is one among a number of possible entrees on the frontier campfire menu, the meat of one wild animal in particular appears more frequently than any other creature in Murrieta’s feasts: that of the grizzly bear, an animal intimately associated with both the American frontier and, more specifically, the state of California. In the Murrieta story, the California grizzly effectively replaces the deer of medieval outlaw tales, not as a symbol of resistance to authority but as a signifier of wild, untamable nature. While not many Americans are known to consume bear meat today, it was a common feature of a frontier diet, especially in California following the increased immigration brought on by the Gold Rush. Tracy Storer and Lloyd Tevis report that ‘grizzlies were rarely hunted for their meat before the gold rush, but the large influx of energetic Americans in that period resulted in a great increase in “meat hunting.” ’48 Contemporary reports of how bear meat tasted varied, likely as a result of bears’ omnivorous diets, which change with the seasons (for example, a bear that has been eating berries would probably taste a good bit better than one that has been eating salmon).49 Grizzly hunting for meat was ‘rather extensive and continued so long as there was a fair supply of the bears. The shooting of other wild game for market sale—­deer, elk, antelope, ducks, geese—­continued for years after grizzly flesh had become a rarity.’50 Alvin Coffey, an African American pioneer who immigrated to California during the Gold Rush, recorded some details regarding the quantities of bear meat being purchased and its cost: ‘The first week in January 1850 we bought 100 lbs. of bear meat at a dollar per pound. I asked the man how many pounds he had sold and he said, “I’ve sold 1300 lbs. And have 400–500 lbs. in camp yet.” ’51 Bears were also hunted for their skins and claws, as well as for their fat that was rendered into oil for cooking. Cathy Luchetti notes, ‘The fat rendered from an adult grizzly would yield “ten gallons of pure, white bear oil” that would sell in St. Louis for $75; the meat would last an entire year when jerked or termed into pemmican.’52 Murrieta could very well have eaten bear meat while hiding out; Ridge could not have verified this, but it is a likely possibility.

38  Jason Hogue In the texts, the outlaws convey an air of power and human mastery over nature by subduing the grizzly and consuming its flesh. The grizzly meat represented in Ridge’s novella is fresh, recently killed by the outlaws; the Police Gazette version, in one of its campfire scenes, includes a meal composed solely of bear meat, following a scene in which Three-­ Fingered Jack kills a large grizzly who is about to attack a woman in the outlaw camp. This instance shows another reason why bears were killed: simply because of the danger they posed to people living on the frontier. Paul Schullery confirms, ‘By the close of the nineteenth century . . . the grizzly bear . . . was still widely regarded as vermin to be destroyed at any opportunity.’53 This attitude, combined with the large quantities of bear meat consumed by frontiersmen (and bandits), would lead to the near eradication of these animals. This environmental cost reveals yet another dark side to a frontier appetite for unbridled consumption and colonial conquest. The destruction of bears, which Ridge represents as a necessary and even heroic act, calls into question the affinity that his frontier bandits are supposed to have with nature. However, both Ridge’s text and the Police Gazette closely link Murrieta and his gang with grizzly bears, beyond the fact that they like to eat them. Two California place names, Bear Mountain and Bear River, appear in Ridge’s book as sites of operation for the sometimes bear-­ like bandits. One of Murrieta’s outlaws, a large fellow named Guerra, ‘looked like a grizzly bear more than a human being.’54 In the Police Gazette, Three-­Fingered Jack quips to another outlaw, ‘Ha, it’s you, is it? I thought it was a grizzly.’55 This identification of the outlaws with the grizzly emphasizes their animality in their closeness to nature, not to mention their fierceness, but it also solidifies their precarious status as hunted men, ‘portrayed as the last and the greatest of their moribund breed.’56 Harlan-­Haughey classifies medieval outlaws in this way, but this distinction is even more relevant in Murrieta’s case: ‘Perhaps an unconscious identification of human beings with the processes impacting animal populations is present here. Like the wolves and bears, who are likewise hunted to extinction, at least in England, the outlaws represent the last of their extinct species.’57 Unlike the long-­extinct bears of the British Isles, the grizzly still maintained a formidable presence in California during the Gold Rush period. On the other hand, Ridge’s Murrieta was, like the grizzly, a threatened species, racialized as a victim of Anglo discrimination but also marked as ‘other’ in the dehumanizing affinities he and his men have with the bears they frequently make meals of. It should also be noted that even though Murrieta and his men could have played a tacit role in the demise of grizzly bears by hunting and eating them, the texts portray the strength and vitality of the grizzly as well, making them a worthy and formidable adversary for the outlaw protagonists. For example, an outlaw named Reyes suffers from a bear attack and ‘being utterly defenceless [sic], was horribly mangled.’58 Though he

The Fare of ‘Sanguinary Devils’ 39 manages to survive the attack, Reyes is so badly injured that his companions are forced to leave him in the arroyo, ‘as he must certainly die, and they could do him no good.’59 In the Police Gazette, another outlaw dreams that ‘one of the monsters had torn me from limb to limb in a hand-­to-­paw encounter.’60 In a word, the grizzlies of these texts were also invited to the ‘feast of America’ from time to time, even if they were ‘monsters.’ Though beast, the grizzly is quintessentially American; Murrieta’s outlaws, however, are never granted such honorary citizenship. In representing the outlaws in close proximity to the grizzly in locale, temperament, and endangered status, Ridge levels the playing field to an extent, acknowledging the agency of non-­human life in the wilderness environment, even as he dehumanizes the Mexican outlaws as ferocious, bear-­like beasts. Alternatively, the Police Gazette plagiarist momentarily contemplates a potential cross-­species kinship in highlighting the likeness of human hand and bear paw, but this glimpse is a decidedly fleeting one. With another fleeting glance, we can also see moments of ethnic cultural agency in the space of the campfire feast, in which traditional Mexican food styles and preparation contrast with the more general frontier diet of America’s Southwest, raising the possibility of resistance to the dominant culture through an affirmative portrayal of marginalized eating habits. The Police Gazette emphasizes these features more so than Ridge does, but unfortunately, they often fall into the category of gross racial stereotyping, probably calculated to unsettle American audiences all too eager to view Mexican immigrants in a negative light.61 However, the campfires of these texts do bridge a certain divide in Mexican and American frontier identities, if only insofar as they inhabit an imaginary space of masculine conquest over nature, in which race is obscured temporarily in the smoke of roasted game meat, consumed by everyone present, accompanied by their chatter of violent stories of adventure. In this convergence of national identities in the borderlands of the frontier setting, Ridge’s text and its plagiarism dart figuratively back and forth across the Mexican-­American border, the possibilities of recognizing its contradictions flickering in the shadows, but ultimately these texts affirm a colonialist vision and version of America that consumes and appropriates such culture rather than celebrating or fully embracing it. As the Police Gazette version of Ridge’s story was translated into other languages, the adaptations began to incorporate aspects of local culture and cuisine in a presumably more authentic manner. For example, Paz’s expansion of the Police Gazette imagines Ridge’s feast in significantly greater detail, embracing and mimicking the atmosphere of superabundance but introducing a specific style of eating: [M]ore than a hundred small Indian mats were covered with tin plates of frijoles and tortillas, cans of preserved oysters and lobsters, fruits, jams and jellies. At the side of each mat lay a tin cup, a bunch

40  Jason Hogue of cigaritos and a bottle of sparkling wine, forming altogether an ample and luxurious banquet, and one that might have tempted many a city epicure. At a signal from the cooks, the fierce and hungry bandits became seated, each one opposite his mat, and with the utmost expedition proceeded to satisfy their appetite.62 This feast is notably more varied than Ridge’s primarily game meat-­based meal, with its inclusion of beans, tortillas, seafood, and even some fruit.63 This change possibly reflects a more plant-­based diet representative of earlier Mesoamerican cooking traditions that informed the later fusions of Indigenous and Spanish eating habits developing in Mexico after the Spanish colonial period. 64 Wallach notes of Mexican foodways, ‘The corn, beans, and chilies that were the mainstays in the Mesoamerican diet were supplemented with ingredients such as squash, tomatoes, chocolate, and fruit.’65 This vegetarian focus would change with the arrival of the more carnivorous Spanish colonists, but remnants of the Indigenous habits persisted into the American period. When the upper portion of California was ceded to the United States following the Treaty of Guadalupe-­Hidalgo in 1848, local eating traditions in California did not change overnight. However, there was an active resistance to long-­ held regional traditions on the part of Anglo immigrants who preferred to hold on to their own dietary habits and customs, regardless of their change of environment. Conlin observes, ‘Despite the fact that Chileans and Mexicans were numerous in California—­South American and Mexican foods and styles of preparation had little impact on the Californians and, over several generations, their cultural heirs.’66 Ridge recognized and depicted Mexican-­ inspired foodways in his novella, but cultural representation in this manner did not amount to immediate acceptance among the majority of Anglo readers. Anglo Americans leaned toward an affected French diet instead, looking down on the Mexican immigrants and the Spanish-­speaking Californios: ‘They “ate French” because cuisine francaise represented to them what the rich ate back East. By the same principle, they were unlikely to adopt the foodways of a people whom they had just defeated in war, whom they were driving from the mines with force and the Foreign Miner Tax of 1850.’67 Thus, it makes sense that the American-­published Police Gazette, in an attempt to expose criminality and the perceived threats to civilized society posed by Mexican troublemakers like Murrieta, would add to Ridge’s story two different scenes of French pioneers and miners having their dinner interrupted by the Mexican outlaws raiding their camps. One of these scenes portrays the Mexicans treating themselves to the French cuisine after killing four Frenchmen guarding the camp: ‘the bandits proceeded to refresh themselves with the breakfast which had already been cooked by the Frenchmen.’68 The Police Gazette narrator heightens the crime of murder with the more trivial but highly meaningful act of stealing

The Fare of ‘Sanguinary Devils’ 41 food. Already having been cooked, the food they steal is not only an easy grab but also, having been prepared by French hands, represents the epitome of effete food culture in the eyes of Americans at the time. With this incident, the Police Gazette suggestively positions what amounts to a barbarian group of uncivilized Mexican marauders raiding and ransacking the very stores of polite civilization, betraying a fear of the loss of civilization through the image of stolen French food. The Police Gazette takes the scene a step further, portraying the outlaws putting on airs, ‘discussing the merits of sundry highly flavored dishes, the ingredients of which would have puzzled Prince Soyer himself to discern.’ 69 However, predictably, the outlaws themselves are interrupted during their stolen meal, this time by Americans. Not found in Ridge’s novella, this added campfire scene suggests a heightened awareness in the Police Gazette of the centrality of food and foodways in the battle over the Western frontier and the construction of American identity. The plagiarist realistically populates the spaces around campfires with a melting pot of nationalities and ethnicities, but ultimately favors a vision in which (Anglo-­)Americans are in control of stirring the pot. The colonialist underpinnings of the texts thus not only hierarchize humans as masters of nature but also position humans in racial hierarchies with white Americans and Europeans populating the upper end of polite society, evidenced by their culinary provenances, which must need to be kept preserved from dark, marauding Mexicans, who ironically threaten to appropriate European culture rather than the other way around. Regardless of the added ingredients to the Police Gazette’s feast, it is still a conspicuously masculine ritual of roasting meat on an open flame, what anthropologist Lévi-­Strauss terms ‘exocuisine,’ as opposed to ‘endocuisine,’ or indoor cooking, which he associates with boiling.70 Martin Jones emphasizes, ‘a roast is an extravagant, theatrical meal.’71 The feasts of Ridge’s Murrieta are no exception. Likewise, the proceedings of the feast in the Police Gazette correspond with Jones’ description of the primal beginnings of the ‘modern meal’: In the centre are food and warmth. . . . Encircling the food is an intimate group, whose seating depends on rank and gender according to a mutually understood code. Their bodies are embellished in a manner that reflects status, and they are deep in conversation.72 Compare this scene to that of the Police Gazette: At one end of the fire sat Joaquin and his lovely Clarina, flanked on the right by Reynardo Feliz and his charming Marguerite, and on the left by Juan Cardoza and the fair Mariquita. . . . Conversation flowed freely among the band, and each man endeavored to amuse the others by a song of patriotism or sentiment.73

42  Jason Hogue Jones carefully distinguishes between a meal and a feast, the latter being more of a competitive event that communicates status and power, a highly visible contest very different from an intimate meal shared with kin.74 In the Police Gazette, Murrieta’s status as the leader of the group is clear, sitting at the front end of the fire and flanked by his lieutenants. To Ridge’s feast, the Police Gazette also adds the women, ‘charming’ and ‘fair,’ positioned next to their respective lovers, establishing their place in the bandit hierarchy. The conversation that flows ‘freely’ among the outlaws is actually an integral part of the social contest of the feast, as Jones describes it, building up and reinforcing the social hierarchies already visible in the ranked seating arrangements of the outlaws around the fire. These social and gendered hierarchies undergird the implicit colonialist hierarchies present in the texts, encouraging conspicuous displays expressing power relationships that subjugate and silence marginalized perspectives within the group. One of the songs of patriotism sung around the campfire, its lyrics fully written out in the Police Gazette version, is titled ‘Our Home is Mexico,’ a jaunty number that includes the line: ‘As to God above, to the maid we love, we repeat th’ exciting tale.’75 Although the women participate in such gatherings, their voices are rarely heard, drowned out as they are by the roaring and singing men. Mix these stories and songs of bold, bloody deeds with the ‘stimulating’ coffee and wine they drink, and the outlaws are well on their way toward their next violent episode. Rather than satisfying their voracious appetites, their indulgence in intoxicating beverages and sensational stories after the feast only whets their appetite for more blood and violence. Additionally, it is possible the coffee and wine consumed at such a feast would have been stronger than typical varieties. Of Mexican coffee, for instance, British writer H. C. Bailey commented in 1883 that ‘their coffee and chocolate surpassed anything I  ever tasted. One cup of coffee would in strength make at least six American.’76 The ‘sparkling’ wines of the feast may have referred to California’s Angelica wine, a sweet dessert wine in the Spanish tradition with a high alcohol content. The Police Gazette represents the outlaws drinking wine with reckless abandon, consuming it indulgently: ‘Five or six bottles were instantly placed in front of them, all of which were speedily drained to the last drop.’77 This over-­indulgence exaggerates and augments the level of animality Ridge suggests of the outlaws in the wilderness setting—­connecting not just their bloody meat-­eating, but also their wine-­gulping habits with a baser animal nature. ‘Wine, which resembles blood,’ Wallach notes, elaborating on the classical conception of bodily humors, ‘was thought to actually increase levels of blood. In ingesting an animal, a person was thought to be prone to take on characteristics from the animal.’78 The wine and animals consumed at the outlaws’ feasts, however, are not enough to satisfy the vicious Three-­Fingered Jack and his thirst for blood.

The Fare of ‘Sanguinary Devils’ 43 We see here, then, another parallel to the ‘Land of Cockayne’ feast: ‘the outlaws’ consumption does not remain restrained and orderly, but often spirals out into violence and uncouthness, a process buttressed by the bestial motifs already inherent in the outlaw material.’79 A difference in these Murrieta texts, however, resides in a struggle over the meaning of identity in terms of ‘Mexican’ and ‘Yankee’ (i.e. American), represented here as being incompatible with each other. As might be expected, the outlaws’ exuberant consumption of alcohol eventually leads to a fight breaking out around the fireside. Significantly, the fight is between Jack and the sole American in the group, a rough character named Mountain Jim, who claims to be ‘a Yankee by birth,’ but ‘a Mexican at heart.’80 Three-­ Fingered Jack is absolutely unwilling to honor Mountain Jim’s elective conversion to a Mexican identity. The Police Gazette modifies the character of Mountain Jim into an extension of Ridge’s ‘lawless and desperate men, who bore the name of Americans but failed to support the honor and dignity of that title.’ Somewhere on the lower end of the spectrum of American identity, in this reckoning, Mountain Jim embodies a certain frontier spirit of rugged individualism, but his lawnessness has corrupted him, in the Police Gazette’s estimation, to a status closer to that of the Mexican bandits. Further, even Mountain Jim’s rugged survivalism must learn its limits, apparently, since an attempt to pass as a Mexican is ultimately incompatible with the notion of a specifically American rugged individualism, however that might be imagined. The Police Gazette is not subtle with its treatment of this ‘American’ outlaw (he is caught and hanged by authorities not long after this exchange), but as we will see in the following section, it is the extreme Three-­Fingered Jack, the most conspicuously and stereotypically ‘Mexican’ of Murrieta’s outlaws, who best reveals the dangers and contradictions of American frontier identity.

Dessert ‘Ha! Murieta,’ exclaimed Three-­Fingered Jack, as he reseated himself in front of the fire, ‘by all the saints! This has been a glorious night for me; what a delightful time I have had with those wretches, and how little they resisted. San Miguel! what a luxurious feast of blood!’81

In this final section, I conclude with the peculiarly racist and cannibalistic form in which Three-­Fingered Jack’s deadly sin of wrath manifests itself, drawing upon and building from the outlaws’ greed for gold and voracious carnivorous appetites. Harlan-­Haughey contrasts the diets of medieval outlaws with those of religious hermits, noting that: holy men who live in the woods are often depicted as subsisting on nuts and berries, while outlaws’ diets of flesh are often the focus

44  Jason Hogue of their narratives  .  .  . the hermits’ vegetarian diet brings them closer to their creator and to an Edenic state, while the outlaws’ fleshly one pushes them into a range of demonic, even cannibalistic, inhumanity.82 Although all of Murrieta’s bandits eat large quantities of meat and commit deplorable acts of theft and murder, Three-­Fingered Jack most closely matches this areligious, cannibalistic figure. Ridge depicts Jack, Murrieta’s ruthless sidekick, as a true villain, a cold-­blooded killer whose crude methods contrast to the measured approach of the nobler Murrieta. However, the Police Gazette plays this quality up to an extreme, to the extent that Three-­Fingered Jack is not only brutal but also bestial and near demonic in his thirst for blood—­Ridge’s ‘sanguinary devil’ fully realized. And while his body count is high and he does not hesitate to kill anyone, Jack takes a particular delight in killing Chinese miners, revealing a racist motivation to his violent actions. Jack’s murderous racism subverts Ridge’s story of Murrieta’s resistance to racial oppression, adding to the complicities in a narrative already hindered by colonialist baggage. In the Police Gazette, when Murrieta forbids Three-­ Fingered Jack from killing ‘so pitiful a looking creature,’ Jack claims, ‘I can’t help it; for somehow or other, I like to let out the blood of a Chinaman. It is so easy to kill them, that it makes it a kind of luxury to cut their throats.’83 One can hear an echo of Ridge’s narrator salivating over the superabundance and easy wealth to be had in California, both in its gold reserves and its hunting grounds; here, however, this abundance overflows in Jack’s perverse, racist desire to take the lives of the defenseless simply because of its apparent ease.84 The racist bent in Three-­Fingered Jack’s penchant for killing Chinese immigrants in the Police Gazette was already present in Ridge’s novel. The only difference between the original language and that of the plagiarized text is that Ridge’s Jack says he loves ‘to smell the blood of a Chinaman.’85 Ridge’s focus on the olfactory sense recalls the savory smells emitted from the outlaws’ campfire feasts, the bear and other meat roasted to ‘tempt the appetite of a hardy pioneer.’86 The narrator of the Police Gazette, on the other hand, tempts the reader who has an appetite for bloody narrations. In the embellished plagiarized text, the temptations of avarice and gluttony swell beyond Ridge’s violent scenes of theft and murder into Jack’s irrational blood-­rage. In this scene, Ridge’s relatively restrained narrative cuts off Jack’s depredations at least for a moment with Jack’s surly reply to his leader that he ‘can’t help it’; the Police Gazette, on the other hand, pushes Jack’s bloodlust for killing Chinese miners to its limit, portraying Jack as an outlaw that Murrieta can barely restrain. The bestial nature that medieval literary outlaws sometimes indulge rises here to stupendous proportions in the characterization of the predatory Three-­Fingered Jack. Harlan-­Haughey claims, ‘Once the outlaw has been absorbed into his habitat, he suffers a

The Fare of ‘Sanguinary Devils’ 45 loss of humanity . . . in order to enter into a new set of relationships with animality and landscape.’87 Rendered an animal, Jack likewise seeks to render other humans into animals. Jack boasts that he will kill his Chinese prisoners ‘like sheep,’ implicitly figuring himself as a wolf, a natural predator of those he dehumanizes. Both texts represent Murrieta as merciful and empathetic in contrast to Jack, but Murrieta, too, dehumanizes the Chinese in characterizing them as laughable, ridiculous-­looking creatures, incapable of protecting themselves.88 As with the Digger Indians whom Ridge also ridicules, the Chinese figure in his novella as an ‘other’ to the clever Murrieta and his outlaws, more proximate to ‘American’ than they, and therefore also apparently more human, even if Jack himself does not qualify on that count. Murrieta’s inability to control his lieutenant is most striking in yet another added campfire scene that the Police Gazette imagines, which showcases Three-­Fingered Jack’s inhumane brutality against the Chinese in a horrendous manner that intensifies his voracious appetite for blood. The Police Gazette juxtaposes a scene of outlaws eating a simple meal consisting of sardines and crackers with what Jack calls ‘a luxurious feast of blood,’ during which he gleefully executes eight Chinese prisoners.89 The scene transpires in a way that once again combines eating around a campfire with telling tales of violence, again ending in actual violence. Upon spying another campfire in the distance, Jack abandons the outlaw camp mid-­meal to investigate, despite Murrieta’s urging him to ‘finish your lunch first.’90 Jack replies that ‘there’s no danger of the sardines losing any of their warmth.’91 At this point, Murrieta demands a story of the outlaw Guerro, and the other men voraciously chime in: ‘Yes, yes! the story! the story!’92 After this story is told (and hungrily consumed), Jack returns with his prisoners, having killed one Chinese miner at the campsite and terrifying the rest into submission. He does not kill his captives immediately, but ‘commenced upon the sardines and crackers with good appetite,’ waiting to dispatch the prisoners as a kind of obscene entertainment for the group, a devilish dessert.93 Just as he excuses the delay of his lunch with the notion that the sardines will keep, Jack justifies this wait by saying, ‘Oh they’ll keep,’ not only animalizing the miners even further, but also hinting at his depraved cannibalistic appetite.94 Jack’s execution of the men is sadistic, taunting them with his knife and pushing them closer to the fire; even the outlaws lose their appetite with the thought of burning human flesh, and Guerro exclaims, ‘you are not going to burn him—­we can’t stand that on a sardine stomach!’95 The demonic Three-­Fingered Jack is beyond this concern, and the hints of cannibalism are clear when the blood of one of the victims whom he stabs partially extinguishes the fire and spatters on one of the outlaws. Harlan-­Haughey indicates that uncouth medieval outlaws ‘repeatedly break taboos against mixing raw human blood with their meals when they commit acts of violence at feasts.’ 96 Three-­Fingered Jack also breaks this taboo, feasting on

46  Jason Hogue the smell and sight of human blood, apparently not averse to even its taste. There is a similarity in this scene to the seemingly more ‘innocent’ entertainments around the outlaws’ other campfire feasts, in that Jack offers to actualize the imaginary bloody narrations into truly bloody entertainments. Before the slaughter, Jack announces, ‘I brought them for the amusement of the company, but must finish my supper before I begin the entertainment. I  have adopted the American maxim of “business before pleasure.” ’97 Jack’s wry adoption of this Americanism is striking, given his quarrel with Mountain Jim over his ‘Yankee’ birth. It is also telling of Jack’s tastes and priorities, for we understand that he means that eating sardines and crackers is the normal ‘business’ of providing the body with calories, the business of nourishment or basic sustenance. Jack derives genuine pleasure only after he eats, going on to ‘feast’ on the blood of the Chinese miners, following up Guerro’s story of bloody narrations with a dessert: a show of easy killing, in abundance, that amounts to a luxury in Jack’s mind, an ease of action that invokes the decadence associated with the wealth and status exploitable in America’s frontier lands. This conspicuous over-­consumption is too much for many of the outlaws, but in fact, Jack’s reprehensible actions embody the ‘feast of America’ taken to its voracious extreme. The idea of ‘business before pleasure’ calls to mind values like the Protestant work ethic, American individualism, and entrepreneurship, but portrayed in this perverse reworking, America’s appetite for more finds purchase in Jack’s racist love of killing Chinese men, whom he regards as easy prey, not significantly differentiated from the wild game hunted elsewhere in these Murrieta stories. Erica Stevens’ assertion that ‘Jack is in no way a model for the American individualism that Ridge saw in Murieta loses some of its force with the transfer of Jack’s character into the Police Gazette version.98 As Stevens suggests, Three-­Fingered Jack may be a foil to Murrieta such that ‘the way Ridge constructs Three-­Fingered Jack as darker in both complexion and nature makes sensible Ridge’s construction of race and racism throughout the novel.’99 In the Police Gazette, however, which actively works against a ‘social bandit’ model of Murrieta’s outlawry (unlike Ridge’s more ambivalent approach), the Mexican Three-­Fingered Jack emerges in his extremity as the American frontiersman par excellence. Jack’s racist bloodlust illuminates a deep pathology associated with America’s ideas of its own abundance and its desire or ability to waste its ‘resources’ in feasting habits that betray an appetite for violence itself. Jack’s bloody application of the truism ‘business before pleasure’ portends an America that misunderstands itself so wholly that it interprets pleasure as the self-­annihilation of its inhabitants, its humans, after having finished the mundane business of consuming the barely tasted calories derived from grains and animals. I briefly turn now to one final campfire story: the one Guerro tells while Three-­ Fingered Jack is off capturing the Chinese miners. The

The Fare of ‘Sanguinary Devils’ 47 violent events that he relates in the story immediately foreshadow and parallel the bloody actions Jack perpetrates when he returns to the camp. Guerro’s story narrates the details of a raid in which he participated while serving under the guerrilla chief Padre Jurata.100 The band of Mexicans under Jurata had come upon an American army encampment, espying the smoke from their campfire from a distance (in the same manner that Jack identifies the Chinese campsite). Jurata’s band had descended upon the unwary soldiers, ‘like serpents,’ indiscriminately cutting and slashing at bodies with their knives ‘in a perfect frenzy of excitement severing the neck-­joints and casting the gaping heads into the rushing water. It was a glorious affair.’101 The ‘frenzy of excitement’ that Guerro relates in the murder and decapitation of easy prey foregrounds the coming bloodbath in Murrieta’s camp at the hands of Three-­Fingered Jack, who also exults in the ‘glory’ of his killing. Jurata’s raid was a success, Guerro continues, with one significant exception: One of our men, a brave fellow who possessed great influence in the band, had thoughtlessly enwrapped himself in one of the dead men’s coats, and Jurata, mistaking him for an American, with a sudden and violent plunge of his huge bowie knife, stretched him lifeless at his feet.102 Taking on the cloak of American identity, even for a brief moment, resulted in the death of this otherwise ‘brave fellow.’ Guerro’s story in the Police Gazette thus subtly comments on Three-­Fingered Jack’s momentary identification with American sensibilities when he performs his grisly executions. As with the incident at the French camp invaded by Mexican marauders, this harrowing scene is meant to terrify American audiences and bias them against supposedly ruthless Mexicans who are especially anti-­American in their bloodlust. The text’s sympathies are unclear, however, because of Jack’s flirtations with Americanisms. The question seems to be: who should we be careful about mistaking for an American? The phrasing of this question is potentially useful, for it also recalls Mountain Jim’s attempt to self-­identify in the opposite direction, claiming a Mexican identity based on where his ‘heart’ is. Cultural, ethnic, and national identities cannot be so easily exchanged, not in the way that stories are exchanged by a warm fire, anyway. But, without a doubt, identities can often get mixed up and confused, especially in the borderlands and regions marked as ‘frontiers.’ The representations of frontier feasting in the early stories of Joaquin Murrieta contain a combustible mix of carnivorous exocuisine, drunken revelry, and graphic tales of violence, all caught up in the frenzied swirl of excitement that historians have dubbed innocuously the ‘Gold Rush.’ In the embers of these campfires, we can perceive the colonial ‘feast’ of America that continues today; we should probably hesitate before warming up at that fire.

48  Jason Hogue

Notes 1 I want to thank the editors of this volume, Alex Kaufman and Penny Vlagopoulos, for their gracious and detailed feedback on earlier drafts of this essay. I  would also like to thank my colleagues Miriam Rowntree, Jeffrey Marchand, and Connor Stratman, who all helped me at various stages of the drafting process. Ridge, Life and Adventures, 70–1. 2 ‘Yellow Bird’ was John Rollin Ridge’s Cherokee name and was the name he used to publish the first edition of Life and Adventures. 3 In this essay, I spell Murrieta with two ‘r’s, following the Hispanophone tradition, rather than the single ‘r’ which John Rollin Ridge and others have used. When referring directly to Ridge’s work, however, or when quoting from it or later plagiarized versions that reproduce the ‘Murieta’ spelling, I retain the original spelling for the sake of accuracy. 4 Various versions of the legend circulated through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, following the publication of Ridge’s book, which was subsequently plagiarized in 1859, adding to the confusion surrounding Murrieta’s ‘true’ story. As influential historian Joseph Henry Jackson explains in his introduction to the 1955 reprint of Ridge’s Life and Adventures (xi-­l), two early California historians, Hubert Howe Bancroft and Theodore H. Hittell, accepted Ridge’s book as credible information, despite some clearly fictive elements. Jackson argued throughout his career that the Murrieta story was essentially a myth. He states that Ridge’s ‘narrative, masquerading as fact, was an obvious fiction, abounding in “conversations” between Murieta and his men in secret caves and the like; it was built frankly to the traditional Robin Hood blueprint,’ xxvii. Later studies in the twentieth century, on the other hand, pushed back against Jackson’s claim, aided by the discovery of new evidence in the form of contemporary reports from regional California newspapers. See especially Remi Nadeau’s The Real Joaquin Murieta, and James F. Varley’s The Legend of Joaquín Murrieta. 5 See Rodolfo Gonzalez’s epic poem I Am Joaquin: An Epic Poem, the seminal Chicano text that recruits Murrieta in this way. 6 See, for example, Leal, ‘Introduction’ to Life and Adventures of the Celebrated Bandit Joaquin Murrieta: His Exploits in the State of California; Lowe, ‘Joaquin Murieta, Mexican History, and Popular Myths of Freedom’; Sandell, ‘John Rollin Ridge’s Joaquín Murieta and the Legacy of the Mexican American Frontier’; Irwin’s ‘Toward a Border Gnosis of the Borderlands: Joaquin Murrieta and Nineteenth-­Century U.S.-­Mexico Border Culture’ and Bandits, Captives, Heroines, and Saints: Cultural Icons of Mexico’s Northwest Borderlands; and Hausman, ‘Becoming Joaquin Murrieta: John Rollin Ridge and the Making of an Icon,’ among others. The theory of the ‘social bandit’ was developed by Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm in his book Primitive Rebels; the concept was later clarified in his book Bandits, where he defines social bandits as ‘peasant outlaws whom the lord and state regard as criminals, but who remain within peasant society, and are considered by their people as heroes, as champions, avengers, fighters for justice, perhaps even leaders of liberation, and in any case as men to be admired, helped and supported,’ 20. Hobsbawm names Murrieta as an example of a social bandit in the first chapter of his Bandits. 7 Lowe, ‘Joaquin Murrieta, Mexican History,’ 37. 8 A number of scholars interpret Ridge’s novella as at least semi-­autobiographical because of circumstances in Ridge’s life that seem to resonate with Murrieta’s struggles. Ridge, half-­Cherokee and son of a prominent tribal leader who advocated for assimilation and faced discrimination from other members of

The Fare of ‘Sanguinary Devils’ 49 the Cherokee Nation. Ridge witnessed the murder of his father and grandfather at the hands of a disagreeing faction in the tribe. Killing a man himself, Ridge fled to Missouri and eventually ended up in California. Although Ridge’s biography is fascinating and his Cherokee background complicates the themes of American identity and race in his novella, this essay is more concerned with the textual representation of food and feast in the frontier and does not explore specific biographical details of Ridge’s life. For such details, see especially Parins’ biography, John Rollin Ridge: His Life and Works. On the issue of race as it is portrayed in Life and Adventures, see, for example, Mondragón’s ‘The [Safe] White Side of the Line,’ which explores Ridge’s personal life and politics as well as his portrayal of race in the novella. See also Streeby, American Sensations (especially chapter  9), and Stevens, ‘Three-­Fingered Jack.’ Stevens’ essay focuses on Murrieta’s ‘darker’ sidekick, highlighting the complexity of the novella’s treatment of race and color even within the ostensibly coherent band of Mexican outlaws. 9 The ‘frontier thesis,’ advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner, popular throughout most of the twentieth century, has received much critical pushback because of its failure to acknowledge factors such as race, ethnicity, and gender. I deploy the term ‘frontier’ critically, acknowledging its roots in a perspective steeped in American exceptionalism. On food in the context of the burgeoning western U.S. frontier and early American identity formation, see especially Wallach, How America Eats. 10 The plagiarism of Ridge’s work by the California Police Gazette has been noted by a number of scholars. Titled ‘The Life of Joaquin Murieta, Brigand Chief of California,’ this text was published in 1859 in ten weekly installments before being published as a book. For an account of the afterlife of this plagiarized version, including translations of it in French and Spanish, see Leal’s Introduction (xxv-­xxxvi) to the English translation of Life and Adventures (2001), originally a Spanish translation published in Mexico in 1904 by Ireneo Paz and based on the Police Gazette plagiarism. See also Parins’ biography of Ridge, John Rollin Ridge: His Life and Works, 106–08, for an account of Ridge’s understandably negative reaction to the plagiarism of his work. In this essay and in the notes, I refer to the plagiarized text as Police Gazette, for the sake of simplicity and to differentiate it from the similar title of Ridge’s book. 11 Ridge, Life and Adventures, 71. 12 Police Gazette, 23. 13 Ridge, Life and Adventures, 82. 14 Ibid., 8. ‘Placer mining’ is the term for surface mining, namely the mining of stream or river bed deposits for minerals such as gold. The image of prospectors ‘panning’ for gold has become standard in popular culture, but miners also employed other methods. The Stanislaus River, a tributary of the San Joaquin River, was one of the major locations of gold mining activity during the California Gold Rush. 15 Ibid., 9. Later, as a result of changes made in a Spanish translation of the Police Gazette edition, Murrieta would come to be viewed by some as Chilean; see Leal, ‘Introduction,’ xxxiv. 16 Ibid., 14. 17 Ibid., 26. 18 Police Gazette, 65. 19 Lowe, ‘Joaquin Murrieta, Mexican History,’ 25–6. 20 Boessenecker, Gold Dust and Gunsmoke, 6. 21 See Johnson, Roaring Camp, 99–140, on the particulars of the domestic and day-­to-­day life in the mining camps, including details related to drinking, dancing, gambling, and prostitution.

50  Jason Hogue 22 Ibid., 11–12. In Johnson’s book, the author attempts to remedy what she perceives as an unbalanced attention by historians on the Northern Mines at the expense of the more diverse mining operations to the south. 23 Boessenecker, Gold Dust and Gunsmoke, 11. 24 Ibid., 11–12. 25 On the audience of Life and Adventures, see, for example, Goeke, ‘Yellow Bird and the Bandit,’ which examines the novella in the context of the dime novel era, positing its audience as largely urban and middle class. However, John C. Havard, in his essay ‘John Rollin Ridge’s Joaquin Murieta: Sensation, Hispanicism, and Cosmopolitanism,’ asserts that Ridge himself associated his audience with the working class. 26 Ridge, Life and Adventures, 28. 27 For a somewhat different take on the vastness of California’s landscape, see Lowe, ‘Space and Freedom,’ which posits Murrieta’s environs, though Edenic, as ultimately imprisoning. Lowe focuses less on the setting as a material environment and more on landscape as metaphor for the mind. 28 Estimates of the American bison population west of the Mississippi River prior to 1870 vary, but the consensus is that they numbered in the millions if not tens of millions, with estimates as high as sixty million bison. By the middle of the 1880s, they had been hunted to near extinction. Today, bison have made something of a recovery as a result of conservation efforts, numbering around 500,000. See Hedrick, ‘Conservation Genetics and North American Bison,’ for an overview of the near extinction and recovery of plains bison in North America, as well as remarks on current conservation issues related to bison. Grizzly bear numbers in North America were also plentiful prior to the Gold Rush. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s website (‘Grizzly Bear’), the grizzly population in the lower 48 states was approximately 500,000 at the beginning of the nineteenth century. By the end of the century, grizzlies in the West had been virtually eliminated. Like the bison, grizzlies today have made something of a recovery, thanks to the work of conservationists, to the extent that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently removed the population of grizzlies (approximately 690 in 2017 at Yellowstone National Park) from the threatened species list. I use the term ‘grizzly’ in this essay because of its historically common usage and its use in the texts under consideration. Scientists typically refer to the grizzly as the North American brown bear. The California grizzly, a very large subspecies of the North American brown bear, is completely extinct. 29 Conlin, Bacon, Beans, and Galantines, 6. 30 Wallach, How America Eats, 13. 31 Ibid., 97. Wallach reports that ‘by the late colonial period, Americans were consuming 150 pounds of meat per capita per year, a figure that remained relatively constant until the middle of the twentieth century,’ 98. 32 Conlin, Bacon, Beans, and Galantines, 6. 33 Ibid., 15. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. Conlin mentions venison steak, pasty, hash, ham, sausage, and soup. Some other wild birds potentially on the menu included pigeon, partridge, pheasant, plover, snipe, woodcock, and bobolinks. 36 Paz, Life and Adventures, 33. 37 Knight, ‘Feasts in the Forest,’ 162. 38 On the forest as a legal concept in medieval England and its relation to Robin Hood’s greenwood, see Pollard, Imagining Robin Hood, 58–64. 39 Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, 41, (lines 145–46). 40 Luchetti, Home on the Range, 12.

The Fare of ‘Sanguinary Devils’ 51 41 Ibid. Here it should be acknowledged that the Police Gazette, in its embellishments and added details, does portray more realistic depictions of outlaws on the run, forced to forego meals for extended periods of time. 42 Ibid., 15. 43 There is some dispute over whether or not Harry Love and his rangers actually killed the outlaw known as Joaquin Murrieta. Varley is particularly critical of Love’s credibility. Regardless of the authenticity of their claims, however, Love’s posse presumably cut off Murrieta’s head and preserved it, afterwards displaying it in numerous California saloons and charging people a dollar to see it. These grisly showings, combined with murky accounts of the ultimate fate of Joaquin’s preserved head, have contributed to the mystique of Murrieta’s legend. It is believed that the head was destroyed while being displayed in a San Francisco museum during the 1906 earthquake. See Thornton, Searching for Joaquín, 151. 44 For corollaries on this phenomenon in scholarship on the forest of Robin Hood, see Keen, Outlaws of Medieval England, for a view of the imagined forest reflecting historical realities about highwaymen; see Pollard, Imagining Robin Hood, for a contrasting view that the greenwood was a literary utopian space, dreaming up, for the most part, both its wildness and its potential for freedom. 45 Ibid., 190. 46 Lowe, ‘Space and Freedom,’ 116. The connection between Murrieta and Robin Hood is implicit in Ridge’s novella and the Police Gazette. Walter Noble Burns would make this connection much more explicitly in his popular book The Robin Hood of El Dorado (1932). 47 Harlan-­Haughey, Ecology of the English Outlaw, 191. 48 Storer and Tevis, California Grizzly, 187. 49 See Storer and Tevis, California Grizzly, 188–91, for a number of these accounts, including one from 1863 that claims ‘the meat of the young grizzly resembles pork in texture and taste, exceeding it in juiciness and greasiness,’ and another from 1849 that gave the following modest review: ‘a steak cut from the haunch of the grisly bear, and roasted on a stick by a camp fire, is by no means despicable fare.’ 50 Ibid., 188. 51 Conlin, Bacon, Beans, and Galantines, 92. 52 Luchetti, Home on the Range, 12. 53 Schullery, Lewis and Clark among the Grizzlies, 199. 54 Ridge, Life and Adventures, 76. 55 Police Gazette, 69. 56 Harlan-­Haughey, Ecology of the English Outlaw, 17. 57 Ibid. 58 Ridge, Life and Adventures, 40. 59 Ibid. 60 Police Gazette, 63. 61 See Streeby, American Sensations, 258–74, on police gazettes, generally, and on the California Police Gazette’s portrayal of race in its representation of Murrieta, specifically, in the context of the instability in California following the Mexican-­American War. 62 Ibid., 24. 63 In Paz’s feast, the oysters remain, but the lobsters become canned squid, in Life and Adventures of the Celebrated Bandit Joaquin Murrieta, 33. On seafood in the American diet generally at this time, Conlin relates, ‘Even before commercial canning made preserved seafood available at a reasonable price, Americans were inclined to eat much more seafood of every kind than do we today,’ in Bacon, Beans, and Galantines, 14–5. Oysters were of special

52  Jason Hogue interest, and Conlin continues thus: ‘They played a curiously large role in American gourmandise by midcentury. They had become almost an obsession in the United States and a most democratic delicacy at that. While they graced the tables of fine restaurants in large eastern cities, they were also bolted by the ton in workingmen’s saloons (for a penny apiece on the waterfront) and rushed hundreds of miles into the interior even before the railroad. . . . In California and throughout the mining West, genus Ostrea became a mania. Along with champagne, oysters were the ‘symbols of wealth’ with which it was customary to celebrate good fortune. So voracious were the forty-­niners for them that by 1851 the oyster beds of San Francisco Bay were so critically depleted—­and the demand for oysters in the mines so tenacious—­that a schooner set off for the north with the explicit purpose of finding more,’ 119. 64 Luchetti, Home on the Range, 211. 65 Wallach, 72. 66 Conlin, Bacon, Beans, and Galantines, 180–81. 67 Ibid., 186. 68 Police Gazette, 59. 69 Ibid. ‘Prince Soyer’ seems to refer to the innovative French celebrity chef Alexis Soyer (1810–58) who served in the kitchens of Prince Polignac, French prime minister, and Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, in London. 70 See Levi-­Strauss, ‘The Culinary Triangle,’ 38. 71 Jones, Feast, 79. 72 Ibid., 98–9. 73 Police Gazette, 24. 74 See Jones, Feast, 149–51. 75 Police Gazette, 64. 76 Conlin, Bacon, Beans, and Galantines, 185. 77 Police Gazette, 67. 78 Wallach, How America Eats, 12. 79 Harlan-­Haughey, Ecology of the English Outlaw, 191. 80 Ibid., 27. 81 Police Gazette, 23. 82 Harlan-­Haughey, Ecology of the English Outlaw, 15. 83 Police Gazette, 72. 84 On the resentment felt by Americans toward the increasing numbers of Chinese immigrants during the Gold Rush, as well as an ambivalence toward their food and cooking habits, see Wallach, How America Eats, 170–78. See also Johnson, chapter 2 of Roaring Camp. 85 Ridge, Life and Adventures, 64, emphasis added. 86 Ridge, Life and Adventures, 71. 87 Harlan-­Haughey, Ecology of the English Outlaw, 2. 88 Police Gazette, 72. 89 Ridge also mentions the sardines and crackers (although not in an elaborate campfire scene like that of the Police Gazette), which ‘they generally carried with them,’ 89. The Police Gazette calls this mini-­feast an ‘anti-­dyspeptic meal,’ 20, an appropriate addition considering the amount of meat and alcohol the outlaws consume at other times. Wallach, in How America Eats, explains: ‘In the early nineteenth century, “dyspepsia,” the preferred contemporary term for indigestion, became a common complaint among eaters whose bodies rebelled against diets comprising greasy meats and gravies, ample carbohydrates and alcohol, and few fresh fruits and vegetables,’ 144. Bear meat was known for being particularly greasy. Hardtack, biscuits, and crackers were common frontier fare. See Williams, Wagon Wheel Kitchens, 14–17, for a discussion of their preparation and consumption along the Oregon Trail.

The Fare of ‘Sanguinary Devils’ 53 90 Police Gazette, 20. 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid., 21. 93 Ibid., 22. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid., original emphasis. 96 Harlan-­Haughey, Ecology of the English Outlaw, 14. 97 Police Gazette, 22, original emphasis. 98 Stevens, ‘Three-­Fingered Jack,’ 88. 99 Ibid., 92. 100 Jurata was based on Padre Jarauta, a Catholic priest and Mexican guerrilla in the Mexican-­American War. See Streeby, American Sensations, 272. 101 Police Gazette, 21. 102 Ibid.

Bibliography Boessenecker, John. Gold Dust and Gunsmoke: Tales of Gold Rush Outlaws, Gunfighters, Lawmen, and Vigilantes. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999. Conlin, Joseph R. Bacon, Beans, and Galantines: Food and Foodways on the Western Mining Frontier. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1986. Goeke, Joe. ‘Yellow Bird and the Bandit: Minority Authorship, Class, and Audience in John Rollin Ridge’s The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta.’ Western American Literature 37, no. 4 (2003): 453–78. Gonzales, Rodolfo. I Am Joaquin: An Epic Poem. Santa Barbara: La Causa Publications, 1967. ‘Grizzly Bear.’ U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Accessed December 30, 2017. www. fws.gov/­mountain-­prairie/­es/­grizzlyBear.php. Harlan-­Haughey, Sarah. The Ecology of the English Outlaw in Medieval Literature: From Fen to Greenwood. Outlaws in Literature, History, and Culture 1. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. Hausman, Blake M. ‘Becoming Joaquin Murrieta: John Rollin Ridge and the Making of an Icon.’ ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, University of California, Berkeley, 2011. Havard, John C. ‘John Rollin Ridge’s Joaquin Murieta: Sensation, Hispanicism, and Cosmopolitanism.’ Western American Literature 49, no. 4 (2015): 321–49. Hedrick, Philip W. ‘Conservation Genetics and North American Bison (Bison bison).’ Journal of Heredity 100, no. 4 (2009): 411–20. Hobsbawm, Eric. Bandits. Rev. ed. New York: The New Press, 2000. Irwin, Robert M. Bandits, Captives, Heroines, and Saints: Cultural Icons of Mexico’s Northwest Borderlands. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. –––. ‘Toward a Border Gnosis of the Borderlands: Joaquin Murrieta and Century U.S.-­ Mexico Border Culture.’ Nepantla: Views from Nineteenth-­ South 2, no. 3 (2001): 509–37. Jackson, Henry Joseph. ‘Introduction.’ In The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit, edited by John Rollin Ridge, xi–l. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955. Joaquin Murieta, the Brigand Chief of California. Fresno: Valley Publisher, 1967. First published 1859 in the California Police Gazette edition of The Life of Joaquin Murieta, the Brigand Chief of California.

54  Jason Hogue Johnson, Susan Lee. Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush. New York: Norton, 2000. Jones, Martin. Feast: Why Humans Share Food. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Keen, Maurice. The Outlaws of Medieval England. Rev. ed. New York: Routledge, 2000. Knight, Stephen. ‘Feasts in the Forest.’ In Telling Tales and Crafting Books: Essays in Honor of Thomas H. Ohlgren, edited by Alexander L. Kaufman, Shaun F. D. Hughes, and Dorsey Armstrong, 161–75. Festschriften, Occasional Papers, and Lectures XXIV. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2016. Knight, Stephen, and Thomas Ohlgren. Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales. 2nd ed. TEAMS Middle English Texts Series. Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University Press, 2000. Leal, Luis. ‘Introduction.’ In Life and Adventures of the Celebrated Bandit Joaquin Murrieta: His Exploits in the State of California. Translated by Francis P. Belle. Introduction translated by Francisco A. Lomeli and Miguel R. Lopez, ix–cxiii. Houston: Arte Público Press, 2001. Lévi-­Strauss, Claude. ‘The Culinary Triangle.’ In Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by Carole Counihan and Penny van Esterik, 40–7. New York and London: Routledge, 2008. Lowe, John. ‘Joaquin Murieta, Mexican History, and Popular Myths of Freedom.’ The Journal of Popular Culture 35 (2001): 25–39. –––. ‘Space and Freedom in the Golden Republic: Yellow Bird’s The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit.’ Studies in American Indian Literatures 4, no. 2 (1992): 106–22. Luchetti, Cathy. Home on the Range: A Culinary History of the American West. New York: Villard Books, 1993. Mondragón, Maria. ‘‘The [Safe] White Side of the Line’: History and Disguise in John Rollin Ridge’s The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit.’ American Transcendental Quarterly 8, no. 3 (1994): 173–87. Nadeau, Remi. The Real Joaquin Murieta: Robin Hood Hero or Gold Rush Gangster? Corona del Mar, CA: Trans-­Anglo Books, 1974. Parins, James W. John Rollin Ridge: His Life and Works. American Indian Lives. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. Paz, Ireneo. Life and Adventures of the Celebrated Bandit Joaquin Murrieta: His Exploits in the State of California. Translated by Francis P. Belle. Houston: Arte Público Press, 2001. Pollard, A. J. Imagining Robin Hood: The Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. Ridge, John Rollin. The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955. Sandell, David P. ‘John Rollin Ridge’s Joaquín Murieta and the Legacy of the Mexican American Frontier.’ Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 28, no. 2 (2003): 19–55. Schullery, Paul. Lewis and Clark Among the Grizzlies: Legend and Legacy in the American West. Guilford, CT: Falcon, 2002. Stevens, Erica. ‘Three-­Fingered Jack and the Severed Literary History of John Rollin Ridge’s The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta.’ ESQ 61, no. 1 (2015): 73–112.

The Fare of ‘Sanguinary Devils’ 55 Storer, Tracy I., and Lloyd P. Tevis. California Grizzly. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955. Streeby, Shelley. American Sensations: Class, Empire, and the Production of Popular Culture. American Crossroads 9. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Thornton, Bruce. Searching for Joaquín: Myth, Murieta and History in California. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003. Varley, James F. The Legend of Joaquín Murrieta: California’s Gold Rush Bandit. Twin Falls, ID: Big Lost River Press, 1995. Wallach, Jennifer Jensen. How America Eats: A Social History of U.S. Food and Culture. The American Ways Series. Lanham, MD: Rowman  & Littlefield, 2013. Williams, Jaqueline. Wagon Wheel Kitchens: Food on the Oregon Trail. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993.

