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Bernard Malamud The Magic Barrel Not long ago there lived in uptown New York, in a small, almost meager room, though crowded with books, Leo Finkle, a rabbinical student in the Yeshivah University. Finkle, after six years of study, was to be ordained in June and had been advised by an acquaintance that he might find it easier to win himself a congregation if he were married. Since he had no present prospects of marriage, after two tormented days of turning it over in his mind, he called in Pinye Salzman, a marriage broker whose two-line advertisement he had read in the Forward. The matchmaker appeared one night out of the dark fourthfloor hallway of the graystone rooming house where Finkle lived, grasping a black, strapped portfolio that had been worn thin with use. Salzman, who had been long in the business, was of slight but dignified build, wearing an old hat, and an overcoat too short and tight for him. He smelled frankly of fish, which he loved to eat, and although he was missing a few teeth, his presence was not displeasing, because of an amiable manner curiously contrasted with mournful eyes. His voice, his lips, his wisp of beard, his bony fingers were animated, but give him a moment of repose and his mild blue eyes revealed a depth of sadness, a characteristic that put Leo a little at ease although the situation, for him, was inherently tense. He at once informed Salzman why he had asked him to come, explaining that his home was in Cleveland, and that but for his parents, who had married comparatively late in life, he was alone in the world. He had for six years devoted himself almost entirely to his studies, as a result of which, understandably, he had found himself without time for a social life and the company of young women. Therefore he thought it the better part of trial and error – of embarrassing fumbling – to call in an experienced person to advise him on these matters. He remarked in passing that the function of the marriage broker was ancient and honorable, highly approved in the Jewish community, because it made practical the necessary without hindering joy. Moreover, his own parents had been brought together by a matchmaker. They had made, if not a financially profitable marriage – since neither had possessed any worldly goods to speak of – at least a successful one in the sense of their everlasting devotion to each other. Salzman listened in embarrassed surprise, sensing a sort of
apology. Later, however, he experienced a glow of pride in his work, an emotion that had left him years ago, and he heartily approved of Finkle. The two went to their business. Leo had led Salzman to the only clear place in the room, a table near a window that overlooked the lamp-lit city. He seated himself at the matchmaker’s side but facing him, attempting by an act of will to suppress the unpleasant tickle in his throat. Salzman eagerly unstrapped his portfolio and removed a loose rubber band from a thin packet of much-handled cards. As he flipped through them, a gesture and sound that physically hurt Leo, the student pretended not to see and gazed steadfastly out the window. Although it was still February, winter was on its last legs, signs of which he had for the first time in years begun to notice. He now observed the round white moon, moving high in the sky through a cloud menagerie, and watched with half-open mouth as it penetrated a huge hen, and dropped out of her like an egg laying itself. Salzman, though pretending through eye-glasses he had just slipped on, to be engaged in scanning the writing on the cards, stole occasional glances at the young man’s distinguished face, noting with pleasure the long, severe scholar’s nose, brown eyes heavy with learning, sensitive yet ascetic lips, and a certain, almost hollow quality of the dark cheeks. He gazed around at shelves upon shelves of books and let out a soft, contented sigh. When Leo’s eyes fell upon the cards, he counted six spread out in Salzman’s hand. “So few?” he asked in disappointment. “You wouldn’t believe me how much cards I got in my office,” Salzman replied. “The drawers are already filled to the top, so I keep them now in a barrel, but is every girl good for a new rabbi?” Leo blushed at this, regretting all he had revealed of himself in a curriculum vitae he had sent to Salzman. He had thought it best to acquaint him with his strict standards and specifications, but in having done so, felt he had told the marriage broker more than was absolutely necessary. He hesitantly inquired, “Do you keep photographs of your clients on file?” “First comes family, amount of dowry, also what kind of promises,” Salzman replied, unbuttoning his tight coat and settling himself in the chair. “After comes pictures, rabbi.” “Call me Mr. Finkle. I’m not yet a rabbi.” Salzman said he would, but instead called him doctor, which he changed to rabbi when Leo was not listening too attentively. Salzman adjusted his horn-rimmed spectacles, gently cleared his throat and read in an eager voice the contents of the top card: “Sophie P. Twenty-four years. Widow one year. No children. Educated high school and two years college. Father promises eight thousand dollars. Has wonderful wholesale business. Also real estate. On the mother’s side comes teachers, also one actor. Well known on Second Avenue.” Leo gazed up in surprise. “Did you say a widow?” “A widow don’t mean spoiled, rabbi. She lived with her husband maybe four months. He was a sick boy she made a mistake to marry him.” “Marrying a widow has never entered my mind.” “This is because you have no experience. A widow, especially if she is young and healthy like this girl, is a wonderful person to marry. She will be thankful to you the rest of her life. Believe me, if I was looking now for a bride, I would marry a widow.” Leo reflected, then shook his head. Salzman hunched his shoulders in an almost imperceptible gesture of disappointment. He placed the card down on the wooden table and began to read another: “Lily H. High school teacher. Regular. Not a substitute. Has savings and new Dodge car. Lived in Paris one year. Father is successful dentist thirty-five years. Interested in professional man. Well Americanized family. Wonderful opportunity.”
“I knew her personally,” said Salzman. “I wish you could see this girl. She is a doll. Also very intelligent. All day you could talk to her about books and theyater and what not. She also knows current events.” “I don’t believe you mentioned her age?” “Her age?” Salzman said, raising his brows. “Her age is thirtytwo years.” “Leo said after a while, “I’m afraid that seems a little too old. Salzman let out a laugh. “So how old are you, rabbi?” “Twenty-seven.” “So what is the difference, tell me, between twenty-seven and thirty-two? My own wife is seven years older than me. So what did I suffer? – Nothing. If Rothschild’s daughter wants to marry you, would you say on account her age, no?” “Yes,” Leo said dryly. Salzman shook off the no in the eyes. “Five years don’t mean a thing. I give you my word that when you will live with her for one week you will forget her age. What does it mean five years – that she lived more and knows more than somebody who is younger? On this girl, God bless her, years are not wasted. Each one that it comes makes better the bargain.” “What subject does she teach in high school?” “Languages. If you heard the way she speaks French, you will think it is music. I am in the business twenty-five years, and I recommend her with my whole heart. Believe me, I know what I’m talking, rabbi.” “What’s on the next card?” Leo said abruptly. Salzman reluctantly turned up the third card: “Ruth K. Nineteen years. Honor student. Father offers thirteen thousand cash to the right bridegroom. He is a medical doctor. Stomach specialist with marvelous practice. Brother in law owns garment business. Particular people.” Salzman looked as if he had read his trump card. “Did you say nineteen?” Leo asked with interest. “On the dot.” “Is she attractive?” He blushed. “Pretty?” Salzman kissed his finger tips. “A little doll. On this I give you my word. Let me call the father tonight and you will see what means pretty.” But Leo was troubled. “You’re sure she’s that young?” “This I am positive. The father will show you the birth certificate.” “Are you positive there isn’t something wrong with her?” Leo insisted. “Who says there is wrong?” “I don’t understand why an American girl her age should go to a marriage broker.” A smile spread over Salzman’s face. “So for the same reason you went, she comes.” Leo flushed. “I am passed for time.” Salzman, realizing he had been tactless, quickly explained. “The father came, not her. He wants she should have the best, so he looks around himself. When we will locate the right boy he will introduce him and encourage. This makes a better marriage than if a young girl without experience takes for herself. I don’t have to tell you this.” “But don’t you think this young girl believes in love?” Leo spoke uneasily. Salzman was about was about to guffaw but caught himself and said soberly, “Love comes with the right person, not before.” Leo parted dry lips but did not speak. Noticing that Salzman had snatched a glance at the next card, he cleverly asked, “How is her health?” “Perfect,” Salzman said, breathing with difficulty. “Of course, she is a little lame on her right foot from an auto accident that it
happened to her when she was twelve years, but nobody notices on account she is so brilliant and also beautiful.” Leo got up heavily and went to the window. He felt curiously bitter and upbraided himself for having called in the marriage broker. Finally, he shook his head. “Why not?” Salzman persisted, the pitch of his voice rising. “Because I detest stomach specialists.” “So what do you care what is his business? After you marry her do you need him? Who says he must come every Friday night in your house?” Ashamed of the way the talk was going, Leo dismissed Salzman, who went home with heavy, melancholy eyes. Though he had felt only relief at the marriage broker’s departure, Leo was in low spirits the next day. He explained it as rising from Salzman’s failure to produce a suitable bride for him. He did not care for his type of clientele. But when Leo found himself hesitating whether to seek out another matchmaker, one more polished than Pinye, he wondered if it could be – protestations to the contrary, and although he honored his father and mother – that he did not, in essence, care for the matchmaking institution? This thought he quickly put out of mind yet found himself still upset. All day he ran around the woods – missed an important appointment, forgot to give out his laundry, walked out of a Broadway cafeteria without paying and had to run back with the ticket in his hand; had even not recognized his landlady in the street when she passed with a friend and courteously called out, “A good evening to you, Doctor Finkle.” By nightfall, however, he had regained sufficient calm to sink his nose into a book and there found peace from his thoughts. Almost at once there came a knock on the door. Before Leo could say enter, Salzman, commercial cupid, was standing in the room. His face was gray and meager, his expression hungry, and he looked as if he would expire on his feet. Yet the marriage broker managed, by some trick of the muscles to display a broad smile. “So good evening. I am invited?” Leo nodded, disturbed to see him again, yet unwilling to ask the man to leave. Beaming still, Salzman laid his portfolio on the table. “Rabbi, I got for you tonight good news.” “I’ve asked you not to call me rabbi. I’m still a student.” “Your worries are finished. I have for you a first-class bride.” “Leave me in peace concerning this subject.” Leo pretended lack of interest. “The world will dance at your wedding.” “Please, Mr. Salzman, no more.” “But first must come back my strength,” Salzman said weakly. He fumbled with the portfolio straps and took out of the leather case an oily paper bag, from which he extracted a hard, seeded roll and a small, smoked white fish. With a quick emotion of his hand he stripped the fish out of its skin and began ravenously to chew. “All day in a rush,” he muttered. Leo watched him eat. “A sliced tomato you have maybe?” Salzman hesitantly inquired. “No.” The marriage broker shut his eyes and ate. When he had finished he carefully cleaned up the crumbs and rolled up the remains of the fish, in the paper bag. His spectacled eyes roamed the room until he discovered, amid some piles of books, a oneburner gas stove. Lifting his hat he humbly asked, “A glass of tea you got, rabbi?” Conscience-stricken, Leo rose and brewed the tea. He served it with a chunk of lemon and two cubes of lump sugar, delighting Salzman. After he had drunk his tea, Salzman’s strength and good spirits were restored.
“So tell me rabbi,” he said amiably, “you considered some more the three clients I mentioned yesterday?” “There was no need to consider.” “Why not?” “None of them suits me.” “What then suits you?” Leo let it pass because he could give only a confused answer. Without waiting for a reply, Salzman asked, “You remember this girl I talked to you – the high school teacher?” “Age thirty-two?” But surprisingly, Salzman’s face lit in a smile. “Age twentynine.” Leo shot him a look. “Reduced from thirty-two?” “A mistake,” Salzman avowed. “I talked today with the dentist. He took me to his safety deposit box and showed me the birth certificate. She was twenty-nine years last August. They made her a party in the mountains where she went for her vacation. When her father spoke to me the first time I forgot to write the age and I told you thirty-two, but now I remember this was a different client, a widow.” “The same one you told me about? I thought she was twentyfour?” “A different. Am I responsible that the world is filled with widows?” “No, but I’m not interested in them, nor for that matter, in school teachers.” Salzman pulled his clasped hand to his breast. Looking at the ceiling he devoutly exclaimed, “Yiddishe kinder, what can I say to somebody that he is not interested in high school teachers? So what then you are interested?” Leo flushed but controlled himself. “In what else will you be interested,” Salzman went on, “if you not interested in this fine girl that she speaks four languages and has personally in the bank ten thousand dollars? Also her father guarantees further twelve thousand. Also she has a new car, wonderful clothes, talks on all subjects, and she will give you a first-class home and children. How near do we come in our life to paradise?” If she’s so wonderful, why wasn’t she married ten years ago?” “Why?” said Salzman with a heavy laugh. “ – Why? Because she is partikiler. This is why. She wants the best.” Leo was silent, amused at how he had entangled himself. But Salzman had arouse his interest in Lily H., and he began seriously to consider calling on her. When the marriage broker observed how intently Leo’s mind was at work on the facts he had supplied, he felt certain they would soon come to an agreement. Late Saturday afternoon, conscious of Salzman, Leo Finkle walked with Lily Hirschorn along Riverside Drive. He walked briskly and erectly, wearing with distinction the black fedora he had that morning taken with trepidation out of the dusty hat box on his closet shelf, and the heavy black Saturday coat he had throughly whisked clean. Leo also owned a walking stick, a present from a distant relative, but quickly put temptation aside and did not use it. Lily, petite and not unpretty, had on something signifying the approach of spring. She was au courant, animatedly, with all sorts of subjects, and he weighed her words and found her surprisingly sound – score another for Salzman, whom he uneasily sensed to be somewhere around, hiding perhaps high in a tree along the street, flashing the lady signals with a pocket mirror; or perhaps a cloven-hoofed Pan, piping nuptial ditties as he danced his invisible way before them, strewing wild buds on the walk and purple grapes in their path, symbolizing fruit of a union, though there was of course still none. Lily startled Leo by remarking, “I was thinking of Mr. Salzman, a curious figure, wouldn’t you say?” Not certain what to answer, he nodded.
She bravely went on, blushing, “I for one am grateful for his introducing us. Aren’t you?” He courteously replied, “I am.” “I mean,” she said with a little laugh – and it was all in good taste, to at least gave the effect of being not in bad – ”do you mind that we came together so?” He was not displeased with her honesty, recognizing that she meant to set the relationship aright, and understanding that it took a certain amount of experience in life, and courage, to want to do it quite that way. One had to have some sort of past to make that kind of beginning. He said that he did not mind. Salzman’s function was traditional and honorable – valuable for what it might achieve, which, he pointed out, was frequently nothing. Lily agreed with a sigh. They walked on for a while and she said after a long silence, again with a nervous laugh, “Would you mind if I asked you something a little bit personal? Frankly, I find the subject fascinating.” Although Leo shrugged, she went on half embarrassedly, “How was it that you came to your calling? I mean was it a sudden passionate inspiration?” Leo, after a time, slowly replied, “I was always interested in the Law.” “You saw revealed in it the presence of the Highest?” He nodded and changed the subject. “I understand that you spent a little time in Paris, Miss Hirschorn?” “Oh, did Mr. Salzman tell you, Rabbi Finkle?” Leo winced but she went on, “It was ages ago and almost forgotten. I remember I had to return for my sister’s wedding.” And Lily would not be put off. “When,” she asked in a trembly voice, “did you become enamored of God?” He stared at her. Then it came to him that she was talking not about Leo Finkle, but of a total stranger, some mystical figure, perhaps even passionate prophet that Salzman had dreamed up for her – no relation to the living or dead. Leo trembled with rage and weakness. The trickster had obviously sold her a bill of goods, just as he had him, who’d expected to become acquainted with a young lady of twenty-nine, only to behold, the moment he laid eyes upon her strained and anxious face, a woman past thirty-five and aging rapidly. Only his self control had kept him this long in her presence. “I am not,” he said gravely, “a talented religious person.” and in seeking words to go on, found himself possessed by shame and fear. “I think,” he said in a strained manner, “that I came to God not because I love Him, but because I did not.” This confession he spoke harshly because its unexpectedness shook him. Lily wilted. Leo saw a profusion of loaves of bread go flying like ducks high over his head, not unlike the winged loaves by which he had counted himself to sleep last night. Mercifully, then, it snowed, which he would not put past Salzman’s machinations.
He was infuriated with the marriage broker and swore he would throw him out of the room the minute he reappeared. But Salzman did not come that night, and when Leo’s anger had subsided, an unaccountable despair grew in its place. At first he thought this was caused by his disappointment in Lily, but before long it became evident that he had involved himself with Salzman without a true knowledge of his own intent. He gradually realized – with an emptiness that seized him with six hands – that he had called in the broker to find him a bride because he was incapable of doing it himself. This terrifying insight he had derived as a result of his meeting and conversation with Lily Hirschorn. Her probing questions had somehow irritated him into revealing – to himself more than her – the true nature of his relationship to God, and from that it had come upon
him, with shocking force, that apart from his parents, he had never loved anyone. Or perhaps it went the other way, that he did not love God so well as he might, because he had not loved man. It seemed to Leo that his whole life stood starkly revealed and he saw himself for the first time as he truly was – unloved and loveless. This bitter but somehow not fully unexpected revelation brought him to a point to panic, controlled only by extraordinary effort. He covered his face with his hands and cried. The week that followed was the worst of his life. He did not eat and lost weight. His beard darkened and grew ragged. He stopped attending seminars and almost never opened a book. He seriously considered leaving the Yeshiva, although he was deeply troubled at the thought of the loss of all his years of study – saw them like pages torn from a book, strewn over the city – and at the devastating effect of this decision upon his parents. But he had lived without knowledge of himself, and never in the Five Books and all the Commentaries – mea culpa – had the truth been revealed to him. He did not know where to turn, and in all this desolating loneliness there was no to whom, although he often thought of Lily but not once could bring himself to go downstairs and make the call. He became touchy and irritable, especially with his landlady, who asked him all manner of personal questions; on the other hand sensing his own disagreeableness, he waylaid her on the stairs and apologized abjectly, until mortified, she ran from him. Out of this, however, he drew the consolation that he was a Jew and that a Jew suffered. But generally, as the long and terrible week drew to a close, he regained his composure and some idea of purpose in life to go on as planned. Although he was imperfect, the ideal was not. As for his quest of a bride, the thought of continuing afflicted him with anxiety and heartburn, yet perhaps with this new knowledge of himself he would be more successful than in the past. Perhaps love would now come to him and a bride to that love. And for this sanctified seeking who needed a Salzman? The marriage broker, a skeleton with haunted eyes, returned that very night. He looked, withal, the picture of frustrated expectancy – as if he had steadfastly waited the week at Miss Lily Hirschorn’s side for a telephone call that never came. Casually coughing, Salzman came immediately to the point: “So how did you like her?” Leo’s anger rose and he could not refrain from chiding the matchmaker: “Why did you lie to me, Salzman?” Salzman’s pale face went dead white, the world had snowed on him. “Did you not state that she was twenty-nine?’ Leo insisted. “I give you my word – ” “She was thirty-five, if a day. At least thirty-five.” “Of this don’t be too sure. Her father told me – ” “Never mind. The worst of it was that you lied to her.” “How did I lie to her, tell me?” “You told her things abut me that weren’t true. You made out to be more, consequently less than I am. She had in mind a totally different person, a sort of semi-mystical Wonder Rabbi.” “All I said, you was a religious man.” “I can imagine.” Salzman sighed. “This is my weakness that I have,” he confessed. “My wife says to me I shouldn’t be a salesman, but when I have two fine people that they would be wonderful to be married, I am so happy that I talk too much.” He smiled wanly. “This is why Salzman is a poor man.” Leo’s anger left him. “Well, Salzman, I’m afraid that’s all.” The marriage broker fastened hungry eyes on him. “You don’t want any more a bride?” “I do,” said Leo, “but I have decided to seek her in a different way. I am no longer interested in an arranged marriage. To be frank, I now admit the necessity of premarital love. That is, I want to be in love with the one I marry.”
“Love?” said Salzman, astounded. After a moment he remarked “For us, our love is our life, not for the ladies. In the ghetto they – ” “I know, I know,” said Leo. “I’ve thought of it often. Love, I have said to myself, should be a by-product of living and worship rather than its own end. Yet for myself I find it necessary to establish the level of my need and fulfill it.” Salzman shrugged but answered, “Listen, rabbi, if you want love, this I can find for you also. I have such beautiful clients that you will love them the minute your eyes will see them.” Leo smiled unhappily. “I’m afraid you don’t understand.” But Salzman hastily unstrapped his portfolio and withdrew a manila packet from it. “Pictures,” he said, quickly laying the envelope on the table. Leo called after him to take the pictures away, but as if on the wings of the wind, Salzman had disappeared. March came. Leo had returned to his regular routine. Although he felt not quite himself yet – lacked energy – he was making plans for a more active social life. Of course it would cost something, but he was an expert in cutting corners; and when there were no corners left he would make circles rounder. All the while Salzman’s pictures had lain on the table, gathering dust. Occasionally as Leo sat studying, or enjoying a cup of tea, his eyes fell on the manila envelope, but he never opened it. The days went by and no social life to speak of developed with a member of the opposite sex – it was difficult, given the circumstances of his situation. One morning Leo toiled up the stairs to his room and stared out the window at the city. Although the day was bright his view of it was dark. For some time he watched the people in the street below hurrying along and then turned with a heavy heart to his little room. On the table was the packet. With a sudden relentless gesture he tore it open. For a half-hour he stood by the table in a state of excitement, examining the photographs of the ladies Salzman had included. Finally, with a deep sigh he put them down. There were six, of varying degree of attractiveness, but look at them along enough and they all became Lily Hirschorn: all past their prime, all starved behind bright smiles, not a true personality in the lot. Life, despite their frantic yoohooings, had passed them by; they were pictures in a brief case that stank of fish. After a while, however, as Leo attempted to return the photographs into the envelope, he found in it another, a snapshot of the type taken by a machine for a quarter. He gazed at it a moment and let out a cry. Her face deeply moved him. Why, he could at first not say. It gave him the impression of youth – spring flowers, yet age – a sense of having been used to the bone, wasted; this came from the eyes, which were hauntingly familiar, yet absolutely strange. He had a vivid impression that he had met her before, but try as he might he could not place her although he could almost recall her name, as he had read it in her own handwriting. No, this couldn’t be; he would have remembered her. It was not, he affirmed, that she had an extraordinary beauty – no, though her face was attractive enough; it was that something about her moved him. Feature for feature, even some of the ladies of the photographs could do better; but she lapsed forth to this heart – had lived, or wanted to – more than just wanted, perhaps regretted how she had lived – had somehow deeply suffered: it could be seen in the depths of those reluctant eyes, and from the way the light enclosed and shone from her, and within her, opening realms of possibility: this was her own. Her he desired. His head ached and eyes narrowed with the intensity of his gazing, then as if an obscure fog had blown up in the mind, he experienced fear of her and was aware that he had received an impression, somehow, of evil. He shuddered, saying softly, it is thus with us all. Leo brewed some tea in a small pot and sat sipping it without sugar, to calm himself. But before he had finished drinking, again with excitement he examined the face
and found it good: good for Leo Finkle. Only such a one could understand him and help him seek whatever he was seeking. She might, perhaps, love him. How she had happened to be among the discards in Salzman’s barrel he could never guess, but he knew he must urgently go find her. Leo rushed downstairs, grabbed up the Bronx telephone book, and searched for Salzman’s home address. He was not listed, nor was his office. Neither was he in the Manhattan book. But Leo remembered having written down the address on a slip of paper after he had read Salzman’s advertisement in the “personals” column of the Forward. He ran up to his room and tore through his papers, without luck. It was exasperating. Just when he needed the matchmaker he was nowhere to be found. Fortunately Leo remembered to look in his wallet. There on a card he found his name written and a Bronx address. No phone number was listed, the reason – Leo now recalled – he had originally communicated with Salzman by letter. He got on his coat, put a hat on over his skull cap and hurried to the subway station. All the way to the far end of the Bronx he sat on the edge of his seat. He was more than once tempted to take out the picture and see if the girl’s face was as he remembered it, but he refrained, allowing the snapshot to remain in his inside coat pocket, content to have her so close. When the train pulled into the station he was waiting at the door and bolted out. He quickly located the street Salzman had advertised. The building he sought was less than a block from the subway, but it was not an office building, nor even a loft, nor a store in which one could rent office space. It was a very old tenement house. Leo found Salzman’s name in pencil on a soiled tag under the bell and climbed three dark flights to his apartment. When he knocked, the door was opened by a think, asthmatic, gray-haired woman in felt slippers. “Yes?” she said, expecting nothing. She listened without listening. He could have sworn he had seen her, too, before but knew it was an illusion. “Salzman – does he live here? Pinye Salzman,” he said, “the matchmaker?” She stared at him a long minute. “Of course.” He felt embarrassed. “Is he in?” “No.” Her mouth, thought left open, offered nothing more. “The matter is urgent. Can you tell me where his office is?” “In the air.” She pointed upward. “You mean he has no office?” Leo asked. “In his socks.” He peered into the apartment. It was sunless and dingy, one large room divided by a half-open curtain, beyond which he could see a sagging metal bed. The near side of the room was crowded with rickety chairs, old bureaus, a three-legged table, racks of cooking utensils, and all the apparatus of a kitchen. But there was no sign of Salzman or his magic barrel, probably also a figment of the imagination. An odor of frying fish made weak to the knees. “Where is he?” he insisted. “I’ve got to see your husband.” At length she answered, “So who knows where he is? Every time he thinks a new thought he runs to a different place. Go home, he will find you.” “Tell him Leo Finkle.” She gave no sign she had heard. He walked downstairs, depressed. But Salzman, breathless, stood waiting at his door. Leo was astounded and overjoyed. “How did you get here before me?” “I rushed.” “Come inside.” They entered. Leo fixed tea, and a sardine sandwich for Salzman. As they were drinking he reached behind him for the packet of pictures and handed them to the marriage broker.
Salzman put down his glass and said expectantly, “You found somebody you like?” “Not among these.” The marriage broker turned away. “Here is the one I want.” Leo held forth the snapshot. Salzman slipped on his glasses and took the picture into his trembling hand. He turned ghastly and let out a groan. “What’s the matter?” cried Leo. “Excuse me. Was an accident this picture. She isn’t for you?” Salzman frantically shoved the manila packet into his portfolio. He thrust the snapshot into his pocket and fled down the stairs. Leo, after momentary paralysis, gave chase and cornered the marriage broker in the vestibule. The landlady made hysterical out cries but neither of them listened. “Give me back the picture, Salzman.” “No.” The pain in his eyes was terrible. “Tell me who she is then.” “This I can’t tell you. Excuse me.” He made to depart, but Leo, forgetting himself, seized the matchmaker by his tight coat and shook him frenziedly. “Please,” sighed Salzman. “Please.” Leo ashamedly let him go. “Tell me who she is,” he begged. “It’s very important to me to know.” “She is not for you. She is a wild one – wild, without shame. This is not a bride for a rabbi.” “What do you mean wild?” “Like an animal. Like a dog. For her to be poor was a sin. This is why to me she is dead now.” “In God’s name, what do you mean?” “Her I can’t introduce to you,” Salzman cried. “Why are you so excited?” “Why, he asks,” Salzman said, bursting into tear. “This is my baby, my Stella, she should burn in hell.” Leo hurried up to bed and hid under the covers. Under the covers he thought his life through. Although he soon fell asleep he could not sleep her out of his mind. He woke, beating his breast. Though he prayed to be rid of her, his prayers went unanswered. Through days of torment he endlessly struggled not to love her; fearing success, he escaped it. He then concluded to convert her to goodness, himself to God. The idea alternately nauseated and exalted him. He perhaps did not know that he had come to a final decision until he encountered Salzman in a Broadway cafeteria. He was sitting alone at a rear table, sucking the bony remains of a fish. The marriage broker appeared haggard, and transparent to the point of vanishing. Salzman looked up at first without recognizing him. Leo had grown a pointed beard and his eyes were weighted with wisdom. “Salzman,” he said, “love has at last come to my heart.” “Who can love from a picture?” mocked the marriage broker. “It is not impossible.” “If you can love her, then you can love anybody. Let me show you some new clients that they just sent me their photographs. One is a little doll.” “Just her I want,” Leo murmured. “Don’t be a fool, doctor Don’t bother with her.” “Put me in touch with her, Salzman,” Leo said humbly. “Perhaps I can be of service.” Salzman had stopped eating and Leo understood with emotion that it was now arranged. Leaving the cafeteria, he was, however, afflicted by a tormenting suspicion that Salzman had planned it all to happen this way.
Leo was informed by better that she would meet him on a certain corner, and she was there one spring night, waiting under a street lamp. He appeared carrying a small bouquet of violets and rosebuds. Stella stood by the lamp post, smoking. She wore white with red shoes, which fitted his expectations, although in a troubled moment he had imagined the dress red, and only the shoes white. She waited uneasily and shyly. From afar he saw that her eyes – clearly her father’s – were filled with desperate innocence. He pictured, in her, his own redemption. Violins and lit candles revolved in the sky. Leo ran forward with flowers outthrust. Around the corner, Salzman, leaning against a wall, chanted prayers for the dead. 1958
On “The Magic Barrel” Introduction Bernard Malamud's short story, "The Magic Barrel," was first published in the Partisan Review in 1954, and reprinted in 1958 in Malamud's first volume of short fiction. This tale of a rabbinical student's misadventures with a marriage broker was quite well received in the 1950s, and Malamud's collection of short stories,The Magic Barrel, won the National Book Award for fiction in 1959. As Malamud attained a reputation as a respected novelist in the 1960s and 1970s, his short stories were widely anthologized and attracted considerable attention from literary students and scholars. A writer in the Jewish-American tradition, Malamud wrote stories that explore issues and themes central to the Jewish community. A love story with a surprising outcome, "The Magic Barrel" traces a young man's struggle to come to terms with his identity and poses the religious question of how people—Jews and others— may come to love God. Is human love, the story asks, a necessary first step to loving God? Malamud's "The Magic Barrel" is a story remarkable for its economy, using just a few strokes to create compelling and complex characters.
The Magic Barrel Summary | Detailed Summary On a cold day in February, Leo Finkle, a 27-year-old rabbinical student at New York's Yeshivah University, is sitting in his small apartment regretting the fact that he decided to call in a matchmaker to help him find a wife. However, Finkle knows that he needs to find a wife if he wants to get an appointment as a rabbi after he graduates, so he patiently waits for Pinye Salzman to arrive and, hopefully, arrange a suitable match for him. Pinye Salzman arrives and cuts a not displeasing figure with his dignified air and wizened looks. However, he is also missing teeth and he smells distinctly of fish, which he eats constantly, so he is not entirely pleasant either. However, more importantly, he carries a binder holding pictures of eligible Jewish women with him, and Finkle hopes that it holds a woman for him. To explain himself, Finkle tells Salzman that he is a student too wrapped up in his studies to have a proper social life and, but for his parents in Cleveland, he is quite alone. Thus, with few female prospects in his life, he has called in a marriage broker, which
Finkle considers a very honored position in the Jewish community, to make "practical the necessary without hindering the joy." (2) Salzman, of course, is quite pleased with the kind words that Finkle offers him, and Salzman opens his binder to offer pictures and descriptions of some women that are looking to marry. Unfortunately, Finkle looks at the pictures, hears Salzman's descriptions and decides that none of these women is for him. One is too old, one is a widow, another's father is a stomach specialist and none of them really entices Finkle. Of course, Salzman argues and tells him that these are all fine women who would make him very happy, but Finkle disapproves of all of them and, in frustration, sends Salzman away. The next day, Leo Finkle is pondering his decision not to see any of the women that Salzman offered and wonders whether he made the right choice. However, Salzman appears at his door that very same night and says that Lily Hirschorn, a 32-year-old woman that he mentioned the previous day, is actually only 29 and, therefore, not too old for Finkle. Of course, Finkle is immediately suspicious and suspects that Salzman is lying in order to make him meet the woman, but Finkle decides to pay her a visit anyway. Leo Finkle and Lily Hirschorn's evening together is unfortuntely, a disaster. Not only is Lily at least 35 years old, but also she seems to have an idea that Finkle is some sort of eminently holy man who can see into the mind of God. Though Finkle is comfortable with her at first, Lily turns the conversation to Finkle's studies with a clear expectation that he will help her see into his understanding of divine truths. Obviously, Salzman built up Finkle as some sort of mystic or prophet, and Finkle cannot provide her with any of the answers that she is looking for. In fact, when Lily asks Finkle why he learned to love God, Finkle hears himself say, "I came to God not because I loved Him, but because I did not." (12) This is not the answer Lily is looking for and the evening ends in disappointment for both of them. The next day, Leo Finkle is furious at Salzman for lying to both him and Lily. However, the more Finkle thinks about it, the more he realizes that he is furious at himself. After all, he should be able to meet women on his own, but his complete inability to have a real social life and his total ineptitude with women has forced him to speak with a marriage broker in order to find a wife. However, the thing that really angers Finkle is the realization that he is studying to be a rabbi because he does not love God, which he only came to understand when he was speaking with Lily Hirschorn. Furthermore, Finkle has never loved anybody, except for his parents, and no one has ever loved him. Thus, he finds himself unloved, loveless and very, very lonely. Over the next two weeks, Finkle neglects his studies and neglects to take care of his self as he begins to do some serious soulsearching. Though he considers dropping out of the Yeshivah, he does finally determine that he should continue his studies and finish school, as planned. However, he still needs to find a wife, but he is not going to use Salzman to do it for him. The night that Finkle decides he does not needs Salzman, the matchmaker himself appears with a new batch of photographs. Of course, Salzman first asks about Lily, but Finkle accuses Salzman of lying to both him and Lily. Salzman apologizes profusely and offers explanations, but Finkle tells him that he is in search of love, not a convenient marriage partner. Of course,
Salzman offers him an envelope of photos to look at, but Finkle wants nothing to do with it. However, before Finkle can give the photos back to him, Salzman rushes out the door. The month turns to March and Finkle makes plans to have a real social life so that he can fall in love. However, it never materializes and Finkle realizes that he is simply not in a situation that allows him to go out and meet women. After all, he is a poor university student who studies diligently and he has neither the time nor the funds to spend on evenings out. Thus, as he comes to grips with his plight, he opens Salzman's envelope of pictures. As Finkle looks through the pictures, he realizes that there is nobody in there who interests him. They are all tired old women who are past their prime, just like Lily Hirschorn, and Finkle, frustrated, puts the pictures back into the envelope. However, as Finkle puts the pictures back in, a small picture that he had not noticed falls out. When Finkle sees the picture, he realizes that he has found the woman he is looking for. She is young, beautiful and alive in a way that he cannot describe. Though she looks familiar, Finkle knows that he would have remembered meeting such a woman and, therefore, they must have never met. However, he knows that he must meet this mystery woman and he immediately runs out to talk to Salzman. When Finkle arrives at Salzman's home, his wife informs Finkle that her husband is out. However, Finkle leaves a message telling Salzman to come over. Then, surprisingly, Salzman is waiting at Finkle's door when he returns. After Finkle provides Salzman with tea and a sardine sandwich, he shows Salzman the picture and says that he wants to meet that particular woman. However, Salzman is shocked and refuses, though he does not explain why at first. When Finkle presses Salzman to let him meet the woman that Salzman says that the picture is of his daughter Stella, and she is dead to him and she should rot in hell. After Salzman leaves, Finkle is so shocked by the revelation that he hides in bed, trying to get Stella out of his mind. Unfortunately, he cannot. For days, he is tortured with longing for her, though he tries to beat his feelings down and forget the image of the woman he loves. However, instead of destroying his feelings, he decides that it is up to him to convert her to goodness and bring her back to God. Thus, when Finkle meets Salzman in a cafeteria in the Bronx, he convinces Salzman to arrange a meeting and let him try to help Stella. Finally, the night arrives that Finkle is to finally meet Stella. They are to meet on a corner under a streetlight and Finkle brings a bouquet of flowers for her. Then, when Finkle sees her in person, he runs toward this shy, yet confident woman that he has loved since he saw her picture. However, just around the corner, Pinye Salzman chants prayers for the dead.
Characters Leo Finkle Leo Finkle has spent the last six years studying to become a rabbi at New York’s Yeshivah University. Because he believes that he will have a better chance of getting employment with a
congregation if he is married, Leo consults a professional matchmaker. Leo is a cold person; he comes to realize that “he did not love God so well as he might, because he had not loved man.” When Finkle falls in love with Salzman’s daughter, Stella, the rabbinical student must confront his own emotional failings. Lily Hirschorn Lily Hirschorn is introduced to Leo Finkle, the rabbinical student, by Pinye Salzman, the matchmaker. She is a schoolteacher, comes from a good family, converses on many topics, and Leo considers her “not unpretty.” It soon becomes clear, however, that the match between them will not work. Pinye Salzman Leo consults Pinye Salzman, who is a professional matchmaker. Salzman is an elderly man who lives in great poverty. He is unkempt in appearance and smells of fish. While Salzman works to bring couples together, Leo has reason to believe that the matchmaker, or “commercial cupid,” is occasionally dishonest about the age and financial status of his clients. Salzman seems greatly dismayed when Leo falls in love with Stella. Yet Leo begins to suspect that Pinye, whom he thinks of as a “trickster,” had “planned it all to happen this way.” Stella Salzman Stella Salzman is the daughter of Pinye Salzman, the matchmaker. Salzman has disowned his daughter, evidently because she has committed some grave act of disobedience. When Leo, who has fallen in love with Stella, asks her father where he might find her, the matchmaker replies: “She is a wild one — wild, without shame. This is not a bride for a rabbi.” When he finally meets Stella she is smoking, leaning against a lamp post in the classic stance of the prostitute, but Leo believes he sees in her eyes “a desperate innocence.”
Themes Identity Malamud’s Leo Finkle is a character trying to figure out who he really is. Having spent the last six years of his life deep in study for ordination as a rabbi, he is an isolated and passionless man, disconnected from human emotion. When Lily Hirschorn asks him how he came to discover his calling as a rabbi, Leo responds with embarrassment: “I am not a talented religious person. . . . I think . . . that I came to God, not because I loved him, but because I did not.” In other words, Leo hopes that by becoming a rabbi he might learn to love himself and the people around him. Leo is in despair after his conversation with Lily because “. . . he saw himself for the first time as he truly was — unloved and loveless.” As he realizes the truth about himself, he becomes desperate to change. Leo determines to reform himself and renew his life. Leo continues to search for a bride, but without the matchmaker’s help: “. . . he regained his composure and some idea of purpose in life: to go on as planned. Although he was imperfect, the ideal was not.” The ideal, in this case, is love. Leo comes to believe that through love — the love he feels when he first sees the photograph of Stella Salzman — he may begin his life anew, and forge an identity based on something more positive. When at last he meets Stella he
“pictured, in her, his own redemption.” That redemption, the story’s ending leads us to hope, will be Leo’s discovery through Stella of an identity based on love. God and Religion Central to Malamud’s “The Magic Barrel” is the idea that to love God, one must love man first. Finkle is uncomfortable with Lily’s questions because they make him realize “the true nature of his relationship to God.” He comes to realize “that he did not love God as well as he might, because he had not loved man.” In spite of the zeal with which he has pursued his rabbinical studies, Leo’s approach to God, as the narrative reveals, is one of cold, analytical formalism. Unable fully to love God’s creatures, Leo Finkle cannot fully love God. Once again, the agent of change in Leo’s life seems to be Stella Salzman. The text strongly implies that by loving Stella, by believing in her, Leo will be able to come to God. Just before his meeting with Stella, Leo “concluded to convert her to goodness, him to God.” To love Stella, it seems, will be Leo’s true ordination, his true rite of passage to the love of God. Topics for Further Study
When did Jewish people settle in large numbers in New York City? Describe the Jewish communities in New York City or in another large American city. In what way can “The Magic Barrel” be read as a story about the descendants of immigrants? In chapter twenty of the Book of Exodus in the Bible, Moses sets forth the Ten Commandments to the Israelites. Do the characters in “The Magic Barrel” follow the Commandments? What does this say about them? What does the story suggest about the relation between love and self-knowledge? What must Leo Finkle learn about himself before he is truly able to love?
Style Point of View Point of view is a term that describes who tells a story, or through whose eyes we see the events of a narrative. The point of view in Malamud’s “The Magic Barrel” is third person limited. In the third person limited point of view, the narrator is not a character in the story, but someone outside of it who refers to the characters as “he,” “she,” and “they.” This outside narrator, however, is not omniscient, but is limited to the perceptions of one of the characters in the story. The narrator of the story views the events of the story through the eyes of Leo Finkle even though it is not Leo telling the story.
Symbolism Symbolism is a literary device that uses an action, a person, a thing, or an image to stand for something else. In Malamud’s “The Magic Barrel” the coming of spring plays an important symbolic role. The story begins in February, “when winter was on its last legs,” and ends “one spring night” as Leo approaches Stella Salzman under a street lamp. The story’s progression from winter to spring is an effective symbol for the emotional rebirth that Leo undergoes as he struggles to grow as a human being. Idiom Idiom may be defined as a specialized vocabulary used by a particular group, or a manner of expression peculiar to a given people. In other words, different groups of people speak in different ways. While the narrator and most of the characters in “The Magic Barrel” speak standard English, Pinye Salzman, the matchmaker, speaks Yiddish. Written in Hebrew characters and based on the grammar of medieval German, Yiddish was the common language of many European Jewish communities. A Russian Jew at the turn of the century (Malamud’s father, for example) might read the Torah in Hebrew, speak to his gentile neighbors in Russian, and conduct the affairs of his business and household in Yiddish. Since World War II, Yiddish has become less prevalent in Europe and in the immigrant Jewish communities of North America. In another generation, it may totally die out. Many of Malamud’s characters, however, still use the idiom. When Salzman asks Leo, “A glass tea you got, rabbi?”; when he exclaims, “what can I say to somebody that he is not interested in school teachers?”; and when he laments, “This is my baby, my Stella, she should burn in hell,” the reader hears an idiomatic version of English seasoned with the cadences of Yiddish speech.
Historical Context Malamud’s “The Magic Barrel” was first published by the Partisan Review in 1954 and reprinted as the title story in Malamud’s first volume of short fiction in 1958. The period between those two dates was an eventful time in American history. In 1954 the United States Supreme Court unanimously rejected the concept of segregation in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, which found that the practice of maintaining separate classrooms or separate schools for black and white students was unconstitutional. In the same year Senator Joseph McCarthy was censured by the Senate for having unjustly accused hundreds of Americans of being communists. In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite to successfully orbit the earth, sparking concern that the Soviets would take control of space. While the text of “The Magic Barrel” is almost entirely free of topical or historical references that might allow readers to place the events of the story at a particular date, one detail establishes Leo’s encounter with Salzman as taking place roughly at the time of the story’s publication in the mid-fifties. Finkle is about to complete his six-year course of study to become a rabbi at New York City’s Yeshivah University. Yeshivah, in Hebrew, means a place of study. Yeshivah University is the oldest and most distinguished Jewish institution of higher learning in the United States. While its history goes back to 1886, the school was not named Yeshivah until 1945, when its charter was revised. At the end of the traditional six years of study to become a rabbi, then,
Leo would probably be considering marriage sometime early in the 1950s. By consulting a professional matchmaker to find a bride, Leo is acting more like his immigrant grandparents than an American Jew of the 1950s. In Yiddish, the secular language of many European and American Jewish communities, the word for “matchmaker” is shadchen (pronounced shod-hun). Before the seventeenth century, the shadchen was a highly respected person, responsible for the perpetuation of the Jewish people through arranged marriages. As European Jewish communities grew larger and as modern secular notions of romantic love became pervasive, professional matchmakers became less scrupulous in their dealings and were frequently the objects of satire and derision. Indeed a wealth of humor at the expense of the shadchen developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; representative is the remark of the Yiddish writer Sholom Aleichem (1859-1916), who quipped that the shadchen was best defined as “a dealer in livestock.” Regardless, the shadchen tradition survived Jewish immigration to the United States. In his history of Jewish immigrant life on New York City’s lower east side, World of our Fathers, Irving Howe describes the typicalshadchen as similar to Malamud’s Pinye Salzman: “Affecting an ecclesiastic bearing, the matchmaker wore a somber black suit with a half-frock effect, a silk yarmulke (skullcap), a full beard.” The matchmaker, according to Howe, “customarily received 5 percent of the dowry in addition to a flat fee, neither one nor both enough to make him rich.” Pinye Salzman is in many ways, then, a stereotypical figure who has stepped from the world of Jewish oral humor into the pages of Malamud’s story. Leo, in seeking the shadchen’s help in the 1950s, reveals himself not only as a formal, but as a very old fashioned young man.
says Kaddish, the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead, he is “commemorating the death of the old Leo who was incapable of love. But he is also celebrating Leo’s birth into a new life.” Both Richard Reynolds and Bates Hoffer offer interpretations of “The Magic Barrel” based on specific Jewish religious traditions. Reynolds’s focus is on the role of Kaddish, maintaining that Salzman hopes that Leo will bring Stella, “the prodigal daughter,” back to a moral life. In that case, reciting the Kaddish is particularly appropriate given the ancient prayer’s emphasis on resurrection. Hoffer compares the five-part structure of the story to the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament, the sacred text of Judaism) and claims that Leo has broken a majority of the ten commandments. Finally Carmen Cramer maintains that Leo’s story is a journey of emotional maturity. Rather, “The Magic Barrel” chronicles the rabbinical student’s “Americanization,” his gradual assimilation into American culture. Cramer asserts that Finkle “possesses few of the typical American traits — decisiveness, emotionality, action-orientation — but he melts into the American pot by the end of Bernard Malamud’s polished piece of writing. . . .” Compare & Contrast
1990s: Through intermarriage and assimilation, many people in the Jewish community believe that Jewish culture is endangered. Unfortunately, discrimination still exists in the United States, but many groups fight misinformation and discrimination against Jews.
Critical Overview When Malamud’s “The Magic Barrel” first appeared in Partisan Review in 1954, it provided a colorful glimpse into the world of American Jews. Fours years later, after his second novel, The Assistant, had been enthusiastically received, Malamud reprinted “The Magic Barrel” as the title story in a collection of his short fiction. The collection sold well, and was praised by reviewers for its honesty, irony, and acute perception of the moral dilemmas of American Jews. It won the National Book Award for fiction in 1959. Between the publication of the collection in 1958 and his death in 1986, Bernard Malamud became one of America’s most respected writers of fiction, publishing six more novels and numerous collections of short fiction. Malamud’s writing has been the subject of critical debate for three decades. Writing in 1966, Sidney Richman examines the emotional sterility of the protagonist Leo Finkle. According to Richman, “. . . Finkle knows the word but not the spirit; and he makes it clear that in a secret part of his heart he knows it.” Theodore C. Miller, in 1972, compares “The Magic Barrel” to Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, pointing out that both stories explore “the love of the minister and the whore.” Unlike Hawthorne’s minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, however, Malamud’s rabbinical student, Finkle, “comes to accept Stella for the reason that he accepts universal guilt.” Miller also contends that Salzman has arranged the love affair between Leo and Stella because he wishes “to initiate Leo Finkle into the existential nature of love.” When at the end of the story Salzman
1950s: Decades of immigration from Eastern and Western Europe have led to a considerable Jewish population in the United States. Strong and vibrant Jewish communities thrive in many American cities. Yet discrimination against the Jewish people exists.
1950s: The Jewish matchmaker, also known as the “shadchen,” performs a vital function within the community. Arranged marriage, although losing popularity among Jewish families, is still a viable option for young Jewish men and women of age. 1990s: Matchmaking is considered an antiquated tradition. It is mainly used in orthodox Jewish communities, as other networking opportunities allow Jewish men and women to meet and find possible marriage partners.
Criticism Freud invokes the concept of reaction formation: a thing consumed (or almost consumed) by its opposite. The third casket and the third daughter have been transformed into the prizes. Yet, says Freud, lead seems dull as compared to gold and silver just as Cordelia lavishes no praise on her father and then dies. According to Freud, her death—all death—is the underlying wager of such interpretive choices. To return to its mythic origins, Shakespeare's story harkens back to the bifurcation of woman as the goddess of love and the goddess of death. Cordelia and that leaden casket appear to be what man desires most: the unconditional love of a woman (his mother), but they are both imbued with the destruction that mother earth brings. Cordelia's death thus is not
her own; it is the dream image of Lear's own death; "the silent Goddess of Death, will take him into her arms."
THE THEME OF THE THREE CASKETS I
Two scenes from Shakespeare, one from a comedy and the other from a tragedy, have lately given me occasion for posing and solving a small problem. The first of these scenes is the suitors' choice between the three caskets in The Merchant of Venice. The fair and wise Portia is bound at her father's bidding to take as her husband only that one of her suitors who chooses the right casket from among the three before him. The three caskets are of gold, silver and lead: the right casket is the one that contains her portrait. Two suitors have already departed unsuccessful: they have chosen gold and silver. Bassanio, the third, decides in favour of lead; thereby he wins the bride, whose affection was already his before the trial of fortune. Each of the suitors gives reasons for his choice in a speech in which he praises the metal he prefers and depreciates the other two. The most difficult task thus falls to the share of the fortunate third suitor; what he finds to say in glorification of lead as against gold and silver is little and has a forced ring. If in psycho-analytic practice we were confronted with such a speech, we should suspect that there were concealed motives behind the unsatisfying reasons produced. Shakespeare did not himself invent this oracle of the choice of a casket; he took it from a tale in the Gesra fiomanorum,1 in which a girl has to make the same choice to win the Emperor's son.2 Here too the third metal, lead, is the bringer of fortune. It is not hard to guess that we have here an ancient theme, which requires to be interpreted, accounted for and traced back to its origin. A first conjecture as to the meaning of this choice between gold, silver and lead is quickly confirmed by a statement of Stuck-en's,3 who has made a study of the same material over a wide field. He writes: "The identity of Portia's three suitors is clear from their choice: the Prince of Morocco chooses the gold casket—he is the sun; the Prince of Arragon chooses the silver casket—he is the moon; Bassanio chooses the leaden casket—he is the star youth." In support of this explanation he cites an episode from the Esto nian folk-epic "Kalewipoeg," in which the three suitors appear undisguisedly as the sun, moon and star youths (the last being "the Pole-star's eldest boy") and once again the bride falls to the lot of the third. Thus our little problem has led us to an astral myth! The only pity is that with this explanation we are not at the end of the matter. The question is not exhausted, for we do not share the belief of some investigators that myths were read in the heavens and brought down to earth; we are more inclined to judge with Otto Rank4 that they were projected on to the heavens after having arisen elsewhere under purely human conditions. It is in this human content that our interest lies. Let us look once more at our material. In the Estonian epic, just as in the tale from the Gesta Romanorum, the subject is a girl choosing between the three suitors; in the scene from The Merchant of Venice the subject is apparently the same, but at the same time something appears in it that is in the nature of an inversion of the theme: a man chooses between three—caskets. If what we were concerned with were a dream, it would occur to us at once that caskets are also women, symbols of what is essential in woman, and therefore of a woman herself— like coffers, boxes, cases, baskets, and so on.5 If we boldly assume that there are symbolic substitutions of the same kind in myths as well, then the casket scene in The Merchant of Venice really becomes the inversion we suspected. With a wave of the wand, as though we were in a fairy tale, we have
stripped the astral garment from our theme; and now we see that the theme is a human one, a man's choice between three women. This same content, however, is to be found in another scene of Shakespeare's, in one of his most powerfully moving dramas; not the choice of a bride this time, yet linked by many hidden similarities to the choice of the casket in The Merchant of Venice. The old King Lear resolves to divide his kingdom while he is still alive among his three daughters, in proportion to the amount of love that each of them expresses for him. The two elder ones, Goneril and Regan, exhaust themselves in asseverations and laudations of their love for him; the third, Cordelia, refuses to do so. He should have recognized the unassuming, speechless love of his third daughter and rewarded it, but he does not recognize it. He disowns Cordelia, and divides the kingdom between the other two, to his own and the general ruin. Is not this once more the scene of a choice between three women, of whom the youngest is the best, the most excellent one? There will at once occur to us other scenes from myths, fairy tales and literature, with the same situation as their content. The shepherd Paris has to choose between three goddesses, of whom he declares the third to be the most beautiful. Cinderella, again, is a youngest daughter, who is preferred by the prince to her two elder sisters. Psyche, in Apuleius's story, is the youngest and fairest of three sisters. Psyche is, on the one hand, revered as Aphrodite in human form; on the other, she is treated by that goddess as Cinderella was treated by her stepmother and is set the task of sorting a heap of mixed seeds, which she accomplishes with the help of small creatures (doves in the case of Cinderella, ants in the case of Psyche). 6 Anyone who cared to make a wider survey of the material would undoubtedly discover other versions of the same theme preserving the same essential features. Let us be content with Cordelia, Aphrodite, Cinderella and Psyche. In all the stories the three women, of whom the third is the most excellent one, must surely be regarded as in some way alike if they are represented as sisters. (We must not be led astray by the fact that Lear's choice is between three daughters; this may mean nothing more than that he has to be represented as an old man. An old man cannot very well choose between three women in any other way. Thus they become his daughters.) But who are these three sisters and why must the choice fall on the third? If we could answer this question, we should be in possession of the interpretation we are seeking. We have once already made use of an application of psycho-analytic technique, when we explained the three caskets symbolically as three women. If we have the courage to proceed in the same way, we shall be setting foot on a path which will lead us first to something unexpected and incomprehensible, but which will perhaps, by a devious route, bring us to a goal. It must strike us that this excellent third woman has in several instances certain peculiar qualities besides her beauty. They are qualities that seem to be tending towards some kind of unity; we must certainly not expect to find them equally well marked in every example. Cordelia makes herself unrecognizable, inconspicuous like lead, she remains dumb, she "loves and is silent." 7 Cinderella hides so that she cannot be found. We may perhaps be allowed to equate concealment and dumbness. These would of course be only two instances out of the five we have picked out. But there is an intimation of the same thing to be found, curiously enough, in two other cases. We have decided to compare Cordelia, with her obstinate refusal, to lead. In Bassanio's short speech while he is choosing the casket, he says of lead (without in any way leading up to the remark): Thy paleness8 moves me more than eloquence. That is to say: "Thy plainness moves me more than the blatant nature of the other two." Gold and silver are "loud"; lead is dumb— in fact like Cordelia, who "loves and is silent."9 In the ancient Greek accounts of the Judgement of Paris, nothing is said of any such reticence on the part of Aphrodite. Each of the
three goddesses speaks to the youth and tries to win him by promises. But, oddly enough, in a quite modern handling of the same scene this characteristic of the third one which has struck us makes its appearance again. In the libretto of Offenbach's La Belle Helene, Paris, after telling of the solicitations of the other two goddesses, describes Aphrodite's behaviour in this competition tor the beauty-prize: La troisieme, ah! la troisieme . . . La troisieme ne dit rien. EiJe eut le prix tout de meme . . .10 If we decide to regard the peculiarities of our "third one" as concentrated in her "dumbness," then psycho-analysis will tell us that in dreams dumbness is a common representation of death.11 More than ten years ago a highly intelligent man told me a dream which he wanted to use as evidence of the telepathic nature of dreams. In it he saw an absent friend from whom he had received no news for a very long time, and reproached him energetically for his silence. The friend made no reply. It afterwards turned out that he had met his death by suicide at about the time of the dream. Let us leave the problem of telepathy on one side:12 there seems, however, not to be any doubt that here the dumbness in the dream represented death. Hiding and being unfindable—a thing which confronts the prince in the fairy tale of Cinderella three times, is another unmistakable symbol of death in dreams; so, too, is a marked pallor, of which the "paleness" of the lead in one reading of Shakespeare's text is a reminder.13 It would be very much easier for us to transpose these interpretations from the language of dreams to be mode of expression used in the myth that is now under consideration if we could make it seem probable that dumbness must be interpreted as a sign of being dead in productions other than dreams. At this point I will single out the ninth story in Grimm's Fairy Tales, which bears the title "The Twelve Brothers."14 A king and a queen have twelve children, all boys. The king declares that if the thirteenth child is a girl, the boys will have to die. In expectation of her birth he has twelve coffins made. With their mother's help the twelve sons take refuge in a hidden wood, and swear death to any girl they may meet. A girl is born, grows up, and learns one day from her mother that she has had twelve brothers. She decides to seek them out, and in the wood she finds the youngest; he recognizes her, but is anxious to hide her on account of the brothers' oath. The sister says: "I will gladly die, if by so doing I can save my twelve brothers." The brothers welcome her affectionately, however, and she stays with them and looks after their house for them. In a little garden beside the house grow twelve lilies. The girl picks them and gives one to each brother. At that moment the brothers are changed into ravens, and disappear, together with the house and garden. (Ravens are spiritbirds; the killing of the twelve brothers by their sister is represented by the picking of the flowers, just as it is at the beginning of the story by the coffins and the disappearance of the brothers.) The girl, who is once more ready to save her brothers from death, is now told that as a condition she must be dumb for seven years, and not speak a single word. She submits to the test, which brings her herself into mortal danger. She herself, that is, dies for her brothers, as she promised to do before she met them. By remaining dumb she succeeds at last in setting the ravens free. In the story of "The Six Swans"15 the brothers who are changed into birds are set free in exactly the same way—they are restored to life by their sister's dumbness. The girl has made a firm resolve to free her brothers, "even if it should cost her her life"; and once again (being the wife of the king) she risks her own life because she refuses to give up her dumbness in order to defend herself against evil accusations. It would certainly be possible to collect further evidence from fairy tales that dumbness is to be understood as representing death. These indications would lead us to conclude that the third one of the sisters between whom the choice is made is a dead woman. But she
may be something else as well—namely, Death itself, the Goddess of Death. Thanks to a displacement that is far from infrequent, the qualities that a deity imparts to men are ascribed to the deity himself. Such a displacement will surprise us least of all in relation to the Goddess of Death, since in modern versions and representations, which these stories would thus be forestalling, Death itself is nothing other than a dead man. But if the third of the sisters is the Goddess of Death, the sisters are known to us. They are the Fates, the Moerae, the Parcae or the Norns, the third of whom is called Atropos, the inexorable.
II We will for the time being put aside the task of inserting the interpretation that we have found into our myth, and listen to what the mythologists have to teach us about the role and origin of the Fates.16 The earliest Greek mythology (in Homer) only knew a single Molpa, personifying inevitable fate. The further development of this one Moera into a company of three (or less often two) sistergoddesses probably came about on the basis of other divine figures to which the Moerae were closely related—the Graces and the Horae [the Seasons]. The Horae were originally goddesses of the waters of the sky, dispensing rain and dew, and of the clouds from which rain falls; and, since the clouds were conceived of as something that has been spun, it came about that these goddesses were looked upon as spinners, an attribute that then became attached to the Moerae. In the sun-favoured Mediterranean lands it is the rain on which the fertility of the soil depends, and thus the Horae became vegetation goddesses. The beauty of flowers and the abundance of fruit was their doing, and they were accredited with a wealth of agreeable and charming traits. They became the divine representatives of the Seasons, and it is possibly owing to this connection that there were three of them, if the sacred nature of the number three is not a sufficient explanation. For the peoples of antiquity at first distinguished only three seasons: winter, spring and summer. Autumn was only added in late GraecoRoman times, after which the Horae were often represented in art as four in number. The Horae retained their relation to time. Later they presided over the times of day, as they did at first over the times of the year; and at last their name came to be merely a designation of the hours (heure, ora). The Norns of German mythology are akin to the Horae and the Moerae and exhibit this time-signification in their names.17 It was inevitable, however, that a deeper view should come to be taken of the essential nature of these deities, and that their essence should be transposed on to the regularity with which the seasons change. The Horae thus became the guardians of natural law and of the divine Order which causes the same thing to recur in Nature in an unalterable sequence. This discovery of Nature reacted on the conception of human life. The nature-myth changed into a human myth: the weather-goddesses became goddesses of Fate. But this aspect of the Horae found expression only in the Moerae, who watch over the necessary ordering of human life as inexorably as do the Horae over the regular order of nature. The ineluctable severity of Law and its relation to death and dissolution, which had been avoided in the charming figures of the Horae, were now stamped upon the Moerae, as though men had only perceived the full seriousness of natural law when they had to submit their own selves to it. The names of the three spinners, too, have been significantly explained by mythologists. Lachesis, the name of the second, seems to denote "the accidental that is included in the regularity of destiny"18 —or, as we should say, "experience"; just as Atropos stands for "the
ineluctable"—Death. Clotho would then be left to mean the innate disposition with its fateful implications. But now it is time to return to the theme which we are trying to interpret—the theme of the choice between three sisters. We shall be deeply disappointed to discover how unintelligible the situations under review become and what contradictions of their apparent content result, if we apply to them the interpretation that we have found. On our supposition the third of the sisters is the Goddess of Death, Death itself. But in the Judgement of Paris she is the Goddess of Love, in the tale of Apuleius she is someone comparable to the goddess for her beauty, in The Merchant of Venice she is the fairest and wisest of women, in King Lear she is the one loyal daughter. We may ask whether there can be a more complete contradiction. Perhaps, improbable though it may seem, there is a still more complete one lying close at hand. Indeed, there certainly is; since, whenever our theme occurs, the choice between the women is free, and yet it falls on death. For, after all, no one chooses death, and it is only by a fatality that one falls a victim to it. However, contradictions of a certain kind—replacements by the precise opposite—offer no serious difficulty to the work of analytic interpretation. We shall not appeal here to the fact that contraries are so often represented by one and the same element in the modes of expression used by the unconscious, as for instance in dreams.19 But we shall remember that there are motive forces in mental life which bring about replacement by the opposite in the form of what is known as reaction-formation; and it is precisely in the revelation of such hidden forces as these that we look for the reward of this enquiry. The Moerae were created as a result of a discovery that warned man that he too is a part of nature and therefore subject to the immutable law of death. Something in man was bound to struggle against this subjection, for it is only with extreme unwillingness that he gives up his claim to an exceptional position. Man, as we know, makes use of his imaginative activity in order to satisfy the wishes that reality does not satisfy. So his imagination rebelled against the recognition of the truth embodied in the myth of the Moerae, and constructed instead the myth derived from it, in which the Goddess of Death was replaced by the Goddess of Love and by what was equivalent to her in human shape. The third of the sisters was no longer Death; she was the fairest, best, most desirable and most lovable of women. Nor was this substitution in any way technically difficult: it was prepared for by an ancient ambivalence, it was carried out along a primaeval line of connection which could not long have been forgotten. The Goddess of Love herself, who now took the place of the Goddess of Death, had once been identical with her. Even the Greek Aphrodite had not wholly relinquished her connection with the underworld, although she had long surrendered her chthonic role to other divine figures, to Persephone, or to the tri-form Artemis-Hecate. The great Mother-goddesses of the oriental peoples, however, all seem to have been both creators and destroyers—both goddesses of life and fertility and goddesses of death. Thus the replacement by a wishful opposite in our theme harks back to a primaeval identity. The same consideration answers the question how the feature of a choice came into the myth of the three sisters. Here again there has been a wishful reversal. Choice stands in the place of necessity, of destiny. In this way man overcomes death, which he has recognized intellectually. No greater triumph of wish-fulfilment is conceivable. A choice is made where in reality there is obedience to a compulsion; and what is chosen is not a figure of terror, but the fairest and most desirable of women. On closer inspection we observe, to be sure, that the original myth is not so thoroughly distorted that traces of it do not show through and betray its presence. The free choice between the three sisters is, properly speaking, no free choice, for it must necessarily fall on the third if every kind of evil is not to come about, as it does in King Lear. The fairest and best of women, who has taken the place of the Death-goddess, has kept certain characteristics that border on the
uncanny, so that from them we have been able to guess at what lies beneath.20 So far we have been following out the myth and its transformation, and it is to be hoped that we have correctly indicated the hidden causes of the transformation. We may now turn our interest to the way in which the dramatist has made use of the theme. We get an impression that a reduction of the theme to the original myth is being carried out in his work, so that we once more have a sense of the moving significance which had been weakened by the distortion. It is by means of this reduction of the distortion, this partial return to the original, that the dramatist achieves his more profound effect upon us. To avoid misunderstandings, I should like to say that it is not my purpose to deny that King Lear's dramatic story is intended to inculcate two wise lessons: that one should not give up one's possessions and rights during one's lifetime, and that one must guard against accepting flattery at its face value. These and similar warnings are undoubtedly brought out by the play; but it seems to me quite impossible to explain the overpowering effect of King Lear from the impression that such a train of thought would produce, or to suppose that the dramatist's personal motives did not go beyond the intention of teaching these lessons. It is suggested, too, that his purpose was to present the tragedy of ingratitude, the sting of which he may well have felt in his own heart, and that the effect of the play rests on the purely formal element of its artistic presentation; but this cannot, so it seems to me, take the place of the understanding brought to us by the explanation we have reached of the theme of the choice between the three sisters. Lear is an old man. It is for this reason, as we have already said, that the three sisters appear as his daughters. The relationship of a father to his children, which might be a fruitful source of many dramatic situations, is not turned to further account in the play. But Lear is not only an old man: he is a dying man. In this way the extraordinary premiss of the division of his inheritance loses all its strangeness. But the doomed man is not willing to renounce the love of women; he insists on hearing how much he is loved. Let us now recall the moving final scene, one of the culminating points of tragedy in modern drama. Lear carries Cordelia's dead body on to the stage. Cordelia is Death. If we reverse the situation it becomes intelligible and familiar to us. She is the Death-goddess who, like the Valkyrie in German mythology, carries away the dead hero from the battlefield. Eternal wisdom, clothed in the primaeval myth, bids the old man renounce love, choose death and make friends with the necessity of dying. The dramatist brings us nearer to the ancient theme by representing the man who makes the choice between the three sisters as aged and dying. The regressive revision which he has thus applied to the myth, distorted as it was by wishful transformation, allows us enough glimpses of its original meaning to enable us perhaps to reach as well a superficial allegorical interpretation of the three female figures in the theme. We might argue that what is represented here are the three inevitable relations that a man has with a woman—the woman who bears him, the woman who is his mate and the woman who destroys him; or that they are the three forms taken by the figure of the mother in the course of a man's life —the mother herself, the beloved one who is chosen after her pattern, and lastly the Mother Earth who receives him once more. But it is in vain that an old man yearns for the love of woman as he had it first from his mother; the third of the Fates alone, the silent Goddess of Death, will take him into her arms.
NOTES 1. [A mediaeval collection of stories of unknown authorship.]— Trans.
2. 3.
Brandes (1896). Stucken (1907, 655).
4. Rank (1909, 8 ff.). 5. [See The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), Standard Ed., 5, 354.]—Trans. 6. I have to thank Dr. Otto Rank for calling my attention to these similarities. [Cf. a reference to this in Chapter XII of Group Psychology (1921c), Standard Ed., 18,136.]—Trans. 7. [From an aside of Cordelia's, Act I, Scene 1.]—Trans. 8. "Plainness" according to another reading. 9. In Schlegel's translation this allusion is quite lost: indeed, it is given the opposite meaning: "Dein schlichtes VVesen spricht beredt mich an." ["Thy plainness speaks to me with eloquence."] —Trans. 10. [Literally: "The third one, ah! the third one . . . the third one said nothing. She won the prize all the same."—The quotation is from Act I, Scene 7, of Meilhac and Halevy's libretto. In the German version used by Freud "the third one" "blieb stumm"—"remained dumb."]—Trans. 11. In Stekel's Sprache des Traumes, too, dumbness is mentioned among the "death" symbols (1911a, 351). [Cf. The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), Standard Ed., 5, 357.]— Trans. 12. [Cf. Freud's later paper on "Dreams and Telepathy" (1922a).]—Trans. 13.
Stekel (1911a), loc. cit.
14. ["Die zwolf Briider." Grimm, 1918, 1, 42.]—Trans. 15. ["Die sechs Schwane." Grimm, 1918, 1, 217 (No. 49).]— Trans. 16. What follows is taken from Roscher's lexicon [18841937], under the relevant headings.
on one side, the mute love of Cordelia on the other. Although Freud initially draws on Shakespeare as his source for the choice between caskets; he ends up relying on myths that deal with the choice a woman must make between three pretenders, but which is inverted (as in the case of the choice between the three caskets and in the logic of the dream) into the choice a man makes between three caskets, that is, three women. This leads Freud to evoke other scenes that turn on the number three in myths, folklore and literature, for instance constellations of three sisters where the choice always fall upon the third one who is the most unique. Freud identifies this uniqueness of the third as her "muteness," and then recalls how muteness in psychic life is typically a representation of death. The third daughter, seen from this perspective, may be viewed as Death, the Goddess of Death. The sisters appear, consequently, as the three daughters of Fate—according to mythological tradition, the three Moirai, Parcae, or Norns. Freud's detour through mythology makes the goddesses of fate represent the inexorable Law of Nature, and thus of the passing of time and the ineluctability of death as well. Returning to the choice between three sisters, Freud seeks to soften any resultant contradictions between this detour through mythology and the specific choice itself by reminding us that fantasy activity typically inverts what is disagreeable into its contrary. Fatality, the inexorability of death, is transformed into a free choice. InKing Lear the old man appears at the end carrying the dead Cordelia in his arms. Freud refers the powerful effect this produces to the latent message transpiring behind the manifest representation of the scene: in fact it is Cordelia, Goddess of Death, who carries the dead king off the battlefield.
