Please note that this episode contains depictions of violence that some people may find disturbing.
This is Whitney Hodgin from the historic Cimarron Hotel for HPPR’S Radio Readers BookBytes.
When I encounter people with strong personalities, I often consider what it would be like if the two of us were stuck in a broken-down elevator.
Would we get along?
Would they be the kind of person who freaks out when confined in small spaces?
I reckon if I were stuck in an elevator with Kathi Holt, we’d have a great time! I’d learn so much and she would be reminded of all the huge fans she has in the world.
We would likely share a common attitude that freaking out about a broken elevator won’t fix anything and if we were both just patient and mindful we could get to the bottom floor sooner or later.
I would probably point out that in any story, descent is often symbolic of hell.
Riding an elevator down instead of up is a very purposeful choice that a writer makes to set the tone.
Author Jason Reynolds knew what he was doing in Long Way Down and I would be so lucky to be trapped in an elevator with him. But not the elevator in his novel!
The cigarette smoke alone sets the scene so effectively that the reader can’t help but cry right along with the troubled characters out of sympathy for their respiratory systems. The elevator ride Reynolds describes is truly a marvel of engineering and economy.
In about 25,000 words typed across 300 pages this man illustrates the most mundane movements shared among the human race –
· A literal elevator ride symbolizing one’s fall from grace
· Yet another trip down by law
· Pushing the buttons of another just because you can
· And all the gun violence: narratives, studies, data, denial, proof, reality, accounts
Reynolds’ novella is the only one to have hit me square in the chest. I’m a moving target with the attention span of a nat and the luxury of suburbia to coddle my consciousness.
I was struck by this story.
Reynolds is a reporter.
I was struck by a story that shouldn’t be a story because there’s nothing new here. Accounts of gun violence makes the gun advocates mad, after all.
What’s there to report?
But even the gun advocates can relate to this young man’s account as one of the antagonists. Could we call gun victims antagonists?
I wanted to take the gun away from our protagonist’s waistband before he does something stupid that can’t be undone.
That’s another thing about dramatic narratives –
IF YOU INTRODUCE A GUN IN ACT 1
IT HAS TO GO OFF BY ACT 3
And yet RENOLDS FLIPS THE SCRIPT
THANK GOD
I suppose not even the gun advocates would feel riled up that this gun-toting protagonist wants to exit stage left.
Instead of HITTING HIS TARGET.
Of every book I’ve ever read Long Way Down has the most bite.
In sum, the protagonist defies gravity.
He defies the system of black-on-black violence that mandate he avenge his brother’s death.
He defies the struggle of man against God’s will.
He defies the world in favor of his true protagonistic nature that hasn’t let him down – yet.
And all this thanks to the everyman’s elevator broken and beleaguered by a group of gun-violence victims who ought to live in close quarters to our protagonist, but instead died.
