Almanac Book Review: ‘The Sawdust House’ – David Whish-Wilson

 

 

David Whish-Wilson, The Sawdust House, Fremantle Press, Fremantle, 2022, pp. 304, $32.99.

 

History and fiction are both concerned with who we are, what we do and why or what drives us to do it? They differ, however, in their approach to tackling such questions. The historian relies on evidence, sources, documents, data. Their lot is to try and make sense, to develop an explanation, or explanations – what might be referred to as a theory or hypothesis – of whatever information they obtain in seeking to understand the phenomenon/phenomena which becomes the object of their curiosity. A golden rule of historical research is not to make things up; to have evidence and documentary support for any statement that you wish to make; to not oxymoronically ‘report’ on something that has not occurred, that you don’t know anything about. To do so amounts to historical fraud; being a pretend historian.

 

The same thing does not apply to friction writers. To the extent they are taking on an historical topic, or historical figure, they can ignore what in fact has happened, make things up to enhance the flow of their prose and storytelling. The golden rule here is that of readability, not accuracy.

 

Let us delve into this issue more fully by considering fiction writing about an historical figure who has had an eventful and complex life. The historian may know about major events associated with our subject’s life and broad knowledge of the background to, and context of his or her times. But there may be no record of their internal life, their thinking and motivation. Suppositions may be derived ex post as it were, in trying to explain why our protagonist did what they did. As a result of the lack of information on the internal life of our subject, an historian may find themselves focusing much of their research and writing on background and contextual factors; describing institutions, major social, economic and political forces operating at the time and ‘using’ our protagonist as an example of more general points; a signifier or representative of the times when our protagonist did what they did.

 

On the other hand, the fiction writer is more likely to focus on the internal life of our subject, make up, or as they might say, imagine very specific details of their life, the nature of their relationships with family, friends and others that flitted in and out of their orbit. This may also result in less background and contextual information being provided. To the extent that something needs to be provided on this score it will be of the ‘bare bones’ variety, operate at the level of assumed knowledge and rely on readers to go and search more specific and complicated details for themselves.

 

This discussion provides a background to David Whish-Wilson’s The Sawdust House, a work of historical fiction which examines the life and times of Yankee Sullivan – his birth name was James Ambrose; he was also known as Frank Murray and James Sullivan (1811 – 1856), a champion bare knuckle fighter credited with introducing pugilism to the United States. In an Author’s Note Whish-Wilson tell us

 

This novel…is the product of research drawn from both official and unofficial sources. Subsequent researchers will find the historical record pretty much as I have transcribed it, except where I have changed names and dates and amalgamated characters for dramatic purposes and to better suit the truths of fiction.

 

The ‘truths of fiction’!

 

Whish-Wilson organises The Sawdust House around four days of interviews of Yankee Sullivan conducted by journalist Thomas Crane in San Francisco in June 1856. Sullivan is holed up in jail awaiting hanging. He is being held in custody by a Vigilance Committee who wants to rid San Francisco of ‘notorious murderers, thieves and black-legs’. Sullivan was a ‘shoulder-charger’ (someone who punches over the shoulder), a bully, thug and enforcer charged with election fraud, racketeering, deception and menace for a Democratic politician on the West Coast; a function he had previously performed with élan for Tammany Hall in New York.

 

The background to these events was the emergence of the Know-Nothings (members were asked to say ‘I know nothing’ if asked by outsiders concerning their activities), Nativist Americans who later merged with the Republican Party. They wished to keep America for Americans, which in this period of American history translated into America for White Protestants. They were especially hostile, on the East Coast to Catholics, and more especially Irish immigrants following the Irish potato famine of the 1840s. On the West Coast, in both the early 1850s and 1856, their hostility was directed to Australians, many of whom had Irish heritage.

 

Crane is interviewing Sullivan to learn about major events of his life, especially his fighting career, for his boss’s newspaper and to later write a book about his life and times. Whish-Wilson puts words into Sullivan’s mouth on books on boxing;

 

Such a book allows the gentleman to indulge in the blood-sport while feeling himself at a remove – distanced by a veil of clever words as though my combat and bleeding were but a poem, or a legal contract or a mathematical problem to be understood.

 

Whish-Wilson presents the interactions between Sullivan and Crane in the style of a boxing match; a series of quick and short exchanges. What should I ask, when should I ask it, how should I ask it; how much should I tell him, when should I tell it, how should I tell it? And hanging over all of this is that Sullivan knows something that is of the utmost importance to Crane; something that Crane suspects he has knowledge of.

