As a veteran reviewer, I am not easily seduced by blurbs, but when the funniest fiction writer in the south, George Singleton, tells me “Everybody Knows” is “a riotous novel,” and he loved this “wild ride,” and when Margaret Renkl, a serious writer deeply concerned with pollinators and politicians, says it is “laugh out loud, post-apocalyptic satire,” attention must be paid. According to David Williams, it ain’t necessarily so.
To begin, it is a novel about the end of the world. There have been an increasing number of these. “The Road” featured a North America where the soil was toxic, and no plants grew. Recently, Silas House in “Lark Ascending” writes of North America burning from west to east. This last is in line with James Baldwin’s feeling in “The Fire Next Time.” Baldwin quoted a Negro spiritual:
“God gave Noah the rainbow sign.
No more water. The fire next time.”
“Everybody Knows” is set in 2030, ten years after what the characters thought would be the end of the world: the upheavals from the pandemic and from the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements, but NOW the end has come. It has rained for 40 days, and Tennessee is mostly flooded. Nashville’s most powerful are being evacuated on a riverboat, the Clementine. It is not exactly an ark, but there are similarities. The smooth-talking, handsome, irresistible governor, H. Walt Flattery III, called Trey, is in charge. His double—for going to church—is on board as is his third wife and two mistresses, his chief of staff, state historian - a few others.
Flattery’s people have saved—or looted—treasures from Nashville’s museums. The lists are hilarious:A powder horn of Davy Crockett, a musket of Daniel Boone, Andrew Jackson’s beaver hat, toupees and pomade, snakeskin boots, piles of musical instruments, mandolins, harmonicas, Jimmy Rodgers’ typewriter, Lester Flatt’s string tie, and cases and cases of Tennessee whiskey. The boat is crammed with loot, and on the very top deck is “Old Smokey,” the state’s retired electric chair, which Flattery is using as a throne. He has always wanted one.
The “Clementine” is headed for the bluffs of Memphis, one of the only spots in Tennessee not underwater. All on board despise Memphis, revile the sinful place—home of Elvis and birth of rock and roll. Throughout “Everybody Knows” there is a constant learned discussion of country music. Very little is still admired by the purists. Nashville ruined country music. So did Bob Dylan. Only very early Patsy Cline is acceptable.
On the “Clementine” there is still politics and partying and, to add to the disorder, pirates. There is a strong element of metafiction here too. God is the head writer. In the novel there are mortal writers, toiling away even in the face of apocalypse. The difference between the ultimate author and the rest is not great. All are hard-working creators doing the best they can, including David Wesley Williams.