3 ‘I’d Dream of Feasts’ Reading Southworth’s The Hidden Hand as a Dual Outlaw Narrative Ann Beebe

Since being reissued by Rutgers University Press in 1988, The Hidden Hand or, Capitola the Madcap (1859) by E. D. E. N. Southworth has received a significant amount of well-­deserved critical attention. The novel follows the journey of Capitola Black (Le Noir) as she discovers her identity as the heiress of a Virginia fortune. Some critics focus on the text’s subversion of gender roles while other scholars have examined the novel’s racial tensions or the context of the Mexican-­American War.1 More recently, critics have argued for recognizing the significance of its serialized publication from 5 February  1859 to 9 July  1859 in Robert Bonner’s famous story-­paper, the New York Ledger.2 Often included in the canon of sentimental literature, The Hidden Hand is a generic hybrid. Readers have noticed the influence of multiple genres on Southworth’s novel: ‘romance, war story, adventure tale, bildungsroman, travel narrative, domestic tale, fairy tale, mystery, [and] ghost story.’3 Yet one genre is noticeably absent from this list—­the outlaw narrative. Moreover, the underestimated weapon successfully deployed by the winning outlaw, the feast scene, has been overlooked by Southworth scholars. Like most of Southworth’s sensational novels, the plot of The Hidden Hand is complicated. There are numerous characters, and an unlikely number of coincidences bind them together. In brief, one villainous man, Colonel Gabriel Le Noir, attacks family and friends for decades; the main plot of the novel traces his downfall at the hands of his niece, Capitola Black. Spirited away at her birth by the midwife, Capitola is hidden in New York City until her teen years. Made aware of her existence, Le Noir’s enemy, Ira Warfield (a.k.a. Old Hurricane of Hurricane Hall), arranges to become Capitola’s guardian. Capitola wields her natural talents for outlawry mixed with an appreciation for food as a weapon, as seen in the suspenseful feast scene, to dismantle Le Noir’s network, including his son Craven and his confederate, Black Donald. Before the novel ends, she has also managed to reconcile Old Hurricane with his wronged wife, Marah Rocke; rescue a girl, Clara Day, from Le Noir’s plot to marry her against her will to Craven; and arrange for Clara’s wedding to Marah’s son Traverse, as well as her own marriage to Herbert

‘I’d Dream of Feasts’ 57 Greyson. Capitola’s success is due to her acceptance and manipulation of her outlaw nature. Outlaw narratives, whether in the British or the American tradition, distinguish carefully between the outlaw, a cultural hero, and immoral criminals. In his study of the outlaw in American folklore, Richard E. Meyer delineates the actions of an outlaw: ‘[h]olding up banks, trains, or Brinks armored cars is outlaw activity.’4 These crimes, if committed within a code of conduct, intrigue the general public when attributed to a handsome or charismatic man. Certain acts, however, are unsanctioned by the myth of the popular outlaw: ‘cold-­blooded and calculated murder, crimes against women and children, acts of sadism and terrorism’ are indefensible.5 In The Hidden Hand, there is one proudly self-­identified outlaw, Black Donald. ‘He stood six feet eight inches in his boots, . . . He had a well-­formed, stately head, fine aquiline features, dark complexion, strong, steady, dark eyes, and an abundance of long curling back hair and beard.’6 The novel promotes Black Donald’s outlaw identity by providing a criminal foil, Colonel Gabriel Le Noir. The Colonel possesses an inhuman magnetism and is labeled ‘the cunningest and most unscrupulous villain that the Lord ever suffered to live.’7 Most critics fuse the characters of Black Donald and Colonel Le Noir, but the men differ notably. The serialized development of the novel over five months displays a clear evolution of Black Donald. Initially he is a nameless dark figure who assists in the kidnapping and sale of Nancy Grewell and the baby Capitola.8 As the serial developed, Southworth recognized the benefits of distancing Black Donald from criminality and crafting him in the outlaw tradition. Therefore, while Black Donald is originally implicated in the murder of Eugene Le Noir, Capitola’s father, Colonel Le Noir later admits to this crime in his deathbed confession.9 Recognizing Black Donald’s placement in the outlaw tradition offers insight into the novel’s stance on authority. As two of the leading authorities on the outlaw narrative genre, Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren, observe, ‘the existence of an outlaw always implies there is something wrong with the law.’10 Classifying Black Donald as an outlaw in the novel is necessary to grasp Southworth’s critique of Southern patriarchal law; however, The Hidden Hand’s investment in the outlaw narrative genre goes much further. Readers have rightly been fascinated by the richness of Capitola’s character. Cap and her adventures created what one critic called ‘a cultural phenomenon.’11 Beyond the sensationalism, Capitola and Black Donald function as outlaw foils. As Black Donald himself reminds Capitola from his jail cell, ‘we outlaws bear no malice!’12 Black Donald and Capitola subvert conventional authority and engage in an outlaw competition for the territory around this Virginia town. Black Donald, an outlaw in the old-­fashioned Robin Hood tradition, and Capitola, an outlaw in the modern American tradition, commence a series of skirmishes for superiority. Capitola’s breed of outlawry—­independent,

58  Ann Beebe moral, and mischievous—­is motivated by her desire to affirm community over capricious authority. Her eventual victory over the criminal Le Noir and the outlaw Black Donald, in a suspenseful feast scene, validate an outlawry which defends the bonds of friendship and fellowship. Feasts and feasting in the political world and the outlaw community have a rich symbolic history. Ken Albala explains that a sixteenth-­century banquet, a culturally specific type of feast, ‘was highly politicized by nature. Its messages were carefully encoded through the choice of ingredients, how they were prepared and how the meal was served.’13 The first definition of a feast, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a ‘religious anniversary appointed to be observed with rejoicing.’ Passover, feast days of saints, and love (agape) feasts fit into this category.14 Art history is replete with works commemorating feast days in Church history. Some of the best known are The Last Supper (Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1495–1496), The Feast of Herod: Salome’s Dance (Filippo Lippi, c. 1460–1464), The Wedding at Cana (Paolo Veronese, 1563), and Belshazzar’s Feast (Rembrandt, c. 1635–1638). Examples of the second definition of a feast in the OED–‘a gathering for pleasure or sport’–can be found in the revelries of Black Donald and his band of outlaws. Very often, such feasting is used in literature to signify excess or gluttony.15 These feasts can also, according to Kaori O’Connor, be manipulated for the ‘creation and consolidation of community and identity through inclusion and exclusion.’16 Black Donald’s men remain loyal to him, even after months of imprisonment and the threat of execution. The tension-­filled feast that Black Donald and Capitola share at the end of the novel is associated with the OED’s fourth definition: ‘an unusually abundant and delicious meal . . . a rich treat.’ This feast for two people acts as an ‘expression of competition and conflict.’17 It is affiliated with representations of feasts in some Renaissance dramas which explore ‘the duplicity of hospitality, its ability to trick, lure, and expose the luckless guest to diabolical temptation.’18 Although Black Donald assumes he has gained control over Capitola by locking her in a room with him, she utilizes the conventions of the feast to outwit him. In doing so, Capitola’s usurpation of the tools of outlawry—­deception and disguise—­to defeat the outlaw cast in the mold of Robin Hood or Eustace the Monk, Black Donald, affirms the young woman’s position in the community she has created and protected.

‘The Merry Captain’: Black Donald, Outlaw Leader Black Donald, whose name alludes to Scottish folktales of the devil, has been alternatively categorized as ‘an assassin,’ ‘a villain,’ and ‘a violently conspiring antihero.’19 His criminal identity was reinforced in the popular imagination by the casting of John Wilkes Booth, future assassin of Abraham Lincoln, as the outlaw in one of the novel’s forty dramatic adaptations.20 Viewing Black Donald as an outlaw figure as defined by Ohlgren

‘I’d Dream of Feasts’ 59 and Meyer, not a one-­dimensional criminal, both unmasks social tensions and frames the even greater challenge to antebellum authority embodied in Capitola, the outlaw. There can be no doubt that Southworth was versed in the Robin Hood literary tradition; she makes a direct reference to the figure by having one of her Hidden Hand characters speak ‘like the author of Robin Hood’s Barn.’21 Following the tradition of eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century novels, Southworth showcases the depth of her reading by adding quotes to the top of every chapter. The fifty-­one chapters of The Hidden Hand begin with references to Lord Byron, John Greenleaf Whittier, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Burns, twelve plays by William Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, and others. A  schoolteacher in Wisconsin and Washington, DC before she was able to support her two children with the proceeds from her novels, Southworth’s explicit associations with these major authors command that her readers incorporate her own characters into the dramatis personae of Western literature. Although Southworth’s personal library was not preserved by her heirs, we know from her writing that the author closely followed political and pop culture trends in both the New York and Washington, DC periodicals. Through the 1870s, the novels of Sir Walter Scott, especially Ivanhoe with its celebration of the Robin Hood story, would be considered required reading for Americans in the literary world. As Emily Todd reminds us, ‘[Scott’s] books were catalysts for collective experience—­everyone waited for them, everyone wanted them, and everyone talked about them.’22 Multiple American newspapers carried bookstore advertisements for editions of English and Scottish ballads of Robin Hood’s adventures, but the long review article in one of the premiere periodicals of the day, the North American Review, would surely have caught Southworth’s attention.23 Published January  1857, just before Southworth began plotting The Hidden Hand, it influenced her creation of Black Donald.24 Towards the end of the review, the anonymous writer situates Robin Hood in a context that must have resonated with Southworth, living in antebellum Washington, DC. The reviewer instructs readers that in fourteenth-­ century England, the majority of the land was owned by the churches and barons; serfs as ‘the inhabitants of the country . . . were in a state of slavery.’25 Moreover, historians of the nineteenth century promoted the belief that fourteenth-­century England was a country divided by Norman or Saxon heritage. The political and social tensions led to the creation of ‘the idol of the English people,’ Robin Hood.26 He was needed to channel their anger over their poverty and disenfranchisement. By 1857, the year of yet another economic panic in the United States, many Americans were convinced that the relationship between the Northern and Southern states was irreconcilable. If we view Black Donald within the context of America’s 1857 political and social divisions, the association with the Robin Hood outlaw tradition becomes more logical.

60  Ann Beebe The definition of the outlaw figure within the British tradition has been neatly organized by Thomas Ohlgren.27 Adapting that outlaw tradition to American culture, Richard Meyer has isolated twelve key characteristics.28 Aligning Black Donald with a few of these Ohlgren and Meyer elements connects him definitively to the outlaw tradition. To begin, Ohlgren’s characteristic of ‘historical time’ is crucial to the outlaw’s relevance.29 Black Donald’s power lies in his ability to expose the injustices and hypocrisies of his age. Black Donald, ‘a giant [who might have] walked out of an age of fable into the middle of the nineteenth century,’ possesses remarkable powers of discernment.30 Because he can perceive a person’s true nature, as noted by his perspicacity in identifying Le Noir’s criminal greed and Capitola’s mischievous outlawry, he is not misled by status conveyed by class, race, or gender. Black Donald diagnoses the flaws in antebellum Virginian society and exploits them for financial gain, without becoming disillusioned. He confidently declares his future goals: ‘I wish to emigrate to the glorious West, settle, marry, and turn my attention to politics, be elected to Congress, then to the Senate, then to the Cabinet, then to the White House.’31 It is possible to read this line as a cynical statement of political opportunism, but other characters appreciate the outlaw’s potential to oppose authoritarianism in government. Major Warfield reluctantly admits his respect for the man by affirming, ‘I’ll nominate him to represent us in the National Congress! . . . He is decidedly the ablest man in this congressional district.’32 Spoken in a fit of anger over Black Donald’s successful ploy to rescue three members of his band from prison, the belief in Black Donald’s leadership is sincere. The outlaw, more than any other man in the district, understands the people in this historical moment, possesses a vision for the future, and acts decisively when necessary. Warfield’s antagonism for Black Donald and his eventual admiration for the man’s abilities would be foreshadowed for those well-­read in Robin Hood mythology. Given the novel’s many associations with outlaw mythology, there may be a possible connection between the names Warfield and Wakefield. One of the Robin Hood ballads, The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield, introduces the pinder, or community official, who objects to Robin Hood’s appropriation of the town’s crops and animals. The two are reconciled in the ballad when Robin Hood invites the pinder of Wakefield to join his band. The conflict between Southworth’s Ira Warfield and the outlaw Black Donald is natural, as is their final mutual regard. Returning to the list of outlaw characteristics, Meyer proposes that the foundational characteristic of the outlaw figure is his connection to the common man.33 Black Donald’s first extended scene in the novel centers on the gathering of his band for a feast. Granny Raven, of the abandoned Old Road Inn, prepares large strips of sirloin and platters of bread, butter, and pickles for the gathering.34 Headlong Hal, Stealthy Steve, Demon Dick, and the other outlaws have been summoned to the

‘I’d Dream of Feasts’ 61 ‘outlaw’s rendezvous’ to reaffirm their loyalty to their leader.35 Black Donald, disguised as a peddler, has been ‘out to hear the people talk, and find out what they think of him.’36 The outlaw knows that his continued success depends on the tacit approval of the common people and an understanding of the local economy. Eric Hobsbawm’s research on bandits across many cultures led him to the conclusion that ‘a successful brigand chief is at least as closely in touch with the market and the wider economic universe as a small landowner or prosperous farmer.’37 Furthermore, Black Donald must foster feelings of community among his band of outlaws; hence, their regular convivial parties at the Old Road Inn. On this night, after their business is concluded, ‘some twenty men were collected together in the large kitchen around the long table, where the remainder of the night was spent in revelry.’38 Black Donald and his outlaw band feast and hold ‘orgies around the supper-­table’ to strengthen their bonds of fellowship.39 The location of the outlaw’s exile, according to Ohlgren, is also significant.40 Robin Hood’s outlawry is usually associated with the forest. Lesley Coote claims that ‘[w]hen outlaw heroes come out of the forest, they usually cause mayhem, harm, or social overturning.’41 The first headquarters of Black Donald’s band is the Old Road Inn, ‘by the side of a forsaken turnpike in the midst of a thickly wooded, long and narrow valley, shut in by two lofty ranges of mountains.’42 Their control of these forests and the roads that cross them make the outlaws figures of superstition and fear. After Capitola’s capture of three members of the band, Black Donald decrees that the group must relocate—­to a cavern in the Devil’s Punch Bowl. The uninhabitable land next to the river is described earlier in the novel in language that might evoke Dante’s lake of ice43: there was an awful abyss or chasm of cleft, torn and jagged rocks, opening as it were from the bowels of the earth, in the shape of a mammoth bowl, in the bottom of which, almost invisible from its great depth, seethed and boiled a mass of dark water.44 It is from this wild and forbidding landscape that Black Donald and his band extend their campaign to control the countryside. Furthermore, the name of this hideout—­Devil’s Punch Bowl—­subtly foreshadows the eggnog punch that Capitola will craft with Black Donald in their final feast showdown. While Ohlgren points to the importance of the outlaw’s hideout, he further emphasizes that a love of disguises and tricks distinguishes the outlaw from the criminal.45 Meyer identifies the outlaw’s ‘audacity, daring, and sheer stupendousness of his exploits.’46 Black Donald excels at ‘outwit[ting] and confound[ing] his opponents through a variety of trickster-­type characteristics.’47 In The Hidden Hand, Black Donald disguises himself as a sailor, a peddler, an African American, and an elderly

62  Ann Beebe preacher. Like a proto-­Method actor, Black Donald ensures the authenticity of his disguises. He relishes the creativity of his costumes, ‘Does not my broad-­skirted gray coat and broad-­brimmed gray hat make me look twelve inches shorter and broader?’48 Beyond costumes and props, Black Donald risks his health to achieve the perfect look for a disguise. For the role of the elderly Father Gray, Black Donald discloses his process to the three imprisoned outlaws: ‘I put myself on a month’s regimen of vegetable diet, and kept myself in a cavern, until I grew as pale and thin as a hermit! Then I shaved off my hair, beard, moustaches and eyebrows! . . . I sacrificed all of my beauty to your interests!’49 In an 1859 novel, this reference to a ‘vegetable diet’ carries special resonance. In the United States, the public associated a vegetable diet with men like William Metcalfe, author of the 1821 pamphlet, Bible Testimony: On Abstinence from the Flesh of Animals, and Sylvester Graham, whom The New England Review called ‘the man who fed on husks until he lost all his flesh.’50 By the 1850s, newspaper exposés on the vegetarian movement, according to Adam Shprintzen, ‘popularly presented [the male vegetarian] as frail, weakened, and feminized,  .  .  .  [and] cast [him] as sickly, sexually impotent, and nearly invalid.’51 With this context in mind, the sacrifices Black Donald is willing to offer are extreme. Denying himself the enjoyment of meat, and presumably feasts, with his remaining outlaw crew, Black Donald consumes only vegetables in isolated darkness to effect a dramatic physical and psychological change. Once he has rescued his three men, Black Donald resumes his meat-­based diet, and restores his physical body to its healthy vigor. However, the experience has evoked in Black Donald an awareness of his body’s potential weakness, leaving him slightly vulnerable to Capitola’s future machinations. Evidence of Black Donald as a trickster is associated with his disguises. When he returns to the outlaw’s hideout masquerading as a peddler, he furnishes the feast’s entertainment with a folklore-­influenced tale. Like Robin Hood in the late medieval poem Robin Hood and the Potter or Eustace the Monk during his outlaw phase in the early thirteenth century, Black Donald savors the opportunity to flaunt his creativity when he puts on a disguise and walks among those who have placed a reward for his capture.52 He begins with a surprise: ‘I have been up to the county seat where the court is now in session, and sold cigar-­cases, snuff-­boxes and smoking caps to the grand and petit jury, and a pair of spectacles to the learned judge himself!’53 The men, as intended, are astounded by their leader’s audacity. Black Donald continues, telling the men that he sold a pair of ‘steel spring handcuffs to the sheriff, John Keepe, in person.’54 Ever the clever salesman, Black Donald persuaded the sheriff to buy the cuffs by ‘assuring him that he would have occasion for their use if ever he caught that grand rascal, Black Donald!’55 This association provokes the sheriff to confide his hatred for Black Donald and his hopes to hang the man since the Major has increased the reward. The mention of the

‘I’d Dream of Feasts’ 63 reward prompts Black Donald to another level of deviltry. Pretending to be interested in capturing the outlaw, he asks the sheriff to describe the disguises Black Donald has taken. The sheriff, as clueless as the most witless version of the Sheriff of Nottingham, eagerly shares the details: ‘Why, friend, it is said that he appears as a Methodist missionary, going about selling tracts; and sometimes a knife-­grinder, and sometimes simulates your calling as a peddler!’56 At this point, Black Donald fears he will soon be unable to hold his laughter. He therefore extols the worth of the handcuffs, asking the sheriff to hold out his hands. The unwitting sheriff complies, and Black Donald restrains the man and departs before he can cry for help. The outlaws are ecstatic, cheering their devious leader: ‘Hip, hip, hurrah! Three times three for the merry captain, that manacled the sheriff!’57 Black Donald’s success as a trickster figure reaches an apex with his disguise as Father Gray, ‘a man considerably past middle age, and broken down with sickness or sorrow.’58 For this caper, Southworth may have been inspired by an 1851 three-­part story that appeared in Peterson’s Magazine, a periodical to which she was contractually obligated through 1858.59 H. J. Beyerle’s ‘The Outlaw’ features a character named Black Fred who leads a band of outlaws in Prussia. In the second installment, a clergyman and a schoolmaster enter a bar-­room, a male-­dominated feastial space, where a troop of soldiers are loudly proclaiming that when they meet the outlaw leader, ‘he should not escape them.’60 When the schoolmaster leaves the bar, the clergyman approaches the soldiers and encourages them to issue greater boasts. At the schoolmaster’s return, the clergyman dares the soldiers, ‘And if he were now in the midst of you?’61 At their nonplussed expressions, the clergyman throws off his disguise and declares himself to be Black Fred. The two outlaws run, but none are able to pursue them as the second outlaw had cut the girths on all of their saddles. Southworth takes the foundation of this episode in the Beyerle story—­the outlaw disguised as a clergyman, the hubris of law enforcement, and the public removal of the costume—­and expands it in The Hidden Hand. Black Donald, as Father Gray, spends a week delivering sermons at a camp revival meeting, finally gaining admission to Major Warfield’s own tent. Mrs. Condiment, the housekeeper, invites the elderly preacher to meals and persuades the Major to share his bed with the decrepit minister. Mrs. Condiment pleads with Father Gray to visit the outlaws, who have refused to betray their leader or confess their sins. Father Gray/­Black Donald demurs, ‘I have a natural shrinking from men of blood.’62 But he is eventually assured of his duty to console the prisoners. The rest is a foregone conclusion. The outlaw leader hides the tools to escape the jail on his person. The outlaws free themselves without any complications, and Father Gray reveals himself to be the outlaw leader. Black Donald applies trickery to gain intelligence, confound authority, and liberate his own men. These acts are also evidence

64  Ann Beebe of his highly developed sense of humor and love of the absurd. Unlike most of the men in the novel, and in the majority of sentimental fiction, Black Donald mocks small-­minded conventions and bloated complacencies in all, regardless of class or race. Taking a representative sampling of sentimental novels of the 1850s, men are cast as amoral villains, indifferent patriarchs, or honorable, if slightly domineering, suitors.63 Black Donald’s unique characterization shines an ironic light on the dangerous problems in antebellum Virginia, but his identity as a seemingly comic outlaw shields Southworth from complaints of politicizing her novel.64 In reviewing the reception of variants in the Robin Hood tradition, Alexander L. Kaufman concludes that ‘some [readers] simply prefer their Robin Hood to be a stout yeoman, some a social bandit, some a trickster, while still others like their Robin Hood to be a gentrified distressed nobleman.’65 The reader’s interpretation of Robin Hood or Black Donald, in some ways, reveals more about the recipient and his historical time than the character itself. Significantly, since 1859, most readers have either conflated Black Donald with the criminal Le Noir, or viewed him as a handy plot device to showcase Capitola’s bravery. Only in the last few years have critics begun to consider Black Donald worthy of analysis.66 Comparing the ways in which both characters function as descendants of the outlaw tradition expands the basis on which we read Black Donald and Capitola as doubles.

‘The Damsel-­Errant in Quest of Adventures’: Capitola’s Outlaw Tale Learning of Capitola’s capture of the three outlaws delegated to abduct her, Black Donald muses: ‘She is doomed to be my destruction, or I hers. Our fates are evidently connected.’67 Lynette Carpenter has noted that Black Donald and Capitola are paired by their dark physical appearance as well as their nicknames, Cap’n and Cap.68 Born on 31 October 1832, as commemorated by the tattoo Nancy Grewell has inked on the Halloween infant’s arm, Capitola has attracted readers and scholars from her first appearance in the New York Ledger.69 Like Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt, Capitola has a male twin. But unlike Apollo, Capitola’s twin dies in childbirth, leaving her the responsibility to protect girls and women against the abuses of authority. Capitola, nicknamed ‘Miss Caterpillar’ by the enslaved Africans (Wool and Pitapat), has been given many labels over the years: tomboy, trickster, burlesque figure, minstrel figure, and hero.70 These attempts at understanding Capitola account for portions of her character, but none of these labels is comprehensive. Reading Capitola as a true double of Black Donald, a new kind of outlaw, exposes unexpected facets of her character. If Black Donald is intended to evoke associations with Robin Hood or Eustace the Monk, Capitola might be read as a nineteenth-­century American parallel for Clorinda,

‘I’d Dream of Feasts’ 65 from the seventeenth-­century poem Robin Hood’s Birth, Breeding, Valour, and Marriage. Clorinda and Capitola are physically similar: erect carriage, dark hair, and innate dignity.71 And neither woman is shunted aside in the stories; they are active participants in their own adventures. In their interpretations of Capitola, critics have noted her challenges to authority. Born in the Hidden House, a dwelling so deep in the woods that Capitola wonders if ‘this were the enchanted forest,’ she embodies the dangerous promise of the forest: Capitola, the outlaw, is born to ‘cause mayhem, harm, or social overturning.’72 Rather than starve or allow herself to be raped, the young Capitola crossdresses as a boy in New York City. After Major Warfield assumes guardianship of Capitola, she relinquishes male apparel, but not her independence, a feature that Warfield and others view as transgressing appropriate gender roles. Unlike Luitzarde, the young woman in Beyerle’s tale, ‘The Outlaw,’ who weeps and faints through most of the story, or most pre-­1860 versions of Maid Marian which marginalize or ‘slut shame’ the woman, Capitola, a modern-­day Clorinda, refuses to wait for a man to take action when an injustice is revealed.73 While Amy Hudock would view Capitola as appropriating the characteristics of the classic hero tradition and ‘claiming the male privilege of selfhood,’ Capitola is, in fact, appropriating the traits of an outlaw and using those talents to subvert social, cultural, and political authority.74 As Kristen Pond reads her character, Capitola employs her skills to ‘fulfill the culturally female role of repairing and maintaining community.’75 Returning to the definitions of the classic English outlaw and the adaptions made by the American tradition outlined by Ohlgren and Meyer, we can see clearly how Capitola utilizes this identity in nineteenth-­century America. Most outlaw tales, according to Ohlgren, rationalize the actions of the hero by promoting a sympathetic backstory. Black Donald’s origin story is unclear; he is already a successful bandit when he enters the text. But Capitola’s background gives evidence of one of the classic outlaw traits: the first crime. As Meyer asserts, ‘the first “crime”–the one that launches his career—­is brought about through extreme provocation or persecution by agents of the oppressive system.’76 Capitola’s first ‘crime’ is survival. After Nancy Grewell returns to Virginia, the money she leaves with the young girl runs out. Eventually, Capitola is homeless and starving. Capitola recalls, ‘I’d dream of feasts and the richest sort of food, and of eating such quantities!’77 The ‘oppressive system’ Capitola confronts in New York City denies a young girl the opportunity to earn a living, instead placing her ‘in danger from bad boys and bad men.’78 So Capitola has a Huck Finn moment. Rather than ‘go to hell,’ she tells the court that ‘I made up my mind to be a boy!’79 In this disguise, she sells newspapers and jockeys for other odd jobs. For the crime of defying social customs and donning men’s apparel, the legal system in New York would sentence her to a prison for juvenile delinquents. Although now secure as

66  Ann Beebe Warfield’s ward, Capitola’s experiences have converted her to a life of outlawry. As she later tells Clara Day, she ‘learned to fear God, to speak the truth, and to shame the devil!’ in New York City.80 But Capitola’s brand of outlawry does not carry the same goals of a Robin Hood or Black Donald. Her experiences have taught her to appreciate wealth, but not to covet it. Instead, her childhood has taught her to value personal liberty and the bonds of loyalty. She has a contempt for blind obedience to authority—­legal, familial, or cultural. Moreover, she will combat anyone who exploits the weak or powerless. Instead Capitola, who ‘from childhood . . . had been inured to danger,’ develops her natural abilities as a rider and a hunter in order to become a ‘damsel-­errant in quest of adventures.’81 Ohlgren draws attention to the fact that most outlaws have a ‘chief’ enemy.82 For example, Black Donald defies the law generally and the sheriff specifically. Initially, Capitola wonders if Black Donald might be a villain and her chief enemy, but she admires his escapades. Unknowingly, she confesses to the outlaw: ‘if Black Donald were only as honest as he is brave, I should quite adore him!’83 Nevertheless, Capitola is granted the perfect enemy: from birth, she is under attack from her uncle Colonel Le Noir. And rather than quail before the enemy’s implacable hatred, a true outlaw welcomes any opportunity for combat. Her instinct tells her that Colonel Le Noir and his son, Craven, are proper criminals. Therefore, she convincingly argues to Clara, ‘I desire above all things to be pitted against those two. How I shall enjoy their disappointment and rage.’84 Although she does not yet know it, the Colonel has killed her father, sold her into slavery, made her mother disappear, and stolen her inheritance. His status as a white military male has afforded him the unjustified authority to commit her mother to an insane asylum.85 Capitola’s appropriation of an outlaw identity urges her instinctively to seek out ways to defy the position and plans of the Le Noirs. The strongest evidence of Capitola’s appropriation of the outlaw figure is her love of disguises and tricks. Capitola becomes agitated if there are ‘no tyrants to take down, no robbers to capture, no distressed damsels to deliver.’86 As noted, while the male outlaw acts as a trickster for amusement and money, Capitola exercises her inventiveness for survival, to mock hypocrisy, to save others from harm, and to punish evil-­doers. One afternoon, not long after she has arrived at Hurricane Hall, Capitola is accosted by a dissipated man who grabs her horse’s bridle and sneers in language eerily similar to Robin Hood’s Birth, Breeding, Valour, and Marriage, ‘Whither away so fast, pretty one?’87 Capitola perceives her danger, and maintains ‘a high degree of courage, self-­control, and presence of mind.’88 Resorting to cultural assumptions which equate female beauty with stupidity, she adopts the role of a flighty girl grateful for male companionship and resists his attempts to get her to dismount by complaining that one patch of ground is full of brambles and another area is

‘I’d Dream of Feasts’ 67 too windy. Eventually, once her horse has recovered from its fatigue and they are in sight of Warfield’s property, she agrees to dismount, provided he covers the ground with his saddle blanket. Once the saddle is off his horse, Capitola spurs her horse, ‘put[ting] her thumb to the side of her nose, and whirl[ing] her fingers in a semi-­circle’ at the man she later learns is Craven Le Noir.89 His name, reminiscent of characters in a Restoration comedy, announces his chief character trait. The verb “crave” points to someone who demands or begs for something, usually to satisfy some form of appetite. But the adjective “craven” marks Le Noir’s son as cowardly and already defeated. He is a man of immense appetites—­for food, for sex, for money, for power—­but Capitola’s ability to vanquish all of his schemes is forecast in the name his father gave him. Capitola also channels her skills with disguise and trickery to rescue Clara Day from a forced marriage. Michelle Ann Abate reads this scene through the lens of tomboyism, claiming that ‘Cap uses her tomboyish physical strength, emotional fortitude and intellectual cunning to foil their plans.’90 Visiting Clara over the objections of Warfield, Capitola discovers that the young woman is to be compelled to marry Craven the next day. Capitola plots an escape, for she ‘wasn’t brought up among the detective policemen for nothing.’91 She and Clara exchange clothing, and after some coaching on her walk and attitude, Clara walks out of her prison and rides to safety on Capitola’s horse. Capitola, immersed in ‘a jolly imprudent adventure,’ devotes the night to crying like an actress in Clara’s room.92 Deeply veiled to appear as Clara the next morning, Capitola accompanies the Le Noirs to the church. Secure in an audience of a few parishioners, Capitola removes her disguise in the aptly named Forest Chapel and ‘abandon[s] herself to the spirit of frolic.’93 And should her enemy mistake the gravity of their error, she enlightens them: ‘It means that you have been outwitted by a girl. . . . It means that you two, precious father and son would be a pair of knaves if you had sense enough; but, failing that, you are only a pair of fools.’94 Capitola practices her outlawry to rescue young girls, and unlike a traditional outlaw, she is able to appear in court as a credible witness since there are no warrants for her arrest. In this case, Capitola advocates successfully for the dismissal of Le Noir’s guardianship of Clara; the outlaw reinstates Clara to her own rightful community. Capitola battles Craven Le Noir one last time, and again she prevails. Learning that he has been casting aspersions on her name and that her ‘band,’ two honorary cousins, decline to call him out, Capitola challenges Craven to a duel. He rudely refuses, but she steals the Major’s pistols and intercepts Craven on the road into town. Throwing him a pistol, which he declines, she shoots him six times in the face. Once in town, Capitola sends medical aid to the wounded man and surrenders to the law. Craven, fearing he is dying, confesses that he spread false rumors about the girl. Capitola, hungry for her breakfast, tires of the game. She asks the surrounding people, ‘Is not any one here cool enough to reflect that if

68  Ann Beebe I had fired six bullets at that man’s forehead, and every one had struck, I should have blown his head to the sky?’95 Capitola had loaded the pistols with split peas, the most visible example of using food as a weapon. Again, the cunning trickster outwits a criminal, mocks the sanctimonious townspeople, and metes out a fitting punishment. Significantly, when she has completed her task, she openly acknowledges her body’s appetite. In his reading of a Stoddard novel, Chad Luck argues that, ‘eating and appetite represent the path to self-­possession. A woman comes into her own, literally, by acknowledging and acting on her bodily hunger.’96 Like this Stoddard character, Capitola’s open admission of her hunger signifies her self-­acceptance and power. The Hidden Hand contains two of the most captivating American outlaws in nineteenth-­century American literature. Significantly, both Black Donald and Capitola challenge the hypocrisies and injustices of traditional authority. And both of these outlaws exhibit a keen understanding of human psychology with their triumphant performances as tricksters. However, a territory can only sustain one outlaw leader. In the forty-­ ninth chapter, these two outlaws meet over the most unorthodox feast in sentimental literature. By the end of the feast, one will be presumed dead.

‘A Contest in Close Quarters’: Capitola’s Feast The ‘trapdoor’ feast scene has been studied by other scholars of The Hidden Hand. It has been viewed within the context of Southworth’s antigallows literature.97 It has been read within the historical context of Native American genocide and the nation’s reliance on slave labor.98 And it has been considered a sexualized encounter in which the cavern beneath the trapdoor represents a woman’s vagina.99 But critics have not analyzed the scene as a competition between rival outlaws negotiated over an unorthodox feast. This trapdoor chamber, situated in the oldest section of Hurricane Hall, is connected with a previous death feast. Showing Capitola to her new bedroom, Mrs. Condiment warns her of the chamber’s history. The original house was built by Henri Le Noir, ‘one of the grandest villains that ever was heard of,’ during the French and Indian War.100 Living nearby was a small group of Native Americans, but Henri coveted their land. Six of their warriors refused to surrender the territory. According to legend, Henri ‘makes a great feast in his lodge and invites his red brothers . . . he proposes that they stand on his blanket and all swear eternal brotherhood.’101 Once the six men were standing close together on the rug, ‘the black villain sprung the bolt, the trap fell, and the six men went down.’102 The men died and the tribe dispersed, leaving Henri to claim the land without contest. Capitola appreciates the well-­told story, but scoffs at the idea that she has anything to fear from ghosts: ‘I have been in too much deadly peril from the living ever to fear the dead.’103 This young girl, unlike the sheltered heroine of Jane Austen’s

‘I’d Dream of Feasts’ 69 Northanger Abbey, is not susceptible to her imagination’s dire foreboding since she grew up fighting for survival among hardened criminals. The location for the feast between Black Donald and Capitola is redolent with providential warnings, but Capitola does not cower at the reminder of the past sins of others. The intimate feast between the two outlaws is made possible by the absence of the African American slaves on Major Warfield’s plantation. The timing of their meeting is dependent on the sanctioned feasting of the enslaved people. Southworth sets the scene: The reader must know, that throughout Virginia the Christmas week, from the day after Christmas until the day after New Year, is the negroes’ [sic] saturnalia! There are usually eight days of incessant dancing, feasting and frolicking from quarter to quarter, and from barn to barn.104 During that week, Capitola occupies her remote bedchamber with only old Major Warfield and the elderly housekeeper, Mrs. Condiment, whose name signifies her destiny to be on the side of all adventures, in residence. The location has been selected, and the date has been set. Last, the food is supplied by Pitapat, who kindly lays a tray in Capitola’s room before leaving for her own feast. Sneaking into her bedchamber to kidnap her, Black Donald laughs when he sees the elaborate spread of food, thinking that ‘the young occupant of the chamber must have an appetite of her own.’105 Black Donald is correct; having nearly starved to death in New York City, Capitola never denies her body’s hunger or physical appetites. The location, the date, the food, and the guest have arrived for this impromptu feast. Unaccompanied, Capitola returns to her bedchamber. Hearing a noise, Capitola almost drops Pitapat’s tray at seeing Black Donald turn the key in the lock of her bedroom door: ‘she understood her real position.’106 She chides herself, ‘Nothing on earth will save you, Cap, but your own wits!’107 Looking at Black Donald, she sees the challenge and the hunger in his face: ‘that fellow . . . is eating you up with his great eyes at the same time that he is laughing at you with his big mouth!’108 Capitola recalls the stories of Jael and Sisera, as well as Judith and Holofernes.109 Those women did not surrender without a fight. David deSilva compares Judith and Jael and asserts, ‘Both heroines employ deceit and violate the sacred code of hospitality (Jael as host, Judith as guest). Most to the point, both stories praise the heroine’s use of deceitful means by which to gain the upper hand over the enemy of her people (Judg. 5:24–27; Jth. 16:5–9).’110 For the sake of their honor and the lives of the people they love, these women openly embrace the code of outlawry. For the young American outlaw, the moment of competition has arrived: ‘a contest in close quarters for dear life!’111 Without hesitation, Capitola conceives of a plan to exploit the elements of the feast to save her life. Sitting down on

70  Ann Beebe an armchair, she calmly scolds her guest as any proper host would do for not giving her advance notice of his arrival. She urges him to eat the ham on the tray, ‘for Heaven forbid that I should fail in hospitality.’112 Black Donald pauses and intimates that her presence of mind indicates that she has entertained other men in her bedchamber. She forcefully denies the insult, and urges him to eat the bread and cheese included in the feast. Once Capitola has Black Donald sitting comfortably in the second armchair, enjoying a hearty meal, she moves to the second stage of her plan—­misdirection. She reminds him of their first encounter, when he was dressed as a peddler and she attempted to capture him by climbing on his back until others could help her subdue the outsized man. She confides, ‘I wanted you to carry me off!’113 Black Donald is so amazed that he drops his food. He tells her, ‘I am afraid you are not good.’114 She agrees, and his defenses are so lowered that he removes his boots and stretches out on his chair. Like Little Ned in Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables, who greedily consumes gingerbread, oblivious to his surroundings and any undercurrents, Black Donald is in danger of ‘too much intemperate eating,’ which in Little Ned’s case, according to Chad Luck, could lead to ‘an inability to consume anything at all.’115 Utilizing the conventions of hospitality and the playfulness of social conversation, Capitola has engineered this impromptu feast to satiate and befuddle the powerful outlaw. After the meal is finished, Black Donald spies the ingredients for eggnog on the tray. Alcohol, of course, has long been a staple in feast menus, responsible, in the words of Justin Jennings for creating ‘the “blissful mood” that was fundamental to feasting in many cultures.’116 Southworth’s selection of this particular drink is loaded with meaning. Eggnog is connected with the Christmas season, of course. But by the nineteenth century, the drink marked an important distinction between the United States and Great Britain. In the European country, the drink was associated with the upper classes due to the expense of the ingredients and the incorporation of Madeira or sherry. But in America, eggs, milk, cream, and sugar were more plentiful; and when the alcohol was changed to brandy, rum, or bourbon, the drink became a national favorite.117 Moreover, while the drink was consumed year-­round, its association with the holidays connects it to feelings of sociability and fellowship. The elaborate mixing process suits Capitola’s strategy; it highlights what Arthur Joyce calls the ‘ritual drama of feasts.’118 She builds a sense of community with the outlaw: ‘it takes two to make eggnog; you’ll have to whisk up the whites of the eggs into a froth, while I beat the yellow, and mix the other ingredients.’119 Black Donald is further disarmed, removing his coat to impress the young girl with his strength and control—­the mixing of egg whites to a froth takes time and stamina. After Capitola calmly separates the eggs, he takes up his bowl, and ‘whisk[s] up the whites with all his might and main.’120 Having lulled him into feeling secure and

‘I’d Dream of Feasts’ 71 welcome with the elements of the feast, Capitola begins to shift her chair back from the fireplace closer to the center of the room. Black Donald objects. Overcome by the feast, he errs by reading her as he would a regular woman, not a fellow outlaw, and assumes she is scheming to flee. He follows her, moving his own chair closer to the center of the room. Capitola says nothing, merely smiles, and again Black Donald’s assumptions about women permit him to interpret this gesture as coyness. She returns to the preparation of the feast’s beverage, stirring in the brandy and then the milk. Last, Black Donald hands her the egg whites, and she folds them into the mix. Capitola then ‘fill[s] a goblet with the rich compound and hand[s] it to her uncanny guest.’121 Southworth’s word choice, ‘uncanny,’ conveys the complexity of these characters neatly. On one hand, Black Donald is ‘careless or incautious’ (the OED’s second definition for the word) when he accepts the drink from Capitola. The fourth definition, ‘of persons: not quite safe to trust to, or have dealings with, as being associated with supernatural arts of powers,’ could allude to either outlaw. Those who have been tricked by their disguises or words would be ready to ascribe them supernatural powers. Last, the word’s sixth definition, ‘dangerous, unsafe,’ applies to both of their situations. Capitola has faced the reality of her circumstances, but Black Donald, placing too much faith in his own ability with the uncanny, is oblivious to the danger Capitola wields. Black Donald removes another item of clothing, his neck cloth, and sips his eggnog. Feeling completely comfortable and in control, Black Donald derides Capitola. He boasts, ‘I know your tricks.’122 Meanwhile, Capitola has been inching her chair closer to the center of the room, unconsciously prompting Black Donald to follow, in a macabre physical call and response. Again relying upon the conventions of the feast, the hostess Capitola stands up to clear away the small table with the remains of the food and drink. Her action leaves Black Donald alone in the center of the room, seated over the rug that covers the trapdoor. Crucially, Capitola does not spring the door at this point. She is not a criminal like Henri Le Noir, nor is she an outlaw like Black Donald, comfortable with indiscriminate violence. She is a different type of outlaw who aspires to rescue others and strengthen community loyalty. Therefore, Capitola asks Black Donald for his full name. She then endeavors to prevent Donald Bayne from sliding into criminality. Like the minister at a criminal’s last meal, she urges him to think of what is right and good.123 He defends himself, ‘women always like men with a spice of the devil in them.’124 Capitola warns him that kidnapping and raping her would be ‘an act of baseness to which you never yet descended.’125 Recognizing that her attempts to convert him have failed, Capitola offers him money and jewels. When he declares that he will have her wealth as her husband, Capitola inquires if he has ever contemplated death. Channeling Jonathan Edwards, she marvels: ‘What a terrible thing for this magnificent frame of yours, this

72  Ann Beebe glorious handiwork of the creator, to be hurled to swift destruction, and for the soul that animates it to be cast unto hell!’126 Three more times she asks him to leave her room, and three times he refuses. Capitola reaches a dreadful resolution. Saying a prayer for his soul, Capitola concludes this harrowing feast by pressing the spring on the trapdoor and sending Black Donald to the pit below. The next morning, when the Major and the housekeeper release Capitola from her imprisonment, she is overjoyed to learn that Black Donald has survived the night. She insists that he be nursed at Hurricane Hall until he is well enough to be removed to the jail. Their dreadful feast is over; she has won, but she respects the defeated outlaw leader. Black Donald, moreover, holds no grudge. He encourages her, ‘Spite is a civilized vice! It was a fair contest, child, and you conquered!’127 She agrees to shake hands with him in court, signaling her independence and agency: ‘his cunning was no match for mine.’128 But Capitola will not support the authority of the state to execute the outlaw. She first seeks lawful methods to free him—­a petition and an appeal to the governor. In these efforts Capitola ‘reveals a personal morality,’ according to Hudock, ‘that she upholds even when it confronts abstract law; she values the individual life over the law that condemns him to death.’129 But when these pleas fail, Capitola brings him the tools he needs to escape his jail cell; her outlawry demands that she circumvent the law to aid a contrite member of her community. Her wedding day dawns, and the estate is amazed to find a note with a bag of gold from ‘Black Donald, Reformed Robber’ to pay for the horse he has procured from the stable.130 Black Donald gathers his outlaws one last time before disbanding the group, declaring victory for Capitola; the territory belongs to the young outlaw. He acknowledges, ‘No one on earth could have helped me except the one who really freed me—­Capitola!’131 Having given his unrequested sanction for her marriage, like the outlaw in Robin Hood and Allin a Dale, Black Donald returns ‘to the merry green wood, / Amongst the leaves so green.’132 He is no longer needed or welcome in this part of the forest and so he departs to discover a new territory and perhaps a new disguise. Yet Capitola’s outlawry story ends more like Robin Hood’s Birth, Breeding, Valour, and Marriage. After dancing, a dinner feast, the ceremony, and the ‘bride-­cake,’ there is a promise of future generations and wise management of her property and territory: ‘That he may get children, and they may get more,/­To govern and do us some good.’133 Using all of the outlawry weapons available to her—­disguise, deception, restrained violence, feast conventions—­Capitola has secured her own future. She has recovered her family honor, removed threats to her property, and married the man she loves and respects. As a young matron, she will raise her children confident in her ability to guide and protect them. Capitola will preserve the community she fought to create, and enjoy any future mischievous forays into outlawry required to do so.

‘I’d Dream of Feasts’ 73

Notes 1 Abate, Tomboys, 6; Carpenter, ‘Double Talk,’ 17; Griffin, ‘I Am the Hero,’ 91; Landry, ‘Of Tricks,’ 31; and Pond, ‘With Badinage,’ 147. 2 The Hidden Hand appeared in 23 installments in 1859; it was subsequently serialized in 1868–1869 and 1883 before finally being published in book form in 1888. See Edelstein, ‘Metamorphosis,’ 30; Gniadek, ‘Seriality,’ 42; Looby, ‘Southworth and Seriality,’ 182; and Scott and Thomas, ‘Hidden Agenda,’ 58. 3 Looby, ‘Southworth and Seriality,’ 185n11. 4 Meyer, ‘The Outlaw,’ 116. 5 Ibid. 6 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 112. 7 Ibid., 292, 179. 8 Ibid., 24. 9 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 460 and Looby, ‘Southworth and Seriality,’ 194n23. 10 Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood, 17. 11 Abate, Tomboys, 2. 12 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 479. 13 Albala, ‘Food and Feast,’ 37. 14 Johnson, ‘Jewish Feasts,’ 117–18; and Lee, ‘Commensality,’ 151. 15 Frantzen, Food, Easting and Identity, 42. 16 O’Connor, Never-­Ending Feast, 9. Classical painters have produced some compelling examples of these feasts as well: Burlesque Feast (Jan Mandijn, c. 1550), Farmer’s Feast (Pieter Aertsen, 1550), Peasant Wedding Feast (Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1567), and The Bean Feast (Jan Steen, 1668). 17 O’Connor, Never-­Ending Feast, 9. 18 Purkiss, ‘Masque of Food,’ 95. 19 Jones, ‘I Put My Fingers,’ 51; Edelstein, ‘Metamorphosis,’ 42; and Looby, ‘Southworth and Seriality,’ 210. Paul Christian Jones refers to Black Donald as a ‘transitional figure’ in understanding Southworth’s opposition to the death penalty. As Jones reviews several Southworth novels, he concludes that after Black Donald’s 1859 appearance, all future Southworth characters condemned to die were falsely accused. This statement, of course, assumes Black Donald guilty of homicide, something Capitola refuses to believe. Jones, ‘I Put My Fingers,’ 57. 20 Abate, Tomboys, 2. 21 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 304. 22 Todd, ‘Establishing Routes,’ 101. 23 ‘Art. 1–1. Robin Hood,’ 1–34. 24 Amy Hudock includes an excerpt from an 1890 interview with Southworth that clearly dates the inception of The Hidden Hand. Southworth recalled, ‘It was in the winter of 1857 and at the very last of the year. I was in very bad health; my sister was dying of consumption; all my surroundings were depressing to the last degree, and yet, in the midst of that, the brightest and gayest of my stories came to me.’ Hudock, ‘Challenging the Definition,’ 5–20. 25 ‘Art. 1–1. Robin Hood,’ 27–8. 26 Ibid., 16. 27 Kaufman, ‘Teaching,’ 128–29. 28 Meyer, ‘The Outlaw,’ 97–111. Graham Seal organizes outlaws into six categories: warriors, tricksters, shape-­ shifters, great thieves, magicians, and saints. One last category, the ‘many in one,’ would likely be the best fit for the outlaws Southworth creates. Black Donald and Capitola exhibit traits and motivations from more than one category. Seal, Outlaw Heroes, 25, 32.

74  Ann Beebe 9 Kaufman, ‘Teaching,’ 128. 2 30 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 143. 31 Ibid., 150. 32 Ibid., 259. 33 Meyer, ‘The Outlaw,’ 97. 34 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 141. 35 Ibid., 140. 36 Ibid., 142. 37 Hobsbawm, Bandits, 94. 38 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 150. 39 Ibid., 160. 40 Kaufman, ‘Teaching,’ 128. 41 Coote, ‘Journeys,’ 58. 42 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 140. 43 Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell freezes sinners who have violently betrayed family, innocents, or nations in a lake of ice, instead of the ‘lake of burning sulfur’ found in Rev. 20:10. 44 Ibid., 15. 45 Kaufman, ‘Teaching,’ 129. 46 Meyer, ‘The Outlaw,’ 105. 47 Ibid., 106. 48 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 143. 49 Ibid., 218. 50 Shprintzen, Vegetarian Crusade, 14 and 25. 51 Ibid., 99. 52 Coote, ‘Journeys,’ 53. Glyn S. Burgess describes this period in Eustace’s life: ‘Using a multitude of disguises, as well as great ingenuity and courage, Eustace scores a sizeable number of victories over his opponent, robbing him repeatedly of both his property and his dignity.’ Burgess, Two Medieval Outlaws, 14. Thomas E. Kelly, using the alternative spelling of the name, Eustache, identifies a series of these disguises in his translation of the c1284 text: shepherd, pilgrim, hay-­man, coal-­man, potter, female prostitute, peasant, leper, cripple, carpenter, fishmonger, and pastry-­cook. Kelly, Eustache the Monk, 118–39. 53 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 144. To some food studies scholars, tobacco is to be treated as a comestible, since it is ingested. Mac Marshall’s book, Drinking Smoke, examines the centrality of tobacco in Oceania cultures. For the people on these islands, tobacco is equated ‘with mother’s milk to emphasize several things at once: tobacco is something essential to life; tobacco is something one obtains from those with whom one has or wishes to have a close relationship; and tobacco is something that one ingests and takes into one’s body.’ Marshall, Drinking Smoke, 22. 54 Southward, Hidden Hand, 144. 55 Ibid., 144. 56 Ibid., 145–46. 57 Ibid., 146. 58 Ibid., 214. 59 Scott and Thomas, ‘Hidden Agenda,’ 50. 60 Beyerle, ‘The Outlaw,’ 82. 61 Ibid. 62 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 215. 63 Three novels from the 1850s might illustrate this assertion: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), Susan Warner’s The Wide, Wide World (1850), and E. D. E. N. Southworth’s The Discarded Daughter (1852). The texts’ villains include Mr. Haley and Simon Legree (UTC), Mr. Saunders (WWW), and General Garnet (DD); the indifferent patriarchs are Arthur

‘I’d Dream of Feasts’ 75 Shelby (UTC), Captain Montgomery (WWW), and Colonel Chester (DD). Finally, the honorable suitors who will rescue the young women but demand their marital obedience are George Harris (UTC), John Humphreys (WWW), and Magnus Hardcastle (DD). 64 Christopher Looby draws our attention to the fact that during the 1859 months that The Hidden Hand was serialized in the New York Ledger, the editor Robert Bonner wrote some provocative editorials. These columns strengthen the argument that for many readers Southworth’s novel provoked real-­world relevancies. The March 26 and April 9 editorials, ‘The North and the South’ and ‘A Small Talk about Politics,’ remind readers that the newspaper is not a party nor a sectional paper, but it is a political paper, for politics means looking after the government and the public welfare.’ Quoted in Looby, ‘Southworth and Seriality,’ 201. 65 Kaufman, ‘Desire for Origins,’ 62. 66 One extended reading of his character focuses on his warning to Le Noir: ‘The Kingdom of Satan divided against itself cannot stand.’ Looby and Edelstein have connected this reference with Lincoln’s 1858 ‘House Divided’ speech accepting his party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate. For Looby, Southworth’s overt association of Black Donald with Lincoln pays ‘an odd tribute to Lincoln’s strange charisma as well as his reputation for ruthless and canny partisan intrigue.’ Southworth, Hidden Hand, 341 and Looby, ‘Southworth and Seriality,’ 210. 67 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 210. 68 Carpenter, ‘Double Talk,’ 21. 69 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 28. 70 Tomboy: Abate, Tomboys, 2; Trickster: Landry, ‘Of Tricks,’ 37; Burlesque Figure: Pond, ‘With Badinage,’ 141; Minstrel Figure: Okker and Williams, ‘Reassuring Sounds,’ 133–45; and Hero: Hudock, ‘Challenging,’ 5–20. 71 The ballad describes Clorinda as ‘queen of the shepherds’ (line 106), ‘Her gait it was graceful, her body was straight, /­And her countenance free from pride’ (109–10), and ‘Her eye-­brows were black, ay and so was her hair, /­And her skin was as smooth as glass’ (113–14). Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood, 532. 72 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 270; and Coote, ‘Journeys,’ 58. 73 In his 2015 chapter on Maid Marian, Stephen Knight claims that ‘Marian is, it appears, primarily invoked by gender-­related concerns of the social environment in which she appears: she does not resist authority so much as represent a changing alternative to it.’ Crystal Kirgiss contends that the classical Marian ‘becomes his [Robin’s] object of devotion, replacing the Virgin Mary.’ In her study of twentieth-­century versions of the Robin Hood tale, Lorinda B. Cohoon argues that the new Marian ‘challenges class boundaries, participates in outlawry, and explores both hetero and homoerotic desires.’ Knight, Reading, 187; Kirgiss, ‘Popular Devotion,’ 176; and Cohoon, ‘Transgressive,’ 228. 74 Hudock, ‘Challenging,’ 5–20. 75 Pond, ‘With Badinage,’ 153. 76 Meyer, ‘The Outlaw,’ 99. 77 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 44. 78 Ibid., 45. 79 In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck resolves to write a letter to Miss Watson to let her know the location of her runaway slave, Jim. But Huck remembers all of their adventures on the river, and realizes the value of their friendship. Having been raised in a slave society, Huck accepts that defying his elders and the government will have consequences. He tears up the letter and declares, ‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell.’ Twain, Huckleberry Finn, 279. Southworth, Hidden Hand, 46.

