Frank Stanford’s The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You:
A Conversation Between James McWilliams and Ata Moharreri, January 2021 (Part I of II)
The following is a phone conversation with James McWilliams, a historian at Texas State University currently working on a biography about Frank Stanford (August 1, 1948 — June 3, 1978). The transcription is edited for readability. Readers may want to have a copy of The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You (The Battlefield) on hand, as references have not been transcribed. The discussion refers to Lost Roads Publishers reissued copy, not the first edition.
Here is a synopsis of The Battlefield, Frank Stanford’s epic poem, composed of over 15,000 unpunctuated lines; it is an example of a text with one foot in myth and the other foot in reality, often blurring the line between the two. The poem takes place in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas during the 1960s. The poem’s main character, a twelve-year-old white boy named Francis, tells the story of his adventures with his older cousin Jimmy and their Black friends. Their wild adventures, and Francis’s imaginative daydreams, checker the poem to create its epic structure. It is Southern and international, violent and funny, strange and sexual, historical and fantastic, educated and unschooled, all in the same breath. The poem includes over 1,000 allusions and four languages (Latin, German, French, and Italian). In the end, Francis inherits a river property, Abraham’s Knife, from Mr. Rufus Abraham. Francis and his friends use the property as a fishing camp, a kind of utopia. The poem closes with Francis and his pal Baby Gauge aboard a luxury liner, on which they’re conversing and smoking with a few folks, including Thomas Merton and Henri Rousseau.
Ata: So many names get dropped in The Battlefield. We know a lot of the names as famous writers because they left behind famous novels, for example. But their biographies also show that they had many labels and that they wore many hats. In other words, they weren’t known as just writers during their lifetimes.
James: Agreed — famous and infamous names are scattered across The Battlefield like buckshot, and the range of these figures includes a mind-boggling global array of cultural references. When you dig in, particularly for the more obscure references, when you investigate who these people are, they turn out (as you say) to be writers who are more than writers. They have multiple interests. It reminds me of Frank Stanford’s love of film, music, art, and the amazing fluency with which he could discuss these media. This interest in the cultural omnivory of others might very well reflect the kind of person who Frank Stanford was interested in becoming, of crafting himself into. It also foreshadows a person who was open to playing other roles. Stanford, after all, would later become a publisher, a filmmaker, an editor, and a surveyor.
Ata: Right, right! And he could also connect more personally with “famous” figures in The Battlefield. There’s a moment when he’s claiming who his daddy is and it’s “The Little Tramp.” I’ll bet you in real life Frank Stanford sent “The Little Tramp,” which was a nickname for Charlie Chaplain, the eleven letters Francis mentions in the poem. We know Chaplin as an actor. But the guy was not only an actor; he was a director, a composer, a screenwriter, and an editor. So, I want to ask: what do you think about Charlie Chaplain being called the dad figure, not just once but a few times in this book?
James: Yeah, I think Frank’s affiliation with film — and Chaplin — is really critical here because the other father figure in the text is his stepfather. The long and lean man who adopted him, Albert Franklin Stanford, also appears repeatedly in The Battlefield. He appears as this kind of authoritative figure, a man of gravitas. He builds the levees, he maintains the levees, he’s well regarded and looked up to by everybody. The boss. He gets along with Black and white people alike. In real life, Frank Stanford’s admiration for his adopted father was quite genuine, and that comes through particularly early in the text. What also happens throughout the text is that Francis comes to admit that he’s a bastard; he doesn’t really know where he came from. He makes this claim on a number of occasions, once noting that his father is “not a for real one.” I’m kind of glad his father never lived to read that.
But this gets us closer to your hypothesis on Chaplin. There’s also a claim in the text where he says, “Now that I know that I’m adopted or a bastard, nobody knows where I came from and I can kind of make it up.” With that, I think there is a wonderful parallel going on because this is exactly what happened to Stanford in real life around the time that he was writing The Battlefield. So here’s Francis going through kind of the same transition of becoming aware that he doesn’t know his roots, and that has a kind of liberating effect on him. He can now make it up. So, what does Francis do? He turns to Charlie Chaplain. Why not?
