Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides welcome the inimitable ZZ Packer—to discuss the sublime story by James Alan McPherson, “Gold Coast.”
ZZ Packer and Peter Orner were both students of James Alan McPherson during their time at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
ZZ Packer has written about the profound influence that James Alan McPherson has had on her.
She considers him one of the smartest and wisest people she’s ever known and has said that “he cared so much, and so deeply,” and that he was “just so intent on finding what was, emotionally, the best and the most human and humane way to exist in the world.”
And we see irrefutable evidence of this humanity in the story “Gold Coast” by James Alan McPherson. The protagonist, Robert, is an assistant janitor. And while he draws a line before the idea of becoming any more full-fledged in that role, he still gives compassion and consideration over to James Sullivan–a man who is a janitor has always been one, it seems— and ever will be that—but for James Alan McPherson is never–could never be– just that.
Robert spends time listening to Sullivan, trying to see him as more than just whatever the tenants in the rest of the building see—someone in a lowly job, someone not deserving of their respect, someone whose very obvious issues—with alcohol, with his marriage, even with his pet dog—are considered only as repugnant—and are never taken into account with any amount of empathy.
ZZ Packer considers this working relationship between Robert and Sullivan as the heart of the story.
Robert is someone who is managing issues of race and class. He has aspirations and goals. He is Black and knows that this fact could set him apart from the complaining tenants—and from the world that exists beyond the building, including at Harvard. Instead, the tenants complain to Robert—about Sullivan. Spending so much time with Sullivan certainly can’t be helping matters. But Robert continues to listen to Sullivan, to spend time with him—even though these are never easy visits.
The one mainstay in these tensions and exchanges, as ZZ Packer points out, is Robert’s humanity.
Peter Orner has also written about James McPherson.
Above all, writes Peter Orner, he “was interested in what makes people human.” McPherson for Orner was someone who encouraged his students and proteges “not to follow anybody’s script”—not even their own. Another thing Orner has long admired about him is that he “loved to collect examples of human beings refusing to be typecast.”
That’s another important part about “Gold Coast” as we’ll see. It would be easy to see each character—Robert, Sullivan, Jean, Meg, and Miss O'Hara and the other tenants in the small world Robert inhabits— in some stereotypical way. But that was not what James Alan McPherson saw in humanity.
In fact, Peter Orner now considers moments when someone offers “a generous instinct” that “overcomes … an imposed identity” as a "McPherson moment.”
When you encounter those “McPherson moments” in “Gold Coast” you’re just kind of happy to have encountered a story like this one.
And to have ZZ Packer join us to guide us along? What could be better?
GUEST:
ZZ Packer is the author of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (2003). Her work is frequently published in such journals as The New Yorker and Granta, She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Academy in Berlin Prize and a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship. She has taught at many institutions including Princeton, where she was a Hodder Fellow; the Michener Center at the University of Texas; Vassar College; and as a Jones Lecturer at Stanford. She received her education at Yale (BA), Johns Hopkins (MA), the University of Iowa (MFA), and Stanford as a Stegner Fellow.
Stay tuned for more episodes of The Lonely Voice with ZZ Packer–coming soon.