76  Ann Beebe 80 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 279. 81 Ibid., 351, 80, 361, and 270. 82 Kaufman, ‘Teaching,’ 128. 83 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 156; emphasis in original. 84 Ibid., 307. 85 After telling Traverse the story of her life, Madam Le Noir castigates the doctor who ‘found it more convenient and profitable to believe’ her brother-­ in-­law’s story. Ibid., 446. 86 Ibid., 173, 213, 263, and 239. 87 Ibid., 113. Robin Hood calls out to Clorinda at their first meeting, ‘Lady fair, whither away? /­Oh whither, fair lady, away?’ Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood, 532 (lines 199–200). 88 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 114. 89 Ibid., 118. 90 Abate, Tomboys, 11. 91 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 307. 92 Ibid., 312. 93 Ibid., 315. 94 Ibid., 316. 95 Ibid., 374. 96 Luck, The Body, 104. The novel Luck is analyzing is The Morgesons (1862). 97 Jones, ‘I Put My Fingers,’ 51–3. 98 Edelstein, ‘Metamorphosis,’ 43 and Gniadek, ‘Seriality and Settlement,’ 42–3. 99 Okker and Williams, ‘Reassuring Sounds,’ 133–45 and Landry, ‘Of Tricks,’ 39–40. 100 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 73. 101 Ibid., 74. 102 Ibid. Southworth used the device of deceptive hospitality in her first novel, Retribution (1849). Again, a greedy white man befriends and then betrays a group of peaceful Native Americans. Dugald Chandos invites an entire tribe for a day of festivities: ‘he spread a feast for them, and laid a heavy train of gunpowder where they would sit. . . . They sat down to the feast, indulged immoderately in drink; and while they were reveling in their frantic orgies, Dugald slipped away unperceived, and fired his train.’ All of the men, women, and children were killed. Southworth, Retribution, 54. 103 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 74; emphasis in original. 104 Ibid, 379. Southworth position as an antebellum Washington, DC author with close familial ties to Virginia and Mississippi reveals a complex relationship to slavery. See Beebe, ‘The Sacred Heart,’ 27–39. 105 Ibid., 382. 106 Ibid., 384. 107 Ibid. 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid., 385. As depicted in Judges (see Judg. 5:24–6, ‘Song of Deborah’), Jael delivered Israel from the general, Sisera, by taking him into her tent, feeding him, and then driving a tent peg through his head while he slept. Judith also saved her city by beheading, presumably after a banquet, another general, Holofernes (Book of Judith). Both of these events were painted by Artemisia Gentileschi. 110 deSilva, ‘Judith the Heroine?,’ 57. 111 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 385. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid., 386.

‘I’d Dream of Feasts’ 77 114 Ibid., 387. 115 Luck, The Body, 99. 116 Jennings et al., ‘Drinking Beer,’ 276. The phrase ‘blissful mood’ comes from a poem quoted at the top of Jennings’ article: ‘The Hymn of Ninkasi, the Mesopotamian Goddess of Brewing.’ 117 Henisch, ‘Christmas Drinks,’ 417; and Gulevich, ‘Eggnog,’ 203. George Washington and Dolley Madison were famous, or notorious, for their eggnog recipes. Washington added brandy, rye, rum, and sherry to his bowl, while Madison switched cinnamon for the traditional dash of nutmeg. 118 Joyce, ‘Expanding,’ 225. 119 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 387. 120 Ibid. 121 Ibid. 122 Ibid., 388. 123 Michael Jones’ study of current last meal rituals in prisons explains that scholars have two main theories about the meal’s significance. Jones paraphrases Daniel LaChance: ‘the state allows the condemned to choose whatever they wish for a final meal and to speak freely before dying in order to demonstrate that they possess autonomy and agency.’ Jones also quotes Terri Gordon’s 2006 theory: ‘the ritual of the last meal constitutes “both an implicit call for forgiveness on the part of the citizens of the state” and “a demonstration of forgiveness as well, in that it shows kindness to the condemned and a recognition of their humanity and our shared humanity” ’; emphasis in original. Jones, ‘Dining,’ 18. Capitola appears to use the feast in her bedchamber to both convince Black Donald of his agency and indicate divine forgiveness. 124 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 390. 125 Ibid. 126 In July 1741, Jonathan Edwards delivered ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’ at Enfield, Massachusetts. Invited to speak to a congregation deemed lax by its permanent minister, Edwards quietly preached what became one of the most powerful sermons of the Great Awakening (1730–1755). Rich with imagery, the sermon asks listeners to contemplate the precariousness of their situation: ‘The Wrath of God burns against them, their Damnation don’t slumber, the Pit is prepared, the Fire is made ready, the Furnace is now hot, ready to receive them, the Flames do now rage and glow. The glittering Sword is whet, and held over them, and the Pit hath opened her Mouth under them.’ Edwards, ‘Sinners,’ 40 and Southworth, Hidden Hand, 391–92. 127 Ibid., 479. 128 Ibid., 478. 129 Hudock, ‘Challenging,’ 5–20. 130 Southworth, Hidden Hand, 484. 131 Ibid., 482. 132 Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood, 490, lines 107–08. 133 Ibid., 535, line 212; 536, lines 217–18.

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78  Ann Beebe ‘Art. 1–1. Robin Hood.’ The North American Review 84, no. 174 (1857): 1–34. Beebe, Ann. ‘‘The Sacred Heart of the Nation’: E. D. E. N. Southworth’s Civil War Washington.’ Washington History 27, no. 2 (2015): 27–39. Beyerle, H. J. ‘The Outlaw. Translated from the German.’ Peterson’s Magazine 20, July, August, September 1851, 43–8, 79–85, 119–25. Burgess, Glyn S. ed., and trans. Two Medieval Outlaws: Eustace the Monk and Fouke Fitz Waryn. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997. Carpenter, Lynette. ‘Double Talk: The Power and Glory of Paradox in E. D. E. N. Southworth’s The Hidden Hand.’ Legacy 10, no. 1 (1993): 17–30. Cohoon, Lorinda B. ‘Transgressive Transformations: Representations of Maid Marian in Robin Hood Retellings.’ The Lion and the Unicorn 31, no. 3 (2007): 209–31. Coote, Lesley. ‘Journeys to the Edge: Self-­Identity, Salvation, and Outlaw(ed) Space.’ In Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition, edited by Stephen Knight, 47–66. Medieval Identities: Socio-­Cultural Spaces 1. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2011. Cotton-­Spreckelmeyer, Antha. ‘Robin Hood: Outlaw or Exile?’ In British Outlaws of Literature and History: Essays on Medieval and Early Modern Figures from Robin Hood to Twm Shon Catty, edited by Alexander L. Kaufman, 133–45. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011. deSilva, David A. ‘Judith the Heroine? Lies, Seduction, and Murder in Cultural Perspective.’ Biblical Theology Bulletin: Journal of Bible and Culture 36, no. 2 (2006): 55–61. Edelstein, Sari. ‘‘Metamorphosis of the Newsboy’: E. D. E. N. Southworth’s The Hidden Hand and the Antebellum Story-­Paper.’ Studies in American Fiction 37, no. 1 (2010): 29–53. Edwards, Jonathan. ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.’ In Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and Other Great Sermons by Jonathan Edwards, edited by Mark Trigsted, 37–56. Orlando: Bridge-­Logos, 2003. Frantzen, Allen J. Food, Eating and Identity in Early Medieval England. Anglo-­ Saxon Studies 22. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2014. Gniadek, Melissa. ‘Seriality and Settlement: Southworth, Lippard, and The Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley.’ American Literature 86, no. 1 (2014): 31–59. Griffin, Megan Jenison. ‘‘I Am the Hero of a Fairy Tale’: The US-­Mexico War and American Manhood in E. D. E. N. Southworth’s The Hidden Hand.’ Legacy 28, no. 1 (2011): 90–113. Gulevich, Tanya. ‘Eggnog.’ In Encyclopedia of Christmas and New Year’s Celebrations, 2nd ed., 203–04. Detriot: Omnigraphics, 2003. Henisch, Bridget Ann. ‘Christmas Drinks.’ In Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, edited by Soloman H. Katz, 416–17. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003. Hobsbawm, Eric. Bandits. Rev. ed. London: Weidenfeld & Noble, 2000. Hudock, Amy. ‘Challenging the Definition of Heroism in E. D. E. N. Southworth’s The Hidden Hand.’ The American Transcendental Quarterly 9, no. 1 (1995): 5–20. Jennings, Justin, Kathleen L. Antrobus, Sam J. Atencio, Erin Glavich, Rebecca Johnson, German Loffler, and Christine Luu. ‘‘‘Drinking Beer in a Blissful Mood”: Alcohol Production, Operational Chains, and Feasting in the Ancient World.’ Current Anthropology 46, no. 2 (2005): 275–303.

‘I’d Dream of Feasts’ 79 Johnson, Brian D. ‘The Jewish Feasts and Questions of Historicity in John 5–12.’ In Jesus and History, Volume 2: Aspects of Historicity in the Fourth Gospel, edited by Paul N. Anderson, Felix Just, and Tom Thatcher, 117–29. Early Christianity and Its Literature 2. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009. Jones, Michael Owen. ‘Dining on Death Row: Last Meals and the Crutch of Ritual.’ Journal of American Folklore 127, no. 503 (2014): 3–26. Jones, Paul Christian. ‘‘I Put My Fingers around My Throat and Squeezed it, to Know How it Feels’: Antigallows Sentimentalism and E. D. E. N. Southworth’s The Hidden Hand.’ Legacy 25, no. 1 (2008): 41–61. Joyce, Arthur A. ‘Expanding the Feast: Food Preparation, Feasting, and the Social Negotiation of Gender and Power.’ In Inside Ancient Kitchens: New Directions in the Study of Daily Meals and Feasts, edited by Elizabeth A. Klarich, 221–39. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2010. Kaufman, Alexander L. ‘A Desire for Origins: The Marginal Robin Hood of the Later Ballads.’ In Medievalism on the Margins, edited by Karl Fugelso with Vincent Ferre and Alicia C. Montoya, 51–62. Studies in Medievalism XXIV. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015. –––. ‘Teaching Medieval Outlaw Tales.’ Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 15, no. 1 (2008): 105–32. Kelly, Thomas E. Eustache the Monk. In Medieval Outlaws: Twelve Tales in Modern English Translation, Revised and Expanded Edition, edited by Thomas H. Ohlgren, 100–50. West Lafayette, IL: Parlor Press, 2005. Kirgiss, Crystal. ‘Popular Devotion and Prosperity Gospel in Early Robin Hood Tales.’ In British Outlaws of Literature and History: Essays on Medieval and Early Modern Figures from Robin Hood to Twm Shon Catty, edited by Alexander L. Kaufman, 165–78. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011. Knight, Stephen. ‘Alterity, Parody, Habitus: The Formation of the Early Literary Tradition of Robin Hood.’ In Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition, edited by Stephen Knight, 1–29. Cultural Spaces 1. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, Medieval Identities: Socio-­ 2011. –––. Reading Robin Hood. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015. Knight, Stephen, and Thomas Ohlgren, ed. Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales. 2nd ed. TEAMS Middle English Texts Series. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000. Landry, H. Jordan. ‘Of Tricks, Tropes, and Trollops: Revisions to the Seduction Novel in E. D. E. N. Southworth’s The Hidden Hand.’ The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 38, no. 2 (2005): 31–44. Lee, Heidi Oberholtzer. ‘Commensality and Love Feast: The Agape Meal in the Late Nineteenth-­and Early Twentieth-­Century Brethren in Christ Church.’ In Food and Faith in Christian Culture, edited by Ken Albala and Trudy Eden, 147–69. Arts and Traditions of the Table. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Looby, Christopher. ‘Southworth and Seriality: The Hidden Hand in the New York Ledger.’ Nineteenth-­Century Literature 59, no. 2 (2004): 179–211. Luck, Chad. The Body of Property: Antebellum American Fiction and the Phenomenology of Possession. New York: Fordham University, 2014. Marshall, Mac. Drinking Smoke: The Tobacco Syndemic in Oceania. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013.

80  Ann Beebe Meyer, Richard E. ‘The Outlaw: A Distinctive American Folktype.’ Journal of the Folklore Institute 17, no. 2 (1980): 94–124. O’Connor, Kaori. The Never-­Ending Feast: The Anthropology and Archaeology of Feasting. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Okker, Patricia, and Jeffrey R. Williams. ‘‘Reassuring Sounds’: Minstrelsy and The Hidden Hand.’ The American Transcendental Quarterly 12, no. 2 (1998): 133–45. Pond, Kristen. ‘‘With Badinage and Repartee’: Freeing Women’s Talk through Capitola in Southworth’s The Hidden Hand, or Capitola the Madcap.’ Women’s Studies 42, no. 3 (2013): 140–62. Purkiss, Dianne. ‘The Masque of Food: Staging and Banqueting in Shakespeare’s England.’ Shakespeare Studies 42 (2014): 91–105. Scott, Alison M., and Amy M. Thomas. ‘The Hidden Agenda of The Hidden Hand: Periodical Publication and the Literary Marketplace in Late-­Nineteenth-­ Century America.’ In E. D. E. N. Southworth: Recovering a Nineteenth-­ Century Popular Novelist, edited by Melissa J. Homestead and Pamela T. Washington, 49–73. Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 2012. Seal, Graham. Outlaw Heroes in Myth and History. Anthem World History. London: Anthem Press, 2011. Shprintzen, Adam D. The Vegetarian Crusade: The Rise of an American Reform Movement,1817–1921. Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Southworth, E. D. E. N. The Hidden Hand or, Capitola the Madcap. American Women Writers Series. Edited by Joanne Dobson. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988. –––. Retribution. A Tale of Passion. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson, 1856. Todd, Emily B. ‘Establishing Routes for Fiction in the United States: Walter Scott’s Novels and the Early Nineteenth-­Century American Publishing Industry.’ Book History 12 (2009): 100–28. Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1896.

4 Breaking Bad While Baking Bread The Cereal Politics of Belle Starr’s Outlaw Reputation Jenna Hunnef Introduction Almost half a century after Belle Starr drew her last breath, the name of the ‘one-­time queen of the Indian Territory outlaws’ was once again in the news.1 The 5 June 1938 issue of The Daily Oklahoman featured a brief column on Starr, which, at less than three hundred words, was nearly lost amidst a clutter of travel advertisements and a lengthier piece on the booming tourism industry in the Pacific Northwest.2 This article is not peculiar for its choice of subject; Belle Starr’s outlaw legacy has provided a steady source of inspiration for writers, filmmakers, and journalists since her death in 1889.3 Nor is it unique, given the periodic revival of public interest in the global history of outlawry evident, for example, in media coverage of recent debates and new discoveries, including former Arizona Governor Bill Richardson’s refusal in 2010 to issue a posthumous pardon for Billy the Kid,4 or the forensic identification in 2011 of the remains of the (in)famous Australian bushranger Ned Kelly.5 In fact, the reputations of most well-­known outlaws from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have continued to find representation in print and on screen long after the conclusion of their criminal careers. Belle Starr’s status as a female outlaw is singular within the history of outlawry in the nineteenth-­century United States, but it is not its focus on this biographical anomaly that distinguishes the 1938 Daily Oklahoman article; rather, the piece is noteworthy for its focus on Starr’s reputation as a cook. Proclaiming in its headline, ‘Recipes used by Belle Star [sic] still popular,’ the article makes almost no mention of Starr’s criminal exploits, opting instead to emphasize her culinary skills: ‘Among [Starr’s] accomplishments was her ability as a cook and her home was the scene of many feasts prepared by her own hands. She took pride in making candy and had a number of favorite recipes that she passed on to her friends.’6 The purpose of the article, it appears, is to transcribe two of these preferred recipes—­one for sugar candy, the other for cream candy, and allegedly written in ‘[Starr’s] own handwriting, clear cut and legible to this day’–for

82  Jenna Hunnef the enjoyment of the Daily Oklahoman’s Depression-­era readers.7 This article is singular within the extant body of literature about outlaws in the United States by virtue of its alimentary focus; food is rarely, if ever, a narrative feature in recollections of the likes of the all-­male James, Younger, Dalton, Doolin, Jennings, or Cook gangs. Significantly, however, the Daily Oklahoman article is neither the first nor the last time Belle Starr and her outlaw reputation are associated with cookery. With the exception of the 1938 article, which insists upon Starr’s alleged ‘sweet tooth,’8 when food appears in narrative accounts of Starr’s life, it is primarily in association with the production and consumption of bread and other grain products. Drawing upon several apocryphal accounts of the life of Belle Starr, this chapter considers how these specific representations of food have contributed to the aggrandizement of Starr’s otherwise dubious reputation as an outlaw. However, despite the role food has played in escalating the mythic hyperbole of Starr’s career, the present discussion suggests that the connotative associations between bread, home, and community, coupled with the novelty of a female outlaw, undermine conventional notions of femininity and domesticity. In these accounts, bread becomes a metonymy of alternative femininity and, indeed, alternative nationhood. American outlaw narratives, including many of those written about Belle Starr, have contributed to the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their lands and the dissolution of tribal autonomy by helping to justify such measures in the name of national stability and ‘progress.’ As David Bell and Gill Valentine suggest, however, given the power of food and food practices to ‘code and demarcate cultural boundaries,’ signaling who we are not only by virtue of what we eat, but also where and why,9 it matters that the baking and breaking of bread in these accounts situates Starr’s popular energy not within the context of the United States, but rather the Cherokee and Choctaw Nations in the former Indian Territory.10 The cereal politics of Belle Starr’s outlaw reputation challenge the isolated exceptionalism of the outlaw in the US national imagination, and enable us to think nationhood differently, or to imagine alternative visions of nationhood and community.

Belle Starr and Her Environment Belle Starr was born Myra Maybelle Shirley on February 5, 1848, in Jasper County, Missouri.11 Her parents, John and Eliza Shirley, were vehement supporters of the Confederacy, but moved their family to Texas in 1864 after losing their hotel business and one of their sons to the devastation of the war.12 In 1866, Myra Shirley married James C. Reed, a former Confederate guerrilla and known affiliate of the James and Younger gangs.13 The couple lived in Texas, Missouri, and California throughout their eight-­year

Breaking Bad While Baking Bread 83 marriage, and their union produced two children: Rosie ‘Pearl’ Reed in 1868, and James Edwin (‘Eddie’) Reed in 1871.14 The marriage came to an abrupt end in 1874 when James Reed was shot and killed by a bounty hunter.15 Myra Reed, as she was then known, is all but completely absent from the historical record in the years between 1874 and 1880. This undocumented interval in Starr’s life has granted considerable creative license to journalists, biographers, and amateur historians, many of whom have exploited the unaccountability of that six-­year period to invent a much more sensational outlaw biography for Starr than the historical record permits.16 Starr reappears in 1880 upon her marriage to Sam Starr, a Cherokee Nation citizen. This marriage profoundly altered Myra Reed’s former identity; she adopted her famous moniker, Belle Starr, at the same time that she became an intermarried citizen of the Cherokee Nation.17 In 1882, Belle and Sam Starr were accused of stealing a horse belonging to a neighbor who claimed to be a white US citizen living in the Cherokee Nation on a paid permit.18 The Cherokee tribal courts did not have authority over cases involving US citizens, so the Starrs were tried in Judge Isaac C. Parker’s US federal court in Fort Smith, Arkansas. The Starrs were found guilty of larceny, and each served nine months in the Detroit House of Correction in 1883. This was the only crime for which Belle Starr was ever convicted and sentenced, and there are no contemporary accounts or court records that might substantiate the innumerable frauds, heists, and murders that have been attributed to her by the popular press in the decades since her death. Sam Starr was fatally shot in 1886 during a neighborhood Christmas party when he and his attacker—­a Cherokee policeman who had long sought to apprehend the elusive Starr—­drew and fired their pistols at the same time, killing each other instantly.19 Belle Starr met a similarly violent demise just three years after her husband’s untimely passing. On the evening of Sunday, February 3, 1889, she was shot and killed by an unknown assailant as she was returning to her home in the Cherokee Nation after a day spent visiting friends in the Choctaw Nation; the identity of her killer remains the subject of debate today.20 Starr is buried on the property she formerly shared with Sam Starr, not far from where the couple’s log cabin once stood. During their marriage, the Starrs lived on the southernmost border of the Cherokee Nation, directly across the Canadian River from the Choctaw Nation. The Starrs’ proximity to multiple national borders, including the imaginary line demarcating the United States from the Indian Territory, and the territory’s shifting demographic patterns, ensconced the couple in a diverse but complex environment. Their neighbors included Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek citizens, their intermarried partners, African American freedmen, US merchants and railroad employees, and, increasingly, US citizens who either leased land from tribal citizens or

84  Jenna Hunnef squatted illegally on tribal land. The combination of this diverse human landscape with the legal grey areas generated by the competing jurisdictions of the tribal courts and the Western District Court of Arkansas in Fort Smith spelled profound consequences not only for the Starr family, but also the future of the Indian Territory and its Indigenous nations.21 By the late 1880s, the US government faced increasing pressure from American citizens to open up surplus lands in the center of the territory—­ known as the ‘Unassigned Lands’–for homesteading by non-­Indigenous settlers.22 The government finally capitulated to these demands, opening the area to settlement in the historic Land Run of 1889, which took place on April 22, less than three months after Belle Starr’s death. After the successful passage of an Organic Act in 1890, this area became the Oklahoma Territory. As a result of the Land Run of 1889 and an even larger-­scale land run in 1893, the 1890s witnessed a three-­fold increase in the territory’s population of settlers from the United States. Whether they settled on any of the newly opened lands, or took up farming on land rented from tribal citizens in other parts of the Indian Territory, by 1890, non-­citizen settlers outnumbered tribal citizens by a ratio of two to one. By 1900, the gap had widened further to a ratio of almost six settlers to one tribal citizen.23 The rapid increase in the Indian Territory’s settler population was matched by their clamor for representation in the US Congress and the influence they wielded in the movement for single statehood with Oklahoma Territory. Indian Territory was combined with Oklahoma Territory in 1907 to form the present state of Oklahoma. In what is perhaps the first Belle Starr narrative to be published in the wake of Oklahoma’s statehood in 1907, an article by journalist Frederick S. Barde, which appeared in the September 1910 issue of Sturm’s Oklahoma Magazine, notes how certain geographical landmarks near the former Starr cabin in the newly created state had been named (or re-­named) after the famous female outlaw, such as ‘Belle Starr Canyon’ and ‘Belle Starr Creek.’24 In the years leading up to and immediately following the Indian Territory’s transition into the state of Oklahoma in 1907, Starr’s name contributed its currency to the expropriation of Indigenous lands in the name of US expansion and geopolitical control. It is in this kind of symbolic capacity, then, that outlaws have functioned rhetorically to help turn the Indian Territory into US national space.25 Indeed, the Starr name has become synonymous with settler—­rather than Cherokee—­outlawry, despite the Starr family’s notoriety in that respect long before, and for several decades after, the brief period of Belle’s membership in the family.26 The rhetorical appropriation of Cherokee Nation land as ‘Belle Starr Country’ predicted the shape of things to come: the systematic implementation of the Dawes Severalty Act throughout the 1890s and the forced integration of the Indian Territory into the United States as part of the state of Oklahoma in 1907.27 Moreover, the literary representation of Starr’s mobility between the Indian Territory

Breaking Bad While Baking Bread 85 and the domestic United States (viz. Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas) gestures toward the inevitability that the territory would one day become a part of the United States and thereby contribute to its Manifest Destiny. As anthropologist Paul Sant Cassia has suggested, Ambiguity and the packaging of the myth of banditry in literate state contexts are significant features which cannot be disregarded as mere frills. . . . Bandits are often romanticized afterwards through nationalist rhetoric and texts which circulate and have a life of their own, giving them a permanence and potency which transcends their localized domain and transitory nature. How bandits are portrayed in the modern nation-­state and the way in which such symbols are utilized to legitimate contemporary struggles is as significant as what they actually did and represented.28 Starr’s death in 1889 followed the passage in the US Congress of the Dawes Severalty Act in 1887, and preceded the Land Run of 1889 by less than three months. Of course, Starr’s death is not wedded through any causal relationship to the allotment of tribal lands in severalty, but its symbolic potential was appropriated at the national level in a manner that made the causes behind the Indian and Oklahoma Territories’ slouch toward statehood appear far more romantic, individualized, and American than is supported by historical reality. However, even as outlaws were invoked in the service of national domestication projects, they have at least as often been invoked in efforts to resist that containment, a resistance that a study of the cereal politics of Belle Starr’s outlaw reputation makes evident.

The Cereal Politics of Belle Starr’s Outlaw Reputation As the sketch of Starr’s life outlined previously suggests, the criminal profile of the ‘Bandit Queen’ was, in fact, relatively unremarkable throughout her life. Her local notoriety as an outlaw vacillated considerably between rumors of her involvement in criminal activities (some of which were well-­founded), and her reputation as a ‘friendly’ woman whose skill behind the piano made her a popular guest at neighborhood gatherings.29 However, narrative accounts written about her in the decades since her death have substantially embellished her exploits to capitalize upon the novelty and salacious potential of a female outlaw. A survey of the most prominent narratives of Starr’s life reveals the disturbing transformation her outlaw reputation underwent from the end of the nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth. The most influential Starr narratives from the late 1880s and the 1890s, for example, imbue their subject with a degree of agency and respect that begins to wane in accounts from the early twentieth century, and is completely

86  Jenna Hunnef absent from some mid-­century texts.30 In the mid-­twentieth century, as the United States became locked in the stalemate of the Cold War and struggled with fears of impotence and the perceived ‘feminization’ of American culture,31 new accounts of Starr’s life dispensed with the popular belief in the active role she took in illicit activities, and divested her of that agency; her characterization underwent a startling transformation from ‘Queen of the Bandits’ to ‘Mistress of Outlaws,’32 and her sexual reproduction became construed as the primary source of her agency. The rhetorical construction of Belle Starr in one example from the 1960s, Paul I. Wellman’s A Dynasty of Western Outlaws, disempowers her as an outlaw in her own right, reducing her to a ‘nymphomaniac’ whose womb was liable to produce social deviants and whose sexual licentiousness merely helped to solder the connections between disparate branches of America’s criminal kinsmen.33 By conceiving of Starr as a ‘carrier’ of criminal behavior,34 Wellman construes her as a threat to the established, albeit imaginary, borders between social units: between white and red, male and female, sinner and saint. However, even within these condescending portrayals of Starr’s alleged criminal and sexual deviance, there nonetheless exist rogue moments where she is conflated with one of the most mundane and wholesome, not to mention feminine, acts of domesticity: the baking, consumption, and sharing of daily bread. In these rogue moments, the borderlands, the outlaw’s retreat, the road, and the courtroom become powerful feminist communal spaces where women of different racial backgrounds, nations, and kinship structures prepare food, share knowledge, and sustain each other and their communities. One of the most common refrains in food studies scholarship across the disciplines is that the communal consumption of food—­whether in a quotidian or formal context—­bears and communicates social significance. In her analysis of the relationship between food and power in the feminist-­inflected writings of British novelist Angela Carter (1940–1992), Emma Parker observes, ‘[F]ood does much more than merely feed the body; when, what, how, and with whom we eat is intrinsically related to a society’s most fundamental beliefs and philosophies. . . . Eating acts as a muted form of expression that can make explicit what is otherwise only implicit.’35 Sarah Sceats, another literary specialist, insists that food is ‘inextricably connected with social function.’36 Anthropologist Tan Chee-­ Beng echoes both of these literary scholars in his observation that the consumption of food is not a mere biological necessity; rather, ‘it is also a communicative act which has the significance of social relations.’37 Given the ability of food actions to speak louder than words, depictions of the consumption of bread and grain products in narratives of the life of Belle Starr upset conventional portrayals of the Bandit Queen that disempower her within the framework of a masculine economy. By revealing and refiguring Belle Starr’s relationship to food, other women, and her Cherokee and Choctaw communities, these narratives (perhaps unintentionally)

Breaking Bad While Baking Bread 87 challenge many of the fragile structures that underpin patriarchy and colonialism, including authority, domination, and ownership. As Kathryn Cornell Dolan notes, bread, grains, and their byproducts have a ‘long domestic historicity’ dating back to the Fertile Crescent of ancient Mesopotamia.38 Dolan adds that the metaphorical richness of bread has been exploited throughout ancient and modern literature, observing its special prominence in the Christian tradition: ‘Jesus Christ calls himself the bread and the life, multiplied loaves of bread, and is substantially connected to bread through the sacrament of communion.’39 However, biblical associations with bread are not restricted to the Christ metaphor. Dolan reminds us that ‘women and bread are connected as early as the Gospel of Matthew, in a recipe for making bread. In this passage, a woman increases the kingdom of heaven through her cooking skills.’40 Unaccountably, Dolan omits any reference to the story of Demeter, Greek goddess of grain and agriculture, in the ‘domestic historicity’ of bread in Western civilization;41 more problematically, she also does not comment upon the domestic baking practices of non-­settler women in her historical overview of the evolution of bread-­making as a domestic chore for American women from the colonial period to the industrial revolution.42 Narrative representations of the production and consumption of bread and grain products in literary treatments of Belle Starr’s life provide some accounting for these erasures. One of the apocryphal accounts of Starr’s life alluded to in my introduction is John Q. Anderson’s ‘Belle Starr and the Biscuit Dough,’ which was published in a 1961 collection of Southern folk songs and stories. Anderson provides us with a second-­hand account of an encounter his father allegedly had with Belle Starr in the Indian Territory in the late 1880s. He relates how his father, who was just a young boy at the time these events are said to have taken place, was walking through the Kiamichi mountain range in the eastern Choctaw Nation with his own father (Anderson’s grandfather) when the pair came across a camp of outlaws who were taking advantage of the region’s fastness ‘[in] between robberies and horse-­stealing raids in the Territory and North Texas.’43 Notwithstanding the group’s criminal orientation, the father and son nonetheless stopped to call, ‘as was customary’ in the region.44 Belle Starr is described as the lone woman in the group, crouched by the fire stirring a pan of biscuit dough with her bare hands. The young men of the camp are preoccupied with a contest to see whose aim is most proficient by shooting at a knothole in a nearby tree. ‘Naturally,’ Anderson says, the outlaws were all experts, but an argument developed over whose bullet had been placed where in the tree. Tempers flared, heated words were exchanged, and a fight was brewing when an arresting command came from the area of the campfire. The voice was Belle Starr’s. . . . Slowly she stood up and wiped the dough off her hands

88  Jenna Hunnef with a rolling motion, as though she were pulling off tight gloves. She walked over to the group and gave her hands a last swipe on her riding skirt. ‘I’ll show you who can shoot,’ she drawled. From their holsters, she drew both of her pearl-­handled six-­shooters and methodically, hand over hand, emptied them into the knot in the tree. The argument was settled.45 Following his recollection of the anecdote, Anderson admits, ‘If there was more to my father’s story, I cannot now recall it. More is not necessary; the story is dramatically complete. This tale . . . compares favorably with versions of Belle Starr’s life in its emphasis on her guns and proficiency in handling them.’46 Although this story is almost certainly untrue, it is nonetheless highly original in the sense that it is completely unique, not having been drawn from any previous account of Starr’s life.47 Its originality is squandered, however, on Anderson’s use of the anecdote as a mere introduction to an otherwise uninspired summary of Starr’s biography, allotting less than three pages to it in his nine-­page account. Anderson identifies the value of his father’s story in its corroboration of popular narratives about Starr’s life that extol her exceptionalism as a renowned gunslinger. However, the significance of this story and what it communicates shift dramatically when the power of Starr’s role as a provider of sustenance is privileged over her skill with a pistol. Starr stops the men’s rising hostilities with ‘an arresting command,’ indicating her influence over the others. Anderson is careful to note that Starr was not mixing the biscuit dough with some kind of implement, but quite explicitly ‘with her hands’–the same hands that prove themselves so adept at marksmanship, not merely equal to that of her male peers, but actually besting them at their own game. Anderson’s description of Starr as she busily prepares the evening meal hints at the threat of contamination her alleged criminality represents to law-­abiding society. Wellman, whose account was published the same year as Anderson’s, capitalizes on this threat in his explicit likening of Starr to ‘Typhoid’ Mary Mallon. Mallon was the first known ‘healthy carrier’ of the typhoid bacterium; she became notorious in the first decade of the twentieth century for spreading the contagion to members of the wealthy New York City families for whom she worked as a cook, namely, by handling and preparing their food with her unwashed hands. Like Mallon, Wellman suggests, Starr was ‘well fitted to perpetuate and dispense the infection of outlawry, of which she seemed to be a “carrier,” like Typhoid Mary.’48 Though it threatens to trespass into Wellman’s politics of abjection,49 Anderson’s fixation on the image of Belle Starr wrist-­deep in raw dough instead imbues his subject with near-­hagiographic reverence in the sense that some essence of her exceptional self has the potential to rub off into the dough she prepares for others’ consumption and sustenance. The barrier between her body and the dough is so fine that Anderson describes the

Breaking Bad While Baking Bread 89 act of cleaning it off her hands as ‘a kind of rolling motion, as though she were pulling off tight gloves,’ suggesting the aptness, rather than the maladroitness, of the outlaw’s domestic activity through the evocation of a perfect, glove-­like fit. Though the goal of Anderson’s anecdote appears to be to corroborate the sensational portrayal of Starr’s proficiency as a gunslinger in popular media, his account concludes on a counterintuitive note. ‘The story of the biscuit dough,’ Anderson insists, ‘demonstrates the skill with guns an outlaw is supposed to have along with the cold calm to make that skill effective.’50 The syntax of this sentence conflates ‘biscuit dough’ with ‘skill with guns’ in a startling non-­sequitur. Anderson follows this statement with the claim, ‘Such tales as these are the folk method of making heroes larger than life.’51 Starr’s hyperbolic outlaw reputation is certainly made larger than life in this account and others like it in the sense that she is endowed with superior gun-­fighting abilities when there is no historical evidence, apart from hearsay and legend, to support such a claim. What renders her human, here, are the story’s references to food, cooking, and communal eating; she is made part of a community, one that, through her labor, she helps to nourish. In Anderson’s account, Starr is neither an apotheosized hero nor an abject, criminalized Other. Her act of preparing biscuits–‘the bread and the life’–becomes the means of communicating Starr’s reclamation in the name of community, rather than supporting the ancient association between outlawry and exile.52 The preparation of ‘daily bread’ that Starr enacts in Anderson’s story confronts readers with the incongruous realities of her outlaw reputation and mundane domestic responsibilities. Whether wittingly or not, Anderson provides us with what Kenneth Burke might call ‘perspective by incongruity.’ According to Burke, ‘perspective by incongruity’ is when ‘a word belongs by custom to a certain category—­and by rational planning you wrench it loose and metaphorically apply it to a different category.’53 I prefer to think of this strategy as ‘purposeful defamiliarization,’ though in Anderson’s case it is perhaps more fortuitous than intentional. The domestic role Belle Starr fulfills in this story disarticulates the outlaw from masculinity, and defamiliarizes the outlaw’s traditional role as a boundary-­maintaining mechanism. Her hands in the biscuit dough are not metonymies of contamination, but rather of productive, community-­ enhancing labor. In another defamiliarizing move, the community her feminine labor enhances is not the United States, but the Cherokee and Choctaw Nations in the Indian Territory, which in the 1880s were still organized according to Cherokee and Choctaw understandings of nationhood and governance. Invocations of bread and grain products in narrative descriptions of the sequence of events prior to Starr’s death and her subsequent burial also appropriate the Bandit Queen in the name of Indigenous nationhood rather than American nationalism. Historian Glenn Shirley, who wrote

90  Jenna Hunnef perhaps the most credible biography of Starr, notes that while riding home from Fort Smith on the day of her death, she stopped at a neighbor’s home across the river in the Choctaw Nation to seek out a piece of the sour cornbread that a tenant farmer’s wife was ‘widely known for making.’54 Shirley claims, ‘Belle got her piece of corn bread, chatted with [the tenant farmer’s wife] nearly half an hour, then rode on. That was the last anybody remembered seeing her alive.’55 The final human exchange Starr allegedly had before she was shot and killed involved the consumption of cornbread during a friendly visit between female members of the same small community, albeit one that crossed at least two national borders. Moreover, Starr’s evident fondness for this woman’s particular brand of sour cornbread contradicts the numerous unsubstantiated rumors that Starr abhorred the company of other women. These rumors make the rounds mostly in early-­and mid-­twentieth-­century narratives of her life written by men, but perhaps the most representative example comes from historian Glenda Riley, who claims, ‘Starr’s partial rejection of women’s culture . . . proved a costly miscalculation, as such isolation not only cut her off from female society but from a network of female support. No evidence suggests that she ever had one truly intimate woman friend.’56 Riley’s comments are an attempt to isolate Starr, to establish her transgressive femininity, and thus heighten her outlaw exceptionalism. However, this apocryphal exchange involving cornbread, much like the one that occasioned the sharing of Starr’s recipes for sugar and cream candy with which this chapter began, communicates Starr’s membership in her community and more specifically within a community of women. As Chee-­Beng observes, ‘Eating together or taking and receiving the food someone provides  .  .  . cultivates solidarity or feelings of acceptance. This human experience is easily extended to persons outside the family or friends to show friendship and solidarity.’57 In the same way that the story of ‘Belle Starr and the Biscuit Dough’ challenges the masculine economy of modern outlaw worship, this apocryphal element in the timeline of Starr’s death similarly complicates our understanding of her as an outlaw in the conventional sense; that is, as an exceptional but necessarily isolated individual. The manner in which Starr is alleged to have been buried following her murder also bespeaks the ability of food to articulate boundaries and claim individuals as members of a specific community, perhaps even in spite of a given author’s intentions. Some biographers have claimed that Starr was buried in the Cherokee fashion, citing rumors that mourners dropped a small piece of cornbread (or a few grains of cornmeal, depending on the account) into her grave or casket as part of an old Cherokee custom.58 To date, I  have been unable to verify that the dropping of cornbread or cornmeal into a casket is, indeed, an ancient Cherokee burial practice; perhaps Starr’s alleged predilection for sour cornbread

Breaking Bad While Baking Bread 91 is what inspired her mourners’ symbolic act. However, other details of the manner in which Starr was buried add a degree of authenticity to the claim that she received Cherokee funeral rites upon her burial, such as the fact that she was interred in the earth just steps from her front door. Tom Mooney, a former archivist with the Cherokee Heritage Center in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, has indicated that it was common for Cherokees in Indian Territory/­Oklahoma to be buried on their homesteads, rather than in a cemetery.59 Perhaps a more compelling item of substantiating evidence is the fact that Starr’s burial site is covered by a ‘grave house,’ consisting of a stone foundation topped with an A-­frame made of two poured concrete slabs (see Figure 4.1). Although the practice of building grave houses is not unique to the Cherokees, such structures are nonetheless found all over the state of Oklahoma, often in the private cemeteries of Indigenous families.60 Inasmuch as Starr’s grave house may have been designed to prevent looters from desecrating her burial site, it also claims her as a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, subject to its customs and traditions, much like the practice of dropping bits of cornbread or cornmeal into her casket. Ultimately, like much of the extant information on Belle Starr, the veracity of the cornbread-­in-­the-­coffin accounts is somewhat beside the

Figure 4.1  Belle Starr’s Grave, Muskogee County, Oklahoma, 19 July 2013. Author’s photograph.

92  Jenna Hunnef point. The burial practice itself is unimportant; rather, it is the kind of food used in it that claims Starr as a member of the Cherokee community rather than as a representative of US nationalism. In his meditation on the psychosociology of contemporary food consumption, Roland Barthes borrows a linguistics term, ‘transformational analysis,’ to frame the question of ‘whether the passage from one fact to another produces a difference in signification.’61 He cites differences in types of bread to illustrate his point: [T]he changeover from ordinary bread to pain de mie [refined white bread] involves a difference in what is signified: the former signifies day-­to-­day life, the latter a party. Similarly, in contemporary terms, the changeover from white to brown bread corresponds to a change in what is signified in social terms, because, paradoxically, brown bread has become a sign of refinement.62 Following Barthes’ logic, it is especially significant that the bread Starr seeks out in the hours before her death and that is used to mark her burial is cornbread. Of course, corn is a widely used substance today, and cornmeal was a staple foodstuff on the frontier and in the Southern United States. However, it was and remains an Indigenous food, native to the Americas, and sacred to many Indigenous peoples, not the least of whom are the Cherokees, whose First Woman, Selu, is also known as the Corn-­Mother or Mother Corn.63

Conclusion The recipes with which this chapter began are not merely rare items of Belle Starr ephemera. They were initially separated from the larger context in which they belong in order to emphasize the singularity of Starr’s association with cookery within the broader sphere of American outlaw narratives. However, that context bears its own significance, and I shall turn to it now by way of conclusion. According to the Daily Oklahoman article, Belle Starr gave her candy recipes to Mrs. Amanda Jackson of Ringling, Indian Territory, on 10 September 1885.64 In exchange, Mrs. Jackson gave Starr a recipe for making sausage.65 Under ordinary circumstances, such an exchange would not warrant remark, but this exchange did not take place under ordinary circumstances. The women became acquainted with each other and exchanged their recipes not in the intimacy of a domestic parlor, but beneath the roof of Judge Isaac Parker’s federal courtroom in Fort Smith, Arkansas. The two women were present in federal court that day for very different reasons. Mrs. Jackson’s son, Lute, had been subpoenaed as a witness in a sheep-­killing case that originated on his ranch

Breaking Bad While Baking Bread 93 in the Chickasaw Nation, and she had come to witness his testimony. Starr, on the other hand, was there to be tried for larceny.66 However, despite the difference in the women’s socioeconomic backgrounds and the reasons for their presence in Fort Smith that day, they quickly established a rapport and symbolically declared their mutual esteem through the exchange of select recipes. The contents of Starr’s candy recipes are neither exceptional nor noteworthy; in fact, her instructions for making the candy are, as Susan Leonardi observes about most recipes, ‘surprisingly useless, even for a fairly experienced cook.’67 Instead, what makes these recipes and the circumstances prompting their exchange meaningful is the fact that they are, as Leonardi suggests of recipes generally, ‘embedded discourses’ that are ‘clearly gendered,’ and as such they bear a relationship to the context that frames the exchange or transmission of the recipes.68 Leonardi further observes the utility and importance of the discourse of recipe exchange, especially amongst women: ‘[M]others and daughters  .  .  . old friends who now have little in common, mistresses and their “help,” lawyers and their secretaries—­all can participate in this almost prototypical feminine activity.’69 In their creation of a micro-­community of women through the exchange of recipes, Starr and Jackson not only cross national borders, but also transgress legal barriers: Starr is on trial, whereas Jackson is not. This distinction appears to matter little to two women whose free circulation of gendered, culinary knowledge challenges the authority of a male-­dominated institution designed to control the freedom and mobility of bodies; for all of its simplicity, the women’s exchange becomes an admirable act of subversion when considered as a counter-­discourse embedded within the very legal institution (the Western District Court of Arkansas) that not only threatened Starr’s personal freedom, but also the autonomy of the Cherokee Nation of which she was an intermarried citizen and the other tribal nations with which she had frequent exchange. Though Starr’s freedom was ultimately curtailed by her premature death in 1889 and Oklahoma statehood was established in 1907, the periodic recirculation of Starr’s outlaw candy recipes, in concert with the knowledge of the context from whence they issued, persists as a reminder of alternative and sustaining forms of community beyond what is lawfully, nationally, or socially sanctioned. Despite many biographers’ attempts to claim Starr not only as an outlaw but more specifically as an outlaw in the American tradition, food in the form of bread and grains appears in narratives of her life when readers least expect it and destabilizes those efforts. In the end, representations of food, eating, and the communal connotations associated with each, function neither to apotheosize her nor abjectify her, but rather reclaim her as a human being who was part of a specific community foreign to the United States: the Cherokee Nation in the former Indian Territory.

Appendix Belle Starr’s Outlaw Candy Recipes

Sugar Candy Six cups white sugar, one cup vinegar, one cup water, teaspoon of butter, put in last, with one teaspoon soda dissolved in hot water. Boil without stirring one-­half hour. Flavor to suit taste.

