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Boy With Loaded Gun: A Memoir
Lewis Nordan is famous for his special vision of the Mississippi Delta. His characters, for whom the closest-though hopelessly inadequate-description might be "eccentrics," share the stage with swamp elves and midgets living in the backyard. His fiction is unlike anybody else's and is as dark, hilarious, and affecting as any ever written. It's also writing that lays bare the agony of adolescence and plows, as the Cleveland Plain Dealer once put it, "the fields of puzzling wonder that precede the responsibilities and disappointments of adulthood." What bred and fed Nordan's imagination, his originality, his indefatigable sense of humor? The answers aren't obvious. But now that Lewis Nordan produces, directs, and stars in his own story, we just might find out. Nordan's mother was widowed when he was a baby, and she went back to her home town to remarry and raise her only son "Buddy." Itta Bena, Mississippi, was a prototypical fifties Delta town, so drowsy that even before puberty, Nordan had made his escape plans. What happened next was pretty typical-a stint in the Navy, college in Mississippi, very early marriage, young fatherhood, alcoholism, infidelities, broken hearts. But in Nordan's hands, the typical turns into the transcendent and, at the heart of things, there is always the irrepressible laughter. Horrible things and horribly funny things happen in Boy with Loaded Gun, but it's that heart that leads us through Lewis Nordan's dark tunnel and back into the light.
290 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2000
11 people are currently reading
213 people want to read
About the author
Lewis Nordan
25 books74 followersFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lewis Nordan (August 23, 1939 – April 13, 2012) was an American writer.
Nordan was born to Lemuel and Sara Bayles in Forest, Mississippi, grew up in Itta Bena, Mississippi. He received his B.A. at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, his M.A. from Mississippi State University, and his Ph.D. from Auburn University in Alabama. In 1983, at age forty-five, Nordan published his first collection of stories, Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair. The collection established him as a writer in the grotesque Southern tradition of William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, and Flannery O'Connor. It also established a place for Nordan’s fiction, the fictional Arrow Catcher, Mississippi, a small town in the Mississippi Delta based loosely on Nordan’s hometown of Itta Bena.
After the short-story collection The All-Girl Football Team (1986) followed Music of the Swamp (1991), a novel/short-story cycle featuring Nordan's spiritual alter ego, the young Sugar Mecklin, as the protagonist. The book features aspects of magic realism that would become one of Nordan's trademarks, along with a peculiar mix of the tragic and the hilarious.
Wolf Whistle (1993), Nordan's second novel, was both a critical and public success. It won the Southern Book Award and gained him a wider audience. The book deals with one of the most notorious racial incidents in recent Southern history: the murder of Emmett Till.
The novel The Sharpshooter Blues (1995) is a lyrical meditation on America's gun culture, as well as another portrait of the grotesque lives in Itta Bena. With the coming-of-age novel Lightning Song (1997), Nordan moved from Itta Bena to the hill country of Mississippi. The novel still features Nordan's magic Mississippi realism, complete with singing llamas and poetic lightning strikes.
In 2000, Nordan published a "fictional memoir," Boy With Loaded Gun.
Before retiring in 2005, Lewis Nordan lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he taught Creative Writing at the University of Pittsburgh.
Lewis Nordan (August 23, 1939 – April 13, 2012) was an American writer.
Nordan was born to Lemuel and Sara Bayles in Forest, Mississippi, grew up in Itta Bena, Mississippi. He received his B.A. at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, his M.A. from Mississippi State University, and his Ph.D. from Auburn University in Alabama. In 1983, at age forty-five, Nordan published his first collection of stories, Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair. The collection established him as a writer in the grotesque Southern tradition of William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, and Flannery O'Connor. It also established a place for Nordan’s fiction, the fictional Arrow Catcher, Mississippi, a small town in the Mississippi Delta based loosely on Nordan’s hometown of Itta Bena.
After the short-story collection The All-Girl Football Team (1986) followed Music of the Swamp (1991), a novel/short-story cycle featuring Nordan's spiritual alter ego, the young Sugar Mecklin, as the protagonist. The book features aspects of magic realism that would become one of Nordan's trademarks, along with a peculiar mix of the tragic and the hilarious.
Wolf Whistle (1993), Nordan's second novel, was both a critical and public success. It won the Southern Book Award and gained him a wider audience. The book deals with one of the most notorious racial incidents in recent Southern history: the murder of Emmett Till.
