Willeford is largely structured around Herron's evolving relationship with his subject, and his attempt to play catch-up and learn all he could about the author. As Herron gets to know Willeford, the reader does, too, and it's a pleasurable experience. We learn that Willeford was an irrepressible trickster, a lover of practical jokes. One of Willeford's recurrent sucker-jokes was about the difference between bananas and plantains. Bananas grow down the tree, he said.
Plantains grow up the tree.
In Willeford's view, it takes an off-center, slightly bent protagonist to make sense in a world gone mad. In Willeford , Herron lets the life story of his subject take a back seat to his literary career. Willeford fans should delight in this type of research, because Herron's fairly obsessive cross-referencing is both humorous and enlightening. Willeford was a rail-riding hobo during the Depression. He spent 20 years in the Army and Air Force.