Cheryl Truman on books

Constantine Rafinesque

State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of  America

(EccoBooks, $29.95) features essays by edgy writers on our 50 states (Dave Eggers on Illinois, Ha Jin on Georgia, Kevin Brockmeier on Arkansas). Here’s Jhumpa Lahiri on Rhode Island: “My father, a global traveler, considers Rhode Island paradise.” 

Flipping over to the state that houses us here at Humidity Central, we find John Jeremiah Sullivan writing on Kentucky, “shaped like an alligator’s head.” But really, he is writing about Constatine Rafinesque, which is simultaneouly intriguing and disappointing: intriguing, because Rafinesque’s “curse” on what is now Transylvania University when he stomped off is the stuff of legend, and disappointing, because Rafinesque stomped off, went crazy and laid down the mojo in the early 19th century. You could pretty easily infer that not much of value has happened since in our little corner of Amurca. But Rafinesque: Kentucky’s Darwin! Audubon’s travelling partner! A brilliant mind with no qualms at all about making stuff up! 

Sadly, the Aububon partnership ended rather badly, as Sullivan notes that one fine evening Audubon “woke to uproar. Hurtling through Rafinesque’s door he found the smaller man leaping naked in the dark, holding the neck of Audubon’s Stradivarius, which he’d bashed to splinters trying to stun small bats.”

So, Constantine Rafinesque: Here’s to you. Although Kentucky is known to many for truly awful reasons, your bat-bashing example humbles us.