Cream Candy Four cups sugar, two cups water, three-­fourths cup vinegar, one cup cream or rich milk; piece of butter the size of an egg, two teaspoons vanilla. Let boil until it cracks in water, then work until white.70

Notes 1 ‘Recipes used by Belle Star [sic] still popular.’ 2 Ibid. 3 Some of the most notable texts that have emerged since Starr’s death in 1889 include: Belle Starr, The Bandit Queen, or The Female Jesse James; Harman, Hell on the Border, 557–611; Barde, ‘The Story of Belle Starr,’ 11–26; Belle Starr, (Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox, 1941); Montana Belle, (Los Angeles: RKO, 1952); Belle Starr, (Los Angeles: Hanna-­Barbera, 1980); Shirley, Belle Starr and Her Times; and Steele, Starr Tracks. 4 Marc Lacey, ‘No Pardon for Billy the Kid,’ The New York Times, December 31, 2010. 5 ‘Ned Kelly’s remains found in mass grave,’ Australian Broadcasting Corporation, September 1, 2011. 6 ‘Recipes.’ 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Bell and Valentine, Consuming Geographies, 2–3. 10 In very general terms, the Indian Territory comprised an area of land west of the Mississippi River that was set aside by the US federal government following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and intended for the relocation of Indigenous peoples from their homelands in the southeastern United States in order to facilitate Anglo American settlement east of the Mississippi River. The relocation process was officially enacted in 1830 with the Jackson administration’s passage of the Indian Removal Act, but it had already been initiated

Breaking Bad While Baking Bread 95 on a small-­scale treaty basis soon after the turn of the century. The 1830s, however, witnessed the large-­scale forced relocation of the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles (often referred to collectively as the ‘Five Civilized Tribes’) from their homelands in the southeast to a territory in the west bordered by the states of Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas. In addition to the Five Tribes, in the period between 1830 and 1890 other Indigenous nations that were forcibly removed to the Indian Territory included the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Wichita, Caddo, Comanche, Kiowa, Apache, Kaw, Tonkawa, Ponca, Oto, Missouri, Pawnee, Osage, Sauk and Fox, Iowa, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Shawnee, Wyandotte, Modoc, Miami, Quapaw, Ottawa, Illinois, Delaware, Ho-­Chunk, Kaskaskia, Cayuga, Tuskegee, Peoria, and Seneca Nations. Some of these tribes were already resident in the Indian Territory and were moved around within it in order to make room for the incoming dispossessed. See Dianna Everett, ‘Indian Territory,’ paragraph 4. 11 Shirley, Belle Starr and Her Times, 34–5. 12 Ibid., 62. 13 Ibid., 72, 52. 14 Ibid., 72–3, 86, 90–3. 15 Ibid., 114–21. 16 See, for example: Aikman, Calamity Jane and the Lady Wildcats, 188; Horan, Desperate Women, 213; and Shackleford, Belle Starr, The Bandit Queen, 11–14. 17 Shirley, Belle Starr, 140–41. 18 Ibid., 152–65. 19 Ibid., 213–14. 20 While numerous parties responsible for the killing have been named over the years, including Starr’s son, Eddie Reed, her daughter, Pearl Reed, and an ambush by ‘government troops,’ by far the most plausible and consistently identified suspect is Edgar A. Watson, an American would-­be settler in the territory to whom Belle Starr had formerly leased some of her property as an added source of income after Sam Starr’s death; see Shirley, Belle Starr, 232. Based on a set of footprints found in the mud near the scene of the crime, it was evident that someone had stood in the corner of a fence that bordered the road and shot Starr from that vantage point. The prints, which were made by a size seven shoe—­the same size worn by Watson—­led back to Watson’s cabin; Ibid., 238, 244. Watson was arrested and brought to Fort Smith to stand trial for Starr’s murder, but the case was dismissed for lack of evidence; Ibid., 245. For primary and alternate theories proposing Ed Reed as the killer, see: Anderson, ‘Belle Starr and the Biscuit Dough,’ 161–62; Booker, Wildcats in Petticoats, 62; Harman, Hell on the Border, 605–06; Horan, Desperate Women, 225; Rascoe, Belle Starr, ‘The Bandit Queen’ 248–49; Riley, ‘Belle Starr, “Queen of the Bandits,” ’ 155; Steele, Starr Tracks, 74; and Wellman, A Dynasty of Western Outlaws, 154. For alternate theories proposing Pearl Starr as the killer, see Booker, Wildcats in Petticoats, 62. For narratives that attribute Starr’s death, inexplicably, to an ambush by government troops, see: Lombroso and Ferrero, The Female Offender, 189; and de Varigny, The Women of the United States, 181. 21 The erosion of the sovereign integrity of the tribal nation courts began at least as early as 1851, when the US federal government established the Western District Court of Arkansas to enforce federal laws throughout western Arkansas and the Indian Territory, despite the fact that the territory’s tribal nations all had their own fully functioning legal systems and police. In 1871, the federal court was moved from Van Buren, Arkansas, to Fort Smith, just

96  Jenna Hunnef across the border from the Indian Territory. The Western District Court held jurisdiction over all crimes committed by or against US citizens living in the Indian Territory, while the tribal courts only had jurisdiction over crimes involving tribal citizens. These competing jurisdictions limited the tribal courts’ ability to police their nations, a circumstance which, combined with the sheer size of the region involved, made the Indian Territory an attractive refuge for outlaws and fugitives from the surrounding states. In other words, the jurisdictional loopholes imposed on the Indian Territory by the US federal government made the territory an outlaw’s paradise; the reputation it acquired as such was then used to gain support for efforts to impose a state government over the territory, efforts which were realized in 1907 upon Oklahoma’s statehood. 22 The Unassigned Lands were a byproduct of the severe repercussions imposed on the Five Tribes under the terms of the Treaty of 1866 following the end of the Civil War. During the war, factionalism broke out in the Indian Territory, as it did in most of the states that bordered it, with some members of the Five Tribes supporting and fighting for the Union while others supported and fought for the Confederacy. At the war’s end, the US government imposed significant penalties on the Five Tribes for some of their citizens’ participation in the Confederate cause. In addition to the granting of railroad rights-­of-­way throughout the territory, some of the penalties included the forced cessions of large tracts of land, resulting in the loss of most of the western half of the territory, to which the US government later relocated other tribes removed from the Midwest, Great Plains, and Southwest in the years following the Civil War. The lands that remained unsettled by relocated tribes became known as the Unassigned Lands. See Littlefield, Seminole Burning, 10. 23 Maxwell, ‘The Sequoyah Convention, Part I,’ 169. 24 Barde, ‘The Story of Belle Starr,’ 22, 23. 25 See also Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, 128. Slotkin has demonstrated how national print media outlets were responsible for the fabrication of the pseudo-­history that grew up around Jesse James—­who was known to frequent the territory—­in the 1870s, separating the localized form and meaning of his social banditry from ‘the specific social and political context that had given his banditry a “social” character’ in the interest of establishing generic national mythologies. 26 Sam Starr’s father, Tom Starr, acquired his own reputation as an outlaw long before Belle became his daughter-­in-­law, with some legends suggesting he killed as many as a hundred men; see Conley, Cherokee Thoughts, 82. Sam Starr was a reputed horse thief, but both his and his more famous wife’s outlaw reputations are vastly outshone by the exploits of his nephew, Henry Starr, who was, perhaps, ‘the greatest bank robber in history,’ Ibid., 81. Henry Starr’s criminal career began in 1891 when he was falsely accused of stealing two horses, and concluded in 1921 when he was fatally shot during a botched bank heist. Despite Henry Starr’s impressive thirty-­year career, Conley observes, ‘History has shoved him aside in favor of his white aunt-­by-­ marriage, Belle Starr,’ 86. See also Starr, Thrilling Events. 27 Throughout the 1890s and first two decades of the twentieth century, the Dawes Severalty Act (also known as the General Allotment Act) enabled the systematic dismantling of the Indian Territory tribal nations’ traditional practice of communal land ownership, replacing it with the enforced ‘allotment’ or parceling out of surveyed sections of land to heads of household in an effort to assimilate Indigenous peoples into the domestic and economic structures of the United States by making them submit to individual property ownership. Surplus lands that remained at the end of the allotment period

Breaking Bad While Baking Bread 97 were made available for purchase by non-­Indigenous settlers. The implementation of this legislative policy significantly compromised tribal and familial cohesiveness and contributed to severe reductions in tribal sovereignty and the civil and political rights of tribal citizens. 28 Cassia, ‘Banditry, Myth, and Terror in Cyprus and Other Mediterranean Societies,’ 774–75. 29 Shirley, Belle Starr, 205, 213. 30 For the former, see: Belle Starr, The Bandit Queen, or The Female Jesse James; Lombroso, The Female Offender, 174–89; Varigny, The Women of the United States, 169–82; and Harman, Hell on the Border, 557–611. For the latter, see: Barde, ‘The Story of Belle Starr’; Aikman, Calamity Jane, 158– 206; Booker, Wildcats in Petticoats, 52–63; Rascoe, Belle Starr; Shackleford, Belle Starr; Horan, Desperate Women, 201–26; Dalton, Under the Black Flag, 143–56; Rogers, Gallant Ladies, 115–44; and Wellman, A Dynasty of Western Outlaws, 74–5, 98–9, 130–57. 31 Faludi, The Terror Dream, 9. 32 Drago, Outlaws on Horseback, 90. 33 Wellman, A Dynasty of Western Outlaws, 146. 34 Ibid., 131. 35 Parker, ‘The Consumption of Angela Carter,’ 142. 36 Sceats, Food, Consumption, and the Body in Contemporary Women’s Fiction, 1. 37 Chee-­Beng, ‘Commensality and the Organization of Social Relations,’ 13. 38 Dolan, ‘Her Daily Bread,’ 40. 39 Ibid., 41. 40 Ibid., 40. The passage to which Dolan refers is one of Christ’s parables in Matthew 13:33 (KJV), ‘The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.’ 41 Known as Ceres in the Roman mythological tradition (the etymological source of ‘cereal’), Demeter ‘gave the gift of wheat first to the Athenians and taught them how to prepare it for food, and the Athenians shared the seeds and knowledge of it with their neighbors, until agriculture spread throughout the inhabited world.’ See Hansen, Classical Mythology, 147. 42 Dolan, ‘Her Daily Bread,’ 41–2. 43 Anderson, ‘Belle Starr,’ 156. 44 Ibid., 157. 45 Ibid., 157–8. 46 Ibid., 158. 47 Anderson says that at the time of the story’s events, his father was ‘a boy of about ten [years old],’ 157. However, in a note on page 164 of his account, he says his father was born in 1882, which would place the story’s action in the early 1890s, several years after Belle Starr’s death. It is plausible that Anderson’s father could have been more like six or seven years old at the time these events took place, but early in the story Anderson also names Sam Starr as a member of the outlaw party. The facts of Sam Starr’s death in 1886 and Anderson’s father’s birth in 1882 render the veracity of this story highly suspect. 48 Wellman, A Dynasty of Western Outlaws, 131. 49 Here and elsewhere in this discussion, the terms ‘abject,’ ‘abjection,’ and ‘abjectify’ are invoked according to the terms of Julia Kristeva’s interpretation of the abject as the loss of distinction between self and other, which threatens a breakdown in one’s subjective understanding of ‘me’ and ‘not-­me.’ In Powers of Horror, Kristeva characterizes the formation of subjectivity as the process of establishing a ‘clean and proper’ body, one with clearly demarcated

98  Jenna Hunnef boundaries and borders. The abject is the ultimate threat to the establishment of those boundaries. In addition to triggers like corpses and sewage, Kristeva suggests that feelings of abjection can be triggered by unfamiliar or altered forms of familiar foods, such as the filmy skin that develops on the surface of warm milk. See Powers of Horror, 2–3. She identifies the causes of abjection not as the ‘lack of cleanliness or health,’ but rather as that which ‘disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-­between, the ambiguous, the composite. The traitor, the liar, the criminal with a good conscience, the shameless rapist, the killer who claims he is a savior. . . . Any crime, because it draws attention to the fragility of the law, is abject, but premeditated crime, cunning murder, hypocritical revenge are even more so because they heighten the display of such fragility,’ 4. 50 Anderson, ‘Belle Starr,’ 164. 51 Ibid. 52 For further elucidation of the outlaw’s ancient associations with isolation and banishment, see Agamben, Homo Sacer; Black, Law Dictionary, 170; and Derrida, The Beast and the Sovereign. 53 Burke, Attitudes Toward History, 308. 54 Shirley, Belle Starr, 234. 55 Ibid. See also Barde, ‘The Story of Belle Starr,’ 25; and Steele, Starr Tracks, 67. 56 Riley, ‘Belle Starr,’ 140. 57 Chee-­Beng, ‘Commensality,’ 25. 58 See Anderson, ‘Belle Starr,’ 161; Horan, Desperate Women, 225; Rascoe, Belle Starr, 243; Ruth, ‘Mystery of Cornbread in Coffin Tackled’; Shackleford, Belle Starr, 22; Shirley, Belle Starr, 240; Steele, Starr Tracks, 69–70; and Wellman, A Dynasty of Western Outlaws, 153. 59 Burley-­Jones, ‘The Death System in Tsalagi Culture,’ 25. 60 In North From the Mountains, Kessler and Ball describe grave houses as ‘small shed-­like structures typically built of wood with lattice walls directly above an interment,’ 75. These kinds of structures can also be found in Europe and they have been reported in the United States from ‘Maine, throughout Appalachia, south-­central Kentucky, middle Tennessee, Georgia, northeastern Mississippi, Louisiana, eastern Texas, and the Ozarks,’ ibid. The grave house tradition appears to be an amalgamation of Anglo American, Native American and African American burial customs. 61 Barthes, ‘Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption,’ 30. 62 Ibid. 63 Justice, Our Fire Survives the Storm, 28, 105. 64 ‘Recipes used by Belle Star [sic] still popular.’ 65 Shirley, Belle Starr, 205. 66 Ibid. Starr would later be found not guilty of the charges brought against her. 67 Leonardi, ‘Recipes for Reading,’ 340. 68 Ibid., 340, 343. 69 Ibid., 324–23. 70 ‘Recipes used by Belle Star [sic] still popular’; and Shirley, Belle Starr, 205.

Bibliography Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated by Daniel Heller-­Roazen. Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Aikman, Duncan. Calamity Jane and the Lady Wildcats. New York: Henry Holt, 1927. Reprinted with an introduction by Watson Parker. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987.

Breaking Bad While Baking Bread 99 Anderson, John Q. ‘Belle Starr and the Biscuit Dough.’ In Singers and Storytellers, edited by Mody C. Boatright, Wilson Mathis Hudson, and Allen Maxwell, 156–65. Publications of the Texas Folklore Society 30. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1961. Barde, Frederick S. ‘The Story of Belle Starr.’ Sturm’s Oklahoma Magazine 11, no. 1 (1910): 11–26. Barthes, Roland. ‘Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption.’ In Food and Culture: A Reader, 2nd ed., edited by Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, 28–35. New York: Routledge, 2008. Bell, David, and Gill Valentine. Consuming Geographies: We Are Where We Eat. London: Routledge, 1997. Belle Starr. Directed by Irving Cummings. Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox, 1941. Belle Starr. Directed by John A. Alonzo. Los Angeles: Hanna-­Barbera, 1980. Belle Starr, The Bandit Queen, or The Female Jesse James: A Full and Authentic History of the Dashing Female Highwayman: With Copious Extracts from Her Journal. Wright American Fiction 3, no. 451. New York: R. K. Fox, 1889. Black, Henry Campbell. Law Dictionary Containing Definitions of the Terms and Phrases of American and English Jurisprudence, Ancient and Modern. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing, 1910. Booker, Anton S. Wildcats in Petticoats. Little Blue Book 1889. Girard, KS: Little-­Blue-­Books, 1931. Reprinted by Girard: Haldeman-­Julius, 1945. Burke, Kenneth. Attitudes Toward History. 3rd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Burley-­Jones, Tracey. ‘The Death System in Tsalagi Culture.’ Totem 10, no. 1 (2002): 20–6. Cassia, Paul Sant. ‘Banditry, Myth, and Terror in Cyprus and Other Mediterranean Societies.’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 35, no. 4 (1993): 773–95. Chee-­Beng, Tan. ‘Commensality and the Organization of Social Relations.’ In Commensality: From Everyday Food to Feast, edited by Susanne Kerner, Cynthia Chou, and Morten Warmind, 13–30. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Conley, Robert J. Cherokee Thoughts: Honest and Uncensored. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008. Dalton, Kit. Under the Black Flag. Memphis: Lockard, 1914. Derrida, Jacques. The Beast and the Sovereign. Vol. 1. Translated by Geoffrey Bennington. Seminars of Jacques Derrida 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. de Varigny, Charles Victor Crosnier. The Women of the United States. Paris: A. Colin, 1893. Translated by Arabella Ward and printed by New York: Dodd & Mead, 1895. Dolan, Kathryn Cornell. ‘Her Daily Bread: Food and Labor in Louisa May Alcott.’ American Literary Realism 48, no. 1 (2015): 40–57. Drago, Harry S. Outlaws on Horseback: The History of the Organized Bands of Bank and Train Robbers Who Terrorized the Prairie Towns of Missouri, Kansas, Indian Territory, and Oklahoma for Half a Century. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1964. Reprinted with an Introduction by Richard Patterson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. Everett, Diana. ‘Indian Territory.’ In The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, Accessed August 10, 2017. www.okhistory.org, paragraph 4. Faludi, Susan. The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-­9/­11 America. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007.

100  Jenna Hunnef Hansen, William. Classical Mythology: A  Guide to the Mythical World of the Greeks and Romans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Harman, Samuel W. Hell on the Border. Fort Smith: Phoenix, 1898. Horan, James D. Desperate Women. New York: Putnam, 1952. Justice, Daniel Heath. Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History. Indigenous Americans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Kessler, John S., and Donald B. Ball. North From the Mountains: A Folk History of the Carmel Melungeon Settlement, Highland County, Ohio. The Melungeons 2. Macon: Mercer University Press, 2001. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Lacey, Marc. ‘No Pardon for Billy the Kid.’ The New York Times. Accessed December 31, 2010. www.nytimes.com/­2011/­01/­01/­us/­01billy.html. Leonardi, Susan J. ‘Recipes for Reading: Summer Pasta, Lobster à la Riseholme, and Key Lime Pie.’ PMLA 104, no. 3 (1989): 340–47. Littlefield, Daniel F., Jr. Seminole Burning: A Story of Racial Vengeance. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996. Lombroso, Cesare, and William Ferrero. The Female Offender. London: T. F. Unwin, 1895. Reprinted, New York: D. Appleton, 1915. Maxwell, Amos. ‘The Sequoyah Convention, Part I.’ Chronicles of Oklahoma 28, no. 2 (1950): 161–92. Montana Belle. Directed by Allan Dwan. Los Angeles: RKO, 1952. ‘Ned Kelly’s remains found in mass grave.’ Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Accessed September  1, 2011. www.abc.net.au/­news/­2011-­09-­01/­ned-­kelly-­ remains-­found/­2865298. Parker, Emma. ‘The Consumption of Angela Carter: Women, Food, and Power.’ ARIEL 31, no. 3 (2000): 141–69. Rascoe, Burton. Belle Starr, ‘The Bandit Queen.’ New York: Random House, 1941. Reprinted with introduction by Glenda Riley. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. ‘Recipes used by Belle Star [sic] still popular.’ The Daily Oklahoman, June  5, 1938, sec. 6D. Riley, Glenda. ‘Belle Starr, “Queen of the Bandits.’’ ’ In With Badges and Bullets: Lawmen and Outlaws in the Old West, edited by Richard W. Etulain and Glenda Riley, 139–58. Notable Westerners. Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 1999. Rogers, Cameron. Gallant Ladies. New York: Harcourt-­Brace, 1928. Ruth, Kent. ‘Mystery of Cornbread in Coffin Tackled.’ The Sunday Oklahoman, October 19, 1980. Sceats, Sarah. Food, Consumption, and the Body in Contemporary Women’s Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Shackleford, William Yancey. Belle Starr, The Bandit Queen: The Career of the Most Colorful Outlaw the Indian Territory Ever Knew. Girard: Haldeman-­ Julius, 1945. Shirley, Glenn. Belle Starr and Her Times: The Literature, the Facts, and the Legends. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-­ Century America. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. Starr, Henry. Thrilling Events: The Life of Henry Starr. Tulsa: R. D. Gordon, 1914. Steele, Phillip W. Starr Tracks: Belle and Pearl Starr. Gretna, LA: Pelican, 1989. Wellman, Paul I. A Dynasty of Western Outlaws. New York: Doubleday, 1961.

5 The Twentieth-­Century American Outlaw Feast Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-­Aid Acid Test W. B. Gerard Outlaws have been a part of human society for as long as there has been authority to rebel against. In literature, outlaws generally are defined by their differences with the law, like Geoffrey Chaucer’s ruthless Shipman in the Canterbury Tales, the altruistic Robin Hood, John Gay’s charming highwayman Macheath in Beggar’s Opera, and even Walter Scott’s romanticized Jacobite rebels in Waverley. With liminal lawlessness (such as seen in the nineteenth-­century American West) declining in Western society over the last century, outlaws have come to be defined more broadly as those who defy norms, with the term used to identify, for instance, those who confront establishment values in the arts and sciences, such as political activist Ai Weiwei and psychedelic adventurer John C. Lilly.1 A recent manifestation of the outlaw can be seen in Ken Kesey and his close associates, collectively known as the Merry Pranksters, as documented by Tom Wolfe in his non-­fiction novel, The Electric Kool-­Aid Acid Test (hereafter EKAAT; 1968). The text serves as a stylized saga celebrating Kesey and his group, who rebel against normative mid-­ twentieth-­century America, choosing, as Barbara Lounsberry notes, ‘to challenge the status quo on its own turf on its own terms,’2 rather than live entirely outside the law. Although seemingly unconventional by traditional standards of outlaw literature, EKAAT portrays many of its prototypal elements: a charismatic and enigmatic leader; a devoted, inclusive group supporting the leader; and an anti-­authority philosophy that defines the group’s function and goals. Brent Whelan views the Pranksters as defining ‘an everydayness at variance in every way with social norms,’3 a sense of opposition that also extends to the political and aesthetic. The Pranksters’ adversarial relationship with figures of authority and Kesey’s eventual fugitive status further underline outlaw parallels. After establishing EKAAT as a type of modern outlaw saga, this study will examine the concept of feasting in its pages as not only a continuation of its more traditional role within the outlaw tradition, but also an extension of the group’s ambitious plan for the mass outlaw-­ization of American society. In general, opposition to postwar American values formed the basis of the outlaw philosophy depicted by Kesey and the Merry Pranksters in

102  W. B. Gerard EKAAT. These values, focusing on nationalism and domestic prosperity, grew from a series of historical events, in particular World War II and the Cold War, which emphasized a sense of unity and uniformity among Americans through a shared philosophy and sense of priorities. Politically, this normative view maintained a monolithic opposition to communist Russia and any suggestion of affiliation with it. For example, in 1950, Clement Greenberg, in conjunction with the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum, defended modern art against charges that it had ‘communist inclinations.’4 National fear of the ‘Red Menace’ later coalesced into Senator Joseph McCarthy’s ‘witch hunts,’ the highly publicized, wide-­reaching 1954 Congressional hearings designed to unmask communists who, by implication, were acting as agents of the Soviet Union. Initial popular opinion supported McCarthy enthusiastically, and although his ‘claims never were definitively verified . . . many Americans accepted them without question.’5 With the continuous threat of a powerful enemy, this nationalism would persist after McCarthy’s formal censure by the United States Senate and death a few years later. By the end of the decade, 85 percent of Americans would state they felt pride in ‘their governmental and political institutions,’6 signaling not only a sense of nationalist fervor, but also approval of the process of power allotment and, more broadly, the status quo. Complementing this political hegemony was one shaped by shared economic values. After World War II, the United States found itself ‘an economic lord’ internationally, with ‘negligible’ domestic inflation, meaning ‘the increase in available dollars was actually buying more goods.’7 This resulted in a popular emphasis on the elements of what Todd Gitlin calls ‘the American good life’: ‘a new house, a new car, TV set,’ with expectations ballooning to ‘high fidelity, jet travel, and multiple cars.’8 Between 1950 and 1960, ‘disposable family income rose by a considerable 49 percent,’9 fostering a culture of superficiality and strong normative standards. An early voice of dissent, Henry Miller, grumbled in 1945, ‘Our world is a world of things. It is made up of comfort and luxuries, or else the desire for them.’10 Miller also saw a distinct downside to the emphasis on industrial productivity, noting, ‘Wherever there is industry there is ugliness, misery, oppression, gloom and despair.’11 A sense of underlying malaise was widespread; Gitlin succinctly observes, ‘conformity was supposed to buy contentment, cornucopia promised both private and public utopia, but satisfaction kept slipping out of reach.’12 Thus the atmosphere of conformist conservatism that prevailed in the postwar years stressed faith in government institutions and the importance of financial success, fostering an inclusivity that by extension prioritized conformity to these ideas: those doubtful about the government’s efficacy or wisdom, or the value of the quest for more material goods, were shunted outside the primary discourse. Of course, contrary opinions emerged throughout the 1950s, with the appearance early in the

The Twentieth-­Century American Outlaw Feast 103 decade of J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, and later Beat literature, as well as rock-­and-­roll music and films aimed at teenage audiences, which ‘all shared an oppositional stance toward conventions and norms imagined as central to American life.’13 And in this opposition were the rumblings of change, an emergent counterculture that ‘objected to the nation’s racism and materialism and rejected the clean-­cut appearances favored by their more conservative peers.’14 In hindsight, it is evident that the cultural markers of outlawism were only the seeds of change, waiting for agents to make them manifest. In many ways, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters became the prototypes of the emerging counterculture even before the movement was widely recognized. Kesey’s well-­received One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) tells the story of a rebellious patient in an Oregon psychiatric ward through the eyes of another patient, and its anti-­authority allegory resonated with the times. A second book, Sometimes A Great Notion (1964), cemented Kesey’s reputation as an important literary voice, but his personal interests were already shifting. Having experimented with psychedelics as a volunteer for government experiments, he began incorporating them in a broader concept of an alternative lifestyle that included communal living, determined non-­conformity (or clever inversion of norms, as represented by the repurposed school bus), artistic experimentation, and the use of a range of drugs as a gateway to spiritual enlightenment and self-­realization. With the Pranksters, Kesey used these outlaw characteristics to foment a new sense of America, one in opposition to prevalent postwar conservative values. In EKAAT, Wolfe sets out to chronicle the story of Kesey, the coalescence of the Pranksters, and their attempt to fulfill emergent radical ideas within American normative society in the mid-­1960s.15 It begins with a series of portraits, focusing on Kesey, but also setting the stage for the uniqueness of the group’s developing quest by lingering on the diverse backgrounds of individual Pranksters: Ken Babbs, who becomes Kesey’s second-­in-­command, is an Army helicopter pilot returned from the Vietnam War; Carolyn Adams (Mountain Girl), from the East Coast upper class, embodies Prankster principles of spontaneity and uninhibited self-­expression; and Neal Cassady, whose talkative and compulsive nature was portrayed by Jack Kerouac in On the Road, emerges as an energy center for the group and driver of the converted school bus, dubbed Furthur. With other singular members, they experiment with communal ingestion of LSD, noting the seeming appearance of synchronicity and intersubjectivity. Kesey, as their accepted leader, becomes a Christ-­like figure, dispensing cryptic wisdom while pursuing higher goals that include the incorporation of other outlaw groups such as the Hells Angels and radical Unitarians in their chemical communions with the goal of spreading their alternative, proto-­hippie philosophy of individualism, open relationships, and non-­traditional living (such as

104  W. B. Gerard avoiding regular jobs and popular entertainment). The book’s unusual narrative style and time shifts effectively disguise a conventional plot arc of a series of ever-­larger communal events (eventually called Acid Tests) that culminate in a disappointing Acid Test Graduation, which effectively ends the group’s goal of evangelical outlawism. To further confound their outlaw mission, Kesey, whose entanglements with the law compound over the course of the story, is sentenced to time in a work camp. With some Pranksters moving on to other causes or abandoning the counterculture altogether, the conclusion is pointed in its finality; in the end, as Scott MacFarlane asserts, EKAAT demonstrates ‘how this lifestyle of disaffection and mind-­expansion reached its critical mass.’16 Wolfe’s narrative describes this arc while endeavoring to capture the heady fervor of Kesey’s adventures, adding another element of outlaw authenticity through an innovative transparent subjectivity that simulates the perspectives of participants in the story’s events. EKAAT is a defining work of New Journalism, along with Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966) and George Plimpton’s Paper Lion (1966), both published two years earlier. Wolfe has reflected on the emergence of the genre, comparing its techniques of ‘social realism’ to the works of ‘Fielding, Smollett, Dickens and Gogol.’17 These techniques give the realistic novel ‘its unique power, variously known as “immediacy,” its “concrete reality,” its “emotional involvement,” [and] its “gripping” or “absorbing” quality’;18 these literary traits are evident in EKKAT, particularly through the meticulous inclusion of dialogue and ‘the technique of presenting every scene to the reader through the eyes of a particular character.’19 John Hollowell observes that EKKAT’s compelling story combines ‘interviews, films, letters, and diaries,’ the raw material of Wolfe’s craft, into a ‘continuous and suspenseful narrative that reads more like a novel than like journalism or biography.’20 In identifying ‘Wolfe’s kaleidoscopic shifting [between] personae, coupled with idiomatic phrasing and some stream-­of-­consciousness to suggest a highly subjective but trans-­personal experience,’21 Whelan incidentally hearkens back to Wolfe’s requirements for the depiction of social realism. Thus, in order to best retell the Pranksters’ story, Wolfe not only relates its content, but also, through subjective storytelling and experimental expression on the page, recreates the charged atmosphere that surrounded the group, at times using the filters of drug-­induced states and individual Prankster mindsets to convey authenticity to the reader. This disregard of the rules of objectivity positions him as an outlaw within the practice of journalism: as Daniel W. Lehman observes, ‘to Wolfe, New Journalism remains a revolution of technique, not of epistemology or politics.’22 Inevitably, though, technique has political implications, the more so given the radical content it mirrors. Lehman sees EKAAT as offering ‘the promise of the new frontier by which Wolfe’s subjects . . . could redefine and free themselves from the

The Twentieth-­Century American Outlaw Feast 105 clutches of conventionality,’23 making the method of conveyance instrumental to the outlaw character of the saga. Another significant component in the book’s sympathetic projection of Kesey and the Pranksters as outlaws is implied in its parallels with the Robin Hood legend. The postwar period saw rapid growth in American popular entertainment, particularly television programs, that would serve as a platform for retellings of the Robin Hood tale, and cultural appearances of that exemplary outlaw in the decades before the Pranksters’ activities likely influenced the group’s self-­definition. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), starring the charismatic Errol Flynn, and a long-­running television series of the same name (1955–1960) testify to popular interest in the legend, which seemed to resonate with Kesey and his followers as they shaped their anti-­establishment image. Robin Hood is directly referenced twice in EKAAT, and the self-­proclaimed Merry Pranksters echo the name of the legendary Merry Men and their disruptive activities too closely to dismiss an intentional connection. The convulsions of the mid-1960s set the stage for a new kind of Robin Hood saga. As Rob Gossedge observes, this tradition flourishes in a ‘sociopolitical context of conservative government, extreme economic disparities and international conflict.’24 The parallels between the outlaw groups include what James N. Stull views as ‘a game-­like interaction between the Merry Pranksters and certain members of mainstream culture,’25 echoing the cat-­and-­mouse games Robin Hood and his Merry Men played with local authorities. Like outlaw narratives of yore, the tale of the Merry Pranksters needs a central, defining figure, and in EKAAT, Ken Kesey sets the philosophy and direction of the group and is key to the group’s existence on many levels. ‘Food and lodging were all taken care of by Kesey’26 at his La Honda residence or on the bus, Furthur, and these become the sites of the group’s preliminary outlaw behaviors, particularly the consumption of reality-­altering LSD. Equally crucial is ‘the magical cement of Kesey’s charisma’ (269) that binds the group together as it evolves and encounters challenges as a unit. Eventually referred to as ‘the Chief,’ he assumes an early leadership role, for instance when he is ‘starting to organize our trips. He hands out the drugs personally’ (61). Referring to their cross-­country adventure on the bus, Wolfe observes, ‘Kesey was the key to whatever was going right and whatever was going wrong on this trip’ (93). Kesey redefines the traditional outlaw credo of defiance of authority through a broader, pointedly counter-­ cultural, idea of advocating an anti-­normative perspective. Wolfe compares him to the hero of Kesey’s first book, ‘a McMurphy figure who was trying to get them [the mental ward’s patients] to move off their own snug-­harbor dead center’ (50), a concept central to the Pranksters’ goals. Lounsberry notes that he ‘confronts  .  .  . the stalled, comatose, and inappropriately acting society’;27

106  W. B. Gerard even before the ambitious reach of the Acid Tests, an adversarial philosophy manifests in the Pranksters’ behavior, metaphorically aligning them with traditional outlaws. Part of Kesey’s leadership technique is to be an anti-­leader, as is appropriate to guide a group of non-­traditional, counter-­cultural outlaws. His message is not always clear, since his ‘explicit teachings were all cryptic, metaphorical; parables, aphorisms’ (126), though his actions set the groundwork for the group’s anti-­normative agenda. These coalesce around the idea of pranks: ‘he introduced the idea of the pranks, great public put-­ons they could perform’ (63). For instance, Kesey conceived of the Pranksters’ attending an anti-­war rally in Berkeley in ‘crazed military costumes’ (219) and arriving in olive-­drab-­painted vehicles, basically launching ‘a huge freaking military invasion’ (217). This aligns Kesey with the archetype of the Trickster, a character who, as Paul Radin points out, ‘wills nothing consciously . . . He possesses no values, moral or social, is at the mercy of his passions and appetites, yet through his actions all values come into being.’28 While this profile seems to suggest rudderless leadership, it corresponds with the notion of spontaneity that threads its way through the Prankster saga, especially the way in which the group is defined by Kesey’s immediate actions; this in turn leads to the carnivalesque inversion of reality the Pranksters foster throughout EKAAT. The starting point for the Keseyian outlaw manifesto—­and the eventual development of his particular brand of feast—­is the novelist’s experimentation with psychedelic drugs. Volunteering for clinical experiments at the Veteran’s Hospital in Menlo Park, California, he finds after taking LSD that ‘suddenly he was in a realm of consciousness he had never dreamed of before and it was not a dream or a delirium but part of his awareness’ (40), and in this enhanced state, when encountering a doctor, ‘Kesey can now see into him’ (41). This revelation is particularly significant, grounding his alternative perspective situated in an adversarial manner to commonly accepted reality. As the narrator elaborates, [i]n ordinary perception, the senses send an overwhelming flood of information to the brain, which the brain filters down to a trickle it can manage for the purpose of survival in a highly competitive world. Man had become so rational, so utilitarian, that the trickle becomes most pale and thin. (44) Echoing Kesey’s own thinking, this conclusion not only justifies, but also is a step toward, the avocation of the mass use of LSD to improve the lives of individuals, a means of spreading his own brand of outlawism. One byproduct of the Pranksters’ ingestion of hallucinogenic drugs is the perception that the group becomes bound by ‘the Unspoken Thing’

The Twentieth-­Century American Outlaw Feast 107 (113), an idea that develops when they travel cross-­country on the repurposed school bus. During this time, when ‘they all felt the trip was becoming a . . . mission, of some sort’ (100), and their experiences ‘all merged into the Group Mind and became very psychic’ (110); this intersubjectivity becomes a central element of their self-­identification through the rest of the Prankster saga, one means of differentiating the group from the normative population. (For instance, mention of the ‘the unspoken Thing’ and that ‘Things were getting very psychic’ [124] reappears fifteen pages later.) The group’s philosophy gains depth as they proceed with their shared life experiment: ‘The side of the LSD experience—­the feeling!–tied in with Jung’s theory of synchronicity . . . the unconscious perceives certain archetypal patterns that elude the conscious mind’ (140). Often eluding precise definition, this synchronized ‘group mind’ binds the Pranksters not only by means of shared philosophical beliefs, but also through the conviction of a mystically shared point-­of-­view. This seemingly magical quality, standing in stark contrast to normative Western culture, earns the status of the ‘Unspoken Thing,’ a continuous presence that becomes increasingly revered: ‘The Pranksters never talked about synchronicity by name, but they were more and more attuned to the principle’ (141). The lacing of Kool-­Aid—­a beverage associated with children—­with that ‘demonic’ liberator of the psyche, LSD, perhaps stands as the ultimate Keseyian prank: the narrator asserts, ‘it was a prank, partly, but mainly it was the natural culmination of the Acid Tests . . . it was truly turning on the world’ (273). The mission of spreading enlightenment through the introduction of LSD is a significant aspect of Kesey’s brand of outlawism, and exposing people to the drug guerrilla-­style corresponds with the anti-­normative message. At the same time, though, there is dissonance about ‘the ethics of springing the acid in the Kool-­Aid’ (283), and indeed several novice partakers suffered emotional distress as a result of being dosed with LSD. The intensification of the Acid Tests, in conjunction with his trouble with the law, eventually prompts Kesey to recognize his own outlaw status. He states, ‘[i]f society wants me to be an outlaw, . . . then I’ll be an outlaw, and a damned good one. That’s something people need. People at all times need outlaws’ (264). Kesey is wise enough to see his archetypal role, though one that might only be played out metaphorically. Given the overwhelming power of authority in 1960s America, his outlaw status seemed only a confrontational gesture against the normative, yet the potential to change attitudes remained—­and perhaps, in the real world, prevailed. One contrast with the normative contemporary social perspective was the Pranksters’ approach to living in the moment or apparent unconcern with the past or future. ‘If there was ever a group devoted totally to the here and now it was the Pranksters’ (126), and as a result (with the

108  W. B. Gerard assistance of Kesey’s bankroll) they are liberated from a host of mundane concerns of typical young people, who, the narrator relates, were concerned about college and jobs. Adopting the Prankster mindset, the narrator assesses these options: ‘how boring each was!–compared to the experience of . . . the infinite . . . and a life in which the subject is not scholastic or bureaucratic’ (65). This point of view helps define their outlaw lifestyle: distain for a mundane, predictable existence and the people who follow it, a distancing from the normative. The Pranskters’ outlaw credo is perhaps best defined by its lack of definition. The narrator relates, ‘[t]hey had no particular philosophy, just a little leftover Buddhism and Hinduism from the beat period, plus Huxley’s theory of opening doors in the mind, no distinct life style. . .’ (135); this approach is in itself a rejection of clear doctrine, especially as it evolved over time through mutual understanding, vaguely directed by Kesey’s enigmatic sayings. This refusal to establish even a clear set of derivative sources—­and thus tenets of their own—­situates the group as yet another type of outlaw band, one rebelling by resisting definition, possibly due to the repellent conventionality of assigning meaning or standard hierarchies. The Pranksters did follow some more typical outlaw patterns, however. Though their membership process was vague (‘[t]here were no rules. There was no official period of probation, and no vote on is he or isn’t he one of us, no blackballing, no tap on the shoulders’), inclusiveness was actually contingent: ‘there was a period of proving yourself’ (163). As in traditional outlaw literature, the Pranksters are made up of a variety of individuals who forged new identities for themselves: Mike Hagen becomes Hassler, Steve Lambrecht transforms into Zonker, and Carolyn Adams is rechristened Mountain Girl. Paula Sundsten transitioned early, and ‘in truth, her old name and persona were gone entirely and she was now a new person known as Gretchin Fetchin’ (115). These names emphasize distinct personalities within the group, each contributing in some way toward its unusual mission. The narrator relates, ‘[t]hey were all now characters in their own movies or the Big Movie. They took on new names and used them’ (77). This reinvention of self enables adaptation to a new outlaw reality considered by its members to have greater significance than the normative world. ‘The Prankster family, the Prankster order, superseded all straight-­world ties, contracts and chattel laws’ (340), and indeed this adopted family and its developing mission seems the exclusive focus of its members throughout the book. The Pranksters’ cumulative self-­definition as outlaws emerges throughout EKAAT. For instance, they identify as inverse reflections of a larger society, being amused by the ‘citizens of the land’ who react to their antics on top of their multi-­color school bus by ‘gawking and struggling to summon up the proper emotion,’ and relishing the outrage they’ve provoked: ‘what in the name of God are the ninnies doing’ (88). Part of

The Twentieth-­Century American Outlaw Feast 109 their excitement, as conveyed by the narrator, is their visibility as outlaws; they are able to defy normative behavior and break the law (using drugs in particular) with evident aplomb, and as they continue their antics unmolested, a feeling of immunity sets in. The narrator’s description of the Pranksters ‘above the multitudes, looking down from the Furthur heights of the bus’ (112) conveys both a real and metaphorical distance from normative society, illustrating their outlaw status. They grow accustomed to, and relish ‘[t]he inevitable confusion of the unattuned,’ which ‘derived from the LSD experience and was incomprehensible without it’ (140). In fact, as the Acid Tests progress and the Pranksters’ outlawism develops into a larger movement woven in the fabric of American counterculture, the sense of a group with shared values becomes more rarified, and they think of themselves as ‘we holy few, we initiates of the acid scene’ (329; a narrative allusion to the ‘Band of Brothers’ speech in Henry V, IV.iii.18–67). At this later point in the group’s development, their distance from the average American mindset is described as being more rarefied and mystical than merely legal and cultural. Traditional outlaw groups also define themselves by their opposition to local authority figures (the Sheriff of Nottingham, for example), and here the Pranksters provide one of their most concrete connections to the tradition. The first chapter of Wolfe’s book, ‘Black Shiny FBI Shoes,’ boastfully broadcasts the means by which Pranksters are able to distinguish undercover agents; the shoes come to signify the cluelessness of law enforcement officials, whose lack of knowledge about their outlaw mentality results in investigations more laughable than effective. This pattern continues through the Prankster saga. When the flamboyant bus is pulled over by a policeman, speed-­talking Neal Cassady goes into a rambling monologue, causing the policeman to be ‘thoroughly befuddled’; to add to his confusion, ‘[b]y this time everyone is off the bus rolling in the brown grass by the shoulder, laughing, giggling, yahooing, zonked to the skies on acid’ (70). The Pranksters escape without a traffic ticket and ‘felt more immune than ever’ (70). On a stop in New Orleans during the cross-­country bus trip, ‘the cops came while they were down by the docks, which was just comic relief, because by now the cops were a piece of cake’; shortly afterwards, ‘the cops skedaddled in a herd of new Ford cruisers’ (89). Later, law enforcement is an ongoing presence at the Acid Tests, though they are described largely as inert background figures, overcome by the outrageousness of the events, inept, or unconvinced of transgressions that would qualify for their interference. As a rule ‘[t]he police watched them very closely’ (250), but they do not take action against the Pranksters. While the relationship with the police is one means by which Wolfe’s saga depicts the Merry Pranksters as twentieth-­century outlaws, a more unusual similarity with traditional outlaws lies in their focus on feasting, albeit of a non-­traditional type. An emergent focus in studies of outlaw

110  W. B. Gerard literature, the feast can be seen as a defining element of the subgenre; for example, Stephen Knight observes that a ‘forest feast’ is ‘[a] recurrent feature of the Robin Hood tradition.’29 Knight sees these feasts as generally simple affairs, consisting of ‘bread, venison, and something to drink,’30 though they might occasionally be more elaborate. The feast by implication not only concerns the consumption of food, but also (and more importantly) provides fellowship and self-­definition ‘as the sign of a harmonious social unit.’ The event even can suggest ‘the notion of a sacral meal, a mass, rather than, or as well as, a feast.’31 These characteristics of the traditional outlaw feast are significant in understanding the recasting of the event in EKAAT. In Wolfe’s narrative, the traditional feast is rarely mentioned. One of the few instances that group meals are described is in conjunction with a Friday night group ‘briefing,’ when ‘Faye [Kesey’s wife] fixes some supper of rice and beans and meat, kind of a stew, and they all go into the kitchen and dig into the pots and put some on a plate and eat’ (143). More suggestive of the eventual displacement of the traditional feast-­ event in EKAAT is the 1963 celebration in the Perry Lane neighborhood in Palo Alto, which features ‘fabled Venison Chili, a Kesey dish made of venison stew laced with LSD, which you could consume and then  .  .  . play pinball with the light show in the sky’ (52). This mixed-­purpose meal simultaneously points back to the centrality of venison in Robin Hood feasts and ahead to an incipient type of feast evident throughout the saga, with its special ingredient, the primary focus of ingestion, a catalyst to the larger, focal experience that leads to an understanding of the outlaw Prankster philosophy of re-­perceiving the world. Although the narrative approach often yields distractions in style and content, a series of these hallucinogenic feasts forms the structural backbone of EKAAT and, as its title implies, reflects its core outlaw values. Kesey and the Pranksters indulge in a series of communal events, at first including only their own circle but growing to engage and affect similar outlaw groups; as in traditional outlaw texts, these events are an opportunity to bond with like-­minded types by exchanging ideas over a shared ‘meal.’ Feasts for the Merry Pranksters do not include mention of food at all, but rather focus on group consumption of LSD, which, though itself a communal linking experience, also is fundamental in generating the group’s developing principles. Kesey and the Pranksters most conspicuously identify their outlaw status through these feast-­events, which transform their rebellion into performance; the first is the group’s cross-­country journey on the psychedelic-­painted bus, where they begin coalescing as a group with LSD-­laced orange juice as a staple. They distinguish themselves as outlaws with ‘outrageous’ costumes and behavior, perhaps most tellingly through the activity of ‘tootling.’ The top of the bus had been equipped for passengers, and several Pranksters riding there point their pipes and

The Twentieth-­Century American Outlaw Feast 111 flutes at passersby and ‘play . . . people like they were music, the poor comatose world outside’ (101). Hence, the rolling feast on the bus provides a means of subtly taunting normative society while unifying the Pranksters with a nascent outlaw philosophy. The feasts to follow include outside groups, beginning with the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, probably the most recognizable American outlaws of the time. The Pranksters’ association with the Angels immediately lends them outlaw bona fides, and eventually their common understanding further qualifies the Pranksters as full-­fledged outlaws, though of a different sort. Although the Angels were known for their volatility and violent tendencies, the joint event largely was low-­key: ‘The beer made the Angels very happy and the LSD made them strangely peaceful and sometimes catatonic, in contrast to the Pranksters and other intellectuals around, who soared on the stuff’ (172). The shared hallucinogenic drug serves as a bridge between the groups, allowing them to reduce inhibitions, put aside points of difference, and prioritize a common anti-­ normative perspective. The Pranksters feel that the Angels have been brought into their ‘movie’ (that is, a reality shaped by an individual or group—­in this case, the Pranksters’, 172–73). The feast-­event with the Hells Angels continues for six to seven weeks (178), establishing a standard for hallucinogenic ‘feasting’ that will continue and develop through the remainder of the Pranksters’ saga. Different settings and groups of participants change the self-­defining tone of the Pranksters’ feast-­events, though not their purpose. The Pranksters (again ‘in costume’ [186]) travel aboard Furthur to join Kesey for a speaking engagement at a Unitarian conference, where ‘[t]hings were . . . up tight from the moment they got there’ (185). On this occasion, the bus becomes a portable platform for guests of the conference interested in partaking in the chemical offerings and absorbing Prankster ideas, which continue to coalesce during the conference’s sub-­event of the Prankster feast. Importantly, the Unitarians, like the Angels, also represent a communal view outside the mainstream, although their approach takes the form of a progressive political agenda such as civil rights protests rather than intoxication and violence. The group thinking of the Unitarians leads to a decision that the Pranksters’ role will consist of ‘all of us doing our thing out front and wailing with it’ (186), an emphasis on individuality and spontaneity. Although the conference follows a well-­planned program, the Pranksters react with an anti-­schedule manifesto: ‘they had no schedule and intimated no one else should, either’ (188). The bus and the LSD being dispensed create an alternative phenomena among the young Unitarians, who ‘began to feel the mysto thing most profoundly’ (189), and, as with the Angels, the Pranksters’ sense of purpose broadens from the shared experience. Further self-­definition of the Pranksters and their goals follows as additional feast-­events progress. Through these focused gatherings that

112  W. B. Gerard advocate a new, liberated perspective toward the world, Kesey ‘had created . . . an experience, an awareness that flashed deeper than cerebration’ (192). The goal of achieving a hazily defined ‘awareness’ through group experience with LSD, a variation on the traditional feast, is central to the Pranksters’ conception of future events and to their self-­definition as modern-­day outlaws. In time, the scope of the feast-­events increases, and thus their potential for recruiting others to their outlaw perspective. Kesey again is invited to speak at the 1965 rally for the Vietnam Day Committee at Berkeley, and here the components of previous gatherings are consciously replicated, serving to disrupt the status quo of reality, in this case not for dozens, but thousands, and without mass consumption of hallucinogenic drugs; instead, a simulacrum of their effect is provided by means of the audio-­ visual experience and a paradigm-­ shifting anti-­ speech by Kesey. The Pranksters arrive at the rally dressed in ‘crazed military costumes’ (219) in the bus, now painted ‘the color of dried blood’ (217) and with ‘two big gray cannons that you could maneuver’ (218) in a fabricated turret. When he finally mounts the podium, Kesey’s speech deliberately works counter to typical crowd-­rousing patterns: From the moment Kesey gets up there, it is a freaking jar. His jacket glows at dusk, and his helmet. Lined up behind him are more Day-­ Glo crazies, wearing aviator helmets and goggles and flight suits and Army tunics, Babbs, Gretch, Walker, Zonker, Mary Microgram, and little Day-­Glo kids, and half of them carrying electric guitars and horns, mugging and moving around in Day-­Glo streaks. The next jar is Kesey’s voice, it is so non-­forensic. He comes on soft, in the Oregon drawl, like he’s just having a conversation with 15,000 people: You know, you’re not gonna stop this war with this rally, by marching  .  .  .  That’s what they do  .  .  .  They hold rallies and they march  .  .  .  They’ve been having wars for ten thousand years and you’re not gonna stop it this way. (222) The Pranksters’ goal is to interject disruptive experiences (‘jars’) during the anti-­establishment experience of the rally. Kesey’s speech, conversational instead of pointed and angry, accompanies equally disruptive music, specifically his ‘goddamn mournful harmonica and that stupid Chinese music by the freaks standing up behind him’ (224). The effect primarily is to alter the crowd’s perspective toward the rally, though there are broader disruptive implications of Kesey’s statements: transcendence instead of resistance, apathy instead of cooperation. A final speaker tries to rouse enthusiasm for the cause, but the march following the rally is lackluster, falling short of the organizers’ expectations: ‘Nobody seemed to have any resolve’ (225). Lounsberry concludes

The Twentieth-­Century American Outlaw Feast 113 that Kesey ‘deflates the Vietnam rally,’32 but it appears his effect on the crowd is more profound. Even without the LSD, the Merry Pranksters’ experiential feast, which disrupts both the senses and the mindset, causes the crowd to lose their appetite for the prescriptive confrontation the Vietnam Day leaders had planned by presenting an even more radical alternative, one that posits an outlaw vision of the world which stands out even to political activists of the period by opposing organizational structures, and more importantly, deflating structured resistance to power as continuing a non-­productive ‘game.’ The apparent success of elements from the Pranksters’ staged experience at the Vietnam War Day rally moves the group toward the culmination of their outlaw celebrations, the Acid Tests, which spring in form and intent from aspects of the previous feast-­events. The Pranksters consider the Acid Test a ‘ceremony,’ suggesting an elevated idea of feasting that includes ‘music, dance, liturgy, sacrifice’ with the ambitious goal ‘to achieve an objectified and stereotyped expression of the original spontaneous religious experience’ (230). The goal of shifting the participants’ perspectives is achieved by an audio-­visually altered reality, which, along with the eponymous LSD, constitutes the experiential feast-­event. With the Tests, the approach toward the Pranksters’ feasting predictably formalizes: ‘Everyone would take acid, any time they wanted, six hours before the Test began or the moment they got there’ (233); though its timing seems arbitrary, LSD is recognized as the central component—­the main course that defines and validates the feast-­event. The first Acid Test is a prototype, a platform for the purposeful integration of the earlier audio-­visual experiences with the ingestion of LSD. What signals the change from the earlier, more ‘accidental’ feasts is the intent: to engineer a sensory and chemical environment—­an idealized, or essentialized, virtual feast—­to create a revelatory state in the participants. In the text, the means of setting up this environment, however, is still in the experimental stage. It is a ‘private affair, and mostly formless,’ though meant to be public; however, the Pranksters ‘were not the world’s greatest at the mechanics of things, like hiring a hall’ (234). They end up holding it at a house belonging to a leading Prankster, Ken Babbs, just outside of Santa Cruz. The entertainment for the first Test illustrates an increasing standardization of the Pranksters’ alternative celebration. Parts of the film of the cross-­country journey on Furthur (itself, as noted earlier, a type of moveable feast-­event) ‘flashed on the walls,’ along with ‘Pranksters providing the music themselves,’ a soundtrack of ‘strange atonal Chinese music. . . á la John Cage’ (235). The main course befitting this carefully cultivated alternative environment is LSD, but the limited attendance means that it ‘was just a dry run, of course. It didn’t really . . . reach out into the world’ (236), leaving the ambitions for the mass revelatory function of the Acid Test yet to be fulfilled.

114  W. B. Gerard The setting of the second Acid Test also is almost spontaneously sourced, and previous audio-­visual components are carried over, creating a continuity of the Test formula. The location is a result of the Pranksters’ persistent indeterminacy: ‘it really seemed natural and almost right that nothing should be definite until the last minute. All that was certain was that they would find’ a venue, and eventually they ‘talked a local boho figure . . . into letting them use his old hulk of a house’ (236). The entertainment for the second Test grows more sophisticated, with music provided in part by an outside band, the Grateful Dead, which had participated in some of the extended parties at Kesey’s house in La Honda. Part of the now-­typical visual experience is ‘[t]he Pranksters . . . primed in full Prankster regalia’ (237). Elements from previous events, like ‘Cassady rapping’ and ‘Roy Seburn’s lights washing past every head’ joined the Dead’s ‘electric organ vibrating through every belly in the place’ (237–38). These, in conjunction with the LSD, cause ‘dancing ecstasy, leaping, dervishing’ (238). During what is called ‘the first mass acid experience’ (with over 400 present), a more intense sense of unity emerges, an evident synchronicity as those gathered move as one: ‘they ripple’ (238), suggesting a physical affirmation of joined consciousness, a psychic communion that instigates the participants’ shift to the Pranksters’ outlaw mentality. Registering some success from this, a the Pranksters set a more ambitious agenda for the third Test. An attempt is made toward effective advertising for the event, and, indicative of their anti-­organization stance (dangerously paradoxical, given the Pranksters’ goals), the location changes during the planning stages, and ‘somehow that didn’t even seem distressing’ (240). The basic elements of the sensory feast are standardized by the third Test, however. The Pranksters and the Dead again ‘piled in with their equipment’ (240) to provide audial atmosphere while the strobe lights nudge participants into the sensation of ‘an LSD experience without taking LSD’ (241). Also returning are the Movie (unedited sequences from Hagen’s film of the cross-­country journey) and ‘Roy Seburn’s light machine pitching the intergalactic red science-­fiction seas to all corners’ of the venue (242). LSD is present, of course, and even more precisely timed: ‘[a] high percentage took LSD about four hours ago’ (242). Increasingly significant to the feast-­event is the charismatic central figure, Kesey, who embodies the outlaw mission of the group, and his non-­ leader approach (‘he was the non-­navigator of the brotherhood’ [266]) again identifies the Pranksters as an outlaw group beyond the traditional sense, in effect rebelling against definition that could restrict the potential freedom of their ongoing experiment. However, during the third Test, Kesey exercises ‘Control’ by speeding up or slowing down the strobe rate with ‘a twist of the mercury lever’ (244), which affects the rate of the participants’ dancing. Kesey’s manipulation of the ‘synch’ opens up the potential for a more directed strategy for the Acid Tests, possibly

The Twentieth-­Century American Outlaw Feast 115 making the feast-­events more overtly didactic. Yet this ‘Control’ has the potential to disrupt (or even corrupt) the emphasis on individuality and spontaneity that lies at the core of Prankster outlaw credo by imposing a layer of structure or perhaps external will; as such, it threatens the Prankster experiment, suggesting an inherent flaw in the expanding movement. Although the next Acid Test, staged in January 1966 at the Fillmore Auditorium, features similar ingredients of light, sound, and LSD, the Trips Festival later that year is the most ambitious of the realized feast-­ events organized by the Pranksters. Billed as ‘a big celebration that was going to simulate an LSD experience, minus the LSD, using light effects and music’ (252), it is scheduled over three nights at another big San Francisco venue, Longshoreman’s Hall. (The ‘minus the LSD’ idea is more of a gesture: the narrator relates, ‘that was a laugh’ [259].) The mass celebration is threatened by a court order instructing Kesey to keep his distance which, of course, he defies; he ends up occupying a central ‘tower of Control’ dressed in ‘a silver space suit complete with a big bubble space helmet’ (260), hinting at least metaphorically at leadership as well as the possibility of suggestive/­disruptive ‘Control’ previously mentioned. With all of the attributes of the previous Tests, the Trips Festival represents a true turning point toward mass popularization of the Pranksters’ outlaw movement: it ‘was like the first national convention of an underground movement that had existed on a hush-­hush cell-­by-­cell basis’ (263). The narrator of EKAAT sees this as the moment that LSD– and with it, the Prankster philosophy—­truly catches hold, proclaiming, ‘the Haight-­Ashbury era began that weekend’ (263). Though a triumph in the quest for mass popularization of their brand of outlawism, the Trips festival marked another kind of turning point for the Pranksters, with Kesey becoming a fugitive from the law by fleeing to Mexico. Babbs continues the Acid Tests, but the group feels ‘a mysterious sense of loss in their venture’ (269). Momentum carries those remaining to stage another Acid Test in a warehouse in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in its now highly organized, above-­board incarnation. Here the Pranksters aim ‘to draw the hundreds, the thousands, into the new experience’ (270), and like the Trips Festival, the Watts Test is broadly successful, ‘caus[ing] the fast-­rising psychedelic thing to explode right out of the underground in a way nobody had dreamed of’ (283). A visiting journalist even calls the feast-­event ‘a master production’ (277), yet to some Pranksters, the deceptive Kool-­Aid administration and some over-­ the-­top moments (such as putting a woman’s bad trip experience over the PA system) seem to be too much: ‘it was a debacle’ (283). Shortly afterwards, the group begins to disperse, many eventually following Kesey south; they ‘ [a]ll began drifting off’ (285), almost as if their purpose had been to establish the psychedelic outlaw paradigm, and having done so feel they are no longer needed.

