Jack Cady (1932–2004)

*Partial spoilers ahead*

The Well, Jack Cady's debut, presents a problem for readers and reviewers alike. Firstly, despite the lurid illustrations on both the hardcover and paperback editions (and the tagline "If you do not believe in evil...you will not know when it takes you"), it's not a horror novel: it's a psychological drama with some of the superficial trappings of a horror novel. That's perfectly fine as long as you know what you're getting into, but a little irksome when you've been led to expect something else. Secondly, it's monotonous: there are, essentially, just two characters (one of whom abruptly disappears from the story without ever being fully developed, only to be dredged up again a page shy of the ending) and a single major setting. Finally, Cady too often sacrifices clarity to indulge in an oblique, circuitous style which seems to have no function apart from filling up space.

On the plus side, Cady's work is characterized by a seriousness of tone and purpose that one rarely encounters in popular fiction; he was writing about difficult, weighty matters and treated them with the proper gravity. The Well is a disjointed effort, but because Cady was so thoughtful and intelligent (and also, perhaps, because I relate to the central character's need to confront his family's singularly dark history), I have a soft spot for it. Two and a half stars.… (more)

This book was originally published back in 1981, and it is one of the author’s best-known novels.

It has an interesting premise: a ghost story on a ship, based on a true story. It’s supposedly based on real events that happened to the author while he was with the Coast Guard, and since it was released just in time for Halloween, the gnomes assumed this would be a very scary book.

Unfortunately, it’s not scary at all. The ghost takes a while to show up. Before the ghost makes an appearance, the book focuses on the everyday lives of the men on board the ship. One man, a new sailor named Brace, spills green paint inside the ship, and spends a couple of chapters cleaning it up. Not the most thrilling stuff.

The prose is wordy, often to the point of being difficult to follow. Sentences are peppered with sailing terminology, but no glossary is provided. The gnomes didn’t finish the book because of these issues.

History lovers and sailors will love this book, but anyone who is looking for a good scare should look elsewhere.

Rating: One Gnome out of Five

This review originally appeared on gnomereviews.ca.… (more)

Ever been caught up in a book so beautiful that even though you want to devour it to the very last page, you slow yourself down, savoring the moments, drawing it out? Waking up in the middle of the night to read a little more?

I forget how powerful Cady is. Even the preface was moving.

No one, in my experience, has written so True, so compleatly, so honestly, so movingly, so . . . perfectly of the extraordinariness of our ordinariness.

So freaking beautiful.

If you're expecting a post-WW2 story with the usual suspects, this isn't it. It isn't set in any of the usual types of locales either.

Louisville, Kentucky. Jackson Street. Bardstown Road.

The drama comes from the oldest stage, the human drama, the everyday in a pivotal time, when Joseph McCarthy was in full cry, Richard Nixon was becoming a recognizable name. When "communist" was spoken carelessly and ruthlessly with malleable and malevolent definition. When a fourteen year old boy (Jim) could decide that "communist" meant that he and his Black friend Howard could go to the park together — and if that's what a communist was that's what he was.

Each character's insights are unique to them, but we see the weaving of a collective consciousness, the one that eventually demanded the Civil Rights Act and the changes of the coming decades, parts of that consciousness the quiet, conscientious generation, watching, knowing that right is right; parts of it those who returned from the battle fronts where obsessions with skin color and racial superiority/inferiority became subsumed in the realities of red blood and weren't ready to resume their previous status back home; and the generation of flux, seeing the anomalies, the BS, asking questions, demanding answers — not the same old song and dance. The ones who decided that if being a communist meant they could go to the park with a Black friend then that was what they'd be.

And what was against them.

This is a story of the birth of change in an everyday world inhabited by people we know, or pass on the street, or that some of us might cross the street to avoid — and the true extraordinariness of it all. It is also the story of individual change and awakenings. Wade, Lucky, Jim, and the agents of change, Lester and Howard.

Plus, it's a damned good story, masterfully wrought.

If you're a writer, you will be a better writer for having read it.

If you're a thoughtful human being, you will be a better human being for having read it.… (more)

When I was looking for more information about this book and Jack Cady, to make sure it'd be the kind of book I'd like to read, I kept seeing praise for his storytelling abilities. I'm not really sure what about the book caught my attention and made me interested, but there was something appealing about the back cover copy, and it's true - Jack Cady is a wonderful storyteller. It only took a few sentences to draw me into the story and hook me completely.

The book is about a neighborhood in Louisville, Kentucky, in August and September of 1948, when there was an eery string of deaths, all connected somehow. It's a portrait of the people who live and work there and even Jackson St. itself, painted against the backdrop of the local bar, the pawn shop, and the auction house. Really, the auction house is the heart of the action, with the pace of the plot segmented by the cycle of setting up and auction nights.

Looming over everything that happens in the book is history and the future, as certain knowledge of change that has happened and change that will come is reflected in each of the local and minor actions. The death of Charlie Weaver, the previous neighborhood auctioneer, at the beginning of the book echoes the deaths in the War only three years earlier. They are obvious marks of the slow, inexorable change that will happen, no matter what.

Cady tells the story of Jackson St, of Lucky the Jewish pawnbroker, of Lester the black auction grip, of Wade the formerly country-boy redneck auctioneer, of the boys Jim and Howard who represent the future, in a meandering fashion. While the book mostly follows the hot, tense days of August, the main story sometimes stops and gets set aside in order to reflect upon the War, or the nature of race in Kentucky in '48, or the way politics mattered to the folks on Jackson St, or religion, or the still-to-come Civil Rights era. But even so, it's still part of the portrait of Jackson St, and it all flows together to make that portrait more vibrant.

This is a book about that pause after World War 2, when everything in the American South was changing, yet it was also going along as best it could like before. I'm so glad I went with my impulse and picked it up at the library: I really enjoyed reading it, and I recommend it to anyone who thinks they might just like to read it, too.… (more)