 

Whish-Wilson locates Sullivan in a Hobbesian world of nature where life is brutish, nasty and cruel. It is a world characterised by poverty, drunkenness, noise, urine, excrement, foul smells, filth, indifference, violence, rape, buggery and death. Sullivan was born in Brandon, County Cork in Ireland. It was a colonial outpost for the English where locals were treated as slaves. His family left for London after his mother – ‘a most spirited beauty’ – was abducted and raped by an English officer. He is arrested as a street arab in London for stealing a gentleman’s handkerchief and transported to Australia. Whish-Wilson’s description of the shocking conditions endured by convicts on board ship while being transported to Australia and the floggings and worse he and other convicts experienced, especially in Moreton Bay, make for shocking and disturbing reading.

 

Sullivan uses fighting to get himself out of the abyss, to avoid being bashed by an adversary, escape authority, make/win a stake to get away, obtain status, find employment, to find something that he was in charge of, something that belonged to him. Whish-Wilson has Sullivan say, ‘To make my dream come true I had to claw my way to the top of the dunghill, and I were made dirty ever after. I were cursed with an ability to fight like a devil and were stupid enough to believe that this were a thing that can be turned on and off like a tap.’ He also has him say, ‘I were on top of the heap with hands around my ankles’.

 

Consistent with a Hobbesian approach, Whish-Wilson has Sullivan voice cynical and disparaging references about both Australia and America. With respect to Australia, he says

 

Terra Australis Nondum Cognita…that majestic and timeless land so marked by the invaders’ habits of breaking and digging and slashing and burning – what the English like to call the great march of progress from darkness into light.

 

He also says, ‘My country-men, they would as soon toady up to an overseer, a lieutenant, a governor, as knock them down and stand in replacement’.

 

And in commenting on his time in America he says, ‘I’m happy here among the tumult of a city in the pangs of birthing, whose midwives are yet the greediest and wickedest men that this young nation has produced’.

 

Which-Wilson also has Sullivan provide comments on the inherent evil and love of violence which is present in so many men.

 

I have seen the depths of cruelty that certain depraved men are drawn to commit for the simple pleasure of doing so. The crime however that surpasses all these crimes is that such men are universally useful to governments.

 

He also has Sullivan inform us on the ‘true’ nature of the rich and powerful, those who lord it over us.

 

…those same men who proselytise from on high about the Godly focus upon working working working and commerce commerce commerce are of course the greatest thieves the most astounding scoundrels the most hostile in their violence toward their wives their children their workers…The proselytisers want us weak, and they want us obedient, and that is why we must organise ourselves that is why we must value our labour and our hard-won revolutionary freedom because our betters will do everything they can to take it from us.

 

And then we have the following extract from one of the few characters who provides Yankee Sullivan with a helping hand;

 

…it were our childlike need to believe in fairytales that makes us what we are and which will also destroy us because our leaders have always used this understanding against us…It’s all just a tissue a cloud a shadow play of words an idea a dream…The dream is beaten into us in church in the newspapers in the Governor’s speeches.

 

In The Sawdust House David Whish-Wilson employs the struggles of Yankee Sullivan as a signifier, a representative, an everyman of the human condition. In commenting on the past in this fictionalised account of a life at different points in Ireland, London, Australia and the East and West Coasts of America, in the first half of the Nineteenth Century, he forces readers to think about the nature of the world in the here and now. This is the great strength of his writing. He is a consummate writer, a master wordsmith who knows his history.

 

Whish-Wilson has the journalist Thomas Crane say, as he contemplates the impending killing of Yankee Sullivan by the Vigilante Committee wishing to rid the West Coast of those horrible Australians, ‘The soul of a man is small as a raindrop, but the hole it leaves once departed is big as the universe’. If only this was true. This is the sort of thing that a writer of fiction can get away with. They can write, say and make up anything they like. However, this is not a statement or observation which can be made by historians; especially those who study humans at their worst abusing, tormenting, terrorising, raping, pillaging, starving and killing each other – think of the history of the world of those millions and millions of people who have been killed for no other reason that others wanted them dead; think of now, if we could only be bothered to pay attention. This brings us back to the differences between historians and the writers of fiction as they go about their respective quests in trying to make sense of who and what we are.

 

The book can be purchased from the publisher Here.

 

More from Braham Dabscheck can be read Here.

 

 

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