116  W. B. Gerard Kesey’s escape to Mexico follows a particularly American pattern of outlawism, a place of retreat for Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty in On the Road, and in a more remote sense for outlaws of the Old West. Proclaiming Mexico the ‘land of all competent Outlaws’ (265), Kesey is compelled by outside forces to confront the real-­world dimension of his outlaw practices, particularly his transgression of drug laws. As it had for Kerouac, Mexico initially shines as a golden ideal to Kesey and the Pranksters, an Edenic escape where they can foster (and possibly spread) their ideas while evading American authorities. They were not successful, however, being rendered less functional, even disparaged, by their new location; normally smooth interactions with law enforcement in the United States, for instance, are complicated by the language barrier with the Mexican police. They are hindered by group paranoia, often suspecting that Mexican authorities are closing in, and occurrences of bad luck like the onset of the red tide in their seaside refuge all serve to put an end to the ambition of fostering experiential feasts as they had in California. The Mexican adventure demonstrates that the Pranksters’ practical outlaw tendencies are as virtual as their feasts, and without the comfortable and secure environment in which to conduct their events, the communal focus shifts, eventually, toward merely coping with current conditions instead of forging new psychic frontiers as they attempted in California. Meanwhile, back in the United States, elements of the Pranskters’ outlaw lifestyle gain popular traction; the narrator relates, ‘the dread LSD had caught on like an infection among the youth’ and ‘[v]ery few realized that it had all emanated from one electric source: Kesey and the Merry Pranksters’ (284). The revelatory potential of LSD, the central element of the Pranksters’ feast, now reached more and more people, and ‘all of a sudden it was like the Acid Tests had taken root and sprung up into people living the Tests like a whole life style’ (353). Though EKAAT also suggests other conclusions, the saga implies that the essence of the Pranksters’ outlaw perspective does indeed become widespread, ‘infecting’ part of American society with an anti-­authoritarian, alternative lifestyle, and worldview. In this manifestation, the feast-­event itself dissolves into free-­ form communal entertainment emphasizing drugs and sensual experience rather than persevering as more organized celebrations. The Acid Tests also inspire a series of similar events, like ‘the first big “be-­in,” ’ the Love Festival of 7 October 1965. Though the ‘be-­in’ lacks the central outlaw offering of LSD (at least officially), this and other experiential feasts create a similar psychedelic, effect as the Acid Tests if not as revelatory; they feature similar music and light shows, striving to simulate the heady experience of the Tests. Plans are made for an ‘ongoing Trips Festival’ put on weekly ‘with all the mixed media stuff, the rock ’n’ roll and movie projections and the weird intergalactic amoeba light shows’ (354). These events benefit from the general popularity and

The Twentieth-­Century American Outlaw Feast 117 novelty of the Tests, and stand as further evidence of the Pranksters’ success in fostering a widespread outlaw perspective. Historically, the psychedelic phenomenon unquestionably had garnered significant attention at the time. The cover story from the 25 March  1966 Life magazine was entitled ‘The Exploding Threat of the Mind Drug that Got Out of Control’; the 6 May Newsweek featured ‘LSD and the Mind Drugs’; and the September 1967 Atlantic carried ‘The Flowering of the Hippies’; all strove to explain the radical re-­visioning that was taking place as a result of the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. In Wolfe’s book, the Tests represent the very essence of the counterculture movement, a mass conversion to outlawism: they ‘were the epoch of the psychedelic style and practically everything that has gone into it’ (250). Indeed, central to the organizers and partakers of the Acid Tests was the desire for large numbers of people to achieve outlaw status, that is, to move philosophically and practically beyond normative society: ‘the Acid Tests were one of those outrages, one of those scandals, that create a new style of a new world view’ (250). The Acid Test Graduation, a grand feast-­event conceived by Kesey and the Pranksters on their return from Mexico (and Kesey’s reconciliation with American authorities), attempts to maintain the spirit of the feast without the central feature of LSD–in other words, to provide a similar experiential effect using only audio-­visual stimuli. The primary focus of the event is to advocate a huge audience to move ‘beyond acid. . . [and] make this thing permanent inside of you’ (324), encouraging individual psychic growth without chemical supplements, although as the headlines noted previously attest, the genie was already out of the bottle. Ambitiously planned for San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom, ‘the biggest indoor arena in the city limits’ (383) on Halloween, the venue is shifted to a smaller warehouse, and presciently the event’s goals shift along with it. Only a few are invited, ‘the kind of people who, if they’ve got anything to say, it will spread out from them, and they can say it straight, and it will spread out from them and there will be no stopping it’ (388). Wolfe’s tone in this passage, seeming to mimic the Pranksters’ feckless optimism, comes across as a concession after the grand hopes pinned to the original feast-­events. This sets the stage for the final scene in the book occurring six months later, with the dispersal of many Pranksters and those remaining attempting to recreate the experiential feast-­event in a small suburban club. The light-­jazz band that had been playing departs and the audience filters out with the onset of the Prankster’s experimental music, underlining the difficulty and perhaps impossibility of continuing to reproduce the sublime feast-­events of the past. More overtly, Wolfe repeats ‘We blew it!’ (411) nine times in the book’s last lines of dialogue, pinning the blame on the Pranksters themselves for the failure of their grand mission to spread social and artistic outlawism. This is a measured failure, however, considering the

118  W. B. Gerard inception of an American outlaw-­oriented counterculture movement is in part due to their efforts. The virtual feasting of the Pranksters finds parallels in traditional outlaw literature. Knight notes ‘[f]easting is common generally as both a symbol and a reality of the social body made visible and celebrated,’33 and for the Pranksters, these events constitute a coalescing opportunity where gathered people recognize their union and manifest something larger than themselves. As such, they strongly represent ‘a potent combination of festivity and resistance, or at least potential resistance, to authority,’34 advocating both legal and social transgression against normative perspectives. Knight also sees an ‘inherently trickster-­like structure’35 found in later, seventeenth-­century Robin Hood ballads, as when an unwilling guest is present at a feast. A parallel is suggested in EKKAT when the ‘befuddled’ police watch the happenings with the Pranksters and the Angels at La Honda, and are unwilling or unable to correct the outlaw impulses, seemingly for the lack of clear legal violations. Part of this trickster mentality also is evident in an interest in getting normative-­minded people to move ‘off their snug harbor.’ Their desire to challenge and disrupt the status quo, particularly through the Acid Tests, shows the group ‘engag[ing] challengingly with conventional society,’ which, according to Knight, is ‘all part of the festal tradition.’36 At the core of the Pranksters’ outlaw feast is a sublime experience that escapes precise description. It is portrayed, for instance, as a revelation, a feast-­event that made it clear how everything fit together and it wasn’t really a world split up into pointless games and cliques. That was merely the way it looked before you knew the key. And now there were beautiful people who knew the key and the experience could be shared. (300) While underlining the crucial role of the feast-­event, this achievement, EKAAT suggests, seems to fall short of the Pranksters’ ambition for an even more widespread adoption of their brand of outlaw philosophy. One result of the Pranksters’ adventurous feasts—­aside from popularizing the use of psychedelic drugs—­was a politicization of Kesey’s outlaw philosophy. Liberalism had been defined by active, often vocal, engagement characterized by marches and rallies, yet ‘[t]he whole New Left, is all of sudden like over on the hip circuit around San Francisco’ (356). This became represented by ‘a very tolerant and therefore withering attitude toward those who are struggling in the old activist ways. . . [they] are still trapped in the old “political games” ’ (356). Thus, the perspective Kesey advocates at the Vietnam War Day rally, that of transcendence

The Twentieth-­Century American Outlaw Feast 119 and self-­focus, becomes a broader current in American society, creating a level of outlaws in opposition even to the former ‘outlaws’ of the New Left. The broader adoption of Kesey’s outlaw ideas seems to result in the dissolution of the Pranksters, who—­along with others in the California counterculture—­expect a greater, possibly paradigm-­shifting impact: ‘The Day . . . was coming, but the movement lacked a single great charismatic leader, a visionary who could pull the whole thing together’ (361). This hope would act in conjunction with the idea that ‘good-­loving heads . . . would just spread out like a wave over the world and end all the bull-­shit, drown it in love and awareness’ (377). The drug-­enlightened would work in opposition to the misrepresentative ways of the world, but in a notably vague manner; no practical plan existed, seemingly not even the inkling of one. As the 1967 essay in The Atlantic mentioned above reports, those ‘ [f]ortified by LSD . . . had come far enough to see distance behind them, but no clear course ahead.’37 Considering traditional outlaw texts, Thomas H. Ohlgren observes that ‘[b]anditry  .  .  . seldom results in major transformations of society,’38 though ‘[s]ome outbreaks . . . may presage genuine revolutionary movements.’39 Viewed historically a half-­century later, the Pranksters’ movement may be viewed as ‘revolutionary,’ though perhaps not in the exact way they had envisioned. In the Prankster saga, the absence of a leader (particularly Kesey’s inability to assume the role in part due to his work-­farm sentence), along with a lack of a practical strategy, dooms the group’s lofty ambitions of outlaw-­izing Western civilization. It is likely, too, that their goal of true mass outlaw-­ization (‘turning on the world’) was simply unrealistic: The hip world, the vast majority of the acid heads, were still playing the eternal charade of the middle-­class intellectuals—­Behold my wings! Freedom! Flight!—­but you don’t actually expect me to jump off that cliff, do you? . . . Privately, the heads remained true to their class, and to its visceral panics. (365) Part of the failure, too, underlines the very definition of outlaw: at any given time, outlaws must, by definition, be a rebellious minority, not only following an anti-­normative philosophy, but expressing it through a willingness to take risks and assert themselves in necessary disagreement with the status quo. The Prankster dream of an enlightened society would have required not only a special leader but also a nearly religious passion about a new perspective, and perhaps this was too much to expect of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, however magical they may seem as modern incarnations of the mythic outlaw.

120  W. B. Gerard

Notes 1 The work of Ai Weiwei (b. 1957), a political activist and ‘committed iconoclast,’ includes a series of photographs entitled, ‘Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn,’ where he symbolically shatters revered tradition; another series depicts his raised middle finger foregrounding different landmarks, such as the Eiffel Tower and the White House. See Wines, ‘China’s Impolitic Artist,’ 1. The neuroscientist John C. Lilly (1915–2001) ‘steadily migrated away from mainstream science’ in his investigation into dolphin intelligence and ‘speech’ as well as experimentation with isolation tanks and hallucinogenic drugs, the latter dramatized in the film Altered States. See Revkin, ‘John C. Lilly Dies at 86,’ 44. 2 Lounsberry, ‘Tom Wolfe’s Negative Vision,’ 23. 3 Whelan, ‘ “Furthur,” ’ 72. 4 Halliwell, American Culture in the 1950s, 194. 5 Burchett, ‘U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy Launches Communist Witch Hunt,’ n.p. 6 Huntington, American Politics, 170. 7 Gitlin, The Sixties, 13. 8 Ibid., 14. 9 Ibid., 17. 10 Miller, The Air-­Conditioned Nightmare, 17. 11 Ibid., 30. 12 Gitlin, The Sixties, 21. Gitlin perceptively notes that the various threats depicted in horror films in the 1950s ‘infiltrated the bodies and minds of loved ones, left them as standardized, emotionless hulks who could be read as Communist or conformist . . . depending on the terms of one’s ideological paranoia,’ 22. 13 Hale, A Nation of Outsiders, n.p. 14 Hill, ‘Counterculture of the 1960s,’ n.p. 15 Discussion of the characters and events in EKAAT here will assume their fictionalization and will treat their reality as confined to the pages of the book. As with other forms of outlaw literature, the mythos conveyed by the text is largely self-­enclosed, and its comparison with historical reality a separate endeavor from a literary analysis. 16 McFarlane, The Hippie Narrative, 114. 17 Wolfe, ‘Seizing the Power,’ 31. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 32. 20 Hollowell, Fact and Fiction, 140. 21 Whelan, ‘Reflections,’ 84. 22 Lehman, ‘ “Split Flee Hide Vanish Disintegrate,” ’ 417. 23 Ibid., 422. 24 Gossedge, ‘ “We Are Robin Hood,” ’ 251. 25 Stull, ‘The Cultural Gamesmanship of Tom Wolfe,’ 25. 26 Wolfe, The Electric Kool-­Aid Acid Test, 137. Hereafter cited parenthetically in the essay; emphasis in original for all in-­text parenthetical citations of Wolfe’s reference. 27 Lounsberry, ‘Negative Vision,’ 24. 28 Radin, The Trickster, xxiii–xxiv. 29 Knight, ‘Feasts in the Forest,’ 161. 30 Ibid., 162. 31 Ibid., 164. 32 Lounsberry, ‘Negative Vision,’ 24.

The Twentieth-­Century American Outlaw Feast 121 3 Knight, ‘Feasts,’ 169. 3 34 Ibid., 170. 35 Ibid., 165. 36 Ibid., 174. 37 Harris, ‘The Flowering of the Hippies,’ n.p. 38 Ohlgren, ‘Introduction,’ xxvii. 39 Ibid.

Bibliography Burchett, Michael H. ‘U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy Launches Communist Witch Hunt.’ Salem Press Encyclopedia: Research Starters, n.p. 2013. EBSCOhost. Accessed February 27, 2018. Gitlin, Todd. The Sixties: Years of Hope Days of Rage. Rev. ed. New York: Bantam, 1993. Gossedge, Rob. ‘‘We Are Robin Hood’: The Outlaw Tradition in Contemporary Popular Culture.’ In Medieval Afterlives in Contemporary Culture, edited by Gail Ashton, 251–62. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Hale, Grace Elizabeth. A Nation of Outsiders: How the White Middle Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in Postwar America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. EBSCOhost. Accessed February 27, 2018. Halliwell, Martin. American Culture in the 1950s. Twentieth-­Century American Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007. Harris, Mark. ‘The Flowering of the Hippies.’ The Atlantic. September, 1967. www.theatlantic.com/­magazine/­archive/­1967/­09/­the-­flowering-­of-­the-­hippies/­ 306619/­. Hill, Richard A. ‘Counterculture of the 1960s.’  Salem Press Encyclopedia: Research Starters. 2013. EBSCOhost. Hollowell, John. Fact and Fiction: The New Journalism and the Nonfiction Novel. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1977. Huntington, Samuel P. American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1981. Knight, Stephen. ‘Feasts in the Forest.’ In Telling Tales and Crafting Books: Essays in Honor of Thomas H. Ohlgren, edited by Alexander L. Kaufman, Shaun F. D. Hughes, and Dorsey Armstrong, 161–75. Festschriften, Occasional Papers, and Lectures XXIV. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2016. Lehman, Daniel W. ‘“Split Flee Hide Vanish Disintegrate”: Tom Wolfe and the Arrest of New Journalism.’ Prospects 21 (1996): 397–434. Lounsberry, Barbara. ‘Tom Wolfe’s Negative Vision.’ South Dakota Review 20, no. 2 (1982): 15–31. McFarlane, Scott. The Hippie Narrative. A Literary Perspective on the Counterculture. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007. Miller, Henry. The Air-­Conditioned Nightmare. 1945. New York: New Directions, 1970. Ohlgren, Thomas H. ‘General Introduction.’ In Medieval Outlaws: Twelve Tales in Modern English Translation, Revised and Expanded Edition, edited by Thomas H. Ohlgren, xv–xxxv. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2005. Radin, Paul. The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology. New York: Schocken Books, 1972.

122  W. B. Gerard Revkin, Andrew C. ‘John C. Lilly Dies at 86; Led Study of Communication with Dolphins.’ New York Times. October 7, 2001, 44. Accessed ProQuest, June 7, 2018. Stull, James N. ‘The Cultural Gamesmanship of Tom Wolfe.’ Journal of American Culture 14, no. 3 (1991): 25–30. Whelan, Brent. ‘‘Furthur’: Reflections on Counter-­Culture and the Postmodern.’ Cultural Critique 11 (1988–89): 63–86. Wines, Michael. ‘China’s Impolitic Artist, Still Waiting to be Silenced.’ New York Times. November 28, 2009, 1. Accessed ProQuest, June 7, 2018. Wolfe, Tom. The Electric Kool-­Aid Acid Test. 1968. New York: Picador, 2008. –––. ‘Seizing the Power.’ In The New Journalism, edited by Tom Wolfe and E. W. Johnson, 23–36. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.

6 Food Fight! Excess and Deficiency in National Lampoon’s Animal House Alexander L. Kaufman

The commercial 1978 blockbuster National Lampoon’s Animal House (hereafter Animal House), directed by John Landis, at first glance may appear to hold very little in common with outlaws and outlawry, medieval or modern. The film was based loosely on Chris Miller’s own experience as a college student at Dartmouth College in 1960 and a member of the fraternity at the heart of the film, Delta Tau Chai. Miller and fellow National Lampoon writers Harold Ramis and Douglas Kenney crafted the screenplay, and the subsequent film is often cited as one of the funniest films ever made. Animal House has a relatively simple plot: it is 1962, and the underdog members of Delta Tau Chai fraternity at Faber College are at the receiving end of attacks from the rival fraternity, Omega Theta Pi, who have the support of Dean Wormer, the head of the ROTC on campus, and the mayor of the city; they all want to expel the Deltas from college. The Deltas fight back and win the day. The film is a raunchy college picture, and viewed today, several of the characters and jokes are uncomfortable at best, and racist and sexist at worst, especially in the current #MeToo movement.1 This essay is not an attempt to try to analyze all of these very problematic elements of the film, though I will in this essay discuss how the filmmakers frame the Deltas as ‘good outlaws,’ in part because of their sexuality. Importantly, these Deltas are within the same paradigm of other good outlaws of medieval legend, such as Robin Hood, Gamelyn, Hereward, and Fouke fitz Waryn: medieval outlaws whose outlawry, as Thomas Ohlgren observes, ‘does not bring shame upon them, but instead proves them to be superior to their opponents.’2 For the filmmakers, therefore, the ‘good’ that these outlaw Deltas do outweighs their (at times very sexist) behavior, and it serves to cast them in a much more positive light when compared to the Omegas. I will, though, briefly examine the racial Othering of Otis Day and the Knights, and the patrons of the Dexter Lake Club, as it connects with the focus of this essay, food and feasting. From the Middle Ages to today, outlaws, even so-­called good ones such as Robin Hood, did unspeakable and unforgivable deeds. Likewise, the good outlaws of Delta House are closely tied to the genre of the outlaw narrative; it is also a film that embraces one

124  Alexander L. Kaufman of the significant, unifying tropes of the Matter of the Greenwood: food and feast. The film, with its sophomoric humor, uses food and feast to help define the outlaws and to differentiate them from their adversaries. In doing so, the film underscores the divisiveness that exists between the outlaws and their overlords: the former, the Deltas, are gluttonous, jovial, and amorous; while the latter, the Omegas, are teetotalers, who are vindictive and sexually deficient. The two extreme groups in the film—­the Deltas and the Omegas—­ represent the immoderations of human ethical behavior. Neither position can lead toward a virtuous human existence, though the filmmakers notably (and at times problematically) frame the excessive behavior of the Deltas as good natured, endearing, and most importantly just. Nevertheless, neither extreme is sustainable for the individual, and thus a middle way is required for the person to emerge as one who has decided to forgo his or her corruptible actions and embrace the correct, upright, and virtuous path: what Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, calls the ‘middle term,’ and what has become known as the ‘golden mean.’ Importantly, Aristotle comments that ‘every knower of the excess and the deficiency avoids them, but seeks out the middle term and chooses this—­yet not a middle belonging to the thing in question but rather the one relative to us.’3 As such, the Deltas and the Omegas decide individually to cast aside their relative extreme as it befits each one. ‘Virtue,’ that is, the middle way of the golden mean, is therefore ‘a characteristic marked by choice, residing in the mean relative to us, a characteristic defined by reason and as the prudent person would define it.’4 For the outlaws of Delta House and their antagonists the Omegas, this decision toward embracing (or not) the golden mean resides in the concluding post-­script/­epilogue of the film, where viewers learn the fates of the main characters. Before I delve into the intricacies of the presence and function of food and feasting in Animal House, and their relationship to excess and deficiency in the Deltas and Omegas, it is necessary, first, to step back and look at the characters of the film within the context of the outlaw paradigm, which has its origins in medieval literature and history. Central to this discussion is the broad category of outlaw literature called the Matter of the Greenwood, a term that signifies the forest world of the outlaws and a concept that Maurice Keen conceived in 1961 in his book The Outlaws of Medieval Legend. In many ways, the construction of alterity, and thus the construction of the outlaw, is the active and radical separation of an individual from the nominal status quo. This process is one that can be done in an active manner (as we see in the construction of the outlaws) or in more passive means. In medieval and post-­medieval outlaw narratives, one must first come to terms with the process of outlawing and its initial result: the creation of the greenwood. In Maurice Keen’s seminal study of the early outlaw figures, the scholar puts forth a central idea that links the outlaw narratives and places them within

Food Fight! 125 the context of medieval literature.5 Along with the matters of Britain, France, and Rome, for Maurice Keen, the Matter of the Greenwood is a ‘familiar back-­drop to much medieval romance,’ yet it is inherently different than the backwoods of Arthurian legend.6 Unlike the dangerous and frightening greenwoods found in such Middle English texts as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or The Adventures of King Arthure at the Terne Wadling, the outlaws’ greenwood zone is a ‘sanctuary’ and an ‘asylum from the tyranny of evil lords and corrupt law.’7 Keen’s analysis of the greenwood as a separate ‘matter’ still holds a good deal of weight and resonance. The narratives that are matters of the greenwood do not fall into neatly, pre-­existing literary genres of the Middle Ages, or any other historical or literary period; therefore, the need to construct a title for this matter was borne out of necessity, but it was also created from the existence of shared themes and motifs that are prevalent throughout many of the early outlaw tales8: springtime scenes, hunting, feasting, games, disguise and trickery, and carnivalesque behavior. More recently, Thomas Ohlgren has furthered Keen’s analysis of the greenwood as a benevolent location and one that is diametrically opposed with the cultural and political forces found within the urban environment: The forest encapsulates the virtues of an ideal realm: loyalty, fidelity, honor, chivalry, brotherhood, solidarity, magnanimity, hospitality, ceremony, and courage. Opposed to the forest are the engrossing negative values of the dominant social, political, and economic powers—­the court, church, and town, so marked by statutory law, cash-­nexus, oppression, and corruption.9 Seen here in Ohlgren’s comments, the greenwood is a physical space and not just a literary convention, for it is within this corporeal habitation where the outlaws are consigned to live. And while the forest does offer the outlaws a sense of protection from outside forces (the sheriff and local government officials, high-­ranking officers of the Church, and other criminals in medieval outlaw tales), the greenwood should not be interpreted as a heaven on earth for all outlaws. First, the greenwood serves as a space in which the outlaws are separated from society and have no protection under the king’s law. Oftentimes, the outlaws escaped into the forests or fenlands so as to avoid capture, fines, and imprisonment. This bodily movement away from major population centers (and even smaller communities) and into an environment was oftentimes met with the realities of a harsh and dangerous life. The Matter of the Greenwood is alive and well in Animal House. In place of the forest or fen, the sanctuary of medieval outlaws, in the film, we have the Delta House: the personal enclave of the members of the outlaw fraternity, Delta Tau Chai. The house is their refuge, where they

126  Alexander L. Kaufman escape from the oppressive actions of the ranking elites. In medieval outlaw narratives, the baddies—­the enemies of the outlaw—­are almost always mid-­and low-­level bureaucrats and administrators: the Sheriff of Nottingham and his men; corrupt clergy (monks, bishops, and archbishops); crooked merchants; and dishonest judges. In Animal House, the greenwood Delta House serves as the base of operations for the outlaws. It is in this locale where they plan their activities, recruit new members, and engage in homosocial bonding, including feasting on beer and women. The house is also where they seek refuge from their own enemies, the middling college bureaucrats, semi-­official campus leaders, and the local government: the Dean of Faber College, Vernon Wormer; Greg Marmalard, President of Omega Theta Pi; Douglas C. Neidermeyer, rush chairman of Omega Theta Pi, Sergeant at Arms of Faber’s ROTC, and the muscle in the film; and Mayor Carmine DePasto, the corrupt city official who controls most of the town and extorts the Dean. These enemies all want the outlaw fraternity to be destroyed, as Dean Wormer makes known: I’ve got their disciplinary files right here. Who dropped a whole truckload of fizzies into the varsity swim meet? Who delivered the medical school cadavers to the alumni dinner? Every Halloween, the trees are filled with underwear. Every spring, the toilets explode.10 It is clear that the Deltas are the outcasts and that their fraternity is the outlaw fraternity. Indeed, these outlaw activities and outlaw bodies share much in common with aspects of the carnivalesque. Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of the carnivalesque are applicable to this film, and in particular to those many moments that revolve around food and feasting, such as ritual spectacles, comedic writings, the creation of a second life/­society that exists outside of the official one, and laughter and its ties to grotesque realism and degradation especially in relation to the human body. Umberto Eco’s essay ‘The Frames of Comic “Freedom” ’ examines several of Bakhtin’s weaknesses in regard to carnivalesque theory, and I would posit that it is important to keep Eco’s ideas in mind, especially in regards to the function of food and feasting in Animal House and its implications. First, Eco believes that carnival can ‘exist only as an authorized transgression (which in fact presents a blatant use of . . . happy double binding),’ and that the twin edifices of comedy and carnival ‘represent paramount examples of law enforcement. They remind us of the existence of the rule.’11 Tantamount to Eco’s examination then is the notion that carnival gives the appearance of liberation and freedom to the folk classes, and that their anti-­establishment rhetoric, visuals, and performance have been carefully monitored and controlled by those in positions of authority.

Food Fight! 127 The Deltas at Faber College have been closely monitored. In fact, Dean Wormer tells the leaders of Omega House that the outlaw fraternity has ‘been on double-­secret probation.’ The entire town appears to be a Russian doll of bureaucratic corruption, with the mayor, who has ties to organized crime, as the dominant controlling force: he is the real heavy. These systems of power are ripe for disruption.

Pledge Week Animal House opens with two juxtaposing scenes that involve food and feast. In the first, the viewer is introduced to Larry Kroger and his roommate Kent Dorfman. It is pledge week, and the two freshmen and have set out to try to secure a pledge invitation to one of Faber’s fraternities. They are eager, earnest, and likable fellows, and their first stop is the Omega House. Right from the start, we understand, just as Larry does, that they are out of their element and do not belong. The exterior of the Omega House is stately and imposing, while the interior is even more so: the members of the fraternity are dressed in suits and ties, their dates are wearing formal gowns, and the house has the look and interior design of a funeral home. Ubiquitous cocktail music is playing quietly in the background. This open pledge party is anything but open, as the Omega fraternity officials already know who is Omega material and who is not, and the selection process begins in earnest. The interior space of the Omega House on this night has been designed in such a way to include those who are deemed worthy and exclude those who are outside of the Omegas’ criteria of acceptable members. Landis frames his shots of the rooms within the Omega House during this pledge party to accentuate who are satisfactory candidates and should be courted and dined, and those who should be disqualified. It is important to note that this is a catered affair, demonstrating the wealth of this fraternity: there is an African American hired waiter, who has a silver tray on which tasty treats are nicely arranged and which he is offers to the guests. Another tray of beautiful food sits, perfectly, in the center of the shot, while the important guests surround this social feast. The shot is also important, for we see, to the far right, that Larry Kroger is quickly being led off screen by Neidermeyer, rush chair of the Omegas, away from the elites. This feast, this party, is not for Larry and his roommate, Kent Dorfman. No, Larry and Kent are to dine and socialize with those who are deemed to be less than Omega material, in a separate room, away from the main gathering. Neidermeyer tells Larry and Kent to enjoy some ‘punch and cookies’ with ‘Mohamed, Jug-­Dish, Sidney, and Clayton.’ As viewers observe from this shot, the ostracized guests include a Muslim man with a turban, someone who could be from India (or from the Middle East), an American Jew, and a student who is blind and also in a wheelchair. It is a social experience, one that is predicated

128  Alexander L. Kaufman upon interaction over food and drink, that underscores the differences between those who should be in Omega House and those who should not. Not only do the spatial dimensions of the party underscore this division (one room for the in-­crowd, another room for the outsiders), but so do the feastial signs. The in-­crowd is waited upon, the food is bountiful, nicely arranged, and beautiful to look at. In contrast, the socially, religiously, geographically, racially, and physically ‘deficient’ students must serve themselves, and their food consists of a handful of cookies thrown carelessly on a tray and alongside some punch. The hosts of the Omega party (and their dates) attempt to demonstrate an important social characteristic, one that Norbert Elias notes has its origins in the Middle Ages and can be said to continue: good manners.12 The upper-­class upbringing of the Omegas has instilled within them the expectation that they should at least attempt to be polite to guests. Thus, Greg Marmalard shows a cheerful countenance toward Larry, Kent, and the other undesirables who have made their way into the open pledge party. However, the viewers, and especially Kent, quickly observe how disingenuous these hosts are, for Babs Jansen tells her sorority sister Mandy Pepperidge that Larry and Kent are, respectively, ‘a wimp and a blimp.’ This veneer of civility, authenticity, and proper etiquette of these two Greek houses reveal the duplicitous nature of both organizations. The initial pledge party at Omega House accentuates from the outset of the film the socially deficient nature of the dominant fraternity at Faber. After all, as hosts of this open pledge party, if they were to follow modern Western practices of entertaining guests, then they ought to have treated all guests equally well, without any semblance of discrimination. Significantly, the following scene in the film emphasizes the non-­discriminatory practices of the Omega fraternity’s rivals, Delta Tau Chai. Larry and Kent decide to try their luck elsewhere, and Kent suggests the Delta House: his brother was a member, and as such, he is a ‘legacy’ pledge and should be guaranteed a spot (and he’ll put in a good word for his new buddy and roommate, Kent). As the two approach the dilapidated house, we hear rock and roll music playing, and Larry says that it is the ‘worst house on campus.’ Outside, they meet John ‘Bluto’ Blutarsky, a member of Delta House, played by John Belushi. Bluto is in front of the house and is urinating; obviously drunk, which he is for the majority of the film, he turns around, splashes his pee on the shoes of the newbies, and invites the two to ‘Grab a brew. Don’t cost nothin’.’ His bodily excess is on full display from the outset in this scene, sloshing around his kingly goblet of beer in front of the new pledges, spilling its contents (and his own fluids) onto the ground and on Larry and Kent (who don’t seem to mind). His body is in a constant state of consumption, immediately replenishing that which is depleted. The open generosity of Bluto—­and, for that matter, the rest of the members of Delta House in the opening scenes—­contrasts sharply with those members of Omega

Food Fight! 129 House. Upon entering the Delta House, Larry and Kent are wide-­eyed at the tableau: it is an organic and orgasmic celebration of beer, dancing, and friendly socializing. It is a bacchanalian display of epic proportions, and it all exists within the official sphere of Faber College, yet, importantly, outside of it as well, in a second world of outlaws and outsiders. The chaste, PG atmosphere of the Omega House party, with its overt divisiveness and punch, is markedly dissimilar to the Delta House, where every night, it seems, is one large communal feast of merrymaking and bodily consumption. Larry Kroger ventures into the basement of Delta House and is welcomed by Karen Allen’s character Katy, who is pouring beer for anyone who walks up to the bar. Katy is certainly an unofficial member of Delta House (her boyfriend Donald ‘Boon’ Schoenstein is a member of the fraternity), for she seems to reside there and takes part in a number of the adventures of the fraternity. At the bar, Larry meets Robert Hoover, president of the Deltas, who invites Larry to ‘Have another beer,’ even though Larry has not yet come close to finishing his first. Landis then cuts to a quick shot of Bluto, who crushes an empty beer can on his forehead. We come to realize that this scene fully encapsulates the behavior of the Deltas: once a beer can (or glass, or bottle) is emptied, there will always be more. Indeed, if there is a deficiency of alcohol in any form, this causes fear and panic—­especially on the part of Bluto, as seen later in the film when the Dean takes everything from the house, including the bar—­and this hysteria is only satiated with more alcohol. Are these men and women alcoholics? From a clinical perspective, it is obvious that Bluto himself is, but the filmmakers are not concerned with a diagnosis, and even less so with a critique of the dangers of alcohol on a college campus. Painted in very broad strokes, the writers and Landis depict the Deltas as good outlaws because they enjoy to partake in consumables that elicit pleasure, conviviality, and rebellion. The feastial atmosphere encourages friendly discourse, and even though not everyone is particularly taken with Kent Dorfman as a pledge (his picture is the target of many beer cans and bottles when it is flashed before Delta members who are voting on his application). Eric ‘Otter’ Stratton, the Delta rush chair, reminds all members that they themselves were once outcasts and that Kent should be given a chance. Larry and Kent are roused from their dorm rooms, and, along with other candidates to Delta, are brought back to the house for the initiation ceremony. They are given pledge pins, nicknames (Larry is now ‘Pinto,’ Kent is ‘Flounder’), and are showered in beer. It is an initiation ceremony that is excessive in all ways: beer is consumed in mass quantities, it is poured on everyone, bottles and cans are thrown everywhere, and there is singing and dancing to that supposed primal song of hedonism and debauchery, ‘Louie, Louie.’ This scene is important for a number of reasons. First, as should be obvious, the feast has succeeded in the continuation of the unifying

130  Alexander L. Kaufman bonds of fraternity. Moreover, the feast has brought in new members, not only increasing the size of the fraternity, but also, by extension, amassing even more ribald behavior. The Deltas are, because of new blood, an even louder, coarser, drunker, more hedonistic group than they were before this pledge drive. Lastly, as this scene ends in the basement of Delta House, the members—­old and new—­are dancing, singing, and drinking together as one. The pledge scene of largess in beer and hospitality in the Delta House is juxtaposed with the initiation scene that is simultaneously occurring next door in the Omega House, which is a ceremony marked by solemnity and ritual, one based not upon the joyful overabundance of beer and feasting, but in the controlled subservience of a pledge to the fraternity that is reinforced through pain. Indeed, the robes, the candles, the paddling reinforce how different the two groups are. While the one is excessive in its inclusivity through the overabundance of a feastial delight, the other is deficient in those very same details. What the Omega House does have in excess is punishment. Rush chair Neidermeyer intones, ‘We will now consecrate the bond of obedience,’ and the pledge Chip Diller (here a young Kevin Bacon) asks four times ‘Thank you, sir. May I have another,’ after every paddling at the hands of Neidermeyer. It is a gift of pain, one that Neidermeyer gives with a smile, and one that does not feed the body (or the soul) in benevolent ways. The lack of feastial delights is obvious: there is no beer, no singing, no joy. The only delight comes from the sinister smiles of the robed Neidermeyer and Marmalard. Both the pledge night at the Delta House and the Omega House are examples of ritual behavior of the two fraternities. The Omega fraternity is concerned with control, dominance, hierarchical order, and repression. The pledges and members of Omega are clearly not equals, as the former are naked, save for their underwear, kneeling before their masters, taking a beating. The Deltas, by contrast, end their night as one. While Hoover is the president of the Deltas, it seems to be a nominal title; importantly, unlike the Omegas, the Deltas act as a unified collective, with very little dissent in their ranks, even when disagreements between Deltas take place.

Sinful Bodies For a number of scholars, how and what one eats is explicitly tied to that person’s moral compass. Specifically, the sin of gluttony looms large, where an excessive diet of any kind of foodstuff is connected with the moral fiber of that individual. While gluttony is linked especially to food and drink, it is also important to consider it as a sin of excess, of a personal lack of self-­control. Gluttonous bodies are present in secular and sacred literature, from the Middle Ages to the present. Medievals were well aware, too, that there was an aspect of contagion attached to each

Food Fight! 131 of the cardinal sins: if one were to fall prey to envy, for example, the slippery slope toward wrathful actions directed against one’s nemesis would be one to guard against. The matrix of these sins then, and now, demonstrates their interconnectivity of improper actions and thoughts. This ‘disease’ of sin, moreover, could very well affect others and (purposefully or not) cause them to engage in sinful acts. How far removed is a slothful existence from a gluttonous one, in which engorged, satiated, stuffed figures are too tired and spent to do anything save sleep, lounge, and consume more bodily delights? As Sarah Gordon observes, gluttony, in the Middle Ages, often had a strong link to the sin of lechery; for example, priests were often singled out, especially those who overate were seen as ones more likely to combine this behavior with ‘immoral sexual acts.’13 The existence of the Deltas is a perfect example of the cycle of perpetual sin, with gluttony being the gateway ‘drug’ toward a college life of loafing, fornicating, and fighting. From their medieval origins, outlaw narratives have often been associated with sinful behavior—­the protagonists, after all, are criminals. The connection between the modern outlaws of Animal House and their medieval forebears is notable, especially when considering the ubiquitous nature of untoward, sinful actions in the greenwood tradition. The early Robin Hood literary tradition itself has its origins in the allegorical figure of Sloth. In the B-­text of William Langland’s Piers Plowman, an alliterative, allegorical dream vision poem from the 1370s, the dreamer, Will, encounters the Seven Deadly Sins. Sloth is represented by a priest, who declares that while he does not know by heart his ‘Our Father,’ he does know the rhymes of Robin Hood and William, earl of Chester.14 Additionally, the Middle English prose treatise Dives and Pauper (ca. 1405–1410), a dialogue between a rich man and a poor man (maybe a friar) on the nature of the Ten Commandments and its contemporary applicability, alerts readers about the connection between Robin Hood literature and a sinful life, especially a gluttonous one. In a discussion of the First Commandment, Dives asks Pauper why he thinks men do not go to church to pray or give confession. Pauper replies that people are reluctant to enter into church because Þey han leuer gon to þe tauerne þan to holy chirche, leuer to heryn a tale or a song of Robyn Hood or of som rybaudye þan to heryn messe or matynys or onyþing of Goddis seruise or ony word of God. [They would rather go to the tavern than to holy church, rather to hear a tale or a song of Robin Hood or of some ribaldry than to hear Mass or Matins or anything of God’s service or any word of God.]15 What is implicit in Pauper’s commentary is the spiritual consequences of those who read or hear Robin Hood tales. These are medieval lessons, though, from a tradition borne out of sermon exempla: Langland

132  Alexander L. Kaufman and the anonymous author of Dives and Pauper sought to curb lives of improper conduct through didactic means, with an appeal toward spiritual salvation. This link between sin and food if not solely a medieval construct. Similarly, in the post-­medieval world of food and feasting, E. Melanie DuPuis examines Benjamin Rush’s eighteenth-­century concerns of how the virtuous will fall under the ‘debilitating luxury’ of certain vices. DuPuis observes how ‘the virtuous were capable, by healthy habits, of providing their own constraints, particularly in terms of what they did with their bodies.’16 Decadent foods, alcohol, masturbation, and sex for pleasure, for example, all needed to be curbed and eliminated for the virtuous to remain so. Such a Puritanical mindset, in many ways, has not gone away. In contrast, the filmmakers of Animal House follow the mindset of the anonymous authors of the early Robin Hood poems, who saw food and feasting not as signs of or pathways towards wickedness or debauchery, but rather, in Stephen Knight’s view, as ‘the sign of a harmonious social unit. . . [one that] energiz[es] the harmonious collective force of the normative meal against the enemies of the outlaws.’17 Knight points out a number of variants within the Robin Hood feasting tradition, such as the ironic feast, which involves the outlaw (or outlaws) playing the role of the feastial trickster, either to entice a guest into joining a meal with the gang (and thus, perhaps, being a new recruit), or to dupe one of the enemies of the band into a feast only to rob, humiliate, enact revenge, or even kill the person.18 This overabundance of food and foodstuffs is a reoccurring trope within early outlaw narratives, even though, as outlaws, food really should be scare. For example, in the late fifteenth-­ century poem A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode, there is an embarrassment of delectables for Robin and his men: Brede and wyne they had rightynought. And noumbles of the dere Swannes & felsauntes they hadfull gode. And foules of the ryuere There fayled none so litell abirde. That euer was bred on bryre19

right enough sweetbreads pheasants birds lacked branch

Like the forest feast of Robin Hood, Bluto’s feast in Faber College’s cafeteria highlights the excessive nature of the outlaw’s appetite.

Food Fight! The centerpiece scene of Animal House for many viewers is the food fight in the cafeteria. Here, Belushi’s Bluto is an all-­consuming, endless pit of food. The space of the cafeteria is interesting, for it is, seemingly, a social-­levelling zone. But as we all know, a cafeteria in school often has

Food Fight! 133 its own designated cliques. The cafeteria presents the perfect opportunity for the Deltas, here, represented in the character of Bluto, to display their generosity and popularity with the commons. The scene begins in the cafeteria food line. As in formal dinner parties, eating in a cafeteria has its own prescribed, understood modes of social behavior. One is to get in line, grab a tray and silverware, and proceed—­in an orderly manner—­through the line of available food. We have all been in cafeteria lines (or a buffet line at a wedding or a business meeting) where people linger too long on a food item, some cut in line, another person makes a mess and doesn’t clean it up, or when someone takes far too much food and leaves none for everyone else. These are not mortal sins, of course, but they go against the unwritten rules of how one should act in such a food space. Of course, Bluto is here to circumvent these social norms of the cafeteria and food in general. As the scene begins, we find Bluto hovering around the discarded food bin, where he spies what looks to be an egg in a bowl of brown liquid (it’s really a golf ball that Otter had hit into a cauldron of soup in the cafeteria’s kitchen) and proceeds to devour it. As a tracking shot follows Bluto through the endless parade of available edibles, he piles food after food on his lunch tray. He’s unshaven, and his sweater (with its sleeves crudely cut off) is soiled with dirt, grease, and who knows what else. Ironically, the Sam Cooke song ‘Wonderful World’ plays on the film’s non-­diegetic soundtrack, as Bluto eats an éclair, slurps all of the Jell-­O from a dish, then crams an entire hamburger into his mouth. This overabundance of food that is on display and that Bluto ingests feeds into the grotesqueness of is character. Yet his voluminous appetite for anything that can be consumed is framed not as sinister but instead benign: he is not a monstrous beast. As he strolls, glides, and dances through the cafeteria line, there’s both joy and a playfulness to his facial expressions, as more food is piled onto his plate, crammed into his pockets, and stuffed into his mouth. Indeed, Bluto’s transgressive behavior throughout the film, but especially in regards to his consumption of foodstuffs, falls in line with the actions and attitudes of real students, who transgress and eat badly (by overeating) and ingest food that is unhealthy as a way to reward and provide comfort for themselves; moreover, they do so because they believe (incorrectly) that there are no tangible consequences for such behavior.20 If Bluto and the Deltas represent those college students who feed their bodies in excessive means, it is because for some, in the words of Carole Counihan, ‘[f]ood signifies pleasure and celebration.’21 There exists delight in stuffing oneself silly, especially when we are with others at parties, holiday gatherings, and communal events. But Counihan also notes that for other college students, control is a dominant manner that many choose to follow: ‘College students value the exercise of restraint in eating because it is a path to personal attractiveness, moral superiority, high status, and dominance.’22 It is obvious while viewing Animal House that

134  Alexander L. Kaufman the Omega fraternity and their sister sorority, Omega-­Pi Pi Pi, represent those students who desire to restrict their consumption of food, and see any amount of feastial excess as a marker of lesser beings. The lily-­white Omegas and Tri-­Pis, in their societal worldview, look at the Deltas as uncivilized creatures. In Animal House, perhaps the most memorable moment of contagious feastial gluttony is the food fight in the cafeteria. As Bluto makes his way through the cafeteria line, Landis cuts to a booth in the cafeteria where Mandy Pepperidge is sitting, enjoying her lunch. Otter, from the Delta House, sits down next to her and unsuccessfully tries to offer to buy her lunch. She declines, and Otter, in one of a number of moments where food and sex are in union, asks ‘Well, can I  just massage your thighs while you eat?’ Mandy brushes aside his remark, and the two are joined by the Southern belle Babs Jensen, who is Mandy’s sorority sister, and two Omegas: Greg Marmalard and Chip Diller. After Bluto has stuffed his face in the cafeteria line, he takes his very full tray of food and sits down at the end of the booth, cramming his overly full tray of food onto the table. The elites protest to this uncouth, uninvited guest, to which Otter instructs them, ‘No, don’t worry. Just keep your hands and feet away from his mouth.’ Greg looks distastefully at Bluto’s presence and physical self, and scornfully asks him ‘Don’t you have any respect for yourself?’ to which Bluto, staring at Greg, squeezes a green blob of Jell­O into his mouth from his bare hand. Tellingly, the impetus of the food fight in Animal House is when Babs Jensen is finally so disgusted with this behavior that she calls Bluto a ‘P. I. G. Pig.’ Bluto calmly instructs her to ‘See if you can guess what I am now.’ He carefully, slowly, places a cream puff into his mouth and squeezes his cheeks together, spewing the creamy center onto his three adversaries. He smiles, saying, ‘I’m a zit, get it?’ Horrified, Greg, Chip, and members of the ROTC chase Bluto around the cafeteria, he yells ‘Food Fight!’ and all of the students engage in the collective revolt, throwing their food in all directions. In this food fight, the Deltas have broadened their appeal to the larger campus body, who delight in flipping the calm and orderly cafeteria into a messy celebration. Gordon notes how gluttonous behavior is ‘disharmonious, causing havoc in the kitchen and rupture of religious order’ in medieval texts, but that ‘Gluttony is often considered funny or ridiculous in part because its excesses were so severely condemned as a cardinal sin and in part because these excesses are so physically evident.’23 Gordon’s primary texts in her study of food-­related comedy represent a wide range of medieval French fictional verse narratives, from the late twelfth to the early fourteenth century, such as Arthurian romance, fabliau, and beast epics. The works of the Matter of the Greenwood are themselves a hybrid lot, with some outlaw narratives containing generic markers of romance, epic, and fabliau. In a number of these medieval outlaw poems, as I  have described elsewhere, food is the primary ingredient

Food Fight! 135 for disruption in internal, domestic spaces: homes, kitchens, and social halls.24 The filmmakers of Animal House are clearly working from firmly established literary tropes in the medieval Western tradition, especially the representation of the lower classes, the vilain. Culinary comedy in certain medieval French works, such as Aliscans and the Chanson de Guillaume, show how food fights, excessive drinking, gluttony, and hunger are on humorous display through the actions of the works’ epic heroes. Importantly, though, these actions do not lower the status of the epic hero to that of the vilain, but rather they serve to question the ‘conventionality of the portrayal of epic heroes.’25 Landis and the writers of Animal House certainly have a cadre of unconventional heroes in the Deltas. And while their actions are juvenile and sexist, the filmmakers do not reduce their class status. After all, the Deltas are attending Faber, a private Northeastern college, and while we do not know their family backgrounds, each Delta member’s family must have had enough wealth to send them to the institution. Their actions are inappropriate, true, but as they are framed within the comedic lens, these characters and their insatiable appetites and bodies are contrasted with the repressive antagonists, the Omegas, and their ilk.

Excessive and Deficient Fluids Landis, in Animal House, is for certain a master of the construction of contrasting scenes. I would argue that the scene that immediately follows the food fight is one such moment, though perhaps one that is not too obvious to viewers. Importantly, the action that triggers the food fight in the cafeteria is Bluto’s explosive creampuff/­zit. However, the matter emanating from the Delta matter could also be read as signifying ejaculate. Given the oversexualized nature of all of the Deltas and their carnal cravings (Bluto himself lusts after Mandy Pepperidge at the cafeteria table and spies upon her through her bedroom window later in the film), the symbolic ejaculation of Bluto reinforces his overly stimulated body. Food and sex are what feed him and the Deltas, so much so that the excessive amounts of both create an overflow of emotions and actions, at times both sanguine (joyous, excitable, social, and at times dangerous), and phlegmatic (calm, easy going, relaxed), to echo these two ancient humors. Other fluids, too, are key to the outlaw Deltas, including those they ingest and subsequently expel. Writer Chris Miller’s memoir of his days at Dartmouth, The Real Animal House, describes the practice of ‘booting’ in great detail; that is, drinking so much so fast—­chugging beer—­that you vomit.26 The act of booting did not make its way into the film; nevertheless, the volcanic side-­effects of excessive consumption is alluded to, especially in the cafeteria scene and elsewhere in the movie. While Bluto and the Deltas cannot seem to contain their excessive desires—­always

136  Alexander L. Kaufman wanting more, always ready to bequeath it to others—­the Omegas are decidedly reticent and restrained in their hungers, none more so than Greg Marmalard. In the scene following the food fight and the explosive creampuff, Greg and Mandy are in his car, parked on a make-­out bluff overlooking the college town. Mandy, trying to make a romantic gesture, says they should make a wish upon a star that she just saw in the sky. Greg quickly dampens the mood: ‘It’s moving too fast. Probably a 707. Those babies really can move across the sky.’ While they are parked, neither is making out with the other; instead, Mandy is masturbating Greg, but to no success, for it is implied that he cannot achieve an erection let alone ejaculate: ‘Greg, is anything happening yet? My arm’s kind of tired.’ The incidents with the Deltas, it seems, has Greg ‘a little distracted,’ he tells Mandy. The conversation turns to Eric Stratton, Otter, and how he and other Deltas have, in Greg’s words, ‘molested women.’ Mandy almost divulges to Greg that she had slept with him, and, growing irritated, tells him, ‘Darn it, Greg. If you’re not even gonna try, I’m, gonna stop.’ To which she reveals her hands, both encased in white, rubber gloves, which she angrily pulls off. Mandy, though, has her own sexual needs, which Greg is incapable of fulfilling. When a similar scene is repeated in the film, with Babs in place of Mandy, Babs says to Greg, ‘Greg, honey, is it supposed to be this soft?’ Mandy is, in truth, much more aligned with the Deltas and their friends in this manner, for the following scene finds her in her upstairs room in her sorority house, feeling her body, while Bluto watches, secretly, from the window on a ladder. This would appear to be a feast for his eyes only, but Bluto breaks the fourth wall, turns his head to the camera, and gives a knowing smile and eyebrow wiggle. We viewers, too, are thus privy to this male gaze and the results of Bluto’s voracious appetite: his erection (and ejaculation?) forcing him and the ladder away from the wall, falling backwards onto the ground. These two scenes—­the food fight, initiated with the ejaculated creampuff, and Greg’s failure to perform—­serve as a diptych of bodily contrasts, where Landis frames Bluto and Greg in opposing bodies of ‘normal’ male behavior.

