What I Am Reading: "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" by John Berendt

I went into this book expecting a Capote-style true crime nonfiction novel with a southern gothic flavor. This was definitely the case, but the book took a little while to get around to the crime, the investigation, and (most extensively) the trial. Additionally, it definitely leaned less heavily on the southern gothic aspect aspect than it could have, or at least it didn't purple up the prose as much as it could have.

Don't get me wrong, the story was inherently a southern gothic one. The book is about a big-shot antiques dealer and preservationist house-flipper murdering his troubled gay lover, then enlisting the aid of a voodoo priestess throughout his repeatedly-overturned trials. It's just that the writer presents these through the deadpan viewpoint of an outside observer with journalistic training. It is also not the sole focus of the book, which lavishes attention on the setting. The writer, New York Magazine editor John Berendt, fell in love with Savannah, Georgia, in the '80s, when airfare was cheap enough for New Yorkers to spend long weekends out of town. Savannah is portrayed as an insular Old South city, inaccessible and unconcerned with developments in the outside world. It was free, allegedly, of Civil War or Civil Rights Movement strife, and is more interested in upscale parties and high-society debauchery, and its gorgeous old houses.

In the course of showing us Savannah through his eyes, Berendt tells of his exploration of the city and introduces a cast of colorful characters, including con man, attorney, squatter, and nightclub proprietor Joe Odom; and Chablis, a black transgender woman who works as a nightclub singer. Berendt rolls pretty well with the trans aspect considering it was the '80s; he even falls into gendering Chablis properly with only a little hesitation. The whole city has a don't ask-don't tell attitude toward the LGBT world, as upscale society ladies keeping a poker face about it even as they gossip behind their hands.

The book is a little more troublesome on race. Though Berendt is made uncomfortable by some of the Confederate stuff, he also makes an effort to learn about the (sedate, in his portrayal) Black community in Savannah. Among all the weird, traditionalist parties that he attends, the Black Cotillion is one (and is the one that Chablis crashes). That being said, the story is mostly focused on white people, and some Black people who appear have their dialogue stylized to reflect a dialect, a somewhat jarring thing to run across.

Jim Williams and his murder of Danny Hansford takes up most of the book, however. I didn't look up the backstory before or while reading it, so the result of almost all of the trials in the story came as a surprise to me. Williams was a respected member of the town’s high society whose preservation efforts had done a great deal to revitalize Savannah's urban core; Hansford was a troubled, younger man from an underprivileged background who was also erratic, violent, and unpredictable. He lived with Williams to “help with restoration projects” and “take care of him through his fainting spells,” as Williams explained it. One night, while Hansford was allegedly in a rage, Williams shot him with one of his old Lugers. Williams claimed self-defense, but the prosecution, headed by a new and inexperienced District Attorney, decided that he had staged the crime scene, and charged him with murder.. Williams was convicted, then re-convicted in a new trial after the verdict was voided; then a third trial led to a mistrial and change of venue, and he was acquitted in the fourth trial. Williams was a believer in the power of concentrated thought to influence outcomes, and to this end he hired Minerva, a voodoo priestess, to put curses on his enemies and protect him from Danny's spirit. He doesn't quite believe in the reality of this magic, but, according to his own theories, it is the (negative) thoughts that count. I’m not sure how much of this aspect may have been embellished; the book plays with the timeline of events anyway, and some characters tend to speak in helpful exposition, so it is certainly possible that this was punched up to make a better story (probably a little problematic).

I think that Williams’ half-disbelief leads Berendt to maintain a level of remove as well, though he does tag along to watch all the rituals. Williams' legal efforts stay in the driver's seat once the story comes to them, and his attorneys and their love of college football are prominent. I almost wonder what the book would have been if Berendt hadn’t inserted himself into the narrative. We wouldn’t have had Chablis or the loveable rascal Joe Odom (a true Mr. Bad Example), but the Williams murder story would have been free to be darker, spookier, and more unsettling. The southern football could have brought some bathos to the proceedings. That, however, may just be my love of horror and ancillary genres speaking.