Writer Lewis Nordan Dies

Lewis Nordan
From "Humor, Heartbreak and Hope"

It’s been more than 20 years now that I was first introduced to Lewis “Buddy” Nordan, a writer and teacher. No, I didn’t meet him personally, but through his novel The Sharpshooter Blues, a gift from a friend. I was instantly hooked, eagerly devouring his books and short stories about the residents of Arrow Catcher, Miss. and elsewhere – tales told with that potent Southern concoction of humor and brutality.

His best-known work was Wolf Whistle, based on the murder of Emmett Till in 1955. It concerns a black teenager, who, like Till, is murdered by Southern whites for allegedly making a suggestive remark – a wolf whistle – to a local white woman. In Wolf Whistle, Nordan employs a unique writing technique, narrating the tale through  multiple points of view, including the point of view of the dead youth himself and even a couple of crows!

According to the New York Times obituary, Nordan “did not begin writing until he was in his mid-30s and did not publish his first book until he was in his mid-40s, was the author of four novels, three volumes of short stories and a memoir.”

A teacher of writing with more than two decades at the University of Pittsburgh, the Mississippi-born Nordan was still able to produce critically-acclaimed works of art and developed a cult following, of which I was a proud member. Among the awards he received for his writing were the Southern Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the American Library Association Notable Book Citation, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, and the American Library Association Notable Book Citation.

In a 2002 article appearing in the Pitt Chronicle, the newspaper of the University of Pittsburg, Nordan told reporter Patricia Lomando White that every time he sat down to write, he’d offer up a brief prayer to the gods: “Make me a great writer.”

 “I guess I could pray, ‘Make me a good writer,’ be a little more humble, but I say, ‘Make me a great writer,’ not a published writer, not a famous writer,” he said. “That’s what I’m working toward.”

And a great writer he was.