Sensual Food, Sensuous Bodies Similar to how the creampuff is used as a coded action-­object, other foodstuffs are meaningfully employed in the film. There are two notable scenes, one involving Trooper, the faithful horse of Neidermeyer, and the other the Food King, the supermarket in Faber. Specifically, the Food King supermarket is the location in which food is used as a sexualized object, in this instance, during a courting ritual between Otter, the lothario of Delta House, and an older woman, who Otter soon finds out is Marion Wormer, the Dean’s wife. Needless to say, she’s game, and on the night

Food Fight! 137 of the Delta’s toga party, after drinks galore, the two have sex. The connection between food and sex, and in particular the excessive amount of food and sex of the Deltas, and the deficiencies of both in regards to the Omegas, is quite telling. Not only do the Omegas abstain from alcohol, they are unwilling or unable to sexually perform, as noted earlier with Greg Marmalard. In fact, the only Omega member who engages in a mutually pleasurable relationship is Doug Neidermeyer, Omega rush chair and ROTC Sergeant at Arms. However, Doug’s ‘girlfriend’ is not of the human variety, and he must use a penis-­substitute, which is, interestingly, a carrot. This ‘carrot’ scene finds Flounder mucking the stalls of Trooper as punishment for his improper ROTC etiquette. Trooper is in a rage, and Flounder is fearing for his life, ready to hit the horse with his shovel. Neidermeyer consoles his horse, stroking her gently on her mane and whispering to her, ‘Yeah, baby. Good, baby. It’s all right.’ Then, with a carrot in his teeth, Neidermeyer kisses Trooper on the mouth and gives the vegetable to her. It is one of the rare moments in the film where an Omega expresses kindness and love toward another being, but it is telling that the recipient of this affection is a horse (and not a human) and that the transfer and sign of this love is in the form of a carrot, an obvious penis substitute. Landis again draws comparisons between the Omegas and the Deltas with another graphic match in a subsequent scene, this time between two humans, where a cucumber serves as a conversation starter and an appetizer for a full course meal of sex. That this scene takes place at a supermarket is notable. In a scene right out of medieval legend, the outlaw Deltas (led by Boon and Otter) proceed to pilfer and poach the king’s deer, except this time, it is not the royal hunting preserves where they venture, but instead the modern gameland: the Food King. Boon stuffs an obscene amount of steak and roasts into the zipped-­up sweater of Pinto. Otter, off screen, hurls all manner of dry goods, canned food, and frozen items at Flounder, who, amazingly, catches most of the items. The trip to the gameland, with its overstocked shelves and abundant goods, also serves as a romantic quest for two of the outlaws, and both are successful. Pinto, in addition to pilfering meat from the Food King, also secures one more additional quarry: the checkout girl, who happens to be the Mayor’s very amorous (and we learn later, very underage) daughter, Clorette. Pinto invites her to the Delta party later that evening. Otter’s interaction with a romantic partner in the Food King is more interesting, as it is Marion Wormer, who schools Otter on the proper use of English to describe objects and persons. The two are in the produce aisle, and each one picks up a cucumber. Otter tells Marion that ‘Mine’s bigger than that.’ Marion, a bit taken aback at first, plays it cool and smiles. Otter then tells her, ‘Vegetables can be very sensuous, don’t you think?’ To which she corrects him: ‘No. Vegetables are sensual. People

138  Alexander L. Kaufman are sensuous.’ Marion’s correction to Otter emphasizes, on the one hand, her command of the lexicon, and on the other, and more significantly, a closer, more ingrained association with food than her male counterpart. For example, Counihan observes that, generally speaking, ‘the association between food and sex is deeper, more extensive, and more intimate for women than it is for men.’27 It is soon revealed to Otter that she’s the Dean’s wife, and asks him, ‘You still want to show me your cucumber?’ Otter’s not embarrassed, and asks her to the Delta party later that night, and while Marion says that it is ‘Doubtful’ that she can attend. Marion does in fact make an appearance, drunk, with a flask in hand, to the Deltas’ party. This, though, is no ordinary get-­together, for the Deltas have decided to throw a toga party. All guests, male and female (with the exception of Flounder and his date, and Marion) arrive in modern toga dress, which consists mainly of white bed sheets tied to their bodies, with some wearing a ‘laurel’ wreath in their hair. It’s a celebratory gathering, with many drinking and dancing to the live music and the song ‘Shout!’ that the band Otis Day and the Knights performs. This faux Roman/­Greek toga party was and remains a ubiquitous college party ritual, though the uproarious feastial nature of these fraternal events bears little resemblance to the formal feasts of ancient Greece and Rome, whose attendees were the social and political elite and who dined upon epicurean delights.28 As the party winds down, couples dance together to the romantic instrumental opening measures of Percy Faith and His Orchestra’s ‘Theme from A Summer Place.’29 The heart of the film, Bluto, sits alone on a chair, exhausted. He holds in his right hand an open glass jar of yellow mustard and, with his trademark expression of raising his eyebrow, communicates in a non-­verbal way to the viewer—­ and himself—­‘Why not?’ With that he pours the mustard onto his chest. For Bluto, the party will never end: he is the food, he is the feast. The toga party ends with two cross-­cutting sex scenes. One involves Pinto and his date, Clorette, the cashier from the Food King, and the other Otter and Marion Wormer. As Pinto and Clorette are making out in his room, she passes out, falls off Pinto’s lap, and lays topless on the floor (her bra slides off her body as well, and Pinto’s hands reveal the tissues she has been using to stuff her garment). Pinto is unsure what to do, when a miniaturized Pinto shoulder angel and a miniaturized Pinto shoulder devil appear, each giving him opposing advice: leave her be, or have sex with her. Pinto takes heed from the good angel, that is, not to rape her (though in the screenplay, the devil, the good angel, and Pinto do not qualify his considered action as such). The shoulder devil has the final word, yelling at Pinto, ‘You homo!’ The normalized male behavior then (and perhaps now) would be to sexually assault the female; perhaps Pinto’s fellow Deltas would indeed do so. That Pinto is called a ‘homo’ certainly complicates things, as it is a derogatory slur directed at him for not doing the ‘right thing.’ But Pinto chooses

Food Fight! 139 the correct path, at least this time in regards to Clorette, and restrains from the feastial delights that are spread before him.

Uninvited Guests The expulsion from college is swift. After midterm grades are released and the Deltas are showing abysmal academic performance and caught cheating on their exams, a student court of the Pan-­Hellenic Disciplinary Council is convened in which the Omegas, led by Neidermeyer, bring formal charges against the Deltas. The Dean presides over this hearing, where Greg Marmalard sits as an officer on the council. Nothing comes of this hearing, other than the Dean saying he will call the Delta House’s national office to have their charter revoked, and that if there is one more slip up, all members will be kicked out of Faber. The Deltas (Otter, Boon, Pinto, and Flounder) decide to relieve their worries by going on a road trip. Their first stop is a nearby women’s college, Emily Dickinson College, where Otter tricks four women into being their dates for the evening. All eight pile into Flounder’s brother’s car and head off into the night. They soon see the Dexter Lake Club, and its sign proclaims to ‘Dance to the Music of Otis Day and the Knights,’ the band that played the toga party the night before at the Delta House. The car careens into the parking lot, hitting a parked sedan. Excited to see someone that he believes is his friend, Boon proclaims in the parking lot, ‘Wait ’till Otis sees us!’ The Dexter Lake Club is an all-­black venue, though not an underground juke joint, and the white visitors are clearly interlopers. Much like the earlier scene in the film that contrasted the different social spaces within the Omega House during pledge week, this scene in Animal House demonstrates how food—­and especially zones of feasting—­can demarcate different social and racial groups. While the Deltas are the outlaw group on campus, the patrons, staff, and musicians of the Dexter Lake Club are the outlaws of the Animal House universe. Their feastial environment is purposefully placed outside of town; moreover, the darkness of the night and low-­lit interior shots of the club, and the majority African American presence of those who frequent it, underscore the immense chasm and weight of difference that separates this group and the persons inside the business from the white majority of the film. This dividing line is accentuated in this scene by something that exists only once in the film: silence. As the four white couples enter the club, the music stops, the staff ceases pouring and serving drinks, and the patrons and musicians stare at the uninvited and unwelcome guests. After a few seconds, which seem like an eternity on screen, the music and dancing pick up, and Boon heads to the bar to get drinks for the group. At the bar, Boon yells out to Otis on the stage, ‘Otis, my man!’ while the singer returns a confused look, signaling to the viewer, the patrons, and Boon that he, Otis, has

140  Alexander L. Kaufman no idea who Boon is. Boon turns to get his drinks, and a man to his left casually shows him a switchblade. These college kids are trespassers to this private event. There is a certain degree of curiosity within the Deltas as they approach the club and when they are inside of it. The movement from their own feastial zone into a different one explores what a number of historians and anthropologists have characterized as a fantasy of the Other. In examining Michel Foucault’s writing on sexuality and Otherness, bell hooks states thus: It is precisely that longing for the pleasure that has led the white west to sustain a romantic fantasy of the “primitive” and the concrete search for a real primitive paradise, whether that location be a country or a body, a dark continent or dark flesh, perceived as the perfect embodiment of that fantasy. Within this fantasy of Otherness, the longing for pleasure is projected as a force that can disrupt and subvert the will to dominate.30 Note how, upon entering the club, Boon refers to Otis as ‘my man,’ which on the one hand communicates (presumed) friendship, and on the other a notion of domination and control; Otis and his band were, of course, ‘hired hands’ at the toga party. Out of all of the Deltas and women from Dickinson, it is Boon who tries the hardest to make himself feel welcome. As hooks comments: White racism, imperialism, and sexist domination prevail by courteous consumption. It is by eating the Other . . . that one asserts power and privilege. A  similar confrontation may be taking place within popular culture . . . young white people seek contact with dark Others. They may long to conquer their fear of darkness.31 The African Americans who are inside the club do not take kindly to the intrusion, and they certainly do not see themselves as items within a curio cabinet—­fetishized objects to admire. It is a troubling and complex scene, one that echoes Stuart Hall’s model for racism. Doris Witt, in examining how soul food has become a complex ideological in post-­World War II popular culture, notes how Hall argues that ‘racism is best understood not as a ‘“simple process”  .  .  . in which blacks are positioned “as the inferior species,” but instead as a far more intricate dynamic of attraction and aversion, of “inexpressible envy and desire.” ’32 The Deltas, especially Boon, desire to be accepted by the Dexter Lake Club, but his companions, and the ways in which the characters are portrayed and the shots are framed, present this feast and its true guests as a dangerous Other. Back at the booth, Pinto asks his date, Brunella, what her major is, to which she replies ‘primitive cultures.’ With that, the film quickly cuts to a

Food Fight! 141 shot of the band singing some doo-­wop in their song. It is clearly a racist moment in the movie, one that the filmmakers knowingly shot and edited together. Indeed, this shot sequence is found in the working screenplay,33 though both it and the filmed sequence pale in comparison to the illustrated drawing of this scene at the Dexter Lake Club that are found in the illustrated novel that was published in conjunction with the film. Over three black-­and-­white, comic book-­style pages, all persons in the club have been transformed by National Lampoon artist Warren Sattler into anthropomorphized creatures. The Delta men are, appropriately, an otter, a pinto, a flounder, and a dog; all of the Dickinson College women are four different types of birds. Otis Day and the Knights, the patrons, and the staff of the Club are all monkeys.34 These racist stereotypes and caricatures have a long, unsettling, and dangerous history in the United States.35 This horror of the Other is best exemplified in this scene by the filmmakers when a giant of a man asks Boon ‘Do you mind if we dance with your dates?’ Boon nervously replies ‘No, not at all, go right ahead.’ The towering man lifts the table of the booth right out of the floor. The next medium close-­up shot frames Boon’s date from the waist up, sitting, as a enormous arm enters the frame from the right and extends an open hand to Boon’s date; she places her tiny hand in his enormous palm, and the two will dance off screen, it is suggested. Such illustrations in the film, and I  would argue the framing and lighting of these scenes, and the performances of the regulars of the Dexter Lake Club, illustrate the different types of feasts present in this movie. In this sequence, the filmmakers present the club’s regulars as primitives, who unsettlingly fall into racial stereotypes, especially the black men: violent individuals who want to have sex with white women. We the viewers, and women, have wandered into a dangerous, darkened cave—­the underground mere of Grendel and his Mother, if you will—­where the codes, practices, and customs of feasting signal within these white intruders both a curiosity of Otherness and a fear of that which is monstrous. The Deltas flee, leaving their dates behind.

The Trojan Cake The following day, the Deltas initiate a plan to sabotage Faber College’s homecoming parade, which will take place in downtown Faber. This final act begins with Babs Jensen luring Otter into what he believes will be a secret tryst between him and Mandy in a roadside motel; he instead meets several Omegas, who give him a serious beating. Delta members Hoover, D‑Day, Bluto, Pinto, and Flounder are summoned to Dean Wormer’s office, where he reads their current GPAs, formally expels them, and says that he will be notifying their local draft boards that they are now eligible for military service. The excessive actions of the Deltas lead to their

142  Alexander L. Kaufman expulsion from college. The feastial, gluttonous delights have caught up with Flounder, too, for he expels (off screen) the contents of his stomach onto Dean Wormer and his desk with a loud splatter. The previous evening’s events at the Dexter Lake Club have left Flounder’s brother’s car a wreck, and D-­Day leads the mission to transform, through his welding skills, the vehicle into something else altogether: a hybrid tank-­car known as the ‘Deathmobile.’ As the outlaw Deltas have done throughout the film, they have moved secretly through life at Faber College and the town, using trickery, cunning, and subterfuge to try to remain hidden. Their fraternity’s entry into the homecoming parade is a fitting grand finale to their existence of excessive food and sex: a Trojan Cake on wheels. The exterior of their death car is, ostensibly, an anonymous entry into the parade, for the outside shell of the car looks like an enormous cake, with white and pink trim icing. Emblazoned on the side of the cake car, in pink, cursive letters, are the words ‘Eat Me.’ Of course, the insult ‘eat me’ has a double meaning: on the one hand it encourages consumption, while on the other hand it is an invective that is meant to push others away, a euphemism for ‘Fuck You.’ The Deltas, as they have done throughout the film, encourage gluttonous behavior of their members and others, and by instructing the townsfolk to ‘Eat’ them the writing is thus an imitation to parade attendees to take part in the carnival of excess. Likewise, as the Deltas have demonstrated, they are outlaws and outsiders, a group who confront their nemeses—­the Omegas, the Dean—­ throughout the film as true outlaws would. The cake on wheels is really a Trojan horse: much like the explosive creampuff, or vomiting Flounder, the harmless exterior gives way to the rebellious and volcanic interior. D-­Day, driving the vehicle, tells Boon and Otter, who are in the backseat, to ‘cut the cake.’ Otter cuts a line of rope inside the car, and the Trojan Cake splits into two. The rear end (all ‘cake’) is left behind while the three Deltas drive forward in the tank car, its full interior now revealed: the black car has a turret, on which is a white skull and crossbones and the words ‘Deathmobile’ and ‘ΔΤΧ’ written in red; the front end of the car has a stylized devil/­monster face painted on it, with two rows of white teeth, red eyes, and red cheeks; and the decapitated bronze head of the college’s founder as the hood ornament. The Deltas have brought their carnival to Faber’s homecoming, a day celebrating the college and its alumni but also recognizing Mayor Carmine DePasto’s control over everyone and everything. With colorful smoke bombs, thousands of marbles thrown into the streets, Bluto-­as-­ Pirate wreaking havoc, and the Deathmobile ramming into the grandstand and throwing the baddies to the pavement—­the day essentially belongs to the Deltas—­the outlaw fraternity has succeeded in initiating an impressive turnabout. To find the golden mean, Aristotle tells us, we must balance excess and deficiency. Somehow, amazingly, the outlaws of Delta House do

Food Fight! 143 just that: they graduate and land good jobs. With the lone exception of D-­Day (whose whereabouts at the end of the film are unknown) and Boone (he and Katy marry in 1964 and divorce in 1969), all other noted members of the outlaw fraternity are inlawed back into normal society: Hoover is a public defender in Baltimore; Pinto becomes an editor at the National Lampoon Magazine; Otter moves to Beverly Hills where he is a gynecologist, Flounder becomes a sensitivity trainer at the Encounter Groups of Cleveland, Inc.; and Bluto and Mandy marry and move to Washington, DC, where he is a US senator. While viewers are not privy to the casting aside of their excessive lifestyles, the suggestion is that the Deltas leave behind their gluttonous ways, somehow manage to graduate, and become upstanding citizens. By contrast, the Omegas’ deficiencies contribute to each member’s demise: Marmalard, we learn, becomes one of Nixon’s White House aides and is subsequently raped in prison (we presume he is imprisoned for his role in Watergate); Neidermeyer serves in Vietnam but is killed by his own troops. The final image we have of Chip is of him screaming ‘All is well!’ as the chaos of the parade continues to devolve and he, in his ROTC uniform, is unable to maintain neither control of the situation nor of his own composure. The filmmakers notably pair Otter and Marmalard together in the final scene, with the former knocking out the latter amid the bedlam of the parade. The post-­college events of these two men’s lives are sharply contrasted, and their excessive and deficient qualities continue to be on the minds of the filmmakers. Otter, as a gynecologist, will have an essentially unlimited supply of women in his practice; by contrast, Marmalard’s ‘manhood’ will be forever damaged—­and perhaps eliminated altogether—­as a result of someone raping him in prison. Both circumstances are played for laughs; indeed, the filmmakers see these life events for both persons as appropriate, especially given how each character was portrayed in the film. Otter, in many ways a hero in the movie, gets a ‘reward,’ while Marmalard receives his ‘punishment.’ In the Animal House universe of good outlaws and baddies, this is an appropriate conclusion, but twenty-­first century viewers will hopefully view this moment (and several others in the film) as deeply unsettling, as it reveals more about what the artists and the audience deemed to be appropriate representations of gender, sexuality, and race. This essay was an examination of the food and feast moments in Animal House with the intent to demonstrate how the filmmakers’ use of literal and figurative foodstuffs and their associated ceremonial and culturally located customs contribute to the outlaw subtext within the film. The filmmakers conceptualize the modern greenwood as a collegiate zone in which outlaws and their adversaries negotiate spaces and forms of power through encoded cinematic moments that explore the possibilities of the human body: its ability to both (over)consume and also to restrict its needs. The film unabashedly portrays the Deltas as the good outlaws,

144  Alexander L. Kaufman men who overindulge in food, drink, and sex. The Omegas are marked as wanting in almost every manner, especially when compared to their Delta counterparts. Neither existence leads toward a middle way of virtue; indeed, the vices of excess and deficiency often lead to the downfall of the individual, especially if we consider the amount of alcohol the Deltas consume, or the lack of empathy shown by the Omegas towards others and its negative effects. While the outlaw Deltas’ love of feastial delights is framed as being normative and just, they nevertheless curtail their appetites just enough to lead conventional lives, thus burying their outlaw selves and emerging at the close of the film as upstanding members of American society.

Notes 1 Hannah Yasharoff, in an article on the fortieth anniversary of the film, ‘In the Era of #MeToo,’ observes thus: ‘But rewatching [Animal House] in a time of hyperawareness about issues of sexual abuse, there are a handful of parts that don’t sit well and make appreciating the movie as a whole frustrating and troublesome. There’s a scene where Bluto climbs a ladder to watch a group of sorority women engage in a half-­naked pillow fight. There’s the fact that every woman in the movie exists to have sex with one of the main male characters.’ Though not a focus of this essay, as the scenes do not relate directly to food and feasting practices of the Deltas, the love triangle between Boon, his girlfriend Katy, and their dope-­smoking English professor Dave Jennings (played by Donald Sutherland) is a disturbing example of the power that male professor on college campuses can have on their female students in the forms of sexual misconduct and assault. 2 Ohlgren, ‘General Introduction,’ xxviii. See also Beneke, Der gute Outlaw, 157. 3 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1106b5–b7. 4 Ibid., 1106b36–1107a2. 5 Keen, Outlaws of Medieval Legend, 1–8. 6 Ibid., 1. 7 Ibid., 2. 8 This is not to say that some medieval-­outlaw narratives are not based on familiar medieval literary genres. For instance, the sources for A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hood includes two embedded analogues: a lost ‘Miracle of the Virgin’ story, and a ‘King and the Subject’ story. For the latter, see Truesdale, ‘Robin Hood and the King and the Commoner Tradition.’ 9 Ohlgren, Gest of Robyn Hode, 360. 10 All quotations from Animal House, unless otherwise noted, are from National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978), screenplay by Ramis, Kenney, and Miller. 11 Eco, ‘The Frames of Comic “Freedom,” ’ 6. 12 Elias, The Civilizing Process I, 65. 13 Gordon, Culinary Comedy, 33. 14 Langland, Piers Plowman, V.395–97. 15 Barnum, Dives and Pauper, 189. 16 DuPuis, Dangerous Digestion, 22, 23. 17 Knight, ‘Feats in the Forest,’ 164, 165. 18 Ibid., 165–69. 19 Ohlgren and Matheson, Early Rymes of Robyn Hood, 64–5, lines 101–07.

Food Fight! 145 20 Counihan, The Anthropology of Food and Body, 120–21. 21 Ibid., 119. 22 Ibid., 121. 23 Gordon, Culinary Comedy, 34. 24 Kaufman, ‘Playing with Food.’ 25 Gordon, Culinary Comedy, 37. See also Farrier, ‘Hungry Heroes,’ 153. 26 Miller, The Real Animal House, 88–9, writes thus: ‘The first boot practice had been held shortly after Sink Night. Magpie was this year’s boot coach, and had immediately introduced them to a stunning new concept—­recreational vomiting. . . . The goal, Magpie said, was learning to power boot. Power boots were the home runs of throwing up. A good power boot, in this case would fly smartly from the mouth, [and] travel ten feet. . . . Somehow, [pledges] all hung in. Each of them made peace, more or less, with booting on demand. And they did try hard, but they couldn’t hit the targets because they couldn’t get any distance. They tried and tried until finally some of them had to go pass out on the mattresses, but all they produced were spit boots and dribble boots as the brothers identified them.’; emphasis in original. 27 Counihan, The Anthropology of Food and Body, 63. 28 See Bober, Art, Culture, and Cuisine, 109–11 and 165–66. 29 While it sounds very dated in comparison to the other popular songs in the film, this song was released in 1960 and won a Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1961. For a film set in 1962, therefore, the song fits in well with its temporality. 30 hooks, ‘Eating the Other,’ 187; emphasis in original. 31 Ibid., 197. 32 Witt, ‘Soul Food,’ 259. See also Hall, ‘New Ethnicities,’ 28. 33 Ramis, Kenney, and Miller, National Lampoon Animal House, 81–2: Shot 218: ‘BRUNELLA Primitive cultures.’ Shot 219: ‘THE STAGE Otis day lets out a tortured falsetto whoop.’ 34 Miller, The National Lampoon’s Animal House Book, 91–3. 35 For an online archive of such static images and videos, see The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University: https:/­ /­ ferris. edu/­jimcrow.

Bibliography Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Beneke, Ingrid. Der gute Outlaw: Studien zu literarischen Typus im 13. Und 14. Jahrhundert. Tübingern: Max Niemeyer, 1973. Bober, Phyllis Pray. Art, Culture, and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Counihan, Carole M. The Anthropology of Food and Body: Gender, Meaning, and Power. New York and London: Routledge, 1999. Dives and Pauper. Edited by Priscilla Heath Barnum. Vol. 1, pt. 1. Early English Text Society, o.s., 275. London: Oxford University Press, 1976. DuPuis, E. Melanie. Dangerous Digestion: The Politics of American Dietary Advice. California Studies in Food and Culture 58. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015. Eco, Umberto. ‘The Frames of Comic ‘Freedom.’’ In Carnival!, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok, assisted by Marcia E. Erickson, 1–9. Berlin, New York, and Amsterdam: Mouton, 1984.

146  Alexander L. Kaufman Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process Volume I: The History of Manners. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Farrier, Susan E. ‘Hungry Heroes in Medieval Literature.’ In Food in the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays, edited by Melitta Weiss Adamson, 145–59. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities 1744; Garland Medieval Casebooks 12. New York: Garland, 1995. Gordon, Sarah. Culinary Comedy in Medieval French Literature. Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures 37. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2007. Hall, Stuart. ‘New Ethnicities.’ In Black Film, British Cinema, edited by Kobena Mercer, 27–31. ICA Documents 7. London: Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1988. hooks, bell. ‘Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance.’ In Eating Culture, edited by Ron Scapp and Brian Seitz, 181–200. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. Ferris State University. Accessed June 10, 2018. https:/­/­ferris.edu/­jimcrow/­. Kaufman, Alexander L. ‘Playing With Food: Medieval Manners and Unruly Behavior in the Domestic Space of Outlaw Tales.’ Paper delivered at the Ninth Biennial Conference of the International Association for Robin Hood Studies, University of St. Louis, October 30–November 2, 2014. Keen, Maurice. The Outlaws of Medieval Legend. Rev. ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Knight, Stephen. ‘Feasts in the Forest.’ In Telling Tales and Crafting Books: Essays in Honor of Thomas H. Ohlgren, edited by Alexander L. Kaufman, Shaun F. D. Hughes, and Dorsey Armstrong, 161–75. Festschriften, Occasional Papers, and Lectures XXIV. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2016. Langland, William. The Vision of Piers Plowman: A  Critical Edition of the B-­Text Based on Trinity College Cambridge MS. B.15.17. Edited by A. V. C. Schmidt. London: J. M. Dent, 1995. Miller, Chris. The National Lampoon’s Animal House Book. New York: 21st Century Communications–Book Division, 1978. –––. The Real Animal House: A Mostly Lucid Memoir. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006. National Lampoon’s Animal House. Directed by John Landis, 1978. Screenplay by Harol Ramis, Doug Kenney, and Chris Miller. Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, Double Secret Probation Edition, DVD, 2003. Ohlgren, Thomas H. ‘General Introduction.’ In Medieval Outlaws: Twelve Tales in Modern English Translation, edited by Thomas H. Ohlgren, xv–xxxv. Rev. and exp. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2005. –––. trans. A Gest of Robyn Hode. In Medieval Outlaws: Twelve Tales in Modern English Translation, edited by Thomas H. Ohlgren, 356–96. Rev. and exp. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2005. Ohlgren, Thomas H., and Lister M. Matheson, ed. Early Rymes of Robyn Hood: An Edition of the Texts, ca. 1425 to ca. 1600. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 428. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2013. Ramis, Harold, Douglas Kenny, and Chris Miller. National Lampoon Animal House: Revised Final Draft Screenplay. University City, CA: Universal Studios, 1977.

Food Fight! 147 Truesdale, Mark. ‘Robin Hood and the King and the Commoner Tradition: ‘The Best Archer of Ilkon,/­I Durst Mete Hym with a Stone.’’ In Robin Hood and the Outlaw/­ed Literary Canon, edited by Lesley Coote and Alexander L. Kaufman, 69–88. Outlaws in Literature, History, and Culture 6. New York: Routledge, 2019. Witt, Doris. ‘Soul Food: Where the Chitterling Hits the (Primal) Pan.’ In Eating Culture, edited by Ron Scapp and Brian Seitz, 258–87. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. Yasharoff, Hannah. ‘In the Era of #MeToo, Is It Still OK to Laugh at Animal House?’ USA Today. July 27, 2018. Accessed July 29, 2018. www.usatoday. com/­story/­life/­movies/­2018/­07/­27/­animal-­house-­turns-­40-­can-­we-­still-­laugh/­ 822642002/­.

7 Post-­Apocalyptic Outlaws Weaponizing Food and Community in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games Jeff Birkenstein There are so many sorts of hunger. Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast1 In nature, Hitler thought, conflict was over food, and the weaker races were to starve. Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning2

In the United States today, people expect grocery stores to always stock myriad varieties of a single product (ketchup, say, or frozen pizza) and, regardless of the season, all of the now common forms of produce (asparagus, avocados, tomatoes, etc.). Americans, that is, have come to expect once seemingly impossible food options to be standardized, ubiquitous, and cheap. Yet how will people react and adapt when society is gone or all but destroyed, when law and order is decimated, when a world in which Susan Leonardi’s formerly banal food and community concerns–‘the giving of a recipe’ from one cook to another3–seem as distant and impossible as a sufficient, nourishing home-­cooked meal? Paraphrasing Lincoln, will people seek to live up to the better angels of their nature, or will all be chaos and destruction, death, and famine? Will laws extending back to the Magna Carta Libertatum be dissolved, and the order of the outlaws and the lawful be overturned, reversed? What will become of the fabled and romantic outlaw—­in Thomas Ohlgren’s words, ‘an essentially-­good nobleman or commoner falsely accused, outlawed without due process, disposed of his titles and land, forced into exile in forest or fen, and only later pardoned’4—­in a destroyed world where the ‘law’ that once was is gone, to be renegotiated with each encounter? In this essay, I  argue that an overlooked key to understanding two recent, successful post-­apocalyptic novels—­Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-­winning The Road (2006) and Suzanne Collins’ blockbuster young adult (YA) book The Hunger Games (2008)–is through the lens of food, food found either in the absence of or outside of the law. Both novels at their core, I posit, suggest that a society, to be successful, must at minimum

Post-­Apocalyptic Outlaws 149 produce and distribute enough food for its people to move beyond the everyday struggle to acquire sufficient calories. If this is not done, chaos will ensue, and formerly extralegal measures will become the new common law based on a kill-­or-­be-­killed precedent, from cannibalism (The Road) to rebellion (Hunger Games). If, as Roland Barthes argues, food is ‘perhaps the functional unit of a system of communication,’5 then McCarthy’s book represents the inherent struggles present when this food system has disappeared, and Collins’ book examines a system perverted by an evil few controlling the food resources at the expense of the many. While both books are set in dystopic, post-­apocalyptic futures, their worlds vary widely. In The Road, laws are gone, but their memory remains for some, and it is against this past system of supposed lawful justice and ethical behavior that the protagonists, a father and son, struggle. This is a world upside down, where cannibals appear to possess the largest communities and non-­cannibals must constantly compete against each other for what meager non-­human meat remains. And while food may seem an obvious realm of exploration in a book with the title of The Hunger Games, extant criticism has mostly focused not on food per se, but primarily on the gender and power relations of the violent Games themselves.6 And yet weaponized hunger in Collins’ world—­once the United States, now called Panem, its very name suggesting the importance of food; Panem being the word ‘bread’ in Latin—­is ubiquitous, pitting commoner against commoner, and everyone against the elites in the Capitol. The search for adequate food for the all-­but-­outlawed majority is the omnipresent struggle in this book. I will be focusing my analysis on the first novel, part one of a trilogy, which in many ways is able to stand as a cohesive tale on its own. Importantly, decadent food used strategically by Panem’s government and elite citizens will not ensure supremacy, and it is this dichotomy between abundance and scarcity that produces a protagonist in the traditional outlaw figure vein, as summarized by Ray Cashman: ‘As a symbolic figure who appears in folklore and popular literature, the Irish outlaw—­like Jesse James in America and Robin Hood in England—­embodies “a sense of justice based upon kinship and community rather than one based upon impersonal, bureaucratic procedures established by the state.”’7 While both books might be seen to end hopefully, society’s alleged salvation is distant for those living without law (The Road) or outside the law (The Hunger Games). In both books, this possible rebirth of community, to be found beyond the last page, is dependent on radically altering the existing food calculus. Cormac McCarthy has been writing grim fiction from the desert(ed) borderlands for years now, but with his allegorical8 The Road, he has what is perhaps his most mainstream novel. In the book, a father and son, both unnamed, walk south along a road in a ruined, post-­apocalyptic America, an America given over to desertification and where many of the remaining humans kill each other for the nutrient value of their

150  Jeff Birkenstein bodies and/­or for any of the meager provisions they might carry. In The Road, food and the gathering and sharing of it, as well of the avoidance of becoming it, are not merely actions and choices that the characters must make, but are central to our understanding of the book’s issues. Rune Graulund notes that ‘like all deserts, the landscape of The Road is one that is primarily characterized by absence: absence of sustenance, therefore of life, hence ultimately of presence.’9 The cause of the book’s apocalypse remains unclear; we are unsure if it is a nuclear holocaust, an environmental calamity, or even an asteroid colliding with Earth. Environmental degradation seems to be the key element, though whether or not this ecosystem collapse is directly caused by humans remains ancillary to McCarthy’s point. Rather, the book is not about the ‘how’ or the ‘why,’ but about the ‘what’ occurring afterwards, about the desolate, destroyed world in which characters barely exist. Charred, dead forests. Scant wildlife. Ruined cities. Everywhere corpses still in the grim reposes in which they died. Potential human extinction via ever-­colder temperatures, the lack of sun and warmth, and the dying off of vegetation and animal life constitutes the book’s milieu. The search for food explicitly, and survival more generally, undergirds almost all human interaction in the book. While the father and son move south along the road, their raison d’être is hope for something better out there, somewhere, somehow; to stay in one place without food or shelter is death. Gangs of roving cannibals are the largest immediate threat in this new, dead world, the most potent reminder that the old rules and laws of society and human interaction have been supplanted by an entirely new set of common laws, including a redefining of acceptable foodstuffs. Food and consumption are, of course, necessities for all living creatures, yet in The Road, precious little food remains. Hunting traditional nutrients is not a possibility because most, if not all (this is unclear), of the animals of the forest, field, and stream are dead. Two scarce and ever-­scarcer but prevalent food sources remain available: scavenged, pre-­ apocalypse goods, and/­or other humans—­human bodies carrying their increasingly emaciated supply of meat around with them on their bones from one makeshift shelter to another. The boy, born just after the apocalypse, has been taught by the father the near-­universal old-­world law that people do not eat other people, especially true for those who would claim to be good, or, in the parlance of the novel, to be ‘carrying the fire.’10 In a world without laws or law enforcement, the father preaches abiding by the old laws, though only insofar as such actions benefit their community of two. The son is the father’s hope, a hope perhaps for something as lofty as the future of humanity, but more immediately the boy represents the father’s selfish talisman. The father is not trying to remain alive for himself, but for the survival of his child. As we have long understood from anthropologists and historians, food represents much more than mere sustaining nutrients. Rather,

Post-­Apocalyptic Outlaws 151 food and foodways enunciate the details of power in our community, culture, and society. Considering American culinary history, Katharina Vester argues: All incarnations of republican cooking had in common that they associated recipes with notions of liberty, equality, and democracy, and promoted these values as truly American . . . they simultaneously reinscribed into American society the unequal distribution of labor and resources based on class, gender, and race via the acts of cooking and eating.11 More generally, Massimo Montanari explains food semiotics this way: [S]ince actions performed with others tend to forsake the simply functional level to take on a communicative value, our human socializing instinct immediately attributes meaning to the gestures performed while eating. So in this way we define food as an exquisitely cultural reality, not only with respect to nutritive sustenance itself but to the ways in which it is consumed, and to everything around it and pertaining to it.12 Food represents at all times community and civilization, or its absence. Food helps to explain who is in and who is out, and who is aligned with whom. Warren Belasco ‘suggest[s] that all groups have an identifiable “cuisine,” a shared set of “protocols,” usages, communications, behaviors, etc. . . . First, each cuisine prioritizes a limited set of “basic foods,” the primary “edibles” selected from a broader environment of potential foods.’13 But in a post-­law society, cuisines and choice are triumphed by a culture of sustenance at any cost. In his book Feast: Why Humans Share Food, Martin Jones argues that there are two principle ways in which humans come together as a result of sharing, or not, food and drink: The first is ‘community,’ bringing together extended connections of kinship and land, the land of the ‘ancestors.’ The food a community shares has a clear ecological relationship with the land; the balance between grains, vegetables, and fruit, meat, fish, and fowl, reflects the balance in soil and water resources in the local region, the ancestral lands. The food is simple, and shared relatively equitably between the dining kin, reaffirming a sense of timeless community and security within its established bounds. The second principle is the ‘network’ along which relative strangers can move and meet to exchange goods and ideas. Such a network is an open rather than a closed system, an ever-­expanding tree whose outer branches grow to take that same network further and further.14

152  Jeff Birkenstein apocalypse foodways, there have been Though Jones describes pre-­ throughout history countless local or regional instances of the breakdown of a viable food community. These breakdowns in the form of human destruction or natural catastrophes affect significant numbers of people, but they are limited in scope and time. In The Road, however, something entirely different occurs. Neither purpose of food for the cause of human interaction—­‘community’ and ‘network’—­is possible. The land is dead, relatives all but (painfully) forgotten, and those still alive can rely only on foodstuffs from before the apocalypse or still-­live humans. Functioning cities, towns, and other forms of community have been wiped away. Roads still exist and people still move along them, but no legal safeguards remain for those traveling along these roads. Around every curve and over each new hill lies the threat of destruction, but the journey goes on as long as hope holds out. From the beginning, post-­apocalyptic narratives have been about the search for, and/­or the establishment of, a New Eden, a place where just laws and rules govern the community. That is, the old world has been destroyed and people ever hopeful and seeking communal interaction look to not only replace but to improve upon what has been lost. Nostalgia suggests that society may have once been great, but was fatally flawed in some way (thus, the apocalypse). This next time, however, humans may be able to improve upon the old models, or perish in the trying. McCarthy’s book is about this, even as the narrative remains mired in a post-­apocalyptic present offering little immediate hope of such rebirth (before the last page or two, anyway, with a sudden shift in tone). If not, what other motivation for going onward, for continuing down the road, would there be, then? This hope is why the father has convinced himself, or has at least convinced his son, that down the road lies sustenance, including community, protection, and re-­generational possibilities not existing in the limited, largely insignificant ‘community’ of one man and one boy. And on that road, they hope, there must be food. If there is no scavenged food to be found, then the father and son will die, as they already have claimed to have foregone the possibility of eating their fellow survivors. Whether or not they will hew to these values is never fully tested, but the father comes close to needing to make a decision several times. He has told the boy they are the good people, and the father might believe the boy’s declaration that he, the boy, is ‘the one.’15 If the boy cannot be kept alive, the father will take the next best option, and will kill the boy before the cannibals can get him alive. As Felipe Fernández-­Armesto argues: as the tally of observed cases grew [in history], the assumption that cannibalism was an inherently aberrant activity, abnormal or unnatural, became even harder to sustain. . . . It has never been enough simply to assert that ‘eating people is wrong.’ Being ‘contrary to

Post-­Apocalyptic Outlaws 153 nature’ does not seem a strong enough sanction when people are really hungry.16 Stories about consuming the Other and regeneration from the Other are rife throughout Western culture’s origin stories: Athena was born of Zeus’ head; Eve from Adam’s rib; Christianity has its transubstantiation. Fetuses take nourishment from their mother’s intake of nutrients. And yet in The Road, the father and son refuse cannibalism, seemingly the new dominant de facto law of the land. The human impulse to survive at whatever cost is ancient, but if the father truly believes his son is ‘the hope,’ then why eschew eating other survivors in order to sustain this hope? After all, sacrifice, often involuntary, is a key component to many versions of pre-­apocalypse religions and cultures. In The Road’s post-­law America, then, McCarthy details a world not as simple as ‘cannibalism is bad,’ but one in which cannibalism may only be as good or as bad as a particular culture deems it, a troubling reality for not only the father and the son, but also the reader. But, McCarthy’s text asks, does the new cannibal culture in the book teach the same to its children? Will there in fact be cannibal children, or will offspring, as might be suggested, be produced (from caged and raped women) for their calories alone and not their potential to extend community down through the generations? Ominously, the largest collection of humans the father and son encounter in the book are cannibals. Though it may be true that ‘[w]hen a culture taboos a type of meat, even the idea of eating it becomes revolting,’17 it is not clear that the opposite is true. In The Road’s cultural stew, a prohibition on eating human flesh is now primarily the cultural touchstone of the new outlaws, as human meat does supply a clear nutritive and communal boon to the cannibals. Whither the meat-­eaters go (the only fresh food left, so to speak) goes mainstream society. Those who disavow eating humans hide in groups of one or two and, when they do meet, are all but unable to be hospitable to one another, hospitality being what Phillip A. Snyder believes is the key to determining whether or not there is any possibility of positive ‘human identity and relations’18 remaining in The Road. When the father and son meet an old man wandering the road, the boy wants to offer food, while the father does not, desiring instead to keep that food for the boy’s nourishment. After negotiating what to do, they offer the old man food: Do you want to eat with us? I dont know. You dont know? Eat what? Maybe some beef stew. With crackers. And coffee. What do I have to do?

154  Jeff Birkenstein Tell us where the world went. What? You dont have to do anything.19 The demarcations are clear: food in this world is a transaction whose currency is moment-­to-­moment survival and potential enslavement. How this old man is still alive is unclear, especially given that he cannot keep the proffered food down. The father says that the old man cannot come with them, for his company would not be in any way beneficial to their community of two. The old man understands this, as this is the law of the new dead land. Still, the father has some questions: How long have you been on the road? I was always on the road. You cant stay in one place. How do you live? I just keep going. I knew this was coming.20 The man, perhaps named Ely (‘Is your name really Ely? / No.’21), meaning ‘Jehovah is God’ in Hebrew, may be something of an oracle. He says he knew the end was coming, but did nothing to prepare, for what can one do, anyway? He survives, he says, because people give him food. The father doesn’t understand this act of charity. Later, when the man and the boy have their shopping cart of possessions stolen, including all their food, they track the thief down and take it back. Not content with heading on down the road for fear the man will threaten them again, the father makes the man strip, against his son’s pleas for forgiveness, and leaves the thief with nothing. Thievery and possession of another’s belongings are no longer unlawful acts in a world without law, but this act leaves the son deeply troubled and confused. The thief pleads for his life, for his clothes, for some chance at survival, as the boy wonders if the father is any better than the cannibals: Dont do this, man [the thief pleads]. You didnt mind doing it to us [the father replies]. I’m begging you.22 Though the father and son do not starve, they approach it, not at the book’s climax, but at about its halfway point. They are on the verge of death yet continue to eschew human meat. The father begins to accept starvation for both of them, when they find a hidden cache of food: ‘He’d been ready to die and now he wasnt going to and he had to think about that.’23 They discover a hidden hatch leading to a pre-­apocalypse bunker filled with fuel, canned and preserved food, clean blankets, a bathtub with flowing water. ‘All high excitements are necessarily transient,’ Edgar Allan Poe tells us,24 and for both the reader, I suspect, and certainly the

Post-­Apocalyptic Outlaws 155 father and son, this is a pivotal moment, a release of tension. Thus far, the road/­The Road has been so grim, so desolate, and so without hope—­ early in the book, the father muses: ‘He thought that in the history of the world it might even be that there was more punishment than crime but he took small comfort from it’25—­that this shelter and its promise of (at least) temporary salvation is a welcome relief. Michael Chabon writes: ‘Manifestly there is no reason to carry on, fire or not, through this “scabland,” which McCarthy portrays as so utterly defoliated and sterilized—­the greatest corpse of all—­that the idea of hope itself comes to seem like a kind of doom.’26 Coming as it does in the middle of the book, however, both the reader and the father know (though not for the same reasons) that this sanctuary cannot endure: Anyone could see the hatch lying in the yard and they would know at once what it was. He had to think about what to do. This was not hiding in the woods. This was the last thing from that. Finally he rose and went to the table and hooked up the little two burner gas stove and lit it and got out a frying pan and a kettle and opened the plastic box of kitchen implements.27 Vulnerable as this refuge is, ultimately, there is no choice between the temporary food and shelter of the bunker and possible longer-­term security of the forest, the road, and, perchance, whatever community may lie at the end of it. But for now, he knows they must risk it. They feast knowing that they cannot stay, and bathe knowing they will be filthy again. The father knows that they, removed from any potential remaining non-­ cannibalistic society and on the brink of starvation, must loiter for a few days amidst this false sanctuary’s promise, the gift of an anonymous pre-­apocalypse donor long dead or scattered. The father and son are fleeing a human act that has always existed, that of intra-­species consumption (anthropophagy), and in The Road, both exo-­and endo-­cannibalism exist. Claude Lévi-­Strauss explains that exo-­ cannibalism is ‘eating the body of an enemy,’ while endo-­cannibalism is ‘eating a relative [or friend]’28 (which is what occurred after the famous 1972 Andes plane crash). The largest fear that the father and son have in this desolate world is not death, but to be consumed and destroyed by an enemy, both through sexual violence and then through consumption. There are three main examples of cannibalism in the book, two exo-­and one endo-­. The first occurs when the man and the boy are surprised by road marauders, who come upon them while they are sleeping in a car. The man and the boy scramble away, but are unable to bring most of their items with them, most notably their shopping cart. To secure their escape, the father shoots and kills a marauder who, urinating off the road, discovers them and takes the boy prisoner. Because this freshly dead man is comprised of meat, his comrades, who appear to have agreed to not

156  Jeff Birkenstein kill each other for this meat, do eat his corpse once he has been killed by another. The cannibals seem to mourn him, however, thus expressing a sense of loss and community, for after they leave the father and son return to look for their things: ‘There was nothing there. Dried blood dark in the leaves. The boy’s knapsack was gone. Coming back he found the bones and the skin piled together with rocks over them.’29 Expressing ritual and community values, the cannibals have built a crude burial mound for the companion upon whom they have just feasted. Many of the hints of cannibalism are not viewed directly, by man or boy or reader. Walking through a house and yard in search of food where such things have recently occurred—­‘We’ve got to eat [says the father]. / I’m not hungry, Papa. I’m not.’30—­they remain silent about what they are witnessing: ‘[S]omeone had wedged . . . a forty gallon castiron cauldron of the kind once used for rendering hogs. Underneath were the ashes of a fire and blackened billets of wood. . . . All these things he saw and did not see.’31 Rendering refers to the act of reducing animal fat to a more substantial, nutrient-­rich version. It is also something of a euphemism. It’s easier to digest the idea of ‘reducing’ fat than it is to, say, kill a human for consumption. English, influenced by the French, has long used such words in order to reduce the immediacy of the act of consuming animal flesh: beef not cow, pork not pig. Such words help to protect the one species—­introspective and with a consciousness—­from feeling guilty about what it is doing to another, or, in the case of cannibalism, to its own. Perhaps the most unsettling instance of cannibalism in The Road is the scene where the man and the boy discover partially consumed yet still live naked humans in a basement, awaiting the next limb-­hacking to be offered up to their eater-­captors, a grotesque organic feast. Horrible, to be sure, but in a lost, outlawed world, this would seem to be the logical extension of what Carol J. Adams describes in The Pornography of Meat: ‘Before someone can be consumed or used, she has to be seen as consumable, as usable, as a something instead of a someone. This process of viewing another as consumable—­as something—­is usually invisible to us. Its invisibility occurs because it corresponds to the view of the dominant culture.’32 In The Road, outside all former laws, such a perspective is made visible, tangible, though how much, McCarthy seems to be asking, has really changed? This is the question I ask my students to ponder when reading this text. As Krista Karyn Hiser notes in her article ‘Pedagogy of the Apocalypse,’ ‘one pleasure in lesson planning lies in pulling the cultural zeitgeist into the classroom for closer inspection and introspection.’33 Today’s students, who have mostly come of age post-­9/­11, amidst the constructed fear and uncertainty of a clash between their supposed civilization and a murky ‘Other,’ know this terrain well. I have now used The Road three times in my ‘Food and Fiction’ course. It is that rare book that I know (almost)

Post-­Apocalyptic Outlaws 157 every student reads. In my classes, the book’s conclusion is always controversial. Shelly L. Rambo puts it succinctly, showing that what happens in my class also affects critics: ‘Reviews of the book diverge greatly in their reading of the final two paragraphs. Does McCarthy provide, in the end, a picture of redemption?’34 Graulund explains the reason for this conflicted view: Introducing a deus ex machina worthy of Euripides, the good guys magically manifested themselves almost instantly [after] the father dies, consequently validating the father’s words in physical as well as conceptual form. Contrary to all former expectations, it turns out that good guys do exist, in essence as in presence.35 Readers wonder: does McCarthy just create this possibility of salvation out of whole cloth, because the book would be otherwise too hard to take? McCarthy, perhaps anticipating this controversy, attempts to address the issue himself within the narrative; in this instance, at least, he tries not to leave any loose ends. The family of four, whether cobbled together from stragglers or a biologically cohesive unit is unknown—­a man, a woman, a boy and a girl—­who come to the boy’s rescue have been watching: ‘Look, he said. You got two choices here. There was some discussion about whether to even come after you at all. You can stay here with your papa and die or you can go with me.’36 The boy asks if the man is carrying the fire, the meme that represents, for their dying culture of two now reduced to one, the good guys. The boy’s new possible savior and father doesn’t understand, but the boy asks again, to which the man says, ‘Yeah, we are.’37 The boy is given to understand, especially after he chooses to trust this man, that he has yet other children with him and that they are not for eating, that the fire they are carrying is not for rendering people: We have a little boy and we have a little girl. How old is he? He’s about your age. Maybe a little older. And you didnt eat them. No. You dont eat people. No. We dont eat people. And I can go with you? Yes, You can. Okay then.38 Parama Roy argues that cannibalism ‘came to be opposed to and therefore constitutive of humanity as such: if to be human, and humane, was to be of the party that loved humanity, it was also consequently to disavow the

158  Jeff Birkenstein possibility of love for those humans who ate other humans.’39 McCarthy, then, concludes on a hopeful note, but the struggle is very much in media res; Allen Josephs notes that ‘[i]t is no coincidence that the final word [of the book] is “mystery.”’40 Which new culture will triumph remains to be seen. Perhaps this New Edenic group has thus far not eaten other survivors only because they have not yet had to. As in The Road, examining food and foodways is a key to understanding Suzanne Collins’ blockbuster novel The Hunger Games. Collins’ novel is set in a post-­apocalyptic America where the lucky minority of Panem’s Capitol force near-­starvation upon the outlawed majority of the outlying districts. The book reveals, or confirms, that at society’s core is the production, distribution, search for, and control of sufficient foodstuffs. Weaponized hunger and consumption are the foundation for the book’s conflicts. From myriad political, military, gender, economic, cultural, medical, and moral perspectives, food is the source of great conflict, especially true when a tiny fraction of organized society controls food and the laws absolutely and uses them as weapons against the outlawed masses. Food scarcity in The Hunger Games is, fundamentally, a tool of oppression, manipulation, and subjugation, as its opposite, gluttony, can also be. There also exists a hint of cannibalism with the mention of ‘the flesh-­ eaters,’41 but, unlike McCarthy, Collins avoids probing this topic, perhaps because of the YA nature of the book. The story’s hero, Katniss Everdeen, is raised in a world where food is scarce and always controlled by political overseers. Hers is a world with laws benefiting only a select few, a world where humans should not eat other humans, and, Robin Hood-­esque ‘poaching carries the severest of penalties, [though] more people would risk it if they had weapons.’42 The book asks whether such an oppressive system should be fought at the risk, and potential benefit, of one’s own life, or for the risk and reward of the entire community. In a world where ‘cuisine,’ loosely interpreted, includes mostly crumbs for survival, the promise of gluttony and escape from the poor territories is always held out to the lucky winner of the Hunger Games. Adrienne Kress calls gluttony a kind of ‘decadence,’ but notes that, if it is performed periodically, it is not always a negative act. Perhaps initially a counterintuitive idea, truly decadent gluttonous, and thereby objectionable, behavior comes ‘from overindulging in it—­a lack of moderation.’43 This over-­the-­top satiety is precisely what Panem’s leaders hold out as the lone hope for fundamentally altering (improving) one’s life. And by bestowing this gift upon the winner of the Hunger Games, they simultaneously corrupt each new winner by bringing this person into the gluttonous fold, an act of devious pacification because all winners know the scarcity from whence they came and to which, at any moment, they could be forced to return. Katniss has convinced herself—­or has at least convinced her younger sister Primrose, as well as her family and perhaps even her townspeople—­ that down the road of revolution lies not only death, but also the possibility