The novel The Sharpshooter Blues (1995) is a lyrical meditation on America's gun culture, as well as another portrait of the grotesque lives in Itta Bena. With the coming-of-age novel Lightning Song (1997), Nordan moved from Itta Bena to the hill country of Mississippi. The novel still features Nordan's magic Mississippi realism, complete with singing llamas and poetic lightning strikes.
In 2000, Nordan published a "fictional memoir," Boy With Loaded Gun.
Before retiring in 2005, Lewis Nordan lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he taught Creative Writing at the University of Pittsburgh.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
April 28, 2015
In Boy with Loaded Gun, novelist Lewis "Buddy" Nordan, who relishes in the dark flavors of all forms of human folly, chronicles his own wayward deeds in his candid memoir of an "odd child" who grows into a tragically perverse adult. With hard won introspection, Nordan does not flinch when writing of his shortcomings, including adulteries, alcoholism and homelessness. Even in the midst of this pain, Nordan's characteristic wit rises to to the top of his prose, though it is more stingy and acerbic than the redemptive humor found in the majority of his novels.
This memoir is compartmentalized into three parts, with the first chronicling his childhood in Itta Bena, Mississippi. If you are not familiar with the author, I would recommend this work as a splendid introduction, as many characters in his novels are ripped right from the author's own childhood experiences and sublimated into his literary black comedy with a profound moral center. There is chapter on his reaction to Emmet Till's murder that serves as inspiration for his most well known novel, Wolf Whistle.
This work is infused with grief and loss from the beginning, as Nordan's father died before he could even form any tangible memories of the man. However, there are moments of sheer joy and humor that the reader can delight in, such as young Nordan's addiction to mail order subscriptions or an incident where he finds himself locked out of his hotel in NYC, naked of course.
Through all of his missteps, the alcoholism, failed marriage and deaths of his sons, Nordan focuses on the redemptive nature of writing. Given the veracity and lyricism of his fictional prose, I can not imagine Nordan ever being at a loss for words. But, as a child, he longed for "words that came from so deep inside me that when I heard their sound, perceived their meaning, I would become possessed of a new self, somehow, one that might someday leave Itta Bena and exist, nay thrive, in another world." And it is through his writing that Nordan escapes both Itta Bena and his own string of follies and regret.
Read Boy with Loaded Gun to laugh, and also read it to weep, for in its pages every range of emotion is illuminated.
This memoir is compartmentalized into three parts, with the first chronicling his childhood in Itta Bena, Mississippi. If you are not familiar with the author, I would recommend this work as a splendid introduction, as many characters in his novels are ripped right from the author's own childhood experiences and sublimated into his literary black comedy with a profound moral center. There is chapter on his reaction to Emmet Till's murder that serves as inspiration for his most well known novel, Wolf Whistle.
This work is infused with grief and loss from the beginning, as Nordan's father died before he could even form any tangible memories of the man. However, there are moments of sheer joy and humor that the reader can delight in, such as young Nordan's addiction to mail order subscriptions or an incident where he finds himself locked out of his hotel in NYC, naked of course.
Through all of his missteps, the alcoholism, failed marriage and deaths of his sons, Nordan focuses on the redemptive nature of writing. Given the veracity and lyricism of his fictional prose, I can not imagine Nordan ever being at a loss for words. But, as a child, he longed for "words that came from so deep inside me that when I heard their sound, perceived their meaning, I would become possessed of a new self, somehow, one that might someday leave Itta Bena and exist, nay thrive, in another world." And it is through his writing that Nordan escapes both Itta Bena and his own string of follies and regret.
Read Boy with Loaded Gun to laugh, and also read it to weep, for in its pages every range of emotion is illuminated.
December 13, 2025
Възможно ли е тая книга да съм я чела повече от година?!
Помня, че я видях в един списък на Мери Кар, боската на мемоара. Едвам се сдобих с някакво хартиено копие, но още първите страници ме отблъснаха с идеологическо писане. Явно доста време ми е трябвало да се отърся от това впечатление и да продължа, подтиквана от безкрайната си вяра в жанра.
В крайна сметка, нещата се промениха, но не по същество. След детството и младостта, разтълкувани през призмата на политически убеждения, следва зрялост, издържана в терапевтичен ключ. Чак на финала има намек за някакво освобождение от всичко; нуждата да се преподаде правилният урок най-после отстъпва пред естествената противоречивост, случайност и моментност на човешката природа. Приемам предишните състояния за мъки на узряването, но не съм сигурна, че и авторът ги вижда така.
