And so Raleigh and fat Mingo Sheffield (his irrepressibly loyal friend) set off on an uproarious contemporary treasure hunt through a landscape of unforgettable characters, falling into adventures worthy of Tom Jones and Huck Finn. A moving parable of human love and redemption, Handling Sin is Michael Malone's comic masterpiece.
And so Raleigh and fat Mingo Sheffield (his irrepressibly loyal friend) set off on an uproarious contemporary treasure hunt through a landscape of unforgettable characters, falling into adventures worthy of Tom Jones and Huck Finn. A moving parable of human love and redemption, Handling Sin is Michael Malone's comic masterpiece.
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Overview
And so Raleigh and fat Mingo Sheffield (his irrepressibly loyal friend) set off on an uproarious contemporary treasure hunt through a landscape of unforgettable characters, falling into adventures worthy of Tom Jones and Huck Finn. A moving parable of human love and redemption, Handling Sin is Michael Malone's comic masterpiece.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781402239335 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Sourcebooks |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2010 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 720 |
| Sales rank: | 761,701 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.80(d) |
About the Author
Hometown:
Hillsborough, North CarolinaPlace of Birth:
Durham, North CarolinaEducation:
B.A., Syracuse University; Ph.D. in English, Harvard UniversityRead an Excerpt
Like everyone else, Raleigh Hayes saw the world, and the people with whom he was obliged to share it, through the kaleidoscope of his own colored designs. As the years turned the viewer round and round, the bits of glass fell into new patterns, but the perspective remained limited to Raleigh's eye.
That there was a world that was not merely an elongation of his own limbs, that there were people in it who were not merely extensions of his own will, he had accepted, in frustration, before the age of two. He had learned by then that he did not make himself bounce merrily in air, nor was the woman's voice saying, "This is the way the ladies ride. Trot trot trot," his own. The fingers that made the church and steeple, made the white bear jump out of no place into view, tucked the shiny blanket around his shoulders, were not his own fingers, nor was the man's voice his that said, "Goodnight, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite, Little Fellow."
But if this knowledge gradually shrank him, so that he no longer painted pictures in which he towered not only over his stick-legged parents, but over the square house and the round spoked yellow sun; still, to the boy, the world beyond his ken stayed shadowy, and he as indifferent to it as it was to him. Outside Thermopylae there was nothing mapped on the globe but Cowstream to the east, the state capital to the west, the beach, beyond the beach a vague ocean, and, indistinctly, a shape called North Carolina surrounded by an incalculable shape called America, surrounded by, in the first years of his life, that "Overseas" where "We" were trying to win against "Them" before they took over the world and killed everyone in it.
As with everyone else, age did not entirely enlarge the young Raleigh's point of view. He realized there were a great many other people, up to their vague other business, but he assumed that the world around him was, simultaneously, unremittingly engrossed in Raleigh Hayes, while remaining utterly incapable of penetrating his secrets or understanding his unique personality. He believed both that his teachers noticed no other pupils but him, and that they never saw him down the row of yellow desks, reading "Joe Palooka" comics behind his math book, or nodding off to sleep in warm study periods, or staring heartsick at one of those girls whose rope-jumping usurpation of the sidewalk had once so annoyed him. Believed both that the whole fourth grade stared at him in the halls, and that none of them knew that his parents had divorced. Believed both that his mother had no life distinct from his, and that she had no inkling that he ever hid the evidence of his wet dreams at the bottom of the laundry hamper. Believed both that the entire town of Thermopylae was talking about the fact that he had bought a package of Trojan condoms at the drugstore, and that not a single person suspected what he might want to do with them. Like everyone else, Raleigh Hayes did not realize that most other people heard more and cared less than he imagined, just as he cared less about their secrets than they believed.
In his preoccupation with himself, Raleigh was certainly not unusual. Our hero was, however (particularly for a citizen of a small southern Piedmont town, out of which, or into which—as his aunt Victoria said—almost nobody had budged for two hundred years), rarer in the thoroughness of his indifference to what did not concern him, and even to what did. As the edges of his world moved back and the shadowy figures in it took on color and form, it was his habit to map and neatly label the typography, then explore no further. This disinterest he came to perceive as a virtue: he never gossiped, and would not willingly listen to the gossip of others.
All his life, Raleigh congratulated himself that it was not in his character to open mail not addressed to him, to open doors without knocking, to pry when it was none of his business. When his Hayes relatives began chortling together through long evenings of garbled gossip about each other or anecdotes about whatever they had managed to remember or make up about the Family Past ("Tell the one about when Papa went up with the barnstormer and the wing fell off. Tell the one about Aunt Mab and that jibber-jabber bigamist from Chicago"), Raleigh picked up an erector set or a stereo kit or a book. He, frankly, wasn't interested.