If it wasn’t Chaplin, it could just as easily have been Muhammad Ali, another hero of Frank’s, and a cue to Frank’s and Francis’s shared sense that they might have been mixed race. In any case, the more I study the life of Frank Stanford, the more I appreciate his admiration for those with an especially performative character — Chaplin, Ali, Jimmy Reed, Sputnik Monroe, and so on.
Ata: Then there are Francis’s friends, who aren’t famous but seem even more significant to the text. In one scene, we see these guys, or the gang, go back up to a drive-in movie theater (Clive Miller’s Sunset Drive Inn scene begins on pg. 184) where they’re told that the movie Hallelujah isn’t showing. Of course, there’s also the racist business owner, Clive, who’s turning them away because he sees a couple of young white guys and a couple of older Black guys in the same car. It’s an remarkable moment in the poem.
…one of the many missions that Stanford is up to in The Battlefield is to show Francis’s transition and emerging interest in racial justice. I think what makes that transition so compelling is the way Stanford powerfully humanizes the Black characters through the eyes of the obviously autobiographical Francis.
James: Just to summarize why I think that this scene is so important: one of the many missions that Stanford is up to in The Battlefield is to show Francis’s transition and emerging interest in racial justice. I think what makes that transition so compelling is the way Stanford powerfully humanizes the Black characters through the eyes of the obviously autobiographical Francis. We see this humanization in the Black character Tang, which is short for “Tangle Eye.” He wants to see the movie you mention (Hallelujah) because his wife was an extra in it (this was common, as Hollywood films set in the South relied on locals as extras, and in real life Charlie B.’s wife was an extra in Baby Doll). I’ve choked up reading the scene before. It’s really a heartfelt moment. Tang, with his lip jumping as he’s getting ready to cry, is nervous and he’s crumpling his hat in his hands in anticipation of seeing his late wife. Jesus, the man puts on cologne for the occasion!
Then Stanford does what he often does as an author: he jumps into the text and addresses the reader, saying, basically, “Hey, look; I’m not joking around here.” This is serious business and these are serious feelings. Tang and his emotions are to be taken seriously.
Ata: Yes. There’s another such moment when he says, “He was as quiet and listless as the mule on Friday, how can I tell you?” At that moment it feels as if Stanford directs us, shows us what readers really need to know about Tang’s experience. And as we’re engrossed in this story, Francis reminds us that he’s actually riding on a mule with Dark (another character) in the narrative. Stanford as a director gives us cues, often guiding us quietly through the text.
There’s a thing going on here with time, and it makes sense that Frank would jump in every now and then to hold our hand a bit through the shifts in voice and time.
James: Yeah, it’s true. You’re right. And then there’s a scene where Dark picks Francis up to go to a baseball game. Then twenty pages pass, dozens of other events play out, and there’s a reference to Dark still taking Francis to the baseball game. There’s a thing going on here with time, and it makes sense that Frank would jump in every now and then to hold our hand a bit through the shifts in voice and time. In a way, it’s a generous move. Joyce never bothered with such help.
Ata: The Battlefield’s flow of events can be dreamy.
James: Indeed. I was just going to say the poem is dream-like in a cinematic way. Stanford does kind of condense time in interesting ways to make things feel off kilter and surreal, a term he did not really like. Then there is the whole merging of the past and the present — very Faulkner like — so that reality is fragmented on many levels at once, and soon, what is dream-like and what is real, gets hard to decipher. It does have a kaleidoscopic effect at times, as a reading experience, and perhaps one prerequisite for reading this poem is to be at ease with such fragmentation.
Ata: What other moments in The Battlefield excite you?
James: One critical scene comes right at the beginning of the poem. It’s when Charlie B. picks up Francis from school early — after Francis has thrown a fit in class, saying, “Fuck mathematics,” so he can play hooky. This is an important moment because it’s when Francis tests the waters in terms of like, “How can I hang out with Charlie B. and his Black friends? How close can I get to their world?” In typical Stanford fashion, it happens through language. Even more specifically, it happens through the use of the n-word.