Иначе Нордан определено може да пише, родее се с Кар и нейната задълбоченост в детайла. Историите са ярки и запомнящи се. Разбира се, и тук има клуб на пияниците, който бащата посещава. Лично на мен са ми любими женските образи — любовницата джудже на доведения му баща, посрещната с пиршество от майка му в семейния дом; неговата собствена любовница — „нимфоманката“; съпругата на шофьора, с когото се сблъскват на пътя… Може би защото чуждите животи му дават възможност да излезе от рамката, която спазва, когато говори за своя. Така че определено ще се запозная и с някоя от художествените му книги, примерно Music of the Swamp. Дано във фикцията да диша още по-свободно.
Помня, че я видях в един списък на Мери Кар, боската на мемоара. Едвам се сдобих с някакво хартиено копие, но още първите страници ме отблъснаха с идеологическо писане. Явно доста време ми е трябвало да се отърся от това впечатление и да продължа, подтиквана от безкрайната си вяра в жанра.
В крайна сметка, нещата се промениха, но не по същество. След детството и младостта, разтълкувани през призмата на политически убеждения, следва зрялост, издържана в терапевтичен ключ. Чак на финала има намек за някакво освобождение от всичко; нуждата да се преподаде правилният урок най-после отстъпва пред естествената противоречивост, случайност и моментност на човешката природа. Приемам предишните състояния за мъки на узряването, но не съм сигурна, че и авторът ги вижда така.
Иначе Нордан определено може да пише, родее се с Кар и нейната задълбоченост в детайла. Историите са ярки и запомнящи се. Разбира се, и тук има клуб на пияниците, който бащата посещава. Лично на мен са ми любими женските образи — любовницата джудже на доведения му баща, посрещната с пиршество от майка му в семейния дом; неговата собствена любовница — „нимфоманката“; съпругата на шофьора, с когото се сблъскват на пътя… Може би защото чуждите животи му дават възможност да излезе от рамката, която спазва, когато говори за своя. Така че определено ще се запозная и с някоя от художествените му книги, примерно Music of the Swamp. Дано във фикцията да диша още по-свободно.
November 15, 2020
The entire story is so crazy, its difficult to believe that its based on real life people and incidents!
August 21, 2023
Took me a little bit to read. Interesting, easy to read.
June 26, 2024
Funny & sad; at times brilliant, with a brutal honesty, & a hint of Dunleavy.
May 17, 2014
Lewis "Buddy" Nordan (August 23, 1939–April 13, 2012) wrote a great memoir.
Often times his memoir reads like a tell-all tale, and at other times like a novel about Nordan himself. The line between fact and fiction is rather hard to ascertain. Boy with Loaded Gun is difficult to pigeonhole into any traditional classification. However, fans will be pleased and new readers will be amazed with his last book.
Nordan confesses to cooking up conversations, changing names, and exaggerating. What's left is an immanently readable, laugh your head right off, story about growing up in the Mississippi Delta town of Itta Bena and the haywire adulthood Nordan lived upon leaving Mississippi in the 1940s and 50s.
For Nordan aficionados, the book touches on the perennial themes of his fiction. Beginning with his first collection of short stories published by LSU Press in 1983 Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair, to his most recent novel Lighting Song, loneliness and grief take center stage, along with a double helping of alcoholism, fantasy, and a Gothic sense of doom and loss.
What makes Nordan's writing engaging is a sense of redemption. His characters are on a quest somewhat like the wayfarers Louisiana novelist Walker Percy wrote about. For Nordan, humor makes suffering and pain bearable.
The memoir begins with the early death of his father when Nordan was a baby. Soon his mother would remarry, this time to a drunk. Nordan's stepfather came home each day from work to retire to his bedroom, where he would drink beer until sleep. Each morning he'd awake to ritual puking. Unfortunately, Nordan followed in his stepfather's footsteps.
He was a bizarre teen, one often obsessed with sex and other fantasies. As a teenager, Nordan ordered a military surplus pistol from the back pages of a magazine and attempted to bushwhack his stepfather in cold blood. The gun mysteriously jammed; thus saving the boy from murder and providing a title for the book.