17. [Their names may be rendered: "What was," "What is," "What shall be."]—Trans. 18. Roscher [ibid.], quotingPreller, ed. Robert (1894). 19. [Cf. The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), Standard Ed., 4, 318.]—Trans. 20. The Psyche of Apuleius's story has kept many traits that remind us of her relation with death. Her wedding is celebrated like a funeral, she has to descend into the underworld, and afterwards she sinks into a deathlike sleep (Otto Rank).—On the significance of Psyche as goddess of the spring and as "Bride of Death," cf. Zinzow (1881).—In another of Grimm's Tales ("The Goose-girl at the Fountain" ["Die Gansehirtin am Brunnen," 1918, 2, 300], No. 179) there is, as in "Cinderella," an alternation between the beautiful and the ugly aspect of the third sister, in which one may no doubt see an indication of her double nature— before and after the substitution. This third daughter is repudiated by her father, after a test which is almost the same as the one in King Lear. Like her sisters, she has to declare how fond she is of their father, but can find no expression for her love but a comparison with salt. (Kindly communicated by Dr. Hanns Sachs.) On "The Theme of the Three Caskets" In "The Theme of the Three Caskets," Sigmund Freud presents a wealth of extremely complex thoughts in just a few short pages. At the beginning are two scenes from Shakespeare, in which the number three plays an essential role: First, the choice of three pretenders to Portia's hand between threemetal caskets in The Merchant of Venice; and second, in King Lear the dying King's partition of his kingdom between his three daughters, according to the love they show for him. In both these two plots, the humblest thing is shown to be the most precious: plain lead
Although a minor work, this magisterial essay demonstrates concretely, even in its use of free association, thefecundity of the
analytical method when applied to literature, myths, and folklore; while at the same time illustrating the laws of psychical functioning, such as the inversion of a wish into its opposite. In a letter to Sàndor Ferenczi dated July 9, 1913, Freud revealed that the "subjective condition" he was in when writing this essay was occasioned by the fact that his third child, Anna, was beginning to occupy a very unique place in his life. Source Citation Freud, Sigmund. (1913f). Das Motiv der Kästchenwahl. Imago 2, 257-266; GW, 10, 24-37; The theme of the three caskets. SE, 12: 291-301. Bibliography Freud, Sigmund, and Ferenczi, Sándor (1992-2000). The correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi. (Eva Brabant, Ernst Falzeder, and Patrizia Giampieri-Deutsch, Eds.; Peter T. Hoffer, Trans.).; Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Benjamin Goluboff Goluboff has taught English at Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, Illinois. In the following essay, he places the story within the context of Jewish fiction of the 1950s and focuses on the theme of intergenerational relations. “Consequently, Finkle’s transformed character would suggest that, unlike their ancestors, the younger generation is open to passion, to change, and to new beginnings exempt from the influence of tradition.” Publishing “The Magic Barrel” in 1954, Bernard Malamud was at the beginning of his career, and near the beginning of a brief and remarkable period in the history of Jewish-American writing. For perhaps a decade, from the mid-1950s to the mid1960s, the American literary imagination seemed to have been captured by a series of books by and about Jews. In 1953 Saul Bellow published The Adventures of Augie March, a story of tragicomic misadventures set in Chicago’s Jewish immigrant milieu. In 1957 Malamud brought out his second novel, The Assistant, the tale of an impoverished Brooklyn grocer who becomes a kind of Jewish everyman. 1959 saw the literary debut of Philip Roth, whose Goodbye, Columbus was the account of a doomed love affair between two Jewish young people divided by social class. Goodbye Columbus won the prestigious National Book Award for fiction in 1960, as Bellow’s Augie March had done in 1954, and as Malamud’s collection of short stories, The Magic Barrel, had in 1959. Equally distinguished Jewish-American writers — such as Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, and Chaim Potok — attracted attention on the literary scene during these years as well. The novelists who made their reputations during this time didn’t always have Jewish concerns as the focus of their fiction. Still, for a decade or so, Malamud’s fiction seemed to be part of a
movement of the American novel toward the lives and problems of Jews. Of course, Jewish-American fiction was not invented in the 1950s; novels by and about American Jews comprised a tradition of some significance and depth by the time Malamud began his career. In one important respect — in its theme of change and conflict between generations — Malamud’s “The Magic Barrel” is solidly embedded in the tradition of JewishAmerican fiction. The first important Jewish-American novel was Mary Antin’s The Promised Land of 1912. Born in Russian Poland, Antin immigrated to Boston as a child in 1894 and became a social worker in the immigrant neighborhoods of that city. The Promised Land is based on Antin’s own immigrant experience, contrasting the poverty and persecution of Jewish life in Eastern Europe with the freedom and economic opportunity available to immigrants in the United States. The vision of America is not so happy, however, in The Rise of David Levinsky by Abraham Cahan (1917). Cahan was a Russian immigrant who found success in America as an editor and journalist. (He edited the The Jewish Daily Forward, the Yiddish newspaper in which Leo Finkle reads Pinye Salzman’s ad.) Like his creator, David Levinsky encounters an America where opportunity is purchased at great sacrifice. As David rises in New York’s garment industry, his success costs him love and personal integrity. Most of all, David’s success results in his betrayal of those Jewish spiritual traditions that had sustained his ancestors in Russia. David ends the novel as a representative of an immigrant generation that has lost the integrity of its ancestors. The theme of change and conflict among generations appears powerfully in Anzia Yezierska’s 1925 novel Bread Givers. Yezierska’s novel dramatizes the conflict between Sara Smolinsky, a lively young Jewish woman, and her dictatorial father, a Russian immigrant Rabbi. Rabbi Smolinsky has devoted his life to study of the Torah, and insists that his daughters work to support him as he continues his studies in America. Sara dreams of receiving a secular American education and becoming a teacher, but to do so she must defy the will of her father: “More and more I began to see that father, in his innocent craziness to hold up the Light of the Law to his children, was a tyrant more terrible than the Tsar from Russia.” Sara eventually realizes her dream, becoming a teacher in the New York Public Schools, but only at the price of breaking off her relationship with her father. When the two reconcile at the end of the novel, it is because Sara has come to recognize that the drive and will that allowed her to finish her education came from her father. As Leo Finkle and Pinye Salzman pursue each other through the pages of Malamud’s “The Magic Barrel,” the theme of generational conflict presents itself with rich ambivalence. It’s as clear from his profession — an arranger of marriages in the way traditional to nineteenth-century European Jewish communities — as it is from his Yiddish-inflected speech that Pinye Salzman is the story’s representative of an older generation of immigrant Jews. Leo Finkle, born in Cleveland and bearing a gentile given name, as clearly embodies a younger population — perhaps those second- or third-generation American Jews who came to maturity in the 1950s. What’s less clear, however, is with which of the two generations the story encourages us to empathize. Who has moral authority in the story, old Salzman or young Finkle? It is tempting to read the story as favoring youth, especially in light of the emotional transformation that Leo Finkle undergoes.
Leo enters the story as a cold and passionless young man. He requires a bride not because he is in love, but because he is about to be ordained as a rabbi and believes that he will find a congregation more readily if he is married. Leo praises Salzman’s profession with chilly formalism; the matchmaker, he says, makes “practical the necessary without hindering joy.” After his date with Lily Hirschorn, Leo comes to recognize and deplore his own passionlessness. Prompted by the matchmaker, Lily had expected Finkle to be a man of great human and spiritual fervor. Leo disappoints her, of course, and sees “himself for the first time as he truly was — unloved and loveless.” In the aftermath of this revelation, Leo appears to change. He tells the matchmaker, “I now admit the necessity of premarital love. That is, I want to be in love with the one I marry.” Salzman’s reply to this declaration seems to identify the matchmaker with the older generation: “‘Love?’ said Salzman, astounded. After a moment he remarked, ‘For us, our love is our life, not for the ladies. In the ghetto they — .’” (Finkle interrupts here with more about his new resolve to find love on his own.) In his fragmentary response Salzman seems to say that for the older generation — those who had lived in the Jewish ghettoes of Europe — romantic love was a frivolous luxury. Survival was what mattered (“our life”), not “the ladies.” With that remark, Salzman appears to inhabit a past whose dangers are no longer real to any but himself.
frailty and passion superior to that of the formalistic rabbinical student. What, then, do we make of the Salzman’s saying Kaddish at the story’s conclusion? If his plan has been all along to educate Leo in the necessity of passion, then it would be inconsistent with that plan for Salzman to mourn just when he has succeeded in bringing the lovers together. Critic Theodore C. Miller has suggested a persuasive way out of this dilemma: “. . . if Salzman has planned the whole episode, then the matchmaker through his Kaddish is commemorating the death of the old Leo who was incapable of love. But he is also celebrating Leo’s birth into a new life.” Viewed in this way, the matchmaker’s prayer of mourning celebrates the success of his plan for Leo and Stella, the “Yiddishe kinder” (Jewish children). Because Malamud’s “The Magic Barrel” is a work of art and not a sociological study of inter-generational relations, it must remain a matter of interpretation whether the story privileges the older or younger generation. Because its central interpretive question involves this judgment between two generations, however, “The Magic Barrel” is a story solidly grounded in the tradition of Jewish-American fiction. Source: Benjamin Goluboff, “Overview of ‘The Magic Barrel,”’ for Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2000.
Finkle’s transformation is complete when he falls in love with the photograph of Salzman’s daughter, Stella, left accidentally among pictures of the matchmaker’s other clients. Loving this fallen woman, and loving her only on the basis of her photograph, is just the passionate leap of faith of which Leo has been previously incapable. His eyes now “weighted with wisdom,” Leo has learned at last the redemptive nature of passion. Old Salzman, however, is more inflexibly than ever rooted in tradition. He considers his daughter dead because of her mysterious sin, and even Finkle’s newfound passion for her can’t restore Stella to the living in her father’s eyes. In the story’s mysterious final section, Finkle rushes to Stella with a bouquet of flowers while: “Around the comer, Salzman, leaning against a wall, chanted prayers for the dead.” If we interpret Salzman’s Kaddish — the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead — as being for his daughter, then as representative of the older generation Salzman is so committed to tradition that he sees only death where life had just begun. Consequently, Finkle’s transformed character would suggest that, unlike their ancestors, the younger generation is open to passion, to change, and to new beginnings exempt from the influence of tradition. One problem with this interpretation is that the story more than once suggests that Finkle’s sudden passion for Stella might not have been an accident, that it might have been planned by the wily Salzman. Finkle suspects that the old man is capable of intrigue. As he walks with Lily Hirschorn, Finkle senses Salzman “to be somewhere around, hiding perhaps high in a tree along the street, flashing the lady signals with a pocket mirror. . . .” Just before the story’s conclusion, when Salzman has finally agreed to let Finkle meet Stella, Leo is suddenly “afflicted by a tormenting suspicion that Salzman had planned it all to happen this way.” If Leo’s meeting with Stella is part of the matchmaker’s plan, then we would have to attribute to him, and to the older generation he represents, a knowledge of human
Malamud’s Unmagic Barrel by Gary Sloan Pinye Salzman, the impoverished marriage broker in Bernard Malamud’s popular story “The Magic Barrel,” is usually perceived as an insoluble mixture of the preternatural and the prosaic, ethereal mentor and plebeian hustler. He is “a shaman and a savant, a prophet and a procurer at the same time” (Gunn 83), “half criminal, half messenger of God” (Richman 119). He exists in the realm of “sheer fantasy” and “in the earthy sphere of gefilte fish, dingy tenements, and Broadway cafeterias” (Reynolds 101). He possesses in equal measure the human and “the magical characteristics” of the god Pan (Storey 180). He appears “now as a human being, now as possessed of supernatural powers, but never indubitably either” (Dessner, “Revisions” 253). He is “scheming pimp” and “holy spirit, placed on earth to bring Leo Finkle from an arid knowledge of the law to the perception that he can fulfill the spirit of the law only by loving in this world” (Solotaroff 36). He is the archetypal “Trickster who symbolizes the instinctual and irrational, driven by the basic needs of sex and hunger” (May 94). Marcus Klein removes him from the human sphere
altogether: he is “either a magician or a demon” and “exists outside all ordinary determinations” (279).
“Why not” Salzman persisted, the pitch of his voice rising. “Because I detest stomach specialists.”
Klein’s proposition works better inverted: Salzman exists entirely within ordinary determinations. Everything he does is explicable in naturalistic terms. Thus approached, the story becomes more dramatic and ingenious. The “happy” ending is no longer assured in advance by elfin sorcery: celestial ingenuity yields to the human variety. Salzman’s “magical powers,” like the “magic” in the barrel, vanish whence they came: Finkle’s “distracted globe.” A naturalistic interpretation is consistent with Malamud’s authorial creed: “I would never,” he said in a rare interview, “deliberately flatten a character to create a stereotype.... Most of all I’m out to create real and passionate human beings” (Field and Field 16).(1) The story can be profitably read along the following lines. Even before he meets Finkle, on the basis of what the student “revealed of himself in a curriculum vitae” (Malamud 195), the broker contemplates a marriage between his daughter, Stella, and the new client.(2) After he meets the student, the intention solidifies. Salzman “heartily approved of Finkle” (194) and “let out a so, contented sigh” (195). As “commercial Cupid,” Salzman hopes to do to Finkle what Eros does to the lovelorn in Medieval and Renaissance emblems: put a hood over his head (hoodwink). If his stratagem works, he will in one swoop “save” his daughter and elevate his own social status. From the outset, Salzman envisions Finkle as son-in-law, persistently calling him “rabbi”—trying the respected epithet on for size—and assuming a proprietary air. To preserve an appearance of occupational integrity and, more importantly, to buy time to sound his prey, the broker masks, consummately as it turns out, his predatory intent. Salzman’s comments about his clients disclose his hidden intent. The remarks are rife with double entendres and subtexts. His thespian skills, lavishly on parade throughout the story, are foretold: “On the mother’s side comes... one actor” (196). Around Finkle, he is always on: he “adjusted his horn-rimmed spectacles, gently cleared his throat and read in an eager voice... .” He can under- as well as overact. When Finkle spurns Sophie P., as Salzman secretly wishes, the broker “hunched his shoulders in an almost imperceptible gesture of disappointment” (196). Rather than betoken wizardly locomotion, as some have thought, his sudden entrances and exits have a patented theatrical quality. His motives, too, are of ordinary provenance. Like Ruth K.’s parents, he and his wife are “particular people” (197) when it comes to a son-in-lay. They are “interested in a professional man,” and in his anxiety to reel Finkle in, Salzman has become, a la Ruth K.’s father, a specialist in stomach disorders (197). If the broker can land his catch, his daughter “will be thankful for the rest of her life” (196). In another passage ostensibly about Ruth K., Salzman obliquely reveals why he is playing matchmaker for his daughter. “We” may be glossed as Salzman and his wife: He [Ruth’s father] wants she should have the best, so he looks around himself. When we will locate the right boy he will introduce him and encourage. This makes a better marriage than if a young girl without experience takes for herself. (198) When a “curiously bitter” Finkle rejects Ruth K. out of hand, a sullen Salzman imagines himself father-in-law non grata. Finally, he [Finkle] shook his head.
“So what do you care what is his business After you marry her do you need him Who says he must come every Friday night in our house?” (199) To net the slippery student, Salzman must do two things: (1) insure that Finkle is disenchanted with the regular clients, and (2) correctly package Stella. The first task is easily discharged. Destitute of magic powers, the broker has been unable to ward off the inexorable incursion of modernity. The matchmaking institution, like “the much-handled cards” (194), has become superannuated. Desirable prospects now fend for themselves. Hence, the broker is poor and ill-fed, lives in “a very old tenement house” (210), and constantly rushes, a hapless luftmensch trying to drum up business. When Finkle “remarked that the function of the marriage broker was ancient and honorable” and that his own parents, “brought together by a matchmaker,” had had a successful marriage, Salzman, machinations already afoot, “listened in embarrassed surprise” (194). Finkle’s respect seems to Salzman as antiquated as the institution the broker represents (Finkle later admits he does not really care for it [199]). The praise nevertheless rekindles an extinguished idealism: Salzman “experienced a glow of pride in his work, an emotion that had left him years ago” (194). Stella and Finkle are, as Salzman might say to his wife, “two fine people that they would be wonderful to be married” (207). Even at the first meeting, Salzman gets an inkling of the guise in which Stella must eventually appear. With 25 years in the business, he readily discerns where Finkle’s chief interest lies. Notwithstanding the “scholar’s nose” and “ascetic lips” (195), the sheltered student seeks a decidedly sublunary love. He wants a wide field from which to choose: “So few,” he asks when he sees Salzman holding but six cards (195). His second question is, “Do you keep photographs of your clients on file,” (195). He has an eye out for someone young, fresh, and sexy, but not too intimidating.(3) Understandably, he “flushes,” twice, when Salzman asks what interests him (198, 201). Sophie P., a 24year-old widow, does not pass muster. She is damaged goods. Though he will finally agree to meet Lily H., she hasn’t a chance either: she is neither young nor libidinous, and has a discomfiting idee fixe on holy men. The 19-year-old, “pretty” (or so Salzman says) Ruth K. fails to meet the exacting specifications because “she is a little lame on the right foot” (198). Finkle wants a perfect ten. Finkle’s finicky standards constitute a daunting challenge for the matchmaker. Bruised, not beautified by poverty (208), Stella’s only kinship with Cinderella is the phonic one. Finkle needs a jolt—lest, caught, he prove not worth the catching. The proximate agent of shock will be Lily Hirschorn, votary (as Salzman well knows) of the caricaturally devout. Primed for her “man enamored of God” (203), a “semi-mystical Wonder Rabbi” (206), Lily will function as gadfly, albeit an unwitting one. Her balked expectations, Salzman hopes, will induce in Finkle a guilty conscience. Rightly plumbed, he might lower his standards a bit. At his second meeting with Finkle, Salzman again shows no trace of shamanic disposition. His anxiety is unfeigned. He is an all-too-mortal schemer in extremis: “His face was gray and
meager, his expression hungry, and he looked as if he would expire on his feet.” His histrionic faculty taxed, he manages, “by some trick of the muscles, to display a broad smile” (199). By upping the ante—Lily is not only wealthy, stylish, and cultivated, he tells Finkle, but, like him, partikiler (202)— Salzman at last mediates a rendezvous. When he next sees Finkle, a week later and subsequent to the rendezvous, the harried broker is “a skeleton with haunted eyes” (206). Again, he shows not a sign of sorcerous clairvoyance. He is painfully ignorant of the status of his gambit. He stalwartly feigns a nonchalant attitude: Casually coughing, Salzman came immediately to the point: “So how did you like her?” Leo’s anger rose and he could not refrain from chiding the matchmaker: “Why did you lie to me, Salzman?” Salzman’s pale face went dead white, the world had snowed o him.(206) For a perilous moment, Salzman thinks he has been hoisted on his own petard, hence the apoplectic reaction. When he realizes Finkle is alluding to Lily, not Stella, he reclaims his histrionic flair and, with glib avowals of innocence, smoothly parries the accusations. Finkle is still son-in-law designate: “The marriage broker fastened hungry eyes on him” (207). Since Finkle “is no longer interested in an arranged marriage” (207), Salzman must pin his hopes on the cheap snapshot of Stella. In a field of wilting lilies, Stella may flourish. When, unable to fend for himself, Finkle turns in last resort to the pictures the broker has left, he sees women “all past their prime, all starved behind bright smiles, not a true personality in the lot. Life, despite their yoohooings, had passed them by” (208). In them, perhaps, he glimpses his own future. Then, he beholds Stella, vibrant youth in a moribund gallery. In his glandular, revved-up imagination, she smacks of earthy sensuality and forbidden fruit—owing in part, one surmises, to a lascivious mien coached by her father. Finkle “received an impression, somehow of evil” (209)—in the original version, “filth” (Dessner, ‘Revisions” 259).(4) Later, like Jehovah marveling at his own creation, “he examined the face and found it good.” She alone “could understand him and help him seek whatever he was seeking” (209). What he seeks is sexual gratification, but he remains, consciously at least, ignorant of the need. In this respect, Salzman (as well as the reader) is well ahead of him. When Finkle, via Mrs. Salzman, summons the marriage broker, Salzman has long been on tenterhooks, the outcome of his ploy in limbo. Adrenalin pumping, he arrives breathless, having, he says, “rushed” (211). When Finkle flashes the snapshot of Stella and ejaculates, “Here is the one I want” (211), Salzman puts on, as one might say, a stellar performance: he “slipped on his glasses and took the picture into his trembling hand. He turned ghastly and let out a groan” (211-12). Knowing that Finkle bridles at the hard sale, Salzman now refuses to sell. The scene is unabashed burlesque, even to a chase and a hysterical woman, with Salzman now the masterful human impresario. Slow on the uptake, Finkle does not immediately grasp that Stella is (supposed to be) a sexual dynamo. Salzman’s metaphorical inventiveness is sorely tasked:
“She is not for you. She is a wild one-wild, without shame. This is not a bride for a rabbi.” “What do you mean wild?” “Like an animal. Like a dog. For her to be poor was a sin. This is why to me she is dead now.” “In God’s name, what do you mean?” “Her I can’t introduce to you,” Salzman cried. “Why are you so excited?” “Why, he asks,” Salzman said, bursting into tears. “This is my baby, my Stella, she should burn in hell.” (212) Salzman is excited because his ploy is working. He has wrapped Stella in the perfect garb. In Finkle’s subconscious, the unholy litany of “sin,” “hell,” “wild,” and “animal” reverberates with aphrodisiac potency. With her “impression of youth” and “spring flowers” (208), Stella embodies, or so Finkle thinks, his oxymoronic dream girl: the perpetually virginal painted woman. Later, when he sees her under the street lamp, he imagines “in a troubled moment” she has on a red dress instead of a white one. Consciously, he has adopted the role of savior. An unabashed slut might be hard “to convert...to goodness” (213). The virginal white assuages his austere conscience. From start to finish, the story is firmly situated on the rock of human passion, foible, and aspiration. Salzman’s lot is not without pathos. By contrast, Malamud’s treatment of Finkle is unremittingly comic(5) Finkle’s condition is throughout reminiscent of Byron’s pubescent Don Juan, befuddled by his sexual awakening: “Now we’ll turn to Juan. / Poor little fellow! he had no idea / Of his own case, and never hit the true one” (Don Juan, Canto the First, stanza 86). The narrator’s diction is occasionally impish: Finkle watches “with half open mouth” as the moon “penetrates” a hen-like cloud before dropping out like an egg (195). The student is at last “aroused” by fantasies of Lily H. and walks “erectly” to meet her, discreetly, however, resisting the urge to “use” his phallic walking stick (202). Later, he solemnly tells Salzman: “I am no longer interested in an arranged marriage. To be frank, I now admit the necessity of premarital love.” Embarrassed by the Freudian slip—the euphemism for premarital sex—he quickly emends: “That is, I want to be in love with the one I marry” (207). The last we see of Finkle he is rushing toward Stella with flowers “outthrust” (214). The climactically placed verb could hardly be better. For some readers, Stella is even more problematic than her father. Lionel Trilling remarked that one need not believe “Stella is what her father makes her out to be—possibly her sexual life is marked merely by a freedom of the kind that now morality scarcely reproves” (173). Actually, one need not suppose Stella has any sexual experience at all. In the final vignette, her eyes are full of “desperate innocence,” and she awaits Finkle “uneasily” and “shyly.” The cigarette and red pumps can be glossed as her thespian father’s contributions, part of the packaging. This might be Stella’s first date. In the final, often discussed sentence, Salzman, concealed chaperone, “chanted prayers for the dead.” The dead are Stella Salzman and Leo Finkle.(6) The tone is ambivalent. Though
pleased to have landed his “professional man,” Salzman knows that marriage can be lethal to romantic illusions. Earlier, when Finkle opines that Ruth K. “believes in love,” Salzman can barely suppress a guffaw (198). Finkle’s “love,” he long ago deduced, is Iago’s “sect or scion of lust.” Knowing marriage demands sterner stuff, Salzman, pious Jew, naturally seeks the aid of higher powers, having none of his own.
—. “The Playfulness of Bernard Malamud’s ‘The Magic Barrel.’“ Essays in Literature 15 (1988): 87-101.
NOTES
Gunn, Giles B. “Bernard Malamud and the High Cost of Living.” Adversity and Grace: Studies in Recent American Literature. Ed. Nathan A. Scott. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1968. 59-85.
1. Asked whether he read criticism of his own works, Malamud replied: “I like imaginative interpretations of my books, whether I agree with them or not. I enjoy criticism that views the work in ways I haven’t anticipated—that surprises me” (15). 2. While several readers echo Finkle’s suspicion that Salzman “planned it all to happen that way” (213), they believe the plan begins only with the placement of Stella’s picture in the envelope. A few believe it begins earlier, but they adduce the fact as further evidence of Salzman’s supernatural powers of ordination (See Storey 180; May 95-96; Ochshorn 61-62). Finkle’s suspicion may be Malamud’s way of alerting readers to his own narrative strategy. 3. Storey, May, and Dessner (“Playfulness”) have all commented on the sexual dimension. It seems to me they do not go far enough. 4. The story was first published in 1954 in The Parisan Review and later revised for the 1958 collection The Magic Barrel. In “Revisions,” Dessner lists all the differences, most of them minor, between the versions. 5. In the course of the story, Finkle does not learn as much about himself as he thinks. Even as he chides himself for egoism, he wants love to “come to him” (206), Stella to “help him,” to find in her “his own redemption” (209, 214; italics added). When Finkle plumes himself on his new self-awareness, the narrative voice is distantly wry, the mode comic: “Never in the Five Books and all the Commentaries—mea culpa—had the truth been revealed to him.... [H]e drew the consolation that he was a Jew and that a Jew suffered” (205). “Perhaps with this new knowledge of himself he would be more successful than in the past” (206). He “had grown a pointed beard and his eyes were weighted with wisdom” (213). After Salzman scandalizes Stella, the treatment of Finkle is pure slapstick: Leo hurried up to bed and hid under the covers. Under the covers he thought his life through. Although he soon fell asleep he could not sleep her out of his mind. He woke, beating his breast. Though he prayed to be rid of her, his prayers went unanswered. Through days of torment he endlessly struggled not to love her; fearing success, he escaped it. (213) 6. Salzman’s previous application of the word to Stella (“to me she is dead now’) has been often noted. The word is also applied earlier to Finkle. The devout image Lily has of him has “no relation,” the narrator reports, “to the living or dead” Finkle (204). WORKS CITED Dessner, Lawrence. “Malamud’s Revisions to ‘The Magic Barrel.’“ Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 30 (1989): 252-60.
Field, Leslie and Joyce. ‘An Interview with Bernard Malamud.” Bernard Malamud: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Leslie and Joyce Field. Englewood Cliffs, N: Prentice-Hall, 1975. 817.
Klein, Marcus. After Alienation. Cleveland: World, 1964. Malamud, Bernard. The Magic Barrel. New York: Farrar, 1958. May, Charles E. “Something Fishy in ‘The Magic Barrel.’“ Studies in American Fiction 14 (1986): 93-98. Ochshorn, Kathleen G. The Heart’s Essential Landscape: Bernard Malamud’s Hero. American University Studies 24. New York: Peter Lang, 1990. Reynolds, Richard. “‘The Magic Barrel’: Pinye Salzman’s Kadish.” Studies in Short Fiction 10 (1973): 100-02. Richman, Sidney. Bernard Malamud. New York: Twayne, 1966. Solotaroff, Robert. Bernard Malamud: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1989. Storey, Michael L. “Pinye Salzman, Pan and ‘The Magic Barrel.’“ Studies in Short Fiction 18 (1981): 180-83 Trilling, Lionel. Prefacer to the Experience of Literature. New York: Harcourt, 1979. Studies in Short Fiction . Newberry: Winter 1995. Vol. 32 , Iss. 1; pg. 51 ISSN/ISBN: 00393789 Copyright Newberry College Winter 1995
2 Raymond Carver
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
My friend Mel McGinnis was talking. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right. The four of us were sitting around his kitchen table drinking gin. Sunlight filled the kitchen from the big window behind the sink. There were Mel and me and his second wife, Teresa— Terri, we called her—and my wife, Laura. We lived in Albuquerque then. But we were all from somewhere else. There was an ice bucket on the table. The gin and the tonic water kept going around, and we somehow got on the subject of love. Mel thought real love was nothing less than spiritual love. He said he’d spent five years in a seminary before quitting to go to medical school. He said he still looked back on those years in the seminary as the most important in his life. Terri said the man she lived with before she lived with Mel loved her so much he tried to kill her. Then Terri said, “He beat me up one night. He dragged me around the living room by my ankles. He kept saying, ‘I love you, I love you, you bitch.’ He went on dragging me around the living room. My head kept knocking on things.” Terri looked around the table . “What do you do with love like that?” She was a bone-thin woman with a pretty face, dark eyes, and brown hair that hung down her back. She liked necklaces made of turquoise, and long pendant earrings. “My God, don’t be silly. That’s not love, and you know it,” Mel said. “I don’t know what you’d call it, but I sure know you wouldn’t call it love.” “Say what you want to, but I know it was ,” Terri said. “ It may sound crazy to you, but it’s true just the same. People are different, Mel . Sure, sometimes he may have acted crazy. Okay. But he loved me. In his own way, maybe, but he loved me. There was love there, Mel . Don’t say there wasn’t .” Mel let out his breath. He held his glass and turned to Laura and me. “The man threatened to kill me, “ Mel said. He finished his drink and reached for the gin bottle. “Terri’s a romantic. Terri’s of the ‘Kick-me-so-I’ll-know-you-love-me’ school. Terri, hon, don’t look that way.” Mel reached across the table and touched Terri’s cheek with his fingers. He grinned at her.
“Now he wants to make up,” Terri said. “Make up what?” Mel said. “What is there to make up? I know what I know. That’s all.” “How’d we get started on this subject anyway?” Terri said. She raised her glass and drank from it. “Herb always has love on his mind,” she said. “Don’t you, honey?” She smiled, and I thought that was the last of it. “I just wouldn’t call Ed ‘s behavior love. That’s all I’m saying, honey,” Mel said. “What about you guys?” Mel said to Laura and me. “Does that sound like love to you?” “I’m the wrong person to ask,” I said. “I didn’t even know the man. I’ve only heard his name mentioned in passing. I wouldn’t know. You’d have to know all the particulars. But I think what you’re saying is that love is an absolute. “ Mel said, “The kind of love I’m talking about is. The kind of love I’m talking about, you don’t try to kill people.” Laura said , “I don’t know anything about Ed , or anything about the situation. But who can judge anyone else’s situation?” I touched the back of Laura’s hand. She gave me a quick smile. I picked up Laura’s hand. It was warm, the nails polished, perfectly manicured. I encircled the broad wrist with my fingers, and I held her. “When I left he drank rat poison,” Terri said. She clasped her arms with her hands. “They took him to the hospital in Santa Fe. That’s where we lived then, about ten miles out. They saved his life. But his gums went crazy from it. . I mean they pulled away from his teeth. After that his teeth stood out like fangs. My God,” Terri said. She waited a minute, then let go of her arms and picked up her glass. “What people won’t do!” Laura said. “He’s out of the action now,” Mel said. “He’s dead.” Mel handed me the saucer of limes. I took a section, squeezed it over my drink, and stirred the ice cubes with my finger. “It gets worse,” Terri said. “He shot himself in the mouth. But he bungled that too. Poor Ed ,” she said. Terri shook her head. “Poor Ed nothing,” Mel said. “He was dangerous.” Mel was forty-five years old. He was tall and rangy with curly soft hair. His face and arms were brown from the tennis he played. When he was sober, his gestures, all his movements, were precise, very careful. “He did love me though, Mel. Grant me that,” Terri said. “That’s all I’m asking. He didn’t love me the way you love me. I’m not saying that. But he loved me. You can grant me that, can’t you? “ “What do you mean, He bungled it?” I said . Laura leaned forward with her glass. She put her elbows on the table and held her glass in both hands. She glanced from Mel to Terri and waited with a look of bewilderment on her open face, as if amazed that such things happened to people you were friendly with . “How’d he bungle it when he killed himself?” I said . “I’ll tell you what happened,” Mel said. “He took this twenty-two pistol he’d bought to threaten Terri and me with. Oh , I’m serious, the man was always threatening. You should have seen the way we lived in those days. Like fugitives. I even bought a gun myself. Can you believe it? A guy like me? But I did. I bought one for self-defense and carried it in the glove compartment. Sometimes I’d have to leave the apartment in the middle of the night. To go to the hospital, you know? Terri and I weren’t married then, and my first wife had the house and kids, the dog, everything, and Terri and I were living in this apartment here. Sometimes, as I say, I’d get a call in the middle of the night and have to go in to the hospital at two or three in the morning. It’d be dark out there in the parking lot and I’d break into a sweat before I could even get to my car. I never knew if he was going to come up out of the shrubbery or from behind a car and start
shooting. I mean, the man was crazy. He was capable of wiring a bomb, anything. He used to call my service at all hours and say he needed to talk to the doctor, and when I’d return the call he’d say, ‘Son of a bitch, your days are numbered.’ Little things like that. It was scary, I’m telling you.” “I still feel sorry for him,” Terri said. “It sounds like a nightmare,” Laura said. “But what exactly happened after he shot himself?” Laura is a legal secretary. We’d met in a professional capacity. Before we knew it, it was a courtship. She’s thirty-five, three years younger than I am. In addition to being in love, we like each other and enjoy one another’s company. She’s easy to be with. “What happened?” Laura asked again. Mel said, “He shot himself in the mouth in his room. Someone heard the shot and told the manager. They came in with a passkey, saw what had happened, and called an ambulance. I happened to be there when they brought him, alive, but past recall . The man lived for three days. His head swelled up to twice the size of a normal head. I’d never seen anything like it, and I hope I never do again. Terri wanted to go in and sit with him when she found out about it. We had a fight over it. I didn’t think she should see him like that. I didn’t think she should see him, and I still don’t.” “Who won the fight?” Laura said. “I was in the room with him when he died,” Terri said. “He never came up out of it. But I sat with him. He didn’t have anyone else.” “He was dangerous,” Mel said. “If you call that love, you can have it.” “It was love,” Terri said. “Sure it was abnormal in most people’s eyes. But he was willing to die for it. He did die for it.” “I sure as hell wouldn’t call it love,” Mel said. “I mean, no one knows what he did it for. I’ve seen a lot of suicides, and I couldn’t say anyone ever knew what they did it for . “ Mel put his hands behind his neck and tilted his chair back . “I’m not interested in that kind of love,” he said. “If that’s love, you can have it.” Terri said, “We were afraid. Mel even made a will out and wrote to his brother in California who used to be a Green Beret. Mel told him who to look for if something happened to him Terri drank from her glass. She said, “But Mel’s right—we lived like fugitives. We were afraid. Mel was, weren’t you, honey? I even called the police at one point, but they were no help. They said they couldn’t do anything until Ed actually did something. Isn’t that a laugh?” Terri said. She poured the last of the gin into her glass and waggled the bottle. Mel got up from the table and went to the cupboard. He took down another bottle. “Well, Nick and I know what love is “ Laura said. “For us, I mean, “ Laura said. She bumped my knee with her knee. “You’re supposed to say something now,” Laura said, and turned her smile on me. For an answer, I took Laura’s hand and raised it to my lips. I made a big production out of kissing her hand. Everyone was amused. “We’re lucky,” I said. “You guys,” Terri said. “Stop that now. You’re making me sick. You’re still on a honeymoon, for God’s sake . You’re still gaga, for crying out loud . Just wait. How long have you been together now? How long has it been? A year? Longer than a year.” “Going on a year and a half,” Laura said, flushed and smiling. “Oh, now ,” Terri said. “Wait a while.” She held her drink and gazed at Laura. “I’m only kidding,” Terri said.
Mel opened the gin and went around the table with the bottle. “ Here, you guys,” he said. “Let’s have a toast. I want to propose a toast. A toast to love. To true love,” Mel said. We touched glasses. “To love,” we said. Outside in the backyard, one of the dogs began to bark. The leaves of the aspen that leaned past the window ticked against the glass . The afternoon sunlight was like a presence in thise room, the spacious light of ease and generosity. We could have been anywhere, somewhere enchanted. We raised our glasses again and grinned at each other like children who had agreed on something forbidden . “I’ll tell you what real love is,” Mel said. “I mean, I’ll give you a good example. And then you can draw your own conclusions.” He poured more gin into his glass. He added an ice cube and a sliver of lime. We waited and sipped our drinks. Laura and I touched knees again. I put a hand on her warm thigh and left it there. “What do any of us really know about love?” Mel said. “It seems to me we’re just beginners at love. We say we love each other and we do, I don’t doubt it. I love Terri and Terri loves me, and you guys love each other too. You know the kind of love I’m talking about now. Physical love, that impulse that drives you to someone special, as well as love of the other person’s being, his or her essence, as it were . Carnal love and, well, call it sentimental love, the day-to-day caring about the other person. But sometimes I have a hard time accounting for the fact that I must have loved my first wife too. But I did, I know I did. So I suppose I am like Terri in that regard. Terri and Ed .” He thought about it and then he went on. “There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I’d like to know. I wish someone could tell me. Then there’s Ed . Okay, we’re back to Ed . He loves Terri so much he tries to kill her and he winds up killing himself.” Mel stopped talking and swallowed from his glass . “You guys have been together eighteen months and you love each other. I t shows all over you. You glow with it. But you both loved other people before you met each other. You’ve both been married before, just like us. And you probably loved other people before that too, even. Terri and I have been together five years, been married for four. And the terrible thing, the terrible thing is, but the good thing, too, the saving grace, you might say, is that if something happened to one of us—excuse me for saying this—but if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the other one, the other person , would grieve for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out and love again, have someone else soon enough. All this, all of this love we’re talking about it would just be a memory. Maybe not even a memory. Am I wrong? Am I way off base? Because I want you to set me straight if you think I’m wrong. I want to know. I mean, I don’t know anything, and I’m the first one to admit it.” “Mel , for God’s sake,” Terri said. She reached out and took hold of his wrist. “Are you getting drunk? Honey? Are you drunk?” “Honey, I’m just talking,” Mel said. “All right? I don’t have to be drunk to say what I think . I mean, we’re all just talking, right?” Mel said. He fixed his eyes on her. “Sweetie , I’m not criticizing,” Terri said. She picked up her glass. “I’m not on call today,” Mel said. “Let me remind you of that. I am not on call .” “Mel , we love you,” Laura said. Mel looked at Laura. He looked at her as if he couldn’t place her, as if she was not the woman she was.
“Love you too, Laura,” Mel said. “And you, Nick, love you too. You know something?” Mel said. “You guys are our pals,” Mel said. He picked up his glass. Mel said, “I was going to tell you about something. I mean, I was going to prove a point. You see, this happened a few months ago, but it’s still going on right now, and it ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we’ re talking about when we talk about love.” “Come on now,” Terri said. “ Don’t talk like you’re drunk if you’re not drunk.” “Just shut up for once in your life, “ Mel said very quietly. “Will you do me a favor and do that for a minute? So as I was saying, there’s this old couple who had this car wreck out on the interstate? A kid hit them and they were all torn to shit and nobody was giving them much chance to pull through. “ Terri looked at us and then back at Mel . She seemed anxious, or maybe that’s too strong a word. Mel was handing the bottle around the table. “I was on call that night,” Mel said. “It was in May or maybe it was June. Terri and I had just sat down to dinner when the hospital called. There’d been this thing out on the interstate. Drunk kid, teenager, plowed his dad’s pickup into this camper with this old couple in it. They were up in their mid-seventies, that couple. The kid— eighteen, nineteen, something—he was DOA. Taken the steering wheel through his sternum. The old couple, they were alive, you understand. I mean, just barely. But they had everything. Multiple fractures , internal injuries, hemorrhaging, contusions, lacerations, the works, and they each of them had themselves concussions. They were in a bad way, believe me. And, of course, their age was two strikesagainst them. I’d say she was worse off than he was. Ruptured spleen along with everything else. Both kneecaps broken. But they’d been wearing their seatbelts and, God knows, that’s what saved them for the time being.” “Folks, this is an advertisement for the National Safety Council,” Terri said. “This is your spokesman, Doctor Melvin R. McGinnis, talking. “ Terri laughed. “Mel,” she said, “sometimes you’re just too much sometimes. But I love you, hon,ey “ She said. “Honey, I love you,” Mel said. He leaned across the table. Terri met him halfway. They kissed. “Terri’s right, “ Mel said as he settled himself again. “Get those seatbelts on . But seriously, they were in some shape, those oldsters . By the time I got down there, the kid was dead, as I said. He was off in a corner, laid out on a gurney. I took one look at the old couple and told the ER nurse to get me a neurologist and an orthopedic man and a couple of surgeons down there right away.” He drank from his glass. “I’ll try to keep this short,” he said. “So we took the two of them up to the OR and worked like fuck on them most of the night They had these incredible reserves, those two . You see that once in a while. So we did everything that could be done, and toward morning we’ re giving them a fifty-fifty chance, maybe less than that for her . So here they are, still alive the next morning. So, okay, we move them into the ICU, which is where they both kept plugging away at it for two weeks, hitting it better and better on all the scopes. So we transfer them out to their own room. Mel stopped talking. “Here,” he said, “let’s drink this cheapo gin the hell up. Then we’re going to dinner, right? Terri and I know a new place. That’s where we’ll go, to this new place we know about. But we’re not going until we finish up this cut-rate, lousy gin. “ Terri said, “We haven’t actually eaten there yet. But it looks good. From the outside, you know.”
“I like food,” Mel said. “If I had it to do all over again, I’d be a chef, you know? Right, Terri?” Mel said. He laughed. He fingered the ice in his glass. “Terri knows. Terri can tell you. But let me say this. If I could come back again in a different life, a different time and all, you know what? I’d like to come back as a knight. You were pretty safe wearing all that armor. It was all right being a knight until gunpowder and muskets and pistols came along.” “Mel would like to ride a horse and carry a lance,” Terri said. “Carry a woman’s scarf with you everywhere,” Laura said. “Or just a woman,” Mel said. “Shame on you,” Laura said. Terri said, “Suppose you came back as a serf. The serfs didn’t have it so good in those days,” Terri said. “The serfs never had it good,” Mel said. “But I guess even the knights were vessels to someone. Isn’t that the way it worked? But then everyone is always a vessel to someone else. Isn’t that right? Terri? But what I liked about knights, besides their ladies, was that they had that suit of armor, you know, and they couldn’t get hurt very easy. No cars in those days, you know? No drunk teenagers to tear into your ass .” “Vassals,” Terri said. “What?” Mel said. “Vassals,” Mel said. “They were called vassals , not vessels .” “Vassals, vessels,” Mel said, “what the fuck’s the difference? You knew what I meant anyway. All right ,” Mel said. “So I’m not educated. I learned my stuff. I’m a heart surgeon, sure, but I’m just a mechanic. I go in and I fuck around and I fix things. Shit,” Mel said. “Modesty doesn’t become you,” Terri said. “He’s just a humble sawbones ,” I said. “But sometimes they suffocated in all that armor, Mel . They’d even have heart attacks if it got too hot and they were too tired and worn out. I read somewhere that they’d fall off their horses and not be able to get up because they were too tired to stand with all that armor on them. They got trampled by their own horses sometimes.” “That’s terrible,” Mel said. “That’s a terrible image, Nicky. I guess they’d just lay there and wait until somebody came along and made a shish kebab out of them.” “Some other vessel ,” Terri said. “That’s right,” Mel said. “ Some vassal would come along and spear the bastard in the name of love. Or whatever the fuck it was they fought over in those days.” “Same things we fight over these days,” Mel said. Laura said, “Nothing’s changed.” The color was still high in Laura’s cheeks. Her eyes were bright. She brought her glass to her lips. Mel poured himself another drink. He looked at the label closely as if studying a long row of numbers . Then he slowly put the bottle down on the table and reached for the tonic water. “What about the old couple?” Laura said. “You didn’t finish that story you started.” Laura was having a hard time lighting her cigarette. Her matches kept going out. The sunshine inside the room was different now, changing, getting thinner . But the leaves outside the window were still shimmering, and I stared at the pattern they made on the panes and on the Formica counter. They weren’t the same patterns, of course. “What about that old couple?” I said. “Older but wiser,” Terri said. Mel stared at her. Terri said, “Go on with your story, hon. I was only kidding. Then what happened?” “Terri, sometimes,” Mel said.
“Please, Mel ,” Terri said. “Don’t always be so serious, sweetie. Can’t you take a joke?” “Where’s the joke? “ Mel said. He held his glass and gazed steadily at his wife . “What happened?” Laura said. Mel fastened his eyes on Laura. He said, “Laura, if I didn’t have Terri and if I didn’t love her so much, and if Nick wasn’t my best friend, I’d fall in love with you. I’d carry you off, honey, “ He said. “Tell your story,” Terri said. “ Then we’ll go to that new place, okay ?” “Okay,” Mel said. “Where was I?” he said. He stared at the table and then he began again . “ I dropped in to see each of them every day, sometimes twice a day if I was up doing other calls anyway. C asts and bandages, head to foot, the both of them. You know, you’ve seen it in the movies . That’s just the way they looked, just like in the movies . Little eye-holes and nose-holes and mouth-holes. And she had to have her legs slung up on top of it. Well, the husband was very depressed for the longest while. Even after he found out that his wife was going to pull through , he was still very depressed. Not about the accident , though . I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn’t everything. I’d get up to his mouthhole, you know, and he’d say no, it wasn’t the accident exactly but it was because he couldn’t see her through his eye-holes. He said that was what was making him feel so bad. Can you imagine? I’m telling you, the man’s heart was breaking because he couldn’t turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife.” Mel looked around the table and shook his head at what he was going to say. “I mean, it was killing the old fart just becayse he couldn’t look at the fucking woman.” We all looked at Mel. “Do you see what I’m saying?” Maybe we were a little drunk by then. I know it was hard keeping things in focus. The light was draining out of the room, going back through the window where it had come from. Yet nobody made a move to get up from the table to turn on the overhead light, “Listen,” Mel said . “Let’s finish this fucking gin. There’s about enough left here for one shooter all around. Then let’s go eat. Let’s go to the new place .” “He’s depressed ,” Terri said. “Mel , why don’t you take a pill?” Herb shook his head. “I’ve taken everything there is.” “We all need a pill now and then ,” I said. “Some people are born needing them ,” Terri said. She was using her finger to rub at something on the table. Then she stopped rubbing. “I think I want to call my kids before we go eat,” Mel said. “Is that all right with everybody? I’ll call my kids, “ He said. Terri said, “What if Marjorie answers the phone? You guys, you’ve heard us on the subject of Marjorie. Honey, you know you don’t want to talk to Marjorie. It’ll make you feel even worse.” “ I don’t want to talk to Marjorie,” Mel said. “But I want to talk to my kids.” “There isn’t a day goes by that Mel doesn’t say he wishes she’d get married again. Or else die,” Terri said. “For one thing,” Terri said, “she’s bankrupting us. Mel says it’s just to spite him that she won’t get married again. She has a boyfriend who lives with her and the kids , so Mel is supporting the boyfriend too .” “She’s allergic to bees,” Mel said. “If I’m not praying she’ll get married again, I’m praying she’ll get herself stung to death by a swarm of fucking bees.” “Shame on you, “ Laura said.
“Bzzzzzz,” Mel said, turning his fingers into bees and buzzing them at Terri’s throat. Then he let his hands drop all the way to his sides . “She’s vicious,” Mel said. “Sometimes I think I’ll go up there dressed like a beekeeper. You know, that hat that’s like a helmet with the plate that comes down over your face, the big gloves, and the padded coat? I’ll knock on the door and let loose a hive of bees in the house. But first I’d make sure the kids were out, of course.” He crossed one leg over the other. Then he put both feet on the floor and leaned forward, elbows on the table, his chin cupped in his hands. “Maybe I won’t call the kids, after all. Maybe it isn’t such a hot idea. Maybe we’ll just go eat. How does that sound?” “Sounds fine to me,” I said. “Eat or not eat. Or keep drinking. I could head right on out into the sunset.” “What does that mean, honey?” Laura said. “It just means what I said,” I said . “It means I could just keep going. That’s all it means .” “I could eat something myself,” Laura said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so hungry in my life. Is there something to nibble on ?” “I’ll put out some cheese and crackers,” Terri said. But Terri just sat there. She did not get up to get anything. Mel turned his glass over. He spilled it out on the table. “Gin’s gone,” Mel said. Terri said, “Now what?” I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone’s heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark. [1981]
Critical Essay on, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love By Liz Brent Carver is best known for his minimalist writing style, as embodied in a sparse use of language and paired down prose. He is also known as a neo-realist, capturing the working class milieu of blue-collar America with his mundane, naturalistic, everyday dialogue. Nevertheless, he does make use of figurative language throughout “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” by exploring its central themes of love, relationships,
communication, and alcoholism. Through the imagery of the knight’s armor, the beekeeper’s protective clothing, the “pill” and the word “heart,” Carver demonstrates that the surface level conversation of his four characters is only the tip of an emotional iceberg. The image of the human “heart” takes on figurative connotations in the story, as it is referred to both in the mechanical sense, of the functioning of the human heart, and the symbolic sense, as the organ of love. Since the character of Mel dominates the conversation, much of the figurative language is expressive of his own feelings about the subject of love. The image of the human “heart” takes on figurative connotations in the story, as it is referred to both in the mechanical sense, of the functioning of the human heart, and the symbolic sense, as the organ of love. Mel is a cardiologist, a doctor who operates on people’s hearts. The opening sentences of the story, in retrospect, play on the irony of Mel, a heart doctor, claiming to be an expert on matters of the heart: “My friend Mel McGinnis was talking. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, so sometimes that gives him the right.” Mel even describes his own work as that of “just a mechanic,” marking the difference between expertise in heart surgery and knowledge of “true love.” When he tells the story of the old couple injured in the near-fatal car accident, the word “heart” again takes on a double meaning. Mel concludes his story, in which the old man and woman are so bandaged up that they cannot see each other even though their beds are next to each other in the same hospital room, by stating that “the man’s heart was breaking because he couldn’t turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife.” Mel is using the word “heart” in the figurative sense here, but it also refers back to the fact that Mel himself had been the attending cardiologist for the old couple in the aftermath of the car accident. Another central element of figurative speech in this story revolves around Mel’s mention that, if he could come back in a different life, he would want to be a “knight.” Mel’s fascination with the armor worn by a knight is perhaps a heavyhanded image of Mel’s need to protect himself emotionally against the ravages of love. Mel explains that “You were pretty safe wearing all that armor.” The image is extended to suggest that Mel’s protective emotional armor has failed to protect him against the dangers of new love: “It was all right being a knight until gunpowder and muskets and pistols came along.” Mel goes on to expand upon his fascination with the protective armor of knights: “what I liked about knights, besides their ladies, was that they had that suit of armor, you know, and they couldn’t get hurt very easy.” Mel is expressing a desire to be protected from getting “hurt” at an emotional level in his relationships with others. At this point, the discussion of the knight turns on a pun that comes out of Mel’s misuse of the term “vessel” when he means “vassal.” A vassal is a servant to another, and Mel, using vessel by accident, attempts to point out that even knights were subservient to others. The idea of servitude is extended symbolically when Mel points out, “But then everyone is always a vessel to someone.” At this point Terri corrects him, supplying the proper term, vassal for vessel. Mel’s incorrect use of vessel has further figurative implications. Mel is an alcoholic, and a vessel is an object designed to contain something, usually in reference to a liquid, as a cup or chalice. Through this play on words, the connection is made to Mel’s use of alcohol, which he drinks out of a vessel, or glass, as his means of protective armor against emotional injury. Furthermore, a vessel, such as an “empty vessel” may be read figuratively to indicate that everyone is a vessel to be filled with the love, false or true, of another.
Nick, the narrator, points out to Mel that the armor worn by knights had its drawbacks. Nick’s comment extends the metaphor of the armor as emotional armor in explaining that one’s emotional defenses, or armor, can end up suffocating the knight in the name of protecting him from harm: But sometimes they suffocated in all that armor, Mel. They’d even have heart attacks if it got too hot and they were too tired and worn out. The image of the heart comes up here, implying that the armor Mel uses to protect himself from emotional suffering in the name of love (a “heart attack”) can be the very cause of his suffering. In reference to Mel’s alcoholism, his use of alcohol to protect himself from heartache may actually lead to a heart attack in terms of the demise of his marriage and other personal relationships, as well as some form of heart attack in the sense that alcoholism can be fatal. (This may seem like a leap of logic, but, given that this story was written not long after Carver nearly died from alcoholism and eventually quit drinking, it is not an unreasonable interpretation.) Mel’s interest in armor as a means of protecting himself from love is made clear when he adds that, were a knight to be made vulnerable by the weight of his armor, “Some vassal would come along and spear the bastard in the name of love.” The imagery of “taking a pill” combines several figurative themes in the story. As Mel becomes more clearly drunk, his conversation acquires an antagonistic edge. ‘He’s depressed,’ Terri said. ‘Mel, why don’t you take a pill?’ Mel shook his head. ‘I’ve taken everything there is.’ ‘We all need a pill now and then,’ I said. ‘Some people are born needing them,’ Terri said. Here, the characters themselves are consciously using the phrase “to take a pill” in a figurative sense. But the pill imagery also echoes with the fact that Mel is a doctor, whose job is, in general terms, to give people pills to make them feel better. Mel’s own pill is clearly alcohol, and his comment that “I’ve taken everything there is” expresses a deep despair at ever finding a cure for his personal heartaches. The figurative language combining the use of alcohol, as contained in a vessel, or the swallowing of a pill, as administered by a doctor, as a means of curing the emotional pain caused by love, is also expressed in Terri’s explanation that her abusive exhusband, Ed, drank rat poison when she left him. Like Mel’s consumption of alcohol, or his figurative need “to take a pill,” Ed’s consumption of rat poison is his own self-destructive attempt to medicate his own emotional pain in the face of his “love” for Terri. Terri explains the effect of the poison; Ed’s life was saved at the hospital, “but his gums went crazy from it. I mean they pulled away from his teeth. After that, his teeth stood out like fangs.” The image of Ed’s teeth turning into fangs symbolizes the fact that Ed, an extremely violent and abusive man, is akin to a beast who threatens Terri with his fangs. More indirectly, there is a suggestion that, just as Ed’s drinking of rat poison in an attempt to cure his emotional pain turns him into a fanged beast, so Mel’s drinking of alcohol in an attempt to cure his own emotional pain may be turning him into a beast, posing a threat of danger to Terri. Mel later uses the imagery of a beekeeper’s protective clothing to express a similar desire for some form of protection from love. In discussing his ex-wife Marjorie, he explains that she is allergic to bees, saying that “if I’m not praying she’ll get married again, I’m
praying she’ll get herself stung to death by a swarm of f--ing bees.” He then makes what is perhaps his most outwardly menacing gesture toward his wife: “‘Bzzzzzzz,’ Mel said, turning his fingers into bees and buzzing them at Terri’s throat.” Mel’s expression of hatred for his ex-wife and his wish that she would die is used as a thinly veiled expression of a similar hatred for Terri. The gesture of buzzing his fingers around her neck combines the figurative image of murder by bee sting into a more literal physical gesture threateningly aimed at Terri’s throat. The armor imagery is echoed here in his description of the beekeeper’s protective clothing: Sometimes I think I’ll go there dressed like a beekeeper. You know, that hat that’s like a helmet with the plate that comes down over your face, the big gloves, and the padded coat? I’ll knock on the door and let loose a hive of bees in the house. The double implications of the word heart come back into play in the closing image of the story. As the two couples sit in the dark in silence, the narrator explains, “I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone’s heart.” The narrator uses the literal image of a silence so profound that he can actually hear the beating of his own and the others’ hearts to express a symbolic feeling that he can “hear everyone’s heart.” It is as if the excess of human emotion aroused by the discussion of true love hums about the room without any hope of articulate expression between the two couples. The term vessel, mentioned earlier, is also echoed with Mel’s enigmatic gesture in the closing moments of the story, when he turns his glass of gin upside down on the table. Mel has emptied his vessel of alcohol, the “gin’s gone,” and they are left with nothing but an ominous feeling of emotional emptiness. Although Carver is considered a minimalist writer, whose stories take on meaning more in what is not said than what is said, his use of figurative language gives depth to his stories by expanding upon their central themes. Source: Liz Brent, Critical Essay on “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” Short Stories for Students, Vol. 12, The Gale Group, 2001.
Carver’s Couples Talk About Love by Fred Moramarco “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” is one of Ray Carver’s best known stories and the title of one of his major collections. Carver probably used the story as a title for a collection because many of his stories express puzzlement about the odd and battered condition of love in the contemporary world. He often uses his fiction to explore that condition and reflect back to us just what it is that we do talk about when we talk about love. “Love,” of course, is one of those words that has been so beaten down in twentieth century discourse, particularly the rhetoric of advertising and pop culture, that it’s hard to know what anyone means by it anymore. T.S. Eliot prefaced his “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” with a quotation from Dante’s Inferno, anticipating the hell that the word would suffer in a mass society where some people, like Erich Segal, who wrote the immensely popular novel Love Story in the early seventies, think that love means “never having to say you’re sorry,” and others, like Bob Dylan, tell us that Love is just a four letter word. We love our mothers, our Hondas, our baseball teams and movie stars, as well our favorite ice-cream flavors and pizza toppings. The word along with a picture of a cherub adorns the #1 selling U.S. postage stamp, and occurs often in the titles of porno movies, religious sermons, new age self-help guides, romantic novels, and tv shows, including “The Love Boat,” which reminds us how often the word is used in association with vacations, leisure time, romantic retreats, sexual liaisons. Where the word seems to provide most difficulty, however, is in the area of human relationships, particularly relationships between men and women. It also provides difficulties in relationships between men and men as well as women and women, but Carver’s focus, in this story and in most of his work, is heterosexual love and its complications in late 20th century America. The story is one of Carver’s several “multiple couple” stories, where two or more heterosexual couples spend some time together socializing, usually drinking, often flirting and almost always miscommunicating. Others of this type include “Feathers,” “Neighbors,” “Put Yourself in My Shoes,” “What’s in Alaska,” “Tell the Women We’re Going,” and “After the Denim,” to name only the most prominent in Carver’s most complete collection of short stories, Where I’m Calling From.
When Robert Altman made his well-received film, Short Cuts, adapted from a dozen or so Carver stories, he used the device of linked, contrasting couples as a unifying factor in the movie, which shifts perspective from couple to couple as they spend a “typical” day in Los Angeles, framed by two archetypal Southern California events each of the characters experience—spraying the L.A. Basin from helicopters with pesticides, and a run-of-the mill 6 point something L.A. earthquake. The genre may ultimately owe something to a very popular comedic film of the early seventies called Bob, and Carol, and Ted, and Alice, which was absolutely shocking when it first appeared, but today is so old hat that even TV sitcoms have exhausted it. Carver, however, uses the genre freshly and for very specific purposes. In”Neighbors,” it becomes a study in voyeurism—how one couple, Bill and Arlene Miller, “inhabit” briefly the lives of their neighbors, Harriet and Jim Stone, while the Stones are on vacation and the Millers “watch” their apartment. The venture into another couple’s lives excites the Millers and momentarily adds sexual energy and vitality to their relationship. But we are ultimately doomed to live our own lives, not those of others, and the ending of the story finds the Millers locked out of their neighbor’s apartment, clinging to one another as if in a storm: He tried the knob. It was locked. Then she tried the knob. It would not turn. Her lips wer parted, and her breathing was hard, expectant. He opened his arms and she moved into them. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said into her ear. ‘For God’s sake, don’t worry.’ They stayed there. They held each other. They leaned into the door as if against a wind, and braced themselves. “Put Yourself in My Shoes” is also about one couple watching another’s house, but it is less about voyeurism than it is about clashing and contrary value systems. The story also explores the ways in which a writer can use the lives of others as a source for his own work. The Meyers and the Morgans are the two couples in question here. The Meyers pay a holiday visit to the Morgans whose home they had rented while the older couple was away in Europe. The story takes increasingly bizarre turns ultimately pitting the couples against one another as adversaries. The Morgans put on a great show of hospitality for the Myers, but clearly, as the story progresses, something is seething beneath the surface. Mr. Morgan has been harboring a grudge that the Myers’ “invaded” his house, brought a cat there even though his wife has asthma and the terms of the lease prohibited it. Further, he accuses the Myers of “vandalizing” the Morgan’s personal possessions. The Myers are astonished by these accusations, and leave with the observation that “Those people are crazy.” But the story’s title implies that it is the writer’s job to see the world and events not only from his own perpsective, but to recreate the world as others see it as well. Meyers is one of very few Carver protagonists who is a writer, and as a writer he “takes” others possessions and identity with very few qualms. “What’s in Alaska” contrasts two couples with much more in common than the Morgans and the Myers. The story revolves around Jack and Mary’s visit to the house of their friends Carl and Helen to get stoned. It is implied, through various slips of the tongue, facilitated by liberal use of marijuana, that Carl and Mary may be having an affair with one another. The story examines that pivotal point in a marriage where one of the partners realizes that the other has been cheating. This moment is symbolized by the entrance of Carl and Helen’s housecat with a dead mouse in its jaws. It is a kind of “objective correlative” for the future of the relationship, a future that looks bleak and that Mary, particularly, does not want to face. On the way home she tells Jack, “When we get home, Jack, I want to be fucked, talked
to, diverted. Divert me Jack. I need to be diverted tonight” (8384) “After the Denim” uses the two-couple motif to contrast generations. James and Edith Packer meet their younger doubles dressed in denim at a Bingo game. The denim suggests the casual, relaxed attitude toward life embodied in the younger couple’s actions. The Packer’s life is ritualized, settled, while the younger couple is open to possibilities and assertive. The Packers feel “displaced” by the couple because they occupy the Packer’s usual parking spot and bingo seats. James particularly feels increasing animosity toward the couple in denim because they seem oblivious to the passage of time and the ravages of age. He finds himself wanting to “straighten them out.” “If only they had to sit with him in the waiting room! He’d set those floozies straight! He’d tell them what was waiting for you after the denim and the earrings, after touching each other and cheating at games” (77). In this story Carver faces the reality that, as John Irving put it in The World According to Garp, “we are all terminal cases,” and even enduring relationships like that of the Packers, end in death and loss. In “Feathers,” the uneasy relationship between the narrator, Jack, and his wife, Fran is contrasted with the easy and obvious expressions of love between Bud and Olla, the couple whose home they visit. Jack and Bud are working buddies, but shortly after Bud’s wife, Olla, gives birth to a child, he invites his friend and his wife to their home for dinner. Jack and Fran are a very different kind of couple than Bud and Olla. They live reclusive lives, scarcely venturing from their apartment after returning from work. Accepting a dinner invitation to Bud and Olla’s home is a major event in their lives, but they have little social grace and hardly know how to act in a social situation. The warmth and love expressed in Bud and Olla’s house—symbolized by a peacock Bud bought for his wife, a plaster mold of Olla’s crooked teeth that sits atop the TV (Bud paid for her teeth to be straightened—something she always wanted to do—and she keeps the mold out to remind her of his kindness), and most of all the “ugly” baby that they express deep affection for. So affected are Fran and Jack by their visit to Bud and Olla’s place, that when they get home Fran decides she wants to emulate their lives by having a child: After we got home from Bud and Olla’s that night, and we were under the covers, Fran said, ‘Honey fill me up with your seed!’ When she said that, I heard her all way down to my toes, and I hollered and let go (354). But once again, Carver seems to be saying we need to live our own lives, not that of others, because once Fran and Jack have a child, their lives go downhill. They become less and less communicative, more and more set in their ways. “Mostly,” as Jack puts it near the story’s end, “it’s just the TV.” But the real tour-de-force of Carver’s multiple couple stories is “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” a story that combines elements of some of these others but raises them to a new intensity. The entire story takes place in the narrator’s kitchen where he and his wife are sitting around a table with another couple drinking gin and talking. As the story begins the kitchen is flooded with daylight, and the character who utters much of the story’s dialogue, Mel, is holding forth on the subject of “love.” It’s significant that Mel is a heart surgeon, for we are about to get a dissection of the ways of the heart in the contemporary world. In addition, the fact that Mel is a doctor has the others deferring to him constantly. The story is narrated by the male half of one of the couples, a man named Nick who tells us in the very first sentences: “My friend Mel McGinnis was
talking. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right.” This immediately establishes Mel’s social status and authority, anticipating his domination of the conversation. In fact, nearly 80% of the dialogue in the story is Mel’s and his views on love virtually roll over those of the others. Mel and his second wife Terri are a relatively seasoned couple (by contemporary standards)—they have been married four years and together for five—who have been through a good deal together. Both had tumultuous previous relationships. Mel has a very hostile relationship with his ex-wife, Marjorie; he’s still paying her alimony and toward the end of the story he says “She’s allergic to bees….If I’m not praying she’ll get married again, I’m praying she’ll get herself stung to death by a swarm of fucking bees.” Terri, meanwhile, was previously involved with a batterer named Ed, who shot himself after Terri and Mel moved in together. Terri’s insistence that Ed loved her—and that he was willing to die for his love is a sore point between the couple. Mel insists equally that Ed’s violence negates the possibility of love. His background as a seminarian before attending medical school taught him that “spiritual” love is the only “real” love: “The kind of love I’m talking about,” he says, “you don’t try to kill people.” Terri, reflecting something of the “battered woman” profile, persists in her view that Ed loved her: “In his own way maybe, but he loved me. There was love there Mel. Don’t say there wasn’t.” This conflict is a 1980’s version of the epiphany that occurs at the end of James Joyce’s “The Dead” when Gabriel Conroy discovers his wife Gretta had a relationship with a man (appropriately named) Michael Furey who loved her so much he caught pneumonia while singing her love songs on a cold and rainy night imploring her not to leave. Though Michael Furey and Ed on the surface may seem the antithesis of one another, both are utterly dependent on the woman they love; neither finds life worth living without her. While this kind of passionate intensity is an anathema in an age of “co-dependency,” Joyce and Carver want us to consider questions about the meaning of love as it actually occurs in the world—both the world of early 20th century Dublin that Joyce wrote about, and the world of late 20th century Albuquerque, New Mexico, the transient western U.S. city where Carver’s story is set. Carver’s story, however, is much less “place specific” than Joyce’s. In an Interview with Gail Caldwell, Carver says that most of his stories could take place anywhere: “…it’s an emotional landscape I’m most interested in. These four people in ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love’ could be sitting around a table in Albuquerque, or El Paso —but they could just as easily be in Wichita or Syracuse.” The emotional landscape of “What We Talk About” involves recording the state of mind of the two couples as they move through a mid-afternoon and early evening talking about all kinds of love—spiritual, carnal, platonic, possessive, brutal, obsessive, unrequited, and even parental, searching for what “real” love is. Mel and Terri’s tumultuous and volatile love history of love is explicitly contrasted that of with Nick and Laura, who are also in a second marriage but have known one another for just a year and a half and are still in a state of what some pop psychologists call “limmerance,” that remarkable time in the early days of a relationship when lovers have a hard time keeping their eyes and hands off one another. Mel, who is the narrator of the story, says “I touched the back of Laura’s hand. She gave me a quick smile. I picked up Laura’s hand. It was warm, the nails polished, perfectly manicured. I encircled the broad wrist with my fingers, and I held her.” Yet despite the physical connection between Nick and Laura, theirs is a relationship of what we might call “lite intimacy.” Mel’s description of it as virtually perfection itself has a hollow ring to it: “Laura is a legal secretary. We’d met in a professional
capacity. Before we knew it, it was a courtship. She’s thirty-five, three years younger than I am. In addition to being in love, we like each other and enjoy one another’s company. She’s easy to be with.” This is the ideal contemporary relationship—between a man and a woman who are friends as well as lovers, and the operative word here is “easy.” We all seek easy relationships, but the real world keeps intruding. And, of course, the trouble with “easy” relationships is embodied in the cliché, “easy come, easy go.” The transience of contemporary relationships creates a need for the characters—and by extension for us as readers—to redefine what love is and what it means to love someone. The entire story revolves around a central passage, delivered as a monologue by Mel, that connects love with time as has occurred in contemporary culture. Though the myth of “eternal love” persists, the reality of contemporary transitory relationships has shaken its foundations. I need to quote this central passage in its entirety because it capsulizes the essence of Carver’s narrative. As Mel drinks more and more, the question implied by the story’s title becomes more and more urgent. Just what do we talk about when we talk about love between human beings today? Does the word mean what it has always meant, or is there something about late 20th century life that has radically altered its meaning: “‘What do any of us really know about love?’ Mel said. ‘It seems to me we’re just beginners at love. We say we love each other and we do, I don’t doubt it. I love Terri and Terri loves me, and you guys love each other too. You know the kind of love I’m talking about now. Physical love, that impulse that drives you to someone special, as well as love of the other person’s being, his or her essence, as it were. Carnal love and, well, call it sentimental love, the day to day caring about the other person. But sometimes I have a hard time accounting for the fact that I must have loved my first wife too. But I did, I know I did. So I suppose I am like Terri in that regard. Terri and Ed.’ He thought about it and then he went on. ‘There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I’d like to know. I wish someone could tell me. Then there’s Ed. Okay, so we’re back to Ed. He loves Terri so much he tries to kill her and he winds up killing himself.’ Mel stopped talking and swallowed from his glass. ‘You guys have been together eighteen months and you love each other. It shows all over you. You glow with it. But you both loved other people before you met each other. You’ve both been married before, just like us. And you probably loved other people before that too, even. Terri and I have been together five years, been married for four. And the terrible thing, the terrible thing is, but the good thing too, the saving grace, you might say, is that if something happened to one of us—excuse me for saying this— but if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the other one, the other person, would grieve for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out and love again, and have someone else soon enough. All this, all of this love, we’re talking about, it would be just a memory. Am I wrong? Am I way off base? Because I want you to set me straight if you think I’m wrong. I want to know. I mean, I don’t know anything, and I’m the first one to admit it.’” Of course, Mel is actually the last one to admit it, and his confused, drunken monologue has a kind of terrible clarity and honesty to it. When I read this passage in my class, my Southern California students, nearly all of them from families that have experienced divorce, both understand it and are bewildered by it simultaneously. Which is to say they recognize it as the
contemporary world they live in—a world of serial relationships where one year’s love is the next year’s courtroom adversary. Both Mel and Terri on the one hand, and Nick and Laura on the other—as well as Mel and Marjorie and Terri and Ed—are contrasted with yet another couple referred to in the story, an elderly couple in their mid-seventies who have been in an auto accident. Significantly, their camper was slammed by a teenage drunk driver who was killed in the accident. The old couple survived, but “just barely.” Carver intends the couple to represent our traditional conception of love—lifetime monogamy—a love that lasts “until death do us part.” What troubles Mel about the love between this old couple is that the husband is upset not so much because he and his wife are badly injured, but because his face is bandaged so severely he cannot move his head and look at his wife. This kind of dependence is much closer to the love of Ed for Terri or the love of Michael Furey for Gretta than it is to either the love of Mel for Terri or the love of Nick for Laura. This kind of love involves dependence, vulnerability and need, all highly unfashionable qualities in a world of “you do your thing and I’ll do mine.” “Can you imagine?” Mel says in an increasingly booze-influenced diatribe, “I’m telling you the man’s heart was breaking because he couldn’t turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife…I mean it was killing the old fart because he couldn’t look at the fucking woman.” In Mel’s world, love is disposable, and disposable love is an oxymoron. Carver underscores our contemporary confusion about love with two motifs he uses as structural elements in the story: alcohol and light. Nick associates the two in his first description of the setting. “The four of us were sitting around his [Mel’s] kitchen table drinking gin. Sunlight filled the kitchen from the big window behind the sink.” The gin is poured liberally throughout and four pages into the story, Mel opens a second bottle and proposes a toast “to true love.” At this point the couples are in a kind of enchanted, fairy tale state, at the point in their drinking when the world seems to be basking in a rose-colored glow. Again the consumption of gin is related to the light in the room. “The afternoon sun was like a presence in this room, the spacious light of ease and generosity. We could have been anywhere, somewhere enchanted. We raised our glasses again and grinned at each other like children who had agreed on something forbidden.” The emotional landscape here is conspiratorial. The two couples appear to be moving toward a revelation but the booze has created an illusory sense of well being.. At this point, Mel goes into his monologue about love in the contemporary world and Terri’s response makes clear the tone of voice in which it is delivered: “Mel, for God’s sake…Are you getting drunk? Honey? Are you drunk?” Because Carver wrote as a recovering alcoholic, alcohol often plays an important role in many of his stories. Drinking is often contrasted with eating. Food is almost always presented as both nourishing and nurturing. Eating is a communal activity, a “small good thing,” as the title of one of his stories has it—while alcohol is a kind of empty substitute for it that neither nourishes nor nurtures but distorts and confuses. As the conversation continues, Mel makes exactly this contrast. “…let’s drink this cheapo gin the hell up. Then we’re going to dinner, right? Terri and I know a new place. That’s where we’ll go, to this new place we know about. But we’re not going until we finish up this cutrate, lousy gin.” Even more pointedly, Mel says “I like food…If I had it to do all over again, I’d be a chef, you know?” But eating keeps getting put aside for more drinking. Mel has passed the state of a euphoric high and is now moving into a somnambulant stupor: “Mel poured himself another drink. He looked at the label closely as if studying a long row of numbers. Then he slowly put the bottle down on the table and slowly reached for
the tonic water.” Things are indeed moving very slowly at this point, and after Mel finishes the story about the old couple, Nick offers a masterful understatement, yet again linking alcohol and light: “Maybe we were a little drunk by then. I know it was hard keeping things in focus. The light was draining out of the room, going back through the window where it had come from. Yet nobody made a move to get up from the table to turn on the overhead light.” The kitchen—significantly a place where food is prepared—gets darker and darker and things move more and more slowly. Mel especially seems to be moving in slow motion —each of his movements is ponderous and exaggerated. It takes him a long time merely to cross one leg over the other. The couples keep talking about food, about going out to eat, but continue drinking until all the liquor is gone. Mel thinks about calling his children (a sentimental insertion of parental love in the midst of all this confusion about love) but finally decides against it. “Maybe I won’t call the kids after all. Maybe it isn’t such a hot idea. Maybe we’ll just go eat. How does that sound.?” Nick responds confusedly: “Sounds fine to me…Eat or not eat. Or keep drinking. I could head right on out into the sunset.” Laura is perplexed by Nick’s response, but she underscores the poverty of the conversation about love when she says “I don’t think I’ve ever been so hungry in my life. Is there something to nibble on?” This is certainly a figurative as well as literal statement. All of the characters are hungry for love, but love as we too often experience it in the contemporary world is a shallow substitute for the real thing. Being hungry for love is one thing, but doing something about that hunger is another. Never one to miss an opportunity for humor in the midst of gravity, Carver has Terri respond to Laura’s request for “something to nibble on” with this: ‘I’ll put out some cheese and crackers,’ Terri said. But Terri just sat there. She did not get up to get anything.” Serial, transient love is to love as booze is to food. It gives the characters the illusion of having arrived somewhere, but leaves them empty and undernourished. And the more we talk about love, the more it becomes clear that we know virtually nothing about it. The story’s conclusion is a masterful stroke—a dark, existential moment when humanity is stripped of its illusions— the gin is finished, and all Nick hears, and consequently we as readers hear, is the sound of four human hearts beating in the darkness. Love and all our conceptions of it in this context are human constructs, what we call today a “socially constructed reality” that we employ to give meaning to the biological actuality of our flesh and blood, of our pulses pounding in the darkness. “I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone’s heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.” One can almost hear the anguished cry of Eugene O’Neill’s Jimmy Tomorrow from The Iceman Cometh hovering behind Carver’s last sentences: “What did you do to the booze, Hickey, what did you do to the booze?”
