Second and Long
October 22, 2025 at 10:27PMJames Whitehead wrote for decades following the publication of Joiner, his acclaimed debut novel that, per one critic, “makes an awful, fearful and glorious impact on the mind and ear.” But a follow-up never made it to press; eventually, “debut” turned to “only.” Steve Yarbrough, a former student of Whitehead’s, revisits his years with his gruff, perfectionist mentor to consider how artists live with the standards they foist on others, and on themselves. Yarbrough outperforms the typical grad-school nostalgia piece with this character-driven, psychologically shrewd exploration of a singular artist with broad resonance—the kind of piece I’ve come to associate with The American Scholar.
“What you need to understand, Yarbrough,” he said, “is that being a Mississippi writer’s like being an Irish writer. You’ve got to get everything, beginning with the landscape, right. Now, you set this narrative in central Jackson, which as you know is my hometown, on an August afternoon. You’ve got this 65-year-old man, who we already know has had at least one heart attack, leaving his house—which you tell us is ‘within a stone’s throw’—and that’s a cliché, and not a good one, there are no good clichés—‘of the zoo.’ Which means that—‘in a quarter of an hour’—he walks damn near the length of Capitol Street, a distance of three and a half miles, which you seem clueless about, to the porn store where he picks up his nasty magazines. Does he sweat along the way? No, of course not, though it’s bound to be about a hundred degrees. You say the porn store’s on”—he consulted my ink-stained manuscript— “ ‘the corner of a side street three blocks from the Old Capitol Museum.’ What side street, Steve? ‘Three blocks’ from the damn museum is West Street. Since he’s walking east and crosses the street, then takes a right, that means we’re at the southeast corner of South West Street.” With my story he slapped a meaty thigh. “You’ve replaced St. Andrew’s Episcopal Cathedral with a goddamn porn store? Give me a break!”
My suspicion is that when he played football, Jim was the kind of lineman who’d smash into you, drive you 10 yards downfield, knock you down, and stand over you to make sure you didn’t get off the ground, while secretly hoping you might try to. But after the whistle blew, he’d offer you his hand, pull you up, and pat you on the butt in the time-honored gesture of a magnanimous victor toward a vanquished opponent. Which is essentially what he did to me that day. He told me to “buck up,” that I had a lot going for me, that my prose was vivid and energetic, that I wrote good dialogue and had a subversive sense of humor, and that anybody who’d run off 65 pounds in six months was not scared to work hard. “Sometimes,” he said, “you just have to go back to the first sentence and start over. That’s what this story calls for.”
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/10/22/james-whitehead-joiner/
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