Post-­Apocalyptic Outlaws 159 for sustenance, community, protection, and possibilities for regeneration that do not exist in the forced ‘army of one’ of the Hunger Games, one young woman against the world. Unlike in McCarthy, The Hunger Games is overtly about hope for a renewed world, even as hope has been turned into a cruel joke as a motto of the games, best expressed by clownish spokesperson Effie Trinket: ‘Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor!’44 The odds may be overwhelming, but they are the prime mover of the narrative. Katniss and some others are at all times in rebellion against the Capitol power base, in ways both large and small, and often concerning food. Once, with a sudden surfeit of food in their possession, Katniss and Primrose devour it while mocking Effie Trinket and her luring of new contestants for the Games. Katniss explains: ‘We have to joke about it because the alternative is to be scared out of your wits. Besides, the Capitol accent is so affected, almost anything sounds funny in it.’45 As Tom Henthorne argues, ‘What makes the state’s use of scarcity as a means of control seem particularly nefarious is the fact that the scarcity seems to be artificial’;46 he then compares Panem to Kafka: ‘As in Franz Kafka’s story, “A Hunger Artist,” privation becomes a spectacle for those unused to want, Kafka’s character capturing “the attention of the entire city.” ’47 The Hunger Games are, Andrew Shaffer argues, ‘schadenfreude in its most extreme form. . . . Nothing elevates one person over another quite like watching him or her die,’48 thus demonstrating that Collins’ book is not so removed from our present reality. In his book Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in Service of the Militarized State, David Price argues: ‘Just as it was becoming passé to remark on anthropology’s status as colonialism’s wanton stepchild, George [W.] Bush’s Terror War rediscovered old militarized uses for culture, and invigorated new modernist dreams of harnessing anthropology and culture for the domination of others.’49 As mirrors for their present moments, the best dystopias comment from another place on the world in which they were written. The Hunger Games is clearly a book for a post-­9/­11 American age, as the Panem oligarchs have repurposed all the old world’s laws and norms into acquiring and maintaining a narrow but extravagant set of commodities serving only their own purposes. In our current American post-­9/­11 moment, such disparity is perhaps more difficult to see and quantify, and much argued over. In The Hunger Games, the fascist militarism and decadence of the overclass is thrust forward for all to see, for all to define themselves as being in or out. Katniss acknowledges as much early on, when she asks and then answers: ‘[W]ho hasn’t broken the law? I  could be shot on a daily basis for hunting, but the appetites of those in charge protect me.’50 Almost everyone not living in, and benefitting from, the narrow confines of the Panem ruling class are outlaws, though in myriad ways. The appetites Katniss speaks of belong to those who buy her poached wares, thus exposing everyone to a complicated system of ‘informers’51 and outlaws, all of whom scrabble for a

160  Jeff Birkenstein hard-­fought, scrappy existence. Laws are slippery, enforcement brutal and often random, but the Capitol insists that the majority remain outside the benefits of the law. Like today’s government-­sponsored lotteries, the Capitol uses the Hunger Games as a legal way to gain access to the protection and beneficence of the laws, but this promise is mostly just a fantasy used to quell the masses. This enforced deprivation, this weaponizing of food, is effected in part because the land is all but off limits to only a few, like Katniss, who risk severe penalties to hunt and forage in the forest. Like in Russia during the days of the Soviet Union, medically acceptable levels of consumption (caloric intake), then, are extremely difficult to acquire. Such efforts take a great deal of time out of one’s day just to secure the basics, thus forcing some few district members to hunt and forage in the forest, what has now been exclusively deemed poaching. Meanwhile, the Panem elite hold out food excess as a sign of their power, the ultimate prize for the winner of the games. Katniss explains to the reader: To make it humiliating as well as torturous, the Capitol requires us to treat the Hunger Games as a festivity, a sporting event pitting every district against the others. The last tribute alive receives a life of ease back home, and their district will be showered with prizes, largely consisting of food. All year, the Capitol will show the winning district gifts of grain and oil and even delicacies like sugar while the rest of us battle for starvation.52 In our own world, for example, sugar in various forms is now so commonplace it is perhaps the opposite of a delicacy, and is instead used as something of a narcotic, overused as an addictive additive in products foisted on the masses in order to move merchandise. While Michael Pollan calls sugary fast-­food ‘Our National Eating Disorder,’53 and the Journal of American Medicine warns against consuming so-­called energy drinks,54 which are marketed toward the overworked and sleep deprived, sugar in Panem is held out in trace amounts, like all food, as a reward for docility and compliance. Katniss experiences this scenario, first with the reward: The moment I slide into my chair I’m served an enormous platter of food. Eggs, ham, piles of fried potatoes. A tureen of fruit sits in ice to keep it chilled. The basket of rolls they set before me would keep my family going for a week. There’s an elegant glass of orange juice. At least, I think it’s orange juice. I’ve only tasted an orange once, at New Year’s when my father bought me one as a special treat.55 And then the punishment: ‘ “It’s the Capitol. They didn’t like our stunt with the berries,” I  blurt out.  .  .  . Already the boy with the bread is

Post-­Apocalyptic Outlaws 161 slipping away from me.’56 The Capitol will punish any attempts at autonomy or self-­actualization, especially if un-­authorized food is involved. Throughout the book, Katniss contemplates her own outlawed status as well as her (potential) complicity in the very system she would destroy. This is the result of weaponizing food. When the commoners are struggling only for the acquisition of the lowest levels on Maslow’s Hierarchy (food, clothing, shelter, etc.), there is little time for a revolution. Katniss is tortured by her society’s structure and how it dispenses benefits: ‘All I can think is how unjust the whole thing is, the Hunger Games. Why am I hopping around like a trained dog trying to please people I hate?’57 The answer is that for her entire life, she has been hopping around for survival. She is presented from the beginning of the novel as a strong, outlawed figure, a provider for her small, weak family, but she remains unable to rise above the basic plan which her food-­weaponized society has created for her. Katniss knows the power of hunger, and that hunger is not merely connected to calories consumed, but it is when she begins to see how she might weaponize this fact against the power structure that the narrative turns: ‘But Katniss, they’re not hungry,’ says Rue. ‘No, they’re not. That’s the problem,’ I agree. And for the first time, I have a plan.58 The townspeople we meet do still vaguely believe in a better future. They have little hope of rebuilding community or reclaiming any real sense of power, but instead hope, at best, to be picked for the Games (or, really, to have someone they know be picked for the Games), to somehow survive, and to then be allowed to live out their days in Panem in comfort with their chosen family members. Some nurse hopes of winning the contest to the death and returning, victorious, to their District, with prizes (food) in tow for everyone—­a dubious hope to be sure, but one they (are allowed to) have. Unlike The Road, however, community still exists in The Hunger Games, at least in a rudimentary fashion. Roads remain, and people still move along these arteries with some hope that they will arrive at their next destination uneaten; towns and villages remain, and people gather around their hearths. Towns have central communal points and people gather. But because society has broken down, and because the Capitol affords no legal resources to the masses, there are few safeguards for those who remain. Yet community perseveres, and full and empty bellies either connect the people to each other or separate them: ‘To this day, I can never shake the connection between this boy, Peeta Mellark [the local baker who is in love with Katniss], and the bread that gave me hope’59; and: ‘We decided to keep it a secret and surprise our families with the meat and money at the end of the next day.’60

162  Jeff Birkenstein For all the horrors and deprivations Collins details, however, she is trod, post-­ 9/­ 11 narrative path, for, as Brian Bethune walking a well-­ notes, living ‘in an era of economic uncertainty, conspiracy theories and fear of environmental collapse . . . [p]essimistic depictions of the future are now everywhere in popular culture.’61 Collins herself acknowledges that her series is ‘partly based on popular culture and foreign wars during George W. Bush’s presidency’;62 she also acknowledges her father’s experience during the Great Depression: ‘For his family, hunting was not a sport but a way to put meat on the table. He also knew a certain amount about edible plants. . . [a]nd here’s what I learned: you’ve got to be really good to survive out there for more than a few days.’63 Narratives of the end times have forever intrigued humans living in an uncertain world and dreading their own mortality. In any bookstore, used or new, there is now an entire section of books dedicated to what Christopher Pizzino refers to as the ‘paraliteratures,’64 such as post-­apocalypse science fiction narratives. As Philip Slater writes in his classic The Pursuit of Loneliness, ‘nuclear war [or indeed any end-­of-­times event] holds an unconscious attraction because it offers a final explosive release from the tensions that afflict us.’65 Oppressive, totalitarian governments, whether local or national or international, have long existed. Both McCarthy and Collins, then, conclude their books on a hopeful note, but the struggles are very much in media res. While many may desire it, McCarthy has given no indication that a sequel is coming, though Collins’ book is, we know, the first part of a trilogy. Whatever may happen next to the son in The Road is speculation, but surely if the boy’s new family is to have any chance at endurance, it must find a place to build defenses and to grow food. If this is not possible, they will perish. By the conclusion of The Hunger Games trilogy, nothing less than the downfall of the Panem government elite, which must include the more equitable distribution of foodstuffs, will do. This leads us to one question our society must address: before we meet our apocalyptic end, do all people have the legal right to a stable and sufficient diet, or should such resources be treated merely as one more capitalistic commodity, available only to those who are in a position to leverage the law, and the resources, to their benefit?

Notes 1 Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 56. 2 Snyder, Black Earth, 194. 3 Leonardi, ‘Recipes for Reading,’ 340. 4 Ohlgren, Medieval Outlaws, xv. 5 Barthes, ‘Toward a Psychosociology,’ 29. 6 Here are some examples of Hunger Games criticism related to food that will be helpful. Parks and Yamashiro, in ‘Consumed: Food in The Hunger Games,’ examine food and power; Ching in ‘Murder Ballads and Hunger Games,’ compares Collins’ book to folk songs and rural life in America, connecting food to both of these narratives. More to my claim, most criticism

Post-­Apocalyptic Outlaws 163 addresses not food or hunger primarily, but as one of a few main topics, loosely grouped here: gender, girlhood, and/­or sexuality, such as in Mishou’s ‘The Hunger Games and the Failure of Dystopian Maternity,’ or Manter and Francis’ ‘Katniss’s Oppositional Romance’; place, politics, and militarism, such as in Krikowa’s ‘Experiencing the Cityscapes and Rural Landscapes,’ or Rauwerda’s ‘Katniss, Military Bratness’; or, alternatively, influences on Collins’ work or comparisons to other works or times, such as Makins’ ‘Refiguring the Roman Empire in The Hunger Games Trilogy,’ or Laskari’s ‘A Comparison of War and Violence in Harry Potter and The Hunger Games.’ Another relevant article by Despain, ‘The ‘Fine Reality of Hunger Satisfied,’ focuses largely on the excess in the Capitol. He argues that ‘Collins consistently reveals her complex understanding of food as metaphor for cultural, social, political, and personal longing when she produces a dystopian future where a brewing rebellion is best portrayed through hunger, and independence comes when that hunger and its metaphorical substitutes are finally satisfied,’ 69. In any case, there remains much critical space to examine actual hunger and food in The Hunger Games. 7 Cashman, ‘The Heroic Outlaw, 192. See also Kooistra, Criminals as Heroes, 11. 8 Humann, ‘Close(d) to God,’ 63. 9 Graulund, ‘Fulcrums and Borderlands,’ 70. 10 McCarthy, The Road, 83. 11 Vester, A Taste of Power, 21. 12 Montanari, Food Is Culture, 93; emphasis in original. 13 Belasco, Food, 15–16; emphasis in original. 14 Jones, Why Humans Share Food, 225–26. 15 McCarthy, The Road, 259. 16 Fernández-­Armesto, Near a Thousand Tables, 24, 26. 17 Herzog, Some We Love, 185. 18 Snyder, ‘Hospitality in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road,’ 69. 19 McCarthy, The Road, 166. McCarthy’s punctuation style is minimalist and has been maintained. 20 Ibid., 168. 21 Ibid., 171. 22 Ibid., 257. 23 Ibid., 144. 24 Poe, ‘Poe on Short Fiction,’ 60. 25 McCarthy, The Road, 33. 26 Chabon, Maps and Legends, 113. 27 McCarthy, The Road, 144. 28 Lévi-­Strauss, ‘The Culinary Triangle,’ 43. 29 McCarthy, The Road, 70–1. 30 Ibid., 108. 31 Ibid., 109; emphasis in original. 32 Adams, The Pornography of Meat, 14; emphasis in original. 33 Hiser, ‘Pedagogy of the Apocalypse,’ 154. 34 Rambo, ‘Beyond Redemption?,’ 100. 35 Graulund, ‘Fulcrums and Borderlands,’ 72; emphasis in original. 36 McCarthy, The Road, 283. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid., 284. 39 Roy, Alimentary Tracts, 13. 40 Josephs, ‘What’s at the End of The Road?,’ 30. 41 Collins, The Hunger Games, 5. 42 Ibid.

164  Jeff Birkenstein 3 Kress, ‘The Inevitable Decline of Decadence,’ 223. 4 44 Collins, The Hunger Games, 19; emphasis in original. 45 Ibid, 8. 46 Henthorne, Approaching The Hunger Games Trilogy, 115. 47 Ibid., 119. 48 Shaffer, ‘The Joy of Watching Others Suffer,’ 78. 49 Price, Weaponizing Anthropology, 1. 50 Collins, The Hunger Games, 17. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid., 219. 53 Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, 1. 54 Torpy and Livingston, ‘Energy Drinks,’ 297. 55 Collins, The Hunger Games, 55. 56 Ibid., 372, 374. 57 Ibid., 117. 58 Ibid., 207. 59 Ibid., 32. 60 Ibid., 270. 61 Bethune, ‘The Hunger Games Taps into Adolescent Issues,’ 61. 62 Brown, The Hunger Games, Race and Social Class,” 185. 63 Balkind, The Hunger Games, 15. 64 Pizzino, ‘Utopia at Last,’ 358. 65 Slater, The Pursuit of Loneliness, 84.

Bibliography Adams, Carol J. The Pornography of Meat. New York: Continuum, 2008. Balkind, Nicola. The Hunger Games. Wilmington, NC: Intellect, 2014. Barthes, Roland. ‘Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption.’ In Food and Culture: A Reader, 2nd ed., edited by Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, 23–30. New York: Routledge, 2008. Belasco, Warren. Food: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Berg, 2008. Bethune, Brian. ‘The Hunger Games Taps into Adolescent Issues of Dating and Death.’ In Violence in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games Trilogy, edited by Gary Wiener, 60–70. Social Issues in Literature. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2015. Brown, Sonya C. ‘The Hunger Games, Race, and Social Class in Obama’s America.’ In Movies in the Age of Obama: The Era of Post Racial and Neo-­Racist Cinema, edited by David Garrett Izzo, 185–202. Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2015. Cashman, Ray. ‘The Heroic Outlaw in Irish Folklore and Popular Literature.’ Folklore 111, no. 2 (2000): 191–215. Chabon, Michael. Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing along the Borderlands. San Francisco: McSweeney’s Books, 2008. Ching, Barbara. ‘Murder Ballads and Hunger Games: Re-­Collecting Rural America.’ In Rural America, edited by Antje Kley and Heike Paul, 305–25. American Studies: A Monograph Series 253. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2015. Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. New York: Scholastic Press, 2010. Despain, Max. ‘The ‘Fine Reality of Hunger Satisfied’: Food as Cultural Metaphor in Panem.’ In Of Bread, Blood and The Hunger Games, edited by Mary F. Pharr and Leisa A. Clark, 69–78. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012.

Post-­Apocalyptic Outlaws 165 Fernández-­Armesto, Felipe. Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food. New York: Free Press, 2002. Graulund, Rune. ‘Fulcrums and Borderlands: A  Desert Reading of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.’ Orbis Litterarum 65, no. 1 (2010): 57–78. Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition. New York: Scribner, 2010. Henthorne, Tom. Approaching the Hunger Games Trilogy: A Literary and Cultural Analysis. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. Herzog, Hal. Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard to Think Straight About Animals. New York: Harper Perennial, 2011. Hiser, Krista Karyn. ‘Pedagogy of the Apocalypse.’ Transformations: The New Jersey Project Journal 21, no. 1 (2010): 154–62. Humann, Heather Duerre. ‘Close(d) to God, Negotiating a Moral Terrain: Questions of Agency and Selfhood in The Road and Sophie’s Choice.’ Interdisciplinary Literary Studies: A Journal of Criticism of Theory 12, no. 1 (2010): 63–77. Jones, Martin. Feast: Why Humans Share Food. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Josephs, Allen. ‘What’s at the End of The Road?’ South Atlantic Review 74, no. 3 (2009): 20–30. Kooistra, Paul. Criminals as Heroes: Structure, Power and Identity. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1989. Kress, Adrienne. ‘The Inevitable Decline of Decadence.’ In The Girl Who Was on Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy, edited by Leah Wilson, 221–36. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2010. Krikowa, Natalie. ‘Experiencing the Cityscapes and Rural Landscapes as “Citizens” of The Hunger Games Storyworld.’ In Cityscapes of the Future: Urban Spaces in Science Fiction, edited by Yael Mauer and Meyrav Koren-­Kuik, 151–67. Consciousness, Literature and the Arts 53. Leiden and Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2018. Laskari, Isabelle. ‘A Comparison of War and Violence in Harry Potter and The Hunger Games.’ Looking Glass 17, no. 2 (2014): n.p. www.the-­looking-­glass.net. Leonardi, Susan J. ‘Recipes for Reading: Summer Pasta, Lobster à la Riseholme, and Key Lime Pie.’ PMLA 104, no. 3 (1989): 340–47. Lévi-­Strauss, Claude. ‘The Culinary Triangle.’ In Food and Culture: A Reader, 2nd ed., edited by Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, 40–47. New York: Routledge, 2012. Makins, Marian. ‘Refiguring the Roman Empire in The Hunger Games Trilogy.’ In Classical Traditions in Science Fiction, edited by Brett M. Rogers and Benjamin Eldon Stevens, 280–306. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Manter, Lisa, and Lauren Francis. ‘Katniss’s Oppositional Romance: Survival Queer and Sororal Desire in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games Trilogy.’ Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 42, no. 3 (2017): 285–307. McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Vintage, 2006. Mishou, Aubrey L. C. ‘The Hunger Games and the Failure of Dystopian Maternity.’ The Quint 6, no. 1 (2013): 124–41. Montanari, Massimo. Food is Culture. Translated by Albert Sonnenfeld. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Ohlgren, Thomas H. ‘General Introduction.’ In Medieval Outlaws: Twelve Tales in Modern English Translation, Revised and Expanded Edition, edited by Thomas H. Ohlgren, xv–xxxv. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2005.

166  Jeff Birkenstein Parks, Lori L., and Jennifer P. Yamashiro. ‘Consumed: Food in The Hunger Games.’ Journal of American Culture 34, no. 2 (2015): 137–50. Pizzino, Christopher. ‘Utopia at Last: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road as Science Fiction.’ Extrapolation 51, no. 3 (2010): 358–75. Poe, Edgar Allan. ‘Poe on Short Fiction.’ In The New Short Story Theories, edited by Charles E. May, 59–72. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1994. Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-­Food World. New York: Bloomsbury, 2011. Price, David H. Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in Service of the Militarized State. Petrolia, CA: Counterpunch, 2011. Rambo, Shelly L. ‘Beyond Redemption? Reading McCarthy’s The Road after the End of the World.’ Studies in Literary Imagination 41, no. 2 (2008): 99–120. Rauwerda, Antje M. ‘Katniss, Military Bratness: Military Culture in Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games Trilogy.’ Children’s Literature 44 (2016): 172–91. Roy, Parama. Alimentary Tracts: Appetites, Aversions, and the Postcolonial. Next Wave. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Shaffer, Andrew. ‘The Joy of Watching Others Suffer: Schadenfreude and the Hunger Games.’ In The Hunger Games and Philosophy: A Critique of Pure Treason, edited by George A. Dunn and Nicolas Michaud, 75–89. The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. Slater, Philip. The Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at the Breaking Point. 3rd ed. Boston: Beacon Press, 1990. Snyder, Phillip A. ‘Hospitality in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.’ The Cormac McCarthy Journal 6 (2008): 69–86. Snyder, Timothy. Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2016. Torpy, J. M., and E. H. Livingston. ‘Energy Drinks.’ JAMA 309, no. 3 (2013): 297. Vester, Katharina. A Taste of Power: Food and American Identities. California Studies in Food and Culture 59. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015.

8 Succulent Texts Desire, Outlaws, and Consumption in Popular Romance Kristin Noone

In Suzanne Enoch’s historical Regency romance1 novel Before the Scandal (2008), the heroine Alyse—­left penniless and dependent on her unkind aunt—­steals and hides food in order to avoid starvation, and the highwayman who sweeps her off her feet does so in part with promises of material comforts, including seductive meals and strawberries; when she is forbidden to eat breakfast, and is feeling—­in her words—­‘alone and trapped,’ her hero manages to present her with a gift of her favorite fruit. As she regards the gift, Alyse thinks, ‘The man had the skill of a master illusionist. And he’d been thinking of her, with everything else he had to worry over.’2 As Alyse picks up a strawberry, she smiles. As she accepts and consumes the gift, she also approves of her hero’s skills of illusion and theft. These skills, employed on her behalf, permit her to enjoy her own miniature feast, which becomes an act of care and comfort in Alyse’s time of need—­a need that is not merely personal, but extends to the estate and the social order around the romantic pair. Enoch’s Alyse is not alone in this association of romance, desire, consumption, and outlaw heroes. Throughout the genre of popular romance, patterns and stories tend to repeat, as Pamela Regis has observed via her eight-­step template for popular romance fiction in A Natural History of the Romance Novel: 1) society defined (the world in which the romance takes place); 2) the meeting; 3) the barrier (the obstacles, whether internal or external, preventing the immediate achievement of the happy ending); 4) the attraction; 5) the declaration (of mutual desire/­commitment); 6) the point of ritual death (the moment at which the happy ending may be prevented); 7) the recognition (the reaffirmation of commitment and overcoming of the final major obstacle); 8) the betrothal or similarly satisfying resolution involving a Happy Ever After (in the abbreviation used by romance scholars, the HEA) or Happy For Now (HFN) ending of the romance. This predictability, however—­as Regis herself has noted—­is not necessarily a negative for the consumers of popular romance texts. While many of these generic patterns are easily identifiable—­a dashing hero, a challenge to society and propriety, a happy ending that includes both sensual and economic fulfillment—­this linkage extends beyond simple

168  Kristin Noone identification. Food, or the lack thereof, often becomes a prime concern for romance protagonists, especially those who find themselves caught up in outlaw narratives. The medieval feast, in medieval urban historian Martha Carlin’s evocative description, ‘has served as a lens through which people could view the past either as a symbol of lost aristocratic splendor, or as a barbarous but entertaining spectacle’; Carlin goes on to observe that: feasts have played a lively role in . . . popular modern conceptualizations of medieval life, which often echoes the earlier dichotomy between nostalgia for a lost time of nobility and honor, and fascination with the exciting but shocking customs of a barbaric age.3 In popular romance texts that invoke the figure of the outlaw, this dichotomy takes the form of desire for the outlaw hero while simultaneously reinscribing him as a reparative and ultimately optimistic fantasy of needs and wants equally fully met. The outlaw hero disrupts the community, often posing (or seeming to pose) a threat to society; however, the society in which he appears is always already failing to function in some way, as indicated by the overindulgence in or scarcity of food and drink. Mealtimes, dinner parties, outlaw feasts in the woods, and steampunk teatimes function in their respective novels to reflect the very real concerns and interests of the readers of these narratives: food for a family, impoverished relations dependent upon one’s support, a need for sustenance, a desire for a match that will provide both emotional and material satisfaction. Carlin proposes that: in new media and entertainments, as well as in modern popular literature, medieval feasts symbolize wealth and power, aristocratic grandeur, and the acquisition of honor. They serve as occasions for portraying dazzling magnificence and farcical crudeness, and as settings for keynote scenes of romance, comedy, eroticism, heroism, and treachery.4 Popular romance texts employ the feasting trope in a similar fashion, incorporating feasting, food, and celebratory scenes of ultimate fulfillment and pleasure to indicate the successful achievement—­or, to borrow Carlin’s term, ‘acquisition’–of the happy ending. In particular, popular romance texts which present outlaw hero protagonists emphasize the outlaw’s ability to provide for the community and persons within that community, as demonstrated in the central love story, and thereby address any concerns about the outlaw’s disruptive potential by reinscribing him as the key to abundance, pleasure, and comfort. Though a detailed focus on certain selected works cannot ever be representative of the entirety of popular romance’s ever-­increasing diversity and breadth, the closer examination of three particular texts may

Succulent Texts 169 be read as potentially indicative, as they suggest narrative patterns centered around the ability of the outlaw figure to provide both literal and metaphorical sustenance when traditional systems fail to do so, patterns which persist over decades and across genres and sexualities. First, Diane Carey’s medieval historical romance Under the Wild Moon (1986) incorporates Robin Hood himself, though the novel features Robin’s follower and fellow outlaw Will Scarlet as the hero, and imagines the greenwood as a place to which the imperiled heroine can flee and be both well fed and loved. Second, Suzanne Enoch’s Before the Scandal invokes a Regency setting and a hero who consciously assumes and utilizes the role of a fictional legendary highwayman to save his brother’s estate while simultaneously seducing the impoverished heroine with the favorite foods she can no longer afford. Finally, Alexis Hall’s Prosperity (2014) examines the intertwining of sexual desire and a desire for expensive or unusual flavors along with a playful pastiche of steampunk airship pirates, Lovecraftian monsters, and queer sexualities. All three texts, while exploring decidedly different visions of the outlaw and the community which he orbits and disrupts and reforms, invoke food (or, more specifically, a difficulty involving food) as a metaphor for that community: society has failed to function on behalf of, or to meet the basic needs of, the hero and/­or heroine. Catherine M. Roach asserts that popular romance provides a ‘reparation fantasy in which the joining of lives can be worked out  .  .  . connecting outside yourself in a positive, fruitful, pleasurable way.’5 The figure of the outlaw hero appears at moments of crisis to provide that reparation fantasy and to reaffirm the possibility of successful connections and the pleasure of bodily desires fulfilled.

Popular Romance, Consumption, and Outlaw Texts In Happily Ever After: The Romance Story in Popular Culture, Roach describes popular romance as a ‘cultural narrative,’ driven by ‘yearning and desire’; she asserts that this narrative of yearning and desire is ‘taught, retold and—­a crucial point—­experimented with in new forms’6 in the mass-­market romance genre, which—­in defiance of trends in other genres—­has continued increasing its readership in recent years. Popular romances, she suggests, ‘do deep and complicated work for the (mostly) women who read them;’ more specifically, this is a healing form of work. As Roach explains, There is a reparative aspect to this work, to try to make up for the costs to a woman’s psyche that comes of living in a culture that is still a man’s world. There is a transgressive and empowering nature to this work, often one of fun and sisterhood, a refusal to be limited or lessened by narrow gender roles and toxic ambivalence about women’s sexuality.7

170  Kristin Noone In other words, the consumption of popular romance provides not a simple escape, but an active reclamation of agency, sexuality, and pleasure: through narratives of strong heroines acting as partners for their heroes; through scenes that without shame depict sensual indulgence and physical passion; and through even the act of reading itself, time that is purely devoted to one’s own enjoyment of a story and characters. Similarly, Eric Murphy Selinger and William A. Gleason, in their introduction to the magisterial Romance Fiction in American Culture: Love as the Practice of Freedom?, examine popular romance through the lenses of feminism, emotion, and optimism, referencing bell hooks and the work of cultural studies scholar Lauren Berlant on affect theory, emotion, and gender. Selinger and Gleason claim that the romance genre’s focus on love functions as an ‘act of freedom,’ with a ‘hybridizing heritage’ that draws on other genres.8 For Selinger and Gleason, popular romance frames love, marriage, and optimism as ‘central to the genre as a whole, but also as a fraught, contested enterprise that may be questioned, renegotiated, and redefined in individual novels;’9 romance fiction functions as an exploratory zone, often examining areas of crucial concern to women and other traditionally marginalized populations, providing spaces in which the narratives of history, literature, and desire may be interrogated, reimagined, reaffirmed, or rejected. This pattern of renegotiation may be found in popular outlaw texts as well, particularly those which emphasize the outlaw’s place within society rather than his rejection of it, as when Robin Hood’s greenwood becomes a place of feasting and revelry for his yeomen, or a refuge for impoverished men and women seeking sanctuary. As historian Michael A. LaCombe observes, the public nature of feasting and the display of food ‘legitimizes’: [M]any English leaders found themselves faced with the need to secure legitimacy, and titles, offices, and royal patents alone were not always sufficient. So officeholders turned to more informal means, presenting themselves in public in a way that conformed to expectations of peers. . . . Food was fundamental to this search for legitimacy.10 Food, and the spectacle of food being consumed, become in LaCombe’s description a means of securing status and a place within the community, particularly for those for whom that status may otherwise be in doubt—­ such as outlaws. Stephen Knight argues, speaking specifically of Robin Hood, that ‘the essence of Robin Hood is not distance from society and its norms, but challenging continuity with them;’11 the negotiation of this ‘space of alterity’ becomes a ‘domain of evaluative experiment, stigmatizing malice and asserting ideals in the safe domain of myth’ where outlaw narratives can ‘provide the material for a history of personal and political anxiety as expressed through an ever-­popular and ever-­changing

Succulent Texts 171 tradition.’12 As noted previously, Selinger and Gleason propose that romance novels engage in the work of questioning and renegotiating identities; outlaw tales serve similar functions of negotiations, working out cultural anxieties and ideals in a space that may remain safely unreal. Knight goes on to suggest more broadly that ‘we find in literary ideology the resolution of the threats we most fear, via the values we would wish to practice,’13 thereby emphasizing the real-­world connections and potential effectiveness of literature. Valerie B. Johnson draws attention to this real-­world importance in terms of the outlaw in particular, reading popular-­culture Robin Hood texts via philosopher and political theorist Giorgio Agamben’s concept of the ‘state of exception’ and arguing that ‘the medievalist Robin Hood, as product and producer of popular culture, finds echoes in other genres which embrace and celebrate the citizen-­outsider taking actions into his own hands, either because the law has failed or because he has been gifted with extraordinary powers.’14 Johnson cites superhero comic books, action-­adventure films, and romance novels as ‘massively popular but critically understudied forms’ which are ‘persistently dismissed as simple entertainment,’15 but which in fact ‘do go out into the world, to change it,’16 existing on the cusp between ideology and lived reality and functioning as a place of mediation between idea and body. Within the context of the Robin Hood tradition, Johnson concludes, it is possible to explore complex theories of sovereignty, legality, the hero as outsider, and the political state of exception.17 While she centralizes these claims around Robin Hood, the invitation to examine outlaw narratives in popular culture, in particular in those ‘understudied forms,’ opens up the field of outlaw studies to new genres. As these popular genres mediate between consumable ideas and the physical body, the question of bodily desires—­and, as previously noted, anxieties—­springs to the fore. Returning to LaCombe’s concept of food as legitimizing, therefore, allows us to read moments of the emergence of food and feasting into these popular-­culture narratives as one avenue by which these texts enter into complex places of mediation and negotiations of power. LaCombe writes: Food is among the most richly symbolic elements of social life, conveying a variety of meanings relating to host and guest, giver and recipient, cook and diner, producer and consumer, and these meanings are linked to the most fundamental of all social relationships . . . the path food took from the soil, streams, and forests of England to the people who lived there delineated the social order itself.18 If tracing the history of food is, according to this formulation, ‘akin to tracing the circulation of blood in the body politic,’19 then texts which engage with precisely the question of who constitutes the body politic must be considered.

172  Kristin Noone Brian J. Levy and Lesley Coote examine one example of feasting in a popular-­culture Robin Hood adaptation—­The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), starring Errol Flynn—­and conclude that ‘the bonding between Robin and his Merry Men centers on the shared rituals of fire and feasting;’20 in popular romance novels, this bonding shifts from the homosocial to the romantic and even erotic, which—­as we will see—­may be played out in traditionally heteronormative or sharply queered ways. In their introduction to Love as the Practice of Freedom, Eric Murphy Selinger and William Gleason claim that ‘the romance novel is definable in terms of a particular kind of ending: a “happy ending,” as it’s usually called, for the central characters, whether they be a heterosexual or same-­sex couple or, recently, a polyamorous marriage;’21 this particular kind of ending, in outlaw romances, also requires a concern for the needs of embodiment, both personal and community-­oriented, as expressed in food and feasting. To illustrate the various ways in which popular romance has engaged with these themes over time, the first example of this type of happy ending, Diane Carey’s Under the Wild Moon, which foregrounds the role of the outlaw camp and its seductive pleasures of feasting, is drawn from an older and more melodramatic school of popular romance. The second text to be discussed, Suzanne Enoch’s Before the Scandal, exemplifies the previously mentioned best-­selling Regency genre and explores questions of scarcity of food before resolving with the promise of future feasts. Finally, Alexis Hall’s recent novel Prosperity (with its related short stories) combines steampunk, H. P. Lovecraft homage, and queer romance to depict desires that are consistently described in terms of the vocabulary of food, flavor, and taste.

Under the Wild Moon: Custard in the Greenwood Diane Carey’s Under the Wild Moon, first published by Signet Books in 1986, portrays Robin Hood’s camp in the greenwood as an almost fantastical space of imagined medievalism in which the heroine’s hunger, both gustatory and sensual, can be satisfied. Discussing late medieval and early modern England, LaCombe notes that multivalence is one of food’s most fascinating qualities . . . the human body’s need for calories made food a daily concern in the early period, and its symbolic richness linked these daily occasions to larger social and political meanings  .  .  . caloric and symbolic meanings always overlaid each other.22 Carey’s novel, in its scenes of feasting and fulfillment in the greenwood, centered around female experiences and pleasures, exemplifies this multivalence. Under the Wild Moon appears at precisely the moment Sarah Frantz Lyons and Eric Murphy Selinger have located as the tipping point in

Succulent Texts 173 popular romance; that is, the historical point at which the ‘sensual historical novel was beginning to prevail over the true bodice-­ripper in American romance.’23 Hsu-­Ming Teo, reading this shift in terms of sociopolitical currents and the history of intersectional feminism, suggests that these historical novels of the 1980s and 1990s—­produced during the decades that saw both the triumph of American liberal feminist demands as well as the backlash against these—­pointed out over and over again that until recently women in the West were also subjugated and repressed, with few opportunities in life.24 In other words, feminist writers of popular romance turned to the past in order to critique and to understand the present, and the forces that shape female desire and depictions of pleasure. Under the Wild Moon, produced squarely in this context, rewrites the legend of Robin Hood in a story of popular medievalism that emphasizes the outlaw hero’s ability to provide for a community, as the greenwood becomes a place of nourishment not only for the heroine Katie but also for the refugees like her who hide at Robin Hood’s camp, and Katie herself becomes in turn a provider of nourishment for others. Carey’s medievalist romance thus purposefully works through a form of fantasy medievalism to imagine a reparative Middle Ages, unreal and idealized but deliberately so, in which women may choose to work as blacksmiths or to wed outlaws, and in either case to contribute to the rebuilding and functioning of their chosen communities. Carey, who possesses an M.A. in English from the University of Michigan,25 opens and closes Moon with apparently historical ‘facts,’ citing no sources but assuming a commanding omniscient tone in her Prologue and Epilogue: ‘It is the year 1192, deep in the core of the land known as England. The ruling class are descendants of the Norman Conquest of 1066 under the Duke of Normandy.’26 The novel’s opening epigraph, provided by the William Butler Yeats poem ‘Solomon and the Witch’ (1921), evokes both uncertainty (‘Yet the world ends’) and fulfillment (‘oil and wick are burned in one’) and asserts the authority of the author’s voice in placing Moon squarely amid established history and literary giants. Thus, as set up by Carey’s opening, the novel from the start is an act of feminist reclamation in terms of history, canonicity, and women-­centered narratives. Carey’s heroine, Katie Chenoweth, has just lost her husband after seven years of marriage; because Katie is a pagan and a follower of the ‘Old Religion,’ the community has turned against her, and although she is strong enough to work her husband’s forge, she will be denied membership in the blacksmiths’ guild unless she agrees to a bargain: ‘The Cart Road across the River Trent has been under siege for three months, and trade is suffering. You will go there, find the thieves who commit

174  Kristin Noone travesty against the Crown, and negotiate with them to open the road’ (Carey, 26). When Katie, not unreasonably, protests, the Abbott argues that ‘even outlaws must answer to God, and I think they may not murder a woman’ (Carey, 25). Katie’s romance begins, then, with the establishment of not only society being defined, as in Regis’ formulation, but also of a society imperiled: her lost husband (and genuine first love; her grief is treated sympathetically and realistically), her lost livelihood, a town suffering loss of trade, religious persecution, and an act of bargaining in order to secure her a means to live. When Katie is kidnapped off the road by Will Scarlet and brought to Robin’s camp in the greenwood, she is drawn to the scenes of abundance, as exemplified by her first meal shared with outlaws: The boar’s meat went around  .  .  . she waited for the lettuce, soft cheese, and shallots to be passed. They also had pears and apples and something that looked like—­yes, it was. Raspberries! Since she’d lived in Southwell she’d had precious little of the fruit. (Carey, 72) While eating, Katie’s physical feasting becomes entwined with her gradual appreciation of the supposedly murderous outlaws, and one in particular: ‘these men weren’t behaving at all like the brutes they were supposed to be. They ate slowly, with small bites, swallowed before drinking, and always wiped their lips before partaking of the shared wine,’ and when Will asks whether she would like some custard, she appreciates both his courtesy and the ‘piping hot’ bowl that ‘smelled of figs and honey’ (Carey, 73). It is at this point, well fed and trusting in the outlaws’ revealed courteous nature, that Katie explains her mission, couching it in economic terms: ‘Your freedom will fill few bellies when the merchants . . . find a road around you or throw more ambushes at you as they did today!’ Will’s counterargument follows the tradition of sparring romantic leads, but also makes a claim on behalf of his community: ‘He [the Baron of Gisbourne] says we squat on the king’s land, land that used to belong to honest men. These people who live with us in the greenwood depend on us to clothe and feed them’ (Carey, 74). Both hero and heroine frame their arguments in terms of full bellies and the ability to feed others, even as they partake of the feast provided by the outlaws and discover the beginnings of passion for each other; Carey’s novel thus suggests that passion, compassion, and heroism may be equally interconnected. Alexander L. Kaufman argues, examining Robin Hood and his men in the Geste, that ‘eating, that basic human need, runs throughout the Geste, and it may hold a fundamental, meta-­narrative implication that goes far beyond the fact that the outlaws need to eat.’27 For Kaufman, feasting in the greenwood is a marker of alterity as reflected in herd

Succulent Texts 175 mentality, a hyper-­performative copying of acts of the aristocracy.28 In Carey’s deliberate rewriting of the Robin Hood myth, this alterity may be redeemed by compassion—­sharing of food, protection of children, welcoming of outsiders into the greenwood—­and by sexual desire predicated on that sense of shared compassion. Under the Wild Moon follows several of the usual Robin Hood motifs—­disguises, archery contests, loyalty to King Richard, conflict with Guy of Gisborne—­but Carey adapts them in order to craft an early attempt at a form of inclusive medievalism: Robin’s dedication to the Church is not only present but emphasized, Katie is an observant follower of the Old Religion, and Katie and Robin’s men even witness the arrival of Malinké visitors to Court—­Alan a Dale, who has traveled the world, including Africa, explains their origins. The idealized space of the greenwood is one in which all visitors are welcome, all will be fed, and children will be cared for; it functions as an embodiment of Knight’s space of ‘localized natural justice and ideals of equity, a politics of hope against the disappointments and degradations of law and law-­keeping that too many people experience.’29 During the novel’s climactic sequence of events, Katie both rescues children from a fire and utilizes her blacksmith’s knowledge to free Will from prison, a fantasy of female power that rewrites any potential death or dissolution of the outlaw band into a potential imagined future. Roach claims a redemptive quality for the fantasy of popular romance that aligns with Knight’s reading of the outlaw idyll: We all know there is, in truth, no ‘happily ever after,’ that love offers no such guarantee. Perhaps people read and write romance novels because they know this truth all too well and seek simultaneously, paradoxically, both to hide from this knowledge and to work it through, by repeated engagement with narratives about these poignant and piercing conundrums of love.30 The narrative of love in popular romance, for Roach, is not naïve or wistful but a form of powerful ‘working through’ of paradoxes of self and Otherness, of the desire for a happily ever after without a guarantee of it. Under the Wild Moon presents an ending in which Katie Chenoweth, given the chance to return to town and reopen her forge, chooses instead to ride to the greenwood with Will Scarlet, where, as she joyously proclaims, their futures will be ‘full of purpose. Greenwoodside will be moved and built again. They’ll need both teachers and knights, my ­darling . . . and that is us’ (Carey, 459). Katie and Will ultimately achieve their happy ending, not by creating a new idyllic home but by committing to the symbolic rebuilding of Greenwoodside, the place in which Katie was first wooed over raspberries and good table manners, as their hope for the future of their community.

176  Kristin Noone

Before the Scandal: Strawberries from a Highwayman Two decades after Carey’s Under the Wild Moon, New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Enoch’s Before the Scandal (2008), the second in Enoch’s ‘Notorious Gentlemen’ trilogy,31 opens with a world in disarray and the problem of a lack of food—­a problem which will be remedied by the novel’s end, given the promised restoration of the estate. This restoration is subsequently clearly demonstrated in the early scenes of the third novel of the trilogy, scenes which take place around a ballroom’s refreshment table and conclusively reaffirm the restoration of order, answering what LaCombe refers to as the ‘challenges’32 of establishing one’s good leadership and social standing by giving readers a reformed highwayman who now demonstrates his reincorporation into the community via symbolic visible feasting, contentment, and wealth. Scandal’s hero, Phineas Bromley (known at times as ‘Phin’ in the text), has returned home from war to his family’s estate of Quence Park, hoping for a more settled life and a chance to resolve old disputes with his crippled brother. His home community, however, is not conducive to healing or reparations, as Phin discovers in the novel’s opening paragraph: Lieutenant Colonel Phineas Bromley didn’t expect paradise. True, after ten years spent fighting the French in Spain,33 anywhere else seemed an improvement, but as he crossed the bridge over the River Ouse and onto Quence Park land, he felt more as if he were stepping into hell. (Enoch, 1) The fictional Quence Park, given Enoch’s brief description, is located in traditional Robin Hood territory, the North Riding of Yorkshire, and while Enoch does not provide authorial comment on this choice of setting, it may provide a further layer of textual pleasure for readers of this romance with its outlaw hero. Quence Park is, however, suffering from a combination of neglect and what will later prove to be sabotage—­ flooded pastures, burned tenant cottages, unplowed fields—­from a neighbor attempting to force the family to sell the land. The state of Phin’s home draws attention to the material and economic plights of a society in which the poor or economically disadvantaged—­the tenants and Phin’s crippled brother, as well as the impoverished heroine shortly to be introduced—­have no recourse and require the assistance of a figure who can act on their behalf outside the law. Phin’s assumption of the highwayman disguise and his use of the outlaw persona allows him to gather information, dispense threats, woo the heroine Alyse, and ultimately repair the damage to Quence Park, where his marriage to Alyse and retirement as a highwayman symbolizes the hope for restoration and reintegration of the outlaw into the existing social order as a benevolent, no longer potentially frightening, figure.

Succulent Texts 177 Alyse Donnelly, the heroine of Enoch’s novel, also exists in a world which no longer functions to support her material needs, and the highwayman-­in-­disguise hero appeals to those desires as the romance unfolds. Once the sought-­after daughter of a viscount, now orphaned, she has been forced to rely upon her cruel aunt and cousin for a home; while she has a roof over her head, she sleeps in the old governess’ room, does the mending, and secretly makes plans to save what money she can for an escape. As noted at the beginning of this essay, Phin recognizes her hunger and attempts to alleviate it; his suitability as a partner is demonstrated in his ability to both recall her liking for and to sneakily deliver gifts of strawberries, her favorite fruit. This symbolic feast—­not merely sufficient food to take the place of the breakfast she has not been permitted, but an indulgence, her favorite—­immediately draws attention to Phin’s ability to provide for Alyse where the social order, and the available options for an impoverished and orphaned gentlewoman, have failed her. LaCombe, discussing the evolution of English attitudes toward food, comments that ‘food was an especially pure encapsulation of civility, gentility, and status (or the lack thereof).’34 Alyse, lacking food (or apparently even the ability to acquire any), also lacks status; she requires Phin, ironically functioning outside the normal social order as a highwayman, to provide the gift of reinstatement to gentility, with the strawberry-­flavored reminders of her true status as a lady, and a desirable partner. Later in the novel, when Phineas, in his respectable daytime persona, asks whether she has time for a cup of tea and a biscuit, Alyse thinks to herself that ‘she shouldn’t. Aunt Augusta would be angry if she didn’t return immediately, and by way of punishment she’d probably end with another basket of mending to do this evening. But Phin was the only person she’d encountered who’d asked about her losses’ (Enoch, 143). Here, emotional comfort—­asking about her losses and her situation—­becomes entwined with physical comfort; Alyse allows Phin to buy her tea and warm biscuits, and realizes, as he departs, that ‘as for what she wanted, that question was becoming more complicated by the moment’ (Enoch, 146). Alyse cannot allow herself to fall in love with Phin precisely because she fears he cannot provide a stable home: ‘He was on leave from the army, and clearly already spending his days away from the family. He would go away soon enough, back to the Peninsula. And then she’d be alone once more’ (Enoch, 146). When she encounters a dashing highwayman on the road—­Phin in disguise, though Alyse is initially unaware of this—­the highwayman becomes a figure of her romantic daydreams, as he does not harm her, but only steals a kiss and in fact later returns her mother’s pearls, which he has taken in the robbery. The masked highwayman is also not a viable option for escape, because as far as Alyse is aware, he has no economic power to help her or the estate. But, importantly, the outlaw hero becomes linked to the idea of life and vitality in Alyse’s mind: ‘She could think of no one who lived

178  Kristin Noone more fiercely than a highwayman. And in kissing him, she’d felt it too. A spark of fire. A spark of life. And she liked it’ (Enoch, 142). As Roach argues, the world of the romance novel presents a space in which ‘love does have a political edge, a healing touch. When we act lovingly, we liberate ourselves and others, we move against oppression, we make the world a better place, we practice freedom.’35 In Enoch’s novel, both Phin and Alyse move against oppression in their own ways, and are rewarded with liberation. Phin’s assumption of the highwayman disguise permits him liberty to act in ways not normally approved by society, but which are required to procure information; Alyse’s willingness to embrace the fire she feels with her highwayman, along with her own practical plans to reclaim some measure of agency, leads her to happiness, as her highwayman turns out to be an eligible suitor after all. Enoch’s novel ends with the betrothal of the hero and heroine, in accordance with the outline suggested by Pamela Regis for the romance template. Moreover, it ends with a restoration that is economic in nature. Phin, in his highwayman disguise, has gained a reputation in the town as ‘some sort of Robin Hood’ (Enoch, 311) for his giving out of coins to the people on the street; the villain behind the estate’s sabotage has been revealed to be Alyse’s cruel cousin, who has previously promised her ten thousand pounds if she will inform him of any information she acquires about the highwayman. While Alyse does so, she does so with permission from Phin, as part of a trap. Because the agreement has been signed and witnessed, and she has technically carried out her side, she has become independently wealthy. At this point, the hero tells her that, although he will ask for her hand in marriage, she should answer based on ‘what you want, not what you think you might need’ (Enoch, 359); in other words, the novel ends with a complex happiness in which any freely made decision requires the heroine to have economic security and other viable options. The third novel in the sequence, which focuses on a different central couple but contains appearances by Phineas and Alyse, as well as other returning characters, reinforces this linked symbolism, or in LaCombe’s phrase the multivalence of food and feasting. Always A  Scoundrel (2009) depicts Phin and Alyse waltzing at a ball, ‘wearing the sickeningly sweet expressions of happiness and true love;’36 moments later, they join Scoundrel’s hero Bramwell at a refreshment table to discuss the joys of marriage and settling into domestic life. Bramwell (known at times as ‘Bram’), with some scorn, comments on their ‘sugar-­coated domesticity’ and on the promising prospects of the Quence Park estate,37 and later muses about Phin becoming depressingly pleased with this new life. Scoundrel subsequently follows Bram’s adventures with cat burglary, meeting the lady he will eventually marry, and social scandal; the choice of aristocratic refreshment table for this opening scene emphasizes the centrality of public feasting and spectacle as the means of acceptance

Succulent Texts 179 and integration. Phineas and Alyse are not merely privately happy; they are visibly and demonstrably capable of conspicuous consumption. In Scoundrel, Enoch in fact concludes the entire trilogy with a scene suggesting the link between food, the successful attainment of gentlemanly leisure, and the next generation, as the epilogue jumps three years later into a comfortable sitting room in which all three couples are visiting. All have children, and the discussion centers around the children’s acquisition of worms and plans to go fishing later. Fishing here is presented as a leisurely pastime, though the fish would also be intended for eating; as food historian C. Anne Wilson notes, fish in a variety of preparations had become a fashionable dish for elegant tables by the early modern period and remained so throughout the Regency era,38 in which Enoch’s trilogy is set. Scoundrel’s concluding promise of fishing, then, presents an idealized symbolic world in which the successful protagonists procure food not out of sheer necessity—­other than the general need to consume some sort of supper—­but out of a combination of necessity and pleasure. Enoch’s trilogy thus links LaCombe’s discussion of food as legitimizing social status—­in this case, the reformed outlaws having become properly domesticated gentlemen—­and Selinger and Gleason’s reading of romance as optimistic, but a form of optimism that is open to negotiation, to other forms of happy endings, and to a redefinition of terms along individual desires, as in outlaw texts. Stephen Knight, finding a parallel with other forms of medieval romance, discusses a convergence of the outlaw and the romance tradition in popular adaptations, in which a hero might be redeemed through the love of his mistress, kings might pretend to be common men, and free forest spirits might ‘lord it in modern celebrity.’39 Knight’s rhizomatic outlaw is a protean figure who might erupt into many forms, drawing on a variety of sources, anxieties, and desires without regard to a pre-­ established cultural hierarchy, and thereby remaining an open space for new ideas. In the space of the romance novel—­as Johnson explains, an understudied yet telling form of popular literature—­new ideas do indeed emerge, quietly and cautiously exploratory within Enoch’s neat and tidy happy ending. In Scandal, Alyse chooses to marry Phin and, importantly, they will invest her money, not his, in the redevelopment and restoration of Quence Park; while Phin hangs up his highwayman’s disguise, without his outlaw actions, this ending would not have been possible, and the subsequent and final novel, Scoundrel, works to reinforce these themes. Enoch’s novels thus deliberately explore the social power of food to connect and perform social rituals in combination with the power of the restorative outlaw, as Phin literally steps into and plays the role of a ‘Robin Hood’ for a time, but steps back into society once the need has passed, reaffirming the romance genre’s fantasy of the possibility of economic and emotional completion.