Fred Moramarco is a professor at San Diego State University.
Looking for Raymond Carver by A. O. Scott (fragments) “And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?
I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.” Plenty of writers are admired, celebrated, imitated, and hyped. Very few writers can, as Raymond Carver does in his poem “Late Fragment,” call themselves beloved. In the years since his death in 1988, at fifty, from lung cancer, Carver’s reputation has blossomed. He has gone from being an influential—and controversial—member of a briefly fashionable school of experimental fiction to being an international icon of traditional American literary values. His genius—but more his honesty, his decency, his commitment to the exigencies of craft—is praised by an extraordinarily diverse cross section of his peers. Richard Ford, whose work, like Carver’s, carries the Hemingway tradition of masculine virtue into the perilous world of discount stores, suburban sprawl, and no-fault divorce, published a tribute to his old friend in The New Yorker last year. Jay McInerney, a student of Carver’s at Syracuse in the early 1980s whose cheeky, cosmopolitan sensibility seems, at first glance, antithetical to Carver’s plain-spoken provinciality, has written memorably, and movingly, about his teacher. And Carver’s stripped-down vignettes of ordinary life in the United States have been championed by such heroes of international postmodern superfiction as Salman Rushdie, Amos Oz, and Haruki Murakami, who is also Carver’s principal Japanese translator. Carver’s influence has proven remarkably durable and protean: the chronicles of family dysfunction, addiction, and recovery that dominate American writing in the late 1990s may owe as much to his example as did the flood of laconic, present-tense short fiction that nearly drowned it in the mid-1980s. […] At the beginning of the story “Why Don’t You Dance?” a nameless man drinks whiskey and stares through his kitchen window at the contents of his house, arranged in the front yard: The chiffonier stood a few feet from the foot of the bed. He had emptied the drawers into cartons that morning, and the cartons were in the living room. A portable heater was next to the chiffonier. A rattan chair with a decorator pillow stood at the foot of the bed. The buffed aluminum kitchen set took up a part of the driveway. A yellow muslin cloth, much too large, a gift, covered the table and hung down over the sides. A potted fern was on the table, along with a box of silverware and a record player, also gifts. In some ways, All of Us resembles this tableau—the interior furnishings of a life dragged out into the sunlight, where they seem incongruous and, at the same time, desperately sad. The pathos of “Why Don’t You Dance?”—surely a case of ordinary objects acquiring power by being rendered in ordinary language —intensifies when we learn, early on in the collected poems, that the man at the window is Carver himself. “Distress Sale” begins with a catalog of household goods: Early one Sunday morning everything outside— the child’s canopy bed and vanity table, the sofa, end tables and lamps, boxes of assorted books and records. These things belong to someone else, a family reduced to selling off all their possessions. The speaker is a friend—”I’m staying
with them, trying to dry out”—whose sympathy is both deepened and limited by the fact that he’s not much better off than they are: “I reach for my wallet and that is how I understand it:/I can’t help anyone.” In fact, as Carver recorded in poems like “Bankruptcy” and “The Miracle,” he and his first wife, Maryann, were twice forced to declare bankruptcy. And the hardships of Carver’s early adulthood—the alcoholism, the financial insecurity, the cruelties and betrayals that finally wrecked his marriage—turn up again and again in his poetry. As Gallagher puts it, “Ray’s appetite for inventorying domestic havoc is often relentless.” “Inventory” is perhaps more apt than Gallagher would wish, given the formal slackness of so many of the poems, but the poems in All of Us will serve, for serious readers of Carver’s fiction, as a useful storehouse of biographical information, and as irrefutable cumulative evidence of how closely bound up Carver’s stories are with the events of his life. ……. […] This kind of reticence, the balked, clumsy attempt to express an experience paralyzed in its enormity and yet at the same time resolutely ordinary - the destruction of a family - resembles the way many of the characters in Carver’s stories express themselves. At the end of “Why Don’t You Dance?”, for example, the point of view shift from the man at the window to a young woman who had stopped with her boyfriend to check out the junk on the man’s lawn: Weeeks later, she said: “The guy was about middleaged. […] She kept talking. She told everyone. There was more to it, and she was trying to get it talked out. After a time, she gave up trying. The girl knows she has witnessed something terrible, but lacks the resources—quite literally, the vocabulary—to explain to herself or anyone else what she has seen. She can only say what happened, and it isn’t enough—there is more to it. But in her inarticulate state she is not much different from the narrator of the story, or indeed, as the poems and essays suggest, from Carver himself. And yet, the girl’s inability to say more, when coupled with Carver’s refusal to say more—the words husband, wife, divorce, alcoholism, bankruptcy, and despair occur nowhere in the story—manages to say it all.
To his admirers, Carver’s taciturnity becomes its own kind of eloquence. But critics, especially those who are bothered by Carver’s disproportionate influence on other writers, have complained about how much he leaves out. For Sven Birkerts, writing in 1986, the fiction of Carver and his followers is marked by “a total refusal of any vision of larger social connection.” And it is true that the inhabitants of Carver’s world appear to exist not only in states of isolation and impermanence, but, to borrow a phrase from George W.S. Trow, in a context of no context, without geographical, social, or historical coordinates. We seldom learn the name of the town, or even the state, in which a given story takes place. The stories tend to be devoid of the cultural and commercial references—popular songs, brand names, movies—that so many contemporary writers use to fix their narratives in time and space. And though Carver began writing in the early 1960s, and came to prominence over the next
two decades, his stories, at first glance, take no notice of the social and political tumult of the era. We never know who the president is, or whether men have walked on the moon; the characters never read newspapers; and nobody expresses any political interests or opinions. As far as I can tell, Vietnam is mentioned exactly once: in “Vitamins” the leering, predatory behavior of a black man named Nelson—one of the very few nonwhite characters who appear in Carver’s work—is ascribed to the fact that he is a veteran just returned from combat in Southeast Asia. […] “I’m much more interested in my characters,” Carver once told an interviewer, “in the people in my story, than I am in any potential reader.” This is a statement of artistic priorities, to be sure, but it also amounts to an expression of solidarity. Carver’s characters are a lot like him: they marrytoo young, divorce too late, and drink too much. Their midlife crises occur in their early thirties. They are menaced by debt and sporadically employed. Childhood in Carver’s world consists of the uncomprehending, often brutal imitation of adults; adulthood, which comes suddenly and irreversibly, is a state of mourning for lost possibilities punctuated by eruptions of childishness. The desire for permanence, for stability, for home and family and steady work, is perpetually at war with the impulse to flee, to strike it rich, or just to be left alone. The spareness of Carver’s style represents not parsimoniousness, but tact. It represents, above all, an absolute loyalty to the people he writes about. It’s as if Carver, in deciding to become the kind of person who has his own library, and who will someday see his own name under the words “edited by,” at the same time swore to remain true not only to the delivery boy he had been, but to that boy’s original state of ignorance. In his recent introduction to The Best American Stories of the Twentieth Century, John Updike writes, somewhat ruefully, that the fiction of Carver and fellow minimalists like Barthelme and Ann Beattie involves “a withdrawal of authorial guidance, an existential determination to let things speak out of their own silence.” This is well put, but it would be more accurate in Carver’s case to say that he is motivated by a moral determination to let persons speak out of their own deep reticence. The exercise of authorial guidance would imply, for him, an unprincipled claim to omniscience, an assertion that he knows more than his characters and is, therefore, better than they are. To read Where I’m Calling From from beginning to end, supplemented by some of the stories from earlier collections that Carver chose not to reprint, is to discover that a great deal of what is supposed to be missing—in particular, the changing social landscape of the United States—has been there all along, but that it has been witnessed from a perspective almost without precedent in American literature. Stories like “What Do You Do in San Francisco?” and “After the Denim” record the curious, suspicious, and disgusted reactions of the small-town working class to interlopers from the urban, well-to-do counterculture. “Jerry and Molly and Sam,” “Nobody Said Anything,” and “Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes,” among others, are ultimately about how the spread of the suburbs transformed family life, and about the crisis of masculinity that resulted. Carver’s work, read closely and in the aggregate, also carries a lot of news about feminism, work-ing conditions, and substance abuse in latetwentieth-century provincial America. To generalize in this way is, of course, to engage in a kind of analytical discourse Carver resolutely mistrusted. More often
than not, the big talkers in Carver’s stories are in possession of a degree of class privilege. “My friend Mel McGinnis was talking,” goes the famous opening of “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” “Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right.” The imperious homeowner in “Put Yourself in My Shoes” and the jealous college teacher in “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?” also come to mind. People who carry on as if they know what they’re talking about are regarded with suspicion. Carver’s greatest sympathy is reserved for those characters who struggle to use language to make sense of things, but who founder or fail in the attempt. It is striking how many of his stories turn on the inability or refusal of people to say what happened. Think of the girl at the end of “Why Don’t You Dance?,” unable to convey the fullness of what she has seen on the strange man’s lawn, or the narrator of “Where is Everyone?,” clamming up at his AA meetings. And there are many more examples. “Why, Honey?” is a mother’s desperate, almost incoherent, and yet strangely formal effort (“Dear Sir,” it begins) to explain to a nameless, prying stranger how her darling son went wrong. In “Distance” (also published as “Everything Stuck to Him”), a father, asked by his grown daughter to tell her “what it was like when she was a kid,” produces a fairy tale of young parenthood (the main characters in which are referred to only as “the boy” and “the girl”) that leaves both teller and listener unsettled, unenlightened, and remote from each other. And then there is “Cathedral,” one of Carver’s most beloved stories and the closest thing he produced to an allegory of his own method. The narrator is visited by a garrulous blind man, an old friend of his wife’s, whose arrival he anticipates with apprehension. The two men end up smoking marijuana together, while the television airs a documentary about the cathedrals of Europe. It starts to bother the narrator that his new acquaintance, while he knows something about the history of church-building, has no idea of what cathedrals really are, and he tries to tell him about them: “They’re really big,” I said. “They’re massive. They’re built of stone. Marble, too, sometimes. In those olden days, when they built cathedrals, men wanted to be close to God. In those olden days, God was an important part of everyone’s life. You could tell this from their cathedral-building. I’m sorry,” I said, “but it looks like that’s the best I can do for you. I’m just no good at it.” The blind man proposes that they draw a cathedral instead, and they do—the narrator’s eyes closed, the blind man’s hand guiding his. The narrator undergoes an epiphany: “It was like nothing else in my life up to now.” The reader is left out: the men’s shared experience, visual and tactile, is beyond the reach of words. But the frustrating vicariousness of the story is also the source of its power. Art, according to Carver, is a matter of the blind leading the tonguetied. Carver was an artist of a rare and valuable kind: he told simple stories, and made it look hard. New York Review of Books, Aug 12 ‘99
JOHN BARTH A Few Words About Minimalism*
“Less is more,” said Walter Gropius, or Alberto Giacometti, or Laszlo MoholyNagy, or Henri GuadierBrzeska, or Constantin Brancusi, or Le Corbusier or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; the remark (first made in fact by Robert Browning) has been severally attributed to all of those more or less celebrated more or less minimalists. Like the Bauhaus motto, “Form follows function,” it is itself a memorable specimen of the minimalist esthetic, of which a cardinal principle is that artistic effect may be enhanced by a radical economy of artistic means, even where such parsimony compromises other values: completeness, for example, or richness or precision of statement. The power of that esthetic principle is easy to demonstrate: contrast my eminently forgettable formulation of it above – “artistic effect may be enhanced,” etc. – with the unforgettable assertion “Less is more.” Or consider the following proposition, first with, and then without, its parenthetical elements: Minimalism (of one sort or another) is the principle (one of the principles, anyhow) underlying (what I and many another interested observer consider to be perhaps) the most impressive phenomenon on the current (North American, especially the United States) literary scene (the gringo equivalent to el boom in the Latin American novel): I meanthe new flowering of the (North) American short story (in particular the kind of terse, oblique, realistic or hyperrealistic, slightly plotted, extrospective, coolsurfaced fiction associated in the last 5 or 10 years with such excellent writers as Frederick Barthelme, Ann Beattie, Raymond Carver, Bobbie Ann Mason, James Robison, Mary Robison and Tobias Wolff, and both praised and damned under such labels as “KMart realism,” “hick chic,” “DietPepsi minimalism” and “postVietnam, postliterary, postmodernist bluecollar neoearlyHemingwayism”). Like any clutch of artists collectively labeled, the writers just mentioned are at least as different from one another as they are similar. Minimalism, moreover, is not the only and may not be the most important attribute that their fiction more or less shares; those labels themselves suggest some other aspects and concerns of the New American Short Story and its proportionate counterpart, the threeeighthinch novel. But it is their minimalism I shall speak of (briefly) here, and its antecedence: the idea that, in art at least, less is more. It is an idea surely as old, as enduringly attractive and as ubiquitous as its opposite. In the beginning was the Word: only later came the Bible, not to mention the threedecker Victorian novel. The oracle at Delphi did not say, “Exhaustive analysis and comprehension of one’s own psyche may be prerequisite to an understanding of one’s behavior and of the world at large”; it said, “Know thyself.” Such inherently minimalist genres as oracles (from the Delphic shrine of Apollo to the modern fortune cookie), proverbs, maxims, aphorisms, epigrams, pensees, mottoes, slogans and quips are popular in every human century and culture – especially in oral cultures and subcultures, where mnemonic staying power has high priority – and many specimens of them are selfreflexive or selfdemonstrative: minimalism about minimalism. “Brevity is the soul of wit.” “Silence is golden.” “Vita brevis est, ars longa” Seneca warns aspiring poets in his third Epistle; “Eschew surplusage,” recommends Mark Twain. Against the largescale classical prose pleasures of Herodotus, Thucydides and Petronius, there are the miniature delights of Aesop’s fables and Theophrastus’ Characters. Against such verse epics as the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid – and the much longer Sanskrit Ramayana, Mahabharata and Ocean of Story – are such venerable supercompressive poetic forms as the palindrome (there are long examples, but the ones we remember are “Madam, I’m Adam” and “Sex at noon
taxes”), or the single couplet (a modern instance is Ogden Nash’s “Candy is dandy/But liquor is quicker”), or the feudal Japanese haiku and its Western echoes in the early20thcentury imagists up to the contemporary “skinny poems” of, say, Robert Creeley. There are even singleword poems, or single words that ought to be poems; the best one I know of I found in the Guinness Book of World Records, listed as the “most succinct word”: The Tierra del Fuegian word “mamihlapinatapei.” In the language of the Land of Fire, “mamihlapinatapei” is said to mean: looking into each other’s eyes, each hoping that the other will initiate what both want to do but neither chooses to commence. The genre of the short story, as Poe distinguished it from the traditional tale in his 1842 review of Hawthorne’s first collection of stories, is an early manifesto of modern narrative minimalism: “In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency . . . is not to the preestablished design . . . . Undue length is . . . to be avoided.” Poe’s codification informs such later 19thcentury masters of terseness, selectivity and implicitness (as opposed to leisurely onceuponatimelessness, luxuriant abundance, explicit and extended analysis) as Guy de Maupassant and Anton Chekhov. Show, don’t tell, said Henry James in effect and at length in his prefaces to the 1908 New York edition of his novels. And don’t tell a word more than you absolutely need to, added young Ernest Heningway, who thus described his “new theory” in the early 1920’s: “You could omit anything if you knew that you omitted, and the omitted part would strenthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.” The Bauhaus Functionalists were by then already busy unornamenting and abstracting modern architecture, painting and design; and while functionalism and minimalism are not the same thing, to say nothing of abstractionism and minimalism (there is nothing abstract about those early Hemingway stories), they spring from the same impluse: to strip away the superfluous in order to reveal the necessary, the essential. Never mind that Voltaire had pointed out, a century and a half before, how indispensable the superfluous can be (“Le superflu, chose si necessaire”); just as, in modern painting, the process of stripping away leads from PostImpressionism through Cubism to the radical minimalism of Kasimir Malevich’s “White on White” of 1918, and Ad Reinhardt’s all but imageless “black paintings” of the 1950’s, so in 20thcentury literature the minimalist succession leads through Hemingway’s “new theory” to the shorter ficciones of Jorge Luis Borges and the everterser texts of Samuel Beckett, perhaps culminating in his play Breath (1969): The curtain opens on a dimly lit stage, empty but for scattered rubbish; there is heard a single recorded human cry, then a single amplified inspiration and expiration of breath accompanied by a brightening and redimming of the lights, then again the cry. Thirtyfive seconds after it opened, the curtain closes. But it closes only on the play, not on the modern tradition of literary minimalism, which honorably continues in such next generation writers as, in America, Donald Barthelme (“The fragment is the only form I trust,” says a character in his slender novel Snow White) and, in the literary generation overlapping and following his, the plentiful authors of the New American Short Story. Old or new, fiction can be minimalist in any or all of several ways. There are minimalisms of unit, form and scale: short words, short sentences and paragraphs, supershort stories, those threeeighthinch thin novels aforementioned, and even minimal bibliographies (Borges’ fiction adds up to a few modest, though powerfully influential, shortstory collections). There are minimalisms of style: a strippeddown vocabulary; a stripped down syntax that avoids periodic sentences, serial predications
and complex subordinating constructions; a strippeddown rhetoric that may eschew figurative language altogether; a strippeddown, nonemotive tone. And there are minimalisms of material: minimal characters, minimal exposition (“all that David Copperfield kind of crap,” says J.D. Salinger’s catcher in the rye), minimal mises en scene, minimal action, minimal plot. Found together in their purest forms, these several minimalisms add up to an art that – in the words of its arch priest, Samuel Beckett, speaking of the painter Bram Van Velde – expresses “that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express – together with the obligation to express.” But they are not always found together. There are very short works of great rhetorical, emotional and thematic richness, such as Borges’s essential page, “Borges and I”; and there are instances of what may fairly be called longwinded minimalism, such as Samuel Beckett’s starkmonumental trilogy from the early 50’s: Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnameable. Parallels abound in the other arts: the miniature, in painting, is characteristically brimful (miniaturism is not minimalism); Joseph Cornell’s little boxes contain universes. The large paintings of Mark Rothko, Franz Kline and Barnett Newman, on the other hand, are as undetailed as the Washington Monument. The medieval Roman Catholic Church recognized two opposite roads to grace: the via negativa of the monk’s cell and the hermit’s cave, and the via affirmativa of immersion in human affairs, of being in the world whether or not one is of it. Critics have aptly borrowed those terms to characterize the difference between Mr. Beckett, for example, and his erstwhile master James Joyce, himself a maximalist except in his early works. Other than bonedeep disposition, which is no doubt the great determinant, what inclines a writer – sometimes almost a cultural generation of writers – to the Negational Path? For individuals, it may be by their own acknowledgment largely a matter of past or present personal circumstances. Raymond Carver writes of a literary apprenticeship in which his short poems and stories were carved in precious quarterhours stolen from a harrowing domestic and economic situation; though he now has professional time aplenty, the notion besets him that should he presume to attempt even a short novel, he’ll wake to find himself back in those wretched circumstances. An opposite case was Borges’s: his neartotal blindness in his later decades obliged him to the short forms that he had elected for other, nonphysical reasons when he was sighted. . . . To account for a trend, literary sociologists and culture watchers point to more general historical and philosophical factors – not excluding the factor of powerful models like Borges and Beckett. The influence of early Hemingway on Raymond Carver, say, is as apparent as the influence of Mr. Carver in turn on a host of other New American ShortStory writers, and on a much more numerous host of apprentices in American college fictionwriting programs. But why this model rather than that, other than its mere and sheer artistic prowess, on which after all it has no monopoly? Doubtless because this one is felt, by the writers thus more or less influenced, to speak more strongly to their condition and that of their readers. And what is that condition, in the case of the coolsurface realistminimalist storytellers of the American 1970’s and 80’s? In my conversation with them, my reading of their critics both positive and negative and my dealings with recent and current apprentice writers, I have heard cited, among other factors, these halfdozen, ranked here in no particular order: *Our national hangover from the Vietnam War, felt by many to be a trauma literally and figuratively unspeakable. “I don’t
want to talk about it” is the characteristic attitude of “Nam” veterans in the fiction of Ann Beattie, Jayne Anne Phillips and Bobbie Ann Mason – as it is among many of their reallife counterparts (and as it was among their numberless 20thcentury forerunners, especially after the First World War). This is, of course, one of the two classic attitudes to trauma, the other being its opposite, and it can certainly conduce to hedged, nonintrospective, even minimalist discourse: one remembers Hemingway’s early story “Soldier’s Home.” *The more or less coincident energy crisis of 197376, and the associated reaction against American excess and wastefulness in general. The popularity of the subcompact car parallels that (in literary circles, at least) of the subcompact novel and the minifiction – though not, one observes, of the miniskirt, which had nothing to do with conserving material. *The national decline in reading and writing skills, not only among the young (including even young apprentice writers, as a group), but among their teachers, many of whom are themselves the product of an everlessdemanding educational system and a society whose narrativedramatic entertainment and tastes come far more from movies and television than from literature. This is not to disparage the literacy and general education of those writers mentioned above, or to suggest that the great writers of the past were uniformly flawless spellers and grammarians, of wide personal literary culture. Some were, some weren’t; some of today’s are, some aren’t. But at least among those of our aspiring writers promising enough to be admitted into good graduate writing programs – and surely they are not the inferior specimens of their breed – the general decline in basic language skills over the last two decades is inarguable enough to make me worry in some instances about their teaching undergraduates. Rarely in their own writing, whatever its considerable other merits, will one find a sentence of any syntactical complexity, for example, and inasmuch as a language’s repertoire of other thanbasic syntactical devices permits its users to articulate otherthanbasic thoughts and feelings, DickandJane prose tends to be emotionally and intellectually poorer than Henry James prose. Among the great minimalist writers, this impoverishment is elected and strategic: simplification in the interest of strength, or of some other value. Among the less great it may be faute de mieux. Among today’s “common readers” it is pandemic. *Along with this decline, an everdwindling readerly attention span. The long popular novel still has its devotees, especially aboard large airplanes and on beaches; but it can scarcely be doubted that many of the hours we bourgeois now spend with our televisions and video cassette recorders, and in our cars and at the movies, we used to spend reading novels and novellas and notsoshort stories, partly because those glitzy other distractions weren’t there and partly because we were more generally conditioned for sustained concentration, in our pleasures as well as in our work. The Austrian novelist Robert Musil was complaining by 1930 (in his maxinovel The Man Without Qualities) that we live in “the age of the magazine,” too impatient already in the twitchy 20’s to read books. Half a century later, in America at elast, even the largecirculation magazine market for fiction had dwindled to a handful of outlets; the readers weren’t there. It is a touching paradox of the New American Short Story – so admirably straightforward and democratic of access, so steeped in brand names and the popular culture – that it perforce appears mainly in very smallcirculation literary quarterlies instead of the likes of Collier’s, Liberty and The Saturday Evening Post. But The New Yorker and Esquire can’t publish everybody.
*Together with all the above, a reaction on these authors’ part against the ironic, blackhumoristic “fabulism” and/or the (sometimes academic) intellectuality and/or the density, here byzantine, there baroque, of some of their immediate American literary antecedents: the likes of Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover, Stanley Elkin, William Gaddis and William Gass, John Hawkes, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut (and, I shall presume, myself as well). This reaction, where it exists, would seem to pertain as much to our successors’ relentless realism as to their minimalism: among the distinguished brothers Barthelme, Donald’s productions are no less lean than Frederick’s or the upandcoming Steven’s; but their characteristic material, angle of attack and resultant flavor are different indeed. The formal intricacy of Elder Brother’s story “Sentence,” for example (a single ninepage nonsentence), or the direct though satirical intellectuality of his “Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel,” are as foreign to the KMart Realists as are the manic flights of Gravity’s Rainbow. So it goes: The dialogue between fantast and realist, fabulator and quotidianist, like the dialogue between maximalist and minimalist, is as old as storytelling, and by no means always adversary. There are innumerable combinations, coalitions, linecrossings and workings of both sides of the street. *The reaction against the all but inescapable hyperbole of American advertising, both commercial and political, with its hightech manipulativeness and glamorous lies, as ubiquitous as and more polluted than the air we breathe. How understandable that such an ambiance, together with whatever other items in this catalogue, might inspire a fiction dedicated to homely, understated, programmatically unglamorous, even minimalistic Telling It Like It Is. That has ever been the ground inspiration, moral philosophical in character, of minimalism and its kissing cousin realism in their many avatars over the centuries, in the fine arts and elsewhere: the feeling that the language (or whatever) has for whatever reasons become excessive, cluttered, corrupted, fancy, false. It is the Puritans’ reaction against baroque Catholicism; it is Thoreau’s putting behind him even the meager comforts of the village of Concord. To the Lost Generation of World War I survivors, says one of their famous spokesmen (Frederic Henry in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms), “Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene.” Wassily Kandinsky said he sought “not the shell, but the nut.” The functionalism of the Bauhaus was inspired in part by admiration for machine technology, in part by revulsion against the fancy clutter of the Gilded Age, in language as well as elsewhere. The sinking of the elegant Titanic has come to symbolize the end of that age, as the sight of some workmen crushed by a falling Victorian cornice symbolized for young Frank Lloyd Wright the dead weight of functionless architectural decoration. Flaubert raged against the blague of bourgeois speech, bureaucratic speech in particular; his passion for the mot juste involved far more subtraction than addition. The baroque inspires its opposite: after the excesses of scholasticism comes Descartes’s radical reductionism – let us doubt and discard everything not selfevident and see whether anything indubitable remains upon which to rebuild. And among the scholastics themselves, three centuries before Descartes, William of Ockham honed his celebrated razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda (“Entities are not to be multiplied”). In short, less is more. Beyond their individual and historically local impulses, then, the more or less minimalist authors of the New American Short Story are reenacting a cyclical correction in the history (and the microhistories) of literature and of art in general: a cycle to be
found as well, with longer rhythms, in the history of philosophy, the history of the culture. Renaissances beget Reformations, which then beget CounterReformations; the seven fat years are succeeded by seven lean, after which we, no less than the people of Genesis, may look forward to the recorrection. For if there is much to admire in artistic austerity, its opposite is not without merits and joys as well. There are the minimalist pleasures of Emily Dickinson – “Zero at the Bone” – and the maximalist ones of Walt Whitman; the lowfat rewards of Samuel Beckett’s Texts for Nothing and the highcalorie delights of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. There truly are more ways than one to heaven. As between minimalism and its opposite, I pity the reader – or the writer, or the age – too addicted to either to savor the other. * Copyright c 1986 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission. Weber Studies does not ordinarily publish previously published material. We have made an exception in the case of this essay for two reasons. The essay was specially written for and presented at the First National Undergraduate Literature Conference at Weber State College on l7 April l986. Secondly, the topic presented herein is important enough to warrant republication for our readers.
The New Yorker, December 24, 2007 Letters written by Raymond Carver to Gordon Lish (and one letter by Lish to Carver) during the years 1969 to 1983, when Lish was editing Carver’s work at Esquire and Alfred A. Knopf. Serves as an introduction to Carver’s story “Beginners,” also published in The New Yorker
Letters to an Editor by Raymond Carver Following are excerpts from Carver’s correspondence with Lish, from 1969 to 1983. November 12, 1969 Well, as it happens I do have a few stories on hand, and I’m sending them along within the next day or two. I hope you can find something you like. July 15, 1970 Hombre, thanks for the superb assist on the stories. No one has done that for me since I was 18, I mean it. High time I think, too. Feel the stories are first class now, but whatever the outcome there, I appreciate the fine eye you turned on them. Hang tough. January 19, 1971 I think it’s a fine story. Took about all yr changes, added a few things here and there. Hope to get it retyped by this evening and back off to you. No later than tomorrow, sure. Thanks for going over it.—Listen, something you said a long time ago, the thing itself is what matters. Is true, in the end. I’m not bothered. I’ve always been the slowest kid in class anyway, right down there. But I keep trying, even at this advanced age. So lean on it, if you see things. If I don’t agree, I’ll say something, never fear. November 11, 1974 Well, listen, can’t exactly tell you how pleased and so on about the prospects of having a collection out under your aegis . . . along with McGraw-Hill, of course. First reaction was to run out and buy two bottles of champagne for a champagne breakfast. . . . But all that is neither here nor there. What I’m concerned about and thrilled about is having out a book of stories, & from there on I intend, brother, to set the globe afire, believe me. . . . I’ll tell you this, you’ve not backed a bad horse. .
. . About the editing necessary in some of the stories. Tell me which ones and I’ll go after it, or them. Tell me which ones. Or I will leave it up to you & you tell me what you think needs done or doing. September 27, 1977 The most wonderful thing about this stay in McKinleyville, though, is that I’ve got sober and intend to stay that way. I’ve never done anything in my life I’ve felt so good about as getting and staying sober. What can I say? [Lish had left Esquire.] You’ve made a single-handed impression on American letters that has helped fix the course of American letters. And, of course, you know, old bean, just what an influence you’ve exercised on my life. Just knowing you were there, at your desk, was an inspiration for me to write, and you know I mean that. You, my friend, are my idea of an ideal reader, always have been, always, that is, forever, will be. So you loomed large on the literary scene, and that is a fact, as well as a truth, but you loomed large in my conscious and unconscious life as well. September 8, 1978 Tess Gallagher, that Irish lass, I like to have fallen in love with her. She left, went to Tucson on business—she’ll be teaching there next year, she’s on a Guggy this year—then returned and we spent a fine week together, I put her on a plane to Seattle yesterday, today I get a dozen red roses from her. February 1, 1979 I’m going to Mardi Gras with Tess; and the Fords are coming down in March for spring break and we’re going into Mexico by train for a week. . . . I’m happy, and I’m sober. It’s aces right now, Gordon. I know better than anyone a fellow is never out of the woods, but right now it’s aces, and I’m enjoying it. May 10, 1980 As for lunch, lord, it was the high point of my visit to NYC, nothing mindless or silly, at least not on your part. I delight in your company, simple as that. You know, I feel closer to you than I do to my own brother. Have for a long time, years. We don’t see each other that often, or talk on the phone weekly, etc., but I know you’re there and it’s important to me. Besides, you’re my hero—don’t you know? Ever since you left PA [Palo Alto] and went out into the Great World and began sending me messages back from time to time what it was like out there. Your friendship and your concern have enriched my life. There’s no question of your importance to me. You’re my mainstay. Man, I love you. I don’t make that declaration lightly either. . . . For Christ’s sweet sake, not to worry about taking a pencil to the stories if you can make them better; and if anyone can you can. I want them to be the best possible stories, and I want them to be around for a while. . . . I never figured I was going to get rich or even earn a living writing stories and poems. Be enough, you know, to have Knopf do a book of mine and have you as my editor. So open the throttle. Ramming speed. July 8, 1980, 8 A.M. Dearest Gordon, I’ve got to pull out of this one. Please hear me. I’ve been up all night thinking on this, and nothing but this, so help me. I’ve looked at it from every side, I’ve compared both versions of the edited mss—the first one is better, I truly believe, if some things are carried over from the second to the first—until my eyes are nearly to fall out of my head. You are a wonder, a genius, and there’s no doubt of that, better than any two of Max Perkins, etc., etc. And I’m not unmindful of the fact of my immense debt to you, a debt I can simply never, never repay. This whole new life I have, so many of the friends I now have, this job up here, everything, I owe to you for “Will You Please.” You’ve given me some degree of immortality already. You’ve made so many of the stories in this collection better, far better than they were before. And maybe if I were alone, by myself, and no one had ever seen these stories, maybe then, knowing that your versions are better than some of the ones I had sent, maybe I could get into this and
go with it. But Tess has seen all of these and gone over them closely. Donald Hall has seen many of the new ones (and discussed them at length with me and offered his services in reviewing the collection) and Richard Ford, Toby Wolff, Geoffrey Wolff, too, some of them. . . . How can I explain to these fellows when I see them, as I will see them, what happened to the story in the meantime, after its book publication? Maybe if the book were not to come out for 18 months or two years, it would be different. But right now, everything is too new. . . . Gordon, the changes are brilliant and for the better in most cases —I look at “What We Talk About . . .” (Beginners) and I see what it is that you’ve done, what you’ve pulled out of it, and I’m awed and astonished, startled even, with your insights. But it’s too close right now, that story. Now much of this has to do with my sobriety and with my new-found (and fragile, I see) mental health and well-being. I’ll tell you the truth, my very sanity is on the line here. I don’t want to sound melodramatic here, but I’ve come back from the grave here to start writing stories once more. As I think you may know, I’d given up entirely, thrown it in and was looking forward to dying, that release. But I kept thinking, I’ll wait until after the election to kill myself, or wait until after this or that happened, usually something down the road a ways, but it was never far from my mind in those dark days, not all that long ago. Now, I’m incomparably better, I have my health back, money in the bank, the right woman for this time of my life, a decent job, blah blah. But I haven’t written a word since I gave you the collection, waiting for your reaction, that reaction means so much to me. Now, I’m afraid, mortally afraid, I feel it, that if the book were to be published as it is in its present edited form, I may never write another story, that’s how closely, God Forbid, some of those stories are to my sense of regaining my health and mental wellbeing. . . . Please help me with this, Gordon. I feel as if this is the most important decision I’ve ever been faced with, no shit. I ask for your understanding. Next to my wife, and now Tess, you have been and are the most important individual in my life, and that’s the truth. I don’t want to lose your love or regard over this, oh God no. It would be like having a part of myself die, a spiritual part. Jesus, I’m jabbering now. But if this causes you undue complication and grief and you perhaps understandably become pissed and discouraged with me, well, I’m the poorer for it, and my life will not be the same again. True. On the other hand, if the book comes out and I can’t feel the kind of pride and pleasure in it that I want, if I feel I’ve somehow too far stepped out of bounds, crossed that line a little too far, why then I can’t feel
good about myself, or maybe even write again; right now I feel it’s that serious, and if I can’t feel absolutely good about it, I feel I’d be done for. I do. Lord God I just don’t know what else to say. I’m awash with confusion and paranoia. Fatigue too, that too. Please, Gordon, for God’s sake help me in this and try to understand. Listen. I’ll say it again, if I have any standing or reputation or credibility in the world, I owe it to you. I owe you this more-or-less pretty interesting life I have. But if I go ahead with this as it is, it will not be good for me. The book will not be, as it should, a cause for joyous celebration, but one of defense and explanation. . . . I know that the discomfort of this decision of mine is at its highest now, it’s rampant, I feel nearly wild with it. But I know it will cause you grief as well, explanations, more work, stopping everything in its tracks and coming up with valid reasons for why. But, eventually, my discomfort and yours, will go away, there’ll be a grieving, I’m grieving right now, but it will go away. But if I don’t speak now, and speak from the heart, and halt things now, I foresee a terrible time ahead for me. The demons I have to deal with every day, or night, nearly, might, I’m afraid, simply rise up and take me over. Of course I know I shouldn’t have signed the contract without first reading the collection and making my fears, if any, known to you beforehand, before signing. So what should we do now, please advise? Can you lay it all on me and get me out of the contract someway? Can you put the book off until Winter or Spring of 1982 and let them know I want to have the stories in the collection published in magazines first (and that’s the truth, several of them are committed to places with publication way off next year)? Tell them I want the magazine publications first, and then the book out when I’m up for tenure here that spring of 1982? And then decide next year what, for sure, to do? Or else can or should everything just be stopped now, I send back the Knopf check, if it’s on the way, or else you stop it there? And meanwhile I pay you for the hours, days and nights, I’m sure, you’ve spent on this. Goddamn it, I’m just nearly crazy with this. I’m getting into a state over it. —No, I don’t think it shd. be put off. I think it had best be stopped. I thought the editing, especially in the first version, was brilliant, as I said. The stories I can’t let go of in their entirety are these. “Community Center” (If It Please You) and “The Bath” (A Small Good Thing) and I’d want some more of the old couple, Anna and Henry Gates, in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” (Beginners). I would not want “Mr. Fixit” (Where Is Everyone) in the book in its present state. The story “Distance” should not have its title changed to “Everything Stuck to Him.” Nor the little piece “Mine” to “Popular Mechanics.” “Dummy” should keep its title. “A Serious Talk” is fine for “Pie.” I think “Want to See Something” is fine, is better than “I Could See the Smallest Things.” . . . I’m just much too close to all of this right now. It’s even hard for me to think right now. I think, in all, maybe it’s just too soon for me for another collection. I know that next spring is too soon in any case. Absolutely too soon. I think I had best pull out, Gordon, before it goes any further. I realize I stand every chance of losing your love and friendship over this. But I strongly feel I stand every chance of losing my soul and my mental health over it, if I don’t take that risk. I’m still in the process of recovery and trying to get well from the alcoholism, and I just can’t take any chances, something as momentous and permanent as this, that would put my head in some jeopardy. That’s it, it’s in my head. You have made so many of these stories better, my God, with the lighter editing and trimming. But those others, those three, I guess, I’m liable to croak if they came out that way. Even though they may be closer to works of art than the original and people be reading them 50 years from now, they’re still apt to cause my demise, I’m serious, they’re so intimately hooked up with my
getting well, recovering, gaining back some little self-esteem and feeling of worth as a writer and a human being. I know you must feel angry and betrayed and pissed off. God’s sake, I’m sorry. I can pay you for the time you’ve put in on this, but I can’t begin to help or do anything about the trouble and grief I may be causing there in the editorial and business offices that you’ll have to go through. Forgive me for this, please. But I’m just going to have to wait a while yet for another book, 18 months, two years, it’s okay now, as long as I’m writing and have some sense of worth in the process. Your friendship and your concern and general championing of me have meant, and mean still, more to me than I can ever say. I could never begin to repay you, as you must know. I honor and respect you, and I love you more than my brother. But you will have to get me off the hook here Gordon, it’s true. I just can’t go another step forward with this endeavor. So please advise what to do now. . . . As I say, I’m confused, tired, paranoid, and afraid, yes, of the consequences for me if the collection came out in its present form. So help me, please, yet again. Don’t, please, make this too hard for me, for I’m just likely to start coming unraveled knowing how I’ve displeased and disappointed you. God almighty, Gordon. Ray Please do the necessary things to stop production of the book. Please try and forgive me, this breach. July 10, 1980 Please look through the enclosed copy of “What We Talk About,” the entire collection. You’ll see that nearly all of the changes I suggest are small enough, but I think they’re significant and they all can be found in the first edited ms version you sent me. It’s just, not just, but it’s a question of reinstating some of the things that were taken out in the second version. But I feel strongly some of those things taken out should be back in the finished stories. “Gazebo,” for instance. “In this, too, she was right.” That ending is far superior and gives the story the right, the just ending, the narrator’s sense of loss, and a sharp, perfect ending for the story. Otherwise, the narrator is a lout, a son of a bitch, and totally insensitive to everything he’s been telling us. Otherwise, why even is he telling the story, I wonder. July 14, 1980 I’m thrilled about the book and its impending publication. I’m stoked about it, and I’m already starting to think about the next one. More than thinking about it, in fact. Fact is, I’m giving some thought to taking the second semester off to do nothing but write and write through the summer as well. . . . Things are in full swing, and I am just generally excited, specifically too. I know you have my best interests at heart, and you’ll do everything and more to further those interests. . . . I won’t harp or dog, for I know the book is going to astonish and give pleasure. So just these last words on the matter: please look at the suggestions I’ve penciled in and entertain those suggestions seriously, even if finally you decide otherwise; if you think I’m being my own worst enemy, you know, well then, stick to the final version of the second edited version. But do give those things a hard third or fourth look. My greatest fear is, or was, having them too pared, and I’m thinking of “Community Center” and “The Bath” both of which lost several pages each in the second editing. I want that sense of beauty and mystery they have now, but I don’t want to lose track, lose touch with the little human connections I saw in the first version you sent me. They seemed somehow to be fuller in the best sense, in that first ed. version. Maybe I am wrong in this, maybe you are 100% correct, just please give them another hard look. That’s all. That and what I said about “Where Is Everyone?”—Mr. Coffee, Mr. Fixit. August 11, 1982 Now I don’t know for sure how we’re going to work out some of the disagreements we’re bound to have over some of these stories I’ve written and am writing this very minute. And
I’m going to give you the book [“Cathedral”] on schedule, in November. . . . Anyway, you’re the best editor there is, and a writer yourself, you bet, and you have to call them the way you see them. Fair enough. But I may not be in agreement with you, and this is what’s worrying me right this minute. . . . Forgive me. But hear me out. I’m saying that despite all and fuck all, I’ve been writing short stories ever since I landed out here in this woodsy cranny. I’ve got five new ones, no six, counting the one I just typed out a second draft of earlier tonight and hope to finish, at least have some more drafts of, before the week is out. I’ve been writing as if my life depended on it and like there’s no tomorrow. And we both know that first may be true, and there’s always likelihood of the second. (And fuck no, I can’t get off the cigarettes either.) . . . But one thing is certain— the stories in this new collection are going to be fuller than the ones in the earlier books. And this, for Christ’s sake, is to the good. I’m not the same writer I used to be. But I know there are going to be stories in these 14 or 15 I give you that you’re going to draw back from, that aren’t going to fit anyone’s notion of what a Carver short story ought to be—yours, mine, the reading public at large, the critics. But I’m not them, I’m not us, I’m me. Some of these stories may not fit smoothly or neatly, inevitably, alongside the rest. But, Gordon, God’s truth, and I may as well say it out now, I can’t undergo the kind of surgical amputation and transplant that might make them someway fit into the carton so the lid will close. There may have to be limbs and heads of hair sticking out. My heart won’t take it otherwise. It will simply burst, and I mean that. Dearest friend of all, brother, you know what I’m saying, and I know you understand. Even if you think I’m dead wrong. . . . I love your heart, you must know that. But I can’t write these stories and have to feel inhibited—if I feel inhibited I’m not going to write them at all—and feel that if you, the reader I want to please more than any, don’t like them, you’re going to re-write them from top to bottom. Why, if I think that the pen will fall right out of my fingers, and I may not be able to pick it up. . . . You understand I’m not saying, or even remotely thinking, that these new and year-old stories are beyond criticism, or that they won’t need editing. Not true. Not true in either case. You’re as close to me, and my work, you couldn’t be closer, if you were my blood brother. You’re the left side of me. Or the right side, take your pick. But I guess I’m trying to say here that we’re going to have to work very closely together on this book—the most important book of them all for me, at every stage, and be careful and understanding with each other. Gordon, the last book passed as if in a dream for me. This one can’t go that way, and we both know it. October 3, 1982 Listen, I’ve finished work on the new Knopf book of stories. Last week I got them all back from the typist and I spent all day today reading them through. It’s going to be something, that book. I thought I would try and put them in order, the order I’d like to see them in the book, but just a few minutes ago gave up on that. I’ll leave that up to you. I don’t have a title, either. We talked, a year ago, about calling the book “Cathedral.” That’s fine with me and maybe lead off with that story and finish with “Fever,” a long story, or “A Small Good Thing,” another long story. But I will leave the arrangement of the stories up to you. You know I want and have to have autonomy on this book and that the stories have to come out looking very essentially the way they look right now. I’m of course not saying we can’t change words or phrases or a line here and there, and punctuation, sure. But after you’ve read the book, I’ll come down and we’ll talk about titles, the ordering, or any suggestions you might have. October 29, 1982 As I said before, I would be happy with either title, “Cathedral” or “Where I’m Calling From.” . . . My biggest concern, as you know, is that the stories remain intact. Oh,
Christ, sure, you know, if you see some words or sentences that can be trimmed, that’s fine, trim them. You know what I’m saying. Please help me with this book as a good editor, the best . . . but not as my ghost. I tell you, I may be reading it all wrong—and if I am, I don’t care, in a very profound way—but I think there is a great deal of good will established toward me, or for me; and this book, the stories, are going to be so different, in so many regards, from so many of the earlier stories, that the book is going to be met with a good show of enthusiasm, even celebration. And, yes, I’m eager to have that artist you were talking about do something for the cover, if she can. Yes, for sure. I hope that works out. (But that, finally, will be your final decision; the matter of the text, in this case, has to be mine.) November 19, 1982 From Lish to Carver Dear Ray—Here’s “Where I’m Calling From” reworked to the extent that I think it must be—as basic as I can keep it. I’m aware that we’ve agreed that I will try to keep my editing of the stories as slight as I deem possible, that you do not want me to do the extensive work I did on the first two collections. So be it, Ray. What you see in this sample is that minimum: to do less than this, would be, in my judgment, to expose you too greatly. At all events, look: if this is in keeping with your wishes, call quickly and say so—and I will then be guided thereby in my handling of the rest of the stories. Love, G. January 21, 1983 From Carver to Lish What’s the matter, don’t you love me anymore? I never hear from you. Have you forgotten me already? Well, I’m going back to the [Paris Review] interview and take out all the good things I said about you. ♦
Echoes of Our Own Lives Interview with Raymond Carver, © 2000 David Koehne, Conducted April 15, 1978. It is late afternoon, a Saturday and we are sitting in my apartment drinking coffee. Outside the living room window some neighborhood children are arguing. A station wagon moves slowly down the street. It could be the opening scene from one of his short stories, because it is seemingly ordinary. Raymond Carver lights his cigarette, gestures slightly with the match, leans forward. “You are not your characters, but your characters are you,” he says. An interesting observation, considering the many roles that Carver has played in his lifetime. He has been a janitor, a saw mill hand, a delivery man, a retail clerk, and an editor of a publishing firm. He taught fiction writing at several universities, including the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1973-1974. For the next few months, however, Carver will simply be living in Iowa City, working on several writing projects before leaving the Midwest to join the faculty of Goddard College in Vermont. “This is a new time in my life. My children are both grown, and I just received a Guggenheim Fellowship. I have large blocks of time to work with,” he says. “I’ve been working on a novel. I had already received an advance from the publisher, but they’ve agreed to accept a collection of short stories this fall, instead.”
Carver has previously published two collections of his short stories: Will you Please Be Quiet, Please?, which was a National Book Award nominee for 1977, and Furious Seasons, which contains his Pushcart Prize-winning story, “So Much Water So Close To Home.” Carver thinks of himself primarily as a fiction writer, although he has published three excellent volumes of poetry and is assembling a fourth. “A year ago I thought I ‘d never write another poem. I don’t know exactly what it is, but since I’ve been in Iowa City I’ve written an entire book. The past few weeks have been very good.” We talk a while about the division that is sometimes evident between a writer’s poetry and her-his prose. I suggest that Carver’s poems often resemble his fiction. He lights another cigarette. “I believe a plotline is very important. Whether I am writing a poem or writing prose I am still trying to tell a story. For a long time I wrote poems because I didn’t have the time to write short stories. The nice thing about a poem is that there is i nstant gratification. And if something goes wrong, it’s right there. It would be a hard thing for me to work for months on a novel and then have it be bad. It would be a tremendous investment for me, and I don’t have a very long attention span.” If it is fair to say that Carver’s poems resemble his short stories, it is equally true that his short stories have a poetic intensity. The language is very clear and deceptively simple. The reader is never certain where the action is going until she-he arrives. Raymond Carver has tremendous skill with dialogue, and his characters remain tangible in the most bizarre situations. In the story, “What’s In Alaska,” Mary and Carl spend an evening with Jack and Helen, trying out the water pipe Jack received for his birthday. Carver not only simulates the conversations of four stoned adults with amusing accuracy, he succeeds in subtly suggesting a series of conflicts that create a kind of subliminal tension in the reader, a tension that culminates in the disturbing last line of the story. Carver’s fiction quite often encourages a kind of empathic response in his readers. This is due to his keen eye for common, small details, details we imagine unique to our personal histories. Therefore we sometimes forget we are reading fictions, suspec t that we are dealing with echoes of our own words, our own lives. We refill our coffee cups and I ask him about process, the origins of his stories. He pauses for a moment. “A lot of things come from experience, or sometimes from something I’ve heard, a line somewhere.” I mention that often his titles are taken from lines in his stories. He leans forward. “You start writing. Sometimes you don’t find what you are trying to say in the story until you turn a line, and then suddenly you know where the story is going. You just have to discover as you go. Then when you get that first draft, you go back. “Everything is important in a story, every word, every punctuation mark. I believe very much in economy in fiction. Some of my stories, like ‘Neighbors,’ were three times as long in their first drafts. I really like the process of rewriting. “Beginnings are very important. A story is either blessed or cursed with its opening lines. Editors have so many manuscripts to look through that often all they do is look at the first paragraph or two, unless it’s an author they know.” Apparently Carver knows what he’s doing, because his stories have been included in some of the most competitive collections in the country: Best American Short Stories, and O. Henry Prize Stories. The longest pause in our conversation follows my question, “What do you think about writing programs, such as the Iowa
Writers’ Workshop? I know you were a student here several years ago.” “I think writing programs can be a good thing, a place to learn craft. Of course, one problem is that a lot of people who are active in the writing program are never heard from again after they leave it. They move away from the school and they just stop writing.” “My time at Iowa wasn’t very productive. I didn’t put much work up. I was here for two semesters and I left before I could get my M.F.A. “The important thing is to find someone you can work with. For me it was John Gardner. He was there at a very important time in my development.” Carver will read in the English lounge at 8 p.m. today; he will read, perhaps, the title story from his new collection of short fiction, Why Don’t You Dance? [not published under this title]. “I might read another story, also,” he says. “‘Put Yourself In My Shoes.’ I’ll decide on Tuesday.” Carver stands up, looks at me, his cup in his hand. “Is there anymore coffee?” he asks.
3
Rock Springs
Richard Ford
RICHARD FORD (1944-) was born in Jackson, Mississippi, the only child of a traveling salesman for a starch company, and was raised in Mississippi and in Arkansas. He went to college at Michigan State University, where he met Kristina Hensley, to whom he has been married since 1968. Ford attended law school briefly before entering the University of California at Irvine, where he received his M.F.A. in fiction writing in 1970. His novels are A Piece of My Heart, The Ultimate Good Luck, The Sportswriter, Wildlife, and, most recently, Women with Men and Independence Day, the only novel to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Ford has taught writing and literature at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, at Princeton University, and at Williams College. He lives in New Orleans, where Kristina, is the head of the cityplanning commission. He travels frequently and also spends time on a plantation in the Mississippi Delta and at his cabin in Chinook, Montana.
Edna and I had started down from Kalispell, heading for TampaSt. Pete where I still had some friends from the old glory days who wouldn't turn me in to the police. I had managed to scrape with the law in Kalispell over several bad checks—which is a prison crime in Montana. And I knew Edna was already looking at her cards and thinking about a move, since it wasn't the first time I'd been in law scrapes in my life. She herself had already had her own troubles, losing her kids and keeping her exhusband, Danny, from breaking in her house and stealing her things while she was at work, which was really why I had moved in in the first place, that and needing to give my litde daughter, Cheryl, a better shake in things. I don't know what was between Edna and me, just beached by the same tides when you got down to it. Though love has been built on frailer ground than that, as I well know. And when I came in the house that afternoon, I just asked her if she wanted to go to Florida with me, leave things where they sat, and she said, "Why not? My datebook's not that full." Edna and I had been a pair eight months, more or less man and wife, some of which time I had been out of work, and some when Fd worked at the dog track as a lead-out and could help with the rent and talk sense to Danny when he came around. Danny was afraid of me because Edna had told him I'd been in prison in Florida for killing a man, though that wasn't true. I had once been in jail in Tallahassee for stealing tires and had gotten into a fight on the county farm where a man had lost his eye. But I hadn't done the hurting, and Edna just wanted the story worse than it was so Danny wouldn't act crazy and make her have to take her kids back, since she had made a good adjustment to not having them, and I already had Cheryl with me. I'm not a violent person and would never put a man's eye out, much less kill someone. My former wife, Helen, would come all the way from Waikiki Beach to testify to that. We never had violence, and I believe in crossing the street to stay out of trouble's way. Though Danny didn't know that. But we were half down through Wyoming, going toward 180 and feeling good about things, when the oil light flashed on in die car I'd stolen, a sign I knew to be a bad one. I'd gotten us a good car, a cranberry Mercedes I'd stolen out of an ophthalmologist's lot in Whitefish, Montana. I stole it because I thought it would be comfortable over a long haul, because I thought it got good mileage, which it didn't, and because I'd never had a good car in my life, just old Chevy junkers and used trucks back from when I was a kid swamping citrus with Cubans. The car made us all high that day. I ran the windows up and down, and Edna told us some jokes and made faces. She could be lively. Her features would light up like a beacon and you could see her beauty, which wasn't ordinary. It all made me giddy, and I drove clear down to Bozeman, then straight on through the park to Jackson Hole. I rented us the bridal suite in the Quality Court in Jackson and left Cheryl and her little dog, Duke, sleeping while Edna and I drove to a rib barn and drank beer and laughed till after midnight. It felt like a whole new beginning for us, bad memories left behind and a new horizon to build on. I got so worked up, I had a tattoo done on my arm that said FAMOUS TIMES, and Edna bought a Bailey hat with an Indian feather band and a little turquoise-and-silver bracelet for Cheryl, and we made love on the seat of the car in the Quality Court parking lot just as the sun was burning up on the Snake River, and everything seemed tlien like the end of the rainbow. It was that very enthusiasm, in fact, that made me keep the car
one day longer instead of driving it into the river and stealing another one, like I should've done and had done before. Where the car went bad there wasn't a town in sight or even a house, just some low mountains maybe fifty miles away or maybe a hundred, a barbed-wire fence in both directions, hardpan prairie, and some hawks riding the evening air seizing insects. I got out to look at the motor, and Edna got out with Cheryl and the dog to let them have a pee by the car. I checked the water and checked the oil stick, and both of them said perfect. "What's that light mean, Earl?" Edna said. She had come and stood by the car with her hat on. She was just sizing things up for herself. "We shouldn't run it," I said. "Something's not right in the oil." She looked around at Cheryl and Little Dulce, who were peeing on the hardtop side-by-side like two little dolls, then out at the mountains, which were becoming black and lost in the distance. "What're we doing?" she said. She wasn't worried yet, but she wanted to know what I was thinking about. "Let me try it again." "That's a good idea," she said, and we all got back in the car. When I turned the motor over, it started right away and the red light stayed off and there weren't any noises to make you think something was wrong. I let it idle a minute, then pushed the accelerator down and watched the red bulb. But there wasn't any light on, and I started wondering if maybe I hadn't dreamed I saw it, Or that it had been the sun catching an angle off the window chrome, or maybe I was scared of something and didn't know it. "What's the matter with it, Daddy?" Cheryl said from the backseat. I looked back at her, and she had on her turquoise bracelet and Edna's hat set back on the back of her head and that little black-and-white Heinz dog on her lap. She looked like a little cowgirl in the movies. "Nothing, honey, everything's fine now," I said. "Little Duke tinkled where I tinkled," Cheryl said, and laughed. "You're two of a kind," Edna said, not looking back. Edna was usually good with Cheryl, but I knew she was tired now. We hadn't had much sleep, and she had a tendency to get cranky when she didn't sleep. "We oughta ditch this damn car first chance we get," she said. "What's the first chance we got?" I asked, because I knew she'd been at the map, . "Rock Springs, Wyoming," Edna said with conviction. "Thirty miles down this road." She pointed out ahead. I had wanted all along to drive the car into Florida like a big success story. But I knew Edna was right about it, that we shouldn't take crazy chances. I had kept thinking of it as my car and not the ophthalmologist's, and that was how you got caught in these things, "Then my belief is we ought to go to Rock Springs and negotiate ourselves a new car," I said. I wanted to stay upbeat, like everything was panning out right. "That's a great idea," Edna said, and she leaned over and kissed me hard on the mouth. "That's a great idea," Cheryl said. "Let's pull on out of here right now." The sunset that day I remember as being the prettiest I'd ever seen. Just as it touched the rim of the horizon, it all at once fired the air into jewels and red sequins the precise likes of which I had never seen before and haven't seen since. The West has it all over everywhere for sunsets, even Florida, where it's supposedly flat but where half the time trees block your view.
"It's cocktail hour," Edna said after we'd driven awhile. "We ought to have a drink and celebrate something." She felt better thinking we were going to get rid of the car. It certainly had dark troubles and was something you'd want to put behind you. Edna had out a whiskey bottle and some plastic cups and was measuring levels on the glove-box lid. She liked drinking, and she liked drinking in the car, which was something you got used to in Montana, where it wasn't against the law, but where, strangely enough, a bad check would land you in Deer Lodge Prison for a year. "Did I ever tell you I once had a monkey?" Edna said, setting my drink on the dashboard where I could reach it when I was ready. Her spirits were already picked up. She was like that, up one minute and down the next. "I don't think you ever did tell me that," I said. "Where were you then?" "Missoula," she said. She put her bare feet on the dash and rested the cup on her breasts. "I was waitressing at the AmVets. This was before I met you. Some guy came in one day with a monkey. A spider monkey. And I said, just to be joking, Til roll you for that monkey.' And the guy said, 'Just one roll?' And I said, 'Sure.' He put the monkey down on the bar, picked up the cup, and rolled out boxcars. I picked it up and rolled out three fives. And I just stood there looking at the guy. He was just some guy passing through, I guess a vet. He got a strange look on his face—I'm sure not as strange as the one I had—but he looked kind of sad and surprised and satisfied all at once. I said, 'We can roll again.' But he said, 'No, I never roll twice for anything.' And he sat and drank a beer and talked about one thing and another for a while, about nuclear war and building a stronghold somewhere up in the Bitterroot, whatever it was, while I just watched the monkey, wondering what I was going to do with it when the guy left. And pretty soon he got up and said, 'Well, good-bye, Chipper'—that was this monkey's name, of course. And then he left before I could say anything. And the monkey just sat on the bar all that night. I don't know what made me think of that, Earl. Just something weird. I'm letting my mind wander." "That's perfectly fine," I said. I took a drink of my drink. "I'd never own a monkey," I said after a minute. "They're too nasty. I'm sure Cheryl would like a monkey, though, wouldn't you, honey?" Cheryl was down on the seat playing with Little Duke. She used to talk about monkeys all the time then. "What'd you ever do with that monkey?" I said, watching the speedometer. We were having to go slower now because the red light kept fluttering on. And all I could do to keep it off was go slower. We were going maybe thirty-five and it was an hour before dark, and I was hoping Rock Springs wasn't far away. "You really want to know?" Edna said. She gave me a quick glance, then looked back at the empty desert as if she was brooding over it. "Sure," I said. I was still upbeat. I figured I could worry about breaking down and let other people be happy for a change. "I kept it a week." And she seemed gloomy all of a sudden, as if she saw some aspect of the story she had never seen before. "I took it home and back and forth to the Am Vets on my shifts. And it didn't cause any trouble. I fixed a chair up for it to sit on, back of the bar, and people liked it. It made a nice little clicking noise. We changed its name to Mary because the bartender figured out it was a girl. Though I was never really comfortable with it at home. I felt like it watched me too much. Then one day a guy came in, some guy who'd been in Vietnam, still wore a fatigue coat. And he said to me, 'Don't you know that a monkey'U kill you? It's got more strength in its fingers than you got in your whole body.' He said people had been killed in Vietnam by monkeys, bunches of them marauding while you were asleep, killing you and covering you with
leaves. I didn't believe a word of it, except that when I got home and got undressed I started looking over across the room at Mary on her chair in the dark watching me. And I got the creeps. And after a while I got up and went out to the car, got a length of clothesline wire, and came back in and wired her to the doorknob through her little silver collar, then went back and tried to sleep. And I guess I must've slept the sleep of the dead —though I don't remember it—because when I got up I found Mary had tipped off her chair-back and hanged herself on the wire line. I'd made it too short." Edna seemed badly affected by that story and slid low in die seat so she couldn't see out over the dash. "Isn't that a shameful story, Earl, what happened to that poor little monkey?" "I see a town! I see a town!" Cheryl started yelling from the backseat, and right up Little Duke started yapping and the whole car fell into a racket. And sure enough she had seen something I hadn't, which was Rock Springs, Wyoming, at the bottom of a long hill, a little glowing jewel in the desert with 180 running on the north side and the black desert spread out behind. "That's it, honey," I said. "That's where we're going. You saw it first." "We're hungry," Cheryl said. "Little Duke wants some fish, and I want spaghetti." She put her arms around my neck and hugged me. "Then you'll just get it," I said. "You can have anything you want. And so can Edna and so can Little Duke." I looked over at Edna, smiling, but she was staring at me with eyes that were fierce with anger. "What's wrong?" I said. "Don't you care anything about that awful thing that happened to me?" Her mouth was drawn tight, and her eyes kept cutting back at Cheryl and Little Duke, as if they had been tormenting her. "Of course I do," I said. "I thought that was an awful thing." I didn't want her to be unhappy. We were almost there, and pretty soon we could sit down and have a real meal without thinking somebody might be hurting us. "You want to know what I did with that monkey?" Edna said. "Sure I do," I said. "I put her in a green garbage bag, put it in the trunk of my car, drove to the dump, and threw her in the trash." She was staring at me darkly, as if the story meant something to her that was real important but that only she could see and that the rest of the world was a fool for. "Well, that's horrible," I said. "But I don't see what else you could do. You didn't mean to kill it. You'd have done it differently if you had. And then you had to get rid of it, and I don't know what else you could have done. Throwing it away might seem unsympathetic to somebody, probably, but not to me. Sometimes that's all you can do, and you can't worry about what somebody else thinks." I tried to smile at her, but the red light was staying on if I pushed the accelerator at all, and I was trying to gauge if we could coast to Rock Springs before the car gave out completely. I looked at Edna again. "What else can I say?" I said. "Nothing," she said, and stared back at the dark highway. "I should've known that's what you'd think. You've got a character that leaves something out, Earl. I've known that a long time." "And yet here you are," I said. "And you're not doing so bad. Things could be a lot worse. At least we're all together here." "Things could always be worse," Edna said. "You could go to the electric chair tomorrow." "That's right," I said. "And somewhere somebody probably will. Only it won't be you." "I'm hungry," said Cheryl. "When're we gonna eat? Let's find a motel. I'm tired of this. Little Duke's tired of it too."
