HOW JOHNNY CASH INSPIRED CONTEMPORARY SOUTHERN GOTHIC
BY JACKSON MCCOY PHOTOS BY PROVIDED
Johnny Cash was — and still is — a titan of country and rock music. The specter of Cash is felt in every chugging acoustic guitar lick and every crooner singing a melancholy tune. However, very few consider the impact of Cash on the world of literature. In fact, Cash’s lyrical prowess and all-black aesthetic hit the horror genre hard enough to create a new subgenre: Southern Gothic.
The swamp of Southern Gothic writing is rich with literary achievement, hosting classic authors like William Faulkner alongside contemporary voices like Anne Rice and Cherie Priest. Often, Southern Gothic focuses on eccentric characters and dark themes centered on poverty, social alienation, and violence presented in humorous or sarcastic ways.
Cash’s music often delves into similar themes, with hints of religious redemption sewn throughout — another aspect of Southern Gothic writing. He often drives this home in humorous songs mirroring the Southern Gothic literature that both predated Cash’s career and came after it.
The relationship between Cash’s music and Southern Gothic is symbiotic. Flannery O’Connor, author of short stories like “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” wove humor throughout violent and grotesque allegories for religious redemption.
Cash incorporated O’Connor’s style of candid macabre. Songs like “A Boy Named Sue,” which tells a story of generational trauma and wounded masculinity throughout, are presented in a comedic way. In the live recording of the song, listeners can hear Cash and the audience laughing at the ridiculous premise of a boy being named Sue, despite the dark nature of the narrative Cash creates about the boy.
The influence of Cash’s musical work is plainly laid out in multiple novels and stories that fall into the subgenre of Southern Gothic literature.
John Kennedy Toole’s 1980 novel, “A Confederacy of Dunces,” follows the story of Ignatius J. Reilly, an unemployed misanthrope who lives with his mother in New Orleans. Ignatius is a smart yet lazy man who interacts with a plethora of colorful characters on his quest for employment in the French Quarter.
Many aspects of Toole’s novel feel like a Cash song. “Dunces” puts forward an almost unredeemable character in a wild journey careening across the South, an aspect that runs parallel to Cash’s music. Additionally, Cash’s music often ends on a somber note, something similar to Toole’s novel, though “Dunces” ends in a happier way than the lives of characters in Cash’s discography (for the sake of interested readers, I will not spoil the ending).
Aesthetically, Cash’s music does not feature many of the motifs typically included in Southern Gothic fiction. He rarely sings about decrepit mansions or ghosts or swamps. However, his outlaw image and activism present in his stage performances, lifestyle, and music match the work of another major force in Southern Gothic literary achievement: Cormac McCarthy.
McCarthy’s 1985 novel “Blood Meridian” is a historical epic set in the American west, telling a story of settler violence against Native American populations across the southwestern territories. McCarthy writes about the Glanton gang, a group of men who made a living hunting Native Americans. “Blood Meridian” is a scarlet smear across America’s identity, pointing to the horrible history of violence against the people who lived in America before it was known as America.
Cash was an ardent advocate for Native Americans at the peak of his career. He made telling the stories of Native Americans central to his music in the ‘50s and ‘60s, fighting both his record label and the dominant right-wing image of country artists at the time. Running off of the success of his previous album “I Walk the Line,” Cash released the 1964 album “Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian,” featuring a tracklist of songs about multiple different tribes. In collaboration with folk artist and songwriter Peter La Farge, Cash loudly fought for the rights of Native Americans and criticized the American government’s past and current policy.
McCarthy and Cash both were advocates for Native Americans at times when that vein of advocacy was radical. Through their writing, both literary and musical, the two figures fought for issues in ways that only they could.
However, no writer quite as brazenly captures the Southern Gothic vibe in the same primal form Cash did as Karen Russell.
Russell’s debut novel, 2011’s “Swamplandia!” is a polarizing, and at times extremely triggering, read. However, its insane premise of a 12-year-old managing an alligator wrestling theme park, steeped in the usual motifs of Southern Gothic horror as well as deeply bizarre imagery, make it an essential piece of literature.
“Swamplandia!” is a story of trauma, family struggle, and violence. Allegorical in its synthesis of “Alice in Wonderland” vibes with brutality and fervor, the novel takes Cash’s foundational Southern Gothic storytelling and turns it up to its most extreme. Taking inspiration from songs like Cash’s “Delia’s Gone” and “Cocaine Blues,” Russell articulates a world of nonsense and hopelessness, highlighting the cruelty of humanity and existence with maddening, sinister tales.
Halloween season is fast approaching; the nights are growing longer and longer, the leaves are shifting to their death colors, and horror novels are beginning to haunt the imaginations of readers everywhere. As you start to curl up to read the next scary story on your list, consider starting at horror’s often unappreciated subgenre, Southern Gothic, and put a Cash record on.
