Cross Creek: Organization

A Disorganized Memoir

At first glance it may seem that Cross Creek is a disorganized, non-sequential book with no unifying theme. Yet, it is the memoir of the personal experiences of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings in the backwater area of Cross Creek, Florida. While it is not chronologically linear, its unifying theme is Rawlings's experiences at Cross Creek and it is written in a disorganized fashion that makes sense. Rawlings questions these same aspects of her work in a letter to her editor, Maxwell Perkins. She wonders if: "there is even approximately sufficient fluidity of narrative . . . it seemed to me impossible to provide straight narrative. There was no one hook on which to hang anything approximating a story" (Perkins and Rawlings 208). However, Perkins answers her worries with complete support and reassurance that she is on the right track, and that it is she, the author, who binds all the loosely configured essays together with her perceptions. Thus, Cross Creek retains its unity through its coherence and style within the text.

Initially, the first two chapters, the introduction and chapter one, run very smoothly together as a description of Cross Creek. Rawlings herself indicates, in her letter to Perkins, that there is some measure of fluidity of narrative until chapter thirteen, entitled "Residue." In that chapter, she launches into a lot of Biblical references and superstitions, interspersed with tall tales of encounters with various insects, wildlife, and people. It is from chapter thirteen on, that her narrative begins to take the form of loosely bound short stories; yet, they still come together into a complex work that seems to represent nearly every aspect of pioneer life in the wilderness of rural Florida through its very disorganization. Real life is disorganized, and Rawlings is writing about real life, so she uses literary disorganization to portray reality within the text.

Some measure of actual chronological continuity within the text serves to keep pace with nature in the later chapters. Chapters eighteen through twenty-one are appropriately named for the seasons of the year. In each chapter, Rawlings gives an account of the pertinent events in each season. She focuses on the weather, the vegetation, the insects and animals, and, in winter, the hunting season. These chapters are bound together internally by the chronology of the seasons as well as their content that includes strong, poetic descriptions of nature.

The work's lack of a truly conventional format may be attributed to the time in which it was written. Cross Creek was published in 1942, during the Modernist period in literature. Modernist works were characterized by the use of fragments, juxtapositions, montages, paradoxes, and uncertainty. While this book does not exactly fit the description of a typical Modernist work, the absence of linear flow can be understood to have become almost the norm by 1942, a fact that contributes further insight into the reading of Cross Creek. For a novel written in an era in which most writers sought to break with classic literary traditions, this composition seems almost conventional by comparison. Also, looking at the book through the lens of the Modernist period in which it was published helps the reader to understand that in its time it was part of a contemporary literary movement.

Thus, when an author works within the structure of a personal memoir, there is a lot of freedom of form that is not permitted in other types of narrative. This flexibility of form allows the author to become the novel's unifying presence, because it is based upon the author's perceptions of events. For instance, Rawlings opens chapter seven by claiming: "I have used a factual background for most of my tales, and of actual people a blend of the true and the imagined. I myself cannot quite tell where the one ends and the other begins" (Rawlings 72). It is this perception that allows Rawlings to avoid the chronological method of storytelling, in favor of a series of inter-related short essays. The novel's continuity lies in her insights and observations about the people and the culture of Cross Creek; it is these perceptions that keep the reader interested, and the fragmented essay form seems to encourage the reader to pay attention to details that might otherwise be skimmed over. Thus, the style of the personal memoir is not only infinitely suitable to Rawlings's tales of Cross Creek, it also helps perpetuate the reader's sense of being right there with Rawlings through her triumphs and hardships in the wild Florida wilderness.

--Melissa Pinder

Works Cited

• Perkins, Maxwell and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Max and Marjorie: The Correspondence Between Maxwell E. Perkins and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Ed. Rodger L. Tarr. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999.
• Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan. Cross Creek. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.