Where the car stopped rolling was some distance from the town, though you could see the clear oudine of the interstate in the dark with Rock Springs lighting up the sky behind. You could hear die big tractors hitting, die spacers in the overpass, revving up for the climb to the mountains. I shut off the lights. "What're we going to do now?" Edna said irritably, giving me a bitter look. "I'm figuring it," I said. "It won't be hard, whatever it is. You won't have to do anything." "I'd hope not," she said and looked the other way. Across the road and across a dry wash a hundred yards was what looked like a huge mobile-home town, with a factory or a refinery of some kind lit up behind it and in full swing. There were lights on in a lot of the mobile homes, and there were cars moving along an access road that ended near the freeway overpass a mile the other way. The lights in the mobile homes seemed friendly to me, and I knew right then what I should do. "Get out," I said, opening my door. "Are we walking?" Edna said. "We're pushing." "I'm not pushing." Edna reached up and locked her door. "All right," I said. "Then you just steer." "You're pushing us to Rock Springs, are you, Earl? It doesn't look like it's more than about three miles." "I'll push," Cheryl said from the back. "No, hon. Daddy 11 push. You just get out with Little Duke and move out of the way." Edna gave me a threatening look, just as if I'd tried to hit her. But when I got out she slid into my seat and took the wheel, staring angrily ahead straight into the cottonwood scrub. "Edna can't drive that car," Cheryl said from out in the dark. "She'll run it in the ditch." "Yes, she can, hon. Edna can drive it as good as I can. Probably better." "No she can't," Cheryl said. "No she can't either." And I thought she was about to cry, but she didn't. I told Edna to keep the ignition on so it wouldn't lock up and to steer into the cottonwoods with the parking lights on so she could see. And when I started, she steered it straight off into the trees, and Lkept pushing until we were twenty yards into the cover and the tires sank in the soft sand and nothing at all could be seen from the road. "Now where are we?" she said, sitting at the wheel. Her voice was tired and hard, and I knew she could have put a good meal to use. She had a sweet nature, and I recognized that this wasn't her fault but mine. Only I wished she could be more hopeful. "You stay right here, and I'll go over to that trailer park and call us a cab;" I said. "What cab?" Edna said, her mouth wrinkled as if she'd never heard anything like that in her life. "There'll be cabs," I said, and tried to smile at her. "There's cabs everywhere." "What're you going to tell him when he gets here? Our stolen car broke down and we need a ride to where we can steal another one,? That'll bea big hit, Earl." "I'll talk," I said. "You just listen to the radio for ten minutes and then walk on out to the shoulder like nothing was suspicious. And you and Cheryl act nice. She doesn't need to know about this car." "Like we're not suspicious enough already, right?" Edna looked up at me out of the lighted car. "You don't think right, did you know that, Earl? You think the world's stupid and you're smart. But that's not how it is. I feel sorry for you. You
might've been something, but things just went crazy someplace." I had a thought about poor Danny. He was a vet and crazy as a shit-house mouse, and I was glad he wasn't in for all this. "Just get the baby in the car," I said, trying to be patient. "I'm hungry like you are." "I'm tired of this," Edna said. "I wish I'd stayed in Montana." "Then you can go back in the morning," I said. "I'll buy the ticket and put you on the bus. But not till then." "Just get on with it, Earl." She slumped down in the seat, turning off the parking lights with one foot and the radio on with the other. The mobile-home community was as big as any I'd ever seen. It was attached in some way to the plant that was lighted up behind it, because I could see a car once in a while leave one of the trailer streets, turn in the direction of the plant, then go slowly into it. Everything in the plant was white, and you could see that all the trailers were painted white and looked exactly alike. A deep hum came out of the plant, and I thought as I got closer that it wouldn't be a location I'd ever want to work in. I went right to the first trailer where there was a light, and knocked on the metal door. Kids' toys were lying in the gravel around the little wood steps, and I could hear talking on TV that suddenly went off. I heard a woman's voice talking, and then the door opened wide. A large Negro woman with a wide, friendly face stood in the doorway. She smiled at me and moved forward as if she was going to come out, but she stopped at the top step. There was a little Negro boy behind her peeping out from behind her legs, watching me with his eyes half closed. The trailer had that feeling that no one else was inside, which was a feeling I knew something about. "I'm sorry to intrude," I said. "But I've run up on a little bad luck tonight. My names Earl Middleton." The woman looked at me, then out into the night toward the freeway as if what I had said was something she was going to be able to see. ""What kind of bad luck?" she said, looking down at me again. "My car broke down out on the highway," I said. "I can't fix it myself, and I wondered if I could use your phone to call for help." The woman smiled down at me knowingly. "We can't live without cars, can we?" "That's the honest truth," I said. "They're like our hearts," she said, her face shining in the little bulb light that burned beside the door. "Where's your car situated?" I turned and looked over into the dark, but I couldn't see anything because of where we'd put it. "It's over there," I said. "You can't see it in the dark" "Who all's with you now?" the woman said. "Have you got your wife with you?" "She's with my little girl and our dog in the car," I said. "My daughter's asleep or I would have brought them." "They shouldn't be left in the dark by themselves," the woman said and frowned. "There's too much unsavoriness out there." "The best I can do is hurry back." I tried to look sincere, since everything except Cheryl being asleep and Edna being my wife was the truth. The truth is meant to serve you if you'll let it, and I wanted it to serve me. "I'll pay for the phone call," I said. "If you'll bring the phone to the door I'll call from right here." The woman looked at me again as if she was searching for a truth of her own, then back out into the night. She was maybe
in her sixties, but I couldn't say for sure. "You're not going to rob me, are you, Mr. Middleton?" She smiled like it was a joke between us. "Not tonight," I said, and smiled a genuine smile. "I'm not up to it tonight. Maybe another time." "Then I guess Terrel and I canlet you use our phone with Daddy not here, can't we, Terrel? This is my grandson, Terrel Junior, Mr. Middleton." She put her hand on the boy's head and looked down at him. "Terrel won't talk. Though if he did he'd tell you to use our phone. He's a sweet boy." She opened die screen for me to come in. The trailer was a big one with a new rug and a new couch and a living room that expanded to give the space of a real house. Something good and sweet was cooking in the kitchen, and the trailer felt like it was somebody's comfortable new home instead of just temporary. I've lived in trailers, but they were just snailbacks with one room and no toilet, and they always felt cramped and unhappy—though I've thought maybe it might've been me that was unhappy in them. There was a big Sony TV and a lot of kids' toys scattered on the floor. I recognized a Greyhound bus I'd gotten for Cheryl. The phone was beside a new leather recliner, and the Negro woman pointed for me to sit down and call and gave me the phone book. Terrel began fingering his toy's and the woman sat on the couch while I called, watching me and smiling. There were three listings for cab companies, all with one number different. I called the numbers in order and didn't get an answer until the last one, which answered with the name of the second company. I said I was on the highway beyond the interstate and that my wife and family needed to be taken to town and I would arrange for a tow later. While I was giving the location, I looked up the name of a tow service to tell the driver in case he asked. When I hung up, the Negro woman was sitting looking at me with the same look she had been staring with into the dark, a look that seemed to want truth. She was smiling, though. Something pleased her and I reminded her of it. "This is a very nice home," I said, resting in the recliner, which felt like the driver's seat of the Mercedes, and where I'd have been happy to stay. "This isn't our house, Mr. Middleton," the Negro woman said. "The company owns these. They give them to us for nothing. We have our own home in Rockford, Illinois." "That's wonderful," I said. "It's never wonderful when you have to be away from home, Mr. Middle-ton, though we're only here three months, and it'll be easier when Terrel Junior begins his special school. You see, our son was killed in the war, and his wife ran off without Terrel Junior. Though you shouldn't worry. He can't understand us. His little feelings can't be hurt." The woman folded her hands in her lap and smiled in a satisfied way. She was an attractive woman, and had on a blue-and-pink floral dress diat made her seem bigger than she could've been, just the right woman to sit on the couch she was sitting on. She was good natures picture, and I was glad she could be, with her little brain-damaged boy, living in a place where no one in his right mind would want to live a minute. "Where do you live, Mr. Middleton?" she said politely, smiling in the same sympathetic way. "My family and I are in transit," I said. "I'm an ophthalmologist, and we're moving back to Florida, where I'm from. I'm setting up practice in some little town where it's warm year-round. I haven't decided where." "Florida's a wonderful place," the woman said. "I think Terrel would like it there." Could I ask you something? 1 said.
"You certainly may," tlie woman said. Terrel had begun pushing his Greyhound across the front of the TV screen, making a scratch that no one watching the set could miss. "Stop that, Terrel Junior," the woman said quiedy. But Terrel kept pushing his bus on the glass, and she smiled at me again as if we both understood something sad. Except I knew Cheryl would never damage a television set. She had respect for nice things, and I was sorry for the lady that Terrel didn't. "What did you want to ask?" the woman said. "What goes on in that plant or whatever it is back there beyond these trailers, where all the lights are on?" "Gold," the woman said and smiled. "It's what?" I said. "Gold," the Negro woman said, smiling as she had for almost all the time I'd been there. "It's a gold mine." "They're mining gold back there?" I said, pointing. "Every night and every day." She smiled in a pleased way. __ "Does your husband work there?" I said. "He's the assayer," she said. "He controls the quality. He works three months a year, and we live the rest of the time at home in Rockford. We've waited a long time for this. We've been happy to have our grandson, but I won't say I'll be sorry to have him go. We're ready to start our lives over." She smiled broadly at me and then at Terrel, who was giving her a spiteful look from the floor. "You said you had a daughter," the Negro woman said. "And what's her name?" "Irma Cheryl," I said. "She's named for my mother." "That's nice. And she's healthy, too. I can see it in your face." She looked at Terrel Junior with pity. "I guess I'm lucky," I said. "So far you are. But children bring you grief, the same way they bring you joy. We were unhappy for a long time before my husband got his job in the gold mine. Now, when Terrel starts to school, we'll be kids again." She stood up. "You might miss your cab, Mr. Middleton," she said, walking toward the door, though not to be forcing me out. She was too polite. "If we can't see your car, the cab surely won't be able to." "That's true." I got up off die recliner, where I'd been so comfortable. "None of us have eaten yet, and your food makes me know how hungry we probably all are." "There are fine restaurants in town, and you'll find them," the Negro woman said. "I'm sorry you didn't meet my husband. He's a wonderful man. He's everything to me." "Tell him I appreciate the phone," I said. "You saved me." "You weren't hard to save," the woman said. "Saving people is what we were all put on earth to do. I just passed you on to whatever's coming to you." "Let's hope it's good," I said, stepping back into the dark. "I'll be hoping, Mr. Middleton. Terrel and I will both be hoping." I waved to her as I walked out into the darkness toward the car where it was hidden in the night. The cab had already arrived when I got there. I could see its little red-and-green roof lights all the way across the dry wash, and it made me worry that Edna was already saying sometxiing to get us in trouble, something about the car or where we'd come from, something that would cast suspicion on us. I thought, then, how I never planned things well enough. There was always a gap between my plan and what happened, and I only responded to things as they came along and hoped I wouldn't get in trouble. I was an offender in the law's eyes. But I always thought differendy, as if I weren't an offender and had no intention of being one, which was the truth. But as I read on a napkin once, between the idea and the act a whole kingdom lies. And I had a
hard time with my acts, which were oftentimes offender's acts, and my ideas, which were as good as the gold they mined there where the bright lights were blazing. "We're waiting for you, Daddy," Cheryl said when I crossed the road. "The taxicab's already here." "I see, hon," I said, and gave Cheryl a big hug. The cabdriver was sitting in the driver's seat having a smoke with the lights on inside. Edna was leaning against the back of the cab between the taillights, wearing her Bailey hat. "What'd you tell him?" I said when I got close. "Nothing," she said. "What's there to tell?" "Did he see the car?" She glanced over in the direction of tlie trees where we had hid the Mercedes. Nothing was visible in the darkness, though I could hear Little Duke combing around in the underbrush tracking something, his little collar tinkling. "Where're we going?" she said. "I'm so hungry I could pass out." "Edna's in a terrible mood," Cheryl said. "She already snapped at me." "We're tired, honey," I said. "So try to be nicer." "She's never nice," Cheryl said. "Run go get Little Duke," I said. "And hurry back." "I guess my questions come last here, right?" Edna said. I put my arm around her. "That's not true." "Did you find somebody over there in the trailers you'd rather stay with? You were gone long enough." "That's not a thing to say," I said. "I was just trying to make things look right, so we don't get put in jail." "Soyou don't, you mean." Edna laughed a little laugh I didn't like hearing. "That's right. So I don't," I said. "I'd be the one in Dutch." I stared out at the big, lighted assemblage of white buildings and white lights beyond the trailer community, plumes of white smoke escaping up into the heardess Wyoming sky, the whole company of buildings looking like some unbelievable casde, humming away in a distorted dream. "You know what all those buildings are there?" I said to Edna, who hadn't moved and who didn't really seem to care if she ever moved anymore ever. "No. But I can't say it matters, because it isn't a motel and it isn't a restaurant." "It's a gold mine," I said, staring at the gold mine, which, I knew now, was a greater distance from us than it seemed, though it seemed huge and near, up against the cold sky. I thought there should've been a wall around it with guards instead of just the lights and no fence. It seemed as if anyone could go in and take what they wanted, just the way I had gone up to that woman's trailer and used the telephone, though that obviously wasn't true. Edna began to laugh then. Not the mean laugh I didn't like, but a laugh that had something caring behind it, a full laugh that enjoyed a joke, a laugh she was laughing the first time I laid eyes on her, in Missoula in the East Gate Bar in 1979, a laugh we used to laugh together when Cheryl was still with her mother and I was working steady at the track and not stealing cars or passing bogus checks to merchants. A better time all around. And for some reason it made me laugh just hearing her, and we both stood there behind the cab in the dark, laughing at the gold mine in the desert, me with my arm around her and Cheryl out rusding up Little Duke and the cabdriver smoking in the cab and our stolen Mercedes-Benz, which I'd had such hopes for in Florida, stuck up to its axle in sand, where I'd never get to see it again. "I always wondered what a gold mine would look like when I saw it," Edna said, still laughing, wiping a tear from her eye. "Me too," I said. "I was always curious about it."
"We're a couple of fools, aren't we, Earl?" she said, unable to quit laughing completely. "We're two of a kind." "It might be a good sign, though," I said. "How could it be? It's not our gold mine. There aren't any drive-up windows." She was still laughing. "We've seen it," I said, pointing. "That's it right there. It may mean we're getting closer. Some people never see it at all." "In a pig's eye, Earl," she said. "You and me see it in a pig's eye." And she turned and got in the cab to go. The cabdriver didn't ask anything about our car or where it was, to mean he'd noticed something queer. All of which made me feel like we had made a clean break from the car and couldn't be connected with it until it was too late, if ever. The driver told us a lot about Rock Springs while he drove, that because of the gold mine a lot of people had moved there in just six months, people from all over, including New York, and that most of them lived out in the trailers. Prostitutes from New York City, who he called "B-girls," had come into town, he said, on the prosperity tide, and Cadillacs with New York plates cruised the little streets every night, full of Negroes with big hats who ran the women. He told us that everybody who got in his cab now wanted to know where the women were, and when he got our call he almost didn't come because some of the trailers were brothels operated by the mine for engineers and computer people away from home. He said he got tired of running back and forth out there just for vile business. He said that 60 Minutes had even done a program about Rock Springs and that a blow-up had resulted in Cheyenne, though nothing could be done unless the boom left town. "It's prosperity's fruit," the driver said. "I'd rather be poor, which is lucky for me." He said all the motels were sky-high, but since we were a family he could show us a nice one that was affordable. But I told him we wanted a first-rate place where they took animals, and the money didn't matter because we had had a hard day and wanted to finish on a high note. I also knew that it was in the little nowhere places that die police look for you and find you. People I'd known were always being arrested in cheap hotels and tourist courts with names you'd never heard of before. Never in Holiday Inns orTraveLodges. I asked him to drive us to the middle of town and back out again so Cheryl could see the train station, and while we were there I saw a pink Cadillac with New York plates and a TV aerial being driven slowly by a Negro in a big hat down a narrow street where there were just bars and a Chinese restaurant. It was an odd sight, nothing you could ever expect. "There's your pure criminal element," the cabdriver said and seemed sad. "I'm sorry for people like you to see a thing like that. We've got a nice town here, but there're some that want to ruin it for everybody. There used to be a way to deal with trash and criminals, but those days are gone forever." "You said it," Edna said. "You shouldn't let it get you down," I said to him. "There's more of you than them. And there always will be. You're die best advertisement this town has. I know Cheryl will remember you and not that man, won't you, honey?" But Cheryl was asleep by then, holding Little Duke in her arms on the taxi seat. The driver took us to the Ramada Inn on the interstate, not far from where we'd broken down. I had a small pain of regret as we drove under the Ramada awning that we hadn't driven up in a cranberry-colored Mercedes but instead in a beat-up old Chrysler taxi driven by an old man full of complaints. Though I knew it was for the best. We were better off without that car; better, really, in any other car but that one, where the signs had turned bad.
I registered under another name and paid for the room in cash so there wouldn't be any questions. On the line where it said "Representing" I wrote "Ophthalmologist" and put "M.D." after the name. It had a nice look to it, even though it wasn't my name. When we got to the room, which was in the back where I'd asked for it, I put Cheryl on one of the beds and Little Duke beside her so they'd sleep. She'd missed dinner, but it only meant she'd be hungry in the morning, when she could have anything she wanted. A few missed meals don't make a kid bad. I'd missed a lot of them myself and haven't turned out completely bad. "Let's have some fried chicken," I said to Edna when she came out of the bathroom. "They have good fried chicken at Ramadas, and I noticed the buffet was still up. Cheryl can stay right here, where it's safe, till we're back." "I guess I'm not hungry anymore," Edna said. She stood at the window staring out into the dark. I could see out the window past her some yellowish foggy glow in the sky. For a moment I thought it was the gold mine out in the distance lighting the night, though it was only the interstate. "We could order up," I said. "Whatever you want. There's a menu on the phone book. You could just have a salad." "You go ahead," she said. "I've lost my hungry spirit." She sat on the bed beside Cheryl and Little Duke and looked at them in a sweet way and put her hand on Cheryl's cheek just as if she'd had a fever. "Sweet little girl," she said. "Everybody loves you." "What do you want to do?" I said. "I'd like to eat. Maybe I'll order up some chicken." "Why don't you do that?" she said. "It's your favorite." And she smiled at me from the bed. I sat on the other bed and dialed room service. I asked for chicken, garden salad, potato and a roll, plus a piece of hot apple pie and iced tea. I realized I hadn't eaten all day. When I put down the phone I saw that Edna was watching me, not in a hateful way or a loving way, just in a way that seemed to say she didn't understand something and was going to ask me about it. "When did watching me get so entertaining?" I said and smiled at her. I was trying to be friendly. I knew how tired she must be. It was after nine o'clock. "I was just thinking how much I hated being in a motel without a car that was mine to drive. Isn't that funny? I started feeling like that last night when that purple car wasn't mine. That purple car just gave me the willies, I guess, Earl." "One of those cars outside is yours," I said. "Just stand right there and pick it out." "I know," she said. "But that's different, isn't it?" She reached and got her blue Bailey hat, put it on her head, and set it way back like Dale Evans. She looked sweet. "I used to like to go to motels, you know," she said. "There's something secret about them and free—I was never paying, of course.-But you felt safe from everything and free to do what you wanted because you'd made the decision to be there and paid that price, and all the rest was tie good part. Fucking and everything, you know." She smiled at me in a good-natured way. "Isn't that the way this is?" I was sitting on the bed, watching her, not knowing what to expect her to say next. "I don't guess it is, Earl," she said and stared out the window. "I'm thirty-two and I'm going to have to give up on motels. I can't keep that fantasy going anymore." "Don't you like this place?" I said and looked around at the room. I appreciated the modern paintings and the lowboy bureau and the big TV. It seemed like a plenty nice enough place to me, considering where we'd been.
"No, I don't," Edna said with real conviction. "There's no use in my getting mad at you about it. It isn't your fault. You do the best you can for everybody. But every trip teaches you something. And I've learned I need to give up on motels before some bad thing happens to me. I'm sorry." "What does that mean?" I said, because I really didn't know what she had in mind to do, though I should've guessed. "I guess I'll take that ticket you mentioned," she said, and got up and faced the window. "Tomorrow's soon enough. We haven't got a car to take me anyhow." "Well, that's a fine thing," I said, sitting on the bed, feeling like I was in shock. I wanted to say something to her, to argue with her, but I couldn't think what to say that seemed right. I didn't want to be mad at her, but it made me mad. "You've got a right to be mad at me, Earl," she said, "but I don't think you can really blame me." She turned around and faced me and sat on the win-dowsill, her hands on her knees. Someone knocked on die door, and I just yelled for them to set the tiny down and put it on the bill. "I guess I do blame you," I said, and I was angry. I thought about how I couid've disappeared into that trailer community and hadn't, had come back to keep things going, had tried to take control of diings for everybody when they looked bad. "Don't. I wish you wouldn't," Edna said and smiled at me like she wanted me to hug her. "Anybody ought to have their choice in things if they can. Don't you believe that, Earl? Here I am out here in the desert where I don't know anything, in a stolen car, in a motel room under an assumed name, with no money of my own, a kid that's not mine, and the law after me. And I have a choice to get out of all of it by getting on a bus. What would you do? I know exactly what you'd do." "You think you do," I said. But I didn't want to get into an argument about it and tell her all I could've done and didn't do. Because it wouldn't have done any good. When you get to the point of arguing, you're past the point of changing anybody's mind, even though it's supposed to be the other way, and maybe for some classes of people it is, just never mine. Edna smiled at me and came across the room and put her arms around me where I was sitting on the bed. Cheryl rolled over and looked at us and smiled, then closed her eyes, and the room was quiet. I was beginning to think of Rock Springs in a way I knew I would always think of it, a lowdown city full of crimes and whores and disappointments, a place where a woman left me, instead of a place where I got things on the straight track once and for all, a place I saw a gold mine. "Eat your chicken, Earl," Edna said. "Then we can go to bed. I'm tired, but I'd like to make love to you anyway. None of this is a matterof not loving you, you know that." Sometime late in the night, after Edna was asleep, I got up and walked outside into the parking lot. It could've been anytime because there was still the light from the interstate frosting the low sky and the big red Ramada sign humming motionlessly in the night and no light at all in the east to indicate it might be morning. The lot was full of cars all nosed in, a couple of them with suitcases strapped to their roofs and their trunks weighed down with belongings the people were taking someplace, to a new home or a vacation resort in the mountains. I had laid in bed a long time after Edna was asleep, watching the Adanta Braves on television, trying to get my mind off how I'd feel when I saw that bus pull away the next day, and how I'd feel when I turned around and there stood Cheryl and Little Duke and no one to see about them but me alone, and that the first thing I had to do was get hold of some automobile and get the plates switched, then get them some breakfast and get us all on the road to Florida, all in the space of probably two hours, since that Mercedes would certainly look less hid in the daytime tiian the night, and word travels
fast. I've always taken care of Cheryl myself as long as I've had her with me. None of the women ever did. Most of them didn't even seem to like her, though they took care of me in a way so that I could take care of her. And I knew that once Edna left, all that was going to get harder. Though what I wanted most to do was not think about it just for a little while, try to let my mind go limp so it could be strong for the rest of what there was. I thought that the difference between a successful life and an unsuccessful one, between me at that moment and all the people who owned the cars that were nosed into their proper places in the lot, maybe between me and that woman out in the trailers by the gold mine, was how well you were able to put things like this out of your mind and not be bothered by them, and maybe, too, by how many troubles like this one you had to face in a lifetime. Through luck or design they had all faced fewer troubles, and by their own characters, they forgot them faster. And that's what I wanted for me. Fewer troubles, fewer memories of trouble. I walked over to a car, a Pontiac with Ohio tags, one of the ones with bundles and suitcases strapped to the top and a lot more in the trunk, by the way it was riding. I looked inside the driver's window. There were maps and paperback books and sunglasses and the little plastic holders for cans that hang on the window wells. And in the back there were kids' toys and some pillows and a cat box with a cat sitting in it staring up at me like I was the face of the moon. It all looked familiar to me, the very same things I would have in my car if I had a car. Nothing seemed surprising, nothing different. Though I had a funny sensation at that moment and turned and looked up at the windows along the back of the motel. All were dark except two. Mine and another one. And I wondered, because it seemed funny, what would you think a man was doing if you saw him in the middle of the night looking in the windows of cars in the parking lot of the Ramada Inn? Would you think he was trying to get his head cleared? Would you think he was trying to get ready for a day when trouble would come down on him? Would you think his girlfriend was leaving him? Would you think he had a daughter? Would you think he was anybody like you?
heart of the 2000 election, then that set of events can be viewed as a direct cause of the unthinkable circumstances in Iraq today, the cause of so much loss of innocent life, and the cause of America’s near-obliterated role as a potential force for good in world affairs. Is all this America’s final fate? I surely hope not. It’s the fix we’re in today. And I hope we have a better, more wholesome fate than this. But there’s no doubt about what was the initial event in the chain of events that landed us in this mess.
Why do you think so many American novelists—some surprising ones, John Updike, some less so, Don DeLillo—have felt bound to confront 9/11 so directly in fiction? They were moved by those events. It’s not very complicated. In the case of DeLillo and Updike, they’re both supremely accomplished writers who’re unusually confident of their abilities to make a subject their own. The fact that I wouldn’t do it, didn’t do it, probably just means I’m not their equal on either front. Otherwise I’d have surely done it. Right?
Much of Frank Bascombe’s dislocation and hurt comes from the death of his son. All of your writing seems to have some of this atmosphere of loss. Where do you sense the source of that in your own life?
An Interview with Richard Ford Richard Ford in conversation with one of America’s foremost writers, Tim Adams.
When The Lay of the Land was completed you suggested you would never write another long novel. Are you still feeling that way? I still feel that way, possibly even more that way. The Lay of the Land was, for me, a big effort and, as efforts go, entirely singular. And it requires a commensurate (if not exactly equal) devotion from its readership. More than I can’t imagine myself writing such a long novel again (and I can’t), I neither can imagine wanting to write anything that would ‘work on a reader’ with anything like the same intense force—length, complexity, general largeness. I’d like to write another novel, yes. I’d like to write plenty of things. But I can’t imagine another such undertaking as The Lay of the Land. Some things just don’t need to be done twice—especially since I feel like I did it right the first time.
You set that book at the time of the disputed first Bush presidential election. Do you feel that election set America’s fate? It did set America’s fate. No question. Insofar as the election was stolen by the Republicans, and insofar as the American electorate was sufficiently uninspired as to permit such a close race, and insofar as the two-party system (particularly the feckless Democrats) allowed a man of George Bush’s astonishing incompetence and dishonesty to become the leader of our country—insofar as all these things are true and occurred at the
First of all, I don’t think that a writer who writes about loss (if I do) needs to have suffered loss himself. We can imagine loss. That’s the writer’s job. We empathize, we project, we make much of what might be small experience. Hemingway (as usual, full of wind) said ‘only write about what you know’. But that can’t mean you should only write about what you yourself have done or experienced. A rule like that pointlessly straps the imagination, confines one’s curiosity, one’s capacity to empathize. After all, a novel (if it chooses) can cause a reader to experience sensation, emotion, to recognize behaviour that reader may never have seen before. The writer’ll have to be able to do that, too. Some subjects just cause what Katherine Anne Porter called a ‘commotion in the mind’. That commotion may or may not be a response to what we actually did on earth. That said, I probably experienced loss no more fully than most people. I was the child of older parents who I always was fearfully expecting to die on me. And the old Arkansas aunties and great uncles did start departing life when I was just a small child. One of my first vivid memories is of my Aunt Lizzie’s funeral—in Arkansas—and of her lying in her casket. Vivid, yes; but also rather normal in life. Then my father died when I was sixteen—died in my arms, at home. That could certainly be seen as imprinting. We were a three-person family, very close and loving. So I experienced loss when he died; and probably, as significantly, I experienced the loss my mother suffered—of her one great love in life. How we experience what we experience is a complex business.
Did you, or do you, look back on the years before your father died, when there were the three of you, as a golden time? No, not a golden time. I’m suspicious of ‘golden times’. I think that right now this minute had better be the golden time, because it’s what you’ve got. I had a happy childhood because my parents loved me and took good care of me. But my father had a very serious heart attack when I was eight and he was fortyeight. And that coloured a lot of life, because it scared him silly and he never felt entirely well after that—probably wasn’t well. And he was gone a lot. His job as a salesman caused him to travel by car five days a week, and my mother and I were left at home together. And we were both of us pretty volatile personalities. And I never did particularly well in school; was, as time went by, a kid who tended to get into trouble—stealing, getting into fights. I was dyslexic and never read very well. So, no. ‘Golden’ it wasn’t. But it was good.
to look after me the way she had up to then—because she had to go out and get a job—and that I’d better not turn up in jail or juvenile court again because she wouldn’t get me out. That made a big impression of me. I guess that’s consequence of a kind. But I wasn’t a very committed felon. More of a little dickhead.
Do you think the dyslexia has shaped how you have read? Absolutely. I read slowly, and as a consequence have definitely not read as many books as I should’ve—in order to be considered properly educated. But what I’ve read—because I’ve read slowly and attentively—I seem to have taken in pretty well. And, importantly, when you read slowly you also become available to those qualities of language that’re other than the cognitive qualities. One becomes sensitive to what you might call the poetic qualities—rhythms, repetitions, sonorities, syncopations, the aptness of particular word choices—those qualities. They’re important—at least they are to me. That’s had a consequence not only upon my reading but also upon my aims as a writer of sentences.
Do you always know what a Richard Ford sentence sounds like?
Richard Ford and his hunting dogs. Did the stealing have consequences—did you get caught? We’re not talking about holding up Brink’s trucks, here, or Manson Family capers; just, oh, stealing the odd car, some random breaking and enterings, and many lesser offences. And I did get caught, got hauled in front of the juvenile judge, put on probation—which was sort of awful but also sort of a badge of honour. It all scared my mother, though, made her miserable, in fact. And as far as consequence was concerned, I suppose I saw what consequence my behaviour had on her—which was bad. I was on probation at the time my father suddenly died; and my mother sat me down and told me that she wasn’t going to be able
I don’t think there’s any signature to my sentences. I’ve heard some people say there is, but that’s just a gesture meant to flatter me. Because I’m sure there’s not. A sentence’s style or manner, or a book full of sentences with styles or manners, is a response to a variety of forces operating on a writer: the writer’s sensuous, instinctual relation to the material itself; the accumulated amount of material that precedes the writing; the writer’s history with other books that may or may not have entertained some of the same subject matter, or books that the writer simply admires; the daily tidal changes in any person’s mood and energies. And much more. All these things affect how sentences get written— how many words they hold, how syntactically complex they are, their diction and all word-choosings, what they undertake to elucidate. And in the course of any one book these stylistic characteristics can and often do change or modulate. It’s certainly the case that over the course of any writer’s life his or her grasp on sentences will also change—either from book to book, subject to subject, or just as one gets older. I think that The Lay of the Land has longer, complexer sentences because my mind (my older man’s mind) was just fuller of things that interested me, and I didn’t want to lose a lot of them. So, I devised sentences to keep all that stuff and put them in play. You can say that was ambition, or you could say it was poor judgment and an inability to discriminate. I’d say it was ambition, because I like the book a lot—like its thoroughness. People can get preoccupied by such stylistic matters as ‘voice’: having a consistent ‘voice’, a true ‘voice’, a ‘voice’ of one’s own. This conception of voice can have something to do with a writer’s purported signature. But to me this isn’t very important. To me ‘voice’ is probably just the music of the story’s intelligence, how it sounds when it’s being smart, or when it’s working on the reader. And that music, like a story’s style, can change, and does change. So, a Richard Ford sentence will usually be differently made from one piece of writing to the next. Which is fine with me.
How aware were you of Eudora Welty in Jackson while you were growing up?
Well, I knew her name. One did, in Jackson. I went to school with her niece, Elizabeth. But, Eudora’d grown up directly across the street from me on Congress Street, and I didn’t even know that until I was far along into adulthood. I also didn’t read anything of hers (or anything much at all) until I was in college and had it presented to me on a syllabus. Eudora lived—on Pinehurst Street—not so far away from us when I was growing up. Walking distance. But it was in another, somewhat better ‘old Jackson’ neighbourhood than ours. My mother once pointed Eudora out to me at the grocery store—I might’ve been eight. She said ‘Richard, that’s Eudora Welty, over there. She’s a writer.’ I could tell from the tone of my mother’s voice that she thought being a writer was good.
Did she write anything herself, your mother I mean? Interesting—to me, anyway. When I was going through my mother’s belongings after she’d died, in 1971, I found a notebook that had only one line written in it, on its first page, and in my mother’s quite elegant hand. It said ‘Les, A life’. Now my grandmother, her mother, was called Les—some version of her real name, which was Essie. My mother took care of my grandmother through the last years of my grandmother’s life. And it was not an easy passage. My grandmother was capable of great, aggressive nastiness. And I know my mother got in the way of it a lot. We all did at one time or other. But it may have seemed to my mother that some act of writing—fictive or otherwise—was the best way to record or imagine her own experience. I’d guess, too, it was partly because she had a son who was a novelist that this began to seem possible to her. But. She never did it—which is all right. She didn’t want to enough.
Do you think stories are created or discovered? That’s easy. Stories are created. It isn’t as if they’re ‘out there’ waiting in some Platonic hyper-space like unread emails. They aren’t. Writers make stories up. It might be that when stories turn out to be good they then achieve a quality of inevitability, of there seeming to have been a previously existing and important space that they perfectly fill. But that isn’t what’s true. I’m sure of it. A story makes its own space and then fills it. Writers don’t ‘find’ stories—although some writers might say so. This to me just means they have a vocabulary that’s inadequate at depicting what they actually do. They’re like Hemingway—always fleeing complexity as if it were a barn fire.
You have written movingly of New Orleans, in memory of your feelings for that city, where you and Kristina have lived and worked; has that disaster altered your perception of loss? I don’t know that I ever had a previous ‘perception’ of loss. But the disaster in New Orleans surely didn’t sponsor a new one. My sense of permanence has always included the likely demolition of all vestiges of permanence—houses, street corners, trees whereon we carved our names in hearts, persons. It can all go, and will. In America we white people sentimentalize permanence —or at least we once could. But Native Americans certainly don’t. Blacks probably don’t either. Europeans of a certain age don’t. I don’t.
Has faith or church-going ever had any appeal to you?
Not church-going. But faith, well… There’s the famous line in Hebrews 11: ‘Faith is the evidence of things unseen’. I’ve always been attracted to that line. But for specifically ir-religious reasons. I deem that line to be a line about the imagination. I could almost say that, ‘the imagination is the evidence of things unseen’. But again specifically I’d say that my ‘faith’ lies in the imagination and in the imagination’s power to bring into existence essential experience that heretofore wasn’t known to exist.
That reminds me of Frank Bascombe’s line: ‘The unseen exists and has properties.’ Do you have an ongoing sense of that ‘unseen’, or only at certain charged moments? I don’t much think about the unseen. For lack of great erudition, or a great education, I suppose I’ve stored a fair amount of trust in my instinct. But as soon as I see that written down I start to think that instinct may just be another word for luck and for trusting to luck—which I’ve done. A favourite line I repair to is by the philosopher Daniel Dennett, who said: ‘We have a builtin, very potent, hairtriggered tendency to find agency in things that are not agents.’ I’m not sure if Dennett approves of that tendency or not. But certainly that’s one of the things literature does—it ascribes agency where before no agency was noticed: it says this causes that, this is a consequence of that, etc. It may be that writing fiction, imagining agencies, is my most trusted way into the unseen.
There is a kind of unflinching morality in many of your stories. I’m thinking particularly of the tales of adultery in A Multitude of Sins. Trangression has consequences, even if only in pointing up the emptiness of lives. Does this moral sense grow out of characters, or does the moral engine come first? I don’t know a specific answer to that. In most of those stories I didn’t start with a character. I usually don’t. I usually start either with a situation (a man meets his ex-lover’s husband in Grand Central Station; a married couple are on their way to a party, when the young wife informs her young husband that she’s had an affair with the host of the party they’re attending—those are examples). Or else I just go looking for bits and pieces that I want a story to contain, and organize the story out of those bits. I suppose when I put it that way, and in terms of your question, the ‘moral engine’ may seem to come first, be an unspoken force in the choosings. But I’m entirely unaware of its being so. I hold with the notion that Martin Amis quoted Northrop Frye to say: that literature is a disinterested use of language; a writer must have nothing riding on the outcome. I set up situations and then see what I can have happen as a consequence, using language. And, at least in theory, the consequence could pretty much be anything.
Does that principle of disinterest apply equally in your novels, is it tough not to be rooting for Frank, say? I’m always rooting for Frank to do something, or have something to say that’s not expected, but interesting, given the conventional sort of man the reader may be imagining him to be—a real estate agent, etc. So, the rule of disinterest still applies. It should also be said, of course, that I’m not bound strictly by that rule. If by following it I write something that I don’t like, or have Frank or
any character say or do something that seems dumb or somehow wrong, I can just scratch it out and often do. I never saw Frank as a human being (although I’d like the reader to think he was pretty close to being a human being). Rather I saw him as an agency made of language. So, I wouldn’t be ‘rooting’ for him the way you’d root for the kid with Hodgkin’s Disease to see one last game at Yankee Stadium. It’s different. I may be more rooting for myself to come up with something good.
Do you find your empathy with the weaknesses of your characters has deepened as you have grown older? My empathy with every kind of weakness has deepened. Is it a matter of age? Maybe. More probably it’s just a matter of experience. Graham Greene wrote—and I’ve always hated the idea—that morality comes with old age, with one’s curiosity growing weak. That’s a sourpuss’s notion of morality. As something that’s moribund. And I don’t buy it. Maybe that’s because my curiosity still seems strong.
In your introduction to The New Granta Book of the American Short Story you quote Walter Benjamin suggesting ‘We no longer work at things that can’t be abbreviated’, perhaps a factor of waning curiosity. What is your feeling for America’s attention span? That was Benjamin expressing his displeasure with modern times. Probably an observer could make, or could’ve made, the same claim about the contemporary attention span at any given time in history. But as for me, and as for now, I see lots of people on airplanes reading really long books; I see the ‘young’ of my country, as well as their beaverish parents, spending long, long, long periods of time in front of computer screens; I see athletes training and training until they drop. So, I conclude from this admittedly unscientific survey, that plenty of Americans have plenty of attention available—for something. It may not be for literary fiction. But then it’s my job as a purveyor of literary fiction to tap into that otherwise wasted attention span. But it’s there.
You have rarely written of childhood, in the way that, for instance, Tobias Wolff has; has that territory never tempted you? Well, I’d say I have written about childhood. Several of the stories in Rock Springs are narrated by teenagers, as is all of Wildlife. And in the New Jersey books there are Frank’s kids all around —especially in Independence Day. Maybe in your terms a teenager isn’t a child; and maybe that’s true. But I always think I’ve written about children—because I always brag that it’s a lot easier to write about children than to have them. And I don’t have any.
To what extent do you think your life was shaped by being an only child among big Southern families? That’s one of those questions that asks me to imagine another life from my own. I suppose I could—a life with brothers and sisters —but it’s a bit like asking whether things have been different, do you suppose, if you’d been a girl. Probably would. Being an only child, however, shaped a great, great deal in my life. A psychologist could probably give a better answer than I could,
and probably a truer answer, too. But I’ll just propose one thing: that I was almost always around adults when I was quite young. Adult life was the ‘important’ life, the aspired-to life, and I could eavesdrop on it all the time, hear what adults thought was important, observe discrepancies in their behaviours and their pronouncements. It probably also intensified the faith that I had in parent–child relationships, inasmuch as my parents seemed to have wanted me, loved me, wanted good for me. It might’ve also caused me to fear loss more than would’ve been the case had there been others around. And I think that in myself (and perhaps evident in what I write) fear of loss and the corresponding instinct to protect myself against loss are potent forces.
Do you think that instinct to protect yourself against loss is one of the reasons you chose not to have children? Doctor Freud might say so. But I just say that it was because Kristina and I didn’t especially like children, didn’t want to be saddled with the responsibility of them. We had our ideas about the future, and there was never room for children in those ideas. It was really the first important thing we ever agreed on when we were in our teens together, in Michigan. I remember the exact moment we first talked about it. It was great.
There are, you’ve said, two fixed points in your life: ‘I always write and I am always married to the same girl.’ In what ways does one depend on the other? I’ve answered that question enough for one lifetime.
All right; you’ve also said that you consciously want your writing to be ‘affirmative’ of the possibility of love, closeness in a life, what makes you hold to that? Not to keep on quoting famous men, but somewhere in Wallace Stevens there’s a little fragment that says, ‘we gulp down evil, choke at good’. That’s always meant to me that it’s more appetizing to decry, and less appetizing, maybe less simple, to find a vocabulary for affirmation. And also ‘closeness in a life’ and (if you will) ‘love’ seem immensely sustaining to me, and worthy of efforts at articulation. That said, I’ve written mostly stories that would have to be called ‘cautionary tales’, and that a lot of readers would not think of as conventionally affirming. However, I hold with John Gardner [the novelist and early supporter of Raymond Carver] who said that moral literature (by which I understand him to have meant good literature, valuable literature) ‘tests values and arouses trustworthy feelings about the better and worse in human actions’. To me, indeed, great literature is always affirming, even if it’s grim—if only because it’s a gesture by someone for the use of another in a future that’s hoped to come. Sartre said even the grimmest literature is optimistic since it proves those things can be thought about.
So literature makes us want to be better men (and women)? I don’t know about that. I just know it gives a reader the chance to see life affirmed through literature’s great concern with life. And it gives the reader a chance—in the sheltered environment of a book—to see the important consequences of events. Making one want to be better, well that’s a private matter. I have some evidence that that may not be accurate—although wanting to be better and being better are obviously different things.
What did you make of being described as a ‘Dirty Realist’ by Granta? I thought—we probably all thought—that ‘Dirty Realism’ was a wonderful marketing ploy. I don’t think Carver or Toby Wolff or Jayne Anne Phillips or any of us ever thought it really described anything especially true or thematically consistent in our stories. Bill Buford just dreamed it up to sell magazines in Britain. And it worked very, very well. We’re still talking about it, aren’t we? At the time—the middle Eighties—I had no books in print, and no readership. This wasn’t true for the other writers in the ‘Dirty Realism’ issue. But it was true for me. And Bill’s scheme helped me find a readership for my stories. I can’t thank him enough.
Did you ever think of giving up at that time? I certainly did. I thought that I’d had my shot at being a novelist and it hadn’t worked out well enough. I went over to Sports Illustrated and asked for a job. But the guy who was running it told me no. He said I was a novelist (cruel irony), and that I couldn’t be a sportswriter. So I went home and wrote The Sportswriter. But if he’d given me a job I’d almost assuredly have taken it and been very, very happy. I’d be retired now and have a big pension. It would’ve been a great life.
It seemed to me natural to group you with Carver and Tobias Wolff as writers to the extent that you had some kind of shared interest in a sort of lonely or alienated masculinity. Where do you think that came from? I never think about that. At our best (if I have a best—and certainly they do), our stories weren’t that much alike. And frankly I can’t think about my own characters in those rather cosseted, conventional terms—alienated, lonely, even masculine. I’m not interested in ‘masculinity’. I’d be surprised if Ray or Toby would’ve said much different. But. I do know that I inherited much of my sense of what a story could be and be about from my reading—from Frank O’Connor, from Sherwood Anderson, from Faulkner, from Isaac Babel, from Flannery O’Connor—alas, from Hemingway, who seems influential in only the most superficial ways. So, that’s where my first ideas came from.
You’ve lived longer than your father, do you catch yourself making his gestures, or have a keener impression of his life now you have reached and passed his age? I look like my father. I sometimes feel my facial features arranging themselves into visages that I know are like his. The long Irish upper lip lapsing over the poor lower one in a state of puzzlement; my tendency to sigh at moments of frustration; the fierce swarm into anger; the tendency to strike out at something (or someone) that threatens me. I saw all this in him when he was in my life. And I accept them in myself—which isn’t to say I glory in them. That said, I have a paler and paler recollection of him as time’s gone on. And I feel the poorer for that. I liked him very much.
Do you think men are born with more ways to fail than women?
I don’t know what that means. But, no. Women and men seem a lot more alike than they’re given credit for. A lot of ‘interests’, of course, are deeply and perniciously invested in keeping them apart and distinct.
You have written about your love of hunting. Does it inform your writing? It’s certainly informed some stories—the ones that’re expressly about hunting: ‘Communist’, ‘Great Falls’, ‘Calling’. But in general I think it’s just been a thing I like to do that hasn’t much informed my writing. I don’t like to read hunting stories. ‘Communist’ I wrote back in 1984, only because Tom McGuane and I were out hunting partridge in Montana, and he told me he knew a guy who was preparing an anthology of hunting stories and if I ever wrote a hunting story I should send it to this guy. I never had before. But I did. And ‘Communist’ was it. I probably never wrote a better story than that. Go figure.
Tell me about your relationship with your HarleyDavidson; it feels like an escape clause? When I got back to owning motorcycles, in the mid-Eighties, I used to say (in my boyish way) that a fellow needed to have something around that could kill him. And at heart, once we get past the snapshot visions of oneself astride the rakish machine, and the appeal of the sound of the thing, and the wind-in-yourhair imagery, and the hoped-for effect on women—once that’s all gone by, I guess I still feel the way I did in the mid-Eighties.
You don’t strike me as someone with a self-destructive urge though—not at all? I don’t think I have a self-destructive urge. But the prospect of one’s eventual end is pretty firmly fixed in my brain. And I’d certainly like to think I held my fate in my own hands should I be struck by some withering disease. I remember when my mother died—of breast cancer—and Kristina and I were sitting on her bed, getting dressed for her funeral, the phone rang. And it was one of my mother’s old Arkie cousins, from up in the sticks. This woman was just calling up to express her condolences, I guess. I had no idea who she was, just a scratchy voice on the phone, there in Little Rock. She said a few consoling things. And then she said—and this woman didn’t know me; she said, ‘Now, Rich-ard. Your mamma died of cancer. So, hon, you’re gonna get it, too. Don’t forget that.’ ‘Okay, I won’t,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’ Just a kind sober thought toward the future to penetrate one’s grief.
What did you learn in writing and in life from Raymond Carver? I did learn some things from Ray. Sometimes people ask me if he was my teacher; but he wasn’t. He and I were close friends, and were colleagues. But he wasn’t that much older than me—seven years. We were pretty much contemporaries. Though it seems strange that he’s been gone now for nearly twenty years. But. One thing that may seem insignificant, but wasn’t, was that his parents and my parents came from pretty much the same place— west Arkansas. His parents had gone out west, and mine had gone down south—for work. And from that coincidence, and from admiring Ray’s early stories very much, and admiring his own instincts for writing them, I think I drew some corroborative strength that my own inherited storage of what was interesting and what a story could be was, in fact, valuable and credible.
Ray and I enjoyed a kind of unspoken confidence that we came from the same stock—possibly rough stock. Beyond that, his early stories and our friendship—which began as he was writing his second book—definitely encouraged me to try writing stories again myself. I’d quit writing stories in the Seventies because I just couldn’t do it very well. But Ray’s stories seemed so natural, almost easy (many people have thought that to their ruin), that I thought I’d try my hand at it again. And I did. At least a couple of the stories in Rock Springs bear signs of his stylistic influence. He always encouraged me to write stories, although I’m sure he felt confident he would always be better at it than I’d be.
He must’ve learned things from you as well, though? I don’t know what he could’ve learned from me. There might’ve been something. We were friends, we talked about work a lot. We had that confidence that came from our family background. And I’m sure I reenforced his confidence about his work. I also had opinions about some of the stories in his book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love—all of which he showed me in early drafts. But most of what I didn’t like he rejected and later chided me for. Although there was that story, I think it’s ‘A Small Good Thing’, that I and others (the poet Donald Hall and Geoffrey Wolff, probably Toby, too) complained to him about. He’d shown that story to us in an early, much more fully developed form. And then he published it in a rather harshly curtailed form. And we all told Ray he should restore it to its fuller self when he collected it in a subsequent volume. And he did. His work was growing, his sentences getting longer, more complex, his sympathies and intellectual reach expanding. Tess [Gallagher, Carver’s second wife] had a big influence on him—probably the biggest influence. I think that I—and again I was just one of a few people he trusted—I just told him work was wonderful, and that was probably the most of it.
You shared an absolute commitment to the business of writing stories: have you always had that work ethic? No. I haven’t. I always wished I had it—from an early age. But I didn’t for a long time. It—the work ethic—just arrived during the summer of 1963, when I was nineteen. I’m not sure where it came from. I was working on the Missouri Pacific Railroad as a switchman, and making lots of money and having a pretty happy life. I was supposed to go to college in the autumn, and was giving thought to just staying working on the railroad. But I ended up going to school, instead. Maybe seeing those working guys I spent my days with made an impression on me; or maybe it was that I wanted to impress Kristina. I don’t really know. But when I got to school, in Michigan, I was just a changed boy. Whatever thresholds I’d not ventured to cross—with regard to my studies, for instance—I just barged across. And it’s been that way ever since. But I should say—about myself and about a work ethic—it’s pretty boring. That’s why we associate the ‘ethic’ with Protestants, who’re also pretty boring. It may lead one on to good, but it doesn’t feel like much of a virtue, frankly. A work ethic story, though. When I was in college I lived with a guy named Tom Candee, who’s now a veterinarian not far from where I live—down in Massachusetts. And every term our grades came out, and Candee used to laugh at me—rail at me,
really. He used to say, ‘Look at Ford, he got all As, but had to worked like a pig to get it. Whereas me, I got all As and never turned a hand. I’m smart. He’s not.’ We eventually came to pretty serious blows, Candee and me, because that used to get under my skin real bad. But the truth was he was right. I did work like a pig. He barely lifted a hand. So, to me, a work ethic has always been a kind of blue-collar trait, something I have to embrace to do anything that’s worthwhile—but spectacularly inferior to being able to waltz through life. I am, however, glad not to be a veterinarian.
I remember talking to Kazuo Ishiguro and he said he imagined the rest of his life in terms of how many novels he would be lucky enough to complete, if he spent, as was his habit, five or six years on each. Do you have a powerful sense of finite time? Well, the return on Ish’s investment is quite wonderful, isn’t it? So his attitude puts a much better burnish on those working virtues than I can hope to put. I suppose I do share a sense of finite time, all right. But I don’t measure it in terms of how many novels I’ll write, or might write. I agree that to get to write a novel at all is very, very lucky—to get to do one’s best, to get to do what Dostoevsky and Faulkner did, to try to contribute good to the life of people you don’t know. All that’s a great privilege. But every time I finish a novel, or a book (and I’ve only finished nine), I ask myself if this isn’t enough now. I’ve given this last effort—whatever it was—my very best. I’ve held back nothing. Have I not perhaps gone along this course as far as I can go? Are my returns not likely to begin to diminish? Could I really have anything as important as this to write again? Someday, I assume, my answer will be, ‘Yes, this is enough.’ I don’t see writing as a profession, something I’m married to forever. I have to reinvent it every time. And I also see that there’s more to life than writing. I see that portrayed in other people’s lives all the time. I’m as curious about that as I ever was.
The greatest short story writers it seems to me are those with the clearest sense of an ending. Do you always know when you are done? Yes, I always know when a story’s finished. And I hope that makes me one of the greatest short story writers—if that’s what it takes.
There’s a line you once used: ‘Your life is the blueprint you make after the building is built.’ How do you think your own blueprint will look when the time comes?
4
LEE SMITH
Intensive Care LEE SMITH (1944—) grew up an only child in Grundy, Virginia (population 2,000), an isolated mountain community in the western part of the state. She attended Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia, where she graduated with a bachelor's degree. She has been the recipient of many awards and honors, including the Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction (1991), the Sir Walter Raleigh Award (1989), rhe John Dos Passos Award for Literature (1987), and the North Carolina Award for Fiction (1984). She also won the 1994 Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award and rhe fifth annual John William Corringxon Award for Literary Excellence. Smith is the author of eight novels, The Last Day the Dogbitshes Bloomed, Something in the Wind, Fancy Strut, Black Mountain Breakdown, Oral History, Family Linen, Fair and Tender Ladies, and The Devil's Dream; and three story collections, Me and My Baby Vieiu the Eclipse, Cakewalk, and News of the Spirit. Lee Smith lives in North Carolina.
Cherry Oxendine is dying now, and everybody knows it. Everybody in town except maybe her new husband, Harold Stikes, although Lord knows he ought to, it's as plain as the nose on your face. And it's not like he hasn't been told either, by both Dr. Thacker and Dr. Pinckney and also that hotshot young Jew doctor from Memphis, Dr. Shapiro, who comes over here once a week. "Harold just can't take it in," is what the head nurse in Intensive Care, Lois Hickey, said in the Beauty Nook last week. Lois ought to know. She's been right there during the past six weeks while Cherry Oxendine has been in Intensive Care, writing down Cherry's blood pressure every hour on the hour, changing bags on the IV, checking the stomach tube, moving the bed up and down to prevent bedsores, monitoring the respirator —and calling in Rodney Broadbent, the respiratory therapist,
more and more frequently. "Her blood gases is not but twentyeight," Lois said in the Beauty Nook. "If" we was to unhook that respirator, she'd die in a day." "I would go on and do it then, it I was Harold." said Mrs. Hooker, the Presbyterian minister's wife, who was getting a permanent. "It is the Christian thing." "You wouldn't either." Lois said, "because she still knows him. That's the awful part. She still knows him. In tact she peps right up ever time he comes in, like they are going on a date or something. It's the saddest thing. And ever time we open the doors, here comes Harold, regular as clockwork. Eight o'clock, one o'clock, six o'clock, eight o'clock, why shoot, he'd stay in there all day and all night if we'd let him. Well, she opens her mouth and says Hi honey, you can tell what she's saying even if she can't make a sound. And her eyes get real bright and her face looks pretty good too, that's because of the Lasix, only Harold don't know .that. He just can't take it all in," Lois said. "Oh, I feel so sorry for him," said Mrs. Hooker. Her tace is as round and flat as a dime. "Well, I don't." Dot Mains, owner of the Beauty Nook, started cutting Lois Hickey's hair. Lois wears it too short, in Dot's opinion. "I certainly don't feel sorry for Harold Stikes, after what he did." Dot snipped decisively at Lois Hickey's frosted hair. Mrs. Hooker made a sad little sound, half sigh, half words, as Janice stuck her under the dryer, while Miss Berry, the old-maid home demonstration agent waiting for her appointment, snapped the pages of Cosmopolitan magazine one by one, blindly, filled with somewhat gratuitous rage against the behavior of Harold Stikes. Miss Berry is Harold Stikes's ex-wife's cousin. So she does not pity him, not one bit. He got what's coming to him, that's all, in Miss Berry's opinion. Most people don't. It's a pleasure to see it, but Miss Berry would never say this out loud since Cherry Oxendine is of course dying. Cherry Oxendine! Like it was yesterday, Miss Berry remembers how Cherry Oxendine acted in high school, wearing her skirts too tight, popping her gum. "The doctors can't do a thing," said Lois Hickey. Silence settled like fog then on the Beauty Nook, on Miss Berry and her magazine, on Dot Mains cutting Lois Hickey's hair, on little Janice thinking about her boyfriend Bruce, and on Mrs. Hooker crying gently under the dryer. Suddenly, Dot remembered something her old granny used to say about such momenrs of sudden absolute quiet: "An angel is passing over." After a while, Mrs. Hooker said, "It's all in the hands ot God, then." She spread out her fingers one by one on the tray, for Janice to give her a manicure. And as for Harold Stikes, he's not even considering God. Oh, he doesn't interfere when Mr. Hooker comes by the hospital once a day to check on him— Harold was a Presbyterian in his former lite—or even when the Baptist preacher from Cherry's mama's church shows up and insists that everybody in the whole waiting room join hands and bow heads in prayer while he raises his big red face and curly gray head straight up to heaven and prays in a loud voice that God will heal these loved ones who walk through the Valley of Death, and comfort these others who watch, through their hour ot need. This includes Mrs. Eunice Sprayberry, whose mother has had a stroke, John and Paula Ripman, whose infant son is dying of encephalitis, and different others who drift in and out of Intensive Care following surgery or wrecks. Harold is losing track. He closes his eyes and bows his head, figuring it can't hurt, like taking out insurance. But deep down inside, he knows that it God is worth His salt, He is not impressed by the prayer of Harold Stikes, who knowingly gave up all hope of peace on earth and heaven hereafter for the love ot Cherry Oxendine. Not to mention his family. He gave them up too.
But this morning when he leaves the hospital alter his eighto'clock visit to Cherry, Harold finds himself turning left out of the lot instead of right toward Food Lion, his store. Harold finds himself taking 15-501 just south of town and then driving through those ornate marble gates that mark the entrance to Camelot Hills, his old neighborhood. Some lucky instinct makes him pull into the little park and stop there, beside the pond. Here comes his ex-wife, Joan, driving the Honda Accord he paid for last year. Joan looks straight ahead. She's still wearing her shiny blond hair in the pageboy she's worn ever since Harold met her at Mercer College so many years ago. Harold is sure she's wearing low heels and a shirtwaist dress. He knows her briefcase is in the backseat, containing lesson plans for today, yogurt, and a banana. Potassium is important. Harold has heard this a million times. Behind her, the beds are all made, the breakfast dishes stacked in the sink. As a home ec teacher, Joan believes that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. The two younger children, Brenda and Harold Jr., are alreadv on the bus to the Academy. James rides to the high school with his mother, hair wet, tace blank, staring straight ahead. They don't see Harold. Joan brakes at the stop sign before entering 15-501. She always comes to a complere stop, even if nothing's coming. Always. She looks both ways. Then she's gone. Harold drives past well-kepr lawn after well-kept lawn and lovely house after lovely house, many of them houses where Harold has attended Cub Scout meetings, eaten barbecue, watched bowl games. Now these houses have a blank, closed look to them, like mean faces. Harold turns left on Oxford, then right on Shrewsbury. He comes to a stop beside the curb at 1105 Cambridge and just sits rhere with the motor running, looking ar the house. His house. The Queen Anne house he and Joan planned so carefully, down to the last detail, the fish-scale siding. The house he is still paying for and will be until his dying day, if Joan has her way about it. Which she will, of course. Everybody is on her side: desertion. Harold Stikes deserted his lovely wife and three children for a redheaded waitress. For a fallen woman with a checkered past. Harold can hear her now. "I fail to see why I and the children should lower our standards of living, Harold, and go to the dogs just because you have chosen to become insane in mid-life." Joan's voice is slow and amiable. It has a down-toearth quality which used to appeal to Harold but now drives him wild. Harold sits at the curb with the motor running and looks at his house good. It looks fine. It looks just like it did when they picked it out of the pages of Southern Living and wrote off for the plans. The only difference is, that house was in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and this house is in Greenwood, Mississippi. Big deal. Joan's response to Harold's desertion has been a surprise to him. He expected tears, recriminations, fireworks. He did not expect her calm, reasonable manner, treating Harold the way she treats the Mormon missionaries who come to the door in their black suits, for instance, that very calm sweet careful voice. Joan acts like Harold's desertion is nothing much. And nothing much appears to have changed for her except the loss of Harold's actual presence, and this cannot be a very big deal since everything else has remained exactly the same. What the hell. After a while Harold turns off the motor and walks up the flagstone walk to the front door. His key still fits. All the furniture is arranged exactly the way it was arranged four years ago. The only thing that ever changes here is the display of magazines on the glass coffee table before the fireplace, Joan keeps them up to date. Newsweek, National Geographic, Good Housekeeping, Gourmet. It's a mostly educational grouping, unlike what Cherrv reads—Parade, Coronet, National Enquirer. Now these magazines litter the floor at the side of the bed like little souvenirs of Cherry. Harold can't stand to pick them up.
He sits down heavily on the white sofa and stares at the coffee table. He remembers the quiz and the day he found it, four years ago now although it feels like only yesterday, funny thing though that he can't remember which magazine it was in. Maybe Reader's Digest. The quiz was titled "How Good Is Your Marriage?" and Harold noticed that Joan had filled it in carefully. This did not surprise him. Joan was so law-abiding, such a goodgirl, that she always filled in such quizzes when she came across them, as if she had to, before she could go ahead and finish the magazine. Usually Harold didn't pay much attention. This time, he picked the magazine up and started reading. One of the questions said: "What is your idea of the perfect vacation? (a) a romantic getaway for you and your spouse alone; (b) a family trip to the beach; (c) a business convention; (d) an organized tour of a foreign land." Joan had wavered on this one. She had marked and then erased "an organized tour of a foreign land." Finally she had settled on "a family trip to the beach." Harold skimmed along. The final question was: "When you think of the love between yourself and your spouse, do you think of (a) a great passion; (b) a warm, meaningful companionship; (c) an average love; (d) an unsatisfying habit." Joan had marked "(c) an average love." Harold stared at these words, knowing they were true. An average love, norhing great, an average marriage between an average man and woman. Suddenly, strangely, Harold was filled with rage. "It is not enough!" He thought he actually said these words our loud. Perhaps he did say them out loud, into the clean hushed air-conditioned air of his average home. Harold's rage was followed by a brief period, maybe five minutes, of unbearable longing, after which he simply closed rhe magazine and put it back on the table and got up and poured himself a stiff shot of bourbon. He stood for a while before the picture window in the living room, looking out at his even green grass, his clipped hedge, and the impatiens blooming in its bed, the clematis climbing the mailbox. The colors of the world fairly leaped at him—the sky so blue, the grass so green. A passing jogger's shorts glowed unbearably red. He felt that he had never seen any of these things before. Yet in another way it all seemed so familiar as to be an actual part of his body—his throat, his heart, his breath. Harold rook another drink. Then he went out and played nine holes of golf at the country club with Bubba Fields, something he did every Wednesday afternoon. He shot 82. By the time he came home for dinner he was okay again. He was very tired and a little lightheaded, all his muscles tingling. His face was hot. Yet Harold felt vaguely pleased with himself, as if he had been through something and come out the other side of it, as if he had done a creditable job on a difficult assignment. But right then, during dinner, Harold could not have told you exactly what had happened to him that da}', or why he felt this way. Because the mind will forget what it can't stand to remember, and anyway the Stikeses had beef Stroganoff that night, a new recipe that Joan was testing for the Junior League cookbook, and Harold Jr. had written them a funny letter from camp, and for once Brenda did not whine.. James, who was twelve that year, actually condescended to talk to his father, with some degree of interest, about baseball, and after supper was over he and Harold went out and pitched to each other until it grew dark and lightning bugs emerged. This is how it's supposed to be, Harold rhought, father and son playing carch in the twilight. Then he went upstairs and joined Joan in bed to watch TV, after which they turned out the light and made love. But Joan had greased herself all over with Oil of Olay, earlier, and right in the middle of doing it, Harold got a crazy terrified feeling that he was losing her, that Joan was slipping, slipping away. But time passed, as it does, and Harold forgot that whole weird day, forgot it until right now, in fact, as he sits on the white sofa in his old house again and stares at the magazines on the
coffee table, those magazines so familiar except for the date, which is four years later. Now Harold wonders: If he hadn't picked up that quiz and read it, would he have even noticed when Cherry Oxendine spooned out that potato salad for him six months later, in his own Food Lion deli? "Would the sight of redheaded Cherry Oxendine, the Food Lion smock mostly obscuring her dynamite figure, have hit him like a bolt out of the blue the way it did? Cherry herself does not believe there is any such thing as coincidence. Cherry thinks there is a master plan for the universe, and what is meant to happen will. She thinks it's all set in the stars. For the first time, Harold thinks maybe she's right. He sees part of a pattern in the works, but dimly, as if he is looking at a constellation hidden by clouds. Mainly, he sees her face. Harold gets up from rhe sofa and goes into the kitchen, suddenly aware that he isn't supposed to be here. He could be arrested, probably! He looks back at the living room but there's not a trace of him left, not even an imprint on the soft white cushions of the sofa. Absentmindedly, Harold opens and shuts the refrigerator door. There's no beer, he notices. He can't have a Coke. On the kitchen calendar, he reads: Harold Jr to dentist, 3:30 p.m. Tues Change furnace filter 2/18/88 (James) So James is changing the furnace filters now, James is the man of the house. Why not? It's good for him. He's been given too much, kids these days grow up so fast, no responsibilities, they get on drugs, you read about it all the time. But deep down inside, Harold knows that James is not on drugs and he feels something awful, feels the way he felt growing up, that sick little flutter in his stomach that took years to go away. Harold's dad died of walking pneumonia when he was only three, so his mother raised him alone. She called him her "little man." This made Harold feel proud but also wild, like a boy growing up in a cage. Does James feel this way now? Harold suddenly decides to get James a car for his birthday, and take him hunting. Hunting is something Harold never did as a boy, but it means a lot to him now. In fact Harold never owned a gun until he was thirty-one, when he bought a shotgun in order to accept the invitation of his regional manager, "Litde Jimmy" Fletcher, to go quail hunting in Georgia. He had a great time. Now he's invited back every year, and Little Jimmy is in charge of the cornpany's whole eastern division. Harold has a great future with Food Lion too. He owns three stores, one in downtown Greenwood, one out at the mall, and one over in Indianola. He owned two of them when his mother died, and he's pleased to think that she died proud—protid of the good little boy he'd always been, and the good man he'd become. Of course she'd wanted him to make a preacher, but Harold never got the call, and she gave that up finally when he was twenty. Harold was not going to pretend to get the call if he never got it, and he held strong to this principle. He wanted to see a burning bush, but if this was not vouchsafed to him, he wasn't going to lie about it. He would just major in math instead, which he was good at anyway. Majoring in math at Mercer College, the small Baptist school his mother had chosen for him, Harold came upon Joan Berry, a home ec major from his own hometown who set out single-mindedlv to marry him, which wasn't hard. After graduation, Harold got a job as management trainee in the Food Lion store where he had started as a bagboy at fourteen. Joan produced their three children, spaced three years apart, and got her tubes tied. Harold got one promotion, then another. Joan and Harold prospered. They built rhis house.