180  Kristin Noone

Prosperity: Catlap Tea and Aetherships Alexis Hall’s Prosperity (2014) possesses the subtitle Being a True Account of the Fall of the Skymining Town of Prosperity in 1863, and exists at the complex intersection of queer romance, erotica, steampunk, Dickensian street slang, and Lovecraftian monsters.40 In Prosperity, Hall, a RITA (Romance Writers of America) and Lambda Award-­ winning time nominee), explores questions of scarcity, author (and multiple-­ piracy, and unconventional sexualities to effectively destabilize and open up new possibilities of both romance novel happy endings and outlaw existence. Len Barot reads the emerging field of queer romance (potentially itself once ‘outlawed’) as a whole as a response to cultural forces and shifting bounds of acceptance: Fiction both reflects the current sociopolitical nature of the community that it represents (and seeks to reach) and portends the emerging forces shaping the future direction of that same community. Never has this been truer for any group than for the gay and lesbian subculture.41 Similarly, Pamela Regis notes that ‘the romance novel, once derided for its heteronormative ideology, is proving more inclusive than society at large.’42 Queer romance, then, can indicate directions for the future of the popular romance genre at large; queer romance texts that employ the outlaw narrative, playing with the boundaries of inclusion/­exclusion, provide a productive field for discussion, particularly when taken up by prominent authors in the genre. I  argue elsewhere43 that Hall’s novels both invoke and evoke his identity as a lover of games (tabletop, massively multiplayer online [MMO], role-­playing, linguistic, narrative) and emphasize the importance of play alongside desire. Here, I would like to suggest that Prosperity creates a narrative in which the outlaw becomes necessary for the world’s survival but does not necessarily become reintegrated into that world, as the novel ends on a note of uncertainty, albeit hopefully so, about both the central romance and the future. Themes of food and feasting become integral both as metaphor and literal action throughout the romance, as characters in the novel judge others in terms of the food they can afford, celebrate their own wealth by purchasing indulgent upper-­class beverages, and contemplate the ‘taste’ of persons they intend to seduce—­placing the experience of consumption and satiation at the core of the novel. Food and scarcity become entwined in the skymining town of Prosperity from the opening pages, in which Dil—­short for Piccadilly—­has just arrived in town and has, in his words, managed to ‘get together enough chink for grub and somewhere to kip that weren’t the ground or some stranger’s bed.’44 Dil makes a living as a con artist and card sharp, having ‘always had sommat of an itch in my palms for cards and, most

Succulent Texts 181 particularly, the winning at ’em by means both fair and foul’(Hall, 2) and, having acquired his initial winnings, first goes in quest of food: ‘I squandered a ha’penny with the barkeep for panem and old peg, that being hardtack and sommat he claimed was a Yorkshire type of cheese, what actually tasted more like old socks’ (Hall, 2–3). Dil both notices details and pays attention to food and drink; he can, in fact, learn facts about other card players by evaluating their choices of beverage. One of those card players being evaluated in terms of beverage proves to be the crime prince of the town of Gaslight: He was sitting there nursing a cup of what the canting crew’d call catlap. Tea, y’know, bits of leaf and shit and what ’ave ye in hot water, such as drunk by fat ol’ spinsters and delicate maidlings what need a good seeing-­to. It looked all kinds of strange next to the empty bottles littering the tabletop. (Hall, 3) Dil’s reading of this ‘all kinds of strange’ proves correct, as Milord is in fact extremely dangerous: ‘I reckoned I’d seen pictures of angels what were less comely than what he was, but there was nowt holy in him. ’Twas like seeing a wolf wrapped up in a man-­skin, and all the pretty in the world couldn’t hide it’ (Hall, 3). In a traditional romance narrative, readers might expect this moment to qualify as Regis’ ‘meeting’ step; in an outlaw tale involving feats of strength, physical challenges, and meeting one’s match (for instance, Robin Hood facing off against Little John with a quarterstaff), the crime prince and the con artist might then square off. Hall’s novel, however, deconstructs both genres immediately after this scene. While Dil does indeed fleece Milord at cards, and subsequently is pursued and shot by him, they are not each other’s love interests, nor are they particularly rivals for any remotely equal authority. Instead, they both land on the aethership Shadowless, which accepts cargo and passengers both legal and less so, performs what Dil euphemistically describes as ‘cloudpanning on a filched claim’ (Hall, 112), and contains a host of colorful characters that includes Milord’s actual love interest (in a fairly tempestuous relationship), the ex-­clergyman Reuben Crowe, and the ship’s aethermancer captain, Byron Kae, who employs the pronouns ‘they/­them,’ dresses in colorful ruffles, and ultimately and only gradually becomes Dil’s romantic partner. Hall’s novel thus follows Regis’ outline in defining its initial society first, but immediately afterwards becomes an ‘outlaw text’ by veering off course, not to mention the multilayered invocation of other temporalities and dialects and texts; simultaneously, Hall links the language of food, consumption, survival (Dil’s first order of business is the finding of ‘grub’), and desire (Dil’s evaluation of Milord as comely and pretty, but too dangerous to pursue) among a society made up almost entirely of outlaws.

182  Kristin Noone While Dil spends much of the novel—­when not fending off krakens or other sky pirates—­exploring his own not precisely reciprocated feelings for Reuben, when reading the outlaw narrative as a reparative fantasy, the actual romantic pairing of the novel emerges far earlier. It is the ship’s captain Byron Kae who cares for Dil during his recovery from being shot, bringing him water, at which point ‘living suddenly sounded like a real sweet proposition because nowt had ever tasted quite so fucking good’ (Hall, 21). When they almost kiss but do not, Dil finds himself wondering about their ‘taste.’ Barot comments that the ‘distinguishing connection of m/­m45 romance is focus on the emotional connection between characters as well as the physical.’46 While Dil’s relationships are more pansexual than strictly m/­m, and Barot’s claims might be somewhat reductive as far as the genre, Prosperity subtly suggests that, while sex between the hero and other characters might be present, the intimacy and emotional connection, as exemplified in the giving of water and Dil’s already established reading of people via beverages, is indeed essential for the establishment of an emotionally reassuring narrative. Returning to Selinger and Gleason’s point regarding the centrality of optimism to the romance genre—­but an optimism that is constantly fraught, interrogating itself, asking under what circumstances it can survive and flourish—­the conclusion of Prosperity offers one solution that does not function as an ending as much as it does an opening up or branching outward. Lesley Coote asserts that while for the elite characters and audiences of outlaw tales, ‘they will return armed with the benefits gained from the journey,’ for non-­elite audiences, ‘this marginal, shifting space is where they belong, in the eyes of the socially, culturally, and politically empowered—­so the narrative may be simply enjoyed, although there remains for the non-­elite the potential to use this marginal fluidity as a platform for more serious challenges to and subversions of social and political order.’47 The characters of Prosperity, in their gender-­fluid, non-­binary, queer sexualities, self-­ presentations and linguistic wordplay, partake of this marginal space. At the novel’s end, they are left on the brink of new adventures. Milord and Reuben have disembarked from the ship, and Dil imagines their future in terms of, yet again, material needs and tea and contentment: I imagine him in his shirtsleeves, drinking tea on the terrace of some white-­walled villa, with a view of some Italian village and mebbe the distant blue sparkle of the sea. I perfume the air with magnolia for him, make it nice and pretty. He don’t deserve it, but I like to think of him enjoying it anyway. (Hall, 166) Dil, for his part, is content to remain aboard Shadowless, uncertain where the future will take him; as he says, ‘I’m about to run out of pages, and I reckon what’s coming next is a whole new story. . . . I don’t mind the

Succulent Texts 183 not knowing cos there’s such a lot of it that it don’t seem getting fussed over’ (Hall, 167). However, he is also thinking yet again about romantic possibilities, the ship’s captain Byron Kae, and the associations of taste: ‘And I keep thinking about that kiss they didn’t take. Like mebbe I could give it to them, and how much I’d like to. I reckon they’d taste of stars’ (Hall, 167). Hall’s novel thus ends with a moment of not knowing, rather than a moment of resettlement or reintegration into society; however, it remains a reparative fantasy, as the con artist Dil no longer worries about the material need of food and shelter, having a flying home and the hope of the taste of stars.

Digestif: Outlaws and Optimism Sarah Frantz Lyons and Eric Selinger argue that ‘for the romance to be “ideal,” or anything like it, the dangerous “events” must be embedded in a structurally, ideologically, and emotionally reassuring narrative’;48 in this way, popular romance allows for an exploration of potentially subversive ideas, sexualities, and agency that nevertheless reassures and comforts readers: the optimism of the genre acknowledges vulnerabilities and pursues answers to them. Similarly, outlaw narratives invite figures of disruption that in fact work to question, investigate, reconstruct, and potentially restore or improve upon a failed society: the outlaw, according to Stephen Knight in Reading Robin Hood: Content, Form, and Reception in the Outlaw Myth, ‘is highly appropriate to the modern multi-­ mobility, generic and personal as well as national and international, that necessarily responds to all the alarms, threats, potential oppressions—­ and indeed the farcical pomposities—­of the modern world.’49 For Knight, the outlaw figure ‘may well be a figure supportive of community when his role is local and organic, but will become involved in opposition to authority when that community comes into conflict with external and abusive authorities such as those of abbot, sheriff, or indeed king’50—­ threats to both personal and communal livelihood that might be found, for instance, as in the popular romance novels cited in this chapter, perhaps a cruel abbot plus Guy of Gisborne, or a powerful neighbor’s greed for land while starving a poor relation, or a self-­interested steampunk crime lord willing to let crew members die. Carey’s, Enoch’s, and Hall’s narratives of romance and consumption all depict societies in which outlaw characters symbolically and literally restore nourishment, physical and emotional, and conclude with happy endings as, importantly, embodied in a joyous world, a comfortable world, and a feasting world, where food is plentiful and scarcity has been at least temporarily solved. These examples might then point the way toward future close readings that examine the intersections of genres, temporalities, and embodiment, particularly in these understudied popular-­culture forms of expression. While I  am not suggesting these

184  Kristin Noone selections are entirely representative, given time and space constraints and the massive amount of popular romance texts produced on a daily basis, they do provide useful directions for further exploration, linking practices of consumption and the ability to feed and provide for others to embodiment, desire, queerness, and satisfaction. As seen even in this small sample size, when popular romance works together with the outlaw narrative, concerns regarding vulnerabilities both personal and societal come to the fore. Whether in Diane Carey’s 1980s feminist Robin Hood retelling, Suzanne Enoch’s early twenty-­first-­century Regency highwayman performance, or Alexis Hall’s recent steampunk queer playfulness, the outlaw figure emerges as a hero concerned with provisions both bodily and emotional. As Roach suggests, ‘embodiment entails vulnerability for all creatures’;51 in outlaw-­centered romance fiction, the hero must find and protect a community that functions to care for these embodied needs, entangled with multiple desires. To return to Martha Carlin’s claims for the symbolic function of medieval feasts, if, ‘in new media and entertainments, as well as in modern popular literature, medieval feasts symbolize wealth and power, aristocratic grandeur, and the acquisition of honor,’52 we might then read popular romance’s insistence on determined optimism and complexly negotiated happy endings as a version of precisely that power to fulfill the needs of others, in terms of both physical and emotional comfort. In these novels, feasts and feasting appear to be an inextricable part of the happy ending, highlighting moments of the outlaw’s heroism and ability to provide fulfilling sustenance, whether that sustenance consists of elaborate custard and figs, a gift of strawberries, or a simple sip of water that makes living again suddenly sound like a newly sweet proposition.

Notes 1 Romance scholar Pamela Regis defines the Regency romance as the subgenre of popular romance set during ‘that period in English history . . . when the Prince of Wales ruled England as regent for his father, the incapacitated George III. The Regency period ended in 1820 because the old king died and the prince became King George IV.’ Regency romances, she notes, were initially popularized by the novelist Georgette Heyer, and are consistently ‘among the most popular historical romance novels.’ See Regis, A Natural History of the Romance Novel, 125. 2 Enoch, Before the Scandal, 261. For simplicity’s sake, future references to this specific text will be provided via in-­text parenthetical citation; emphasis in original in all occurrences of in-­text parenthetical citations of Enoch’s reference. 3 Carlin, ‘Feast,’ 64–8. 4 Ibid., 68–9. 5 Roach, Happily Ever After, 20. 6 Ibid., 4. 7 Ibid., 11. 8 Selinger and Gleason, ‘Introduction,’ 4–9.

Succulent Texts 185 9 Ibid., 4. 10 LaCombe, Political Gastronomy, 8. 11 Knight, ‘Introduction,’ xi. 12 Ibid., xii. 13 Selinger and Gleason, ‘Introduction,’ 19. 14 Johnson, ‘Agamben’s homo sacer,’ 223. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., 227. 17 Ibid. 18 LaCombe, Political Gastronomy, 8–9. 19 Ibid., 9. 20 Levy and Coote, ‘Mouvance, Greenwood, and Gender,’ 174. 21 Selinger and Gleason, ‘Introduction,’ 7. 22 LaCombe, Political Gastronomy, 9. 23 Lyons and Selinger. ‘Strange Stirrings, Strange Yearnings,’ 100. 24 Teo, ‘Orientalism,’ 199 25 Carey’s ‘About the Author’ page lists her specializations as classical and medieval literature and the history of theater; she is otherwise well known as an author of several of the most widely read Star Trek tie-­in novels, one of which—­Best Destiny—­has been referenced by the screenwriters as an influence on the rebooted franchise. 26 Carey, Under the Wild Moon, 9. Future references to this specific text will be provided via in-­text parenthetical citation. 27 Kaufman, ‘Nietzsche’s Herd and the Individual,’ 40. 28 Ibid., 42. 29 Knight, ‘Introduction,’ xi. 30 Roach, ‘Love as the Practice of Bondage,’ 386. 31 The other two are, respectively, After the Kiss (2008) and Always a Scoundrel (2009); while the novels stand alone, they each involve one of a group of retired soldiers and friends as the main hero. 32 LaCombe, Political Gastronomy, 8. 33 During the Napoleonic Wars, though Enoch does not elaborate on specific historical engagements. 34 LaCombe, Political Gastronomy, 169. 35 Roach, ‘Love as the Practice of Bondage,’ 386; emphasis in original. 36 Enoch, Always a Scoundrel, 14. 37 Ibid., 17. 38 Wilson, Food and Drink in Britain, 17–59. 39 Knight, Reading Robin Hood, 249–54. 40 Hall’s text contains numerous literary references and allusions, primarily but not exclusively Victorian, as well as early twentieth-­century pulp fiction; greater space would be required to discuss the intertextuality of the Prosperity universe, which contains several additional short stories, at least one novella, and numerous Author’s Notes. 41 Barot, ‘Queer Romance in Twentieth and Twenty-­First Century America,’ 390. 42 Regis, ‘Female Genre Fiction in the Twentieth Century,’ 857. 43 In the forthcoming follow-­up volume to Kline’s Digital Gaming Re-­Imagines the Middle Ages, in which my chapter will examine Alexis Hall’s male/­male (m/­m) romance novel Looking for Group as an act of romantic online role-­ playing medievalism. 44 Hall, Prosperity, 2. Additional references will be provided via in-­text parenthetical citation. 45 Male/­male, as far as primary gender pairing, as opposed to male/­female.

186  Kristin Noone 46 Barot, ‘Queer Romance in Twentieth and Twenty-­First Century America,’ 401. 47 Coote, ‘Journeys to the Edge,’ 55. 48 Lyons and Selinger. ‘Strange Stirrings, Strange Yearnings,’ 100. 49 Knight, Reading Robin Hood, 39. 50 Ibid., 10. 51 Roach, ‘Love as the Practice of Bondage,’ 375. 52 Carlin, ‘Feast,’ 68–9.

Bibliography Barot, Len. ‘Queer Romance in Twentieth- and Twenty-­First Century America: Snapshots of a Revolution.’ In Romance Fiction and American Culture: Love as the Practice of Freedom?, edited by William A. Gleason and Eric Murphy Selinger, 389–404. Food Matters. New York: Routledge, 2016. Carey, Diane. Under the Wild Moon. New York: Signet, 1986. Carlin, Martha. ‘Feast.’ In Medievalism: Key Critical Terms, edited by Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz, 63–9. Medievalism 5. New York: Boydell & Brewer, 2014. Coote, Lesley. ‘Journeys to the Edge: Self-­Identity, Salvation, and Outlaw(ed) Space.’ In Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition, edited by Stephen Knight, 47–66. Medieval Identities: Socio-­Cultural Spaces 1. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. Enoch, Suzanne. Always a Scoundrel. New York: Avon Books, 2009. –––. Before the Scandal. New York: Avon Books, 2008. Hall, Alexis. Prosperity: Being a True Account of the Fall of the Skymining Town of Prosperity in 1863. Hillsborough, NJ: Riptide Publishing, 2014. Johnson, Valerie B. ‘Agamben’s Homo Sacer, the “State of Exception”, and the Modern Robin Hood.’ In Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition, edited by Stephen Knight, 207–27. Medieval Identities: Socio-­Cultural Spaces 1. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. Kaufman, Alexander L. ‘Nietzsche’s Herd and the Individual: The Construction of Alterity in A Lytell Geste of Robin Hode.’ In Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition, edited by Stephen Knight, 31–46. Medieval Identities: Socio-­Cultural Spaces 1. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. Kline, Daniel T. Digital Gaming Re-­Imagines the Middle Ages. Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture 15. New York: Routledge, 2013. Knight, Stephen. ‘Introduction.’ In Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition, edited by Stephen Knight, xi– xviii. Medieval Identities: Socio-­Cultural Spaces 1. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. Knight, Stephen. Reading Robin Hood: Content, Form and Reception in the Outlaw Myth. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015. LaCombe, Michael A. Political Gastronomy: Food and Authority in the English Atlantic World. Early American Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Levy, Brian J., and Lesley Coote. ‘Mouvance, Greenwood, and Gender in The Adventures of Robin Hood and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.’ In Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition,

Succulent Texts 187 edited by Stephen Knight, 165–86. Medieval Identities: Socio-­Cultural Spaces 1. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. Lyons, Sarah Frantz, and Eric Murphy Selinger. ‘Strange Stirrings, Strange Yearnings: The Flame and the Flower, Savage Love, and the Lost Diversities of Blockbuster Historical Romance.’ In Romance Fiction and American Culture: Love as the Practice of Freedom?, edited by William A. Gleason and Eric Murphy Selinger, 89–110. Food Matters. New York: Routledge, 2016. Regis, Pamela. ‘Female Genre Fiction in the Twentieth Century.’ In The Cambridge History of the American Novel, edited by Leonard Cassuto, Clare Virginia Eby, and Benjamin Reiss, 847–60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. –––. A Natural History of the Romance Novel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. Roach, Catherine M. Happily Ever After: The Romance Story in Popular Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016. –––. ‘Love as the Practice of Bondage: Popular Romance Narratives and the Conundrum of Erotic Love.’ In Romance Fiction and American Culture: Love as the Practice of Freedom?, edited by William A. Gleason and Eric Murphy Selinger, 369–87. Food Matters. New York: Routledge, 2016. Selinger, Eric Murphy, and William A. Gleason. ‘Introduction: Love as the Practice of Freedom?’ In Romance Fiction and American Culture: Love as the Practice of Freedom?, edited by William A. Gleason and Eric Murphy Selinger, 1–21. Food Matters. New York: Routledge, 2016. Teo, Hsu-­Ming. ‘Orientalism, Freedom, and Feminism in Popular Romance Culture.’ In Romance Fiction and American Culture: Love as the Practice of Freedom?, edited by William A. Gleason and Eric Murphy Selinger, 181–203. Food Matters. New York: Routledge, 2016. Wilson, C. Anne. Food and Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to the 19th Century. Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1991.

Contributors

Stephen Basdeo completed his Ph.D. at Leeds Trinity University in 2017. His thesis, entitled ‘The Changing Faces of Robin Hood, c. 1700-­c. 1900,’ was conducted under the supervision of Prof. Paul Hardwick and Prof. Rosemary Mitchell, and is a cultural history of post-­medieval representations of England’s most famous outlaw. Basdeo currently teaches on the liberal arts programme at the Leeds campus of Richmond American International University. He is interested in all aspects of eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­ century social and cultural history, although his research has led him into a few areas of focus, such as the history of crime and Georgian and Victorian medievalism. His recent publications include peer-­reviewed articles in articles in Law, Crime and History, and he has recently authored two popular history books entitled The Life and Legend of a Rebel Leader: Wat Tyler (2018) and The Lives and Exploits of the Most Noted Highwaymen, Rogues, and Murderers (2018). Basdeo’s current projects include, in collaboration with Dr. Mark Truesdale, the transcription and eventual publication of the first Robin Hood novel, an unpublished work entitled ‘Harold; or, the Castle of Morford,’ written by Robert Southey in 1791. Ann Beebe is an Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in English at the University of Texas at Tyler. Her publications have examined the works Aphra Behn, Phillis Wheatley, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Emily Dickinson, Asher Brown Durand, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, and E. D. E. N. Southworth. Her articles have appeared in Washington History, Teaching American Literature: Theory & Practice, Women’s Studies, Nineteenth-­Century Prose, Religion and the Arts, and various essay collections. Her book proposal for a teaching companion on the works of Emily Dickinson has recently been accepted for publication. Jeff Birkenstein is a Professor of English at Saint Martin’s University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in 2003. His major interests lie in American and world short stories; significant food used to tell stories; and  cultural criticism, especially post-­9/­11 narratives. He has co-­edited five collections of scholarly essays. With Robert C.

Contributors 189 Hauhart (Saint Martin’s University): European Writers in Exile (Lexington Books), Social Justice and American Literature (Salem Press/­ EBSCO, 2017), and American Writers in Exile (Salem Press/­EBSCO, 2015). With Anna Froula (East Carolina University) and Karen Randell (Nottingham Trent University, UK):  The Cinema of Terry Gilliam: It’s a Mad World (Columbia University Press/­Wallflower Press, 2013), and Reframing 9/­11: Film, Popular Culture and the ‘War on Terror’ (Continuum, 2010). W. B. Gerard is Professor of English at Auburn University at Montgomery. He teaches eighteenth-­century British Literature, fiction writing, and American literature of rebellion. His book Laurence Sterne and the Visual Imagination (Ashgate, 2006) examines the pictorialism within Sterne’s work and the interpretative meaning of the literary illustrations that appear in his texts. He is also the editor of Divine Rhetoric: Essays on the Sermons of Laurence Sterne (Delaware, 2010) and co-­ editor of Swiftly Sterneward: Essays on Laurence Sterne and His Times in Honor of Melvyn New (Delaware, 2010). He is also co-­editor, with Melvyn New, of volume 9 of the Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne, The Miscellaneous Writings (2014). He is co-­editor of the semi-­annual journal The Scriblerian and the Kit-­Cats (www.scrib lerian.net), member of the editorial board of The Shandean (www. shandean.org), and general editor of THAT Literary Review (www. thatliteraryreview.com). Jason Hogue is a Ph.D. candidate in English literature at the University of Texas at Arlington. He teaches courses in composition/­rhetoric and literature, and his research interests include early modern and medieval literature, ecocriticism, new materialisms, critical animal/­plant studies, and outlaw studies. He has recently contributed entries to The Map of Early Modern London, an interactive wiki, and has done transcription work for the Early Modern Recipes Online Collection (EMROC). His dissertation (in progress) investigates the intersection of trees, punishment, and pain in Shakespearean drama. Jenna Hunnef is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English and American Studies at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. Her scholarly  interests include Indigenous North American literatures, nineteenth-­and twentieth-­century American literature, and critical legal studies. She has published articles and reviews in such venues as Studies in American Indian Literatures, Western American Literature, and the Canadian Review of American Studies. Alexander L. Kaufman is the Reed D. Voran Distinguished Professor of Honors Humanities and Professor of English at Ball State University, where he teaches in the Honors College. He is the author of The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion (Ashgate 2009; repr. Routledge, 2016), co-­editor of Telling Tales and Crafting Books:

190  Contributors Essays in Honor of Thomas H. Ohlgren (Medieval Institute Publication, 2016) and Robin Hood and the Outlaw/­ed Literary Canon (Routledge, 2018), and editor of British Outlaws of Literature and History: Essays on Medieval and Early Modern Figures from Robin Hood to Twm Shon Catty (McFarland, 2011). He co-­founded the journal The Bulletin of the International Association for Robin Hood Studies and also serves as co-­administrator for the scholarly blog ‘Robin Hood Scholars: IARHS on the Web.’ He is also a general editor of the series Outlaws in Literature, History, and Culture for Routledge Publishing. His research and teaching interests include outlaws from the medieval period to the present day, the Robin Hood tradition, historical writing and medieval chronicles, Chaucer, Arthuriana, and medievalisms. Kristin Noone is an English instructor and Writing Center faculty at Irvine Valley College in southern California, where she teaches courses on topics from superheroes and heroism to monsters and monstrosity to critical thinking and rhetoric. She is also a Ph.D. candidate (ABD) at the University of California, Riverside, where her research focuses on medievalism, adaptation, heterotemporalities, fantasy, romance, and popular culture. In 2018, she was a recipient of both the Kathleen Gilles Seidel Award, administered by the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance, for travel and research support in Australia, and the National Popular Culture Association’s Two-­Year College Faculty Award. With Audrey Becker, she is co-­editor of the essay collection Welsh Mythology and Folklore in Popular Culture (McFarland, 2011), and she has published academic articles and essays on subjects ranging from Neil Gaiman’s many Beowulfs to depictions of witchcraft in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series to Arthurian references and tropes in World of Warcraft. Under her pen name, she is also a published author of fantasy fiction and popular romance fiction, including two novels and numerous short stories, and she is currently editing a collection of essays on ethics, acts of creation, imagination, and identity in the works of Terry Pratchett: Terry Pratchett’s Ethical Worlds (McFarland, forthcoming 2019). Penny Vlagopoulos is Assistant Professor of English at St. Lawrence University. She received her Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. Her teaching and research focus on twentieth-­and twenty-­first-­century literature and culture, with an emphasis on multiethnic literatures and issues of diaspora and globalization. She wrote an introduction to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road: The Original Scroll, published by Viking (2007) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the novel’s publication. She has also published articles and reviews on a range of contemporary American writers. Currently, she is at work on projects that explore literary treatments of transgressive eating as an act of decolonization, cosmofeminism from below, and hospitality in the current refugee crisis.

Index

9/11 156, 159, 162 Abate, Michelle Ann 67 Acid Tests 8, 104, 106 – 7, 109, 113 – 18; Acid Test Graduation 117; Love Festival 116; Trips Festival 115 – 16; Vietnam Day Committee Rally 112 – 13, 118 – 19; Watts Test 115 Adams, Carol J. 156 Adams, Caroline (‘Mountain Girl’) 103, 108 Addison, Jack 18 Addison, John 16 Adventures of King Arthure at the Terne Wadling, The 125 Adventures of Robin Hood, The (film) 105, 172 Adventures of Robin Hood, The (TV series) 105 Agamben, Giorgio 171 Agrippa, Henry Cornelius 23n21 Alan a Dale (Under the Wild Moon) 175 Albala, Ken 58 alcoholic beverages: beer 111, 126, 128 – 30, 135; bourbon 70; brandy 70 – 1, 77n117; eggnog 61, 70 – 1, 77n117; general 13, 18, 43, 50n89, 70, 129, 132, 137, 144; and intoxication 19 – 20, 35, 42, 47, 111, 128, 130, 138, 181; Madeira 70; rum 70, 77n117; rye 77n117; sherry 70, 77n117; wine 28, 34, 40, 42, 174; see also chocolate houses; taverns and bars Aliscans 135 Anderson, John Q. 87 – 9, 97n47 animals: cruelty towards 13, 16, 21, 23n21; and fishing 179; game 3,

29, 33 – 7, 39 – 40, 46; hunting of 34, 36 – 8, 46, 50n28, 125, 137 160, 162, 23n21; poaching of 3, 12, 36, 137, 158 – 60; Trooper (Animal House) 136 – 7; see also blood; butchers; food and drink; hunting humans; poulterer Apollo 63 Aristotle 124, 142 Artemis 63 Austen, Jane 68 – 9 avarice 29, 31, 43 – 4, 70 Babbs, Ken 103, 112 – 13, 115 Bailey, H. C. 42 Bakhtin, Mikhail 126 Barde, Frederick S. 84 Barot, Len 180, 182 Barthes, Roland 4, 9, 92, 149 Basdeo, Stephen 6, 12 – 27, 188 Bates, Katherine Lee 31 Beane, Sawney 14 – 15 Beardsworth, Alan 4 – 5 Bear Mountain 38 Bear River 38 Beat literature 103 Beebe, Ann 7, 56 – 80, 188 Belasco, Warren 151 Bell, Adam 2 Bell, David 82 Berlant, Laura 170 Bethune, Brian 162 Beyerle, H. J. 63, 65 Billy the Kid 81 Birkenstein, Jeff 9, 148 – 66, 188 – 9 Black Donald (Hidden Hand) 7, 56 – 72, 73n19, 75n66; disguised as “Father Gray” 62 – 3 Blanke, Thomas 12

192 Index blood: of animals 12 – 14, 16, 23n21, 42; feast of 30, 42, 45; human 45 – 6, 156; as marker of violent disposition 15 – 16, 18, 21, 29 – 30, 42 – 7; resembling wine 42 Blutarsky, John (‘Bluto’) (Animal House) 128 – 9, 132 – 6, 138, 141 – 3 bodily humors 42, 135 Boessenecker, John 32 – 3 Bonner, Robert 56 Booth, John Wilkes 58 Bourdieu, Pierre 4 – 5 Brillat-Savarin, Jean-Anthelme 2 Bromley, Phineas (‘Phin’) (Before the Scandal) 176 – 9 Brown, John 23n22 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett 59 Burgess, Glyn S. 73n52 Burke, Kenneth 89 Burns, Robert 59 Bush, George W. 159, 162 butchers 6, 12 – 19, 21, 22n5, 22n13, 23n22; apprentices of 6, 13, 16 – 19, 21, 24n38; see also animals Byron, George Gordon, Lord 59 cafeteria 132 – 5 Cage, John 113 California Gold Rush 7, 28 – 9, 31, 33, 35 – 8, 47, 49n14, 52n84 California Police Gazette 29 – 31, 33 – 5, 37 – 47, 49n10 calories see diet cannibalism 9, 14 – 15, 43 – 5, 149 – 50, 152 – 8 Capitola Black (Le Noir) (Hidden Hand) 7, 56 – 72 Capote, Truman 104 Carey, Diane 169, 172 – 6, 183 – 4, 185n25 Carlin, Martha 168, 184 carnivalesque 106, 125 – 6, 142 Carpenter, Lynette 64 Carruth, Allison 1 Carter, Angela 86 Cashman, Ray 149 Cassady, Neal 103, 109, 114 Cassia, Paul Sant 85 Chabon, Michael 155 Chanson de Guillaume 135 Chaucer, Geoffrey 101 Chee-Beng, Tan 86, 90

Chenoweth, Katie (Under the Wild Moon) 173 – 5 Cherokee Heritage Center 91 Cherokee Nation 8, 28, 48 – 9n8, 82 – 4, 89, 91, 93 Chickasaw Nation 93   Chinese immigrants 44 – 7, 52n84 chocolate houses 13, 20 Choctaw Nation 82 – 3, 86 – 7, 89 – 90 Clorinda 64 – 5 Cockayne, Emily 22n12 coffeehouses 18 Cohoon, Lorinda B. 75n73 Cold War 86, 102 Collins, Suzanne 9, 148 – 9, 158 – 9, 162 colonialism 29, 31 – 2, 34 – 6, 38 – 9, 41 – 2, 44, 47 87, 159 Condiment, Mrs. (Hidden Hand) 63, 68 – 9 Conlin, Joseph R. 34 – 5, 40, 50n35, 51 – 2n63 Cook, Henry 12 cookbooks 35 Cook Gang 82 Coote, Lesley 61, 172, 182 Counihan, Carole 133, 138 Craven, Wes 14 criminal biographies 6, 14 – 21, 23n19, 33, 48 – 9n8, 49n10, 91, 83, 88, 90, 93 cross-dressing 7, 65 Crouch, Robert 19 Crowe, Reuben (Prosperity) 181 – 2 Daily Oklahoman 81 – 2, 92 Dalton Gang 82 Dante 61, 73n43 Dartmouth College 8, 123, 135 Dawes Severalty Act 84 – 5, 96n27 Day, Clara (Hidden Hand) 56, 66 – 7 Day, Daniel Simpson (‘D-Day’) (Animal House) 141 – 3 Delta Tau Chai Fraternity (Animal House) 8 – 9, 123 – 31, 133 – 44; Delta House 125 – 30, 136, 139 Demeter 87, 97n41 DePasto, Carmine, Mayor (Animal House) 126, 142 Depasto, Clorette (Animal House) 137 – 9 deSilva, David 69 Detroit House of Correction 83

Index  193 Devil’s Punch Bowl 61 Dexter Lake Club (Animal House) 123, 139 – 42 diet 5, 34; and calories 34, 46, 149, 153, 160 – 1, 172; French 40; meatbased 35, 62, 153; vegetarian-based 15, 40, 44, 62; see also cannibalism; gluttony Diller, Chip (Animal House) 130, 134, 143 Dives and Pauper 131 – 2 Dobin, John 12 Dolan, Kathryn Cornell 87 Donnelley, Alyse (Before the Scandal, Always a Scoundrel) 167, 176 – 9 Doolin Gang 82 Dorfman, Kent (‘Flounder’) (Animal House) 126 – 9, 137 – 9, 141 – 3 Dublin 12 DuPuis, E. Melanie 5, 132 Eco, Umberto 126 Edelstein, Sari 75n66 Edwards, Jonathan 71 – 2, 77n126 Elias, Norbert 4, 128 Ely (The Road) 154 English, Edward 12 Enoch, Suzanne: Always a Scoundrel 178 – 9, 185n31; Before the Scandal 10, 167, 169, 172, 176 – 9 Euripides 157 Eustace the Monk 58, 62, 64, 74n52 Everdeen, Katniss (Hunger Games) 158 – 61 Evergreen, Primrose (Hunger Games) 158 – 9 Faber College (Animal House) 8, 123, 126 – 7, 129, 132, 141 – 2 Faller, Lincoln B. 18, 22n9, 22n10 feasts: absurd 36 – 7; botanical 32; campfire 29, 31, 33 – 5, 37 – 9, 41 – 2, 44 – 7, 52n89; Christmas 69 – 70, 83; Greek and Roman 138; hallucinogenic (LSD) 8, 110 – 12; last meal 71, 77n123; manners and hospitality at 1, 5, 58, 69 – 70, 128, 130, 133, 153, 175, 177; mini (antidyspeptic) 52n89; Passover 58; ritualistic 70, 138, 156, 172; sexual 67 – 8, 77n123; social and gendered hierarchies 42; symbolic 118, 168, 176 – 7, 184; violent 70 – 1, 141;

virtual 8, 113, 116, 118; see also Acid Tests; cannibalism Fernández-Armesto, Felipe 152 – 3 Filewood, James 17 Flynn, Errol 172 food and drink: antelope 33, 37; apples 32, 174; asparagus 148; avocados 148; bark 36; beans 40, 110; bear 28, 33, 35, 37 – 8, 44, 51n49, 52n89; beef stew 153; berries 43, 160; biscuits 52n89, 87 – 90, 177; bison 34, 50n28; boar 174; bourgeoisie examples of 4, 18; bread 8, 35, 60, 70, 82, 86 – 7, 89, 92 – 3, 110, 149, 160 – 1; butter 60, 94; cake 72, 141 – 2; camas root 36; canned 51n63, 137, 154; carrots 137; cheese 70, 174, 181; chicken 17; chili peppers 40; chocolate 20, 40, 42; cinnamon 77n117; coffee 34, 42; cookies 127 – 8; corn 40; cornbread 90 – 2; crackers 45 – 6, 52n89, 153; cream 70; cream candy 81, 90, 94; creampuff 134 – 6, 142; cucumber 137 – 8; custard 172, 174, 184; deer 35 – 7; developmental approach toward 4; duck 35, 37; éclair 133; eggs 70, 133, 160; elk 33, 37; endocuisine 41; exocuisine 41, 47; fast- 160; fat and oil 37, 156, 160; and fights 132 – 5; figs 174, 184; fish 179; formalist approach toward 4; French cuisine 40; frijoles 39 – 40; frozen 137; fruit 39 – 40, 52n89, 151, 160; geese 37; gingerbread 70; gold as harvestable 32 – 5; grain 7, 31, 46, 82, 86 – 7, 89, 93, 151, 160; grizzly bear 37; grouse 28, 33, 35; ham 70, 160, 50n35; hamburger 133; hardtack 52n89, 181; hare 35; hash 50n35; honey 174; Jell-O 133 – 4; jelly 39; jerky 37; juniper berries 36; KoolAid 8, 107, 115; lamb 14 – 15; and leisure 17, 179; lettuce 174; lobster 39, 51n69; LSD as 8, 103, 105 – 7, 110 – 17, 119; milk 70 – 1, 74n53, 94, 97 – 8n49; moss 36; mustard 138; nutmeg 77n117; nuts 43; orange juice 110, 160; oxen 14 – 15; oysters 39, 51 – 2n63; panem 181; pears 174; pemmican 37; pheasant 132; pickles 60; pizza 148; potatoes

194 Index 160; preserved 154; production of 5, 22n5, 82, 87, 158; punch 127 – 8; quail 28, 33, 35; rabbit 35; raspberries 174 – 5; rice 110; as ritual 5, 7, 41, 77n123; roast 41; rolls 160; salmon 36 – 7; sardines 45 – 6, 52n89; sausage 50n35, 92; scarcity of 6, 132, 149 – 50, 158 – 9, 168, 172, 176 – 7, 180, 183; and sex 136 – 8, 140, 142; shallots 174; sheep 14, 45, 92; soup 50n35; split peas 68; squash 40; squid 51n63; steak 50n35; stealing of 10, 40 – 1, 137, 167; strawberries 10, 167, 177, 184; structuralist approach toward 4; sugar 70, 94, 160; sugar candy 81, 90, 94; sweetbreads 132; as symbol 5 – 6, 34, 51 – 2n63, 58, 171 – 2; tea 177, 180 – 2; tobacco 74n53; tomatoes 40, 148; tortillas 39 – 40; turkey 16 – 17, 35; vanilla 94; venison 28, 35 – 7, 50n35, 110; “Venison Chili” 110; as weapon 68, 148 – 66; see also alcoholic beverages; animals; butchers; recipes Foreign Miner Tax of 1850 40 Fort Smith, AR 83 – 4, 90, 92 – 3 Foucault, Michel 140 French and Indian War 68 Furthur 103, 105, 109 – 11, 113 Gamelyn 2, 123 games 125, 149, 158 – 61, 180 Gardiner, Stephen 17 Gardner, Edward 12 Gay, John 12, 15, 101 Gerard, W. B. 8, 101 – 22, 189 Gigante, Denise 1 Gitlin, Todd 102, 120n12 Gleason, William A. 170 – 2, 179, 182 gluttony 9, 29, 34, 44, 58, 124, 130 – 1, 134 – 5, 142 – 3, 158 Glyndwr, Owain 2 golden mean 9, 124, 142 Gonzalez, Rodolfo 48n5 Goody, Jack 4 Gordon, Sarah 131, 134 Gordon, William 19 Gospel of Matthew 87 Gossedge, Rob 105 Graham, Sylvester 62 Grateful Dead 8, 114

Graulund, Rune 150, 157 Great Depression 162 Greenberg, Clement 102 greenwood: food and feast within 35, 124, 170, 172 – 5; as safe space 51n44, 125 – 6, 169, 175 Grewell, Nancy (Hidden Hand) 57, 64 – 5 Greyson, Herbert (Hidden Hand) 56 – 7 Guy of Gisborne 175, 183; Baron of Gisbourne (Under the Wild Moon) 174 Hagen, Mike (‘Hassler’) 108, 114 Hall, Alexis 169, 172, 180 – 4 Hall, Stuart 140 Harlan-Haughey, Sarah 36 – 8, 43 – 5 Havard, John C. 50n25 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 70 Head, Richard 16 Hells Angels 103, 111, 118 Hemingway, Ernest 148 Henthorne, Tom 159 Hera 32 Hereward ‘The Wake’ 2, 123 Hewlet, John 15 Hewlet, Richard 15 highwaymen 6, 12, 14 – 21, 22n10, 23n19, 51n44, 101, 167, 169, 176 – 9, 184 Hind, James 6, 17, 23n19 Hiser, Krista Karyn 156 Hobsbawm, Eric 22n10, 48n6, 61 Hogarth, William 16, 19, 21 Hogue, Jason 6 – 7, 28 – 55, 189 Hollowell, John 104 Holofernes 69, 76n109 hooks, bell 140, 170 Hoover, Robert (Animal House) 129 – 30, 141, 143 hospitality 58, 69 – 70, 76n102, 125, 130, 153, 198 Hudock, Amy 65, 72, 73n24 hunger 7, 9, 29, 35, 68 – 9, 135 – 6, 149, 158, 161, 162n6, 172, 177 Hunnef, Jenna 7 – 8, 81 – 100, 189 hunting humans 36, 38, 150 Huxley, Aldous 108 Indian Territory 7, 81 – 4, 87, 89, 91 – 3, 94 – 5n10, 95 – 6n21, 96n22, 96n27

Index  195 Jackson, Amanda 92 Jackson, Joseph Henry 48n4 Jael 69, 76n109 James, Jesse 149 James VI (king of Scotland)/James I (king of England) 14 James Younger Gang 82 Jansen, Babs (Animal House) 128, 134, 136, 141 Jennings Gang 82 Johns, Bramwell, Lord (‘Bram’) (Always a Scoundrel) 178 Johnson, Charles 6, 12, 14 – 17, 19, 21, 22n10, 23n19, 23n20 Johnson, Valerie B. 171, 179 Johnson, William 12 Jolly Pinder of Wakefield, The 60 Jones, Martin 41 – 2, 151 – 2 Jones, Michael 77n123 Jones, Paul Christian 73n19 Judith 69, 76n109 Jung, Carl 107 Kae, Byron (Prosperity) 181 – 3 Kafka, Franz 159 Katy (Animal House) 129, 143 Kaufman, Alexander L. 1 – 11, 64, 123 – 47, 174, 189 – 90 Keen, Maurice 2, 124 – 5 Keil, Teresa 4 – 5 Kelly, Ned 81 Kelly, Thomas E. 73n52 Kenney, Douglas 8, 123 Kerouac, Jack 103, 116 Kesey, Faye 110 Kesey, Ken 8, 101, 103 – 8, 110 – 19; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 8, 103; Sometimes a Great Notion 8, 103 Knight, Stephen 1, 35, 57, 75n73, 110, 118, 132, 170 – 1, 175, 179, 183 Kress, Adrienne 158 Kristeva, Julia 97 – 8n49 Kroger, Larry (‘Pinto’) (Animal House) 127, 129, 137 – 41, 143 LaCombe, Michael A. 170 – 1, 176 – 9 Lambrecht, Steve (‘Zonker’) 108, 112 Landis, John 123, 127, 129, 134 – 7 Land of Cockayne 35, 43 Land Run of 1889 84 Langland, William 131

Lehman, Daniel W. 104 – 5 Le Noir, Craven (Hidden Hand) 56, 66 – 7 Le Noir, Eugene (Hidden Hand) 57 Le Noir, Gabriel, Colonel (Hidden Hand) 56 – 7 Leonardi, Susan 1, 93, 148 Leonardo da Vinci 58 Levene, Alysa 23n38 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 4, 41, 155 Levy, Brian J. 172 Lilly, John C. 101, 120n1 Lincoln, Abraham 58, 75n66, 148 Linebaugh, Peter 12, 21 Lippi, Filippo 58 Little John 36, 181 London 12 – 13, 17 – 18, 20, 12n13; Hyde Park Corner 19; Knightsbridge 19; Marylebone 20; Old Bailey 19; Smithfield Market 13; Tyburn 12 Looby, Christopher 75n64 Lounsberry, Barbara 101, 105, 112 – 13 Love, Harry 36, 51n43 Lovecraft, H. P. 169, 172, 180 Lowe, John 6, 28, 31 – 2, 36, 50n27 Luchetti, Cathy 37 Luck, Chad 68, 70 Lyons, Sarah Frantz 172 – 3, 183 Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode, A 6, 132, 144n8, 174 MacFarlane, Scott 104 Magna Carta 148 Maid Marian 65, 75n73 Mallon, Mary (‘Typhoid Mary’) 88 Manifest Destiny 85 Mannur, Anita 1 Marmalard, Greg (Animal House) 126, 128, 130, 134, 136 – 7, 139, 143 Marshall, Mac 73n53 Maslow, Abraham 161 Matter of the Greenwood 2 – 3, 9, 124 – 6, 134 Mauss, Marcel 3 McCarthy, Cormac 9, 148 – 62 McCarthy, Joseph 102 Mellark, Peeta 161 Mennell, Stephen 4 Merry Pranksters 8, 101, 103, 105, 109 – 10, 113, 116, 119

196 Index Metcalfe, William 62 #MeToo movement 123, 144n1 Mexican-American War 56 Meyer, Richard E. 57, 59 – 61, 65 Miller, Chris 8, 123, 135 Miller, Henry 102 Milord (Prosperity) 181 – 2 Montanari, Massimo 151 Mooney, Tom 91 Mountain Girl see Adams, Caroline Mountain Jim 43, 45, 47 Murcott, Anne 4 Murrieta, Joaquín 6, 28 – 55 National Lampoon 8, 123, 141, 143 National Lampoon’s Animal House 8, 123 – 47 Neidermeyer, Douglas C. (Animal House) 126 – 7, 130, 136 – 7, 139, 143 Newgate Calendar 6, 19 New Journalism 104 New York City 7, 56, 65 – 6, 69, 88 New York Ledger 56, 64, 75n64 Noone, Kristin 9 – 10, 167 – 87, 190 Norman Conquest 173 North American Review 59 North Riding, Yorkshire 176 O’Connor, Kaori 3 Ohlgren, Thomas 1, 57 – 8, 60 – 1, 65 – 6, 119, 123, 125, 148 Oklahoma Territory 84 Omega Theta Pi Fraternity (Animal House) 8–9, 123 – 4, 127 – 8, 130, 134, 136 – 7, 137, 140, 142 – 4; Omega House 127 – 8, 130, 139 Organic Act of 1890 84 Otherness 2, 89, 123, 140 – 1, 153, 156, 175 Otis Day and the Knights (Animal House) 123, 138 – 41 Ouse River 176 Padre Jurata 47, 53n100 Panem (Hunger Games) 149, 158 – 62 Parker, Emma 86 Parker, Isaac C., US Judge 83, 92 Paz, Ireneo 35, 39, 51n63 Pepperidge, Mandy (Animal House) 128, 134 – 6, 141, 143 Pepys, Samuel 20 Peterson’s Magazine 63 Phillips, Helen 1 Piccadilly (‘Dil’) (Prosperity) 180 – 3

Pitapat (Hidden Hand) 64, 69 Pizzino, Christopher 162 Plimpton, George 104 Poe, Edgar Allan 154 Pollan, Michael 160 Pond, Kristen 65 Pope, Alexander 14 poulterer 17 Price, David 159 public houses 18 queer romance 172, 180 – 2 racism 29, 44, 46, 103, 140 Radin, Paul 106 Rambo, Shelley L. 157 Ramis, Harold 8, 123 recipes 1, 35, 77n117, 81, 87, 90, 92 – 4, 148, 151 Reed, James C. 82 – 3 Reed, James Edwin ‘Eddie’ 83, 95n20 Reed, Rosie ‘Pearl’ 83, 95n20 Regency romance 10, 167, 169, 172, 179, 184, 184n1 Regis, Pamela 167, 174, 178, 180 – 1, 184n1 Rembrandt 58 Reyes 38 – 9 Richard I (king of England) 17, 175 Richardson, Bill 81 Ridge, John Rollin 6, 28 – 55 Riley, Glenda 90 Ritson, Joseph 15 – 16, 23n19 Roach, Catherine M. 169, 175, 178, 184 Robin Hood 2 – 3, 6, 17, 23n19, 35 – 7, 51n46, 57 – 62, 64, 66, 101, 105, 110, 123, 131 – 2, 149, 158, 169 – 76, 178 – 9, 181, 184 Robin Hood and Allin a Dale 72 Robin Hood and the Potter 62 Robin Hood’s Birth, Breeding, Valour, and Marriage 65 – 6, 72 Rocke, Marah (Hidden Hand) 56 Rocke, Traverse (Hidden Hand) 56 Roy, Parama 157 – 8 Roy, Rob 23n19 Rush, Benjamin 132 Salinger, J. D. 103 San Francisco 32, 115, 118 Sattler, Warren 140 Scarlett, Will (Under the Wild Moon) 169, 174 – 5 Sceats, Sarah 86

Index  197 Schoenstein, Donald (‘Boon’) (Animal House) 129, 137, 139 – 43 Schullery, Paul 38 Scott, Sir Walter 59, 101 Seal, Graham 73n28 Seburn, Roy 114 Selinger, Eric Murphy 170 – 3, 179, 182 – 3 Selu, Cherokee Corn-Mother 92 Shaffer, Andrew 159 Shakespeare, William 59, 109 Sheriff of Nottingham 63, 109, 126 Shirley, Glenn 89 – 90, 95n20 Shprintzen, Adam 62 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 125 Sisera 69, 76n109 Slater, Philip 162 Slavery 68 – 9 Slotkin, Richard 96n25 Smith, Alexander 6, 12, 15 – 17, 19, 21, 22n10, 23n19 Snyder, Phillip A. 153 Snyder, Timothy 148 social bandit 28, 46, 48n6, 64, 96n25 Southworth, E. D. E. N.: Hidden Hand or, Capitola the Madcap 7, 56 – 80 Soyer, Prince 41, 52n69 Speed, Kate 18 Starr, Belle 7 – 8, 81 – 100 Starr, Sam 83, 95n20 starvation 10, 65, 69, 148, 154 – 5, 158, 160, 167 steampunk 168 – 9, 172, 180, 183 – 4 Steele, Richard 20 Stevens, Erica 46 Stoddard, Tom 68 Storer, Tracy 37, 51n49 Stratton, Eric (‘Otter’) (Animal House) 129, 133 – 4, 136 – 9, 141 – 3 Streeby 50n61 Stull, James N. 105 Sturm’s Oklahoma Magazine 84 Sundsten, Pamela (‘Gretchin Fetchin’) 108 supermarket/grocery store 136 – 7, 148 Swift, Jonathan 20

taverns and bars 13, 16 – 18, 21, 63, 129, 131, 139 Teo, Hsu-Ming 173 Tevis, Lloyd 37, 51n49 Three-Fingered Jack 30, 38, 42 – 7 Todd, Emily 59 Tompkins, Kyla Wazana 1 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo 40 trickster 61 – 4, 66, 68, 106, 118, 132 Trinket, Effie (Hunger Games) 159 Tryon, Thomas 15 – 16 Turner, Frederick Jackson 49n9 Turpin, Dick 6 Twain, Mark 75n79 Unitarians 103, 111 Valentine, Gill 82 Van Otterloo, Anneke H. 4 Vegetarianism 62 Veronese, Paolo 58 Vester, Katharina 151 Vlagopoulos, Penny 1 – 11, 190 Wallace, William 2 Wallach, Jennifer Jensen 34 – 5, 40, 42, 50n31, 52n89 Warfield, Ira, Major (Hidden Hand) 56, 60, 63, 65 – 7, 69 Washington, DC 59, 143 Weiwei, Ai 101, 120n1 Wellman, Paul I. 86, 88 Wells, Abraham 19 – 20 Wells, Nicholas 21 Whelan, Brent 101, 104 Whittier, John Greenleaf 59 Williams-Forson, Psyche 1 Wilson, C. Anne 179 Withers, Jack 19 Witt, Doris 1, 140 Wolfe, Tom 8, 101 – 22 Wool (Hidden Hand) 64 World War II 102 Wormer, Marion (Animal House) 136 – 8 Wormer, Vernon, Dean (Animal House) 123, 126 – 7, 141 – 2 wrath 29, 44, 131 Yasharoff, Hannah 144n1 Yeats, William Butler 173