Ultimately, I think this is a poem about language and about crossing over from one linguistic tradition to another. Francis comes from the mansions of Memphis and The Peabody Hotel. He’s raised amidst great privilege; it was standard white privilege in the 1950’s South. He is clearly attracted to the way African-Americans speak. In many ways what you see throughout the poem is his evolution on that continuum of being outside of this world, and, in many ways, crossing over into it.
Is he appropriating a culture? Or is he entering into it respectfully and with fascination — driven by curiosity?
One question we might want to ask is how he crosses over into it? Is he appropriating a culture? Or is he entering into it respectfully and with fascination — driven by curiosity? The scene when Charlie B. picks Francis up from school allows us to conclude that he is crossing over into African-American culture out of respect and fascination. Notably, Charlie B. stays in charge. There is a limit that he places on where Francis can go with his language. In this scene, Charlie B. is saying to Francis, hey, you can come and join us but you can only go so far. You’re not going to co-opt us, you’re not going to appropriate what we’re doing. But, we’ll let you in , if only because your daddy is a big shot.
It’s a noteworthy scene. Again, it’s contained and it’s important. I think it plays a critical role in Francis’s approach to language and Charlie B’s powerful role in determining how Francis enters this world through language. What are your thoughts on that?
Ata: Well, the first thing that comes to mind is another scene that’s about seventy-pages onward. I want to ask if you think they’re related. It’s not with Charlie B., though; it’s with Sylvester. It’s on page 106, line 4226. To sum up what’s going on here: I think Sylvester basically tricks Francis into stealing a bottle of Wild Turkey. Francis comes out of a shop followed by the shop owner. Sylvester flips the whole power and race script. Basically, Sylvester gets to whoop Francis’s behind for stealing, and, by the way, Sylvester gets to keep the whiskey. The shop owner even commends Sylvester! So, when you read the Charlie B. moment, that was another moment when what-goes-around-comes-around in this book — at least as far as language and race are concerned.
James: Yeah, and I really like what Sylvester does with language in this scene. As you said, he flips the script and he gets his whiskey, even though his plot from the start was to steal it, tricking Francis into doing so. If I remember correctly, he roughs up Francis to evoke sympathy from the shop owner who Francis has stolen from, right?
Ata: Look at the top of page 107. The “in front of my kinfolks” part.
James: Yeah. So, I guess the question is, is Sylvester acting this out, or does he really feel it? In my reading of this passage, it was Sylvester being an extraordinarily talented trickster, who was acting this out in order to evoke sympathy and admiration even from the shop owner who he has thoroughly duped to get the bottle of whiskey. It’s also an important shift in power — as if Sylvester is saying, if you want to run with us, you’re going to pay some dues.
Ata: “I was fixing to talk but Sylvester put his hand over my mouth,” Francis says (p. 107).
James: There you are. I think Sylvester is way ahead of anyone else in this scene. So, I’d agree that these scenes are related. With Sylvester and Charlie B., Francis realizes there are limits to what he can say. He’s basically told in that scene with Charlie B. that he can’t throw around the n-word like Black people can. They have the right to do that, but you’re a privileged white kid, and I don’t care how interested you are or how much you like hanging out with us, you can’t do that because that’s not your place. Sylvester cedes him the middle ground when they get into arguments over words like “gorilla” — gorilla, the animal, versus the word “guerilla,” a warrior. This goes on for pages and it’s hilarious. It’s great. That’s just a classic case of “the dozens,” the kind of banter that’s central to a lot of African-American cultures. So, as for Francis, he’s okay, he can do that; he’s allowed to play the dozens. Sylvester really comes alive as a character in these scenes with Francis. My sense is, the whole time he’s just screwing with Francis, Sylvester’s just having fun at Francis’s expense. But never lose sight of this: it all plays out over language.
Ata: Switching gears, what about the poem’s structure? When a scene closes off, the narrative goes into a dream state, often using some kind of anaphora; Francis seems to nod into a dream or go into a trance.
This is a poem that rewards repeated readings… Each time you read The Battlefield, it’s like a slow adjustment of the binoculars. Things get more magnified and clarified.