Harold looks around and now this house, his house, strikes him as creepy, a wax museum. He lets himself out the back door and walks quickly, almost runs, to his car. It's real cold out, a gray day in February, but Harold's sweating. He starts his car and roars off roward the hospital, driving—as Cherry would say— like a bat out of hell. They're letting Harold sray with her longer now. He knows it, they know it, but nobody says a word. Lois Hickey jusr looks the other way when the announcement "Visiting hours are over" crackles across the PA. Is this a good sign or a bad sign? Harold can't tell. He feels slow and confused, like a man underwater. "I think she looks better, don't you?" he said last night to Cherry's son Stan, the TV weatherman, who had driven down from Memphis for the day. Eyes slick and bright with tears, Stan went over to Harold and hugged him tight. This scared Harold to death, he has practically never touched his own sons, and he doesn't even know Stan, who's been grown and gone for years. Harold is not used to hugging anybody, especially men. Harold breathed in Stan's strong go-get-'em cologne, he buried his face in Stan's long curly hair. He thinks it is possible that Stan has a permanent. They'll do anything up in Memphis. Then Stan stepped back and put one hand on each of Harold's shoulders, holding him out at arm's length. Stan has his mother's wide, mobile mouth. The bright white light of Intensive Care glinted off the gold chain and the crystal that he wore around his neck. "I'm afraid we're going to lose her, Pop," he said. But Harold doesn't think so. Today he thinks Cherry looks the best she's looked in weeks, with a bright spot of color in each cheek to match her flaming hair. She's moving around a lot too, she keeps kicking the sheet off. "She's getting back some of that old energy now," he tells Cherry's daughter, Tammy Lynn Palladino, when she comes by after school. Tammy Lynn and Harold's son James are both members of the senior class, but they aren't friends. Tammy Lynn says James is a "stuck-up jock," a "preppie," and a "countryclubber." Harold can't say a word to defend his own son against these charges, he doesn't even know James anymore. It might be true, anyway. Tammy Lynn is real smart, a teenage egghead. She's got a full scholarship to Millsaps College for next year. She applied for it all by herself. As Cherry used to say, Tammy Lynn came into this world with a full deck of cards and an ace or two up her sleeve. Also she looks out for Number One. In this regard Tammy Lynn is as different from her mama as night from day, because Cherry would give you the shirt off her back and frequently has. That's gotten her into lots of trouble. With Ed Palladino, for instance, her second husband and Tammy Lynn's dad. Just about everybody in this town got took by Ed Palladino, who came in here wearing a seersucker suit and talking big about putting in an outlet mall across the river. A lot of people got burned on that outlet mall deal. But Ed Palladino had a way about him that made you want to cast your lot with his, it is true. You wanted to give Ed Palladino your savings, your time-sharing condo, your cousin, your ticket to the Super Bowl. Cherry gave it all. She married him and turned over what little inheritance she had from her daddy's death—and that's the only time in her life she ever had any money, mind you—and then she just shrugged and smiled her big crooked smile when he left town under cover of night. "C'est la vie," Cherry said. She donated the rest of his clorhes to the Salvation Army. "Que sera, serd," Cherry said, quoting a song that was popular when she was in junior high. Tammy Lynn sits by her mama's bed and holds Cherry's thin dry hand. "I brought you a Chick-Fil-A," she says to Harold. "It's over there in that bag." She points to the shelf by the door. Harold nods. Tammy Lynn works at Chick-Fil-A. Cherry's eyes are wide and blue and full of meaning as she stares at her daughter. Her mouth moves, both Harold and Tammy Lynn lean
forward, but then her mouth falls slack and her eyelids flutter shut. Tammy sits back. "I think she looks some better today, don't you?" Harold asks. "No," Tammy Lynn says. She has a flat little redneck voice. She sounds just the way she did last summer when she told Cherry that what she saw in the field was a cotton picker working at night, and not a UFO after all. "I wish I did but I don't, Harold. I'm going to go on home now and heat up some Beanee Weenee for Mamaw. You come on as soon as you can." "Well," Harold says. He feels like things have gotten all turned around here some way, he feels like he's the kid and Tammy Lynn has turned into a freaky little grown-up. He says, "I'll be along directly." But they both know he won't leave until Lois Hickey throws him out. And speaking of Lois, as soon as Tammy Lynn takes off, here she comes again, checking something on the respirator, making a little clucking sound with her mouth, then whirling to leave. When Lois walks, her panty girdle goes swish, swish, sivish at the top of her legs. She comes right back with the young black man named Rodney Broadbent, Respiratory Therapist. It says so on his badge. Rodney wheels a complicated-looking cart ahead of himself. He's all built up, like a weightlifter. "How you doing tonight, Mr. Stipe?" Rodney says. "I think she's some better," Harold says. Lois Hickey and Rodney look at him. "Well, lessee here," Rodney says. He unhooks the respirator tube at Cherry's throat, sticks the tube from his own machine down the opening, and switches on the machine. It makes a whirring sound. It looks like an electric ice cream mixer. Rodney Broadbent looks at Lois Hickey in a significant way as she turns to leave the room. They don't have to tell him, Harold knows. Cherry is worse, not better. Harold gets the Chick-Fil-A, unwraps it, eats it, and then goes over to stand by the window. It's already getting dark. The big mercury arc light glows in the hospital parking lot. A little wind blows some trash around on the concrete. He has had Cherry for three years, that's all. One trip to Disney World, two vacations at Gulf Shores, Alabama, hundreds of nights in the old metal bed out at the farm with Cherry sleeping naked beside him, her arm thrown over his stomach. They had a million laughs. "Alrightee," Rodney Broadbent nearly sings, unhooking his machine. Harold rurns to look at him. Rodney Broadbent certainly looks more like a middle linebacker than a respiratory therapist. But Harold likes him. "Well, Rodney?" Harold says. Rodney Starrs shadow-boxing in the middle of the room. "Tough times," he says finally. "These is tough times, Mr. Stipe." Harold stares at him. Rodney is light on his feet as can be. Harold sits down in the chair by the respirator. "What do you mean?" he asks. "I mean she is drowning, Mr. Stipe," Rodney says. He throws a punch which lands real close to Harold's left ear. "What I'm doing here, see, is suctioning. I'm pulling all the fluid up our of her lungs. But now looka here, Mr. Stipe, they is just too damn much of it. See this little doohickey here I'm measuring it with? This here is the danger zone, man. Now Mrs. Stipe, she has been in the clanger zone for some time. They is just too much damn fluid in there. What she got, anyway? Cancer and pneumonia both, am I right? What can I tell you, man? She is drowning." Rodney gives Harold a short affectionate punch in the ribs, men wheels his cart away. From the door, apparently struck by some misgivings, he says, "Well, man, if it was me, I'd want to know what the story is, you follow me, man? If it was me, what I'm saying. Harold can't see Rodney anymore, only hear his voice from the open door. "Thank you, Rodney," Harold says. He sits in the chair. In a way he has known this already, for quite some time. In a way, Rodney's news is no news, to Harold. He just hopes he will be
man enough to bear it, to do what will have to be done. Harold has always been scared that he is not man enough for Cherry Oxendine, anyway. This is his worst secret fear. He looks around the little Intensive Care room, searching for a sign, some sign, anything, that he will be man enough. Nothing happens. Cherry lies strapped to the bed, flanked by so many machines that it looks like she's in the cockpit of a jet. Her eyes are closed, eyelids fluttering, red spots on her freckled cheeks. Her chest rises and falls as the respirator pushes air in and out through the tube in her neck. He doesn't see how she can sleep in the bright white light of Intensive Care, where it is always noon. And does she dream? Cherry used to tell him her dreams, which were wild, long Technicolor dreams, like movies. Cherry played different parts in them. If you dream in color, it means you're intelligent, Cherry said. She used to tease him all the time. She thought Harold's own dreams were a stitch, dreams more boring than his life, dreams in which he'd drive to Jackson, say, or be washing his car. "Harold?" It's Ray Muncey, manager of the Food Lion at the mall. "Why, what are you doing over here, Ray?" Harold asks, and then in a flash he knows, Lois Hickey must have called him, to make Harold go on home. "I was just driving by and I thought, Hey, maybe Harold and me might run by the Holiday Inn, get a bite to eat." Ray shifts from foot to foot in the doorway. He doesn't come inside, he's not supposed to, nobody but immediate family is allowed in Intensive Care, and Harold's glad—Cherry would just die if people she barely knows, like Ray Muncey, got to see her looking so bad. "No, Ray, you go on and eat," Harold says. "I already ate. I'm leaving right now, anyway." "Well, how's the missus doing?" Ray is a big man, afflicted with big, heavy manners. "She's drowning," Harold says abruptly. Suddenly he remembers Cherry in a water ballet at the town pool, it must have been the summer of junior year, Fourth of July, Cherry and the other girls floating in a circle on their backs to form a giant flower—legs high, toes pointed. Harold doesn'r know it when Ray Muncey leaves. Out the window, the parking lot light glows like a big full moon. Lois Hickey comes in. "You've got to go home now, Harold," she says. "I'll call if there's any change." He remembers Cherry at Glass Lake, on the senior class picnic. Cherry's getting real agitated now, she tosses her head back and forth, moves her arms. She'd pull out the tubes if she could. She kicks off the sheet. Her legs are still good, great legs in fact, the legs of a beautiful young woman. Harold at seventeen was tall and skinny, brown hair in a soft flat crew cut, glasses with heavy black frames. His jeans were too short. He carried a pen-and-pencil set in a clear plastic case in his breast pocket. Harold and his best friend, Ben Hill, looked so much alike that people had trouble telling them apart. The}' did everyrhing together. They built model rockets, they read ever}' science fiction book they could get their hands on, they collected Lionel train parts and Marvel comics. They loved superheroes with special powers, enormous beings who leaped across rivers and oceans. Harold's friendship with Ben Hill kept the awful loneliness of the only child at bay, and it also kept him from having to talk to girls. You couldn't talk to those two, not seriously. They were giggling and bumping into each other all the time. They were immature. So it was in Ben's company that Harold experienced the most private, the most personal memory he has of Cherry Oxendine in high school. Oh, he also has those other memories you'd expect, the big public memories of Cherry being crowned Miss Greenwood High (for her talent; she surprised everybody by reciting "Abou Ben Adhem" in such a stirring way that there
wasn't a dry eye in the whole auditorium when she got through), or running out onto the field ahead of the team with the other cheerleaders, red curls flying, green and white skirt whirling out around her hips like a beach umbrella when she turned a cartwheel. Harold noticed her then, of course. He noticed her when she moved through the crowded halls of the high school with her walk rhat was almost a prance, she put a little something extra into it, all righr. Flarold noticed Cherry Oxendine then in the way that he noticed Sandra Dee on the cover of a magazine, or Annette Funicello on American Bandstand. But such girls were not for the likes of Harold, and Harold knew it. Girls like Cherry always had boyfriends like Lamar Peebles, who was hers—a doctor's son with a baby-blue convertible and plenty of money. They used to drive around town in his car, smoking cigarettes. Harold saw them, as he carried out grocery bags. He did not envy Lamar Peebles, or wish he had a girl like Cherry Oxendine. Only something about them made him stand where he was in rhe Food Lion lot, watching, until they had passed from sight. So Harold's close-up encounter with Cherry was unexpected. It took place at the senior class picnic, where Harold and Ben had been drinking beer all afternoon. No alcohol was allowed at the senior class picnic, but some of the more enterprising boys had brought out kegs the night before and hidden them in the woods. Anybody could go back there and pay some money and get some beer. The chaperones didn't know, or appeared not to know. In any case, the chaperones all left at six o'clock, when the picnic was officially over. Some of the class members left then too. Then some of them came back with more beer, more blankets. It was a free lake. Nobody could make you go home. Normally, Harold and Ben would have been among the first to leave, but because they had had four beers apiece, and because this was the first time they had ever had any beer ever, at all, they were still down by the water, skipping rocks and waiting to sober up so that they would not wreck Harold's mother's green Gremlin on the way home. All the cool kids were on the other side of the lake, listening to transisror radios. The sun went down. Bullfrogs started up. A mist came out all around the sides of the lake. It was a cloudy, humid day anyway, not a great day for a picnic. "If God is really God, how come He let Himself get crucified, is what I want to know," Ben said. Ben's daddy was a Holiness preacher, out in the county. But Harold heard something. "Hush, Ben," he said. "If I was God I would go around and really kick some ass," Ben said. Harold heard it again. It was almost too dark to see. "Damn." It was a girl's voice, followed by a splash. All of a sudden, Harold felt sober. "Who's there?" he asked. He stepped forward, right up to the water's edge. Somebody was in the water. Harold was wearing his swim trunks under his jeans, but he had not gone in the water himself. He couldn't stand to show himself in front of people. He thought he was too skinny. "Well, do something." It was the voice of Cherry Oxendine, almost wailing. She stumbled up the bank. Harold reached out and grabbed her arm. Close up, she was a mess, wet and muddy, with her hair all over her head. But the thing that got Harold, of course, was that she didn't have any top on. She didn't even try to cover them up either, just stomped her little foot on the bank and said, "I am going to kill Lamar Peebles when I get ahold of him." Harold had never even imagined so much skin. "What's going on?" asked Ben, from up the bank. Harold took off his own shirt as fast as he could and handed it over to Cherry Oxendine. "Cover yourself," he said. "Why, thank you." Cherry didn't bat an eye. She took his shirt and put it on, tying it stylishly at the waist. Harold couldn't believe it. Close up, Cherry was a lot smaller than she looked on
the stage or the football field. She looked up at Harold through her dripping hair and gave him her crooked grin. "Thanks, hey?" she said. And then she was gone, vanished into the mist and trees before Harold could say another word. He opened his mouth and closed it. Mist obscured his view. From the other side of the lake he could hear "Ramblin Rose" playing on somebody's radio. He heard a girl's high-pirched giggle, a boy's whooping laugh. "What's going on?" asked Ben. "Nothing," Harold said. It was the first time he had ever lied to Ben. Harold never told anybody what had happened that night, not ever. He felt that it was up to him to protect Cherry Oxendine's honor. Later, much later, when he and Cherry were lovers, he was astonished to learn that she couldn't remember any of this, not who she was with or what had happened or what she was doing in the lake like that with her top off, or Harold giving her his shirt. "I think that was sweet, though," Cherry told him. When Harold and Ben finally got home that night at nine or ten o'clock, Harold's mother was frantic. "You've been drinking," she shrilled at him under the hanging porch light. "And where's your shirt?" It was a new madras shirt which Harold had gotten for graduation. Now Harold's mother is out at the Hillandale Rest Home. Ben died in Vietnam, and Cherry is drowning. This time, and Harold knows it now, he can't help her. Oh, Cherry! Would she have been so wild if she hadn't been so cute? And what if her parents had been younger when she was born—normal-age parents—couldn't they have controlled her better? As it was, the Oxendines were sober, solid people living in a farmhouse out near the county line, and Cherry lit up their lives like a rocket. Her dad, Martin "Buddy" Oxendine, went to sleep in his chair every night right after supper, woke back up for the eleven-o'clock news, and then went to bed for good. Buddy was an elder in the Baptist church. Cherry's mom, Gladys Oxendine, made drapes for people. She assumed she would never have children at all because of her spastic colitis. Gladys and Buddy had started raising cockapoos when they gave up on children. Imagine Gladys's surprise, then, to find herself pregnant at thirty-eight, when she was already old! They say she didn't even know it when she went to the doctor. She thought she had a tumor. But then she got so excited, that old farm woman, when Dr. Grimwood told her what was what, and she wouldn't even consider an abortion when he mentioned the chances of a mongoloid. People didn't use to have babies so old then as they do now, so Gladys Oxendine's pregnancy was the talk of the county. Neighbors crocheted little jackets and made receiving blankets. Buddy built a baby room onto the house and made a cradle by hand. During the last two months of the pregnancy, when Gladvs had to stay in bed because of toxemia, people brought over casseroles and boiled cusrard, everything good. Gladys's pregnancy was the only time in her whole life that she was ever pretty, and she loved it, and she loved the attention, neighbors in and our of the house. When the baby was finally born on November 1, 1944, no parents were ever more ready than Gladys and Buddy Oxendine. And the baby was everything they hoped for too, which is not usually the case—the prettiest baby in the world, a baby like a little flower. They named her Doris Christine which is who she was until eighth grade, when she made junior varsity cheerleader and announced that she was changing her name to Cherry. Cherry! Even her parents had to admit it suited her better than Doris Christine. As a little girl, Doris Christine was redheaded, bouncy, and busy—she was always into something, usually something you'd never thought to tell her not to do. She started talking early and never shut up. Her old dad, old Buddy Oxendine, was so crazy about Doris Christine diat he took her everywhere with him in his red pickup truck. You got used to seeing the two of
them, Buddy and his curly-headed little daughter, riding the country roads together, going to the seed-and-feed together, sharing a shake at the Dairy Queen. Gladys made all of Doris Christine's clothes, the most beautiful little dresses in the world, with hand-smocking and French seams. They gave Doris Christine everything they could think of—what she asked for, what she didn't. "That child is going to get spoiled," people started to say. And of course she did get spoiled, she couldn't have helped that, but she was never spoiled rotten as so many are. She stayed sweet in spite of it all. Then along about ninth grade, soon after she changed her name to Cherry and got interested in boys, things changed between Cherry and the old Oxendines. Stuff happened. Instead of being the light of their lives, Cherry became the bane of their existence, the curse of their old age. She wanted to wear makeup, she wanted to have car dates. You can't blame her—she was old enough, sixteen. Everybody else did it. But you can't blame Gladys and Buddy either—they were old people by then, all worn out. They were not up to such a daughter. Cherry sneaked out. She wrecked a car. She ran away to Pensacola with a soldier. Finally, Gladys and Buddy just gave up. When Cherry eloped with the disc jockey, Don Westall, right after graduation, they threw up their hands. They did not do a thing about it. They had done the best they could, and everybody knew it. They went back to raising cockapoos. Cherry, living up in Nashville, Tennessee, had a baby, Stan, the one that's in his twenties now. Cherry sent baby pictures back to Gladys and Buddy, and wrote that she was going to be a singer. Six years later, she came home. She said nothing against Don Westall, who was still a disc jockey on WKLX, Nashville. You could hear him on the radio every night after ten P.M. Cherry said the breakup was all her fault. She said she had made some mistakes, but she didn't say what they were. She was thin and noble. Her kid was cute. She did not go back out to the farm then. She rented an apartment over the hardware store, down by the river, and got a job downtown working in Ginger's Boutique. After a year or so, she started acting more like herself again, although not quite like herself, she had grown up somehow in Nashville, and quit being spoiled. She put Stan, her kid, first. And if she did run around a little bit, or if she was the life of the party sometimes out at the country club, so what? Stan didn't want for a thing. By then the Oxendines were failing and she had to take care of them too, she had to drive her daddy up to Grenada for dialysis twice a week. It was not an easy life for Cherry, but if it ever got her down, you couldn't tell it. She was still cute. When her daddy finally died and left her a little money, everybody was real glad. Oh now, they said, Cherry Oxendine can quit working so hard and put her mama in a home or something and have a decent life. She can go on a cruise. But then along came Ed Palladino, and the rest is history. Cherry Oxendine was left with no husband, no money, a little girl, and a mean old mama to take care of. At least by this time Stan was in the Navy-Cherry never complained, though. She moved back out to the farm. When Ginger retired from business and closed her boutique, Cherry got another job, as a receptionist at Wallace, Wallace and Peebles. This was her undoing. Because Lamar Peebles had just moved back to town with his family, to join his father's firm. Lamar had two little girls. He had been married to a tobacco heiress since college. All this time he had run around on her. He was not on the up-and-up. And when he encountered redheaded Cherry Oxendine again after the passage of so many years, all those old fireworks went off again. They got to be a scandal, then a disgrace. Lamar said he was going to marry her, and Cherry believed him. After six months of it, Mrs. Lamar Peebles checked herself into a mental hospital in Silver Hill, Connecticut. First, she called her lawyers. And then it was all over, not even a year after it began. Mr. and Mrs. Lamar Peebles were reconciled and moved to Winston-
Salem, North Carolina, her hometown. Cherry Oxendine lost her job at Wallace, Wallace and Peebles, and was reduced to working in the deli at Food Lion. Why did she do it? Why did she lose all the goodwill she'd built up in this community over so many years? It is because she doesn't know how to look out for Number One. Her own daughter, Tammy Lynn Palladino, is aware of this. "You have got a fatal flaw, Mama," Tammy said after learning about fatal flaws in English class. "You believe everything everybody tells you." Still, Tammy loves her mother. Sometimes she writes her mother's whole name, Cherry Oxendine Westall Palladino Stikes, over and over in her Blue Horse notebook. Tammy Lynn will never be half the woman her mother is, and she's so smart she knows it. She gets a kick out of her morher's wild ideas. "When you gee too old to be cute, honey, you get to be eccentric," Cherry told Tammy one time. It's the truest thing she ever said. It seems to Tammy that the main thing about her mother is, Cherry always has to have something going on. If it isn't a man it's something else, such as having her palm read by thar woman over in French Camp, or astrology, or the grapefruit diet. Cherry believes in the Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, Atlantis, and ghosts. It kills her that she's not psychic. The UFO Club was just the latest in a long string of interests although it has lasted the longest, starting back before Cherry's marriage to Harold Sdkes. And then Cherry got cancer, and she kind of forgot about it. But Tammy still remembers the night her mama first got so turned on to UFOs. Rhonda Ramey, Cherry's best friend, joined the UFO Club first. Rhonda and Cherry are a lot alike, although it's hard to see this at first. While Cherry is short and peppy, Rhonda is tall, thin, and listless. She looks like Cher. Rhonda doesn't have any children. She's crazy about her husband, Bill, but he's a workaholic who runs a string of video rental stores all over northern Mississippi, so he's gone a lot, and Rhonda gets bored. She works out at the spa, but it isn't enough. Maybe this is why she got so interested when the UFO landed at a farm outside her mother's hometown of Como. It was first spotted by sixteen-year-old Donnie Johnson just at sunset, as he was finishing his chores on his parents' farm. He heard a loud rumbling sound "in the direction of the hog house," it said in the paper. Looking up, he suddenly saw a "brilliantly lit mushroom-shaped object" hovering about two feet above the ground, with a shaft of white light below and glowing all over with an intensely bright multicolored light, "like the light of a welder's arc." Donnie said it sounded like a jet. He was temporarily blinded and paralyzed. He fell down on the ground. When he came back to his senses again, it was gone. Donnie staggered into the kitchen where his parents, Durel, fifty-four, and Erma, fortynine, were eating supper, and told them what had happened. They all ran back outside to the field, where they found four large imprints and four small imprinrs in the muddy ground, and a nearby clump of sage grass on fire. The hogs were acting funny, bunching up, looking dazed. Immediately, Durel jumped in his truck and went to get the sheriff, who came right back with two deputies. All in all, six people viewed the site while the bush continued to burn, and who knows how many people—half of Como—saw the imprints the next day. Rhonda saw them too. She drove out to the Johnson farm with her mother, as soon as she heard about it. It was a close encounter of the second kind, according to Civil Air Patrol head Glenn Raines, who appeared on TV to discuss it, because the UFO "interacted with its surroundings in a significant way." A close encounter of the first kind is simplv a close-range sighting, while a close encounter of the third kind is something like the most famous example, of Betty and Barney
Hill of Exeter, New Hampshire, who were actually kidnapped by a UFO while they were driving along on a trip. Betty and Barney Hill were taken aboard the alien ship and given physical exams by intelligent humanoid beings. Two hours and thirty-five minutes were missing from their trip, and afterward, Betty had to be treated for acute anxiety. Glenn Raines, wearing his brown Civil Air Patrol uniform, said all this on TV. His appearance, plus what had happened at the Johnson farm, sparked a rash of sightings all across Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas for the next two years. Metal disk-like objects were seen, and luminous objects appearing as lights at night. In Levelland, Texas, fifteen people called the police to report an egg-shaped UFO appearing over State Road 1173. Overall, the UFOs seemed to show a preference for soybean fields and teenage girl viewers. But a pretty good photograph of a UFO flying over the Gulf was taken by a retired man from Pascagoula, so you can't generalize. Clubs sprang up all over the place. The one that Rhonda and Cherry went to had seventeen members and met once a month at the junior high school. Tammy recalls exactly how her mama and Rhonda acted the night they came home from Cherry's first meeting. Cherry's eyes sparkled in her face like Brenda Starr's eyes in the comics. She started right in telling Tammy all about it, beginning with the Johnsons from Como and Betty and Barney Hill. Tammy was not impressed. "I don't believe it," she said. She was president of the Science Club at the junior high school. "You are the most irritating child!" Cherry said. " What don't you believe?" "Well, any of it," Tammy said then. "All of it," and this has remained her attitude ever since. "Listen, honey, jimmy Carter saw one," Cherry said triumphantly. "In nineteen seventy-one, at the Executive Mansion in Georgia. He turned in an official report on it." "How come nobody knows about it, then?" Tammy asked. She was a tough customer. "Because the government covered it up!" said Rhonda, just dying to tell this part. "People see UFOs all the time, it's common knowledge, they are trying to make contact with us right now, honey, but the government doesn't want the average citizen to know about it. There's a big cover-up going on." "It's just like Watergate." Cherry opened a beer and handed it over to Rhonda. "That's right," Rhonda said, "and every time there's a major incident, you know what happens? These men from the government show up at your front door dressed all in black. After they get through with you, you'll wish you never heard the word 'saucer.' You turn pale and get real sick. You can't get anything to stay on your stomach." Tammy cracked up. Bur Rhonda and Cherry went on and on. They had official-looking gray notebooks to log their sightings in. At their meetings, they reported these sightings to each other, and studied up on the subject in general. Somebody in the club was responsible for the educational part of each meeting, and somebody else broughr the refreshments. Tammy Lynn learned to keep her mouth shut. It was less embarrassing than belly dancing; she had a friend whose mother took belly dancing at the YMCA. Tammy did not tell her mama about all the rational explanations for UFOs that she found in the school library. They included: (1) hoaxes; (2) natural phenomena, such as fungus causing the so-called fairy rings sometimes found after a landing; (3) real airplanes flying off course; and Tammv's favorite, (4) the Fata Morgana, described as a "rare and beautiful type of mirage, constantly changing, the result of unstable layers of warm and cold air. The Fata Morgana takes its name from fairy lore and is said to evoke in the viewer a profound sense of longing," the book went on to say. Tammy's biology teacher, Mr. Owens, said he thought that the weather patterns in Mississippi might be especially conducive to this
phenomenon. But Tammy kept her mouth shut. And after a while, when nobody in the UFO Club saw anything, its membership declined sharply. Then her mama met Harold Stikes, then Harold Stikes left his wife and children and moved out to the farm with them, and sometimes Cherry forgot to attend the meetings, she was so happy with Harold Stikes. Tammy couldn't see tuhy, initially. In her opinion, Harold Stikes was about as interesting as a telephone pole. "But he's so nice!" Cherry tried to explain it to Tammy Lynn. Finally Tammy decided that there is nothing in the world that makes somebody as attractive as if they really love you. And Harold Stikes really did love her mama, there was no question. That old man—what a crazy old Romeo! Why, he proposed to Cherry when she was still in the hospital after she had her breast removed (this was back when they thought that was it, that the doctors had gotten it all). "Listen, Cherry," he said solemnly, gripping a dozen red roses. "I want you to marry me." "What?" Cherry said. She was still groggy. "I want you to marry me," Harold said. He knelt down heavily beside her bed. "Harold! Get up from there!" Cherry said. "Somebody will see you." "Say yes," said Harold. "I just had my breast removed." "Say yes," he said again. " Yes, yes, yes!" Cherry said. And as soon as she got out of the hospital, they were married out in the orchard, on a beautiful April day, by Lew Uggams, a JP from out of town. They couldn't find a local preacher to do it. The sky was bright blue, not a cloud in sight. Nobody was invited except Stan, Tammy, Rhonda and Bill, and Cherry's mother, who wore her dress inside out. Cherry wore a new pink lace dress, the color of cherry blossoms. Tough little Tammy cried and cried. It's the most beautiful wedding she's ever seen, and now she's completely devoted to Harold Stikes. So Tammy leaves the lights on for Harold when she finally goes to bed that night. She tried to wait up for him, but she has to go to school in the morning, she's got a chemistry test. Her mamaw is sound asleep in the little added-on baby room that Buddy Oxendine built for Cherry. Gladys acts like a baby now, a spoiled baby at that. The only thing she'll drink is Sprite out of a can. She talks mean. She doesn't like anything in the world except George and Tammy, the two remaining cockapoos. They bark up a storm when Harold finally gets back out to the farm, at one-thirty. The cockapoos are barking, Cherry's mom is snoring like a chain saw. Harold doesn't see how Tammy Lynn can sleep through all of this, but she always does. Teenagers can sleep through anything. Harold himself has started waking up several times a night, his heart pounding. He wonders if he's going to have a heart attack. He almost mentioned his symptoms to Lois Hickey last week, in fact, but then thought, What the hell. His heart is broken. Of course it's going to act up some. And everything, not only his heart, is out of whack. Sometimes he'll break into a sweat for no reason. Often he forgets really crucial things, such as filing his estimated income tax on January 15. Harold is not the kind to forget something this important. He has strange aches that float from joint to joint. He has headaches. He's lost twelve pounds. Sometimes he has no appetite at all. Other times, like right now, he's just starving. Harold goes in the kitchen and finds a flat rectangular casserole, carefully wrapped in tinfoil, on the counter, along with aTupperware cake carrier. He lifts off the top of the cake carrier and finds a pina colada cake, his favorite. Then he pulls back the tinfoil on the casserole. Lasagna! Plenty is left over. Harold sticks it in the microwave. He knows that the cake and the lasagna were left here by his ex-wife. Ever since Cherry has been
in Intensive Care, Joan has been bringing food out to the farm. She comes when Harold's at work or at the hospital, and leaves it with Gladys or Tammy. She probably figures that Harold would refuse it, if she caught him at home, which he would. She's a grear cook, though. Harold takes the lasagna out of the microwave, opens a beer, and sits down at the kitchen table. He loves Joan's lasagna. Cherry's idea of a terrific meal is one she doesn't have to cook. Harold remembers eating in bed with Cherry, tacos from Taco Bell, sour-cream-and-onion chips, beer. He gets some more lasagna and a big wedge of pina colada cake. Now it's two-thirty, but for some reason Harold is not a bit sleepy. His mind whirls with thoughts of Cherry. He snaps off all the lights and stands in the darkened house. His heart is racing. Moonlight comes in the windows, it falls on the old patterned rug. Outside, it's as bright as day. He puts his coat on and goes out, with the cockapoos scampering along beside him. They are not even surprised. They think it's a fine time for a walk. Harold goes past the mailbox, down the dirt road between the fields. Out here in the country, the sky is both bigger and closer than it is in town. Harold feels like he's in a huge bowl turned upside down, with tiny little pinpoints of light shining through. And everything is silvered by the moonlight—the old fenceposts, the corn stubble in the flat long fields, a distant barn, the highway at the end of the dirt road, his own strange hand when he holds it out to look at it. He remembers when she waited on him in the Food Lion deli, three years ago. He had asked for a roast beef sandwich, which come prepackaged. Cherry put it on his plate. Then she paused, and cocked her hip, and looked at him. "Can I give you some potato salad to go with that?" she asked. "Some slaw?" Harold looked at her. Some red curls had escaped the required net. "Nothing else," he said. But Cherry spooned a generous helping of potato salad onto his plate. "Thank you so much," he said. They looked at each other. "I know I know you," Cherry said. It came to him then. "Cherry Oxendine," said Harold. "I remember you from high school." "Lord, you've got a great memory, then!" Cherry had an easy laugh. "That was a hundred years ago." "Doesn't seem like it." Harold knew he was holding up the line. "Depends on who you're talking to," Cherry said. Later that day, Harold found an excuse to go back over to the deli for coffee and apple pie, then he found an excuse to look through the personnel files. He started eating lunch at the deli every day, without making any conscious decision to do so. In the afternoons, when he went back for coffee, Cherry would take her break and sit at a table with him. Harold and Cherry talked and talked. They talked about their families, their kids, high school. Cherry told him everything that had happended to her. She was tough and funny, not bitter or self-pitying. They talked and talked. In his whole life, Harold had never had so much to say. During this period, which lasted for several weeks, his whole life took on a heightened aspect. Everything that happened to him seemed significant, a little incident to tell Cherry about. Every song he liked on the radio he remembered, so he could ask Cherry if she liked it too. Then there came the day when they were having coffee and she mentioned she'd left her car at Al's Garage that morning to get a new clutch. "I'll give you a ride over there to pick it up," said Harold instantly. In his mind he immediately canceled the sales meeting he had scheduled for four o'clock. "Oh, that's too much trouble," Cherry said. "But I insist." In his conversations with Cherry, Harold had developed a brand-new gallant manner he had never had before.
"Well, if you're sure it's not any trouble ..." Cherry grinned at him like she knew he really wanted to do it, and that afternoon when he grabbed her hand suddenly before letting her out at Al's Garage, she did not pull it away. The next weekend Harold took her up to Memphis and they stayed at the Peabody Hotel, where Cherry got the biggest kick out of the ducks in the lobby, and ordering from room service. "You're a fool," Harold's friends told him later, when the shit hit the fan. But Harold didn't think so. He doesn't think so now, walking the old dirt road on the Oxendine farm in the moonlight. He loves his wife. He feels that he has been ennobled and enlarged, by knowing Cherry Oxendine. He feels like he has been specially selected among men, to receive a precious gift. He stepped out of his average life for her, he gave up being a good man, but the rewards have been extraordinary. He's glad he did it. He'd do it all over again. Still walking, Harold suddenly knows that something is going to happen. But he doesn't stop walking. Only, the whole world around him seems to waver a bit, and intensify. The moonlight shines whiter than ever. A little wind whips up out of nowhere. The stars are twinkling so brightly that theyr seem to dance, actually dance, in the sky. And then, while Harold watches, one of them detaches itself from the rest of the skv and grows larger, moves closer, until it's clear that it is actually moving across the sky, at an angle to the earth. A falling star, perhaps? A comet? Harold stops walking. The star moves faster and taster, with an erratic pattern. It's getting real close now. It's no star. Harold hears a high whining noise, like a blender. The cockapoos huddle against his ankles. They don't bark. Now he can see the blinking red lights on the top of it, and the beam of white light shooting out the bottom. His coat is blown straight out behind him by the wind. He feels like he's going blind. He shields his eyes. At first it's as big as a barn, then a tobacco warehouse. It covers the field. Although Harold can't say exactly how it communicates to him or even if it does, suddenly his soul is filled to bursting. The ineffable occurs. And then, more quickly than it came, it's gone, off toward Carrollton, rising inro the night, leaving the field, the farm, the road. Harold turns back. It will take Cherry Oxendine two more weeks to die. She's tough. And even when there's nothing left of her bur heart, she will fight all the way. She will go out turious, squeezing Harold's hand at the very moment of death, clinging last to every minute of this bright, hard life. And although at first he won't want to, Harold will go on living. He will buy another store. Gladys will die. Tammy Lynn will make Phi Beta Kappa. Harold will start attending the Presbyterian church again. Eventually Harold may even go back to his family, but he will love Cherry Oxendine until the day he dies, and he will never, ever, tell anybody what he saw.
Lee Smith at Home in Appalachia by Jeanne McDonald As they say in the South, Lee Smith has never met a stranger. Five minutes after you meet her, you are exchanging intimate secrets and discussing weighty things-metaphysical issues, humanity, the really important stuff. Smith demonstrates an empathy and involvement with the concerns of others that are so sincere, you realize immediately that she herself has been on the same emotional plateau at one time or another. Her lively blue eyes are as friendly and approachable as a cool lake you can wade into, and her smile and expressions seem completely implicated with everything you are telling her. No wonder her
characters are so real, her subjects so genuine. Lee Smith understands. She listens. And after her discovery of James Still, Smith began listening even more intently to the stories told in Grundy, taping them and writing them down. She coaxed her mother to retell tales from the past that she might have forgotten, talked to her father about ghost stories and legends of the region, and prompted her Aunt Kate to tell her version of the truth. ‘Writing comes out of a life lived,’ James Still said once in an interview (Knoxville News-Sentinel, May 16, 1993). ‘For me, ideas are hanging from limbs like pears, from fences like gourds. They rise up like birds from cover.’ So it was for Lee Smith, who began to incorporate all those true tales and anecdotes from Grundy into her novels. Last year, at the beginning of her ninth novel, Saving Grace (Putnam, 1996), she quoted these lines from T. S. Eliot’s ‘Little Giddings’: We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. During the writing of her fourth novel, Oral History (Putnam, 1983), another revelation occurred. Smith discovered that the device of using first-person narrative gave her characters dignity and removed stiffness from the dialogue. Now she had place, story, and voice, the voice that had been in her head, in her ears, on the tip of her tongue, for years. The rhythms of the native dialect came naturally to her. Even in the novels she had read as a child, Smith had fallen in love with the Southern literary voice. ‘Of course,’ she says, ‘it was impossible not to be influenced by Faulkner,’ and it was from novels like The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying that she got the idea of multiple narrators, even though Faulkner’s Deep South settings, with their Spanish moss, ruined columns, and crumbling old mansions, were a world apart from Grundy’s dark hills and poverty-ridden hollows. There were no black people in Grundy, either. For Smith, Faulkner’s world was so alien, it might as well have been a foreign country. The voices of Grundy that already existed in her head were reinforced by the characters in Eudora Welty’s ‘Shower of Gold’ and Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Everything That Rises Must Converge.’ Although Smith is often compared to both these Southern writers, her own reading taste is broad and eclectic. She lists Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse as the ‘perfect novel,’ is an avid reader of poetry, and, with tongue in cheek, calls Shakespeare ‘real good.’ Smith could never be labeled as a ‘grit-lit’ writer who reduces poor white Southerners to generic caricatures. She brings to her characters a decency and dignity that makes them as credible as any memorable character in English literature. Some people, however, equate Southern dialects with ignorance-in both characters and authors. Smith recounts an episode that occurred early in her career, when she gave a reading at Columbia University. As soon as she began to speak, several people got up and walked out of the auditorium, put off, she assumed, by her thick Southern accent. Others call her accent ‘lilting,’ ‘charming,’ and Newsweek summed up the impact of her work in a review of her fifth novel, Fair and Tender Ladies (Putnam, 1988): ‘Her work is about the moment when, as you look at or listen to a work of naďve art, it stops being a curiosity and starts to speak to you in a human voice.’ Lee Smith made a giant leap into the mainstream when Oral History was published. With that novel, she became the titular queen of the new Southern regional movement, which Peter Guralnick, writing in the Los Angeles Times Magazine (May 21, 1995), defined as a ‘simultaneous embrace of past and present, this insistent chronicling of the small, heroic battles of the human
spirit, a recognition of the dignity and absurdity of the commonplace.’ Guralnick includes among the movement’s members Larry Brown, Kaye Gibbons, Cormac McCarthy, Jill McCorkle, Jayne Anne Phillips, Anne Tyler, and James Wilcox. Though they may have varied literary styles, all these authors, like Smith, write stories with an exceptionally strong sense of place. ‘In the South,’ Smith says, ‘sense of place implies who you are and what your family did. It’s not just literally the physical surroundings, what stuff looks like. It’s a whole sense of the past. Even if I write a short story, I have to make diagrams of what the character’s house looks like and where the house is in relation to the town.’ In fact, Putnam recently returned to her a map she drew when she wrote Oral History, depicting not only the physical setting for the novel, but also the geographical relationship of all the characters. Oral History is the virtual prototype of the modern Appalachian novel, but it is also the book that broke Lee Smith out of the regional mold. ‘Lee Smith,’ says Guralnick, ‘is the latest in a long line of Southerners who transform the region’s voices and visions into quintessentially American novels.’ Other novels by Smith that celebrate the ‘small, heroic battles of the human spirit’ followed soon after: Family Linen (Putnam, 1985), Fair and Tender Ladies, The Devil’s Dream (Putnam, 1992), and, in 1996, Saving Grace. Smith’s first novel came out of her senior thesis at Hollins College under the tutelage of Louis Rubin, who later founded Algonquin Press. The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed, published by Harper and Row in 1968, was an impressive beginning for such a young writer, but there was a period early in her career when the initial momentum broke down. ‘Harper and Row had published my second and third novels [Something in the Wind, 1971, and Fancy Strut, 1973], when my wonderful editor, Cass Canfield, retired. I was young, living in Alabama, and my books had lost money for the publishers. I had been published in Best Writing From American Colleges, had won a Book-of-the-Month Club Writing Fellowship, and I had a good agent, Perry Knowlton. But nobody would take my new novel, Black Mountain Breakdown. Not even my agent believed in it. To further complicate matters, Smith realized that her marriage to her first husband, poet James Seay, was disintegrating, and she had two young sons to care for. From 1973 to 1981 she taught high school English and a variety of other courses and had actually enrolled in graduate school for training as a special education teacher when her friend Roy Blount, Jr., helped her find the New York agent who still represents her work-Liz Darhanshoff-and her literary career took off again. ‘Faith Sale at Putnam became my editor and remains my editor after all these years,’ says Smith, ‘and that ended the nonpublishing streak.’ She handled the temporary defeat as cheerfully as she handles all obstacles: ‘I have never had writer’s block,’ she says wryly, ‘but I have definitely had publisher’s block.’ Meanwhile, back in Grundy, nobody had ever doubted that Lee Smith would grow up to be a famous storyteller, especially not Smith herself, who says she had been ‘romantically dedicated’ to the grand idea of being a writer ever since she could remember. Like Karen, the teen-aged narrator in her story ‘Tongues of Fire’ in the short story collection Me and My Baby View the Eclipse, Putnam, 1990) who Smith says is closest to her autobiographical double, she often pictured herself ‘poised at the foggy edge of a cliff someplace in the south of France, wearing a cape, drawing furiously on a long cigarette, hollow-cheeked and haunted.’ As soon as she was able to spell, Smith started writing stories. ‘I loved it,’ she said, ‘because everything happened just the way I wanted it to. Writing stories gave me a special power.’ Her first ‘novel,’ written on her mother’s stationery when Smith
was eight years old, had as its main characters her two favorite people at the time-Adlai Stevenson and Jane Russell. The plot involved their falling in love, heading west in a covered wagon, and converting to Mormonism. At the age of 11, Smith and her best friend, Martha Sue Owens, published a neighborhood newspaper, The Small Review, which they laboriously hand-copied for 12 neighbors. Articles from the newspaper show evidence of Smith’s budding talent for detailed observation as well as her curiosity about people’s idiosyncrasies. Her controversial editorial, ‘George McGuire Is Too Grumpy,’ exacted an apology to the neighbor across the street, but it was indicative of Smith’s dedication to truth in writing. For example, in the short story ‘Fancy Strut’ in the collection Me and My Baby View the Eclipse, she writes, ‘Bob and Frances Pitt stayed in a bridal suite in the Ocean-Aire Autel at Fort Walton Beach, Florida, on their honeymoon, and had a perfectly all right time; but do you know what Johnny B. and Sandy DuBois did? They went to the Southern 500 at Darlington, South Carolina, and sat out in the weather on those old hard benches for three entire days, watching the cars go around and around.’ In another story, ‘Life on the Moon’ (in Me and My Baby View the Eclipse), she writes: ‘Lonnie took the rug and the E-Z Boy and his clothes and six pieces of Tupperware, that’s all, and moved in with a nurse from the hospital, Sharon Ledbetter, into her one-bedroom apartment at Colony Courts.’ It is these ‘particulars of life’ that are ‘splendidly observed,’ said reviewer Caroline Thompson, writing in the Los Angeles Times at the publication of Black Mountain Breakdown (Putnam, 1981): ‘They would make a Carson McCullers of a Flannery O’Connor proud. Smith already knows her characters intimately before she sits down to write the first word of a story. In order to keep her work spontaneous, she rarely revises, which is lucky, because she still writes first drafts in longhand. But she knows exactly what her characters are going to do because, she says, they tell her. In fact, she describes herself as the medium through which those characters speak. For her, voices are ‘easy to do. There’s always a human voice that’s telling me the story.’ It is easy for us as readers to accept her declaration that she is merely the vehicle for her characters’ stories when we see how accurately she gives voice to those poverty-stricken daughters, wives, and mothers who live in the mountain ‘hollers’ she knew when she was growing up in Grundy. Her empathy and her innate ability to recreate the events of their lives and the cadence of their voices are factors that help the reader understand-even love-those women who marry young, are weighed down by poverty and children while they are mere children themselves, and who usually die never having seen the world beyond the shadowy mountains where the sun rarely shows itself before noon. Most of Smith’s novels deal with women whom Publishers Weekly (May 1995) called ‘spirited women of humble background who are destined to endure difficult and often tragic times.’ She draws her women so thoroughly-Crystal Spangler in Black Mountain Breakdown, Florida Grace Shepherd in Saving Grace, Ivy Rowe in Fair and Tender Ladies-that by the time you have finished her novels, you feel as if you have made two new friends-the character and Lee Smith herself. Until Smith began to write novels, most southern heroines, like Scarlett O’Hara, were from privileged families. Poor white women remained in the background, unexamined and unworthy of star billing. But Smith changed all that by exploring their hearts and minds and resurrecting the dignity of Appalachian women. Saving Grace is the perfect example of a story and voice that Smith says ‘possessed her,’ much as Ivy Rowe’s had in Fair and Tender Ladies. In fact, she was so involved with Ivy, a character she says helped her deal with the death of her own mother, that she was reluctant to give up the manuscript when her editor declared the book finished. Grace had already been speaking to Smith for a while when she went to the annual
Flannery O’Connor Festival in Milledgeville, Georgia. She returned home to Chapel Hill, reread all the O’Connor works she could find, submerged herself in a torrent of writing, and delivered the manuscript to Putnam two years early. ‘I got taken over by Grace,’ she says. ‘It was the most compelling narrative that had ever come my way. But even when it was finished and I went to the post office to mail the manuscript to the publisher, I still hadn’t thought of a name for the book. While I was waiting in line, the wife of the local pediatrician came in. ‘What’s the book about?’ she asked me. ‘And what’s the character’s name?’ ‘‘Grace,’ I told her,’ recounts Smith. ‘‘Well, there’s your title, Lee,’ she said. ‘Call it Saving Grace.’ And I did.’ One reason so many Southern fans identify with Lee Smith is that she tells a story in the same convoluted way that they themselves do, using intimate asides, gossipy digressions, and personal references, just as any friend would tell a story in ordinary conversation. ‘The way Southerners tell a story is really specific to the South,’ Smith says. ‘It’s a whole narrative strategy, it’s an approach. Every kind of information is imparted in the form of a story.’ Ask for directions in the South? She laughs. ‘It’s not just turn left. It’s I remember the time my cousin went up there and got bit by a mad dog. It’s a whole different approach to interactions between people and to transmitting information.’ There is a fine line between the exaggerations and embellishments with which Southerners give details and what they define as a story. ‘My father was fond of saying that I would climb a tree to tell a lie rather than stand on the ground to tell the truth,’ says Smith. ‘In fact, in the mountains where I come from, a lie was often called a story, and well do I remember being shaken until my teeth rattled and [given] the stern admonition: ‘Don’t you tell me no story, now.’ But Smith was a precocious and imaginative child, and her dramatic views were reinforced by books that gave her an insight to the outside world that few others in Grundy were privy to. Though none of her large extended family ever read novels, Smith discovered literature early. ‘Not for entertainment or information,’ she says, ‘but to feel all wild and trembly inside.’ Her favorites were ‘anything at all about horses and saints. Nobody ever told me something was too old for me because they didn’t know, see? They hadn’t read them. I read stuff that would have made my mother die-Mandingo, Frank Yerby, Butterfield 8, lots of John O’Hara. And Raintree County put me to bed for two days. I had to lie down.’ Smith gave these same books to Florida Grace Shepherd to read in Saving Grace, and that is how Grace, like Smith, learned that there was much more to explore in the world. Still, it is the people Smith grew up with who provided most of the material and background for her characters: the minister and his wife, her grandmother, her friends who lived in the hollers, or the women who worked in her father’s dime store and talked about babies being born ‘with veils across their faces.’ Although her characters may be eccentric or bizarre, they are always believable, and their dimension emanates from Smith’s ability to slip into other people’s hearts and minds. Even when he characters are flawed-shallow or evil or crafty-she gives the reader something to love in each one. Their weaknesses and vulnerability make them seem real, and every single one of her characters is the kind of person you can still meet in southern Appalachia today. You can still find the Randy Newhouse of Saving Grace at any roadside tavern in the South; you can still hear Travis Word preaching at any Southern fundamentalist country church; and you can see Virgil Shepherd on religious TV on any day of the week. In order to make these characters realizable, Smith gives them dignity. ‘Smith has great empathy for the poor,’ said Publishers Weekly in a 1996 review of Saving Grace, ‘uneducated country people who yearn for a transcendent message to infuse their lives with spiritual meaning.’
A review of Saving Grace in The New York Times Book Review complained that Smith had made her characters ‘dangerously close to cliché,’ but anybody who has grown up in the South recognizes in Smith’s stories his cousin, or an eccentric neighbor, or the man who runs the grocery store down at the crossroads. And Lee Smith knows human nature. When she wants more information for a story, she dives in headfirst. For background on Family Linen she took a job as a shampoo girl at a local beauty shop to learn firsthand how her characters’ lives would play out. Nothing is too demanding or exhausting for Smith. She is a woman who loves her work. In conjunction with her latest award-a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest grant, which gives her a generous financial stipend and a three-year sabbatical-she chose to affiliate with the Hindman Settlement School in Kentucky, where, ironically, James Still was librarian in 1932. Besides the connection wit Still, Smith is attracted to the area because it reminds her of Grundy, and she feels an affinity to the people there. She has been working with writing students at Hindman’s Adult Learning Center and at other eastern Kentucky schools. Smith has also been the recipient of the Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction (1991), the Sir Walter Raleigh Award (1989), the John Dos Passos Award for Literature (1987), the North Carolina Award for Fiction (1984), and a Lyndhurst Prize. She left Hollins College in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in English and $3,000 from her first major award, the Book-of-the-Month College English Writing Contest Prize, and embarked on a career that has spanned 30 years. The affiliation in Kentucky has excited and energized Smith. ‘Watching people express themselves in language,’ she muses,’ is like watching them fall in love.’ She is particularly excited and inspired by the older participants in her workshops, especially the ones who have only recently learned to read and write. For the first time, she says, they are able to express on paper the scores of stories that have been stored in their heads for years. And-lucky for them-they have Lee Smith to help. ‘I love to work with older writers,’ says Smith. ‘At North Carolina State University I have lots of older graduate students, but it’s good to get out of the academic community where people are always deconstructing texts and talking about symbolism. This experience in Kentucky puts the emphasis on communication and how thrilling it is to read and write.’ For both Smith and the adults enrolled in the literacy program, the ultimate fulfillment is seeing their words in print for the first time. ‘The publishers are Lila Wallace, Kinko’s, and me,’ says Smith wit a laugh. ‘We’ve already printed two autobiographies in batches of 1,000 and we’re selling out.’ Some of the manuscripts are being used by other writing workshops as models of how writing can be taught in the community. Next year Smith will return to teaching at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. She and her second husband, Hal Crowther, a syndicated journalist and columnist for Oxford American magazine, have recently bought an old house in Hillsborough, North Carolina, eight miles from their former Chapel Hill home. They’ve also purchased a cabin in Jefferson, North Carolina, where Smith grows dahlias and roses and nourishes 20 apple trees. The cabin and the surrounding woods remind her of Grundy and her roots and the people who have been her greatest source of inspiration. But while she’s living other areas of her life, plots are still buzzing around in her head, and she rarely takes a vacation from her stories. Louis Rubin, Smith’s former writing teacher, has said of her: ‘Lee’s a real writer. She writes all the time. She writes when she’s down. She writes when she’s up-that’s just her way of dealing with the world.’ ‘I write fiction the way other people write in their journals,’ Smith says. ‘It helps me keep track of time so I
can see what I’m up to.’ Often writing helps her work through real-life trauma. It’s her personal brand of therapy, the way she deals with whatever emotional ups and downs she inherited from her beloved manic-depressive parents. She never discussed their illness while they were alive, but it’s something she is dealing with openly and honestly now. ‘Sometimes when I look back at something I’ve written, I remember what was going on in my life at that time, and I see how I worked it out through the writing.’ The deaths of both her parents in recent years and their constant history of depression have bee overwhelming, but writing, she says, has actually helped her to work through and come to terms with such obstacles. Now, life generally seems balmy. ‘I want more time with Hal, more years,’ Smith says adoringly of her husband. (The two met at Duke University’s Evening College, where both were teaching writing courses.) Smith never loses her enthusiasm for teaching classes and workshops. Although she firmly believes that such programs have given rise to a proliferation of good writers, ‘The terrible paradox,’ she says, ‘ is that even though there are more good writers now than ever before, publishers are publishing less literary fiction. In fact, almost nobody who is a good literary writer ever makes it any more.’ Among those who have made it, a few of her current favorites are Richard Bausch, Larry Brown, James Lee Burke, Clyde Edgerton, Ellen Gilchrist, Toni Morrison, Lewis Nordan, and Anne Tyler. Smith’s project that she calls ‘a stocking stuffer’ was published by Algonquin in the fall of 1996. Although most of her books have been published by Putnam, she has always wanted to do a project with Algonquin editor Shannon Ravenel, her old friend from Hollins. Like Fair and Tender Ladies, which is an epistolary novel based on actual letters Smith found at a garage sale, The Christmas Letters is a novella composed of actual Christmas letters from three generations of women in the same family. But the resemblance stops there. ‘The new book also involves recipes,’ she says. ‘I guess I could tell my entire life story through food. You know how we went through that phase using Cool Whip and cream of mushroom soup? And then we went on to fondue, then quiche? Now it’s salsa.’ Recently she has also been busy promoting her newest book, News of the Spirit, a collection of short stories and novellas released in September by Putnam, and is working on new stories. Smith has come full circle, from discovering James Still’s novel and becoming a friend of the author himself at the Hindman Center in Kentucky, to seeing her first novel, The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed, recently reprinted in paperback by Louisiana State University Press as part of a series of Southern reissues. Now she is working on the songs and stories of Florida Slone, a ballad singer famous around Knott County, and participating in a workshop for public school teachers in Kentucky. Meanwhile, she has donated her father’s former dime store in Grundy to the town for the use as a teen center. And with all this boundless energy and enthusiasm for life, Smith continues to write incessantly and to support the work of others. She is fascinated by the writing of Lou Crabtree, a woman in her 80s in Abingdon, Virginia, who, like everyone else who meets her, has become Lee Smith’s friend. ‘Until LSU recently published her
collection, Stories from Sweet Holler, Lou had been writing her whole life without any thought of publication,’ says Smith, with her usual exuberance. ‘Once I said to her, ‘Lou, what would you do if somebody told you that you weren’t allowed to write anymore?’ ‘‘Well,’ Lou replied, ‘I reckon I’d just have to sneak off and do it.’’ So would Lee Smith: she’d just sneak off and do it.
In Her Own Words Although I don’t usually write autobiographical fiction, my main character in one of the short stories from News and the Spirit sounds suspiciously like the girl I used to be: ‘More than anything else in the world, I wanted to be a writer. I didn’t want to learn to write, of course. I just wanted to be a writer, and I often pictured myself poised at the foggy edge of a cliff somewhere in the south of France, wearing a cape, drawing furiously on a long cigarette, hollow-cheeked and haunted. I had been romantically dedicated to the grand idea of ‘being a writer’ ever since I can remember.’ I started telling stories as soon as I could talk – true stories, and made-up stories, too. It has always been hard for me to tell the difference between them. My father was fond of saying that I would climb a tree to tell a lie rather than stand on the ground to tell the truth. In fact, in the mountains of southwestern Virginia where I grew up, a lie was often called a story, and well do I remember being shaken until my teeth rattled with the stern admonition, ‘Don’t you tell me no story, now!’ But he was hardly one to talk. Both my mama and my father were natural storytellers themselves. My mama – a home ec. teacher from the Eastern shore of Virginia – was one of those Southern women who can – and did – make a story out of thin air, out of anything – a trip to the drugstore, something somebody said to her in the church. My father liked to drink a little and recite Kipling out loud. He came from right there, from a big mountain family of storytelling Democrats who would sit on the porch and place 25 dollar bets on which bird would fly first off a telephone wire. They were all big talkers. I got hooked on stories early, and as soon as I could write, I started writing them down. I wrote my first novel on my mother’s stationery when I was eight. It featured as main characters my two favorite people at that time: Adlai Stevenson and Jane Russell. In my novel, they fell in love and then went west together in a covered wagon. Once there, they became – inexplicably – Mormons! Even at that age, I was fixed upon glamour and flight, two themes I returned to again and again as I wrote my way throughout high school, then college. Decades later, I’m still at it. Narrative is as necessary to me as breathing, as air. I write for the reason I’ve always done so: simply to survive. To make sense of my life. I never know what I think until I read what I’ve written. And I refuse to lead an unexamined life. No matter how painful it is, I intend to know what’s going on. The writing itself is a source of strength for me, a way to make it through the night. The story has always served this function, I believe, from the beginning of time. In the telling of it, we discover who we are, why we exist, what we should do. It brings order and delight. Its form is inherently pleasing, and deeply satisfying to us. Because it has a beginning, a middle, and an end, it gives a recognizable shape to the muddle and chaos of our lives.
Goodbye to the Sunset Man
Lee Smith bids farewell to her son, Josh BY LE E SM ITH Once again my husband and I line up for sunset cruise tickets on the tall vintage schooner Western Union, which sways in its dock here at the end of William Street, here at the end of America. ‘How many?’ The handsome blonde in the ticket booth looks like she used to be a man. ‘Three,’ I say. ‘Two,’ Hal says, turning around to look at me. ‘So how many is it?’ She drums her long nails on the wooden counter. ‘Two,’ Hal says. He gives her his credit card. She slides over two tickets for the sunset cruise and two coupons for free drinks, which we order on the roof of the Schooner Wharf Bar where we wait until time to board. This year we are here without my son, Josh, who died in his sleep this past Oct. 26. The cause of his death was an ‘acute myocardiopathy,’ the collapse of an enlarged heart brought about, in part, I believe, by all the weight he had gained while taking an antipsychotic drug. He was 33; he had been sick for half his life, doing daily heroic battle with the brain disorder that first struck while he was in a program for gifted teen musicians at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, the summer between his junior and senior years in high school. Back in Chapel Hill, we’d started getting wilder and wilder phone calls from him about ‘birds flying too close to the sun,’ reports of all-night practice sessions on the piano, strange encounters in the park, and no sleep – no sleep, ever. He flew home in a straight jacket. Then the hospitalizations began – first a lengthy stay at Holly Hill in Raleigh followed by a short, heart-breaking try at returning home to normalcy and Chapel Hill High; then longterm care at Highland Hospital in Asheville, where he lived for the next four years, sometimes in the hospital itself, sometimes in their group home, sometimes in an apartment with participation in their day program. For a while he was better, then not. All kinds of fantasies and scenarios rolled through his head. He moved, talked and dressed bizarrely; he couldn’t remember anything; he couldn’t even read. We brought him back to UNC Neurosciences Hospital. They referred him to Dorothea Dix’s test program for the new ‘wonder drug’ clozapine, just legalized in this country (1992). Up on that beautiful, windy hill looking out over the city of Raleigh, Josh started getting truly better for the first time. He could participate in a real conversation; he could make a joke. It was literally a miracle. He was able to leave the hospital and enter Caramore Community in Chapel Hill, which offered vocational rehabilitation, a group home and then a supervised apartment – as well as a lot of camaraderie. He came in with some great stories as he worked with the Caramore lawn and housecleaning business ... my favorite being the time the housecleaning crew dared one of the gang to jump into the baptismal pool at a local church they were cleaning – and then they all ‘baptized’ him on the spot. Before long he graduated into a real job at Carolina Cleaners. Against all odds, Josh had become a ‘working man,’ as he always referred to himself; his pride in this was enormous. Though other hospitalizations (‘tune-ups,’ he called them) would be required from time to time, Josh was on his way. He lived in his own apartment, drove a car, managed his weekly doctor visits, blood tests, pharmacy trips and medication. But as the most important part of his own ‘treatment team,’ he steadfastly refused his doctor’s eventual urging to switch to one of the newer drugs, such as olanzapine, risperidol or geodon, in hopes of jump-starting his metabolism. Clozapine had given him back his life, and he didn’t want to give it up. And in spite of his
weight and smoking, he seemed healthy enough; physical examinations didn’t ring any warning bells. Josh became a familiar figure in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, with friends and acquaintances all over town – especially his regular haunts such as Weaver Street and Caffe Driade, where he went every day. Josh worked at Akai Hana Japanese Restaurant in Carrboro for the last seven years of his life, doing everything from washing dishes to prep work to lunchtime sushi chef. He was the first one there every morning – he opened up and started preparing the rice. It was his favorite time of the day, as he often said. He played piano at Akai Hana every Saturday night: a mix of jazz, blues and his own compositions. The live music produced by the Wharf Bar’s Jimmy Buffet wannabe band is way too loud, and our drinks, when they come, are a startling shade of red, with umbrellas in them. Hal raises his plastic glass high. ‘Here’s to the big guy,’ he says. We drain them. Josh considered the schooner trip a requisite for his annual Key West experience. He loved the ritual of it all, beginning when the crew invited the evening’s passengers to participate in raising the mainsail. He always went over to line up and pull, passing the halyard hand over hand to the next guy. He loved to stand at the rail as we passed the town dock and Mallory Square, where all the weird pageantry of the sunset was already in full swing: the tourists, the guy with the trained housecats, the flame swallower, the escape artist tied up in chains, the oddly terrifying cookie lady. The aging hippie musician on board invariably cranked up ‘Sloop John Bee’ as we headed out to sea while the sun sank lower on the starboard side. The sun was so bright that I couldn’t even face it without sunglasses, but Josh never wore them. He just sat there perfectly still, staring straight into the sun, a little smile playing around his lips. What thoughts went through his head on that last voyage? Perhaps more to the point, what thoughts did not go through his head, in this later stage of schizophrenia characterized by ‘blank mind’ and ‘lack of affect?’ Gone the voices, gone the visions, gone the colored lights, to be replaced by ... what? Maybe nothing, like the bodhisattva, a person who has achieved the final apotheosis, beyond desire and self. Here he sat, an immense man in a black T-shirt and blue jeans, silent, calm, apparently at peace. He no longer seemed to know what he had lost. Some call this a ‘blessing,’ and some days I am among them; but most days I am not, remembering instead that wild boy of 17 who wanted the world – all the music; all the friends, BMX bikes and skateboards; all the poetry; all the girls – all the life there ever was. Now the captain is blowing the conch shell from the deck of the Western Union. We stand. The sun slants into our eyes. A breeze is coming up. I pull on my windbreaker, fingering the little bronze vial of ashes in my pocket. It’s time. Last January (2003) Josh and I flew into Key West together, arriving late on a cool and blustery Tuesday night around 9 p.m. Wind rattled the palm fronds as we walked out onto the brightly lit but somehow lonely looking Duval Street. Only a few people scurried past, their shoulders hunched against the wind. We passed the funky Chicken Store, a ‘safe house’ for the muchmaligned chickens that have overrun Key West. We passed the Scrub Club, an ‘adult’ bathhouse that usually featured its scantily clad ladies blowing bubbles over the balcony rail, calling out, ‘Hi there! Feeling dirty? Need a bath?’ to the amused passersby. But it was too cool for bubbles that night, and the girls were all inside behind their red door. The wind whipped paper trash along the street. We crossed Duval and went into the friendly looking Coffee and Tea House, where big trees overhung an old bungalow with a porch and yard filled with comfortable, mismatched furniture. Josh was very tired. He had that out-of-it, blank look he
sometimes gets, almost vegetative, like a big sweet potato. We walked up the concrete steps and into the bar with its comforting, helpful smell of coffee brewing. People clustered at little tables, on sofas, in armchairs in adjacent rooms, talking and reading the newspapers strewn everyplace. The bartender’s long, gray hair was pulled back into a ponytail. He came over to Josh and said, ‘What can I get for you, sir?’ ‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ Josh said in a surprisingly loud voice (maybe it even surprised him), shaking his head like a dog coming up from under the water. ‘I’ll tell you, buddy, I don’t know what the hell it is I want, and I don’t know where the hell it is I am, and I don’t know what the hell it is I’m doing!’ Heads along the bar swiveled, and the bartender burst out laughing. ‘In that case, sir, you’ve come to the right island!’ he announced, as everybody applauded. Josh had found his Key West home for the next week. At bars or beaches, he talked to everybody; you never knew what he was going to say next. He told a great version of the Christmas story, too, conflating the Bible with O. Henry: ‘Once upon a time there was a young girl who was very sick, and somehow she got the idea that she would die when all the leaves fell off the tree that grew just outside her bedroom window. One by one they dropped. She got sicker and sicker. Finally there was only one red leaf left on the tree; she was just about to die. That night while she was asleep, Jesus flew up to her window. Jesus was a French artist. He wore a red beret. So he brought his box of oil paints with him and painted red leaves all over the window, finishing just as the sun came up and the last red leaf fluttered down to the ground. Then he flew away. Then she woke up, and she was well, and it was Christmas.’ Answering the question of whether or not he believed in Jesus, he said, ‘Well, I don’t know. Every time I’m in the hospital, there are at least three people in there who think they’re Jesus. So sometimes I think, well, maybe Jesus wasn’t Jesus at all – maybe he was just the first schizophrenic.’ Josh’s eventual diagnosis was schizo-affective, meaning partly schizophrenic (his mind did not work logically, his senses were often unreliable, his grip on reality sometimes tenuous) and partly bipolar – actually a blessing, since the characteristic ‘ups and downs’ allowed him more expression and empathy. But diagnosis is tricky at best. The sudden onset of these major brain disorders usually occurs in the late teens or early twenties, and it’s usually severe. But all psychosis looks alike at first. There’s no way to distinguish between the ‘highs’ of bipolar illness, for instance, and the florid stage of schizophrenia – or even a garden variety LSD psychosis. Reality had fled in every case. The best doctors make no claims; ‘Wait and see,’ they say. As far as prognosis goes, medical folklore holds to a ‘rule of three’: About a third of all people with major psychotic episodes will actually get well, such as Kurt Vonnegut’s son, Mark, now a physician who wrote the memoir Eden Express. The next, larger group will be in and out of hospitals and programs for the rest of their lives, with wildly varying degrees of success in work and life situations; the final group will have recalcitrant, persistent illnesses which may require lifelong care or hospitalization – though now, I suspect, the new drugs and community care models have shrunk this group considerably. But here’s the bottom line: All mental illnesses are treatable. Often, brain chemistry has to be adjusted with medication. If symptoms occur, go to the doctor. Don’t downplay it, don’t hide it – seek treatment immediately. Mental illness is no more embarrassing than diabetes. And the earlier we get treatment, the more effective it will be. I myself could never have made it through this past year of grief and depression without both counseling and medication. We are also lucky to have organizations and support groups in this area to help us and our
families cope. As Josh proved, very real, valid and full lives can be lived within these illnesses. Now my husband and I sit discreetly at the very back of the Western Union, right behind the captain at the wheel. He has given the order; the crew has cried ‘fire in the hole’ and shot off the cannon. We have covered our ears. We have gotten our complimentary wine, our conch chowder. We have listened to our shipmates talk about how much snow they left behind in Cleveland, how many grandchildren they have, and how one guy played hockey for Hopkins on that great team in 1965. Then we duck as, with a great whoosh of the jib, we come about. We sit quietly, holding hands, hard. Now there’s a lot of wind. All around us, people are putting on their jackets. Independent of any of this, the sky puts on its big show, gearing up for sunset. The sun speeds up as it sinks lower and lower. The water turns into a sheet of silver, like a mirror. Like Hal, Josh was a major sunset man, always looking for that legendary green flash right after the sunset, which nobody I know has ever actually seen, though everybody claims to have known somebody who has seen it. Here where sunset is a religion, we never miss the moment. In Key West the sun grows huge and spreads out when it touches the water, so that it’s no longer round at all but a glowing red beehive shape that plunges down abruptly to the thunderous applause of the revelers back at Mallory Square. ‘Get ready,’ Hal says in my ear. ‘But look, there’s a cloud bank, it’s not going to go all the way.’ I twist the top of the vial in my windbreaker pocket. The sun glows neon red, cut off at the bottom by clouds. A hush falls over the whole crowd on board the Western Union. Everybody faces west. Cameras are raised. It is happening. ‘Bon voyage,’ Hal says. Suddenly, the sun is gone. The crowd cheers. I throw the ashes out on the water behind us; like a puff of smoke, they disappear immediately into the wake. I say, ‘Goodbye, baby.’ Nobody notices. The water turns into mother of pearl, shining pink all the way from our schooner to the horizon. The scalloped edge of the puffy clouds goes from pink to gold. The crowd goes ‘aah.’ Goodbye baby. But no green flash. The crowd stretches, they move, they mill around on deck. The light fades and stars come out. I don’t agree with the theory that mental illness conveys certain gifts. Even if this sometimes seems to be the case, as in bipolar disorder’s frequent association with creativity, those gifts are not worth the pain and devastating losses the illness also brings with it. Yet sometimes there are moments.... I am remembering one starry summer night back in North Carolina, the kind of breathtakingly beautiful summer night of all our dreams, when Josh and I took a long walk around our village. He’d been staying with us for several days because he was too sick to stay in his own apartment. He’d been deteriorating for months, and his doctor had arranged his admission to UNC’s Neurosciences Hospital for the next morning. Josh didn’t know this yet. But he was always ‘compliant,’ as they call it. We were very lucky in this. My friend’s son wouldn’t take his medicine and chose to live on the street; she never knew where he was. Schizophrenia is like an umbrella diagnosis covering a whole crowd of very different illnesses; but very few people with brain disorders actually become violent, despite the stereotype. Josh liked the hospital. It was safe, and the world he’d been in that week in North Carolina was not safe, not at all, a world where strangers were talking about him and people he used to know inhabited other people’s bodies and tables turned into spiders and all the familiar landmarks disappeared so that he couldn’t find his way anywhere. He couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t drive, he couldn’t think. Yet on that summer night in Hillsborough, a wonderful thing happened. We were walking through the alley between the old
Confederate cemetery and our back yard when we ran into our neighbor Allan. ‘Hi there, Josh,’ Allan said. Instead of replying, Josh sang out a single note of music. ‘A flat,’ he said. It hung in the hot honeysuckle air. ‘Nice,’ Allan said, passing on. The alley ended at Tryon Street, where we stepped onto the sidewalk. A young girl hurried past. ‘C sharp,’ Josh said, then sang it out. The girl looked at him before she disappeared into the Presbyterian Church. We crossed the street and walked past the young policemen getting out of his car in front of the police station. ‘Middle C,’ Josh said, humming. Since it was one of Hillsborough’s ‘Last Friday’ street fairs, we ran into more and more people as we headed toward the center of town. For each one, Josh had a musical note – or a chord, for a pair or a group. ‘What’s up?’ I finally asked. ‘Well, you know I have perfect pitch,’ he said – I nodded, though he did not – ’and everybody we see has a special musical note, and I can hear every one.’ He broke off to sing a high chord for a couple of young teen girls, then dropped into a lower register for a retired couple eating ice cream cones. ‘Hello,’ another neighbor said, smiling when Josh hummed back at him. So it went all over town. Even some of the buildings had notes, apparently: the old Masonic Hall, the courthouse, the corner bar. Josh was singing his heart out. And almost – almost – it was a song, the symphony of Hillsborough. We were both exhilarated. We walked and walked. By the time we got back home, he was exhausted. Finally he slept. The next day, he went into the hospital. Josh loved James Taylor, especially his song ‘Fire and Rain.’ But we were too conservative, or chickenshit, or something, to put it on his tombstone, the same way we were ‘not cool enough,’ as Josh put it, to walk down the aisle to ‘Purple Rain’ (his idea) while he played the piano on the day we got married in 1985. But now I say the words to Hal as the light fades slowly on the water behind us. I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend But I always thought that I’d see you again. Well, I won’t. I know this. But what a privilege it was to live on this earth with him, what a privilege it was to be his mother. There will be a lessening of pain, there will be consolations, I can tell. But as C.S. Lewis wrote in On Grief: ‘Reality never repeats... . That is what we should all like, the happy past restored’... as it can never be, and maybe never was. Who’s got perfect pitch, anyway? Yet to have children – or simply to experience great love for any person at all – is to throw yourself wide open to the possibility of pain at any moment. But I would not choose otherwise. Not now, not ever. Like every parent with a disabled child, my greatest fear used to be that I would die first. ‘I can’t die,’ I always said whenever any risky undertaking was proposed. So now I can die. But I don’t want to. Instead, I want to live as hard as I can, burning up the days in honor of his sweet, hard life. Night falls on the schooner ride back to Key West. I clutch the bronze vial that held some of Josh’s ashes, tracing its engraved design with my finger. The wind blows my hair. The young couple in front of us are making out. ‘Let’s get some oysters at Alonzo’s,’ Hal says, and suddenly I realize that I’m starving. ‘Look,’ the captain says, pointing up. ‘Venus.’