Table of Contents
PrologueTHE CALL
Chapter 1 In Which the Hero Is Introduced and Receives a Blow
Chapter 2 Which Treats of the Strange Message the Hero's Father Sent Him
Chapter 3 Of a Misunderstanding between Our Hero and His Neighbors
Chapter 4 How Raleigh Received His Name
Chapter 5 In Which Raleigh Blackmails an Enemy and Frightens the Kaiser
Chapter 6 Of the Advice Given Raleigh by His Only Sane Aunt
Chapter 7 In Which the Hero Commits a Crime
Chapter 8 And Is Nearly Arrested
Chapter 9 The First Sally Takes a Strange Turn
Chapter 10 How Raleigh Was Confirmed in His View of the World
THE QUEST
Chapter 11 In Which Our Hero Attends a Surprise Party
Chapter 12 Raleigh Escapes
Chapter 13 Wherein Is Continued the Account of the Innumerable Troubles Endured by Our Hero
Chapter 14 Sudden Impulses Overwhelm Our Hero
Chapter 15 In Which Is Continued a Conversation Begun Thirty Years Ago
Chapter 16 In Which Raleigh and Mingo Fall into a Swamp
Chapter 17 Raleigh's Confession
Chapter 18 How Mingo Fared Alone at Myrtle Beach
Chapter 19 In Which the Hero Finds Himself at Sea
Chapter 20 The Great Adventure of the Bass Fiddle Case -
Chapter 21 In Which Is Described the Famous Barbecue at "Wild Oaks"
Chapter 22 Our Hero Succumbs to a Faded Beauty
Chapter 23 The Very Extraordinary Adventures Which Ensued at the Inn
Chapter 24 In Which Are Continued the Misfortunes That
Reading Group Guide
Our Book Club Recommendation
Michael Malone’s Handling Sin is a comic novel whose depths are almost deceptively hidden by a happy-go-lucky exterior. Beneath the improbable story -- which concerns a respectable man who must pursue his elderly father on a humiliating wild-goose chase across the American South -- is a tale that encompasses complex issues such as racism, the claims of family, and the extent to which "respectability" is a virtue. Readers will laugh at the goings-on in Malone’s whimsical universe, but they may also see in them a reflection of the world they experience every day.
The theme of family in Handling Sin is sure to start many conversations. On the one hand, Malone is a master at portraying the uncomfortable comedy that results when a family contains more than a few eccentrics, and his hero, North Carolina insurance salesman Raleigh Hayes, must put up with an almost endless assortment of relatives who are decidedly not, by his middle-of-the-road standards, normal.
But as Hayes digs deeper into his family's history, he finds that what he’s been quick to judge is far from simple, and his attitudes about family raise issues of real significance, such as identity and race in the modern South, and the conflicts between compassion for others and the need to care for oneself. Raleigh's journey into his family history becomes multilayered and in turn will provoke many to think about the funny and serious sides of every family.
Book clubs may particularly enjoy sharing their ideas about the literary influences behind this almost epic-sized tall tale. The strange quest on which Raleigh finds himself borrows liberally from such masterpieces as Don Quixote and Tom Jones. Readers of John Kennedy Toole’s modern classic, A Confederacy of Dunces, will also spot many of the citizens of that nation among Malone’s southern eccentrics and hopeless cases. It’s almost impossible to exhaust the hunt for these literary connections in Malone's highly sophisticated novel; and while Handling Sin is too much fun to feel like work, reading group members will discover just how "heavy" the themes in this lighthearted book can become. (Bill Tipper)
Discussion Questions from the Publisher
1. At the beginning of the novel, on the Ides of March, Raleigh Hayes receives the following fortune in a Chinese cookie: "You will go completely to pieces by the end of the month." In what ways does the fortune come true, and in what ways does it not?
2. Aristotle has famously said, "Character is action." Characters will act in certain believable ways because of their established natures. How does the character of Raleigh Hayes lead to his response to the situations in which he finds himself? What qualities in his personality make Raleigh's father feel he needs to be sent on the journey he takes?
3. The first section of the novel is called "The Quest." Earley Hayes is sending his son on a quest for certain objects, but the quest is really to teach Raleigh what lessons about life and faith?
3. The objects Raleigh must "find" and bring to New Orleans (the gun, the bust, the Bible, Jubal himself, etc.) are all connected to the Hayes family past: How?
