DENNARD DAYLE: (Reading) Every man, save a few simians, deserves freedom. The men on the other side of this field don't understand that.
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Just a few pages into his new novel, and Dennard Dayle has written a stirring battlefield speech from a general to his troops at Gettysburg.
DAYLE: (Reading) Right now, we can crush the Union's center and throw the continent's largest army into chaos. We can show their senators and newsmen that we will not kneel. I won't mince words. We are one charge away from winning this war, but I need you with me. Or rather, Pickett needs you with him. I'll be supervising.
RASCOE: The Confederate General Pickett, as in Pickett's Charge - and yes, satire is on the march. "How To Dodge A Cannonball" is, among other things, about the absurdity of the Civil War as experienced by a 15-year-old from Illinois who seeks glory through flag twirling. Author Dennard Dayle is with us now to talk about it. Were you a flag twirler yourself at any point?
DAYLE: Let's see. No, I only served briefly in the Civil War, but no.
RASCOE: OK.
(LAUGHTER)
RASCOE: There are so many Civil War novels. Why did you want to write this one?
DAYLE: So it had a lot more to do with my own fixation than necessarily some kind of critique of the existing canon. Though, you know, most Civil War novels are written by serious people. So I think I bring something very unique on that term - this sort of catch-22 by way of the 1860s.
RASCOE: Talk to us about Anders 'cause he is this kind of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn-type character, and he's white. And that's, like, a big part of this (laughter).
DAYLE: So Anders' voice was kind of one of the main impetuses for me writing this. He is someone who has this - he has this narrow experience. He has these very tilted viewpoints coming at him. He's trying to sort this information. I mean, he is deluded, but the reason is he does not really have a better bank of information to work from. And then he is just thrown into the pool of the world, and he is essentially learning about the world, unfortunately, in the most active, bullet-ridden, high-risk way possible.
You know, sometimes when you write comedy, it's nice to go with sort of a pure fool or a pure idiot. But with him, I tried to do someone who had a lot of strong sort of - I guess you'd say quantitative or mechanical intelligence but was just not equipped for the social maelstrom that he is being thrown into, especially at his age. He is convinced that his tiny slice of this war - you know, maintaining morale, performing for soldiers - is the most important thing.
RASCOE: He takes it very seriously, and he is, like, very critical of others who try to do it (laughter).
DAYLE: Oh, yeah, his ego is wrapped all the way around this thing. In his head, he is the Mozart of spinning this flagpole around.
RASCOE: And it seems like Anders - his primary motivation, at first, is to survive 'cause, you know, the thing about it is, he twirls for the Union, then he switches sides, and he twirls...
DAYLE: (Laughter).
RASCOE: ...For the Confederates, and then he switches back to twirl for the Union. But this time, he attaches himself to a Black regiment, and then he goes around telling everyone, he's an octoroon.
DAYLE: (Laughter).
RASCOE: None of the Black soldiers really buy it, but they just kind of let him in. Why do you think they accept him?
DAYLE: So right off the bat, it is clear that this kid, who has no idea what he's doing, is a breed of misfit. And they are in this extremely unenviable position where they are being told they have to, you know, fight to earn or deserve their freedom. That's sort of an idea I interrogate throughout all this. And I think being in that position gives them a little more sympathy than they might have otherwise.
And this one figure, Gleason, who - he calls himself a scientific playwright. He's kind of a Jules Verne. It's very important that he meets Gleason first because he's someone who's a very true believer in America as pitched in earning this place in America, that this is the moment for Black America, that it can all be OK from here. And that affects how he treats this kid who comes in, just runs in shouting, hi, I'm octoroon, and he just sort of nods along, like...
RASCOE: (Laughter) Yeah.
DAYLE: ...OK, I can work with this.
RASCOE: Anders also kind of unwittingly discovers this plot that's happening...
DAYLE: (Laughter)
RASCOE: ...While the Civil War rages. And there's this showdown with a surprise bad guy - Wendy Ross, the daughter of Betsy Ross. It turns out she's a master flag twirler. Can you read a little bit from their flag twirling smackdown?
DAYLE: (Reading) He started with a crouched walk-the-eagle, sweeping the pole under his foot and hopping over. Wendy matched it. She performed a varial flag spin. He matched it. Anders performed a Delaware crossing, spinning the pole on his left knee while imitating Washington's favorite pose.
RASCOE: (Laughter) Is this kind of like a you know, you've-been-served type thing?
DAYLE: That is exactly the frame. I essentially took the type of movements you would do in breaking or B-boying, and I used a lot of sort of stylistic affectations or vocabulary style of skateboarding. Like, you know, it says varial flag spin.
RASCOE: OK.
DAYLE: It's just like a game of skate, basically. And they have this whole ideological thing behind it because - I'll be careful of the spoilers, but she has a very particular, insane position that she is sort of pitching through the medium of this flag-twirling thing at him. But she has a retro perspective on what the country is and where it should go. And it is kind of a thread that underlies a lot of the psychology of long-term politics in America. You can still sort of see it play out in very strange ways today - essentially, this royalist streak. And Anders, essentially, has to come in and try to represent this sort of baseline sanity for the people that are, you know, living day to day here.
RASCOE: Yeah. Well, what do you think about Gleason's view that this was the moment? - because it wasn't the moment. It was a moment. It did end slavery, but it really wasn't the moment that Gleason was hoping it would be for Black people.
DAYLE: You know, it's one of the core tensions 'cause you and I sitting on the perch of history - which I have the, you know, convenience of writing this book from - we see the whole long road and the dogs and the sharecroppers and any given headline last week ahead. At the same time, there's this tension because you do, in a way, need these people that have this strive or the sort of purist belief to make whatever gains you make.
RASCOE: After kind of plumbing the aspects of American identity, you know, in writing this book, has your sense changed of whether a more perfect union is possible, or are we, you know, kind of doomed to keep reliving this stuff?
DAYLE: So when I fell all the way into the rabbit hole of researching and preparing for this book, I think I was actually a little surprised by how - I know, everything - there is always, like, a sub-viewpoint or a sub-faction. Like, it's all very chaotic. And in a way, it was less samey than I expected. And I think that's a good reminder that this is a place of a relatively short history. These are not immutable things, and I think that's half why a lot of us care or even bother, is that we sense that this is a nascent culture that is influenceable. I actually do believe that we can get far better or far worse. We are not necessarily on track for the status quo, yeah.
RASCOE: That's Dennard Dayle. His new book is "How To Dodge A Cannonball." Thank you so much for joining us.
DAYLE: I really appreciate this. This was a great conversation.
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