Sure enough. Then we see the Big Dipper, Orion, Mars. Where’s that French artist with the red beret? No sign of him, and no green flash, either – but stars. A whole sky full of them by the time we slide into the dock at the end of William Street. Lee Smith lives in Hillsborough with her husband, Hal Crowther. Her latest novel is The Last Girls.
Angel Levine Bernard Malamud To the
Joshua Field Seay 12/23/69-10/26/03 CHAPEL HILL – Joshua Field Seay, 32, died in his sleep early Sunday, Oct. 26, 2003. Josh was born on Dec. 23, 1969, in Tuscaloosa, Ala. He moved with his family to Nashville, Tenn., in 1971 and lived there until 1974, when his family came to Chapel Hill. He is survived by his father, James Seay; his mother, Lee Smith; James’ wife, Caroline Seay, and Lee’s husband, Harold Crowther. Also surviving are his stepsister, Amity Crowther of Chapel Hill; his brother, Page Seay, who resides in Nashville, Tenn., with his wife, Erin, and Josh’s beloved niece, Lucy. Josh attended Chapel Hill public schools and UNC-Asheville. For the past seven years he was employed at Akai Hana Japanese Restaurant in Carrboro. Among his duties there were his lively and popular Saturday evening piano sets, a unique mix of blues and jazz covers along with his own compositions. He recently assembled a tape of his compositions which, with signature humor, he entitled ‘Five Not So Easy Pieces.’ Josh was beset by mental illness in his teen years, but he came to regard the amelioration of that illness as part of his daily work. He was never embittered by what life dealt him. In the words of a friend, ‘He bore it with quiet bravery and distinction, at a cost few of the rest of us can begin to calculate.’ Josh never wavered in his determination to keep that illness from defeating him. His absence will leave an immense void in the lives of his family and friends. James Seay
memory of Robert Warshow Manischewitz, a tailor, in his fifty-first year suffered many reverses and indignities. Previously a man of comfortable means, he overnight lost all he had when his establishment caught fire, and, because a meal container of cleaning fluid exploded, burned to the ground. Although Manischewitz was insured, damage suits against him by two customers who had been seriously hurt in the flames deprived him of every penny he had collected. At almost the same time, his son, of much promise, was killed in the war, and his daughter, without a word of warning, married a worthless lout and disappeared with him, as if off the face of the earth. Thereafter Manischewitz became the victim of incessant excruciating backaches that knifed him over in pain, and he found himself unable to work even as a presser – the only job available to him – for more than an hour or two daily, because after that the pain from standing became maddening. His Leah, a good wife and mother, who had taken in washing began before his eyes to waste away. Suffering marked shortness of breath, she at last became seriously ill and took to her bed. The doctor a former customer of Manischewitz, who out of pity treated them, at first had difficulty diagnosing her ailment but later put it down as hardening of the arteries, at an advanced stage. He took Manischewitz aside, prescribed complete rest for her, and in whispers gave him to know there was little hope. Throughout his trials Manischewitz had remained somewhat stoic, almost unbelieving that all this had descended upon his head, as if it were happening , let us say, to an acquaintance, or to some distant relative; it was in sheer quantity of woe incomprehensible. It was also ridiculous, unjust, and because he had always been a religious man—an affront to God. This, Manischewitz fanatically believed amid all his suffering. When, however, his burden had grown too crushingly heavy to be borne alone, he eased himself into a chair and with shut hollow eyes prayed: “My dear God, my soul, sweetheart, did I deserve this to happen to me?” But recognizing the worthlessness of this thought, he compelled himself to put complaint aside and prayed humbly for assistance: “Give to Leah back her health, and give to me, for myself, that I should not feel pain in every step I make. Help now, or tomorrow we are dead. This I don’t have to tell you.” And Manischewitz, aching all over and grief-stricken, wept. Manischewitz’s flat, which he had moved into after the disastrous fire, was a meagre one, furnished with a few sticks of chairs, a table, and bed, in one of the poorer sections of the city. There were three rooms: a living room, small, poorly papered; an apology for a kitchen, with a wooden icebox; and the comparatively large bedroom where Leah lay in a second-hand bed, panting for breath. The bedroom was the warmest room of the house and it was here, after his outburst to God, that
Manischewitz, by the light of two small bulbs overhead, sat reading his Jewish newspaper. He was not truly reading, because his thoughts were everywhere but on the print. However the print offered a convenient resting place for his eyes; and a word or two, when he permitted himself to comprehend them, indeed had the effect of aiding him momentarily to forget his troubles. After a while he discovered, to his surprise, that he was actively scanning the news, searching for an item of great interest to him. Exactly what its contents would be he could not say—until he realized with astonishment that he was expecting to discover something regarding himself. At that moment he gazed up with the distinct impression that someone had entered the apartment, though he could not remember having heard the sound of the door. Manischewitz looked around: the room was still, Leah sleeping peacefully. Half-frightened, he observed her until he became convinced she was not dead; then, still disturbed by the thought of an unannounced visitor, he stumbled into the living room, and there had the shock of his life, for at the table sat a burly Negro reading a newspaper he had folded up to fit into one hand. ”What do you want here?” Manischewitz cried out in fright. The Negro put down the paper and glanced up with a gentle smile. “Good evening.” He seemed not to be sure of himself, as if he had happened into the wrong house. He was a large man, bonily built, with a heavy head covered by a hard derby hat, which he made no attempt to remove. His eyes seemed sad, but his lips, above which he wore a slight moustache, were on the verge of laughter; he was not otherwise prepossessing. The cuffs of his sleeves, Manischewitz noted, were frayed to the lining, and the dark suit was badly fitted. He had very large feet. Recovering from his fright, Manischewitz guessed he was being visited by a case worker from the Welfare Department—some came at night—for he had recently applied for relief. Therefore he lowered himself into a chair opposite the Negro, returning, as well as he was able, the man’s somewhat troubled although pleasant smile. The former tailor sat stiffly but patiently at the table, waiting for the investigator to take out his pad and pencil and begin asking questions; but before long he became convinced the man intended to do nothing of the sort. ”Who are you?’ Manischewitz asked uneasily. ”If I may, insofar as one is able to, identify myself, I bear the name of Alexander Levine.” Despite himself, a trace of smile appeared on Manischewitz’s bitter lips. ”You said Levine?” he politely inquired. The Negro nodded. “That is exactly right.” Carrying the jest a bit further, Manischewitz asked, “You are maybe Jewish?” ”All my life I was, most willingly.” Manischewitz hesitated. He had heard of black Jews, but had never met one. It gave an unusual sensation. Recognizing in afterthought something strange about the tense of Levine’s remark, he said doubtfully, “You ain’t Jewish any more?” Levine, at this point, removed his hat, but immediately replaced it. He said quietly, “I have recently been discarnated into an angel. As such I offer you my humble assistance, if to offer is within my province and ability—in the best sense.” He lowered his eyes in apology. “Which calls for added explanation: I am what I am granted to be, and at present the completion is in the future.” ”What kind of angel is this?” Manischewitz gravely asked. ”A bona fide angel of God, within prescribed limitations,” answered Levine, “not to be confused with the members of any sect, order, or organization here on earth operating under a similar name.” Manischewitz was thoroughly disturbed. He had been expecting something but not quite this. What sort of mockery
was it ? provided Levine was an angel—of a faithful servant who had from childhood lived in the synagogues and houses of study, concerned with His word? To test Levine he asked, “Then where are your wings?” The Negro blushed as well as he was able. Manischewitz understood this from his expression. “Under certain circumstances we lose privileges and prerogatives upon returning to earth no matter for what purpose, or endeavouring to assist whosoever.” ”So tell me,” Manischewitz said triumphantly, “how did you get here?” ”I was transmitted.” Still troubled, the tailor said, “If you are a Jew, say the blessing for bread.” Levine recited it in sonorous Hebrew. Although moved by the familiar words, Manischewitz still could not believe he was dealing with an angel. Somewhat angrily he demanded, “If you are an angel, show me proof.” Levine wet his lips. “Frankly, I cannot perform either miracles or near miracles, due to the fact that I am in a condition of probation. How long that will persist or even consist, I admit, depends on the outcome.” Manischewitz racked his brains for some means of causing Levine positively to reveal his true identity, when the Negro spoke again: ”It was given me to understand that both you and your wife require assistance of a salubrious nature?” The tailor could not rid himself of the feeling that he was the butt of some jokester. Is this what a Jewish angel looks like? he thought. This I am not convinced. But he asked one last question. “So if God sends to me an angel, why a black? Why not a white that there are so many of them?” ”It was my turn to go next,” Levine explained. Manischewitz could not be convinced. “I think you are a faker.” Levine slowly rose.. His eyes showed disappointment and worry. “Mr. Manischewitz,” he said tonelessly, “if you should desire me to be of assistance to you any time in the near future, or possibly before, I can be found”—he cast a quick glance at his fingernails—”in Harlem.” He was by then gone. The next day Manischewitz felt some relief from his backache and was able to work four hours at pressing. The day after, he put in six; and the third day four again. Leah sat up a little and asked for some halvah to suck. But on the fourth day the stabbing, breaking ache returned to his back, and Leah once again lay supine, breathing with blue-lipped difficulty. Manischewitz was miserably disappointed at the return of his active pain, and suffering. He had hoped for a longer interval of easement, long enough to have some thought other than of himself and his troubles. Day by day, hour by hour, minute after minute, he lived in pain, with pain as his only memory, and questioned the necessity of it, inveighed against it, and occasionally though with affection, against God. Why so much, Gottenyu? If He wanted to teach His servant a lesson for some reason, some cause – the nature of His nature—to teach him, say, for reasons of his weakness, his neglect of God during his years of prosperity—give him a little lesson, why then, any one of the tragedies that had happened to him, any one would have sufficed to chasten him. But all together – the loss of his means of livelihood, of both his children, the health of Leah and himself – that was too much to ask one frail-boned man to endure. Who, after all, was Manischewitz that he had been given so much to suffer? A tailor. Certainly not a man of talent. Upon him suffering was largely wasted. It went nowhere, into nothing: into more pain. His pain did not earn him bread, nor fill the cracks in
the wall, nor lift, in the middle of the night, the kitchen table; only lay upon him, sleepless, so sharply oppressively that he could many times have shrieked yet not heard himself through all the misery. In this mood he gave no thought to Mr. Alexander Levine, but at moments when the pain wavered, momentarily slightly diminishing, he sometimes wondered if he had been mistaken to dismiss him. A black Jew and angel to boot—hard to believe, but suppose he had been sent to succour him, and he, Manischewitz, was in his blindness too blind to comprehend? It was this thought that set him on the knifepoint of agony. Therefore the tailor, after much self-questioning and doubt, decided he would seek the self-styled angel in Harlem. Of course he had great difficulty, because he had not asked for specific directions, and all movement was tedious to him. The subway took him to 116th Street, and from there he wandered in a dark world. It was vast and its lights lit nothing. Everywhere were shadows, often moving. Manischewitz hobbled along painfully, with the aid of a cane; and not knowing where to seek in the blackened tenement buildings, looked fruitlessly into store windows. In the stores he saw people and everybody was black. It was an amazing thing to observe. When he was too tired, too unhappy to go farther, Manischewitz stopped in front of a tailor’s store. Out of familiarity with the appearance of it, and with some heartbreak, he entered. The tailor, an old skinny Negro with a mop of woolly gray hair, was sitting cross-legged on his workbench, sewing a pair of full-dress pants that had a razor rent all the way down the seat. ”You’ll excuse me, please, gentleman,” said Manischewitz, admiring the tailor’s deft, thimbled fingerwork, “but you know maybe somebody by the name of Alexander Levine?” The tailor, who, Manischewitz thought, seemed somewhat antagonistic to him, scratched his scalp. ”Cain’t say I ever heered dat name.” ”Alex-ander Lev-ine,” Manischewitz pronounced slowly. ”Cain’t say I heered.” Discouraged, Manischewitz was about to depart when he remembered to say: “He is an angel, maybe.” ”Oh him,” said the tailor, clucking. “He hang out in dat honkytonk down a ways.” He pointed with a skinny finger and returned to the split pants. Manischewitz crossed the street against a red light and was almost killed by a taxi. On the block; after the next, the fourth store from the corner was a cabaret, and the name in sparkling lights was Bella’s. Ashamed to go in, Manischewitz gazed through the neonlighted window, and when the dancing couples parted and drifted away, he discerned, at a table towards the rear, Levine. He was sitting by himself, a cigarette butt dangling from the corner of his mouth, playing solitaire with a dirty pack of cards, and Manischewitz felt a touch of pity for him, for Levine had deteriorated in appearance. His derby hat was dented and had a white smudge across the top. His ill-fitting suit had grown shabbier, as if he had been sleeping in it. His shoes and the bottoms of his trousers were caked with with mud, and his face covered by an impenetrable stubble the colour of licorice. Manischewitz, though dreadfully disappointed, was about to enter anyway, when a fat-breasted Negress in a purple evening gown appeared before Levine’s table, and with much laughter through many white teeth, broke into a vigorous sinuous shimmy. Levine looked straight at Manischewitz with a haunted expression, but the tailor was too paralysed to move or acknowledge it. As Bella’s heavy gyrations continued, Levine rose, his eyes lit in excitement. She embraced him with vigour, both his hands going around her big restless buttocks, and they tangoed together across the floor, loudly applauded by the other customers. She seemed to have lifted Levine off his feet and his
large shoes hung lifeless as they danced. They slid past the window where Manischewitz, white-faced, stood staring in. Levine winked slyly and the tailor fled home. Leah lay at death’s door. Through shrunken lips she muttered concerning her girlhood, the sorrows of the marriage bed, the loss of her babies, yet wept to live. Manischewitz tried not to listen, but even without ears he would have heard her thoughts. It was not a gift. The doctor panted up the stairs, a broad but bland, unshaven man (it was Sunday) and shook his head. A day at most, or two. He left at once, not without mercy, to spare himself Manischewitz’s multiplied despair; the man who never stopped hurting. He would someday get him into a public home. Manischewitz visited a synagogue and there spoke to God, but God was strangely absent. The tailor searched his heart and found no hope. When she died he would live dead. He considered taking his life although he knew he never would. Yet it was something to consider. Considering, you existed in dregs. He railed against God—shouted his name without love. Can you love a rock, a broom, an emptiness? Baring his breast, he smote the naked bones, cursing himself for having believed. That afternoon, asleep in a chair, he dreamed of Levine. He was standing before a faded mirror, preening small, decaying opalescent wings. “This means,” mumbled Manischewitz, as he broke out of sleep, “that it is possible he could be an angel.” Begging a neighbour lady to look in on Leah, occasionally wet her lips with a drop of water, he drew on his thin coat, gripped his walking stick, changed some pennies for a subway token, and rode to Harlem. He recognized this act as the last desperate one of woe: to go without belief, seeking a black magician to restore his wife to invalidism. Yet if there was no choice, he did at last what was chosen. He hobbled to Bella’s but the place had changed hands. It was now, as he breathed, a synagogue in a store. In the front, towards him, were several rows of empty wooden benches. In the rear stood the Ark, its portals of rough wood covered with many coloured sequins; under it a long table on which lay the sacred scroll unrolled, illuminated by the dim light of a bulb on a chain overhead. Around the table, as if frozen to it and the scroll, which they all touched with their fingers, sat four Negros wearing black skullcaps. Now as they read the Holy Word, Manischewitz could, through the plate-glass window, hear the singsong chant of their voices. One of them was old, with a grey beard. One was bubble-eyed. One was humpbacked. The fourth was a boy, no older than thirteen. Their heads moved in rhythmic swaying. Touched by this sight from his childhood and youth, Manischewitz entered and stood silent in the rear. ”Neshoma,” said bubble eyes, pointing to a word with a stubby finger. “Now what dat?” ”That means soul,” said the boy. He wore glasses. ”Let’s git on wid de commentary,” said the old man. ”Ain’t necessary,” said the humpback. “Souls is immaterial substance. That’s all. The soul is derived in that manner. The immateriality is derived from the substance, and they both, casually and otherwise, derived from the soul. There can be no higher.” ”That’s the highest.” ”Over de top.” ”Way, way.” ”Wait a minute,” said bubble eyes. “I don’t see what is dat immaterial substance. How come de one gits hitched to de odder? Speak up, man.” He addressed the humpback. ”Ask me something hard. Because it is substanceless immateriality. It couldn’t be closer together, like the organs of the body under one skin.” ”Hear now,” said the old man. ”All you done is switched de words.”
”It is the primum mobile, the substanceless substance from which comes all things that were incepted in the idea—you, me, and everything and body else.” ”Now how dat happen? Make it sound simple.” ”It de speerit,” said the old man. “On de face of de water moved de speerit. An’ dat was good. It say so in de Book. From de speerit ariz de man.” ”But now listen here. How come it become substance, if it all de time a spirit?” ”God alone done dat.” ”Holy! Holy! Praise His Name.” ”But has dis spirit got some kind of a shade or colour?” asked bubble eyes, deadpan. ”Man, of course not. It colourless.” ”Then how come we is coloured?” he said, with a triumphant glare. ”Ain’t got nought to do wid dat.” ”I still like to know.” ”God put the spirit in all things,” answered the boy. “He put it in the green leaves an’ the red flowers. He put it in little gold fishes in the water an’ in the big blue sky. That’s how come it came to us.” ”Amen.” ”Praise Lawd and utter loud His speechless name.” ”Blow de bugle till it break de sky.” They fell silent, intent upon the next word. Manischewitz approached. ”You’ll excuse me,” he said. “I am looking for Alexander Levine. You know him maybe?” ”That’s the angel,” said the boy. ”Oh, him,” snuffed bubble eyes. ”You’ll find him at Bella’s. It’s the establishment right across the street,” the humpback said. Manischewitz explained that he could not stay, thanked them all, and limped across the street. It was already night. The city was dark and he could barely find his way. But Bella’s was bursting with strains of blues. Through the window Manischewitz recognized the dancing crowd and among them sought Levine. He was sitting loose-lipped at Bella’s side table. They were tippling from an almost empty whiskey fifth. Levine had shed his old clothes, wore a shiny new checkered suit, pearl-gray derby, cigar, and big two-tone button shoes. To the tailor’s dismay, a drunken gaze had settled upon Levine’s formerly dignified face. He leaned toward Bella, tickled her ear lobe with his pinky, and whispered words that sent her into gates of raucous laughter. She fondled his knee. Manischewitz, girding himself, pushed open the door and was not well received. ”This place reserved.” ”Beat it, pale puss.” ”Exit, Yankel, Semitic trash.” He gasped, but moved towards the table where Levine sat, the crowd breaking before him as he hobbled forward. ”Mr. Levine,” he spoke in a trembly voice. “Is here Manischewitz.” Levine glared through bleary eyes. ”Speak yo’ piece, son.” Manischewitz shivered. His back plagued him. Cold tremors tormented his crooked legs. ”You’ll excuse me. I would like to talk to you in a private place.” He looked around, but people were everywhere and all of them listening. ”Speak, Ah is a private pu’son.” Bella laughed piercingly. “Stop it, boy, you killin’ me.” Manischewitz, no end disturbed, considered leaving, but Levine addressed him: ”What is the pu’pose of yo’ communication with yo’s truly?”
The tailor wet his cracked lips. “You are a Jew. This I am sure.” Levine rose, his nostrils flaring. ”Anythin’ else yo’ got to say?” Manischewitz’s tongue was in torment. ”Speak now, or fo’ever hold yo’ peace.” Tears blinded the tailor’s eyes. Was ever man so tried? Should he say he believed a half-drunken Negro to be an angel? The silence turned to stone. Manischewitz was recalling scenes of his youth, as a wheel in his mind whirred: believe, do not, yes, no, yes, no. The pointer pointed to yes, to between yes and no, to no, no it was yes. He sighed. One had still to make a choice. ”I believe you are also an angel—from God.” He said it simply but in a broken voice. Yet he thought, If you said it it was said. If you believed it you must say it. If you believed, you believed. The hush broke. Everybody talked but the music commenced and they went on dancing. Bella, grown bored, picked up the cards and dealt herself a hand. Levine burst into tears. ”How you have humiliated me.” Manischewitz sincerely apologized. ”Wait’ll I freshen up.” Levine went to the men’s room and returned in his old clothes. No one said goodbye as they left. They rode to the flat via subway. As they walked up the stairs Manischewitz pointed with his cane to his door. ”That’s all been taken care of,” Levine said. “You best go in now.” Disappointed that it was all over, yet torn by curiosity, Manischewitz followed the angel up four flights of stairs to the roof. When he got there the door was padlocked. Luckily he could see through a small broken window. He heard a strange noise, as though a vibration of wings, and when he strained for a wider view, could have sworn he saw a dark figure borne aloft on strong-pinioned, magnificent black wings. A feather drifted down. Manischewitz gasped as it turned white, but it was only snowing. He rushed downstairs. In the flat, Leah wielded a dust mop under the bed and upon the cobwebs on the wall. ”A wonderful thing, Leyka,” Manischewitz said. “There are Jews everywhere.” What has made the Jewish writers conspicuous in American literature is their sensitivity to the value of man . . . Personally, I handle the Jew as a symbol of the tragic experience of man existentially. I try to see the Jew as a universal man. Everyman is a Jew though he may not know it. The Jewish drama is a . . . symbol of the fight for existence in the highest possible human terms. Jewish history is God’s gift of drama. Bernard Malamud, as quoted in The Story and Its Writer,Ann Charters, ed., (Boston, 1991): 879 Bernard Malamud, “Angel Levine” 1) How does Malamud use irony as a way of “universalizing” the main character’s experience? 2) How does the story’s big city setting accentuate the author’s exploration of the themes of human suffering and redemption? 3) What message might Malamud be seeking to convey by his juxtaposition of images of “depravity,” holiness, and humor? 4) How does the author play with the theme of Jewish “identity”? 5) Does the story suggest the presence of any sense of community, Jewish or otherwise, within the stark urban environment in which Manischewitz, the main character, resides?
4 “We’re either portrayed as either the noble savage or the ignoble savage. In most people’s minds, we only exist in the nineteenth century.” “Nobody ever asked Raymond Carver to speak for every white guy.” “I don’t believe in writers’ block. I think it’s laziness and/or fear.” “I’ve heard it said that Indians shouldn’t become involved in high-stakes gambling because it tarnishes our noble heritage. Personally, I’ve never believed in the nobility of poverty. Personally, I believe in the nobility of breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona by Sherman Alexie Just after Victor lost his job at the BIA, he also found out that his father had died of a heart attack in Phoenix, Arizona. Victor hadn’t seen his father in a few years, only talked to him on the telephone once or twice, but there still was a genetic pain, which was soon to be pain as real and immediate as a broken bone. Victor didn’t have any money. Who does have money on a reservation, except the cigarette and fireworks salespeople? His father had a savings account waiting to be claimed, but Victor needed to find a way to get to Phoenix. Victor’s mother was just as poor as he was, and the rest of his family didn’t have any use at all for him. So Victor called the Tribal Council. “Listen,” Victor said. “My father just died. I need some money to get to Phoenix to make arrangements.” “Now, Victor,” the council said. “You know we’re having a difficult time financially.” “But I thought the council had special funds set aside for stuff like this.” “Now, Victor, we do have some money available for the proper return of tribal members’ bodies. But I don’t think we have enough to bring your father all the way back from Phoenix.”
“Well,” Victor said. “It ain’t going to cost all that much. He had to be cremated. Things were kind of ugly. He died of a heart attack in his trailer and nobody found him for a week. It was really hot, too. You get the picture.” “Now, Victor, we’re sorry for your loss and the circumstances. But we can really only afford to give you one hundred dollars.” “That’s not even enough for a plane ticket.” “Well, you might consider driving to Phoenix.” “I don’t have a car. Besides, I was going to drive my father’s pickup back up here.” “Now, Victor,” the council said. “We;re sure there is somebody who could drive you to Phoenix. Or is there somebody who could lend you the rest of the money?” “You know there ain’t nobody around with that kind of money.” “Well, we’re sorry, Victor, but that’s the best we can do.” Victor accepted the Tribal Council’s offer. What else could he do? So he signed the proper papers, picked up his check, and walked over to the Trading Post to cash it. While Victor stood in line, he watched Thomas Builds-the-Fire standing near the magazine rack, talking to himself. Like he always did. Thomas was a storyteller that nobody wanted to listen to. That’s like being a dentist in a town where everybody has false teeth. Victor and Thomas Builds-the-Fire were the same age, had grown up and played in the dirt together. Ever since Victor could remember, it was Thomas who always had something to say. Once, when they were seven years old, when Victor’s father still lived with the family, Thomas closed his eyes and told Victor this story: “Your father’s heart is weak. He is afraid of his own family. He is afraid of you. Late at night he sits in the dark. Watches the television until there’s nothing but that white noise. Sometimes he feels like he wants to buy a motorcycle and ride away. He wants to run and hide. He doesn’t want to be found.” Thomas Builds-the-Fire had known that Victor’s father was going to leave, knew it before anyone. Now Victor stood in the Trading Post with a one-hundred-dollar check in his hand, wondering if Thomas knew that Victor’s father was dead, if he knew what was going to happen next. Just then Thomas looked at Victor, smiled, and walked over to him. “Victor, I’m sorry about your father,” Thomas said. “How did you know about it?” Victor asked. “I heard it on the wind. I heard it from the birds. I felt it in the sunlight. Also, your mother was just in here crying.” “Oh,” Victor said and looked around the Trading Post. All the other Indians stared, surprised that Victor was even talking to Thomas. Nobody talked to Thomas anymore because he told the same damn stories over and over again. Victor was embarassed, but he thought that Thomas might be able to help him. Victor felt a sudden need for tradition. “I can lend you the money you need,” Thomas said suddenly. “But you have to take me with you.” “I can’t take your money,” Victor said. “I mean, I haven’t hardly talked to you in years. We’re not really friends anymore.” “I didn’t say we were friends. I said you had to take me with you.” “Let me think about it.” Victor went home with his one hundred dollars and sat at the kitchen table. He held his head in his hands and thought about Thomas Builds-the-Fire, remembered little details, tears and scars, the bicycle they shared for a summer, so many stories. ***
Thomas Builds-the-Fire sat on the bicycle, waited in Victor’s yard. He was ten years old and skinny. His hair was dirty because it was the Fourth of July. “Victor,” Thomas yelled. “Hurry up. We’re going to miss the fireworks.” After a few minutes, Victor ran out of his house, jumped the porch railing, and landed gracefully on the sidewalk. “And the judges award him a 9.95, the highest score of the summer,” Thomas said, clapped, laughed. “That was perfect, cousin,” Victor said. “And it’s my turn to ride the bike.” Thomas gave up the bike and they headed for the fair-grounds. It was nearly dark and the fireworks were about to start. “You know,” Thomas said. “It’s strange how us Indians celebrate the Fourth of July. It ain’t like it was our independence everybody was fighting for.” “You think about things too much,” Victor said. “It’s just supposed to be fun. Maybe Junior will be there.” “Which Junior? Everybody on this reservation is named Junior.” And they both laughed. The fireworks were small, hardly more than a few bottle rockets and a fountain. But it was enough for two Indian boys. Years later, they would need much more. Afterwards, sitting in the dark, fighting off mosquitoes, Victor turned to Thomas Builds-the-Fire. “Hey,” Victor said. “Tell me a story.” Thomas closed his eyes and told this story: “There were these two Indian boys who wanted to be warriors. But it was too late to be warriors in the old way. All the horsees were gone. So the two Indian boys stole a car and drove to the city. They parked the stolen car in front of the police station and then hitchhiked back home to the reservation. When they got back, all their friends cheered and their parents’ eyes shone with pride. You were very brave, everybody said to the two Indian boys. Very brave.” “Ya-hey,” Victor said. “That’s a good one. I wish I could be a warrior.” “Me, too,” Thomas said. They went home together in the dark, Thomas on the bike now, Victor on foot. They walked through shadows and light from streetlamps. “We’ve come a long ways,” Thomas said. “We have outdoor lighting.” “All I need is the stars,” Victor said. “And besides, you still think about things too much.” They separated then, each headed for home, both laughing all the way. *** Victor sat at his kitchen table. He counted his one hundred dollars again and again. He knew he needed more to make it to Phoenix and back. He knew he needed Thomas Builds-the-Fire. So he put his money in his wallet and opened the front door to find Thomas on the porch. “Ya-hey, Victor,” Thomas said. “I knew you’d call me.” Thomas walked into the living room and sat down on Victor’s favorite chair. “I’ve got some money saved up,” Thomas said. “It’s enough to get us down there, but you have to get us back.” “I’ve got this hundred dollars,” Victor said. “And my dad had a savings account I’m going to claim.” “How much in your dad’s account?” “Enough. A few hundred.” “Sounds good. When we leaving?” ***
When they were fifteen and had long stopped being friends, Victor and Thomas got into a fistfight. That is, Victor was really drunk and beat Thomas up for no reason at all. All the other Indian boys stood around and watched it happen. Junior was there and so were Lester, Seymour, and a lot of others. The beating might have gone on until Thomas was dead if Norma Many Horses hadn’t come along and stopped it. “Hey, you boys,” Norma yelled and jumped out of her car. “Leave him alone.” If it had been someone else, even another mna, the Indian boys would’ve just ignored the warnings. But Norma was a warrior. She was powerful. She could have picked up any two of the boys and smashed their skulls together. But worse than that, she would have dragged them all over to some tipi and made them listen to some elder tell a dusty old story. The Indian boys scattered, and Norma walked over to Thomas and picked him up. “Hey, little man, are you okay?” she asked. Thomas gave her a thumbs up. “Why they always picking on you?” Thomas shook his head, closed his eyes, but no stories came to him, no words or music. He just wanted to go home, to lie in his bed and let his dreams tell his stories for him. *** Thomas Builds-the-Fire and Victor sat next to each other in the airplane, coach section. A tiny white woman had the window seat. She was busy twisting her body into pretzels. She was flexible. “I have to ask,” Thomas said, and Victor closed his eyes in embarassment. “Don’t,” Victor said. “Excuse me, miss,” Thomas asked. “Are you a gymnast or something?” “There’s no something about it,” she said. “I was first alternate on the 1980 Olympic team.” “Really?” Thomas asked. “Really.” “I mean, you used to be a world-class athlete?” Thomas asked. “My husband still thinks I am.” Thomas Builds-the-Fire smiled. She was a mental gymnast, too. She pulled her leg straight up against her body so that she could’ve kissed her kneecap. “I wish I could do that,” Thomas said. Victor was ready to jump out of the plane. Thomas, that crazy Indian storyteller with ratty old braids and broken teeth, was flirting with a beautiful Olympic gymnast. Nobody back home on the reservation would ever believe it. “Well,” the gymnast said. “It’s easy. Try it.” Thomas grabbed at his leg and tried to pull it up into the same position as the gymnast. He couldn’t even come close, which made Victor and the gymnast laugh. “Hey,” she asked. “You two are Indian, right?” “Full-blood,” Victor said. “Not me,” Thomas said. “I’m half magician on my mother’s side and half clown on my father’s.” They all laughed. “What are your names?” she asked. “Victor and Thomas.” “Mine is Cathy. Pleased to meet you all.” The three of them talked for the duration of the flight. Cathy the gymnast complained about the government, how they screwed the 1980 Olympic team by boycotting. “Sounds like you all got a lot in common with Indians,” Thomas said. Nobody laughed.
After the plane landed in Phoenix and they had all found their way to the terminal, Cathy the gymnast smiled and waved goodbye. “She was really nice,” Thomas said. “yeah, but everybody talks to everybody on airplanes,” Victor said. “It’s too bad we can’t always be that way.” “You always used to tell me I think too much,” Thomas said. “Now it sounds like you do.” “Maybe I caught it from you.” “Yeah.” Thomas and Victor rode in a taxi to the trailer where Victor’s father died. “Listen” Victor said as they stopped in front of the trailer. “I never told you I was sorry for beating you up that time.” “Oh, it was nothing. We were just kids and you were drunk.” “Yeah, but I’m still sorry.” “That’s all right.” Victor paid for the taxi and the two of them stood in the hot Phoenix summer. They could smell the trailer. “This ain’t going to be nice,” Victor said. “You don’t have to go in.” “You’re going to need help.” Victor walked to the front door and opened it. The stink rolled out and made them both gag. Victor’s father had lain in that trailer for a week in hundred-degree temperatures before anyone found him. And the only reason anyone found him was because of the smell. They needed dental records to identify him. That’s exactly what the coroner said. They needed dental records. “Oh, man,” Victor said. “I don’t know if I can do this.” “Well, then don’t.” “But there might be something valuable in there.” “I thought his money was in the bank.” “It is. I was talking about pictures and letteres and stuff like that.” “Oh,” Thomas said as he held his breath and followed Victor into the trailer.
Thomas Builds-the-Fire closed his eyes and told this story: “I remember when I had this dream that told me to go to Spokane, to stand by the Falls in the middle of the city and wait for a sign.. I knew I had to go there but I didn’t have a car. Didn’t have a license. I was only thirteen. So I walked all the way, took me all day, and I finally made it to the Falls. I stood there for an hour waiting. Then your dad came walking up. What the hell are you doing here? he asked me. I said, Waiting for a vision. Then your father said, All you’re going to get here is mugged. So he drove me over to Denny’s, bought me dinner, and then drove me home to the reservation. For a long time I was mad because I thought my dreams had lied to me. But they didn’t. Your dad was my vision. Take care of each other is what my dreams were saying. Take care of each other.” Victor was quiet for a long time. He searched his mind for memories of his father, found the good ones, found a few bad ones, added it all up, and smiled. “My father never told me about finding you in Spokane,” Victor said. “He said he wouldn’t tell anybody. Didn’t want me to get in trouble. But he said I had to watch out for you as part of the deal.” “Really?” “Really. Your father said you would need the help. He was right.” “That’s why you came down here with me, isn’t it?” Victor asked. “I came because of your father.” Victor and Thomas climbed into the pickup, drove over to the bank, and claimed the three hundred dollars in the savings account. ***
When Victor was twelve, he stepped into an underground wasp nest. His foot was caught in the hole, and no matter how hard he struggled, Victor couldn’t pull free. He might have died there, stung a thousand times, if Thomas Builds-the-Fire had not come by. “Run,” Thomas yelled and pulled Victor’s foot from the hole. They ran then, hard as they ever had, faster than Billy Mills, faster than Jim Thorpe, faster than the wasps could fly. Victor and Thomas ran until they couldn’t breathe, ran until it was cold and dark outside, ran until they were lost and it took hours to find their way home. All the way back, Victor counted his stings. “Seven,” Victor said. “My lucky number.”
Thomas Builds-the-Fire could fly. Once, he jumped off the roof of the tribal school and flapped his arms like a crazy eagle. And he flew. For a second, he hovered, suspended above all the other Indian boys who were too smart or too scared to jump. “He’s flying,” Junior yelled, and Seymour was busy looking for the trick wires or mirrors. But it was real. As real as the dirt when Thomas lost altitude and crashed to the ground. He broke his arm in two places. “He broke his wing,” Victor chanted, and the other Indian boys joined in, made it a tribal song. “He broke his wing, he broke his wing, he broke his wing,” all the Indian boys chanted as they ran off, flapping their wings, wishing they could fly, too. They hated Thomas for his courage, his brief moment as a bird. Everybody has dreams about flying. Thomas flew. One of his dreams came true for just a second, just enough to make it real.
***
***
Victor didn’t find much to keep in the trailer. Only a photo album and a stereo. Everything else had that smell stuck in it or was useless anyway. “I guess this is all,” Victor said. “It aint much.” “Better than nothing,” Thomas said. “Yeah, and I do have the pickup.” “Yeah,” Thomas said. “It’s in good shape.” “Dad was good about that stuff.” “Yeah, I remember your dad.” “Really?” Victor asked. “What do you remember?”
Victor’s father, his ashes, fit in one wooden box with enough left over to fill a cardboard box. “He was always a big man,” Thomas said. Victor carried part of his father and Thomas carried the rest out to the pickup. They set him down carefully behind the seats, put a cowboy hat on the wooden box and a Dodgers cap on the cardboard box. That’s the way it was supposed to be. “Ready to head back home,” Victor asked. “It’s going to be a long drive.” “Yeah, take a couple days, maybe.” “We can take turns,” Thomas said.
***
“Okay,” Victor said, but they didn’t take turns. Victor drove for sixteen hours straight north, made it halfway up Nevada toward home before he finally pulled over. “Hey, Thomas,” Victor said. “You got to drive for a while.” “Okay.” Thomas Builds-the-Fire slid behind the wheel and started off down the road. All through Nevada, Thomas and Victor had been amazed at the lack of animal life, at the absence of water, of movement. “Where is everything?” Victor had asked me more than once. Now when Thomas was finally driving they saw the first animal, maybe the only animal in Nevada. It was a long-eared jackrabbit. “Look,” Victor yelled. “It’s alive.” Thomas and Victor were busy congratulating themselves on their discovery when the jackrabbit darted out into the road and under the wheels of the pickup. “Stop the goddamn car,” Victor yelled, and Thomas did stop, backed the pickup to the dead jackrabbit. “Oh, man, he’s dead,” Victor said as he looked at the squashed animal. “Really dead.” “The only thing alive in this whole state and we just killed it.” “I don’t know,” Thomas said. “I think it was suicide.” Victor looked around the desert, sniffed the air, felt the emptiness and loneliness, and nodded his head. “Yeah,” Victor said. “It had to be suicide.” “I can’t believe this,” Thomas said. “You drive for a thousand miles ain’t even any bugs smashed on the windshield. I drive for ten seconds and kill the only living thing in Nevada.” “Yeah,” Victor said. “Maybe I should drive.” “Maybe you should.” *** Victor and Thomas made it back to the reservation just as the sun was rising. It was the beginning of a new day on earth, but the same old shit on the reservation.” “Good morning.” Thomas said. “Good morning.” The tribe was waking up, ready for work, eating breakfast, reading the newspaper, just like everybody else does. Willene LeBret was out in her garden wearing a bathrobe. She waved when Thomas and Victor drove by. “Crazy Indians made it,” she said to herself and went back to her roses. Victor stopped the pickup in front of Thomas Builds-the-Fire’s HUD house. They both yawned, stretched a little, shook dust from their bodies. “I’m tired,” Victor said. “Of everything,” Thomas added. They both searched for words to end the journey. Victor needed to thank Thomas for his help, for the money, and make the promise to pay it all back. “Don’t worry about the money,” Thomas said. “It don’t make any difference anyhow.” “Probably not, enit?” “Nope.” Victor knew that Thomas would remain the crazy storyteller who talked to dogs and cars, who listened to the wind and pine trees. Victor knew that he couldn’t really be friends with Thomas, even
after all that had happened. It was cruel but it was real. As real as the ashes, as Victor’s father, sitting behind the seats. “I know how it is,” Thomas said. “I know you ain’t going to treat me any better than you did before. I know your friends would give you too much shit about it.” Victor was ashamed of himself. Whatever happened to the tribal ties, the sense of community? The only real thing he shared with anybody was a bottle and broken dreams. He owed Thomas something, anything. “Listen,” Victor said and handed Thomas the cardboard box which contained half of his father. “I want you to have this.” Thomas took the ashes and smiled, closed his eyes, and told this story: “I’m going to travel to Spokane Falls one last time and toss these ashes into the water. And your father will rise like a salmon, leap over the bridge, over me, and find his way home. It will be beautiful. His teeth will shine like silver, like a rainbow.
He will rise, Victor, he will rise.” Victor smiled. “I was planning on doing the same thing with my half,” Victor said. “But I didn’y imagine my father looking anything like a salmon. I thought it’d be like cleaning the attic or something. Like lettings things go after they’ve stopped having any use.” “Nothing stops, cousin,” Thomas said. “Nothing stops.” Thomas Builds-the-Fire got out of the pickup and walked up his driveway. Victor started the pickup and he began to drive home. “Wait,” Thomas yelled suddenly from his porch. “I just got to ask one favor.” Victor stopped the pickup, leaned out the window, and shouted back. “What do you want?” “Just one time when I’m telling a story somewhere, why don’t you stop and listen?” Thomas asked. “Just once?” “Just once.” Victor waved his arms to let Thomas know that the deal was good. It was a fair trade, and that was all Victor had ever wanted from his whole life. So Victor drive his father’s pickup toward home while Thomas went into his house, closed the door behind him, and heard a new story come to him in the silence afterwards. from “American Short Stories Since 1945” edited by John G. Parks © 2002 Oxford University Press, New York
http://www.barriolife.com/stories/alexie.html
An Essay on Casinos by Sherman Alexie Love, hunger, money... and other not-so-facetious reasons why the Spokane Indians want to bet on casinos by Sherman Alexie I’ve just returned from the Spokane Tribe’s casino-and-gambling mecca at the western edge of our reservation, and I may have to enter the federal Witness Relocation Program because I have seen and know too much. I couldn’t believe it. I had gone there expecting to see a few slot machines and some sweaty smalltown gamblers. Instead, there were dozens of suspicious-looking men in expensive suits shaking hands with our Spokane tribal councilmen. “It’s the Mafia,” I whispered into the tape recorder that I had carefully hidden beneath the bill of my Washington Redskins baseball hat. Risking life and limb, I maneuvered closer to the wiseguys and councilmen. They barely noticed me, of course, because nobody, neither Indian nor white, ever pays attention to poets. “The Family really admires what you’re doing out there,” one of the wiseguys said to the councilmen. His diction was perfect. “We believe your reservation could become a lucrative member of our network.” My true identity could’ve been discovered at any time. Confidently, I ordered a Diet Pepsi without ice, shaken, not stirred. “Where do you want us to sign?” the councilmen asked and took out the pens that they all saved for special occasions. “Sign here. And initial here and here.” Unable to read the fine print, I inched closer and closer - too close, in fact. “What seems to be the problem?” one of the wiseguys asked as he grabbed me by the front of my Atlanta Braves T-shirt. “Who is this young man?” the head wiseguy asked. “Him?” the councilmen asked, and looked at me. “He’s just a poet.” “Prove it,” the head wiseguy demanded of me. “My love is like a red, red rose,” I blurted. I waited for the response. Had all my years of creative-writing classes finally paid off? The head wiseguy looked me over, slapped my face gently, pinched my cheek. “Leave him alone,” he said to the wiseguy holding me. “He’s just a poet. Give him a dollar and a free drink.” I took my dollar and voucher for another Pepsi and went my way. However, I had time to read the fine print on one of those contracts and it said the terms of this agreement would be valid as long as the grasses grow, the winds blow, and the rivers flow. Help me. I’m writing this from a seedy hotel room in an eastern Washington city. I know too much. I know that the Mafia is on
the Spokane Indian Reservation and that they’re making treaties. I know the Mafia will break those treaties and only the United States Government is allowed to break treaties with Indians. I’m caught in a crossfire. Help me. I’m just a poet. Gambling has always been about trust and the loss of trust. It’s never been about money. Gambling is nothing new for the Indians. Gambling is traditional and began when Columbus arrived in our country. Indians started to roll the dice every time we signed another treaty but we’ve always been the losers because the dice were loaded and the treaties broken by random design. Now we’ve got our own game of Reservation Roulette and I’d advise the faithful to always bet on red.
However, I have the distinct feeling that America is not placing any bets on the survival of Indians. America will not even allow Indians to become citizens of the 20th century. We’re trapped somewhere between Custer and Columbus, between the noble and savage. I’ve heard it said that Indians shouldn’t become involved in high-stakes gambling because it tarnishes our noble heritage. Personally, I’ve never believed in the nobility of poverty. Personally, I believe in the nobility of breakfast, lunch and dinner. Indians need money. Forget the discussions about self-hate or cultural dislocation. Forget the loss of land and language. Most Indians cannot even begin to think about those kinds of complicated issues. They don’t have the time. They have to spend most of their time worrying about where their next meal is coming from. They worry about how love and hunger can get so mixed up. Most Indians don’t have time or energy enough to listen to me or you. As Billie Holiday said, “You’ve got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for anybody’s damned sermon.” Indians need the money, Indians need
the money, the money because we all need all of us (meaning me and you) need the money. Indians need it more because we have less of everything except our stories and poems but you can’t buy a can of Spam with a metaphor. We need the money, the money because money is America’s religion, because money is prayer and hymn, because a dollar bill can fill our empty stomachs like a good savior will. I’ve also heard so much talk about the morality of gambling. How immoral is the Washington State Lottery? How immoral is Grand Coulee Dam? How immoral are the beer and tobacco companies? Those questions have their answers buried somewhere deep in the heart of capitalism, and the casino on the Spokane Indian Reservation is proof that the Spokanes have embraced capitalism. There was a demand for a product (gambling) and the Spokane Indians have produced a supply (casino). Does that frighten me? Of course. But I think it’s more important to ask the non-Indians why they are frightened of it. Is it because of the imagined threat of gangster influence? The profits from reservation gambling are small change on a Mafia scale. Is it because of the supposed threat to the noble image of Indians? There isn’t much non-Indian complaint about the Washington Redskins or the fact that Tonto is still monosyllabic on television every day of the year. Is it really because of the immorality of gambling? Capitalism has always rewarded immorality, regardless of race, gender or religion. I think it has more to do with power. As Indians make money we also gain power. As we gain power we develop a political voice. We can then use that voice to demand that treaties be honored. We can demand that this country be held accountable for what it did to us and what it continues to do to us. We can make those demands because we’ll have the power. We can make those demands because we’ll have the money. We’ll have the money that used to belong to you. from High Country News (www.hcn.org), September 19, 1994. Online at www.hcn.org/1994/sep19/dir/essay.html
northwest of Spokane. Approximately 1,100 Spokane Tribal members live there. Alexie’s father is a Coeur d’Alene Indian, and his mother is a Spokane Indian. Born hydrocephalic, with water on the brain, Alexie underwent a brain operation at the age of 6 months and was not expected to survive. When he did beat the odds, doctors predicted he would live with severe mental retardation. Though he showed no signs of this, he suffered severe side effects, such as seizures and uncontrollable bed-wetting, throughout his childhood. In spite of all this, Alexie learned to read by age three, and devoured novels, such as John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, by age five. All these things ostracized him from his peers and he was often the brunt of other kids’ jokes on the reservation. As a teenager, after finding his mother’s name written in a textbook he was assigned at the Wellpinit school, Alexie made a conscious decision to attend high school off the reservation in Reardan, WA, where he knew he would get a better education. At Reardan High he was “the only Indian...except for the school mascot.” There he excelled academically and became a star player on the basketball team. He graduated from Reardan High and went on to attend Gonzaga University in Spokane on scholarship in 1985. After two years at Gonzaga, he transferred to Washington State University (WSU) in Pullman. Alexie planned to be a doctor until he “fainted three times in human anatomy class and needed a career change.” That change was fueled when he stumbled into a poetry workshop at WSU. Encouraged by poetry teacher Alex Kuo, Alexie excelled at writing and realized he’d found his new career choice. Shortly after graduating in American Studies from WSU, Alexie received the Washington State Arts Commission Poetry Fellowship in 1991 and the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship in 1992. Not long after receiving his second fellowship, and just one year after he left WSU, two of his poetry collections, The Business of Fancydancing and I Would Steal Horses, were published. Alexie had a problem with alcohol that began soon after he started college at Gonzaga, but after learning that Hanging Loose Press agreed to publish The Business of Fancydancing, he immediately gave up drinking, at the age of 23, and has been sober ever since. Alexie continued to write prolifically and his first collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, was published by Atlantic Monthly Press in 1993. For his collection he received a PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction, and was awarded a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award.
Biography
Alexie was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists and won the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award and the Murray Morgan Prize for his first novel, Reservation Blues, published in 1995 by Atlantic Monthly Press. His second novel, Indian Killer, published in 1996, also by Atlantic Monthly Press, was named one of People’s Best of Pages and a New York Times Notable Book.
Sherman J. Alexie, Jr., was born in October 1966. A Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian, he grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington, about 50 miles
Alexie occasionally does reading and stand-up performances with musician Jim Boyd, a Colville Indian. Alexie and Boyd also collaborated to record the album Reservation Blues, which
contains the songs from the book of the same name. One of the Reservation Blues songs, “Small World”, also appeared on Talking Rain: Spoken Word & Music from the Pacific Northwest and Honor: A Benefit for the Honor the Earth Campaign. In 1996 Boyd and Alexie opened for the Indigo Girls at a concert to benefit the Honor the Earth Campaign. In 1997, Alexie embarked on another artistic collaboration. Chris Eyre, a Cheyenne/Arapaho Indian, discovered Alexie’s writing while doing graduate work at New York University’s film school. Through a mutual friend, they agreed to collaborate on a film project inspired by Alexie’s work. The basis for the screenplay was “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” a short story from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Shadow Catcher Entertainment produced the film. Released as Smoke Signals at the Sundance Film Festival in January 1998, the movie won two awards: the Audience Award and the Filmmakers Trophy. After success at Sundance, Smoke Signals found a distributor, Miramax Films, and was released in New York and Los Angeles on June 26 and across the country on July 3. In 1999 the film received a Christopher Award, an award presented to the creators of artistic works “which affirm the highest values of the human spirit.” Alexie was also nominated for the Independent Feature Project/West 1999 Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay. In the midst of releasing Smoke Signals, Alexie competed in his first World Heavyweight Poetry Bout competition in June 1998. He went up against world champion Jimmy Santiago Baca and won the Bout, and then went on to win the title again over the next three years, becoming the first poet to hold the title for three and four consecutive years. Known for his exceptional humor and performance ability, Alexie made his stand-up debut at the Foolproof Northwest Comedy Festival in Seattle, WA, in April 1999, and was the featured performer at the Vancouver International Comedy Festival’s opening night gala in July 1999. In 1998, Alexie participated with seven others in the PBS Lehrer News Hour Dialogue on Race with President Clinton. The discussion was moderated by Jim Lehrer and originally aired on PBS on July 9, 1998. Alexie has also been featured on Politically Incorrect , 60 Minutes II, and NOW with Bill Moyers, for which he wrote a special segment on insomnia and his writing process called “Up All Night.” In February 2003, Alexie participated in the Museum of Tolerance project, “Finding Our Families, Finding Ourselves,” an exhibit showcasing the diversity within the personal histories of several noted Americans, and that celebrates the shared experiences common to being part of an American family and encourages visitors to seek out their own histories, mentors and heroes. This project was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, “Our Big American Family,” which originally aired in January 2003, on which Alexie was a guest. Alexie was the guest editor for the Winter 2000-01 issue of Ploughshares, a prestigious literary journal. He was a 1999 O. Henry Award Prize juror, was one of the judges for the 2000 inagural PEN/Amazon.com Short Story Award, and a juror for both the Poetry Society of America’s 2001 Shelley Memorial
Award and the Poets and Writers “Writers Exchange 2001” Contest. He currently serves as a mentor in the PEN Emerging Writers program. He was a member of the 2000 and 2001 Independent Spirit Awards Nominating Committees, and has seved as a creative adviser to the Sundance Institute Writers Fellowship Program and the Independent Feature Films West Screenwriters Lab. Alexie was the commencement speaker for the University of Washington’s 2003 commencement ceremony. In October 2003 he received Washington State University’s highest honor for alumni, the Regents’ Distinguished Alumnus Award. Alexie has published 16 books to date, including his most recent collection of short stories, Ten Little Indians.
