Andrew Nelson Lytle (1902–1995)

A Name for Evil. Andrew Nelson Lytle. 1947. Creepy. I found this book on a list of lesser known horror novels around Halloween. Lytle is considered an “Alabama Author” by the Alabama Library Association guidelines, and he was part of the Agrarian movement started by John Crowe Ransom in reaction to H.L. Mencken’s criticism of the South. And the novel is full or descriptions of the rural landscape and farmland. Our narrator has found an old abandoned farm and he and his wife plan to recover the land and restore the house. We are drawn into the mysterious sense of danger and evil almost immediately and know that disaster is inevitable. The ghost appears within the first few pages and we are drawn in to see if the ghost wins… (mer)

Startling detail of the De Soto Expedition, Lytle puts us into to heads of the Spanish and by way of Ortiz, a released captive, the Indians. The story is mostly of contradictory righteousness, which slowly leads away from gold lust toward mere survival. The army's approach is appeasment, slavery, torture and slaughter. The violence is numbing and graphic. A key confrontation between De Sota as Governor an a mission of God's, and the head priest, who speaks for God about the strategy of the mission. The various authorities of the Indian clans are often set up as counters to De Soto's changing standards of honor.

While mostly from the point of view of a trusted but disgrace soldier, Tovar, Lytle shifts into raw narrative and a few Ortiz stories. The shifts are disjointed, and the jumps from Cutifichiqui to Mauvella to Guachoya are jarring. The novel has more value as history than entertainment. The novel is heavily based on U.S. De Sota Expedition Commission Report of 1939. Reading one of the novel or report should suffice unless the reader is pursuing an academic investigation of the styles and effects of historical fiction.… (mer)