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THE BAD CANON - THE LEOPARD'S SPOTS

The infamous film Birth of a Nation was inspired by a trilogy of novels by Thomas Dixon, primarily the first two books, The Leopard's Spots and The Clansmen. The first is the story of the rise of a character named Charlie Gaston, who subscribes to The Secret philosophy of achievement by doing little but thinking about becoming governor (it works). The last two thirds of the book are a romance, sprinkled with some nasty racism. The primary antagonist is an opposing politician who states at one point "You can't tell their color when they get in the [ballot] box." Dixon's decision to cast him as the height of villainy should give you a good idea of the overall racial tone of the book. The main characters are as follows:

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Charlie Gaston – aspiring politician, excellent orator, not much else. I couldn't help but imagine him as Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. As a result, Gaston's song from the movie was going through my head for the majority of the book.

Sallie Worth – Gaston's girlfriend

Allan McLeod – The villain. I imagined him as Snidely Whiplash, mostly because he was called dastardly at one point, and because I only think in cartoons.

The General – Sallie's father.

I think every southern man who has ever achieved the rank of general in the army is thereby known only as 'The General'. I imagined him as Colonel Sanders, which is the wrong military rank, yeah, I fucking know that.

There's also a super-racist preacher who alternately talks about how God is love and how "Negroes don't know their place," even though all of the people in town, including the former slaves, repeatedly state their undying devotion to him. Dixon himself was a preacher, and I think he took the Woody Allen approach and wrote the character as a proxy for himself, based mostly on this humble description:

"Standing in the dim light of his study he was a striking man. He had a powerful figure of medium height, deep piercing eyes and a high intellectual forehead. His hair was black and thick. He was a man of culture, had graduated at the head of his class at Wake Forest College before the war, and was a profound student of men and books. He was now thirty-five years old and the acknowledged leader of the Baptist denomination in the state. He was eloquent, witty, and proverbially good natured. His voice in the pulpit was soft and clear, and full of a magnetic quality that gave him hypnotic power over an audience. He had the prophetic temperament and was more of poet than theologian."

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He was an eloquent, witty and powerful speaker man with a full head of hair. Is the character based on himself? It's just a hunch.

And what a proud Wake Forest alum! I wonder if one could make hoodies with eye holes, for the recreational racist? Current KKK members, you can take that little nugget, if you like. I bet CafePress would print some of those right up.

There is little mention of the KKK in this book, at least directly. I get the sense there will be more in The Clansmen. What little there is is horrifying. A former slave who is attempting to start a school is lynched after he asks a white teacher to kiss him. Instead of saying no, the girl runs off and the KKK murders him. Dixon considers it a triumph.

In spite of the inescapable and often nightmarish descriptions of racism and murder, Dixon provides a lot of counter-arguments to the senselessness himself. They may have been unintentional, purely vehicles to make the novel longer, but they exist nonetheless. He created Harris, a black character who can't find a job in spite of being well-educated, brilliant, and extremely motivated. He also included the character Dick, Gaston's childhood best friend who is eventually burned alive when he is falsely accused of attacking a little girl. (Coincidentally, considering the book is a romance, that probably makes Dick the first of the non-white best friends in a romantic comedy.) Dixon includes these characters to prove his point that everyone, including former slaves, were better off when slavery was in place. However, any logical person, and I'm fairly confident it's not just the lens of 2011 through which I'm judging this, would conclude that what would have helped Harris and Dick was probably not to be re-enslaved. Dixon is undoubtedly a hypocritical dirtbag, but based on the uneven nature of it, the way he waffles between the lynchings and the sad description of a guy who can't find a job because of the color of his skin, it seems as if there was more going on that was struggling to surface, whether Dixon meant for that to happen or not.

The majority of the novel is the romance. I know, the word "romance" is in the subtitle (A Romance of the White Man's Burden), but I was honestly surprised at how pervasive the storyline was. It's extremely melodramatic, and involves both of them crying and yearning and little else. Dixon seemed incapable of characterizing anyone who wasn't based on himself, and as a result Gaston and Sallie have virtually nothing to connect on. To fill the void, Gaston declares his undying love for Sallie a million times, and they both insist that they will never find anyone else, in spite of everyone around them explaining that the concept of soul mates is pretty ridiculous. It's most ridiculous to consider that the book that helped inspire a rebirth of the KKK in this country consists mostly of a man and woman crying and sending letters to each other. I wonder which parts of the book got talked about at the meetings? Did the next incarnation of the KKK start out as book clubs? If I had to guess, I would say that, like in any good book club, almost no one read it.

Harris, the college graduate guy who couldn't find a job, is introduced early in the book by a woman from Boston who shows up for a chapter with the gall to attempt to open a school for black kids. Dixon paints her as a self-righteous, spinsterish, hideous Yankee, and while the preacher and Miss Walker have a civil discussion, his opinions are clear. The clincher is that she came from Harvard, which she name drops early in their discussion. In such an upsetting work, it's tempting to try and find something universal, some little piece of hope that maybe things will be all right and eventually humanity will unite. In The Leopard's Spots, it is this: everyone has always hated Harvard.

SARAH ROSENSHINE