4. Why do you think that Earley set up such an elaborate journey for Raleigh instead of just coming out and telling him what he wanted him to do and why?
5. Raleigh's journey takes place during Lent and climaxes on Maundy Thursday (the gathering in New Orleans), Good Friday (when Earley dies), and Easter (when Earley is "buried"). How is this significant?
6. The author has said that characters often insist on following their own destinies. For example, he did not originally plan for Mingo to accompany Raleigh on his journey. How do you think Raleigh's trip would have been different if Mingo had not joined him?
7. It has been said there are really only two stories. In one, a stranger comes to town (as Mr. Darcy does in Pride and Prejudice); in the other, somebody leaves home, as Dorothy does in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Which is true of Handling Sin? Does the novel contain both elements?
8. Images and characters of a religious nature show up often in Handling Sin. One of the most important of these has to do with Earley's position as a former minister. Would you consider the Hayes family to be religious? In what other ways do the doctrines and rituals of Christianity play a central role in the novel?
9. The name of the novel is Handling Sin. Why? What does Earley want his son to learn by going into the world and handling sin there (becoming engaged in the clutter of life, accepting his own imperfections, and forgiving those of others)? What are some examples of how Raleigh's journey leads him to participate in the seven "sins" (lust, anger, etc.)?
10. There are seven chapters in the book that are meditations, taking Raleigh back to memories of his childhood. These chapters are named for the seven sacraments: Baptism ("How Raleigh Received His Name"), Confirmation ("How Raleigh Was Confirmed in His View of the World"), and so on. Talk about the purpose of these chapters.
11. In the memory chapters, there are two central figures (both women, both intellectual and moral "guides" to the young Raleigh). One is Flonnie Rogers, the family maid; one is Raleigh's aunt Victoria. Early in the novel, Raleigh turns to Victoria Hayes to be a kindred soul, a reliable ally amidst a madcap family. In what ways is Raleigh wrong about his picture of Victoria? What do they both learn?
12. Flonnie and Victoria have long kept a deep and dark family secret (that Victoria and Jubal Rogers had a child). Raleigh's journey is to unravel that secret. What does the discovery of "Billie" do to the characters in the novel?
13. Discuss the similarities and differences caused by race between Victoria Hayes and Flonnie Rogers. From where did they draw their strengths, and how did these strengths affect the courses of their lives, for better or for worse? How have Flonnie and Victoria's attitudes about life informed Raleigh's own?
14. Handling Sin has been compared to the great picaresque novels like Don Quixote and Tom Jones. It shares many qualities (and even narrative scenes) with the cherished comic epics on which it is modeled, yet it is set in the modern American South. In what ways does the novel mix elements of old and new narrative styles to make the story realistic and contemporary, yet fantastical and classic?
15. Race and religion are two of the major themes of Handling Sin. How do these issues interact? What do you think the novel is trying to say about the complicated histories of Southern communities?
16. Gates Hayes, Raleigh's free-spirited brother, is one of the novel's most engaging characters. Do you know anyone like Gates? Why are these people so engaging despite their irresponsibility?
17. The cover description refers to Mingo (the novel's Sancho Panza to Raleigh's Quixote) as Raleigh's "irrepressibly loyal friend." Would Raleigh agree with this description at the beginning of the novel? At the end? Is it possible for two people so different to truly be friends? How does Raleigh learn to appreciate Mingo's human gifts?
18. Through the course of Handling Sin, Raleigh begins to better understand his own family-in the beginning of the novel, he seems to be contemptuous of his Hayes relatives and to know little about what's going on with his wife, Aura (who's running for mayor), or his twin daughters, Caroline and Holly. How many different types of families does Raleigh come to have in Handling Sin? How do Raleigh's changing attitudes toward the Hayes family reflect real-life family relations?
19. How would you describe Raleigh and Aura's relationship? Does Aura's activist work disturb Raleigh as much as you would expect? Why do you think this is so?
20. Willa Cather said, "Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet." Michael Malone is a Southerner and his novels are almost always set in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, where he grew up. How is this Southernness manifested in Handling Sin?
21. The novel travels southward through very specific Southern cities (Charleston, Atlanta, Montgomery) on its way to New Orleans. What are some of the reasons for these choices?
22. Handling Sin is filled with hilarious and quirky characters. Besides the main characters, who was your favorite person in the novel? How did this supporting character affect the outcome of the story?
23. What do you think of the contents of the Civil War treasure chest? What treasure did Raleigh receive at the end of his journey?
24. How would you summarize the spiritual "message" of Handling Sin?