After a stint in the Navy, Nordan attended the Methodist Millsaps College in Jackson, where he found easy sex in the parking lot outside the women's dormitory. He and his partner quickly and ludicrously eloped. In graduate school, he bummed around with hippies, did drugs, lived on a farm, and had illicit trysts with the first real hippie he met. This was a life far removed from the confines of Itta Bena, though his departure wasn't far from the rural South. Dissipation, it seems, can be found in the remotest hamlets of the Bible Belt, even around Auburn, Alabama, where he studied for the Ph.D. in English.
The memoir has all the components of a good southern novel. It's sprinkled with drunkards, midgets, racial angst over the Emmett Till lynching, pathological liars, sexual perversion, and even an unclaimed corpse that is kept on display for several decades at a Mississippi funeral home.
In one of the book's saddest moments, Nordan's college-aged son committed suicide. Years earlier, a child by his first wife died at birth. Perhaps the suicide served as a catalyst for the author to finally grow up. It appeared that Nordan eventually learned to take responsibility and to call his grief by name.
The story ends with a surreal book tour stop in New Orleans, the land of dreamy dreams. By then Nordan was a published author and teacher of creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh, remarried and reconciled with wife number two, and on the wagon.
Readers may learn more than they wish about the real Buddy Nordan.
No, readers will love this book, and not just long-time Nordan fans. They won't love it because of his now public failures, but because he's got the guts to tell the tale, and because of the life-affirming laughter in every page. As always, Nordan writes beautifully, even if he had to jumble up the facts to avoid being sued.
--Dayne Sherman, author of Welcome to the Fallen Paradise: Novel and Zion: A Novel (coming soon)
Often times his memoir reads like a tell-all tale, and at other times like a novel about Nordan himself. The line between fact and fiction is rather hard to ascertain. Boy with Loaded Gun is difficult to pigeonhole into any traditional classification. However, fans will be pleased and new readers will be amazed with his last book.
Nordan confesses to cooking up conversations, changing names, and exaggerating. What's left is an immanently readable, laugh your head right off, story about growing up in the Mississippi Delta town of Itta Bena and the haywire adulthood Nordan lived upon leaving Mississippi in the 1940s and 50s.
For Nordan aficionados, the book touches on the perennial themes of his fiction. Beginning with his first collection of short stories published by LSU Press in 1983 Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair, to his most recent novel Lighting Song, loneliness and grief take center stage, along with a double helping of alcoholism, fantasy, and a Gothic sense of doom and loss.
What makes Nordan's writing engaging is a sense of redemption. His characters are on a quest somewhat like the wayfarers Louisiana novelist Walker Percy wrote about. For Nordan, humor makes suffering and pain bearable.
The memoir begins with the early death of his father when Nordan was a baby. Soon his mother would remarry, this time to a drunk. Nordan's stepfather came home each day from work to retire to his bedroom, where he would drink beer until sleep. Each morning he'd awake to ritual puking. Unfortunately, Nordan followed in his stepfather's footsteps.
He was a bizarre teen, one often obsessed with sex and other fantasies. As a teenager, Nordan ordered a military surplus pistol from the back pages of a magazine and attempted to bushwhack his stepfather in cold blood. The gun mysteriously jammed; thus saving the boy from murder and providing a title for the book.
After a stint in the Navy, Nordan attended the Methodist Millsaps College in Jackson, where he found easy sex in the parking lot outside the women's dormitory. He and his partner quickly and ludicrously eloped. In graduate school, he bummed around with hippies, did drugs, lived on a farm, and had illicit trysts with the first real hippie he met. This was a life far removed from the confines of Itta Bena, though his departure wasn't far from the rural South. Dissipation, it seems, can be found in the remotest hamlets of the Bible Belt, even around Auburn, Alabama, where he studied for the Ph.D. in English.
The memoir has all the components of a good southern novel. It's sprinkled with drunkards, midgets, racial angst over the Emmett Till lynching, pathological liars, sexual perversion, and even an unclaimed corpse that is kept on display for several decades at a Mississippi funeral home.
In one of the book's saddest moments, Nordan's college-aged son committed suicide. Years earlier, a child by his first wife died at birth. Perhaps the suicide served as a catalyst for the author to finally grow up. It appeared that Nordan eventually learned to take responsibility and to call his grief by name.
The story ends with a surreal book tour stop in New Orleans, the land of dreamy dreams. By then Nordan was a published author and teacher of creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh, remarried and reconciled with wife number two, and on the wagon.
