Ink-Stained Elegy

In Come Again No More, David Wesley Williams resurrects the spirit of a dying newsroom with the lyrical gusto of a man both mourning and celebrating his first love. This is a novel about, among other things, the end of an era — the collapse of American newspapers, yes, but also the twilight of a man who is skeptical, rumpled, and in love with ink. This book is melancholy, hysterical, and ultimately full of grace, a requiem played in twelve-bar blues.

The story opens with a wake and the kind of copious whiskey and profanity all proper mourning should embrace. Charley Hull, a middle-aged Memphis reporter, has just been “riffed” — a corporate euphemism for “fired” — from a shrinking daily paper. “Death by paper cut, the official cause,” he quips. What follows is one long night of grief, reminiscence, and gallows humor as Charley and his fellow “ink-stained wretches” gather for an unofficial funeral of their profession. Over the course of the wake — and through Charley’s encounters with his colleagues, his best friend Wick, and the ghosts of the past — Williams constructs a comic lament for the American newsroom and the people who once thought it might last forever.

Williams, a longtime sports writer who left The Commercial Appeal in 2017 when a layoff seemed inevitable, writes with the intimacy of a survivor and the musicality of a storyteller. His prose is by turns bourbon-dark and laugh-out-loud funny. The first chapter alone is a masterclass in tone, beginning with a benediction in “this bar called Little Blind’s, down on old South Main,” where the jilted journalists “gathered, we bastards, we wenches,” to toast a profession that once seemed immortal. The humor is biting but never cruel, the nostalgia tender but never saccharine.

As Charley grapples with the wreckage of his life, he does so with characters who feel conjured straight from a smoke-filled newsroom of yore. There’s Madison, the metro columnist who’s been living off his reputation for decades and carries on affairs with his ex-wives; Stell, the queen of the copy desk who can “teach sentences to walk straight”; and Pearl, the photographer who “could disappear altogether,” his lens a confessional booth. Together, these eccentrics face extinction with a toast and a curse.

At the novel’s center is Charley’s friendship with Wick, his genteel counterpart from the city’s moneyed class. Their dialogue and philosophical sparring represent the book’s finest writing. Wick, who “could wear anything, even rags, like they were bespoke,” serves as Charley’s foil and conscience. He reminds Charley (and us) that the romantic myth of journalism — the noble truth-teller, the benevolent crusader  — was always a kind of illusion. Yet for all his cynicism, Wick envies Charley’s devotion to a calling he thought was his destiny.

Williams’ Memphis is not mere backdrop but a living, heaving presence — a city on the bluff that hums with ghosts, barbecue smoke, and the memory of better days. The dialogue moves like good blues, which also features prominently in Williams’ writing: equal parts regret and laughter. Even in its grimiest corners, the novel sometimes feels like poetry. Williams describes a barmaid named Molly as “an old woman” who “scowled all the time, and never had a kind word to say.” And then: “We adored her.”

As Charley reckons with loss and nostalgia, and finally begins to make room for joy, Williams’ voice is distinctly Southern, witty, gritty. When a record store clerk expresses that he’s sorry about Charley’s unceremonious discharge from the paper, Williams leans into the irony. “I’ll tell you what a damned shame is, good people — when a music store clerk bemoans the sad state of your industry.”

While Come Again No More is not autobiographical, Williams says he and Charley do share some similarities. “We’re both introverts who loved the observational and writing part of the job, but had to force ourselves in the human interaction part,” the author writes by email to Chapter 16. “We’re both two-fingered typists. We love the same music. We both only ever wanted to do one thing.”

The novel, Williams’ third, is funny, soulful, and beautifully written, a love letter to language, to work, and to the flawed people who believed the written word could change the world. When it’s not evoking sorrowful reflection, it’s like sitting for hours at your favorite bar being regaled by a brilliant, foul-mouthed bard.