James: Yeah, I think that’s an important observation — and can really help readers follow the narrative. Stanford presents a scene — such as the ones we’ve talked about — and then usually he moves away from the scene, or closes it, by going into a dream sequence. Then there might be twenty to thirty other scenes before we actually come back to or reconnect with the original scene. He’ll allow a hundred pages to go by before he’ll return to a scene that was earlier in the text. I say this a lot, but it’s like Ulysses. This is a poem that rewards repeated readings. It is very complex in the way that the scenes are ordered and arranged, and the way that they fade in and out throughout the text. Each time you read The Battlefield, it’s like a slow adjustment of the binoculars. Things get more magnified and clarified.
Ata: What you were saying reminds me of, to borrow your word, a trickster. In a way, Francis is a bit of a trickster in the way that he tells us his story.
James: That’s fantastic. Stanford was a trickster. Of course, Francis is a trickster — or at least a wannabe trickster. Sylvester, as we’ve said, is a trickster extraordinaire. You’ve got a meta-tricksterism going on here that is wildly entertaining. I would also say, it’s very much a nod in the direction of African-American culture, a culture that Francis, and eventually Stanford, would find fascinating.
Ata: There is another point that I have in mind, and I want to get your take on it. Does Francis have a sense that Black culture seems somehow more authentic, at least in terms of friendships, than white culture? Here’s how I see it: it’s true camaraderie and friendships that we see going on. In other words, there are other moments in the text when we see other folks stabbing each other in the back, even if they’re “friends.” By contrast, with Francis and the guys he hangs out with, there’s fellowship. The Black guys don’t screw each other over in this particular narrative. In the end, Francis, a kid with a loyal heart, inherits Abraham’s Knife and sets up a fishing camp for everyone. How do you see this moment?
The first thought that comes to mind is the camaraderie that Francis experiences with characters like Charlie B., Sylvester, Tang, Rufus, and all the Black characters in the book — well, again, it’s ultimately bound by a shared language in a shared landscape.
James: I think it’s a really important question. The first thought that comes to mind is the camaraderie that Francis experiences with characters like Charlie B., Sylvester, Tang, Rufus, and all the Black characters in the book — well, again, it’s ultimately bound by a shared language in a shared landscape. As we know about Frank Stanford, his ear for vernacular was outstanding. I think what we see in Francis is a discovery that language excites him, the way that people talk, the way their mouths move around words. It just so happens that Tang, Sylvester, Charlie B., Rufus, and Dark, these guys have a way of putting things that sound more exciting to hear. Trust begins there.
Ata: That’s great! I would add, too, that Vico, if I’m not mistaken, is deaf.
James: Francis was certainly attracted to Vico — and he was able to communicate with him in some mysterious sign language — but he never trusted him. He’s always saying that he doesn’t know about this Vico guy. He never trusted him fully.
Ata: Not the way he trusts Sylvester, you’re saying?
James: Absolutely, he trusts Sylvester, Charlie B., and Tang, and it seems to be without tension. Even Jimmy Lee, who is white and his cousin — Francis looks up to Jimmy Lee, but he’s also frustrated with Jimmy Lee at times. He’s like, come on, you’re not going to do that shit again, you’re not going to wind up in jail again are you, you dumbass? There’s a kind of frustration that Francis has with Jimmy Lee. I think your observation is correct — Francis feels camaraderie with the Black characters, and I think he enters into that camaraderie through the channel of language. And, let’s keep in mind, that Francis witnesses a tremendous amount of generosity and heroism from his Black friends. I’m thinking of Bobo and the fish early in the poem. So, that kind of generosity happens repeatedly. It seems like throughout this text that Black people are bailing white people out of situations that they’ve gotten themselves into.
Ata: That’s right, Bobo actually saves Francis! Can you speak about the gradual rise of Francis’ use of vernacular in the text?
James: Yeah, I haven’t mapped it out mathematically but it’d be interesting to quantify. What I do in the text when I see Francis using vernacular is just write a “V.” I notice early on that “the astronomer,” a reference to another actual person in Frank Stanford’s life, is this character insisting that Francis speak correctly, use proper diction, read lots of erudite books, and wear a tie to dinner. Francis says, “Ain’t that a pile of shit!” So there is a part of Francis who wants to break away from that formality — the formality of his privilege — and of course as he starts to hang out with his Black friends he starts to absorb a different lingua franca.
