Short of John Lennon or Princess Diana, it’s hard to think of a more comprehensively eulogized death than that of Johnny Cash. Tributes are still coming in; among the latest is Literary Cash (BenBella Books, 240 pp., $17.95), an “unauthorized” collection of writings inspired by the Outlaw country icon, who died of world-weariness in 2003.
Cash himself set the obituary bar high with the posthumous release of American V: A Hundred Highways, the last in an 11th hour series of recordings increasingly obsessed with death, dissolution and faith. Great as American V is, some reviewers still find it vaguely opportunistic. By allowing himself to die in public, Cash gained a new audience (punks and goths) while reinvigorating an old one (geezer country, rock ’n’ roll and Americana fans), in the process getting more ink than he’d had in years. Rather than just fading away, Cash was making a point by allowing himself to be portrayed in decline, and his legacy certainly benefits from the attention. Little surprise, in an already tribute-heavy market, that many of the books and records that have followed American V are blatantly exploitative, contributing more to sagging careers than to Cash’s extraordinary life.
Three-and-a-half years after the entertainer’s death, then, it would be easy to dismiss Literary Cash as one more attempt to cash in. Such is not the case. The collection (which is edited by Florida writer, historian and educator Bob Batchelor) succeeds due to a core of essays and short stories that voice a less heard perspective on the Man in Black.
Literary Cash has its share of fact-driven exegeses, which are insightful but don’t make for a particularly inspired read. The book’s more fanciful works, on the other hand, are far more interesting. Of these, the most effective illuminate the way women experience Cash, whose effect on men is more than well documented. In her essay, “Ring of Fire,” for example, poet Alison Stine sees Cash as a mentor of sorts: a fallible ghost who requires that she write the truth, no matter how gauzy the concept. “I don’t want to write a good poem,” she declares. “The world has enough good things.... It must be a way to survive, to save. And live, and live. You have five minutes. What are you going to say?”
Similarly, Tiffany Lee Brown turns machismo on its head in “Reno,” a short story that takes its cue from the famous verse in Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” Brown, a writer and multidisciplinary artist, tells an absorbing tale worthy of that terrifying line—though its ending is one that Cash fans will never anticipate.
In the end, Cash’s own body of work is the best last testament. Birth, death, sin and redemption are the stuff of his songs—in fact, his very life. What Literary Cash makes plain is the power that life has to affect the rest of us.