Readers may learn more than they wish about the real Buddy Nordan.
No, readers will love this book, and not just long-time Nordan fans. They won't love it because of his now public failures, but because he's got the guts to tell the tale, and because of the life-affirming laughter in every page. As always, Nordan writes beautifully, even if he had to jumble up the facts to avoid being sued.
--Dayne Sherman, author of Welcome to the Fallen Paradise: Novel and Zion: A Novel (coming soon)
August 14, 2008
After reading about half of this book, I have elected not to read any further. It's not terrible, but there are so many other books I'd rather spend my time on. The funny parts are REALLY funny, but you have to read a lot of so-so stuff in between laughs. Besides, all the funny stories are at the beginning of the book. Once he gets past young adulthood, the book becomes a little dull and slightly maudlin-----as in: "Here's yet another story of how I f***ed up my life and couldn't get out of my own way." I'll just scan through the rest of it to see if I've missed any more funny bits.
HOWEVER: If you ever run across a copy of this book, turn to pages 12 and 13 and read about what he thought he heard his fifth grade teacher say while he was daydreaming and not paying attention. Nothing I have ever read in all my life has made me laugh that hard! Nothing! If you read it and don't laugh yourself in half, your funny bone is irreparably broken.
Also, read the Author's Note at the beginning of the book. He recreates his discussion with his wife about how to classify this book. It reads like a sort of "Who's on First?" for librarians. Very funny.
HOWEVER: If you ever run across a copy of this book, turn to pages 12 and 13 and read about what he thought he heard his fifth grade teacher say while he was daydreaming and not paying attention. Nothing I have ever read in all my life has made me laugh that hard! Nothing! If you read it and don't laugh yourself in half, your funny bone is irreparably broken.
Also, read the Author's Note at the beginning of the book. He recreates his discussion with his wife about how to classify this book. It reads like a sort of "Who's on First?" for librarians. Very funny.
November 21, 2012
I loved this book. It's impossible to know how much of it is specifically true and how much hyperbolic or just plain made up but the deep, honest, truthful, ugly guts of it, the emotion of it is as raw and truthful as memoir gets. The language is at times playful, poetic, harsh. The writing is clear, funny, heart wrenching. I want to know this guy. I know some of him already from what's inside myself, but I'd like to sit down to a meal with him and talk about pretty much anything. The kind of insight into oneself that it takes to write a book like this can only come out of some incredibly painful living and a lot of courage to confront it.
August 11, 2013
In the beginning I was turned off by Nordan's obvious use of hyperbole and admitted omission of the truth. But as the story progressed it became clear that he wrote that way only because he couldn't remember the specifics of the early parts of his life. The book really got good when it became clear he remembered things--his adult years--well. He reveals himself to be a flawed man, but he makes no apologies. I appreciate his conversational style of writing and would've been happy if this book went on for another 200 pages.
November 16, 2007
Why hasn't this book come out in paperback? It's pretty hard to find now. Some of Nordan's fans didn't like it so much, maybe cuz it was pretty perverse in spots. Also, someone from the publisher told me they thought the title may have hurt the book's success as well. I thought it was a highly enjoyable read.
January 10, 2008
I have seen Lewis Nordan aka Buddy read from his work a few times at book festivals. He is hilarious. Part of this book made me laugh so hard my insides hurt. Other parts were odd/disturbing and maybe a bit TOO honest.
June 9, 2012
It's not for the faint of heart. He's no saint, but the story is written so well. This was recommended to me by two of my closest friends and I cherish the conversations we had after we all finished it. I even found river rocks for all of us.
September 21, 2008
hysterical Delta story
November 28, 2010
Worst memoir I have ever read. Took me 4 months to get through it. Wasted my time, it never got better.
November 20, 2010
-- Autobiography of an excellent writer but not a very nice guy. Self-indulgent.
July 23, 2014
One of those books where, after you've read the last page, you're certain you won't find anything so well-written and enchanting ever again
April 16, 2015
Pitiful people. Unfortunately I don't care about them.
January 23, 2016
It was ok. Not one of my favorites.
June 19, 2016
Got halfway through this book and then gave it away to a local thrift store. Disappointed and it failed to hold my interest.
June 6, 2014
Great book, really enjoyed it, it's a memoir!
January 11, 2015
A psychologically astute examination of a life from my favorite Southern novelist.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews