© 1966 by Frederick Feikema Manfred
Introduction © 2014 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska
All rights reserved
Reprinted by arrangement with the Manfred Literary Committee.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Manfred, Frederick Feikema, 1912–1994.
King of spades / Frederick Manfred; introduction to the Bison Books edition
by Joel Johnson.—Second edition.
pages; cm
ISBN 978-0-8032-4882-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8032-8426-5 (epub)
ISBN 978-0-8032-8427-2 (mobi)
I. Title.
PS3525-A52233K5 2014
813′.54—dc23
2014014358
“The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.”
Introduction
JOEL JOHNSON
Frederick Manfred’s King of Spades (1966) is a sprawling, complex novel, vividly depicting the human condition in all of its dimensions. While not as widely read as Lord Grizzly and Scarlet Plume, two of the other Buckskin Man Tales, King of Spades is a daring and encompassing work. Manfred sets a large stage, and his characters are big and bold enough to walk upon it. There are mistaken identities, lust and love, jealousy and revenge, gunfights and hangings, gold and greed, rude justice, hope, and the chance of redemption. The very foundations of civilization are exposed, and the nature of the American experiment is subtly examined. This is a mature work of a mature novelist, resulting from years of research and reflection regarding the American West. It may fall short of being the Great American Novel, but not for lack of trying. Manfred seriously engages the central questions of American political and cultural identity, and he makes a strong argument for looking for the meaning of America in the frontier experience.
As in most of his work, Manfred seeks insight regarding human nature in the prairies and hills of the great American West. It is here that wilderness and civilization actively compete, revealing truths about humanity not easily seen in more stable communities. Each of the principal themes of King of Spades could sustain its own novel, but Manfred skillfully weaves them into one tale. The purpose of this introduction is to pull apart some of these strands so that the reader can better appreciate Manfred’s achievement.
One of the most obvious themes of the book, called out in the epigraph to Part One, concerns the basic taboos of the family. Likely inspired by Sigmund Freud’s work, Manfred explores the consequences of violating the near universal taboos against incest and patricide. According to Freud, though their origin is difficult to ascertain, these taboos serve as the base of civilization.1 Manfred does not seem to contradict Freud’s argument, preferring to explore the consequences of violating the taboos in varying settings. Does it matter, for example, whether these taboos are violated while outside of established society? Are there ever any mitigating factors that society will consider as it decides upon a penalty—or are violations of these taboos too dangerous to allow for any kind of acceptance? These questions lie in the background as the novel develops.
Manfred sets up the main plot in King of Spades by telling of the King family’s proclivity toward violating basic social norms, beginning with Magnus King’s parents. Henrietta Worthington, the daughter of an English earl, defies her father and runs off with Alan King, a commoner from a poor family that used to have high status—if the stories passed from one generation to another can be believed. As a result of her elopement, Henrietta is cut out of the family inheritance. Tempted by prospects in America, Alan and Henrietta immigrate in 1834 to Iowa, where their son is born. Like his father, Magnus King grows up proud of his aristocratic heritage, disdaining the ordinariness of his surroundings. When he moves to Chicago to study medicine, he habitually acts as if he is above the law, flouting one social convention after another. He sleeps with innumerable women, even going as far as crossing racial lines. Eventually, he falls in love with a thirteen-year-old girl named Katherine—herself quite promiscuous. They marry and move to Sioux City, Iowa. Although Magnus and Katherine are treated as respectable members of the community—on account of Magnus’s profession and noble bearing and Katherine looking older than her actual age—the couple cares little for society’s expectations.
When their son Roddy is born, deeper taboos are challenged. Magnus delivers Roddy by Caesarean section, a procedure virtually unknown in that region and considered sacrilegious by Gooseberry June, the Yankton woman assisting Katherine. Then, as Roddy grows from infant to child, he establishes an unusually close relationship with his mother. Magnus strenuously objects to Roddy regularly sleeping in his mother’s bed; this, combined with visions of his wife’s unfaithfulness, makes him a madly jealous man. He returns home one evening with gun blazing, shooting Katherine repeatedly before Roddy levels him with a shotgun blast. Roddy flees, thinking that both he and his father are now murderers.
Amnesia creates a sharp break here for Roddy, who after fleeing can remember neither where he came from nor how old he is. Having given himself the name Earl Ransom, he picks up experience as a gunslinger and gambler along the trails west of the Missouri. When he begins a relationship with Kate, the madam of the Stinging Lizard brothel in Cheyenne, he imagines a life full of potential. He will strike it rich as a prospector in the Black Hills, and the two of them will build a family—even a dynasty—in the new world of the West. Tragically, however, neither Kate nor Ransom are aware of their real connection to each other, despite hints along the way. Kate is in fact Katherine, Roddy’s mother. She suffered serious wounds but survived the murder attempt. This truth is not revealed to them until the end of the book, which means that although they violated the incest taboo, they did so unknowingly. Nevertheless, with the possible exception of the murders and murder attempts, this is the most serious crossing of social nomas in the novel.
It is no surprise that Manfred links his tale closely to the Oedipus myth, in which Oedipus unwittingly kills his father, King Laius, and marries his mother, Queen Jocasta.2 Like Oedipus, Roddy/ Ransom finds himself alone in the wilderness, with no knowledge of his past. Both are taken in by animal tenders: Oedipus by a shepherd, Ransom by Sam Slaymaker, a pack train boss. Though the circumstances are somewhat different, Oedipus and Ransom push their respective fathers out of the way and marry their mothers. Both suffer grave consequences as a result. (As a subtle reference to the etymology of the name Oedipus, Manfred even notes that Roddy’s mother and paternal grandmother have unusually large feet.)
By reworking the Oedipus story in the American West, Manfred accomplishes two things. First, he ties the myth (and its attendant Freudian interpretations) to a more familiar setting, thereby emphasizing the universality of the main human taboos. Second, and more important, Manfred is able to test the nature of the taboos more thoroughly than if his subjects were all living in an established society. Because King of Spades is set on the edge of human civilization, one can see human nature expressed more clearly, as opposed to the behavior that comes from many years of socialization in a settled environment. This, after all, is what makes Mark Twain’s character Huckleberry Finn more intriguing than his Tom Sawyer. We get closer to human nature with Huck than with Tom, making for a much more thought-provoking tale.
In King of Spades we have a whole cast of Huck Finns, each having decided to “light out for the territory” because of one objection or another to “sivilization.”3 The opportunities for reinvention in the West are enormous—especially since there are many paths to quick wealth. However, despite all of this newfound freedom, and despite the routine flouting of civilized norms (from cleanliness to chastity) on the
frontier, no one in the book rejects the basic Oedipal taboos. Violations outweigh any history of good deeds, and even the perpetrators are horrified upon discovering what they have done. Try as one might—even on the frontier—to cast off the restrictions of society, one cannot destroy these two cornerstone taboos. Their power prompted Oedipus to pluck out his eyes and call for his own death; Earl Ransom does much the same at the end of this novel.
While preparing to write King of Spades, Manfred remarked in an interview that writers have given too much attention to the relationship between mother and son and too little to the problem of fatherhood: “The father is there always so obviously in the scene that they seldom pay any attention to him…. We have never gone around and looked at this peculiar problem. Because it is a problem to be a father, more difficult to be a good father than to be a good mother.”4 Manfred’s fascination with fatherhood explains the chief difference between King of Spades and the Oedipus story: in King of Spades, the father returns. Oedipus truly kills Laius before marrying Jocasta; Magnus King, in contrast, survives his gunshot wounds and arrives in Deadwood just as his son’s trial begins. In other words, the aggrieved father can come back to confront his son. What might Laius have done to Oedipus if given this chance? One might expect him to exact revenge, making doubly sure that Oedipus could never harm him again. What Manfred suggests, though, is that a returning father might actually do the opposite: with his wife dead, his son admitting to the sin, and even Ransom’s friends calling for a hanging, Magnus is a voice of calm reason, even of forgiveness. After his initial shock, Magnus earnestly attempts to settle down Ransom: “Son, we all stand in mud. But, remember, we also have our eyes fixed on heaven” (303).
Like Laius, Magnus is largely to blame; in both cases the father caused the orphaning of the son. However, this is not the only reason for Magnus’s gentleness toward Ransom. As the novel’s opening epigraph states, the first great miracle on earth was the “emergence of love.” The taboo followed upon this. It did not precede it, in Manfred’s view. Also, according to the last line of the epigraph, despite the deadliest of fleshly acts, the Lord’s works remain marvelous. This, ultimately, is why Magnus is sorrowful and repentant at the end of the novel, rather than furious. He weeps for his son and his wife, despite everything that has happened. He loves them dearly, regardless of their transgressions. The news, then, that Earl may have fathered a child with Erden brings Magnus great joy. His line—and his son’s—will continue, in the midst of great sin. Love has indeed proven more fundamental than even the most basic taboos of society.
At this point, the meaning of the novel’s title becomes clearer. Historically, the King of Spades, or King of Swords in tarot, has been associated with nobility, uprightness, and imperiousness on one hand, and on the other hand tyranny and abuse of power.5 As such, it is an apt symbol for the King family, with all of its laudable and vicious traits. The Kings are noble in birth and in bearing, seeing themselves as superior to all others. This attitude can be seen in their heirlooms of aristocracy, such as the image of the old earl hanging on the King family wall; in behavioral tics, such as the motion of placing a monocle in one’s eye; and in the aversion to ordinary norms. We see the best and worst tendencies of the aristocratic temperament in the Kings; their large-scale acts of virtue and vice make the novel feel much more expansive.
The King of Spades is also associated with King David, another favored man who transgressed mightily.6 Not content with the blessings he already enjoyed, David sought to marry Bathsheba and to have her husband, Uriah, killed. Because his sins were more deliberate than Oedipus’s, David is arguably a worse violator of fundamental social norms. Surprisingly, however, David does not receive eternal damnation but instead becomes the head of the most royal lineage of all time.
Ransom’s case lies partway between those of David and Oedipus. The fact that Ransom’s transgressions are severe but unintentional moves him closer to Oedipus. However, his sinful actions are indirectly responsible for his founding of a new family line. Without Bathsheba, the “house and lineage of David” would have been rather ordinary. Without Kate as a driving force, Ransom would not have set out in the same way for the Black Hills. He would not have discovered gold, met Erden, and fathered children. As in David’s case, love ultimately trumps sin. This is what makes King of Spades, at its heart, a tale of redemption rather than of outright tragedy. In the midst of the awfulness of great sin, new birth is possible. Earl Ransom can indeed be ransomed.
The setting of King of Spades makes Ransom’s redemption possible. All of the principal characters have come to the Black Hills from elsewhere: from the East, from Europe, where civilization is well established. They come west for any number of reasons, but all are united in the hope of building a life better than the one they are leaving. As defense counsel Clemens notes at Ransom’s trial, “Each one of us has his peculiar past and so we’re not inclined to stick our noses into each other’s affairs. The height of discourtesy out here is for a man to ask another where he came from. To ask that is to put oneself down as a fool” (278). Many change their name and appearance, like Ransom with his gambler’s mustache; others, like Horses and Hermie, acquire nicknames. In each case the past is repressed, allowing for sins and failures to be forgotten—either literally, as with Ransom’s amnesia, or figuratively, as with Kate and others.
However, Manfred makes clear that while the West can erase names and deeds, it cannot erase blood. As Magnus remarks while burying his wife and son, “All too soon no one will remember what these names stood for. Well, that’s America for you. Better to carry the blood than the name” (304). The liberating power of America is at its most intense in the West, wiping away all that is artificial and conventional, leaving the natural. Blood can be cleansed of its sins in the West, but it will always follow its tendencies. The Kings may not be recognized as noble back east—either in civilized America or Europe—but their blood is clearly noble. It is no surprise that Ransom is a crack shot, an expert gambler, a discoverer of gold, a protector of others, and a founder of a town. As his father told him, and his father before that, the Kings are a step above everybody else.
Keeping Kings within the law is an affront to aristocracy; if they are to act nobly, they cannot be hindered by ordinary restrictions. Consider, for example, Magnus’s response to Ransom marrying both Erden and Kate: “Now, now. Steady, steady. A real stud of a man is bound to have complex tastes when it comes to women” (302). Unlike the East, the West gives space for these tendencies to be expressed. England stifled the Kings and Worthingtons. Iowa, as well, was too civilized to let a natural aristocracy rise to the top.7 It was only in the West that noble blood could show itself without a title, and where an Earl or a King could act as he saw fit.
However, the vices of nobility are also unleashed in the West. These are often harmless, but some are serious enough to threaten ordinary citizens’ sense of security. The town of Deadwood, once it is established in a rudimentary fashion, promptly begins to “civilize” those of nobler blood. This includes Ransom, whom others regularly identify as being a cut above the average. So long as he helps protect the townsfolk by shooting bandits and troublemakers, they accept his eccentricities. When he kills Kate in a drunken rage, however, he has struck at the heart of civilization, the sacred conventions that order family relationships.
This the citizens of Deadwood cannot abide. The community—roughhewn as it is—seeks justice in the manner of eastern courts. A judge is named, as well as a prosecutor and defense attorney. Procedures are established, an outdoor courtroom improvised, and the legitimacy of the whole enterprise is proclaimed by those present. This is to be no summary hanging. Rather, the trial will be the closest possible approximation of a big city case.
While in certain respects the trial at the end of the book is a laudable improvement over a lynch mob, its formality resembles that of a witch trial, the real purpose of which is to bring down that which is feared to be superior to the people
’s power. Importantly, while the miners’ court yields a kind of semi-civilized justice, it does not provide redemption. That comes from Ransom’s own actions. He has fathered a new people, and now he swings himself into the noose, thereby slipping out of the hands of the court.
Ultimately, King of Spades is about more than the struggles of a complicated family. As in his other novels, Manfred is fascinated by the broader cultural significance of the American West. In this respect, he joins a long fist of authors on both sides of the Atlantic, from Carlyle and Arnold to Cooper, Whitman, and Twain, who devote themselves to celebrating or criticizing the new world. For his part, Manfred does not clearly choose sides, instead subtly balancing the competing claims of old world and new. Like Willa Cather, Manfred appreciates both the hope and the sense of loss experienced by those who move far from home to establish a new and uncertain life on the frontier. (Manfred’s Kings and Cather’s Shimerdas in My Ántonia face similar challenges of adaptation.) Despite its promise, the West is not Eden; many lack the fortitude to struggle with the harsh forces of nature and the pangs of homesickness. Understanding both the attraction and the cruelty of the West is of paramount importance for Manfred; underneath and around the story of Magnus, Kate, and Ransom is built this larger concern.
In the opening pages of King of Spades, we learn that Magnus King’s aristocratic ancestors, the Worthingtons, originally hailed from Frisia, where their name meant “root people” (1). They did indeed send down deep roots, establishing a centuries-long dynasty in England. However, they were just as importantly a root-less people. They were the boat people who ferried the Angles and Saxons over to Britain and then moved there themselves. They sought a new world in which to set down their roots, and through great struggle they succeeded.
This tension between being rooted, or civilized, versus rootlessness, or wandering in search of a better future, is at the core of King of Spades. It makes the novel more substantial, setting the Oedipal story in an epic context. It also makes this a truly American novel, for its emphasis on how old ways are uprooted—for good and for ill—in a world of great freedom and possibility.
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