I think Stanford is really attentive to allowing that to happen gradually. Towards the end, Francis uses much more vernacular than he was using at the beginning, when he dipped his toes in with Charlie B. He won’t say the United States, he’ll say, “Unitey States,” and he won’t say Saturday, he’ll say, “Saddy.” There is also the word “tave,” and you read that and think, tave like “cave,” but, when you actually realize that this is Francis speaking vernacular, it’s “to have.” That took me a while to figure out. It’s fairly subtle, but you see Francis start to blend words and use diction that’s not all his but a mélange. Coming from the South, I hear these words with a certain recognition and pleasure.
There is always going to be an appearance of appropriation of another culture’s language… If Francis has appropriated language, he has done so to join forces with those who want to mow down racists who have appropriated power. At least, that’s how I read it.
But I also think this is where the text could become troubling for contemporary readers, on many levels. There is always going to be the appearance of appropriation of another culture’s language. I mean I guess that’s one way to look at it, and I take it seriously and want input from others. Not to overplay the point, but I think it’s important to realize that Francis speaks this way out of a genuine interest in that way of speaking, but also — as you so rightly note — because of the friendships that he’s formed with his Black friends. The drive-in scenes seem bizarre, and they’re very funny and violent. These guys get a freaking bulldozer and wipe out the drive-in! It’s over the top! If Francis has appropriated language, he has done so to join forces with those who want to mow down racists who have appropriated power. At least, that’s how I read it.
Ata: Not only do they get a bulldozer, they also break into an Army Corps of Engineers office and steal a case of dynamite. These guys band together to go back and really take care of business.
James: It’s bad ass. They go whole hog for revenge. Just imagine doing something like that. You’re with your cousin and your two pals; you’re getting drunk although Francis doesn’t —
Ata: He does the driving. . .
James: — and you are going to exact a measure of revenge. You know what? You’re going to be friends with those guys; you’re going to be close to those guys afterwards. Francis uses the term “Maundy,” instead of saying Monday. You could look at that and say that he’s just imitating them, or, no, he’s close to them because they’ve been through some shit. They’ve hung out and they’ve done some shit, so they’re close now. Don’t we all do something like this all the time?
Ata: And the reason they go back to bulldoze the drive-in is twofold. One, the owners, Clive and his wife, don’t want to let the Black guys in, and, two, Francis and his friends were going to see Hallelujah, one of three Black films that were supposed to show that night. At the drive-in’s entrance, Francis and his friends were told that the Black movies weren’t going to show at their scheduled times; they’d show much later, instead. It’s the night before Easter Sunday, and now the drive-in owners decide they’re going to show the Black films at 1AM, and a preacher is scheduled to preach there in the morning, so Hallelujah may not even go on the screen!
James: That’s right! They’re going to play these movies, but, when the preacher shows up, they’re going to pull the plug and have Easter Sunday, and they don’t want Black people around for the resurrection of Lord Jesus.
Ata: So, that’s why they go back to wage war.
James: Yeah, and they do. So, you get my point. When you go through something like that with people and then you’re close to them, it’s like warfare, like you said, you become bonded. I think it’s easy to miss that point. Francis becomes very close to these guys, so close that he ends up taking a Freedom Ride and possibly risking his life. He ends up finding this utopia where he invites them all to, as you say, live life like they are running a fishing camp.
Ata: You know, all this brings me back to Francis’s relationship with the astronomer and how it contrasts with his group of friends. The astronomer shows up a lot, like on page sixty-six, where his butler offers “master Francis cookies and milk.” Towards the bottom of the page, lines 2635 to 2637, Francis mentions “Sleeping Beauty,” a painting by Henri Rousseau. In the same lines he mentions Francisco Goya. Francis’s thinking and speaking turn inward to explore questions of culture and art in different ways through his imagination when he’s with the astronomer.
To support what you were saying, he doesn’t go “the milk and cookies way.” I don’t think he eschews the high-minded, though, does he? He enjoys being with his friends, living life to the fullest, but he’s also got a rich inner-life that he picks up from the astronomer.
James: I think that’s really perceptive. He’s not rejecting that “high” cultural tradition. I guess he sees it very much like Frank Stanford saw it: the wider the scope of your cultural references, essentially the more interesting life is going to be. Francis gets bored out of his mind in school; he wants life to be interesting. It seems as if Stanford realized, certainly by the age of sixteen, that the wider your range of cultural references, the more your mind can draw on. That, I think, partially explains why there is such an incredible range of cultural interests pointed to in this epic poem by Francis. I think it really reflects Frank Stanford’s own habit of mind; he’s just sort of culturally omnivorous. At times, he actually uses the highfalutin, astronomer-like language in a very fun way.
Ata: That’s definitely true of conversations with his cousin Jimmy. Francis speaks in tongues, Jimmy says, or Francis just annoys Jimmy with crazy stories. Francis uses language and story telling to keep up with his older cousin.
… the high and low together, which I think is one of the most entertaining aspects of this poem.
James: Also, there’s that one line when Francis is in school and he has to go to the bathroom and, instead of asking to use the restroom, he stands up dramatically and says, “This chevalier needs to piss.” I love that! I just love it because there is piss, which is street language and then there’s chevalier, which is “astronomer” language. That line brings the high and low together, which I think is one of the most entertaining aspects of this poem.
Ata: I love what you just said, the high and the low together. It’s excellent, and it leads us to another idea: historical accuracy. Here’s an example just to get you going. On page 132, line 5263, you get the story of a woman in Alabama who was hit on the head by a meteorite. In the next line after that, in Siberia, a fireball killed 1,500 deer. Well, turns out those things happened!
James: Yes! There is a reference during one of Francis’s dreams in which a meteorite hits a woman on the head, the Hodges meteorite story. Well, that event happened on November 3rd, 1954, which is, no coincidence, six years before 1960, around when this poem is set. This is a very important reminder that there are details in this book that are dead-on accurate. Now, of course there’s a lot that’s fantastical stuff, too, but we are talking about a poem that is rooted in a very strong autobiographical foundation, and not just autobiographical but historical as well.
The scenes in Memphis in particular are so deeply aware of what’s happening in Memphis at the time, with music, with the transition from white listeners listening to Black music. It’s sensitive to what’s happening with Brown vs. Board of Education and the attempt to integrate schools.
Stanford was a great historian, and I don’t know if he would ever have called himself that. His historical awareness in this poem is ever-present.
There’s a scene in The Battlefield where Francis says, “Baby Gauge and I are hoping to go to school together,” then, “That guy came around passing out pamphlets from the supreme court.” There’s a very clear awareness of what was happening in Memphis racially throughout the 1950s. You see it in the baseball scenes. The Negro League had a team in Memphis called The Memphis Red Socks that I think Stanford is alluding to. You actually see it in the scenes about The Cotton Carnival, which Frank himself attended as a kid in Memphis. Also, Francis felt angry about the way journalists portrayed Sylvester’s death. This reflects a major battle between the Black press and the white press in the 1950s. Stanford was a great historian, and I don’t know if he would ever have called himself that. His historical awareness in this poem is ever-present.
Ata: So, thinking of an autobiographical foundation in the poem, is it possible that, when a teacher’s name gets mentioned, for example, Stanford actually had that teacher in school?
James: Yeah, he refers to Mrs. Barker, and, in my own research of Stanford, I found his baby book that was kept by his sister, who recently died. That baby book actually has pictures of his teachers, and one is Mrs. Barker. He’ll say things in the text like, ‘I gave my tickets to the carnival to Howard.’ Indeed, one of his best friends was Howard Larsky, and there’s a picture of him in the baby book. He mentions Billy Phillips in The Battlefield; indeed, in the baby book there’s a picture of Billy Phillips. So, again, there are some clear autobiographical references.
Ata: What about the astronomer, since we were talking about him? Was he a real person in Frank Stanford’s life?
James: The astronomer was a professor at Southwestern University, which is now Rhodes College. He lived down the street from the Stanford’s when they moved to the Audubon neighborhood in Memphis. He would come to their house regularly to talk to Frank’s dad, and they talked about levee construction. Unfortunately, in the one recorded interview of Frank’s mother, who talked about the astronomer, the man’s name is never mentioned.
The astronomer also knew how to work a telescope, and little Frankie had gotten a telescope for his ninth birthday, and this guy taught Frank how to use it. He showed him the constellations. I guess he was a man of some refinement who made an impression on young Frank. It’s also my impression that he’s the one, in a very positive way, who encouraged him to read and educate himself. In the text of The Battlefield, the astronomer says to Francis, “You need to be an epic!”
Ata: He did!
James: He did indeed. The way that Frank Stanford became an epic was he read more than anybody in the room. I think that came from the astronomer, even though the astronomer gets poked at quite a bit in the text. I think the astronomer is ultimately the person in Frank’s real-life who encouraged him at an early age to educate himself and to read as widely as he could.
Ata: In real life, just to wrap up the historical, or some of these things being real: the book that they stole from the library later in The Battlefield was called The Secret Teachings of All Ages, and, apparently, it did happen.
James: How do you know that?
Ata: Bill Willet told me. He told me that there was a book that they had hidden in the library that was called The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall.
James: Wait, did this happen in Arkansas?
Ata: This was at Subiaco, I believe.
James: Bill didn’t go to Subiaco.
Ata: They apparently went back there to steal that book, or Frank told Bill about stealing it.
James: A noble Stanfordian mission.
Ata: It’s amazing how some of these experiences seem far-fetched but are actually true. Another great example: a character shows up at the beginning of the book, as early as page six, and Francis said that this guy lived ten houses up the street, and then he shows up to help Francis near the very end of the book. The “he” is Elvis! Is what Francis said about Elvis Presley at all true?
…Elvis’s role is important in the simplest way because, for about a year, he lived exactly ten houses down from the Stanfords.
James: Yeah, I think Elvis’s role is important in the simplest way because, for about a year, he lived exactly ten houses down from the Stanfords.
Ata: No way! Wow, Elvis is throughout the whole book.
James: Oh, without a doubt. Elvis was the gateway for Frank Stanford. He loved him as a kid but, of course, Elvis would be a gateway towards the blues, towards the other Black musicians who Frank would ultimately appreciate and enjoy far more than Elvis. As a kid growing up in the white suburbs of Memphis, you weren’t allowed to worship B.B. King. Sam Phillips at Sun Records knew this and really presented and packaged Elvis as a figure for white kids who really liked Black music but couldn’t listen to it.
In The Battlefield, Frank Stanford can do a little revisionist history, and Elvis becomes the gateway to B.B. King and a wide range of Black musicians. There is even a scene in The Battlefield that includes the radio station WDIA, which was a real radio station in Memphis that played all Black music. They were playing Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s version of “That’s All Right” rather than Elvis’s version of that song, and Francis thinks this is great that they’re playing the Black version cause it’s going to piss off the white kids at the honkey tonk. It’s a good example of the relationship between autobiography and revisionist history. The autobiography is Frank loved Elvis and that comes through in the text of The Battlefield. The revisionist history is that Frank would eventually love all the Black musicians who influenced Elvis.
In The Battlefield he condenses everything and allows Francis to make the discovery that Frank Stanford will make ten years later. So, it’s a tricky kind of shadow history that Stanford is writing in The Battlefield. This is a history of what almost was, and we see that with Elvis and the Black musicians who influenced him, if that makes any sense.
Ata: It does, and we see someone like Elvis Presley, about whom I can read different perspectives, humanized in a unique way.
James: Yes. And I’d say it’s a transcendently humanizing text in general.
(Part II of this conversation will be available on August 1, 2021)
James McWilliams is an historian at Texas State University. His writing on art and literature has appeared in a variety of places, including The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The New Yorker. He is writing a literary biography of Frank Stanford for the University of Arkansas Press.
Related Links:
Frank Stanford’s Lament and Some of His Biography with James McWilliams
The Battlefield Conversation Part II
Frank Stanford’s The Battle Field Where The Moon Says I Love You Pt. 1
Frank Stanford’s The Battle Field Where The Moon Says I Love You Pt. 2
Frank Stanford: In His Own Words
Frank Stanford: In Leenus Orth’s Words
The Art Of Imitation In Poetry Between Pablo Neruda & Frank Stanford
Frank Stanford Chapbook Assignment