What It Means to Be Sherman Alexie The toughest Indian writer in the world angles for a bigger audience. by Russ Spencer
Sherman Alexie’s second-floor Seattle office is bordered by redwoods and cedar and has three pieces of art on the walls. Two of them are what you would expect. One is the original artwork from his second short-story collection, First Indian on the Moon. The other is a signed and framed print of the poem “Thanksgiving at Snake Butte” by the pre-eminent Indian author James Welch, one of Alexie’s literary heroes. Then there’s the black-and-white photograph to the left of his desk. It’s a portrait of Kurt Cobain, the grunge-rock superhero who revitalized the moribund early-’90s pop-culture scene with his band Nirvana and then, in 1994, killed himself with a shotgun blast to the head. The photo is a surprise at first, but then you realize it fits. The sense of being an outsider, the anger, the motivation. Seattle. “He saved us all,” Alexie says. “He came and blew away all that shit that was going on.” Alexie isn’t as famous as Cobain, but he wants to be. He started as what he likes to call “a small literary writer from Seattle,” but he was remarkably prolific and had an appetite for success. His college writing professor, Alex Kuo, once said that he probably had ten students with more talent than Alexie. But Alexie, Kuo said, “had a dedication that other students with perhaps more talent didn’t have.” That dedication has paid off. One year after he graduated from college in 1991, two books of his poetry were published, I Would Steal Horses and The Business of Fancydancing, and as the legend goes, their acceptance prompted him to kick five years of debilitating drinking in one night. He has since published five more books of poetry. His first book of prose, a short-story
collection titled The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, was published in 1993, and he followed in 1995 with his first novel, Reservation Blues. Indian Killer came out a year later and became a New York Times Notable Book. Then he devoted his time to producing the 1998 film Smoke Signals and working on his new collection, The Toughest Indian in the World. Along the way, he won awards from PEN, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ernest Hemingway Foundation and many others. In 1998 and 1999, he was named by both Granta and The New Yorker as one of the best American fiction writers under forty. He has been embraced by Hollywood, as well—he is now working on three screen adaptations of novels, including his own Reservation Blues. And he won both the 1998 and 1999 World Heavyweight Championship Poetry Bout at the Taos Poetry Circus in New Mexico. *** “I identify strongly with him,” Alexie says of Cobain. “Smalltown guy, poor, makes himself into this huge rock star.” Alexie was born just six months before Cobain, a couple of hundred scrub-brush miles away from Cobain’s tiny hometown of Aberdeen, on the 150,000-acre Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern Washington. Like Cobain, his antipathy toward the social and racial oppression of mainstream America drove much of his early work. With Alexie’s success, though, he has begun moving beyond his early, anger-driven prose into a kind of mythopoetic writing style, which has come stridently into focus with The Toughest Indian in the World. Concurrently, Alexie—though he describes himself as an introvert—has purposefully developed a fast-talking, highly entertaining onstage comic persona. At public appearances, he embarks on quick-witted monologues, taking serious aim at pretty much every race he can, but reserving a disproportionate amount of attention for what he calls “crazy white people.” He gleefully targets New Age white women who “come floating onto the reservation healing everything in their path” and jokes about white people who expect him to read coyote stories, speak in a slow monotone and “stare off into the distance as if constantly receiving visions.” Alexie memorizes his own stories and then acts them out, improvising new lines along the way, making the reading into a kind of free-form Beat performance. He has developed this side of his work, he says, specifically to further his career and in part because he was often turned off by writers who appeared live and read their work, no matter how brilliant, with a monotone delivery. “I care about my writing so much, and I’m so involved in it and so emotionally connected to it, and I want that passion, that caring, that hatred of it, that incredible relationship I have with my own work, I want people to know about that,” he says. “I want them to feel it when I’m up in front of them talking about what I do.” It’s all undertaken to accomplish one central goal, he says, and that is to get his books read by twelve-year-old reservation kids, who, like him, grew up either with heroes who had been created by the white media or no heroes at all. “In order for the Indian kid to read me,” Alexie says, “pop culture is where I should be. Literary fiction is very elitist. The fifteen or twenty thousand literary-book buyers in this country, I’m very happy for them, and I’m happy they buy my books, by and large. But there is a whole other population out there I want to reach. And so for me, what kind of art can I create that gets to them? I don’t want to
have an elitist career. I’ve won awards, I’ve gotten a lot of attention, I’ve been in The New Yorker, I’m very happy with all that. I’m very proud. But I would consider myself a failure if more people didn’t read me. I’d rather be accessible than win a MacArthur.” With the success, of course, it’s become harder and harder for Sherman Alexie to live up to the image the public has of him as the toughest Indian writer in the world. Both whites and Indians come at him with expectations. He butts up against these expectations and complains about them vociferously, at the same time using them to his advantage. There have been few Indian writers with the kind of mainstream ambitions as Alexie, and he’s the first to admit that he has worked the Indian angle for all it’s worth. “It’s a really crowded world out there, and everybody is clamoring for attention and you use what you’ve got,” he says. “And what I’ve got that makes me original is that I’m a rez boy.” *** Alexie’s father is Coeur d’Alene Indian, and his mother is Spokane Indian. One of six siblings, he was born October 7, 1966, in the tiny reservation town of Wellpinit. Soon after his birth, he was diagnosed with hydrocephalus, a condition in which expanding cranial fluid puts too much pressure on the brain. At six months old, Alexie underwent drastic surgery. The doctors told his parents that if he survived at all, which was doubtful, he would most likely be mentally handicapped. As a result of the surgery, he dealt with seizures and uncontrollable bed-wetting late into childhood, eventually becoming what he describes as a math geek who played Dungeons and Dragons by himself in the basement. He was smart and tall, though, so he went to Reardan, a white high school, where he played on the basketball team and was the only real Indian on the Reardan Indians. He went on to college at Washington State University in Pullman and, after taking a writing class, gave up his pre-med plans. On May 15, Alexie returned to Auntie’s Bookstore in Spokane, the place he had gone to buy books and games as a child. This time he was there to give a reading, and he read the story “Dear John Wayne” from his new book. In the third row sat his mother and father, two brothers, two sisters and two nieces. There were people he had known from all periods of his life, childhood, college and adulthood in Seattle. There was the woman who worked at the Safeway near his crummy apartment in college, whom he would see every day when he went to the grocery store, counting his pennies along the way, to buy something to eat. Seeing her was a symbolic moment, he says. “I had this big crush on her, and I never told her. Now I can tell her.” In other words, Alexie has arrived. There were five hundred people at that reading, and another couple of hundred had to be turned away. Success kills some pop stars, but it’s bringing Alexie to life—in some ways, making him larger than life. The success of Smoke Signals certainly helped. Cobbled together from situations and characters first developed in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven—primarily from the story “This is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona”—it is a roadtrip movie about Northwest Indians Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-A-Fire, who drive to the Southwest to take possession of the ashes of Victor’s dead father. Alexie wrote the screenplay and produced the movie, which was picked up by Miramax after winning the Audience Award and the Filmmakers Trophy at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. It became the first Indian-
produced, Indian-directed, Indian-written feature film ever distributed in the United States. And as Alexie likes to point out, “The Indians weren’t played by Italians with long hair.” It also showed Alexie the cultural power of film, something he never experienced with his books, and that gave him his biggest taste yet of the pop-culture presence he desires. “Thomas Buildsa-Fire, the character, has become a huge cultural character in the Indian world,” Alexie says. “I get photographs of Indian kids who dressed as him for Halloween. His lines in the movie have become pop-cultural phrases. In the Indian world, we just don’t have that. Our heroes have always been guys with guns. And now, to have this cultural hero who is this androgynous little storytelling bookworm geek—I think that’s wonderful.” His fiction has since become bigger, more daring, more surreal. He now traffics in huge metaphors and characters that engage in strange, archetypal and at times wildly desperate bids for intimacy or a sense of personal context. As such, The Toughest Indian in the World has elicited wildly divergent appraisals. While The New Yorker has given it a kind of ueberblessing by running two of the book’s stories in the past year, The New York Times panned it. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review, stating “Alexie’s stories continually surprise, revealing him once again as a master of his craft.” But others have accused him of fashioning those same surprises just for effect. In Toughest Indian, there is a road-trip story, “South by Southwest,” similar in many key ways to Smoke Signals, but Victor and Thomas have been replaced by a nutty white guy named Seymour and a fat Indian that Seymour nicknames Salmon Boy. They kiss in the front seat of a 1965 Chevrolet Malibu on their way to a McDonald’s in Tucson, Arizona. In Alexie’s preceding work, the novel Indian Killer, there was no kissing going on between Indians and white guys. There wasn’t even any handshaking. An Indian guy was mutilating white guys with a knife and leaving owl feathers on their bodies. Seymour and Salmon Boy meet when Seymour attempts to rob a pancake house, Pulp Fiction-style. He takes $42 in change from the customers and then says he needs someone to go with him to Arizona, someone who will fall in love with him along the way. Salmon Boy is the only volunteer. “Are you gay?” Seymour asks. “I’m not gay.” “No sir, I am not a homosexual,” Salmon Boy says. “I am not a homosexual, but I do believe in the power of love.” Alexie carries out the story, as he carries out all of the stories in the book, with his own brand of magic realism, as if these weren’t modern short stories at all, but indigenous folk tales that have been passed down through the ages. He mixes mythic references to salmon and constellations with the tragedies and foibles of real Indian life, with all of its juxtapositions, misunderstandings and occasional victories. He weaves in and out of Indian stereotypes, setting them up, teasing the reader with them, destroying them, and then being courageous enough to refer back to them again, as if, within the weave of what is thought to be true of pre-colonial Indians and what you see of today’s Indians, lies the ultimate truth. It’s a trickster sleight of hand that messes with reality and allows Alexie to get away with stories that feel purposefully timeless. ***
Alexie does a lot of his writing at 3 a.m. at the International House of Pancakes in the university district of Seattle, close to his office and not too far from his home, where he lives with his wife, Diane, a college counselor and Hidatsa Indian, and their five-year-old son. He has been an insomniac since he was a child. In those days, he would play games. Now, when he’s up late, he writes. When he’s not traveling, his Seattle life is quiet— he is limited to the writing he does during the day, at an office shared with an assistant he has known since college. He spends time with his family in the evenings and meets up with his buddies for basketball every Tuesday after work. He says all of his stories are born out of a central image that expands as he writes, and the image for Seymour and Salmon Boy came one night at the IHOP. “An Indian and a white guy walked in together, and they were obviously great friends,” he recalls. “They were laughing and a little intoxicated and not sloppy or obnoxious, just having a great time. And they looked so sweet together. They weren’t lovers, there was none of that energy, but they seemed so close and so intimate with each other that it was really touching.” Homosexuality informs many of the stories in The Toughest Indian in the World. The title story is about an Indian journalist who picks up an Indian boxer hitchhiking. The tired, conflicted writer is in awe of what he perceives as the fighter’s mythic purity. “You’d have been a warrior in the old days, enit?” the journalist says. “You would’ve been a killer. You would’ve stole everybody’s horses.” The story explodes, though, when they share a hotel room and, late at night, the fighter—who, it turns out, is gay—climbs into the writer’s bed and coaxes the journalist into a new experience. “I’m becoming more urban and also spending more and more time in the art world, which, you know, is heavily populated by homosexuals,” Alexie says. “So simply, my experiences have grown, so the characters represented in my fiction will grow accordingly. And one of the things, one of the hatreds that bothers me the most is homophobia. So in some sense I wanted to use my fiction as a way of addressing that directly. And celebrating [homosexuality] in all of its forms. And including it as just another aspect of love.” Love? From the guy who still talks about his fantasies of killing the white guys who sat in the back row of his high-school classes? “A couple of the reviews found the story cynical or a parody. And I meant it to be a very sweet story,” he says. “I was trying to do that. It is certainly difficult for anybody to love anybody, but we usually do OK. These aren’t happy stories necessarily. But I think they are positive stories.” If this isn’t the kind of thing one would expect from Alexie, well, he’s fine with that. “I always want to be a moving target,” he says. That quality may stem from a certain sense of personal protectionism. In the crowd at Auntie’s Bookstore, a lot of his old acquaintances from the reservation were on hand, and some were most decidedly not supporters of his work. Alexie has been dogged throughout his career by accusations from those at the reservation who say that he is selling them up the river, misrepresenting reservation life for his own gain, embarrassing them. “The word that keeps coming back is responsibility,” Alexie says. “They ask me to represent them, until the point where I’m not an artist. I’m a politician, or not even that, a propagandist. I’m supposed to be making public-service
announcements, rather than creating art. And I hate that. That kind of pressure is terrible.” At one point after his reading, a reservation Indian woman approached the microphone in the crowd. Alexie said later he had been estranged from her since age nine. “Old long feuds over old long things,” he said. The woman asked why, instead of shooting fictional narrative film like Smoke Signals, he didn’t film a documentary about the reservation, so that the American public could see “how it really is.” A few minutes later, a white man approached the mike and asked, “Do you hate white people?” These questions follow Alexie wherever he goes. And he’s not going to escape them, because what they both spring from informs who he has made himself to be—an Indian writer. It is both his reason to write and what he battles most strongly against. Every single one of the stories in his new book is about Indians and whites trying to overcome the stereotypes of who and what they are supposed to be. And that’s Alexie’s own challenge these days. On his book jackets in the past, Alexie has worn the same stoic too-cool-for-school Indian mask that he himself makes fun of. He calls it “the ethnic stare.” On his new book, though, we see a man without the mask. He wears a look of concern, but also of gentleness, vulnerability and, ultimately, pride. It was taken by Rex Rystedt, the same Seattle photographer who took the Cobain portrait on his wall. One looks at the image and wonders, Is this the introvert? Or the guy who becomes the Indian Richard Pryor on stage? The insomniac scratching out verse at 3 a.m. in the Seattle IHOP? Or the screenwriter who takes lunch at Sunset Strip cafes? The poor rez boy who enjoys the power and privilege he once railed against? The guy who started as a outsider poet? Or the one who now wants to be a mainstream pop-culture icon? A man who may not be telling the whole truth about the modern American Indian but is at least telling his own? Sherman Alexie defied expectations from his first breath. Now, he does it for the American literary world and, increasingly, the American public, as well. Book Magazine, July/August 2000
On Sherman Alexie Kenneth Lincoln With Sherman Alexie, readers can throw formal questions out the smokehole (as in resistance to other modern verse innovators, Whitman, Williams, Sexton, or the Beats). Parodic antiformalism may account for some of Alexie’s mass maverick appeal. This Indian gadfly jumps through all the hoops, sonnet, to villanelle, to heroic couplet, all tongue-in-cheeky. “I’m sorry, but I’ve met thousands of Indians,” he told Indian Artist magazine, Spring 1998, “and I have yet to know of anyone who has stood on a mountain waiting for a sign.” A reader enters the land of MTV and renascent AIM: a cartoon Pocahontas meets Beavis and Butthead at the forest’s edge, Sitting Bull takes on Arnold Schwarzenegger at Wounded Knee ‘73. The Last Real Indian has a few last words. A stand-up comedian, the Indian improvisator is the performing text, obviating too close a textual reading: youngish man, sixfoot-two or so, born in 1966 at the height of hippie nativism,
from Wellpinit, Washington, now living in Seattle and taking the fin de siecle literary world by storm (an Indian Oscar Wilde?). After a century of benign neglect, Indian literature has hit an inflationary spiral with six-figure book deals and million-dollar movies. New York publishers have been humping this sassy, talkback satirist as the last essentialist hold-out, a commercially successful Crazy Horse of mass marketing. The “most prodigious” Native American writer to date, Alexie told a Chicago Sun reporter asking about his brassy novel, Indian Killer, October 1996, to which the reporter queried, “Indian dujour?” Our young hero replied, “If so, it’s been a very long day. How about Indian du decade?” Millennial Indian extraordinaire? The reporter raised the controversy over Granta naming Alexie one of the twenty “Best Young American Novelists” for Reservation Blues (not a novel), and Sherman snapped: “To say I was on the list because I’m an Indian is ridiculous: I’m one of the most critically respected writers in the country. So the Granta critics . . . essentially, fuck ‘em” (October 31, 1996, New City’s Literary Supplement). Starting with Native American writers, Alexie’s competition includes no less than Allen, Erdrich, Harjo, Hogan, Momaday, Ortiz, Silko, TallMountain, Tapahonso, Welch, and Whiteman, among others (not to mention non-Indians like Toni Morrison, Norman Mailer, Cormac McCarthy, or Rita Dove). If “most critically respected” in a specific fictional genre of Indian Killer (thriller violence with racial undertones), his closest rivals are Tony Hillerman, Gerald Vizenor, Mickey Spillane, and Stephen King, an acknowledged model, John Steinbeck and the Brady Bunch tossed in. “He’s young,” says my elder brother back home, “he’ll ripen, given time.” A breed Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, not just anybody, but thirteen-sixteenths blood, according to his poetry: “I write about the kind of Indian I am: kind of mixed up, kind of odd, not traditional. I’m a rez kid who’s gone urban” (Indian Artist). What kind of an Indian is this?—a photogenic black mane of hair, dark-framed bifocal glasses, high-school class president, bookworm nose broken six times by bullies (he reminisces), English lit college degree from Eastern Washington State (after passing out as a pre-med student in his anatomy class, twice). His work is wizened with poetic anger, ribald love, and whipsaw humor. The crazy-heart bear is dancing comically, riding a wobbly unicycle, tossing overripe tomatoes at his audience. “This late in the 2Oth century,” the poet says in Red Blues, “we still make the unknown ours by destroying it.” His firecat imagination plays tricks on the reader, for our supposed good, for its own native delight and survival. “You almost / believe every Indian is an Indian,” the poet swears to MarIon Brando. Sherman: not So much a rhymer in the old sense, as a circus juggler Who can eat apples, he says, while juggling. A college graduate who played basketball sixteen hours a day to keep from boozing with his cronies: Seymour chugging beer as a poet writes poetry (up to the last one that kills you) and Lester dead drunk in the convenience store dumpster. Alexie’s sister and brother-in-law, passed out in a trailer, died by fire when a window curtain blew against a hot plate. The boy mimed everyone in his family and still won’t Stop talking. “I was a divisive presence on the reservation when I was seven,” he told an LA Times reporter, December 17, 1996. “I was a weird, eccentric, very arrogant little boy. The writing doesn’t change anybody’s opinion of me.” Promoting his new movie, Smoke Signals (coproduced with Cheyenne-Arapaho director Chris Eyre), the writer describes himself today as “mouthy, opinionated and arrogant,” a court jester’s cross of Caliban, Groucho Marx, and Lear’s Fool, but underneath, “I’m a sweetheart” (Denver Post, October 20, 1997). He’s the best
native example yet of Lewis Hyde’s wiley hinge-maker, Trickster, the infant Prince of Thieves, Hermes stealing into Olympus to claim legitimacy: “Wandering aimlessly, stupider than the animals, he is at once the bungling host and the agile parasite; he has no way of his own but he is the Great Imitator who adopts the many ways of those around him. Unconstrained by instinct, he is the author of endlessly creative and novel deceptions, from hidden hooks to tracks that are impossible to read.” Artistic grist and ironic survival are inseparable in this verse, tracing a short lifetime of basketball (a team captain “ball hog” in high school), beer, TV, rez cars falling apart, pony dreams, fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) babies, and fancy-dancing drunks. “You call it genocide; I call it economics,” Custer snorts. A warm-up for fiction and the movies, poetics are wrapped up in the politics of native poverty , torqued metrics, and ethnic protest: dime store Indi’n princesses and back-alley vision questers, 7-11 heroes and Vietnam vets, Marlon Brando and Crazy Horse. No insurance CEO or village doctor, Alexie has the near fatal, comic bravado of surviving an everyday rez, where every day is a blow to the stomach and a blaze of understanding. Being Indian means you’re hanging on for dear life, hanging in there with catastrophic humor, kicking back at sunset, staggering through the ‘49 to dawn, laughing your ass off and on again (the short fiction says), and accepting that bottom line of your neighbor’s butt next to you, misplaced, displaced, re-relocated into the present Red reality, so real that it hurts. So unreal in its hurtful beauty, so surreal that it makes you blink and smile to see another dawn. “How do you explain the survival of all of us who were never meant to survive?” It’s a long walk from Sitting Bull bearing “hard times” to Charlie Blackbird “surviving.” Alexie takes to Internet chat rooms for essential defenses of native sovereignty and intercultural access to America’ s power structures, particularly publishing and the movies. So, from Momaday’s visionary form, through Welch’s shamanic rhythm, here’s a surreal trickster savage in two-dimensional poetic cartoon. Rather than close reading or parsing the lines, his work elicits charged reaction, critical gut response, positive or negative argument. Reading Alexie’s work triggers a recoil from the shock of Indian reality, like looking into the Sun Dance sun, going blind, and slowly regaining sight, stars and blackspots and sunbursts floating across the field of perception, so you know it’s your perception, anyway, at last, of reality: “whiskey salmon absence,” the poem “Citizen Kane” ends. Firewater, relocation, vanishing American. The images, concretely charged as Pound’s Vorticist objects, are loaded in disconnections: the poison where food swarms, desperate homing, the absence that starves Indians to death. “Rosebud” is not a child’s movie sled but a desperately poor Sioux reservation in the Dakotas. “But, I mean, I really love movies. I always have,” Alexie said in “Making Smoke” (Aboriginal Voices May-June 1998). “I love movies more than I love books, and believe me, I love books more than I love every human being, except the dozen or so people in my life who love movies and books just as much as I do.” His favorite films are Midnight Cowboy, The Graduate, and Aliens. The writer goes on, “I mean, screenplays are more like poetry than like fiction. Screenplays rely on imagery to carry the narrative, rather than the other way around. And screenplays have form. Like sonnets, actually. Just as there’s [sic] expectations of form, meter, and rhyme in a sonnet, there are the same kinds of expectations for screenplays.” There are two dimensions in Alexie’s work, screenplay to verse, often no more than two characters in the short fiction, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. His work is mostly minimalist drama, back to the first Greek plays, alazon to eiron, dreamer to realist,
fool to cynic. Toss in commedia dell’arte, Punch and Judy, Laurel and Hardy, Amos and Andy, Lewis and Martin, Red Ryder and Little Beaver. The embedded third dimension of this post-holocaustal comedy is cultural landscape, for lack of a better term, devastated native homestead. So a third character might be salvage-surrealist, Old Man absent and implied, as with Welch’s winter-in-the-blood Na’pi. The third- dimensional axis then is Indi’n humor, a vanishing point of survival in the canvas of a hidden spirit world, including Trickster mimics, all around and behind us. Alexie takes Welch’s foxy shaman a skitter-step forward to tease Mary Austin: “Sweetheart, history / doesn’t always look like horses.” Poetry comes on not so much a text as a comic ruse, a razored one-liner, a reader’s riff to wake up America. The world is Indian as a coyote magician who makes every ordinary day a trick of survival, a vanishing act, a raw joke. A reader’s breath catches in the throat and comes out laughing strange, still . . . a breath it is, of life. It gets you going, brothers’ and sisters, a buzzing, rattling, weeping, yipping imagination. Cry so hard you begin to laugh: run so fast you lap your shadow: dream so hard you can’t sleep: think so hard you startle awake like a child. “Maia gave birth to a wily boy,” the Homeric hymn begins, “flattering and cunning, a robber and cattle thief, a bringer of dreams, awake all night, waiting by the gates of the city—Hermes, who was soon to earn himself quite a reputation among the gods, who do not die.” Crossing Ginsberg with Creeley, Hughes’s Crow with Berryrnan’s Mistah Bones, Alexie brews a homeboy devil’s own humor. The voice makes junkyard poetry out of broke-down reality, vision out of delirium tremens, prayer out of laughter. “When my father first smiled,” the poet recalls, “it scared the shit out of me.” . . . Indi’n vaudeville, then, stand-up comedy on the edge of despair; A late-twentieth-century, quasi-visionary clown tells the truth that hurts and heals in one-liners cheesy as the Marx Brothers, trenchant as Lenny Bruce, tricky as Charlie Hill’s BIA Halloween “Trick or Treaty.” The, stand-up poet marvels in dismay, “Imagine Coyote accepts / the Oscar for lifetime achievement.” There’s an old trickster-teacher role here in a young Indian’s hands-jokes draw the line, cut to the quick, sling the bull, open the talk. “White Men Can’t Drum,” Alexie announced in Esquire Magazine, October 1992, roasting the new-age men’s movement, all the Wannabe fuss and fustian. “How do you explain the survival of all of us who were never meant to survive?” asks the verse straight man. “There is nothing we cannot survive,” the poet swears. Surviving war is the premise. In The Summer of Black Widows (1996), Alexie’s sixth poetry collection in as many years (composing by computer), “Father and Farther” (also performed on the rock cassette, Reservation Blues) recalls a drunken basketball coach and a losing team. “Listen,” his father slurs, “I was a paratrooper in the war.” “Which war? “ the boy-poet asks. “All of them,” he said. Quincentennial facts: Native Americans as a composite are the only in-country ethnic group that the U.S. has declared war against, 1860-1890. Some existing 560 reservations, 315 in the lower forty-eight states, are natively seen from inside as occupied POW camps. Think of it as the delayed stress of contemporary Indian America: the post- traumatic shock of surviving Columbus to Cotton Mather, Buffalo Bill Cody to Andy Jackson, Chivington to Custer. “Goddamn,” the general says, again and again, “saber is a beautiful word,” in ironic cut against Auden’s penchant for “scissors.” World War I Indian
volunteers, as cited, gained Native Americans dual citizenship in 1924. Code Talkers in World War II made natives national heroes. Korea, Vietnam, and Desert Storm’ s chemical poisoning brought tribal veterans into millennial terror. In 1993, the UCI.A American Indian Studies Center published Old Shins & New Skins as no. 9 in the Native American Poetry Series. Old shirts, not stuffed new suits: new ‘skins, Redskins reborn, sloughing “old” skins. There are always two sides to things, bicultural ironies to new-age lies, & the “blessed ampersand,” hip shorthand to a coded new tongue, the with-it Indi’n poet. There’s no text “set” here as such, but more a radical riff, something spilled over, a virus, a toxin released, a metastasizing anger. It’s a “reservation of my mind,” the poet says. The opening epithet equates, “Anger x Imagination = poetry,” in the amplitude & invention of the angry young Indian. One shot short of death, Seymour says, drink as you write free verse, no matter if “our failures are spectacular.” Maverick Trixter talks back, makes a different kind of poetry for people with differences: “it was not written for the white literary establishment,” Adrian Louis says in the foreword to Old Skins & New Shins. A double buckskin language frays the edges of bicultural America, questions the multiple meanings of reservation, red, risk, Cody & Crazy Horse, Marlon Brando & John Wayne, Christ & Custer, who died for your sins. The critic is left with notes to bumper-sticker poetics, insult & antagonism, the fractious comehither. Poetry as disruptive tease, a sideshow of historical truth & poetic hyperbole. Or, to borrow from the social sciences, “privileged license”: tribal teasing tests boundaries, deepens resilience, insures survival, bets on renewal. Not without the warrior history of Old English insults, flytyngs, hurled across a river a thousand years ago in “The Battle ofMaldon.” LA South Central Blacks doin’ the dozens, Yer granmother wears combat boots! The Last Poets in Harlem chant, Niggers like to fuck each other. . . . El Paso Hispanics drive slow ‘n low riders. Inventories of abuses, imagined & otherwise: hunger of imagination, poverty of memory, toxicity of history, all in the face of cultural genocide and racial misrepresentation and out-right extermination, to challenge musty stereotypes of vanishing, savage, stoic, silent, shamanic, stuperous Indians. Poetry is never bread enough & doesn’t pay the bills, “damned from beginning to end,” Williams says. Who could quibble aesthetics in this setting? money is free if you ‘re poor enough Are there any connections with canonical American poetry? Start with Langston Hughes’s essentialist pride in the Harlem Renaissance, “I, too, sing America,” not just Walt Whitman fingering leaves of grass, or Carl Sandburg shouldering Chicago. Allen Ginsberg howled his native place in the 1950s: the marginalized, dispossessed, discriminated, hipster, homosexual, Jewish, offbeat antihero. It’s an old revolutionary American motif, the lost found, the last first, the underdog bites back. Sylvia Plath’s rage and exhibitionist daring to die for us as Lady Lazarus: “Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air.” Ted Roethke’s lost-son, lyric blues: “Thrum-thrum, who can be equal to ease? / I’ve seen my father’s face before / Deep in the belly of a thing to be.” John Berryman’s brilliant mad comic pain: “These songs were not meant to be understood, you understand, / They were meant to terrify & comfort. / Lilac was found in his hand.” A kind of Indian antipoetry breaks form at the millennial end. Alexie pushes against formalist assumptions of what poetry ought to be, knocks down aesthetic barriers set up in xenophobic academic corridors, and rebounds as cultural performance. He
can play technique with mock sonnet, breezy villanelle, unheroic couplet, tinkling tercet, quaky quatrain in any-beat lines. The rhymer trades on surreal images and throwaway metaphors in a drunken villanelle: Trail of Tears . . . trail of beers. The rush of his poems is an energy released, stampeding horses, raging fires, stomping shoes: the poet as fast & loose sharpster in accretive repetition. Alexie likes catalogues, anaphoral first-word repetitions, the accumulative power of oral traditions. There is something freeing about all this—free to imagine, to improvise, to make things up, to wonder, to rage on. Sharpening wits on quick wit, his poetry runs free of restrictive ideas about Indians, poems, ponies, movies, shoes, dreams, dumpsters, reservations, angers, losses. His lines break free of precious art . . . but free for what, that matters? Do we care? the hard questions come tumbling. Do we remember, or listen closely, or think carefully, or wonder fully, or regard deeply enough? Readers certainly learn about New Rez Indi’ns who shoot hoop, stroke pool, fancy dance, drink beer, snag girls, hustle, hitch, rap, joke, cry, rhyme, dream, write everything down. These Computer Rad ‘Skins write verse that does not stay contained in formal repose: does not pull away, or shimmer in the night sky, or intimidate the common reader, but comes on full as a poetry that begs visceral response. Often cartoonish, a gag, a point-of-view gimmick, more “like” Virtual lndian. “There is no possible way to sell your soul” for poetry, Alexie said in LA (December 17, 1996), “because nobody’s offering. The devil doesn’t care about poetry. No one wants to make a movie out of a poem.” This trickster has made one movie, as mentioned, and cast another from Indian Killer. Call it a reactive aesthetics, kinetic pop art, protest poetics to involve and challenge late-century readers—cajoled, battered, insulted, entertained, humored, angered to respond. A poetry that gets us up off our easy chairs. Tribal jive, that is, streetsmart, populist, ethnocentric, edged, opinionated, disturbed, fired up as reservation graffiti, a la John Trudell’s Venice, California, rock lyrics, a Cherokee-breed Elvis as “Baby Boom Che.” Alexie joins the brash, frontier braggadocio of westering America, already out west a long time, ironically, a tradition in itself, shared with Whitman, Lawrence, Stein, Mailer, Kesey, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Vonnegut, Bellow, Heinemann, Mamet. Huckster, con man, carny barker, stand-up comedian, Will Rogers to Jonathan Winters, Cheech & Chong to Charlie Hill. The impudence of the anti-poetic Red Rapster, daring us not to call this poetry. “I’m not a rapper,” Russell Means crows of his punk album, Electric Warrior, “I’m a Rapaho!” “You’ll almost / believe every Indian is an Indian,” Alexie carries on. Frybread . . . Snakes . . . Forgiveness Excerpted from a longer essay, “Futuristic Hip Indian: Alexie.” From Sing With the Heart of a Bear: Fusions of Native and American Poetry, 1890-1999. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Copyright © 2000 by The Board of Regents of the University of California.
General Commentary by Sherman Alexie
Alexie on his poetic inspiration “[Alex Kuo’s poetry workshop] was the first place I ever read contemporary poems, especially contemporary American Indian
poems. And I read one poem in particular that was revolutionary and revelatory. The line was, ‘I’m in the resrvation of my mind.’ It was by Adrian Louis, a Paiute Indian poet. For me, that was like, ‘In the beginning . . .’ It was , ‘Because I could not stop for death, death kindly stopped for me . . .’ It was ‘ I sing the body electric . . .’ It was all that and more. It was the first line I ever read in any work, any fiction anywhere that ever applied to something I knew. Literally, it was this flash of lightning, roll of thunder, Bert Parks parking, Bob Barker barking, where I understood everything that I ever wanted to be. At that moment. When I read that line. It was really like that, like a light switch. And at that moment I knew I wanted to be a writer.” from Bob Ivry, “From the Reservation of His Mind.” Bergen Record 28 June 1998. http://www.bergen.com/yourtime/ytsmoke199806282.htm
(S.A.) It was my first semester poetry manuscript. Part of the assignment was to submit to literary magazines. The one I liked in the Washington State library was Hanging Loose magazine. I liked that it started the same year I was born. The magazine, the press and I are the same age. Over the next year and a half they kept taking poems of mine to publish. Then they asked if I had a manuscript. I said, “Yes!” and sent it in. It was a thousand copies. I figured I’d sell a hundred and fifty to my family. My mom would buy a hundred herself and that would be about it. But, it took off. I never expected it. Sometimes I think it would have been nicer if it had not been as big, because my career has been a rocket ride. There’s a lot of pressure. from Thomson Highway, “Spokane Words: An Interview with Sherman Alexie” http://jupiter.lang.osaka-u.ac.jp/~krkvls/salexie.html
Alexie on Poetry [Interview with Thomson Highway] (S.A.) I started writing because I kept fainting in human anatomy class and needed a career change. The only class that fit where the human anatomy class had been was a poetry writing workshop. I always liked poetry. I’d never heard of, or nobody’d ever showed me, a book written by a First Nations person, ever. I got into the class, and my professor, Alex K[u]o, gave me an anthology of contemporary Native American poetry called Songs From This Earth on Turtle’s Back. I opened it up and--oh my gosh--I saw my life in poems and stories for the very first time. (T.H.) Who were some of the writers in the book? (S.A.) Linda Hogan, Simon Ortiz, Joy Harjo, James Welch, Adrian Lewis. There were poems about reservation life: fry bread, bannock, 49’s, fried baloney, government food and terrible housing. But there was also joy and happiness. There’s a line by a Paiute poet named Adrian Lewis that says, “Oh, Uncle Adrian, I’m in the reservation of my mind.” I thought, “Oh my God, somebody understand me!: At that moment I realized, “I can do this!” That’s when I started writing--in 1989. (T.H.) The poetry that you would have studied in American Studies, for instance, the poetry of Wallace Stevens or e.e. cummings or Emily Dickinson never influenced you at all? (S.A.) Of course it did. I loved that stuff. I still love it. Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are two of my favorites. Wallace Stevens leaves me kind of dry, but the other poets, they’re still a primary influence. I always tell people my literary influences are Stephen King, John Steinbeck, and my mother, my grandfather and the Brady Bunch.
Alexie on Heroes I’ve always been picky about heroes. Like most American males, I’ve always admired athletes, particularly basketball players. I admired Julius Erving and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar not only for their athletic abilities, but for who they seemed to be off the court. They seemed to be spiritual, compassionate, and gracious people. Neither has done nor said anything over the years to contradict my image of them. Unlike many American males, I always admired writers as much as I admired athletes. I loved books and the people who wrote books. John Steinbeck was one of my earliest heroes because he wrote about the poor. Stephen King became a hero because he wrote so well of misfit kids, the nerds and geeks. Growing up on my reservation, I was a poor geek, so I had obvious reasons to love Steinbeck and King. I still love their novels, but I have no idea if they were/are spiritual, compassionate, and gracious men. There is so much spirit, compassion, and grace in their work, I want to assume that Steinbeck and King were/are good people. I would be terribly disappointed to find out otherwise. . . . Most of my heroes are just decent people. Decency is rare and underrated. I think my writing is somehow just about decency. Still, if I was keeping score, and I like to keep score, I would say the villains in the world are way ahead of the heroes. I hope my writing can help even the score. from Laura Baratto, “On Tour: Writers on the Road with New Books.” Hungry Mind Review Summer 1995: 22. http://www.bookwire.com/hmr/Review/htour.html
(T.H.) Then you moved on to short stories. (S.A.) I’d written a couple of them in college. After my first book of poems, The Business of Fancy Dancing, was published by Hanging Loose Press in Brooklyn, New York, I got a great New York Times book review. The review called me “one of the major lyric voices of our time.” I was a 25-year old Spokane Indian guy working as a secretary at a high school exchange program in Spokane, Washington when my poetry editor faxed that review to me. I pulled it out of the fax machine beside my desk and read, “...one of the major lyric voices of our time.” I thought, “Great! Where do I go from here!?” After that, the agents started calling me. (T.H.) Where did the book of poetry come from?
Alexie on Indian Literature Reflecting oral storytelling traditions, in which repetition exists not for memorization but to deepen meaning with each iteration, Alexie’s writing returns to certain themes, such as the fire that killed his sister and brother-in-law. In his most recent collection of poetry, The Summer of Black Widows (Hanging Loose Press, 1996), one section is entitles “Sister Fire, Brother Smoke.” . . . When asked why he made the switch from poetry to prose, from short stories to novels, from writing to film, Alexie immediately responds with two answers: sales and access. Novels and film pay the bills better than poetry, and with the broader sales he can get his work out to more people, particularly Indian youth. . . .
“As I have been working with the film,” Alexie says, “I’ve come to realize sitting in a movie theater is the contemporary equivalent of sitting around the fire listening to a storyteller. . . . And because of this, Indian peoples, all peoples, will respond more powerfully to movies than to books.” . . . Another of Alexie’s concerns is that Indian literatures are erroneously assumed by non-Indian readers to represent social and historical realities in ways that other readers do not. When readers’ expectations take an anthropological turn, writers are put in the awkward position of being expected to represent their tribes, communities, and Native America. “Most of us [Indian writers] are outcasts,” Alexie says. “We don’t really fit within the Indian community, so we write to try to fit in and sound Indian. So it’s ironic that we become spokespeople for Indian country, that we are supposed to be representative of our tribes.” . . . What does Alexie want to see within the ranks of Indian writers? “I want us to write about the way we live.” He wants Indian writers to write from their own lived experiences, not some nostalgic and romanticized notion of what it means to be Indian. “When I see words like the Creator, Father Sky, Mother Earth, Four Legends, I almost feel like we’re colonizing ourselves. These words, this is how we’re supposed to talk—what it means to be Indian in white America. But it’s not who we really are; it’s not what it means to be Navajo or Spokane or Cour d’Alene.” from Susan Berry Brill de Ramirez, “Fancy Dancer: A Profile of Sherman Alexie.” Poets and Writers January/February 1999: 54-59.
Alexie on the Responsibilities of Native writers EK: Would you speak to what you see as our responsibility is as Native Writers? Do you see that responsibility restricting/constricting certain avenues of creativity? SA: We do have a cultural responsibility above and beyond what other people do, more than other ethnic group, simply because we are so misrepresented and misunderstood and appropriated. We have a serious responsibility to tell the truth. And to act as . . . role models. We are more than just writers. We are storytellers. We are spokespeople, We are cultural ambassadors. We are politicians. We are activists. We are all of these simply by nature of what we do, without even wanting to be. So we’re not like these other writers who can just pick up and choose their expressions. They’ve chosen for us , and we have to be aware of that. I also think that we have a responsibility to live up to our words. As Native writers, we certainly talk the talk about the things that everybody should do, but if you’re going to write about racism, I don’t think you should be a racist. If you’re going to write about sexism and exploitation, then I don’t think you should be a sleeping around. If you’re going to write about violence and colonialism, then I don’t think you should be doing it to your own family. So, I think we have a serious responsibility as Native writers to live traditionally in a contemporary world. And I don’t think that a lot of us do. EK: What do you think prevents us from doing that? SA: A lot of it is our own dysfunctions. While we may have more responsibilities because of what we do, that does not
automatically make us healthy. Part of the danger in being an artist of whatever color is that you fall in love with your wrinkles. The danger is that if you fall in love with your wrinkles then you don’t want to get rid of them. You start to glorify them and perpetuate them. If you write about pain, you can end up searching for more pain to write about, that kind of thing; that self-destructive route. We need to get away from that. We can write about pain and anger without having it consume us, and we have to learn how to do that in our lives as individuals before we can start doing that as writers. from E. K. Caldwell, “Interview: Sherman Alexie.”
Selected Critical Excerpts on Sherman Alexie Susan Berry Brill de Ramirez Alexie’s poems and stories in First Indian on the Moon embrace both discursive and conversive styles in a conjunction that is inevitably disjunctive, disconcerting, and effective in communicating his worlds and words. Alexie . . . writes in a powerful voice that speaks of the realities of worlds that continually push each other to the point of discursive and actual implosion. Whether the results are burning cars, a trailer fire, alcoholism, domestic or racial violence, smallpox blankets, broken treaties, or human alienation, the process is always the same: The clash of worlds that rarely gives more than temporary (and in fact illusory) respite from the unfulfilled dreams and lived pain that is on either side of the divide. . . . Throughout Alexie’s writing, he displays a critically discursive stance against virtually anyone and anything. This is an equal opportunity anger that perceives both the weaknesses and failures of both Indian and white worlds. . . . Alexie lives and writes on the interstices between the divergent stories of both worlds, what he refers to as “the in-between / between tipi and HUD house / between magic and loss” (43). . . . And yet, the interstice is not only a place of pain and anguish, but also a place in which lives are born and lived with joy as well as pain. When human lives come together in the loves and joys of fancydancers, basketball player, and lovers, then the conversive magic of human interrelationships transforms the interstice into the here and now as meaningful as any. . . . The reservation dreams of fancydancers and basketball players are the same dreams of all human beings trapped within the discursive lies of oppositional relations, relative (in) significance, subjective power, and objective weakness. . . . The dreams of treaties that won’t be broken, the dreams of loves that will mend the torn weavings of broken relationships and families, the dreams of the conversive power of myth, all these survive even beyond the pain of loss. . . . from Susan Berry Brill de Ramirez, Contemporary American Indian Literatures & the Oral Tradition. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1999. 190-93.
Ron McFarland There is a combativeness that distinguishes Alexie’s often polemical poems, for he is, in a way, at war. In most of his
writing, sooner or later, Alexie is a “polemicist,” which is to say, a “warrior,” and there is nearly always controversy and argument, implied or direct, in his poems and stories. . . . “Do you ever worry about anger becoming a negative force?” the Bellante brothers asked [in a Bloomsbury Review interview]. Citing Gandhi, Alexie answered that anger could be a positive force: “Anger without hope, anger without love, or anger without compassion are allconsuming. That’s not my kind of anger. Mine is very specific and directed.” . . . The Indians in Alexie’s poems do not speak with raven spirits or go on vision quests. They are not haunted by spirit animals . . . and they are not visited by Kachina spirits. . . . In fact, it is more appropriate to think of them in psychological rather than spiritual terms. They have been uprooted from the animistic world. . . . The power of Alexie’s poems comes from the world at hand. . . . Alexie’s other collections of poetry are even more problematic with respect to form (and he is a very conscious, though only rarely conventional, formalist). The forty-two items that make up The Business of Fancydancing (counting the four “Indian Boy Love Songs” as one poem, as it is listed in the contents) comprise twenty-eight poems and fourteen prose pieces, one of which is a nine-page story and eight of which run just a paragraph and could be considered prose poems, though I am inclined to regard them as sudden fiction. Old Shirts & New Skins consists of fifty items, as many as forty of which are obviously poems. But is “Snapping the Fringe” a prose piece consisting of about thirteen very short paragraphs, or a poem consisting of almost thirty lines (depending on the format) and using indentation in favor of stanza breaks? Although mixed genres like “prose poetry” always leave me feeling a bit uneasy, I am inclined to think it is his best effort in that mode. Old Shirts & New Skins, then, including such conventional forms as the sestina (“The Naming of Indian Boys”) and the villanelle (“Poem”), is the closest Alexie has come so far [prior to 1996] to a book made up of poems alone. . . . In “Split Decisions” . . . Alexie employs a sort of “round” form which he also uses in several stories, including “My Heroes Have Never Been Cowboys.” In this form a word or phrase in the last line of one section or stanza is repeated somewhere in the first line of the next, and at the end of the poem a key word or phrase is echoed from the first line so that the effect is circular. In “Split Decisions” Alexie blends the free verse line with prose sections . . . [so that] poetry and prose, line and sentence, appear to move toward each other. . . . When he was asked by the interviewers for Bloomsbury Review if the transition from poet to writer of fiction was difficult for him, Alexie answered that it was not difficult, that “my poems are stories. There’s a very strong narrative drive in all my poetry.” . . . As the interviewers noted from the outset, Alexie is “a storyteller [with] an unmistakable poetic streak.” His powers as a poet are primarily narrative, and after that rhetorical, and with that, perhaps as a sub-species, polemical. . . . Alexie’s is a rhetoric, whether in his poems or in his fiction, that reflects pain and anger, a rhetoric that could give way to bitterness. What keeps that from happening and makes the pain and anger bearable for the reader . . . is not so much the hope, love, and compassion to which he refers in the interview, but humor. Predictably, this humor is rarely gentle or playful (though it can be that at times), but most often satirical. . . . Alexie’s poems are filled with such moments of painful or poignant humor which may be described as “serious” or “dark.” .
. . The impact is not so much like the escape or release offered by comedy as the catharsis provided by tragedy. from Ron McFarland, “‘Another Kind of Violence’: Sherman Alexie’s Poems.” American Indian Quarterly 21.2 (Spring 1997): 251-64.
5 Tim O’Brien Tim O’Brien is from small town Minnesota. He was born in Austin on October 1, 1946, a birth date he shares with several of his characters, and grew up in Worthington , “Turkey Capital of the World.” He matriculated at Macalester College. Graduation in 1968 found him with a BA in political science and a draft notice. O’Brien was against the war, but reported for service and was sent to Vietnam with what has been called the “unlucky” Americal division due to its involvement in the My Lai massacre in 1968, an event which figures prominently in In the Lake of the Woods.. He was assigned to 3rd Platoon, A Co., 5th Batt. 46th Inf., as an infantry foot soldier. O’Brien’s tour of duty was 196970. After Vietnam he became a graduate student at Harvard. No doubt he was one of very few Vietnam veterans there at that time, much less Combat Infantry Badge (CIB) holders. Having the opportunity to do an internship at the Washington Post, he eventually left Harvard to become a newspaper reporter. O’Brien’s career as a reporter gave way to his fiction writing after publication of his memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Send Me Home. Tim O’Brien is now a visiting professor and endowed chair at Southwest Texas State University where he teaches in the Creative Writing Program.
scholars seldom know how to label, varyingly calling it a novel, a short story collection, or a meta-fiction. O’Brien has continued to craft books stunning in their diverse approaches and successful in their ability to capture the American experience, allowing his work to boast regular appearances on national and international best seller lists. His most recent novel is July, July. O’Brien’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and has been included in several editions of Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize Stories. He has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Foundation for the Arts. He currently teaches at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. Fiction: July, July (2002) Tomcat in Love (1998) In the Lake of the Woods (1994) The Things They Carried (1990) Nuclear Age (1985) Going After Cacciato (1978) Northern Lights (1975) Nonfiction: If I Die in a Combat Zone (1973)
“As a story teller and as a person who trusts story, I think a good story addresses not just the head, but the whole human body: the tear ducts, the scalp, the back of your neck and spine, even the stomach.” Tim O’Brien Shares Writings and Experiences at Davidson by Bill Giduz, 2001 “Well, I had a desire to write from the time I was a little kid and then something collided with that desire—namely Vietnam—and I had to write about it. It moved from desire to imperative. I couldn’t not write.” “The ‘What If’ Game” in Atlantic, 2002
Tim O’Brien is frequently cited by writers and readers alike as the finest novelist of his generation. He is almost uniformly regarded as the preeminent voice to chronicle the American Vietnam experience. Winner of the National Book Award in 1979 for his novel Going After Cacciato, O’Brien may be best known for his book The Things They Carried, so legendary a literary accomplishment that not only was it a finalist for the Pulitzer and the National Book awards, a winner of the Paris Prize and the Heartland Prize, it is a book that critics and
“The way I look at it is that anything is fair game. I mean, if you’re an artist you can’t not write about a subject for fear of exploiting it. There’s a danger, I suppose, of exploitation, but you’ve got to take the risk and say I’m going to write a book that means something to me and might mean something to other people.” O’Brien, where art thou? by Hillary Schroeder for the Stanford Daily Cardinal, 2002 “That’s how I spend my days for four years in a row. I’m just sitting here in my underwear trying to write a book.” O’Brien Reveals All for Robert Birnbaum & IdentityTheory, 2002
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. In the late afternoon, after a day’s march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of fight pretending. He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there. More than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her, but the letters were mostly chatty, elusive on the matter of love. She was a virgin, he was almost sure. She was an English major at Mount Sebastian, and she wrote beautifully about her professors and roommates and midterm exams, about her respect for Chaucer and her great affection for Virginia Woolf. She often quoted lines of poetry; she never mentioned the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself. The letters weighed ten ounces. They were signed “Love, Martha,” but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant. At dusk, he would carefully return the letters to his rucksack. Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin. The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wrist watches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water. Together, these items weighed between fifteen and twenty pounds, depending upon a man’s habits or rate of metabolism. Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations; he was especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake. Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-size bars of soap he’d stolen on R&R in Sydney, Australia. Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April. By necessity, and because it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed five pounds including the liner aid camouflage cover. They carried the standard fatigue jackets and trousers. Very few carried underwear. On their feet they carried jungle boots-2.1 pounds— and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr. Scholl’s foot powder as a precaution against trench foot. Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried six or seven ounces of premium dope, which for him was 2 necessity. Mitchell Sanders, the RT0, carried condoms. Norman Bowker carried a diary. Rat Kiley carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, Carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother’s distrust of the white man, his grandfather’s old hunting hatchet. Necessity dictated. Because the land was mined and booby-trapped, it was SOP for each man to carry a steelcentered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier. Because you could die so quickly, each man carried at least one large compress bandage, usually in the helmet band for easy access. Because the
nights were cold, and because the monsoons were wet, each carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or groundsheet or makeshift tent. With its quilted liner, the poncho weighed almost two pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In April, for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him across the paddy, then to lift him into the chopper that took him away. They were called legs or grunts. To carry something was to “hump” it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps. In its intransitive form, “to hump,” meant “to walk,” or “to march,” but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive. Almost everyone humped photographs. In his wallet, Lieutenant Cross carried two photographs of Martha. The first was a Kodachrome snapshot signed “Love,” though he knew better. She stood against a brick wall. Her eyes were gray and neutral, her lips slightly open as she stared straight-on at the camera. At night, sometimes, Lieutenant Cross wondered who had taken the picture, because he knew she had boyfriends, because he loved her so much, and because he could see the shadow of the picture taker spreading out against the brick wall. The second photograph had been clipped from the 1968 Mount Sebastian yearbook. It was an action shot—women’s volleyball —and Martha was bent horizontal to the floor, reaching, the palms of her hands in sharp focus, the tongue taut, the expression frank and competitive. There was no visible sweat. She wore white gym shorts. Her legs, he thought, were almost certainly the legs of a virgin, dry and without hair, the left knee cocked and carrying her entire weight, which was just over one hundred pounds. Lieutenant Cross remembered touching that left knee. A dark theater, he remembered, and the movie was Bonnie and Clyde, and Martha wore a tweed skirt, and during the final scene, when he touched her knee, she turned and looked at him in a sad, sober way that made him pull his hand back, but he would always remember the feel of the tweed skirt and the knee beneath it and the sound of the gunfire that killed Bonnie and Clyde, how embarrassing it was, how slow and oppressive. He remembered kissing her goodnight at the dorm door. Right then, he thought, he should’ve done something brave. He should’ve carried her up the stairs to her room and tied her to the bed and touched that left knee all night long. He should’ve risked it. Whenever he looked at the photographs, he thought of new things he should’ve done. What they carried was partly a function of rank, partly of field specialty. As a first lieutenant and platoon leader, Jimmy Cross carried a compass, maps, code books, binoculars, and a .45caliber pistol that weighed 2.9 pounds fully loaded. He carried a strobe fight and the responsibility for the lives of his men. As an RTO, Mitchell Sanders carried the PRC-25 radio, a killer, twenty-six pounds with its battery. As a medic, Rat Kiley carried a canvas satchel filled with morphine and plasma and malaria tablets and surgical tape and comic books and all the things a medic must carry, including M&M’s for especially bad wounds, for a total weight of nearly twenty pounds. As a big man, therefore a machine gunner, Henry Dobbins carried the M-60, which weighed twenty-three pounds unloaded, but which was almost always loaded. In addition, Dobbins carried between ten and fifteen pounds of ammunition draped in belts across his chest and shoulders. As PFCs or Spec 4s, most of them were common grunts and carried the standard M-16 gas-operated assault rifle. The weapon weighed 75 pounds unloaded, 8.2 pounds with its full twenty-round magazine. Depending on numerous factors, such as topography and psychology, the riflemen carried anywhere from twelve to twenty magazines, usually in cloth bandoliers, adding
on another 8.4 pounds at minimum, fourteen pounds at maximum. When it was available, they also carried M-16 maintenance gear—rods and steel brushes and swabs and tubes of LSA oil—all of which weighed about 2 pound. Among the grunts, some carried the M-79 grenade launcher, 5.9 pounds unloaded, a reasonably fight weapon except for the ammunition, which was heavy. A single round weighed ten ounces. The typical load was twenty-five rounds. But Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried thirty-four rounds when he was shot and killed outside Than Khe, and he went down under an exceptional burden, more than twenty pounds of ammunition, plus the flak jacket and helmet and rations and water and toilet paper and tranquilizers and all the rest, plus the unweighed fear. He was dead weight. There was no twitching or flopping. Kiowa, who saw it happen, said it was like watching a rock fall, or a big sandbag or something—just boom, then down—not like the movies where the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins and goes ass over teakettle—not like that, Kiowa said, the poor bastard just flat-fuck fell. Boom. Down. Nothing else. It was a bright morning in mid-April. Lieutenant Cross felt the pain. He blamed himself. They stripped off Lavender’s canteens and ammo, all the heavy things, and Rat Kiley said the obvious, the guy’s dead, and Mitchell Sanders used his radio to report one U.S. KIA and to request a chopper. Then they wrapped Lavender in his poncho. They carried him out to a dry paddy, established security, and sat smoking the dead man’s dope until the chopper came. Lieutenant Cross kept to himself. He pictured Martha’s smooth young face, thinking he loved her more than anything, more than his men, and now Ted Lavender was dead because he loved her so much and could not stop thinking about her. When the dust-off arrived, they carried Lavender aboard. Afterward they burned Than Khe. They marched until dusk, then dug their holes, and that night Kiowa kept explaining how you had to be them how fast it was, how the poor guy just dropped like so much concrete, Boom-down, he said. Like cement. In addition to the three standard weapons-the M-60, M-16, and M-79-they carried whatever presented itself, or whatever seemed appropriate as a means of killing or staying alive. They carried catch-as-catch can. At various times, in various situations, they carried M-14’s and CAR-15’s and Swedish K’s and grease guns and captured AK-47s and ChiCom’s and RPG’s and Simonov carbines and black-market Uzi’s and .38-caliber Smith & Wesson handguns and 66 mm LAW’s and shotguns and silencers and blackjacks and bayonets and C-4 plastic explosives. Lee Strunk carried a slingshot; a weapon of last resort, he called it. Mitchell Sanders carried brass knuckles. Kiowa carried his grandfather’s feathered hatchet. Every third or fourth man carried a Claymore antipersonnel mine-3.5 pounds with its firing device. They all carried fragmentation grenades-fourteen ounces each. They all carried at least one M-18 colored smoke grenade —twenty-four ounces. Some carried CS or tear-gas grenades. Sonic carried white-phosphorus grenades. They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried. In the first week of April, before Lavender died, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross received a good-luck charm from Martha. It was a simple pebble. An ounce at most. Smooth to the touch, it was a milky-white color with flecks of orange and violet, oval-shaped, like a miniature egg. In the accompanying letter, Martha wrote that she had found the pebble on the Jersey shoreline, precisely where the land touched water at high tide, where things came together but also separated. It was this separate-but-together quality, she wrote, that had inspired her to pick up the pebble and to carry it in her breast pocket for several days, where it seemed weightless, and then to send it through the mail, by air, as a token of her truest feelings for him. Lieutenant Cross found this
romantic. But he wondered what ‘her truest feelings’ were, exactly, and what she meant by separate-but-together. He wondered how the tides and waves had come into play on that afternoon along the Jersey shoreline when Martha saw the pebble and, bent down to rescue it from geology. He imagined bare feet. Martha was a poet, with the poet’s sensibilities, and her feet would be brown and bare the toenails unpainted, the eyes chilly and somber like the ocean in March, and though it was painful, he wondered who had been with her that afternoon. He imagined a pair of shadows moving along the strip of sand where things came together but also separated. It was phantom jealousy, he knew, but he couldn’t help himself. He loved her so much. On the march, through the hot days of early April, he carried the pebble in his mouth, turning it with his tongue, tasting sea salts and moisture. His mind wandered. He had difficulty keeping his attention on the war. On occasion he would yell at his men to spread out the column, to keep their eyes open, but then he would slip away into daydreams, just pretending, walking barefoot along the Jersey shore, with Martha, carrying nothing. He would feel himself rising. Sun and waves and gentle winds, all love and lightness. What they carried varied by mission. When a mission took them to the mountains, they carried mosquito netting, machetes, canvas tarps, and extra bugjuice. If a mission seemed especially hazardous, or if it involved a place they knew to be bad, they carried everything they could. In certain heavily mined AO’s, where the land was dense with Toe Poppers and Bouncing Betties, they took turns humping a twenty-eight-pound mine detector. With its headphones and big sensing plate, the equipment was a stress on the lower back and shoulders, awkward to handle, often useless because of the shrapnel in the earth, but they carried it anyway, partly for safety, partly for the illusion of safety. On ambush, or other night missions, they carried peculiar little odds and ends. Kiowa always took along his New Testament and a pair of moccasins for silence. Dave Jensen carried night-sight vitamins high in carotene. Lee Strunk carried his slingshot; ammo, he claimed, would never be a problem. Rat Kiley carried brandy and M&M’s. Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried the starlight scope, which weighed 63 pounds with its aluminum carrying case. Henry Dobbins carried his girlfriend’s panty hose wrapped around his neck as a comforter. They all carried ghosts. When dark came, they would move out single file across the meadows and paddies to their ambush coordinates, where they would quietly set up the Claymores and lie down and spend the night waiting. Other missions were more complicated and required special equipment. In mid-April, it was their mission to search out and destroy the elaborate tunnel complexes in the Than Khe area south of Chu Lai. To blow the tunnels, they carried onepound blocks of pentrite high explosives; four blocks to a man, sixty-eight pounds in all. They carried wiring, detonators, and battery-powered clackers. Dave Jensen carried earplugs. Most often, before blowing the tunnels, they were ordered by higher command to search them, which was considered bad news, but by and large they just shrugged and carried out orders. Because he was a big man, Henry Dobbins was excused from tunnel duty. The others would draw numbers. Before Lavender died there were seventeen men in the platoon, and whoever drew the number seventeen would strip off his gear and crawl in headfirst with a flashlight and Lieutenant Cross’s .45-caliber pistol. The rest of them would fan out as security. They would sit down or kneel, not facing the hole, listening to the ground beneath them, imagining cobwebs and ghosts, whatever was down there-the tunnel walls squeezing in-how the flashlight seemed impossibly heavy in the hand and how it was tunnel vision in the very strictest sense, compression in all ways, even time, and how you
had to wiggle in-ass and elbows-a swallowed-up feeling-and how you found yourself worrying about odd things—will your flashlight go dead? Do rats carry rabies? If you screamed, how far would the sound carry? Would your buddies hear it? Would they have the courage to drag you out? In some respects, though not many, the waiting was worse than the tunnel itself. Imagination was a killer. On April 16, when Lee Strunk drew the number seventeen, he laughed and muttered something and went down quickly. The morning was hot and very still. Not good, Kiowa said. He looked at the tunnel opening, then out across a dry paddy toward the village of Than Khe. Nothing moved. No clouds or birds or people. As they waited, the men smoked and drank Kool-Aid, not talking much, feeling sympathy for Lee Strunk but also feeling the luck of the draw, You win some, you lose some, said Mitchell Sanders, and sometimes you settle for a rain check. It was a tired line and no one laughed. Henry Dobbins ate a tropical chocolate bar. Ted Lavender popped a tranquilizer and went off to pee. After five minutes, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross moved to the tunnel, leaned down, and examined the darkness. Trouble, he thought—a cave-in maybe. And then suddenly, without willing it, he was thinking about Martha. The stresses and fractures, the quick collapse, the two of them buried alive under all that weight. Dense, crushing love. Kneeling, watching the hole, he tried to concentrate on Lee Strunk and the war, all the dangers, but his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered. He wanted her to be a virgin and not a virgin, all at once. He wanted to know her. Intimate secrets: why poetry? Why so sad? Why that grayness in her eyes? Why so alone? Not lonely, just alone—riding her bike across campus or sitting off by herself in the cafeteria. Even dancing, she danced alone—and it was the aloneness that filled him with love. He remembered telling her that one evening. How she nodded and looked away. And how, later, when he kissed her. She received the kiss without returning it, her eyes wide open, not afraid, not a virgin’s eyes, just flat and uninvolved. Lieutenant Cross gazed at the tunnel. But he was not there. He was buried with Martha under the white sand at the Jersey shore. They were pressed together, and the pebble in his mouth was her tongue. He was smiling. Vaguely, he was aware of how quiet the day was; the sullen paddies, yet he could not bring himself to worry about matters of security. He was beyond that. He was just a kid at war, in love. He was twenty two years old. He couldn’t help it. A few moments later Lee Strunk crawled out of the tunnel. He came up grinning, filthy but alive. Lieutenant Cross nodded and closed his eyes while the others clapped Strunk on the back and made jokes about rising from the dead. Worms, Rat Kiley said. Right out of the grave. Fuckin’ zombie. The men laughed. They all felt great relief. Spook City, said Mitchell Sanders. Lee Strunk made a funny ghost sound, a kind of moaning, yet very happy, and fight then, when Strunk made that high happy moaning sound, when he went Ahhooooo, right then Ted Lavender was shot in the head on his way back from peeing. He lay with his mouth open. The teeth were broken. There was a swollen black bruise under his left eye. The cheekbone was gone. Oh shit, Rat Kiley said, the guy’s dead. The guy’s dead, he kept saying, which seemed profound—the guy’s dead. I mean really. The things they carried were determined to some extent by superstition. Lieutenant Cross carried his good-luck pebble. Dave Jensen carried a rabbit’s foot. Norman Bowker, other-wise a very gentle person, carried a thumb that had been presented to him as a gift by Mitchell Sanders. The thumb was dark brown, rubbery to the touch, and weighed four ounces at most. It had
been cut from a VC corpse, a boy of fifteen or sixteen. They’d found him at the bottom of an irrigation ditch, badly burned, flies in his mouth and eyes. The boy wore black shorts and sandals. At the time of his death he had been carrying a pouch of rice, a rifle, and three magazines of ammunition. You want my opinion, Mitchell Sanders said, there’s a definite moral here. He put his hand oil the dead boy’s wrist. He was quiet for a time, as if counting a pulse, then he patted the stomach, almost affectionately, and used Kiowa’s hunting hatchet to remove the thumb. Henry Dobbins asked what the moral was. Moral? You know. Moral. Sanders wrapped the thumb in toilet paper and handed it across to Norman Bowker. There was no blood. Smiling, he kicked the boy’s head, watched the files scatter, and said, It’s like with that old TV show—Paladin. Have gun, will travel. Henry Dobbins thought about it. Yeah, well, he finally said. I don’t see no moral. There it is, man. Fuck off. They carried USO stationery and pencils and pens. They carried Sterno, safety pins, trip flares, signal flares, spools of wire, razor blades, chewing tobacco, liberated joss sticks and statuettes of the sniffing Buddha, candles, grease pencils, The Stars and Stripes, fingernail clippers, Psy Ops leaflets, bush hats, bolos, and much more. Twice a week, when the resupply choppers came in, they carried hot chow in green Mermite cans and large canvas bags filled with iced beer and soda pop. They carried plastic water containers, each with a two gallon capacity. Mitchell Sanders carried a set of starched tiger fatigues for special occasions. Henry Dobbins carried Black Flag insecticide. Dave Jensen carried empty sandbags that could be filled at night for added protection. Lee Strunk carried tanning lotion. Some things they carried in common. Taking turns, they carried the big PRC-77 scrambler radio, which weighed thirty pounds with its battery. They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer bear, Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak. They carried infections. They carried chess sets, basketballs, Vietnamese English dictionaries, insignia of rank, Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts, plastic cards imprinted with the Code of Conduct. They carried diseases, among them malaria and dysentery. They carried lice and ringworm and leeches and paddy algae and various rots and molds. They carried the land itself—Vietnam, the place, the sod—a powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces. They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity. They moved like mules. By daylight they took sniper fire, at night they were mortared, but it was not battle, it was just the endless march, village to village, without purpose, nothing won or lost. They marched for the sake of the march. They plodded along slowly, dumbly, leaning forward against the heat, unthinking, all blood and bone, simple grunts, soldiering with their legs, toiling up the hills and down into the paddies and across the rivers and up again and down, just humping, one step and then the next and then another, but no volition, no will, because it was automatic, it was anatomy, and the war was entirely a matter of posture and carriage, the hump was everything, a kind of inertia, a kind of emptiness, a dullness of desire and intellect and conscience and hope and human sensibility. Their principles were in their feet. Their calculations were biological. They had no sense of strategy or mission. They searched the villages without knowing what to look for, nor caring, kicking over jars of rice, frisking children and old men, blowing tunnels, sometimes setting fires and sometimes not, then
forming up and moving on to the next village, then other villages, where it would always be the same. They carried their own lives. The pressures were enormous. In the heat of early afternoon, they would remove their helmets and flak jackets, walking bare, which was dangerous but which helped ease the strain. They would often discard things along the route of march. Purely for comfort, they would throw away rations, blow their Claymores and grenades, no matter, because by nightfall the resupply choppers would arrive with more of the same, then a day or two later still more, fresh watermelons and crates of ammunition and sunglasses and woolen sweaters—the resources were stunning—sparklers for the Fourth of July, colored eggs for Easter—it was the great American war chest—the fruits of sciences, the smokestacks, the canneries, the arsenals at Hartford, the Minnesota forests, the machine shops, the vast fields of corn and wheat they carried like freight trains; they carried it on their backs and shoulders—and for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry. After the chopper took Lavender away, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross led his men into the village of Than Khe. They burned everything. They shot chickens and dogs, they trashed the village well, they called in artillery and watched the wreckage, then they marched for several hours through the hot afternoon, and then at dusk, while Kiowa explained how Lavender died, Lieutenant Cross found himself trembling. He tried not to cry. With his entrenching tool, which weighed five pounds, he began digging a hole in the earth. He felt shame. He hated himself He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war. All he could do was dig. He used his entrenching tool like an ax, slashing, feeling both love and hate, and then later, when it was full dark, he sat at the bottom of his foxhole and wept. It went on for a long while. In part, he was grieving for Ted Lavender, but mostly it was for Martha, and for himself, because she belonged to another world, which was not quite real, and because she was a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey, a poet and a virgin and uninvolved, and because he realized she did not love him and never would. Like cement, Kiowa whispered in the dark. I swear to God —boom-down. Not a word. I’ve heard this, said Norman Bowker. A pisser, you know? Still zipping himself up. Zapped while zipping. All right, fine. That’s enough. Yeah, but you had to see it, the guy just I heard, man. Cement. So why not shut the fuck up? Kiowa shook his head sadly and glanced over at the hole where Lieutenant Jimmy Cross sat watching the night. The air was thick and wet. A warm, dense fog had settled over the paddies and there was the stillness that precedes rain. After a time Kiowa sighed. One thing for sure, he said. The lieutenant’s in some deep hurt. I mean that crying jag—the way he was carrying on—it wasn’t fake or anything, it was real heavy-duty hurt. The man cares. Sure, Norman Bowker said. Say what you want, the man does care. We all got problems. Not Lavender. No, I guess not, Bowker said. Do me a favor, though. Shut up? That’s a smart Indian. Shut up.
Shrugging, Kiowa pulled off his boots. He wanted to say more, just to lighten up his sleep, but instead he opened his New Testament and arranged it beneath his head as a pillow. The fog made things seem hollow and unattached. He tried not to think about Ted Lavender, but then he was thinking how fast it was, no drama, down and dead, and how it was hard to feet anything except surprise. It seemed unchristian. He wished he could find some great sadness, or even anger, but the emotion wasn’t there and he couldn’t make it happen. Mostly he felt pleased to be alive. He liked the smell of the New Testament under his check, the leather and ink and paper and glue, whatever the chemicals were. He liked hearing the sounds of night. Even his fatigue, it felt fine, the stiff muscles and the prickly awareness of his own body, a floating feeling. He enjoyed not being dead. Lying there, Kiowa admired Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s capacity for grief. He wanted to share the man’s pain, he wanted to care as Jimmy Cross cared. And yet when he closed his eyes, all he could think was Boom-down, and all he could feel was the pleasure of having his boots off and the fog curling in around him and the damp soil and the Bible smells and the plush comfort of night. After a moment Norman Bowker sat up in the dark. What the hell, he said. You want to talk, talk. Tell it to me. Forget it. No, man, go on. One thing I hate, it’s a silent Indian. For the most part they carried themselves with poise, a kind of dignity. Now and then, however, there were times of panic, when they squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn’t. When they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said Dear Jesus and flopped around on the earth and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and begged for the noise to stop and went wild and made stupid promises to themselves and to God and to their mothers and fathers, hoping not to die. In different ways, it happened to all of them. Afterward, when the firing ended, they would blink and peek up. They would touch their bodies, feeling shame, then quickly hiding it. They would force themselves to stand. As if in slow motion, frame by frame, the world would take on the old logicabsolute silence, then the wind, then sunlight, then voices. It was the burden of being alive. Awkwardly, the men would reassemble themselves, first in private, then in groups, becoming soldiers again. They would repair the leaks in their eyes. They would check for casualties, call in dust-offs, light cigarettes, try to smile, clear their throats and spit and begin cleaning their weapons. After a time someone would shake his head and say, No lie, I almost shit my pants, and someone else would laugh, which meant it was bad, yes, but the guy had obviously not shit his pants, it wasn’t that bad, and in any case nobody would ever do such a thing and then go ahead and talk about it. They would squint into the dense, oppressive sunlight. For a few moments, perhaps, they would fall silent, lighting a joint and tracking its passage from man to man, inhaling, holding in the humiliation. Scary stuff, one of them might say. But then someone else would grin or flick his eyebrows and say, Roger-dodger, almost cut me a new asshole, almost. There were numerous such poses. Some carried themselves with a sort of wistful resignation, others with pride or stiff soldierly discipline or good humor or macho zeal. They were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it. They found jokes to tell. They used a hard vocabulary to contain the terrible softness. Greased, they’d say. Offed, lit up, zapped while zipping. It wasn’t cruelty, just stage presence. They were actors and the war came at them in 3-D. When someone died, it wasn’t quite dying, because in a curious way it seemed scripted, and because they had their fines mostly memorized, irony mixed with tragedy, and because they called it by other names, as if to encyst and destroy the reality of death itself. They kicked
corpses. They cut off thumbs. They talked grunt lingo. They told stories about Ted Lavender’s supply of tranquilizers, how the poor guy didn’t feel a thing, how incredibly tranquil he was. There’s a moral here, said Mitchell Sanders. They were waiting for Lavender’s chopper, smoking the dead man’s dope. The moral’s pretty obvious, Sanders said, and winked. Stay away from drugs. No joke, they’ll ruin your day every time. Cute, said Henry Dobbins. Mind-blower, get it? Talk about wiggy. Nothing left, just blood and brains. They made themselves laugh. There it is, they’d say, over and over, as if the repetition itself were an act of poise, a balance between crazy and almost crazy, knowing without going. There it is, which meant be cool, let it ride, because oh yeah, man, you can’t change what can’t be changed, there it is, there it absolutely and positively and fucking well is. They were tough. They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment. They crawled into tunnels and walked point and advanced under fire. Each morning, despite the unknowns, they made their legs move. They endured. They kept humping. They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy, really. Go limp and tumble to the ground and let the muscles unwind and not speak and not budge until your buddies picked you up and lifted you into the chopper that would roar and dip its nose and carry you off to the world. A mere matter of falling, yet no one ever fell. It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards. By and large they carried these things inside, maintaining the masks of composure. They sneered at sick call. They spoke bitterly about guys who had found release by shooting off their own toes or fingers. Pussies, they’d say. Candyasses. It was fierce, mocking talk, with only a trace of envy or awe, but even so, the image played itself out behind their eyes. They imagined the muzzle against flesh. They imagined the quick, sweet pain, then the evacuation to Japan, then a hospital with warm beds and cute geisha nurses. They dreamed of freedom birds. At night, on guard, staring into the dark, they were carried away by jumbo jets. They felt the rush of takeoff Gone! they yelled. And then velocity, wings and engines, a smiling stewardess-but it was more than a plane, it was a real bird, a big sleek silver bird with feathers and talons and high screeching. They were flying. The weights fell off; there was nothing to bear. They laughed and held on tight, feeling the cold slap of wind and altitude, soaring, thinking It’s over, I’m gone!—they were naked. They were light and free—it was all lightness, bright and fast and buoyant, light as light, a helium buzz in the brain, a giddy bubbling in the lungs as they were taken up over the Clouds and the war, beyond duty, beyond gravity and mortification anti global entanglements—Sin loi! They yelled, I’m sorry, motherfuckers, but I’m out of it, I’m goofed, I’m on a space cruise, I’m gone!—and it was a restful, disencumbered sensation,
just riding the fight waves, sailing; that big silver freedom bird over the mountains and oceans, over America, over the farms and great sleeping cities and cemeteries and highways and the Golden Arches of McDonald’s. It was flight, a kind of fleeing, a kind of falling, falling higher and higher, spinning off the edge of the earth and beyond the sun and through the vast, silent vacuum where there were no burdens and where everything weighed exactly nothing. Gone! they screamed, I’m sorry but I’m gone! And so at night, not quite dreaming, they gave themselves over to lightness, they were carried, they were purely borne. On the morning after Ted Lavender died, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross crouched at the bottom of his foxhole and burned Martha’s letters. Then he burned the two photographs. There was a steady rain falling, which made it difficult, but he used heat tabs and Sterno to build a small fire, screening it with his body, holding the photographs over the tight blue flame with the tips of his fingers. He realized it was only a gesture. Stupid, he thought. Sentimental, too, but mostly just stupid. Lavender was dead. You couldn’t burn the blame. Besides, the letters were in his head. And even now, without photographs, Lieutenant Cross could see Martha playing volleyball in her white gym shorts and yellow T-shirt. He could see her moving in the rain. When the fire died out, Lieutenant Cross pulled his poncho over his shoulders and ate breakfast from a can. There was no great mystery, he decided. In those burned letters Martha had never mentioned the war, except to say, Jimmy take care of yourself. She wasn’t involved. She signed the letters “Love,” but it wasn’t love, and all the fine lines and technicalities did not matter. The morning came up wet and blurry. Everything seemed part of everything else, the fog and Martha and the deepening rain. It was a war, after all. Half smiling, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross took out his maps. He shook his head hard, as if to clear it, then bent forward and began planning the day’s march. In ten minutes, or maybe twenty, he would rouse the men and they would pack up and head west, where the maps showed the country to be green and inviting. They would do what they had always done. The rain might add some weight, but otherwise it would be one more day layered upon all the other days. He was realistic about it. There was that new hardness in his stomach. No more fantasies, he told himself. Henceforth, when lie thought about Martha, it would be only to think that she belonged elsewhere. He would shut down the daydreams. This was not Mount Sebastian, it was another world, where there were no pretty poems or midterm exams, a place where men died because of carelessness and gross stupidity. Kiowa was right. Boom-down, and you were dead, never partly dead. Briefly, in the rain, Lieutenant Cross saw Martha’s gray eyes gazing back at him. He understood. It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do. He almost nodded at her, but didn’t. Instead he went back to his maps. He was now determined to perform his duties firmly and without negligence. It wouldn’t help Lavender, he knew that, but from this point on he would comport himself as a soldier. He would dispose of his good-luck pebble. Swallow it, maybe, or use Lee Strunk’s slingshot, or just drop it along the trail. On the march he would impose strict field discipline. He would be careful to send out flank security, to prevent straggling or bunching up, to keep his troops moving at
the proper pace and at the proper interval. He would insist on clean weapons. He would confiscate the remainder of Lavender’s dope. Later in the day, perhaps, he would call the men together and speak to them plainly. He would accept the blame for what had happened to Ted Lavender. He would be a man about it. He would look them in the eyes, keeping his chin level, and he would issue the new SOPs in a calm, impersonal tone of voice, an officer’s voice, leaving no room for argument or discussion. Commencing immediately, he’d tell them, they would no longer abandon equipment along the route of march. They would police up their acts. They would get their shit together, and keep it together, and maintain it neatly and in good working order. He would not tolerate laxity. He would show strength, distancing himself. Among the men there would be grumbling, of course, and maybe worse, because their days would seem longer and their loads heavier, but Lieutenant Cross reminded himself that his obligation was not to be loved but to lead. He would dispense with love; it was not now a factor. And if anyone quarreled or complained, he would simply tighten his lips and arrange his shoulders in the correct command posture. He might give a curt little nod. Or he might not. He might just shrug and say Carry on, then they would saddle up and form into a column and move out toward the villages west of Than Khe. (1986) R&R rest and rehabilitation leave; SOP standard operating procedure; RTO radio and telephone operator; M&M joking term for medical supplies; KIA killed in action; AOs areas of operation; Sin loi Sorry
How to Tell a True War Story from The Things They Carried In a true war story, if there’s a moral at all, it’s like the thread that makes the cloth. You can’t tease it out. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. And in the end, really, there’s nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe “Oh.” True war stories do not generalize. They do not indulge in abstraction or analysis. For example: War is hell. As a moral declaration the old truism seems perfectly true, and yet because it abstracts, because it generalizes, I can’t believe it with my stomach. Nothing turns inside. It comes down to gut instinct. A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe.
This one does it for me. I’ve told it before - many times, many versions - but here’s what actually happened. We crossed that river and marched west into the mountains. On the third day, my friend Curt Lemon stepped on a boobytrapped artillery round. He was playing catch with Rat Kiley, laughing, and then he was dead. The trees were thick; it took nearly an hour to cut an LZ for the dustoff. Later, higher in the mountains, we came across a baby VC water buffalo. What it was doing there I don’t know - no farms, no paddies - but we chased it down and, got a rope around it and led
it along to a deserted village where we set up for the night. After supper Rat Kiley went over and stroked its nose. He opened up a can of C rations, pork and beans, but the baby buffalo wasn’t interested. Rat shrugged. He stepped back and shot it through the right front knee. The animal did not make a sound. It went down hard, then got up again, and Rat took careful aim and shot off an ear. He shot it in the hindquarters and in the little hump at its back. He shot it twice in the flanks. It wasn’t to kill; it was to hurt. He put the rifle muzzle up against the mouth and shot the mouth away. Nobody said much. The whole platoon stood there watching, feeling all kinds of things, but there wasn’t a great deal of pity for the baby water buffalo. Curt Lemon was dead. Rat Kiley had lost his best friend in the world. Later in the week Rat would write a long personal letter to the guy’s sister, who would not write back, but for now, it was simply a question of pain. He shot off the tail. He shot away -chunks of meat below the ribs. All around us there was the smell of smoke and filth and greenery, and the evening was humid and very hot. Rat went to automatic. He shot randomly, almost casually, quick little spurts in the belly. Then he reloaded, squatted down, and shot it in the left front knee. Again the animal fell hard and tried to get up, but this time it couldn’t quite make it. It wobbled and went down sideways. Rat shot it in the nose. He bent forward and whispered something, as if talking to a pet, then he shot it in the throat. All the while the baby water buffalo was silent, or almost silent, just a little bubbling sound where the nose had been. It lay very still. Nothing moved except the eyes, which were enormous, the pupils shiny black and dumb. Rat Kiley was crying. He tried to say something, but them cradled his rifle and went off by himself. The rest of us stood in a ragged circle around the baby buffalo. For a long time no one spoke. We had witnessed some- thing essential, something brand-new and profound, a piece of the world so startling there was not yet a word for it. Somebody kicked the baby buffalo. It was still alive, though just barely, just in the eyes. “Amazing,” Dave Jensen said. “My whole life, I never seen anything like it.” [...] “Never?” “Not hardly. Not once.” Kiowa and Mitchell Sanders picked up the baby buffalo. They hauled it across the open square, hoisted it up, and dumped it in the village well. Afterward, we sat waiting for Rat to get himself together. “Amazing,” Dave Jensen kept saying. “A new wrinkle. I never seen it before.” Mitchell Sanders took out his yo-yo. “Well, that’s Nam,’ he said. “Garden of Evil. Over here, man, every sin’s ret fresh and original.”
