Mode of Program Participation
Academic Scholarship
Participation Type
Paper
Session Abstract or Summary
Ron Rash’s 2006 novel The World Made Straight features a central character, Leonard Shuler, who struggles to navigate the strait between contemporary and “high” culture; on one hand, he is a low-end drug dealer and bootlegger who is comfortable catering to his typically jejune and financially-strapped client base, as well as negotiating with the deceptively bumpkinish Carlton Toomey (the chief drug dealer of his pocket of Western North Carolina), and on the other hand, he is a devoted amateur historian with an interest in classical music. In the novel, Shuler takes Travis Shelton, a disaffected high school student, into his tutelage, the course of which includes not only discouraging Shelton from abusing the substances that Shuler himself sells but also introducing Shelton to regional history and world culture. Among the cultural facets to which Shuler introduces Shelton is, in Rash’s terms, “the bliss and magnificence of classical music.” The title of the novel, in fact, is a loose appropriation of a line from Handel’s oratorio Messiah. This paper will analyze the role of classical music in the novel as it undermines cultural expectations of a trailer-dwelling Appalachian drug dealer and serves to illustrate three levels of cultural expectation: the high (classical music), the low (drug culture), and, implicitly, the middle (the complicated existence of someone caught by circumstance between the two).
Presentation #1 Title
Ron Rash’s The World Made Straight and the Rejection of Cultural Expectation
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Ron Rash’s 2006 novel The World Made Straight features a central character, Leonard Shuler, who struggles to navigate the strait between contemporary and “high” culture; on one hand, he is a low-end drug dealer and bootlegger who is comfortable catering to his typically jejune and financially-strapped client base, as well as negotiating with the deceptively bumpkinish Carlton Toomey (the chief drug dealer of his pocket of Western North Carolina), and on the other hand, he is a devoted amateur historian with an interest in classical music. In the novel, Shuler takes Travis Shelton, a disaffected high school student, into his tutelage, the course of which includes not only discouraging Shelton from abusing the substances that Shuler himself sells but also introducing Shelton to regional history and world culture. Among the cultural facets to which Shuler introduces Shelton is, in Rash’s terms, “the bliss and magnificence of classical music.” The title of the novel, in fact, is a loose appropriation of a line from Handel’s oratorio Messiah. This paper will analyze the role of classical music in the novel as it undermines cultural expectations of a trailer-dwelling Appalachian drug dealer and serves to illustrate three levels of cultural expectation: the high (classical music), the low (drug culture), and, implicitly, the middle (the complicated existence of someone caught by circumstance between the two).
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
David McKay Powell is Assistant Professor of English at Union College in Barbourville, Kentucky.
Ron Rash’s The World Made Straight and the Rejection of Cultural Expectation
Ron Rash’s 2006 novel The World Made Straight features a central character, Leonard Shuler, who struggles to navigate the strait between contemporary and “high” culture; on one hand, he is a low-end drug dealer and bootlegger who is comfortable catering to his typically jejune and financially-strapped client base, as well as negotiating with the deceptively bumpkinish Carlton Toomey (the chief drug dealer of his pocket of Western North Carolina), and on the other hand, he is a devoted amateur historian with an interest in classical music. In the novel, Shuler takes Travis Shelton, a disaffected high school student, into his tutelage, the course of which includes not only discouraging Shelton from abusing the substances that Shuler himself sells but also introducing Shelton to regional history and world culture. Among the cultural facets to which Shuler introduces Shelton is, in Rash’s terms, “the bliss and magnificence of classical music.” The title of the novel, in fact, is a loose appropriation of a line from Handel’s oratorio Messiah. This paper will analyze the role of classical music in the novel as it undermines cultural expectations of a trailer-dwelling Appalachian drug dealer and serves to illustrate three levels of cultural expectation: the high (classical music), the low (drug culture), and, implicitly, the middle (the complicated existence of someone caught by circumstance between the two).
