Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (1994)

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (published 1994) by John Berendt is a nonfiction book about places, events, and people living in Savannah, Georgia during the 1980s. Though similar to a memoir and travelogue, the novel reads more like literary fiction, not in the least because of how potent the characters’ (Jim Williams, Danny Hansford, and Chablis, for example) personalities are. It’s difficult to remember that these characters were, and are, real people, and not just creations from the author’s imagination.

“An early evening mist had turned the view of Monterey Square into a soft-focus stage set with pink azaleas billowing beneath a tattered valence of live oaks and Spanish moss. The pale marble pedestal of the Pulaski monument glowed hazily in the background. A copy of the book At Home In Savannah - Great Interiors - lay on Williams’ coffee table. I had seen the same book on several other coffee tables in Savannah, but here the effect was surreal: The cover photograph was of this very room.” (p. 9)

From the start, Berendt immerses the authorized chronology of events within Savannah’s history and culture, starting with an introduction to the omnipresent Jim Williams, who seemed to reign over Savannah’s geography for much of the ‘80s, though a newcomer to the area at that time. Williams, a big-time antiques collector and dealer, spent a good amount of his money on restoring and preserving Savannah’s architecture, along with its spaces (public and private). Many in Savannah, as the story goes, fawned over him, though the circumstances that occurred after meeting a local boy named Danny Hansford would mar his name, if not locally, then nationally, forever. He was charged with murder, though never convicted, despite the evidence showing otherwise.

Capturing infinitely intricate details, the truth within Berendt’s pages is obscure, and for this Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil carries a mark of honesty throughout. It’s hard to tell whether Berendt is a reliable narrator, even to himself; he doesn’t really let on who side he’s on, and like a veritable journalist, he gives the facts as they come. However, the inhabitants of Savannah he encounters are relayed as they seem, as if they - Williams’, the socialite who is respected for his mysterious guile and charm, Danny, the attractive young boy in the throes of misguided adolescence, Chablis, the wild, beautiful transgender woman unafraid to speak her mind despite the grievous consequences, and Minerva, the back of the woods witch who keeps superstition alive and well - are traveling head-first, without scheme or conspiratorial aims, into a whirlwind of their connected lives, almost naively unaware of who, besides Berendt, might be watching them. And even Berendt is enmeshed within the push and pull of their frustrated wants and desires, watching as if from a clear-eyed distance, yet leaning in all the same.

“We walked single file into the graveyard, taking a winding route and stopping finally at a grave under a large cedar tree. My first thought was that this was a new grave, because unlike the others the soil appears to be freshly spread on top of it. Minerva knelt by the headstone. She reached into the shopping bag and gave Williams a trowel… I stood a few yards back and watched. Minerva and Williams were like two people kneeling at the opposite ends of a picnic blanket. They faced each other over the bones of Dr. Buzzard.” (p. 246)

To really seal the quality of this nonfiction narrative, the atmosphere of Savannah during the time of Berendt’s stay permeates the linear trajectory of the character’s stories and holds each scene in a lucid clarity. Of course, the light, the weather, the objects specific to Savannah, but more prominently in Midnight is the presence of the architectural atmosphere haunted by Southern magic.

“The town of Beaufort was dark and still. Williams drove along the main street, passing the great old houses that faced across the harbor toward the Sea Islands - eighteenth-century mansions of brick, tabby, and wood. Halfway between Savannah and Charleston, Beaufort had once been a major shipping center, but it was now an almost forgotten, perfectly preserved, gemlike little village. We cruised along the narrow streets, passing rows of handsome white houses gleaming in the darkness.” (p. 242)

Quite a place to be a voyeur, willing or unwilling, in a city that moves as if a theater for those people, local and not local, who don’t even realize (yet, if ever) that they are actors, in what might be, perhaps, some grand scheme of things.