Florida versus “Florida”
An odd disconnect exists between the geographical location of Florida and everything about its sociology, anthropology, psychology, ideology, and probably every other word that ends in -ology. That disconnect frames the context of “Florida” versus Florida which is at the heart of Lauren Groff’s collection of short stories united by the title of the tome. The disconnect is made clear on the first page in the imagery of the opening line of the third paragraph:
“Northern Florida is cold in January and I walk fast for warmth.”
Only non-natives ever reference the fact that the norther tier of the state can get surprisingly cold, even to the point of seeing snowfall every decade or so. The only people who are actually surprised at just how bone-chilling cold the winter air powered by the moisture from Gulf of Mexico can actually get are those who only know Florida from that whole sunshine every day propaganda.
The Sunshine State
Florida is the Sunshine State, after all. Which, as anyone could tell you, is a much more enticing state slogan than, “The Hurricane State,” or “Old Swampy,” or, “Watch Out for Snakes!” Florida in the eyes of those who come from the north to settle is the Florida described by the narrator across the breadth of these tales and it is a journey through text which mirrors the journey most of those who resettled there experience. That experience essentially boils down to this: Florida is not necessarily what it seems. Forget the alligators, those are really more for show. It is an entirely different sort of cold-blooded animal you really have to watch out for:
“Jude’s father was a herpetologist at the university, and if snakes hadn’t slipped their way into their hot house, his father would have filled it with them anyway. Coils of rattlers sat in formaldehyde on the windowsills. Writhing knots of reptiles lived in the coops out back, where his mother had once tried to raise chickens. At an early age, Jude learned to keep a calm heart when touching fanged things. He was barely walking when his mother came into the kitchen to find a coral snake chasing its red and yellow tail around his wrist.”
Southern Gothic
Florida doesn’t usually make it into that whole world of the grotesque which characterizes Southern Gothic fiction because if you really want to dive into that whole experience it, other places down Dixie way have much more of that traditional gothic feeling that the author perfectly conveys through efficient imagery:
“We moved here ten years ago because our house was cheap and had virgin-lumber bones, and because I decided that if I had to live in the South, with its boiled peanuts and its Spanish moss dangling like armpit hair, at least I wouldn’t barricade myself with my whiteness in a gated community.”
Louisiana and Mississippi are absolutely draped in Spanish moss and constantly smell of boiled peanuts. But Florida? Sure, it is there in grand supply, but not in the same way. Florida for most non-natives is sugary white beaches in the panhandle, themes park in the middle and Miami vice down at the tip. To get to that Spanish moss and peanuts part of the state referenced by the narrator of that first story requires heading off the beaten track.
The Florida You Don’t See
The cover of this collection features not an overhead shot of the peninsula, or a rocket lifting from Cape Canaveral or party boats in Tampa or even rebel flags in the panhandle. It features what looks like a mountain lion, better known as the Florida Panther. “The Midnight Zone” commences with imagery that simply doesn’t seem to “feel” like a story taking place in Florida. Here is the epicenter of the reality that Florida is not just the most southern state geographically, but has a strong claim to call itself the most gothic state in the region”
“It was an old hunting camp shipwrecked in twenty miles of scrub. Our friend had seen a Florida panther sliding through the trees there a few days earlier. But things had been fraying in our hands, and the camp was free and silent, so I walked through the resistance of my cautious husband and my small boys, who had wanted hermit crabs and kites and wakeboards and sand for spring break. Instead, they got ancient sinkholes filled with ferns, potential death by cat.”