How do you generalize? War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead. The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can’t help but gape at the awful majesty of combat. You stare out at tracer rounds unwinding through the dark like brilliant red ribbons. You crouch in ambush as a cool, impassive moon rises over the nighttime paddies. You admire the fluid symmetries of troops on the move, the great sheets of metal-fire streaming down from a gunship, the illumination rounds, the white phosphorus, the purply orange glow of napalm, the rocket’s red glare. It’s not pretty, exactly. It’s astonishing. It fills the eye. It commands you. You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not. Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope, any battle or bombing raid or artillery barrage has the aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference - a powerful, implacable beauty and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth is ugly. To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true. Though it’s odd, you’re never more alive than when you’re almost dead. You recognize what’s valuable. Freshly, as if for the first time, you love what’s best in yourself and in the world, all that might be lost. At the hour of dusk you sit at your foxhole and look out on a wide river turning pinkish red, and at the mountains beyond, and although in the morning you must cross the river and go into the mountains and do terrible things and maybe die, even so, you find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and you are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not. Mitchell Sanders was right. For the common soldier, at least, war has the feel - the spiritual texture - of a great ghostly fog, thick and permanent. There is no clarity. Everything swirls. The old rules are no longer binding, the old truths no longer true. Right spills over into wrong. Order blends into chaos, hate into love, ugliness into beauty, law into anarchy, civility into savagery. The vapors suck you in. You can’t tell where you are, or why you’re there, and the only certainty is absolute ambiguity. In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it’s safe to say that in a true war story nothing is absolutely true.
Often in a true war story there is not even a point, or else the point doesn’t hit you until, say, twenty years later, in your sleep, and you wake up and shake your wife and start telling the story to her, except when you get to the end you’ve forgotten the point again. And then for a long time you lie there watching the story happen in your head. You listen to your wife’s breathing. The war’s over. You close your eyes. You smile and think, Christ, what’s the point?
This one wakes me up.
In the mountains that day, I watched Lemon turn sideways. He laughed and said something to Rat Kiley. Then he took a funny half step, moving from shade into bright sunlight, and the boobytrapped artillery round blew him into a tree. The parts were just hanging there, so Dave Jensen and I were ordered to shinny up and peel him off. I remember the white bone of an arm. I remember pieces of skin and something wet and yellow. The gore was horrible, and stays with me. But what wakes me up twenty years later is Dave Jensen singing “Lemon Tree” as we threw down the parts.
You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let’s say, and afterward you ask, “Is it true?” and if the answer matters, you’ve got your answer. For example, we’ve all heard this one. Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast and saves his three buddies. Is it true? The answer matters. You’d feel cheated if it never happened. Without the grounding reality, it’s just a trite bit of puffery, pure Hollywood, untrue in the way all such stories are untrue. Yet even if it did happen - and maybe it did, anything’s possible even then you know it can’t be true, because a true war story does not depend upon that kind of truth. Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. For example: Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast, but it’s a killer grenade and everybody dies anyway. Before they die, though, one of the dead guys says, “The fuck you do that for?” and the jumper says, “Story of my life, man,” and the other guy starts to smile but he’s dead. That’s a true story that never happened.
Twenty years later, I can still see the sunlight on Curt Lemon’s face. I can see him turning, looking back at Rat Kiley, then he laughed and took that curious half step from shade into sunlight, his face brown and shining, and when his foot touched down, in that instant, he must’ve thought it was the sunlight that was killing him. It was not the sunlight. It was a rigged 105 round. But if I could ever get the story right, how the sun seemed to gather around him and pick him up and lift him into that tree, if I could somehow recreate the fatal whiteness of that light, the quick glare, the obvious cause and effect, then you would believe the last thing Curt Lemon believed, which for him must’ve been the final truth. Sunlight was killing him.
Now and then, when I tell this story, someone will come up to me afterward and say she liked it. It’s always a woman. Usually it’s an older woman of kindly temperament and humane politics. She’ll explain that as a rule she hates war stories; she can’t understand why people want to wallow in all the blood and gore. But this one she liked. The poor baby buffalo, it made her sad.
Sometimes, even, there are little tears. What I should do, she’ll say, is put it all behind me. Find new stories to tell. I won’t say it but I’ll think it. I’ll picture Rat Kiley’s face, his grief, and I’ll think, You dumb cooze. Because she wasn’t listening. It wasn’t a war story. It was a love story. But you can’t say that. All you can do is tell it one more time, patiently, adding and subtracting, making up a few things to get at the real truth. No Mitchell Sanders, you tell her. No Curt Lemon, no Rat Kiley. No baby buffalo. No trail junction. No baby buffalo. It’s all made up. Beginning to end. Every goddamn detail - the mountains and the river and especially that poor dumb baby buffalo. None of it happened. None of it. And even if it did happen, it didn’t happen in the mountains, it happened in this little village on the Batangan Peninsula, and it was raining like crazy, and one night a guy named Stink Harris woke up screaming with a leech on his tongue. You can tell a true war story if you just keep on telling it. And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It’s about sunlight. It’s about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross that river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It’s about love and memory. It’s about sorrow. It’s about sisters who never write back and people who never listen. [TIM O’BRIEN, The Things They Carried, New York 1990, pp.84-91]
Writing Vietnam Tim O’Brien, President’s Lecture, 21 April 1999 The Brown University Department of English and Creative Writing Program hosted a conference on “Writing Vietnam” from April 21 to April 23, 1999. […] Tim O’Brien: Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, it’s a pleasure to be here tonight. I’ve got a really bad cold-both of my ears are stopped up; I can barely hear my own voice. I’ve got people in the audience kind of going like this and like this (gestures with hands) to kind of modulate my volume. When I began preparing this little talk, I was very quickly reminded that one of the reasons I became a fiction writer is I don’t know anything. I don’t mean this in a falsely humble sense. I mean, quite literally, that I have very little to offer you in the way of abstraction or generalization; the sort of thing that can be communicated in a President’s Lecture. I’m not a literary historian, I’m not a critic, I’m not a teacher. I spend my days, and a good many of my nights, writing stories. And I don’t devote a lot of time or a lot of energy worrying about the hows or the whys of it all, instead taking a kind of lazy man’s conviction in the belief that stories require no justification; they just are. It’s a
conviction, too, I suppose, that abstraction and generalization are precisely the reverse of what I do as a storyteller. Abstraction may make your head believe, but a good story, well told, will also make your kidneys believe, and your scalp and your tear ducts, your heart, and your stomach, the whole human being. In any case, after, I don’t know, twenty aborted attempts to compose a lecture for tonight, I finally gave it up, and decided to spend my time with you doing what I do best, which is to tell stories. I did, however, save a few nuggets from my original efforts at a lecture. I just want to share them with you; it’ll only take about four seconds: Number one: writing never gets easier, it gets harder. You can’t repeat yourself. Unlike, say, a professional surgeon, you cannot perform precisely the same operation with the same protocol in case after case, and even for a surgeon, this would be risky, if one’s first patient happened to end up in a mortuary. Number 2: use active verbs. Avoid ridiculous similes. For example: do not write, “her neck was like a swan’s, long and graceful.” Instead write, “she honked.” Three: avoid unintentional puns. Do not write, “she came in a Jeep.” Four (I did that in the Atlantic monthly, believe it or not): Four: avoid alliteration. Do not write, quote, “The red, rollicking river of his tongue rubbed me the wrong way.” Instead write, “He kissed me with conviction,” or, perhaps, more simply, “He kissed me. I gagged.” Finally, as my last salvageable little jewel, I thought it might be helpful to begin by stating the obvious, or what should be obvious, a writer must, above all, write. Joseph Conrad, in a letter to a friend, describes his daily routine: “I sit down religiously every morning. I sit down for eight hours every day, and the sitting down is all.” Note Conrad says he sits down to write every day. Saturdays, Sundays, religiously, he says. Beyond anything, it seems to me, a writer performs this sitting-down act primarily in search of those rare, very intense moments of artistic pleasure that are as real in their way as the pleasures that can come from any other source—the rush of endorphins, for instance, that accompanies the making of a nice little bit of dialogue. And this isn’t to say that writing isn’t painful—and it is, most of the time—but at the same time, there is no pleasure without the pain. As much as writing hurts, it carries with it, at times, content, satisfaction, which, in part, I think, is what Conrad is getting at when he says, “The sitting down is all.” In my own case, I get up at about six-thirty, seven o’clock every day, try to be at work by eight, work until about one o’clock in the afternoon, work out for a couple of hours -. Uh, lifting weights is my hobby, but even when I’m doing that, I’m still writing in my head, going over a bit of dialogue, kind of mumbling aloud, or trying to come up with just that right word that’s been eluding me during the morning hours. Take shower, go back to work, and write until about six o’clock at night. I work on Christmas, I work at New Years, my birthday, my girlfriend’s birthday—it’s all I do. And yet, as monotonous as it might sound to you, it gives me great, great pleasure. Now, what I thought I -. That’s sort of the end of the little prepared thing I’d done. What I want to do with you now is to do —is to tell you, basically, two stories. Uh, the pair of stories are kind of wedded together by the common theme, that I hope will sort of soak through by osmosis. I grew up, as President [E. Gordon] Gee said, in a small prairie town in southern Minnesota, population, what, nine thousand or so? If you look in a dictionary under the word “boring,” you will find a little pen-and-ink illustration of Worthington, Minnesota, where I grew up. On one side of town, of the highway coming into town, you’ll see soybeans, on the other side of the highway, fields of corn. It’s a place that gives new meaning to the word flat. The town, for reasons unknown, took pride, and to this day still takes pride, in calling itself “The Turkey Capital of the World.” Uh, why they
took pride in this I’m not quite sure. Every September in my home town, on September fifteenth there is an event called ‘Turkey Day.” And what Turkey Day consists of is the farmers will put their turkeys in their trucks, uh, drive them into town, dump them in front of the Esso gas station on one end of Main Street, and then they’ll herd the turkeys up Main Street, and we, the citizens of Worthington, will all sit on the curbs and watch the turkeys go by (laughs). And then we’d go home. That’s our big day! Well, you can imagine what the rest of the days are like. Imagine yourself as a nine year old, ten year old kid, growing up in this godforsaken place; a place, by the way that’s no better and no worse than any town like it across this country of ours; a town full of chatty housewives and holier than thou ministers, and the Kiwanis boys with their, you know, their white belts and their white shoes, and the country club set, a town that congratulates itself, day after day, on its own ignorance of the world: a town that got us into Vietnam. Uh, the people in that town sent me to that war, you know, couldn’t spell the word “Hanoi” if you spotted them three vowels. They couldn’t do it. In any case, they sent me—well, again, imagine yourself as a nine year old, in my case, boy, growing up in this place. What do you do to escape it? Well, one way to escape it, I found, was through books and through reading, and I spent a great deal of my youth in the Noble’s County Library, on Fourth Street in Worthington, reading books like, you know, Huckleberry Finn, and Tom Sawyer, but also stuff that was essentially crap: books like The Hardy Boys, as an example, for which, you know, the avenue towards literature really doesn’t matter much, as long as you like reading, I suppose. It matters later. Then it didn’t. I spent most of my summers as a kid playing a crappy shortstop for the Ben Franklin-store Little League team—couldn’t field, couldn’t hit, couldn’t run, couldn’t throw—otherwise, a pretty good shortstop. I remember coming off of Little League practice one afternoon in July. It probably was nineteen fifty-eight, a particularly disastrous, even catastrophic day on the, on the baseball field, and going into the library-it was one of these little Carnegie libraries that dot small-town America, a place that, if I were to close my eyes right now, I could—I would be there. I could see the ceiling fan spinning as you’re walking in, and the smell of Johnson’s paste wax on the floor, and those smells of— library smells, of paper and books and ink and glue. A kind of, the atmosphere was a kind of place that, as you enter it, instantly makes your bowels kind of relax. You know the feeling, don’t you? Kind of peaceful, at-home feeling. Well, on this day, I found a book called—it was as instrumental in my becoming a writer as, say, Marquez or Faulkner—the book was entitled “Larry of the Little League.” I read this book in, what, a half an hour or so, but what a half an hour! This kid Larry could do everything I couldn’t do: he could field, hit, run, and throw. I finished the book, marched over to the librarian, asked for a pad of paper and a pen, which she gave to me, went back to my desk, and over the course of the next hour and a half, at age nine, possibly ten, composed the first novel of my life, or what I thought of as a novel. The title was “Timmy of the Little League,” essentially a rip-off of Larry. It—I remember on the— my mom and dad, I think, still have this aborted effort—I remember on page ten or so of this—it was hand-written, in big handwriting, but on page ten or so, uh, the Worthington Ben Franklin team won the Worthington, uh, Little League, you know, championship. And I, in the character of Timmy, got the game-winning hit. On page twenty or so, the team went up to Minneapolis-St. Paul Little League championship, where the Worthington Ben Franklin team defeated a team from Edina, this kind of ritzy-ditzy, rich people’s suburb—you guys would fit in there—a place we really despised, and again, the game-winning
hit was by little Timmy, and at the end of the book, on page thirty or whatever it was, when I called it????, the team went to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where they defeated Taiwan, like, eighty to nothing, and again, the game-winning hit was mine. Well, I tell you this story for a reason; the reason being that writers often forget or neglect to talk about those sources that have very little to do with, you know the Shakespeares, and—all of which is important, I don’t mean to denigrate that for an instant, but of equal importance in some ways is that experience in childhood, a source of loneliness and frustration I felt growing up in this town, escape through books, and a discovery of writing through a book like “Larry of the Little League.” I learned other practical lessons, I might add, in writing that book, that I don’t often talk about --. I certainly don’t talk about them in interviews, but among them being that I was writing in that book the story, not of what was, the world I lived in, but the story of what could have been or should have been, which is what fiction is all about. And I could have been a good shortstop, I should have been—I wasn’t. But in that book I became another person, assumed a new identity, and lived in another world, the world of success, in this case; a world outside of Worthington, Minnesota, and many years later—uh, what, twenty or something like that— I wrote a novel called Going After Cacciato, my sort of first successful book, that the premise of which was essentially that of “Timmy of the Little League-” a book about a soldier walking away from Vietnam, heading for Paris. Uh, I didn’t do it, but I could have, and more importantly, I should have, because, you know, I was so opposed to that war. What’s to stop me in the could-have part? You know, I’ve got the weapon, the water, the rations—the weapon to get more water and rations and—it can’t be any more dangerous than Vietnam, just walking over those mountains, and heading through Thailand, and ending up in Paris. As a fiction writer, I do not write just about the world we live in, but I also write about the world we ought to live in, and could, which is a world of imagination. I grew up, I left Worthington, went to college at a place called Macalaster College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and during my four years in college, the Vietnam War began more and more raising its head. The war was escalating rapidly, and I spent my four years in Macalaster doing two things sort of simultaneously, and they were contradictory things. One was kind of trying to ignore it all, hoping it would go away, that it wouldn’t capture me as a person. I had kind of a smug attitude about it all, thinking, “well, I’m a good student, and smart, and they won’t take me as a soldier,” I really believed that it was impossible. But by the time I became a senior I began to realize that it was more and more possible. I rang some doorbells for Gene McCarthy, running as a peace candidate. Uh, I was student body president, tried to use that as a, you know, in a minor kind of way, as a way of showing my opposition to the war. Stood in peace vigils on campus—I graduated in May of nineteen sixtyeight, which now seems a lifetime ago, returned to Worthington for the summer. I remember coming off the golf course in an afternoon in mid-June and going to the mailbox, and finding in the mailbox my draft notice. I took it into the kitchen where my mother and father were having lunch, and I dropped it on the table. My father looked at it, and my mom looked at it, and I looked at it, and there was an absolute silence in that kitchen. They knew about my feelings toward the war, how much I despised it, but they also knew I was a child of Worthington, this place, this Turkey Capital place I just told you about. My father had been a sailor in World War Two; my mother was a Wave, you know, a kind of Navy woman. Uh, there was a tradition of service to country in my family.
Well, anyway, a long time passed in that kitchen; it might have been a half an hour, when no one spoke. My mother fiddled at the stove, and my dad would you know, just sort of ate his soup, and, uh, finally he looked up at me and said, “What are you going to do?” And I said, “I don’t know. Wait.” Which was what I did for the rest of the summer of nineteen sixty-eight. I took a job in a meat-packing plant in my hometown, where I worked on an assembly line eight hours a day, or more properly, a disassembly line. It was a pig factory. The hogs were butchered in one part of the plant, they were strung up by their hind hocks, on a kind of high conveyer belt, and as they came by, my job was, I held a—it looked like a machine gun—it was a thing that was this big, it weighed maybe eighty pounds, and it was suspended from the ceiling by a heavy rubber cord strong enough to actually hold it, but it had some give to it, you could move this thing around. And as the hogs came by, the heads had been cut off, they’d been split open down the belly and pried open, so the blood had all congealed in the neck cavity—they were upside down—and my job was to get rid of the blood clots, essentially, these kind of big, grapefruit-sized clots of blood. And to do this, I’d take this machine which had a roller brush on one end and a trigger on this end, and I’d put the roller brush into the pig’s, uh, neck cavity, pull the trigger, the brush would spin, water would come out, and these clots of blood would, uh, would dissolve into kind of a fine red mist. I spent the summer, essentially, breathing pig blood. Not a nice job. And especially not a nice job when one has a draft notice tucked away in a back pocket. My dreams, obviously, were dreams of slaughter that summer— blood dreams. On top of everything else, I might add, I smelled like a pork chop. You couldn’t get that pig factory smell out of your skin and your hair. You know, you’d shower at the plant and then again at home, but you really did smell like bacon or a pork chop as you’d spend your nights, you know, cruising around this small town in your father’s car, stopping at the A&W for a root beer, and staring at the town lake, wondering what’s going to become of me when the summer is over. Well, I’ve told this story before, and I’ve written about it in The Things They Carried, as some of you know, that read it. But parts of the story are hard to tell, and now I’m at one of those points. Near the end of the summer, something happened to me that, to this day, I don’t fully understand. One day, at a pig line, as I was pulling this trigger, something exploded in my stomach. It felt like a water balloon that popped open inside of me. It was a leaky, gaseous, watery feeling—a feeling of, uh, real despair. I nearly began crying. I immediately put this gun down, walked out of the plant without taking a shower, got in my dad’s car, drove home, uh, went in the house, and just stood in that kitchen, the kitchen I told you about, looking—my mom and dad weren’t home, I don’t know where they were that afternoon. Uh, I went down into the basement where my room was, and I packed a bag, filled it up with clothing—I had a passport from a trip to Europe the previous summer. I got back in my mom’s car, and took off. For those of you who don’t know the geography, Minnesota is on the Canadian border, and eight hours later, after a drive I essentially forget, a blurry drive, just pure velocity, I found myself in a place called International Falls, Minnesota, up on the Minnesota-Canadian border. I hadn’t planned any of this-I had sort of half-daydreamed about it, but never seriously. By that time it was close to midnight; I spent the night in the car, uh, in a-a closed-down gas station-very --. It was a sleepless night. In the morning, as dawn began to break, I got-I started the car, and I began driving east, along the Rainy River, which is a river that physically separates, uh, Minnesota from Canada. It’s not just a river: it’s as wide as a lake, in parts. It’s a big river. Um, I was
looking for a way across, you know, a bridge. Within a half an hour or so, I came across a closed-down, uh, resort along the river, a place called the Tip-Top Lodge. It wasn’t really a lodge: it was a sort of-ten yellow cabins along the river. Tourist season was over by then, so the place was abandoned, but I stopped anyway, thinking, well, I’ll think it over for one last night before I walk away from my own life and from the world I knew. I went up to the main building and knocked on the door. A little man came to the door. He was really a small guy, he was like a foot tall. I mean he was really a tiny little guy. He was dressed all in, all in brown, you know, the kind of north woods look—brown shirt and brown pants—brown everything. Uh, for the first time in my life I could actually look down at somebody-I remember looking down at the guy, and he looking up at me, and he said, “What do you want?” And I said, “A place to stay.” He introduced himself to me; his name was Elroy Berdahl. The man is the hero of my life. If, uh, heroes come—come in small packages, this guy did. He took one look at me and I know that instantly he knew that here’s a kid in deep trouble. Uh, he was no dummy. He knew there was a war on, he knew this was the Canadian border, he could see how old I was, he could see the terror in my eyes, I’m sure. He said, “No problem.” He gave me a key, and walked me to one of his little cabins, and said to me, “I hope you like fish,” and I said, “Yeah.” Well, I spent the next six days with old Elroy Berdahl on the Rainy River, trying to decide what to do with my, you know, my life. On the one hand, I did oppose the war. It seemed to me that certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons—that is to say, the reasons for the war were all under dispute. It was a time when Hawks were at the throats of Doves, when smart people in pinstripes couldn’t make their minds up about the rectitude of the war. You know, smart people were saying the war was right; smart people were saying it’s dead wrong, and where was the truth in all this swirling ambiguity? Uh, I opposed it, but on the other hand, I was a child of Worthington, Minnesota. I didn’t know everything. Uh, I didn’t know much about the history of Vietnam, the politics of it all—maybe I was mistaken. Beyond that, I felt drawn by America itself, even by this little shitty town that I told you about. I felt drawn to it because, as bad it was, it was mine, and I didn’t want to leave it, and I didn’t want to leave America. I felt like I was one of those pigs that had been pried open, pulled two different ways—part of me being pulled toward the war; part of me being pulled toward Canada. And I was, hell, I was your age! And that’s a tough thing to do when you’re that old, to decide to walk away from your whole history. Well, during those six days at the Tip-Top Lodge, what do I tell you? They were as important as anything that later happened in Vietnam. They were much more traumatic than anything that happened in Vietnam—I was wounded, and I saw death all around me. But those six days at the Tip-Top lodge were a lot worse. It was a poignant decision that I can’t, uh, even begin here to describe for you, except as a storyteller. I remember old Ellroy watching me all the time during these six days—he was a very quiet guy. As I said, he knew something was wrong, but he was the sort of person who would never talk about it or ask about it. I mean, he was the kind of guy who, if you were to walk into a bar with two heads, and old Ellroy’s sitting there, he would talk about everything except that extra head. He’d talk about the weather, and, you know, and Lutheranism, but not the extra head. That’s the kind of Midwestern, even Minnesotan, way of dealing with things like this. Uh, but he saw some strange behavior on my part. I remember one afternoon we were out behind the—his lodge. He was showing me how to split wood. And I began sweating-I just couldn’t shut the sweat off; I just was like a spigot had been turned on inside me, just full of it. One night I
vomited at his table. Not out of—it wasn’t the fish; it was a spiritual sickness inside of me. I remember lying awake at night, full of very peculiar hallucinations—I mean , it wasn’t, it wasn’t hallucination, really, but the kind of thoughts you have when you’re suffering from the flu, or you’re really sick. I’d imagine being chased through the Canadian woods by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and dogs barking, and spotlights on me—people even in my hometown yelling deserter, sissy, coward—things like this. Well, near the end of my stay on the sixth and last day there, Ellroy did a thing that, in a way, made me into a writer, as much as, you know, Larry of the Little League. He said to me, uh, “Let’s get in the boat. We’ll go fishing.” So we got into this, you know, little twelve foot boat of his, and we went across to the Canadian side, and he stopped the boat, maybe, I don’t know, fifteen yards or so, from the Canadian, you know, where the wilderness was, and he tossed his line in and started fishing. I was in the front of the boat, in the bow, and he was in the back, where the engine was, and I can now, again like that library, I can feel myself there, bobbing in that slate-gray water, fifteen yards from Canada. It was as close to me as the third row here, fourth row, I could see the berries on the bushes and the blackbirds and stones, my coming future. I could have done it, I could have jumped out of that boat, started swimming for my life. So time went by; again, old Ellroy just said nothing, just let me bob there. I think he knew what he was doing. He was bringing me face to face with it all, and wanted to kind of be there for me the way God is there for us, you know—not really present, but sort of over our shoulder somewhere, whatever the stand-in for God might be for you, like a conscience bearing witness, and just here. After—not long, a couple of minutes—I started crying. It wasn’t loud, just kind of like the chest-chokes, when you’re crying, but you’re trying not to, and even then, he said nothing, not a word. After, what, twenty minutes or so, he reeled his line in, said “Ain’t bitin.’” Turned on the engine, and took me back. Well, after we got back to the Minnesota shore, I went back to my cabin, and I knew it was all over. What I was crying about, you see, was—was not self-pity. I was crying with the knowledge that I’d be going to Vietnam, that I was essentially a coward, that I couldn’t do the right thing, I couldn’t go to Canada. Given what I believed, anyway, the right thing would have been to follow your conscience, and I couldn’t do it. Why, to this day, I’m not sure, I can speculate it. Some of it had to do with raw embarrassment, a fear of blushing, a fear of some old farmer in my town saying to another farmer, “Did you hear what the O’Brien kid did? The sissy went to Canada.” And imagining my mom and dad sitting in the next booth over, overhearing this, you know, and imagining their eyes colliding and bouncing away, and-uh, I was afraid of embarrassment. Men died in Vietnam, by the way, out of the same fear-you know, not out of nobility or patriotism; they were just af-they charged bunkers and machine gun nests, just because they would be embarrassed not to, later on, in front of their buddies. Not a noble motive for human behavior, but I tell you one thing, one you’d better think about in your lives, that sometimes doing the hard thing is also doing the embarrassing thing, and when that moment strikes, it hits you hard. I didn’t see Ellroy again. I got up the next morning, and I went to, you know, his little lodge thing, and I knocked on the door, and he wasn’t there. I could see right way he was gone, his pickup was gone. I left a little note for him, saying thank you. Uh, I got in my-the car, and I drove north-or drove south, rather, out of the pine forest, down to the prairies of Southern Minnesota. Within two weeks I was in the Army, and about four months after that in Vietnam.
Now, what I have told you is, is a war story. War stories aren’t always about war, per se. They aren’t about bombs and bullets and military maneuvers. They aren’t about tactics, they aren’t about foxholes and canteens. War stories, like any good story, is finally about the human heart. About the choices we make, or fail to make. The forfeitures in our lives. Stories are to console and to inspire and to help us heal. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are. And a good war story, in my opinion, is a story that strikes you as important, not for war content, but for its heart content. The second reason I told you this story is that none of it’s true. Or very little of it. It’s—invented. No Ellroy, no TipTop Lodge, no pig factory, I’m trying to think of what else. I’ve never been to the Rainy River in my life. Uh, not even close to it. I haven’t been within two hundred miles of the place. No boats. But, although the story I invented, it’s still true, which is what fiction is all about. Uh, if I were to tell you the literal truth of what happened to me in the summer of nineteen sixty-eight, all I could tell you was that I played golf, and I worried about getting drafted. But that’s a crappy story. Isn’t it? It doesn’t—it doesn’t open any door to what I was feeling in the summer of nineteen sixty-eight. That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth. The pig factory is there for those dreams of slaughter—they were quite real inside of me. And in my own heart, I was certainly on that rainy river, trying to decide what to do, whether to go to the war or not go to it, say no or say yes. The story is still true, even though on one level it’s not; it’s made up. The point was not to pull a fast one, any more than, you know, Mark Twain is trying to pull a fast one in Huckleberry Finn. Stories make you believe, that’s what dialogue is for, that’s what plot is for, and character. It’s there to make you believe it as you’re reading it. You don’t read Huckleberry Finn saying “This never happened, this never happened, this never happened, this never happened-” I mean, you don’t do that, or go to The Godfather and say, you know, no horse head. I mean, you don’t think that way; you believe. A verisimilitude and truth in that literal sense, to me, is ultimately irrelevant. What is relevant is the human heart. All right, I want to finish up here with just a little-a short little snatch from something that is a little more based on-I’m not going to say based on-a little more out of the real world I lived in, and then I’ll take whatever questions you might have, just for, you know, a brief time. This little thing, it’ll only take, like, two minutes to read this, or five or something. When she was nine, my daughter Kathleen asked me if I’d ever killed anyone. She knew about the war, she knew I’d been a soldier. “You keep writing war stories,” she said, “so I guess you must’ve killed somebody.” It was a difficult moment but I did what I thought was right, which was to say, “Of course not,” and then to take her onto my lap and hold her for a while. Someday, I hope, she’ll ask again But here, now I want to pretend she’s a grown-up. I want to tell her exactly what happened, or what I remember happening, and then I want to say to he that as a little girl she was absolutely right. This is why I keep telling war stories: He was a short slender young man of about twenty. I was afraid of him-afraid of something-and as he passed me on the trail I threw a grenade that exploded at his feet and killed him. Or to go back: Shortly after midnight we moved into the ambush site outside My Khe. The whole platoon was there, spread out in the dense brush along the trail, and for five hours nothing at all happened.
We were working in two-man teams-one man on guard while the other slept, switching off every two hours-and I remember it was still dark when Kiowa shook me awake for the final watch. The night was foggy and hot. For the first few moments I felt lost, not sure about directions, groping for my helmet and weapon. I reached out and found three grenades and lined them up in front of me; the pins had already been straightened for quick throwing. And then for maybe half an hour I kneeled there and waited. Very gradually, in tiny slivers, dawn began to break through the fog, and from my position in the brush I could see ten or fifteen meters up the trail. The mosquitoes were fierce. I remember slapping at them, wondering if I should wake up Kiowa and go get some repellent, then thinking it was a bad idea, then looking up and seeing the young man come out of the morning fog. He wore black clothing and rubber sandals and a gray ammunition belt. His shoulders were slightly stooped, his head cocked to the side as if listening for something. He seemed at ease. He carried his weapon in one hand, muzzle down, moving without any hurry up the center of the trail. There was no sound at all—none that I can remember. In a way, it seemed, he was part of the morning fog, or my own imagination, but there was also the reality of what was happening in my stomach. I had already pulled the pin on a grenade. I had come up to a crouch. It was entirely automatic. I did not hate the young man; I did not see him as the enemy; I did not ponder issues of morality or politics or justice. I crouched and kept my head low. I tried to swallow whatever was rising from my stomach, which tasted like lemonade, something fruity and sour. I was terrified. There were no thoughts about killing. The grenade was to make him go away-just evaporate-and leaned back and felt my head go empty and then felt it fill up again. I had already thrown the grenade before telling myself to throw it. It was gone. The brush was thick and I had to lob it high, not aiming, and I remember the grenade seeming to freeze above me for an instant, as if a camera had clicked, and I remember ducking down and holding my breath and seeing little wisps of fog rise from the earth. The grenade bounced once and rolled across the trail. I did not hear it, but there must’ve been a sound, because the young man dropped his weapon and began to run, just two or three quick steps. Then he looked down at the grenade, turned to his right, and tried to cover his head but never did. It occurred to me then that he was about to die. I wanted to warn him. The grenade made a popping noise—not loud, not what you’d expect. Just a pop, and there was a puff of dust and smoke and the young man seemed to jerk upward as if pulled by invisible wires. He fell on his back. His rubber sandals had been blown off. He lay at the center of the trail, his right leg bent beneath him, his one eye shut, his other eye a huge star-shaped hole. For me, it was not a matter of live or die. There was no real peril. Almost certainly the young man would have passed me by. And it will always be that way. Later, I remember, Kiowa tried to tell me that the man would’ve died anyway. He told me that it was a good kill, that I was a soldier and this was a war, that I should shape up and stop staring, that I should ask myself what the dead man would’ve done if things were reversed. But you see, none of it mattered. The words, or language, far too complicated. All I could do was gape at the fact of the young man’s body. Even now, three decades later, I haven’t finished sorting it out. Sometimes I forgive myself, other times I don’t. In the ordinary hours of life I try not to think about it, but now and then, when I’m reading a newspaper or just sitting alone in a room, I’ll look
up and see the young man coming out of the morning fog. I’ll watch him walk toward me, his shoulders slightly stooped, his head cocked to the side, and he’ll pass within a few yards of me and suddenly smile at some secret thought and then continue up the trail to where it bends back into the fog. Thanks.
[...]
About Tim O’Brien: A Profile by Don Lee The good news is that Tim O’Brien is writing fiction again. In 1994, after his sixth book, In the Lake of the Woods, was released, he distressed his many fans by vowing to stop writing fiction “for the foreseeable future.” Then, a few months later, he published a now famous essay in The New York Times Magazine thatdescribed his return to Vietnam. With his girlfriend at the time, he visited My Lai, where on March 16, 1968, a company of American soldiers massacred an entire village in a matter of four hours—women, children, old men, chickens, dogs. The body count ranged from two to five hundred. From 1969–70, O’Brien had been an infantryman in the Quang Ngai province, and his platoon had been stationed in My Lai a year after the massacre. Then and now, he could feel the evil in the place, “the wickedness that soaks into your blood and heats up and starts to sizzle.” In the Times cover story, O’Brien elaborated on the complex associations of love and insanity that can boil over during a war, almost inevitably exploding into atrocity. But he went a step further, drawing parallels between the “guilt, depression, terror, shame” that infected both his Vietnam experience and his present life, especially now that his girlfriend had left him. Chillingly, he admitted, “Last night suicide was on my mind. Not whether, but how.” This time, his fans were not the only ones concerned. Friends and strangers alike called him: shrinks to sign him up, clergymen to save his soul, people who thought he had disclosed way too much, others who thought he had disclosed too little. Today, O’Brien has no regrets about publishing the article. He considers it one of the best things he has ever written. “I reread it maybe once every two months,” he says, “just to remind myself what writing’s for. I don’t mean catharsis. I mean communication. It was a hard thing to do. It saved my life, but it was a fuck of a thing to print.” After taking nine months off and pulling his life back together, O’Brien started another novel, intrigued enough by the first page to write a second, propelled, as always, by his fundamental faith in the power of storytelling. Born in 1946, O’Brien was raised in small-town Minnesota, his father an insurance salesman, his mother an elementary school teacher. As a child, O’Brien was lonely, overweight, and a professed “dreamer,” and he occupied himself by practicing magic tricks. For a brief time, he contemplated being a writer, inspired by some old clippings he’d found of his father’s— personal accounts about fighting in Iwo Jima and Okinawa that had been published in The New York Times during World War II. When O’Brien entered college, however, his aspirations turned political. He was a political science major at Macalester, attended peace vigils and war protests, and planned to join the State Department to reform its policies. “I thought we needed people
who were progressive and had the patience to try diplomacy instead of dropping bombs on people.” He never imagined he would be drafted upon graduation and actually sent to Vietnam. “I was walking around in a dream and repressing it all,” he says, “thinking something would save my ass. Even getting on the plane for boot camp, I couldn’t believe any of it was happening to me, someone who hated Boy Scouts and bugs and rifles.” When he received his classification—not as a clerk, or a driver, or a cook, but as an infantryman—he seriously considered deserting to Canada. He now thinks it was an act of cowardice not to, particularly since he was against the war, but in 1969, as a twenty-two-year-old, he had feared the disapproval of his family and friends, his townspeople and country. He went to Vietnam and hated every minute of it, from beginning to end. When he came back to the States, he had a Purple Heart (he was wounded by shrapnel from a hand grenade) and several publishing credits. Much like his father, he had written personal reports about the war that had made their way into Minnesota newspapers, and while pursuing a doctorate at the Harvard School of Government, O’Brien expanded on the vignettes to form a book, If I Die in Combat, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home. He sent it first to Knopf, whose editors had high praise for the book. Yet they were already publishing a book about Vietnam, Dispatches by Michael Herr, and suggested that O’Brien try the editor Seymour Lawrence, who was in Boston. “He called me at my dormitory at Harvard,” O’Brien recalls. “He said, ‘Well, we’re taking your book. Why don’t you come over, I’ll take you to lunch.’ It was a big, drunken lunch at Trader Vic’s in the old Statler Hilton, during the course of which we decided to fire my agent. Sam said, ‘Look, you’re not going to get much money, there’s no way, might as well fire the guy. Why give him ten percent?’ “ If I Die in Combat was published in 1973, just as O’Brien was being hired as a national affairs reporter for The Washington Post, where he’d been an intern for two summers. “I didn’t know the first thing about writing for a newspaper, but I learned fast,” says O’Brien, who never took a writing workshop. The job helped tremendously in terms of discipline, which, O’Brien confesses, was a problem for him until then. “I learned the virtue of tenacity.” After his one-year stint at the Post, O’Brien simply wrote books. In 1975, he published Northern Lights, about two brothers—one a war hero, the other a farm agent who stayed home in Minnesota—who struggle to survive during a cross-country ski trip. Going After Cacciato came out in 1978. In the novel, an infantryman named Cacciato deserts, deciding to walk from Southeast Asia to Paris for the peace talks. Paul Berlin is ordered to capture Cacciato, and narrates an extended meditation on what might have happened if Cacciato had made it all the way to Paris. The novel won the National Book Award over John Irving’s The World According to Garp and John Cheever’s Stories. The Nuclear Age, about a draft dodger turned uranium speculator who is obsessed with the threat of nuclear holocaust, was released in 1985, and then, in 1990, came The Things They Carried, which was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The collection of interrelated stories revolves around the men of Alpha Company, an infantry platoon in Vietnam. The title story is a recitation of the soldiers’ weapons and gear, the metaphorical mixing with the mundane: they carried M-60’s and C rations and Claymores, and “the common scent of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to
run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture.” A central motif in the book is the process of storytelling itself, the way imagination and language and memory can blur fact, and why “story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.” In his latest novel, In the Lake of the Woods, which is now in paperback, O’Brien takes this question of how much we can know about an event or a person one step further. John and Kathy Wade are staying at a secluded lakeside cottage in northern Minnesota. He has just lost a senatorial election by a landslide, after the revelation that he was among the soldiers at My Lai, a fact he has tried to conceal from everyone—including his wife; even, pathologically, himself—for twenty years. A week after their arrival at the lake, Wade’s wife disappears. Perhaps she drowned, perhaps she ran away, perhaps Wade murdered her. The mystery is never solved, and the lack of a traditional ending has produced surprisingly vocal reactions from readers. “I get calls from people,” O’Brien says. They ask questions, they offer their own opinions about what happened, they want to know, missing the point of the novel, that life often does not offer solutions or resolutions, that it is impossible to know completely what secrets lurk within people. As the anonymous narrator, who has conducted a four-year investigation into the case, comments in a footnote: “It’s human nature. We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate by hypothesis, by daydream, by scientific investigation those leaden walls that encase the human spirit, that define it and guard it and hold it forever inaccessible. (‘I love you,’ someone says, and instantly we begin to wonder—’Well, how much?’—and when the answer comes—’With my whole heart’—we then wonder about the wholeness of a fickle heart.) Our lovers, our husbands, our wives, our fathers, our gods—they are all beyond us.” O’Brien feels strongly that In the Lake of the Woods is his best book to date, but it took its toll on him. He is a meticulous, some would say fanatical, craftsman. In general, he writes every day, all day. He does practically nothing else. He lifts weights, watches baseball, occasionally plays golf, and reads at night, but rarely ventures from his two-bedroom apartment near Harvard Square. He’ll eke out the words, then discard them. It took him an entire year to finish nine pages of The Nuclear Age, although he tossed out thousands. Always, it will begin with an image, “a picture of a human being doing something.” With Going After Cacciato, it was the image of a guy walking to Paris: “I could see his back.” With The Things They Carried, it was “remembering all this crap I had on me and inside me, the physical and spiritual burdens.” With In the Lake of the Woods, it was a man and a woman lying on a porch in the fog along a lake: “I didn’t know where the lake was at the time. I knew they were unhappy. I could feel the unhappiness in the fog. I didn’t know what the unhappiness was about. It required me to write the next page. A lost election. Why was the election lost? My Lai. All of this was discovered after two years of writing.” But when O’Brien finished In the Lake of the Woods, he stopped writing for the first time in over twenty years. “I was burned out,” he says. “The novel went to the bottom of the well for me. I felt emotionally drained. I didn’t see the point of writing anymore.” In retrospect, the respite was good for him. He likens the hiatus to Michael Jordan’s brief leave from basketball: “He may not be a better basketball player when he comes back, but he’s going to be a better person.”
Of course, the road back has not been easy, particularly with the loss of his editor and good friend, Sam Lawrence, who died in 1993. “Through the ups and downs of any writer’s career, he was always there, with a new contract, and optimism. Another of his virtues was that he didn’t push. Sam didn’t give a shit if you missed a deadline. He wanted a good book, no matter how long it took.” For the moment, O’Brien has yet to sign up with another publisher for his novel in progress, which opens with two boys building an airplane in their backyard. He prefers to avoid the pressure. “Maybe it’s Midwestern,” he says. “When I sign a contract, I think I owe them X dollars of literature.” And in defiance of some editors and critics, who suggest he should move on from Vietnam, he will in all likelihood continue to write about the war. “All writers revisit terrain. Shakespeare did it with kings, and Conrad did it with the ocean, and Faulkner did it with the South. It’s an emotional and geographical terrain that’s given to us by life. Vietnam is there the way childhood is for me. There’s a line from Michael Herr: ‘Vietnam’s what we had instead of happy childhoods.’ A funny, weird line, but there’s some truth in it.” Yet to categorize O’Brien as merely a Vietnam War writer would be ludicrously unfair and simplistic. Any close examination of his books reveals there is something much more universal about them. As much as they are war stories, they are also love stories. That is why his readers are as apt to be female as male. “I think in every book I’ve written,” O’Brien says, “I’ve had the twins of love and evil. They intertwine and intermix. They’ll separate, sometimes, yet they’re hooked the way valances are hooked together. The emotions in war and in our ordinary lives are, if not identical, damn similar.”
Too Embarrassed Not to Kill by Robert R. Harris Only a handful of novels and short stories have managed to clarify, in any lasting way, the meaning of the war in Vietnam for America and for the soldiers who served there. With ‘‘The Things They Carried,’’ Tim O’Brien adds his second title to the short list of essential fiction about Vietnam. As he did in his novel ‘‘Going After Cacciato’’ (1978), which won a National Book Award, he captures the war’s pulsating rhythms and nerveracking dangers. But he goes much further. By moving beyond the horror of the fighting to examine with sensitivity and insight the nature of courage and fear, by questioning the role that imagination plays in helping to form our memories and our own versions of truth, he places ‘‘The Things They Carried’’ high up on the list of best fiction about any war. ‘‘The Things They Carried’’ is a collection of interrelated stories. A few are unremittingly brutal; a couple are flawed two-page sketches. The publisher calls the book ‘‘a work of fiction,’’ but in no real sense can it be considered a novel. No matter. The stories cohere. All deal with a single platoon, one of whose members is a character named Tim O’Brien. Some stories are about the wartime experiences of this small group of grunts. Others are about a 43-year-old writer—again, the fictional character Tim O’Brien—remembering his platoon’s experiences and writing war stories (and remembering writing stories) about them. This is the kind of writing about writing that makes Tom Wolfe grumble.
It should not stop you from savoring a stunning performance. The overall effect of these original tales is devastating. As might be expected, there is a lot of gore in ‘‘The Things They Carried’’—like the account of the soldier who ties a friend’s puppy to a Claymore antipersonnel mine and squeezes the firing device. And much of the powerful language cannot be quoted in a family newspaper. But let Mr. O’Brien explain why he could not spare squeamish sensibilities: ‘‘If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for the truth; if you don’t care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty.’’ In the title story, Mr. O’Brien juxtaposes the mundane and the deadly items that soldiers carry into battle. Can openers, pocketknives, wristwatches, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, matches, sewing kits, C rations are ‘‘humped’’ by the G.I.’s along with M16 assault rifles, M-60 machine guns, M-79 grenade launchers. But the story is really about the other things the soldiers ‘‘carry’’: ‘‘grief, terror, love, longing . . . shameful memories’’ and, what unifies all the stories, ‘‘the common secret of cowardice.’’ These young men, Mr. O’Brien tells us, ‘‘carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.’’ Embarrassment, the author reveals in ‘‘On the Rainy River,’’ is why he, or rather the fictional version of himself, went to Vietnam. He almost went to Canada instead. What stopped him, ironically, was fear. ‘‘All those eyes on me,’’ he writes, ‘‘and I couldn’t risk the embarrassment. . . . I couldn’t endure the mockery, or the disgrace, or the patriotic ridicule. . . . I was a coward. I went to the war.’’ So just what is courage? What is cowardice? Mr. O’Brien spends much of the book carefully dissecting every nuance of the two qualities. In several stories, he writes movingly of the death of Kiowa, the best-loved member of the platoon. In ‘‘Speaking of Courage,’’ Mr. O’Brien tells us about Norman Bowker, the platoon member who blames his own failure of nerve for Kiowa’s death. Bowker ‘‘had been braver than he ever thought possible, but . . . he had not been so brave as he wanted to be.’’ In the following story, ‘‘Notes’’ (literally notes on the writing of ‘‘Speaking of Courage’’), Mr. O’Brien’s fictional alter ego informs the reader that Bowker committed suicide after coming home from the war. This author also admits that he made up the part about the failure of nerve that haunted Bowker. But it’s all made up, of course. And in ‘‘The Man I Killed,’’ Mr. O’Brien imagines the life of an enemy soldier at whom the character Tim O’Brien tossed a grenade, only to confess later that it wasn’t ‘‘Tim O’Brien’’ who killed the Vietnamese. Are these simply tricks in the service of making good stories? Hardly. Mr. O’Brien strives to get beyond literal descriptions of what these men went through and what they felt. He makes sense of the unreality of the war—makes sense of why he has distorted that unreality even further in his fiction—by turning back to explore the workings of the imagination, by probing his memory of the terror and fearlessly confronting the way he has dealt with it as both soldier and fiction writer. In doing all this, he not only crystallizes the Vietnam experience for us, he exposes the nature of all war stories. The character Tim O’Brien’s daughter asks him why he continues to be obsessed by the Vietnam War and with writing about it. ‘‘By telling stories,’’ he says, ‘‘you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths.’’ In ‘‘Good Form,’’ he writes: ‘‘I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again.’’ You come away from this book understanding why there have been so many novels about the Vietnam War, why so many of Mr. O’Brien’s
fellow soldiers have turned to narrative—real and imagined—to purge their memories, to appease the ghosts. Is it fair to readers for Mr. O’Brien to have blurred his own identity as storyteller-soldier in these stories? ‘‘A true war story is never moral,’’ he writes in ‘‘How to Tell a True War Story.’’ ‘‘It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.’’ Mr. O’Brien cuts to the heart of writing about war. And by subjecting his memory and imagination to such harsh scrutiny, he seems to have reached a reconciliation, to have made his peace— or to have made up his peace. Robert R. Harris is an editor of The Book Review.
The Vietnam in Me by Tim O’Brien
LZ [landing zone, R.A.] GATOR, VIETNAM, FEBRUARY 1994—I’m home, but the house is gone. Not a sandbag, not a nail or a scrap of wire. On Gator, we used to say, the wind doesn’t blow, it sucks. Maybe that’s what happened—the wind sucked it all away. My life, my virtue. In February 1969, 25 years ago, I arrived as a young, terrified pfc. on this lonely little hill in Quang Ngai Province. Back then, the place seemed huge and imposing and permanent. A forward firebase for the Fifth Battalion of the 46th Infantry, 198th Infantry Brigade, LZ Gator was home to 700 or 800 American soldiers, mostly grunts. I remember a tar helipad, a mess hall, a medical station, mortar and artillery emplacements, two volleyball courts, numerous barracks and offices and supply depots and machine shops and entertainment clubs. Gator was our castle. Not safe, exactly, but far preferable to the bush. No land mines here. No paddies bubbling with machine-gun fire. Maybe once a month, for three or four days at a time, Alpha Company would return to Gator for stand-down, where we took our comforts behind a perimeter of bunkers and concertina wire. There were hot showers and hot meals, ice chests packed with beer, glossy pinup girls, big, black Sony tape decks booming “We gotta get out of this place” at decibels for the deaf. Thirty or 40 acres of almost-America. With a little weed and a lot of beer, we would spend the days of stand-down in flatout celebration, purely alive, taking pleasure in our own biology, kidneys and livers and lungs and legs, all in their proper alignments. We could breathe here. We could feel our fists uncurl, the pressures approaching normal. The real war, it seemed, was in another solar system. By day, we’d fill sandbags or pull bunker guard. In the evenings, there were outdoor movies and sometimes live floor shows—pretty Korean girls breaking our hearts in their spangled miniskirts and high leather boots— then afterward we’d troop back to the Alpha barracks for some letter writing or boozing or just a good night’s sleep.
So much to remember. The time we filled a nasty lieutenant’s canteen with mosquito repellent; the sounds of choppers and artillery fire; the slow dread that began building as word spread that in a day or two we’d be heading back to the bush. Pinkville, maybe. The Batangan Peninsula. Spooky, evil places where the land itself could kill you. Now I stand in this patch of weeds, looking down on what used to be the old Alpha barracks. Amazing, really, what time can do. You’d think there would be something left, some faint imprint, but LZ (Landing Zone) Gator has been utterly and forever erased from the earth. Nothing here but ghosts and wind. At the foot of Gator, along Highway 1, the little hamlet of Nuoc Man is going bonkers over our arrival here. As we turn and walk down the hill, maybe 200 people trail along, gawking and chattering, the children reaching out to touch our skin. Through our interpreter, Mrs. Le Hoai Phuong, I’m told that I am the first American soldier to return to this place in the 24 years since Gator was evacuated in 1970. In a strange way, the occasion has the feel of a reunion—happy faces, much bowing. “Me Wendy,” says a middle-aged woman. Another says, “Flower.” Wendy and Flower: G.I. nicknames retrieved from a quarter-century ago. An elderly woman, perhaps in her late 70’s, tugs at my shirt and says, “My name Mama-san.” Dear God. We should’ve bombed these people with love. CAMBRIDGE, MASS., JUNE 1994—Last night suicide was on my mind. Not whether, but how. Tonight it will be on my mind again. Now it’s 4 A.M., June the 5th. The sleeping pills have not worked. I sit in my underwear at this unblinking fool of a computer and try to wrap words around a few horrid truths. I returned to Vietnam with a woman whose name is Kate, whom I adored and have since lost. She’s with another man, seven blocks away. This I learned yesterday afternoon. My own fault, Kate would say, and she would be mostly right. Not entirely. In any case, these thoughts are probably too intimate, too awkward and embarrassing for public discussion. But who knows? Maybe a little blunt human truth will send you off to church, or to confession, or inside yourself. Not that it matters. For me, with one eye on these smooth yellow pills, the world must be written about as it is or not written about at all. Z GATOR, FEBRUARY 1994—By chance, Kate and I have arrived in Nuoc Man on a day of annual commemoration, a day when the graves of the local war dead are blessed and repaired and decorated and wept over. The village elders invite us to a feast, a picnic of sorts, where we take seats before a low lacquered table at an outdoor shrine. Children press up close, all around. The elders shoo them away, but the shooing doesn’t do much. I’m getting nervous. The food on display seems a bit exotic. Not to my taste. I look at Kate, Kate looks at me. “Number one chop-chop,” an old woman says, a wrinkled, gorgeous, protective, scarred, welcoming old woman. “Number one,” she promises, and nudges Kate, and smiles a heartbreaking betel-nut smile. I choose something white. Fish, I’m guessing. I have eaten herring; I have enjoyed herring. This is not herring. There are decisions to be made. The elders bow and execute chewing motions. Do not forget: our hosts are among the maimed and widowed and orphaned, the bombed and rebombed, the recipients of white phosphorus, the tenders of graves. Chew, they say, and by God I chew. Kate has the good fortune to find a Kleenex. She’s a pro. She executes a polite wiping motion and it’s over for her. Eddie Keating, the Times photographer whose pictures accompany this text, tucks his portion between cheek and gum, where it remains until the feast concludes. Me—I imagine herring. I remember Sunday afternoons as a boy, the Vikings on TV, my dad opening up the crackers and creamed herring, passing it out at halftime.
Other flashes too. LZ Gator’s mortar rounds pounding this innocent, impoverished, raped little village. Eight or nine corpses piled not 50 yards from where we now sit in friendly union. I prepare myself. Foul, for sure, but things come around. Nuoc Man swallowed plenty. THE SONG TRA HOTEL, QUANG NGAI CITY, FEBRUARY 1994—It’s late in the evening. The air-conditioner is at full Cuban power. Kate’s eyes sparkle, she’s laughing. “Swallowed!” she keeps saying. In 1969, when I went to war, Kate was 3 years old. Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, McNamara, Bunker, Rogers, Bundy, Rusk, Abrams, Rostow—for her, these names are like the listings on a foreign menu. Some she recognizes not at all, some she recalls from books or old television clips. But she never tasted the dishes. She does not know ice cream from Brussels sprouts. Three years old—how could she? No more than I could know the Southern California of her own youth. Still, it was Kate who insisted we come here. I was more than reluctant—I was petrified, I looked for excuses. Bad dreams and so on. But Kate’s enthusiasm won me over; she wanted to share in my past, the shapes of things, the smells and sunlight. As it turns out, the sharing has gone both ways. In any other circumstances, I would have returned to this country almost purely as a veteran, caught up in memory, but Kate’s presence has made me pay attention to the details of here and now, a Vietnam that exists outside the old perimeter of war. She takes delight in things alive: a chicken wired to someone’s bicycle, an old woman’s enormous fingernails, an infant slung casually on the hip of a tiny 7-year-old girl. Kate has the eyes and spirit of an adventurer, wide open to the variety of the world, and these qualities have pushed me toward some modest adventurism of my own. Now I watch her fiddle with the air-conditioner. “Swallowed!” she keeps saying. Later in the night, as on many other nights, we talk about the war. I try to explain—ineptly, no doubt—that Vietnam was more than terror. For me, at least, Vietnam was partly love. With each step, each light-year of a second, a foot soldier is always almost dead, or so it feels, and in such circumstances you can’t help but love. You love your mom and dad, the Vikings, hamburgers on the grill, your pulse, your future—everything that might be lost or never come to be. Intimacy with death carries with it a corresponding new intimacy with life. Jokes are funnier, green is greener. You love the musty morning air. You love the miracle of your own enduring capacity for love. You love your friends in Alpha Company—a kid named Chip, my buddy. He wrote letters to my sister, I wrote letters to his sister. In the rear, back at Gator, Chip and I would go our separate ways, by color, both of us ashamed but knowing it had to be that way. In the bush, though, nothing kept us apart. “Black and White,” we were called. In May of 1969, Chip was blown high into a hedge of bamboo. Many pieces. I loved the guy, he loved me. I’m alive. He’s dead. An old story, I guess. CAMBRIDGE, JUNE 1994—It’s 5:25 in the morning, June 7. I have just taken my first drug of the day, a prescription drug, Oxazepam, which files the edge off anxiety. Thing is, I’m not anxious. I’m slop. This is despair. This is a valance of horror that Vietnam never approximated. If war is hell, what do we call hopelessness? I have not killed myself. That day, this day, maybe tomorrow. Like Nam, it goes. For some time, years in fact, I have been treated for depression, $8,000 or $9,000 worth. Some of it has worked. Or was working. I had called back to memory—not to memory, exactly, but to significance—some pretty painful feelings of rejection as a child. Chubby and friendless and lonely. I had come to acknowledge, more or less, the dominant principle of love in my life, how far I would go to get it, how terrified I was
of losing it. I have done bad things for love, bad things to stay loved. Kate is one case. Vietnam is another. More than anything, it was this desperate love craving that propelled me into a war I considered mistaken, probably evil. In college, I stood in peace vigils. I rang doorbells for Gene McCarthy, composed earnest editorials for the school newspaper. But when the draft notice arrived after graduation, the old demons went to work almost instantly. I thought about Canada. I thought about jail. But in the end I could not bear the prospect of rejection: by my family, my country, my friends, my hometown. I would risk conscience and rectitude before risking the loss of love. I have written some of this before, but I must write it again. I was a coward. I went to Vietnam. MY LAI, QUANG NGAI PROVINCE, FEBRUARY 1994 —Weird, but I know this place. I’ve been here before. Literally, but also in my nightmares. One year after the massacre, Alpha Company’s area of operations included the village of My Lai 4, or so it was called on American military maps. The Vietnamese call it Thuan Yen, which belongs to a larger hamlet called Tu Cung, which in turn belongs to an even larger parent village called Son My. But names are finally irrelevant. I am just here. Twenty-five years ago, knowing nothing of the homicides committed by American troops on the morning of March 16, 1968, Alpha Company walked through and around this hamlet on numerous occasions. Now, standing here with Kate, I can’t recognize much. The place blends in with all the other poor, scary, beleaguered villes in this area we called Pinkville. Even so, the feel of the place is as familiar as the old stucco house of my childhood. The clay trails, the cow dung, the blank faces, the unknowns and unknowables. There is the smell of sin here. Smells of terror, too, and enduring sorrow. What happened, briefly, was this. At approximately 7:30 on the morning of March 16, 1968, a company of roughly 115 American soldiers were inserted by helicopter just outside the village of My Lai. They met no resistance. No enemy. No incoming fire. Still, for the next four hours, Charlie Company killed whatever could be killed. They killed chickens. They killed dogs and cattle. They killed people, too. Lots of people. Women, infants, teen-agers, old men. The United States Army’s Criminal Investigation Division compiled a list of 343 fatalities and an independent Army inquiry led by Lieut. Gen. William R. Peers estimated that the death count may have exceeded 400. At the Son My Memorial, a large tablet lists 504 names. According to Col. William Wilson, one of the original Army investigators, “The crimes visited on the inhabitants of Son My Village included individual and group acts of murder, rape, sodomy, maiming, assault on noncombatants and the mistreatment and killing of detainees.” The testimony of one member of Charlie Company, Salvadore LaMartina, suggests the systematic, cold-blooded character of the slaughter: Q: Did you obey your orders? A: Yes, sir. Q: What were your orders? A: Kill anything that breathed. Whether or not such instructions were ever directly issued is a matter of dispute. Either way, a good many participants would later offer the explanation that they were obeying orders, a defense explicitly prohibited by the Nuremberg Principles and the United States Army’s own rules of war. Other participants would argue that the civilians at My Lai were themselves Vietcong. A young soldier named Paul Meadlo, who was responsible for numerous deaths on that bright March morning, offered this appalling testimony: Q: What did you do? A: I held my M-16 on them. Q: Why?
A: Because they might attack. Q: They were children and babies? A: Yes. Q: And they might attack? Children and babies? A: They might’ve had a fully loaded grenade on them. The mothers might have throwed them at us. Q: Babies? A: Yes. . . . Q: Were the babies in their mothers’ arms? A: I guess so. Q: And the babies moved to attack? A: I expected at any moment they were about to make a counterbalance. Eventually, after a cover-up that lasted more than a year and after the massacre made nationwide headlines, the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division produced sufficient evidence to charge 30 men with war crimes. Of these, only a single soldier, First Lieut. William Laws Calley Jr., was ever convicted or spent time in prison. Found guilty of the premeditated murder of “not less than” 22 civilians, Calley was sentenced to life at hard labor, but after legal appeals and sentence reductions, his ultimate jail time amounted to three days in a stockade and four and a half months in prison. In some cases, judicial action was never initiated; in other cases, charges were quietly dropped. Calley aside, only a handful of men faced formal court-martial proceedings, either for war crimes or for subsequent cover-up activities, with the end result of five acquittals and four judicially ordered dismissals. Among those acquitted was Capt. Ernest Medina, who commanded Charlie Company on the morning of March 16, 1968. All this is history. Dead as those dead women and kids. Even at the time, most Americans seemed to shrug it off as a cruel, nasty, inevitable consequence of war. There were numerous excuses, numerous rationalizations. Upright citizens decried even the small bit of justice secured by the conviction of Lieutenant Calley. Now, more than 25 years later, the villainy of that Saturday morning in 1968 has been pushed off to the margins of memory. In the colleges and high schools I sometimes visit, the mention of My Lai brings on null stares, a sort of puzzlement, disbelief mixed with utter ignorance. Evil has no place, it seems, in our national mythology. We erase it. We use ellipses. We salute ourselves and take pride in America the White Knight, America the Lone Ranger, America’s sleek laser-guided weaponry beating up on Saddam and his legion of devils. It’s beginning to rain when Kate and I sit down to talk with two survivors of the slaughter here. Mrs. Ha Thi Quy is a woman of 69 years. Her face is part stone, part anguish as she describes through an interpreter the events of that day. It’s hard stuff to hear. “Americans came here twice before,” Mrs. Quy says. “Nothing bad happened, they were friendly to us. But on that day the soldiers jumped out of their helicopters and immediately began to shoot. I prayed, I pleaded.” As I take notes, I’m recalling other prayers, other pleadings. A woman saying “No VC, no VC,” while a young lieutenant pistol-whipped her without the least expression on his face, without the least sign of distress or moral uncertainty. Mad Mark, we called him. But he wasn’t mad. He was numb. He’d lost himself. His gyroscope was gone. He didn’t know up from down, good from bad. Mrs. Quy is crying now. I can feel Kate crying off to my side, though I don’t dare look. “The Americans took us to a ditch. I saw two soldiers with red faces—sunburned—and they pushed a lot of people into the ditch. I was in the ditch. I fell down and many fell on top of me. Soldiers were shooting. I was shot in the hip. The firing went on and on. It would stop and then start again and then stop.” Now I hear Kate crying, not loud, just a certain breathiness I’ve come to recognize. This will be with us forever. This we’ll have.
My notes take a turn for the worse. “I lay under the dead in the ditch. Around noon, when I heard no more gunfire, I came out of the ditch and saw many more. Brains, pieces of body. My house was burned. Cattle were shot. I went back to the ditch. Three of my four children were killed.” I’m exhausted when Mrs. Quy finishes. Partly it’s the sheer magnitude of horror, partly some hateful memories of my own. I can barely wire myself together as Mrs. Truong Thi Le, another survivor, recounts those four hours of murder. Out of her family of 10, 9 died that day. “I fell down,” Mrs. Le tells us. “But I was not shot. I lay with three other bodies on me, all blood. Did not move at all. Pretended dead. Saw newborn baby near a woman. Woman died. Infant still alive. Soldiers came up. Shot baby.” Outside, the rain has let up. Kate, Eddie and I take a walk through the hamlet. We stare at foundations where houses used to stand. We admire a harsh, angular, defiant, beautiful piece of sculpture, a monument to the murdered. Mrs. Quy accompanies us for a while. She’s smiling, accommodating. Impossible, but she seems to like us. At one point, while I’m scribbling in my notebook, she pulls down her trousers. She shows Kate the scarred-over bullet hole in her hip. Kate nods and makes sounds of sympathy. What does one say? Bad day. World of hurt. ow the rain is back, much harder. I’m drenched, cold and something else. Eddie and I stand at the ditch where maybe 50, maybe 80, maybe 100 innocent human beings perished. I watch Eddie snap his pictures. Here’s the something else: I’ve got the guilt chills. Years ago, ignorant of the massacre, I hated this place, and places much like it. Two miles away, in an almost identical hamlet, Chip was blown into his hedge of bamboo. A mile or so east, Roy Arnold was shot dead, I was slightly wounded. A little farther east, a kid named McElhaney died. Just north of here, on a rocky hillside, another kid, named Slocum, lost his foot to a land mine. It goes on. I despised everything—the soil, the tunnels, the paddies, the poverty and myself. Each step was an act of the purest selfhatred and self-betrayal, yet, in truth, because truth matters, my sympathies were rarely with the Vietnamese. I was mostly terrified. I was lamenting in advance my own pitiful demise. After fire fights, after friends died, there was also a great deal of anger—black, fierce, hurting anger—the kind you want to take out on whatever presents itself. This is not to justify what occurred here. Justifications are empty and outrageous. Rather, it’s to say that I more or less understand what happened on that day in March 1968, how it happened, the wickedness that soaks into your blood and heats up and starts to sizzle. I know the boil that precedes butchery. At the same time, however, the men in Alpha Company did not commit murder. We did not turn our machine guns on civilians; we did not cross that conspicuous line between rage and homicide. I know what occurred here, yes, but I also feel betrayed by a nation that so widely shrugs off barbarity, by a military judicial system that treats murderers and common soldiers as one and the same. Apparently we’re all innocent—those who exercise moral restraint and those who do not, officers who control their troops and officers who do not. In a way, America has declared itself innocent. I look away for a time, and then look back. By most standards, this is not much of a ditch. A few feet deep, a few feet wide. The rain makes the greenish brown water bubble like a thousand tiny mouths. The guilt has turned to a gray, heavy sadness. I have to take my leave but don’t know how. After a time, Kate walks up, hooks my arm, doesn’t say anything, doesn’t have to, leads me into a future that I know will hold misery for both of us. Different hemispheres, different
scales of atrocity. I don’t want it to happen. I want to tell her things and be understood and live happily ever after. I want a miracle. That’s the final emotion. The terror at this ditch, the certain doom, the need for God’s intervention. CAMBRIDGE, JUNE 1994—I’ve been trying to perform good deeds. I bought a Father’s Day card three days early. I made appointments for a physical exam, dental work, a smokeender’s program. I go for walks every day. I work out, draw up lists, call friends, visit lawyers, buy furniture, discharge promises, keep my eyes off the sleeping pills. The days are all right. Now the clock shows 3:55 A.M. I call NERVOUS and listen to an automated female voice confirm it. The nights are not all right. I write these few words, which seem useless, then get up and pull out an album of photographs from the Vietnam trip. The album was Kate’s parting gift. On the cover she inserted a snapshot that’s hard to look at but harder still to avoid. We stand on China Beach near Danang. Side by side, happy as happy will ever be, our fingers laced in a fitted, comfortable, half-conscious way that makes me feel a gust of hope. It’s a gust, though, here and gone. Numerous times over the past several days, at least a dozen, this piece has come close to hyperspace. Twice it lay at the bottom of a wastebasket. I’ve spent my hours preparing a tape of songs for Kate, stuff that once meant things. Corny songs, some of them. Happy songs, love-me songs. Today, scared stiff, I deposited the tape on her doorstep. Another gust of hope, then a whole lot of stillness. THE SONG TRA HOTEL, QUANG NGAI CITY, FEBRUARY 1994—Kate’s in the shower, I’m in history. I sit with a book propped up against the air-conditioner, underlining sentences, sweating out my own ignorance. Twenty-five years ago, like most other grunts in Alpha Company, I knew next to nothing about this place—Vietnam in general, Quang Ngai in particular. Now I’m learning. In the years preceding the murders at My Lai, more than 70 percent of the villages in this province had been destroyed by air strikes, artillery fire, Zippo lighters, napalm, white phosphorus, bulldozers, gunships and other such means. Roughly 40 percent of the population had lived in refugee camps, while civilian casualties in the area were approaching 50,000 a year. These numbers, reported by the journalist Jonathan Schell in 1967, were later confirmed as substantially correct by Government investigators. Not that I need confirmation. Back in 1969, the wreckage was all around us, so common it seemed part of the geography, as natural as any mountain or river. Wreckage was the rule. Brutality was S.O.P. Scalded children, pistol-whipped women, burning hootches, freefire zones, body counts, indiscriminate bombing and harassment fire, villages in ash, M-60 machine guns hosing down dark green tree lines and any human life behind them. In a war without aim, you tend not to aim. You close your eyes, close your heart. The consequences become hit or miss in the most literal sense. With so few military targets, with an enemy that was both of and among the population, Alpha Company began to regard Quang Ngai itself as the true enemy—the physical place, the soil and paddies. What had started for us as a weird, vicious little war soon evolved into something far beyond vicious, a hopped-up killer strain of nihilism, waste without want, aimlessness of deed mixed with aimlessness of spirit. As Schell wrote after the events at My Lai, “There can be no doubt that such an atrocity was possible only because a number of other methods of killing civilians and destroying their villages had come to be the rule, and not the exception, in our conduct of the war.” I look up from my book briefly, listen to Kate singing in the shower. A doctoral candidate at Harvard University, smart and sophisticated, but she’s also fluent in joy, attuned to the
pleasures and beauty of the world. She knows the lyrics to “Hotel California,” start to finish, while here at the airconditioner I can barely pick out the simplest melodies of Vietnam, the most basic chords of history. It’s as if I never heard the song, as if I’d gone to war in some mall or supermarket. I discover that Quang Ngai Province was home to one of Vietnam’s fiercest, most recalcitrant, most zealous revolutionary movements. Independent by tradition, hardened by poverty and rural isolation, the people of Quang Ngai were openly resistant to French colonialism as far back as the 19th century and were among the first to rebel against France in the 1930’s. The province remained wholly under Vietminh control throughout the war against France; it remained under Vietcong control, at least by night, throughout the years of war against America. Even now, in the urbane circles of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the people of Quang Ngai are regarded as a clan of stubborn country bumpkins, coarse and insular, willfully independent, sometimes defiant of the very Government they had struggled to install. “Like a different country,” our interpreter told us after a long, frustrating session with representatives of the Quang Ngai People’s Committee. “These people I don’t like much, very crude, very difficult. I think you had horrible bad luck to fight them.” At noon, by appointment, a Vietnamese journalist named Pham Van Duong knocks on our door. It’s a secret meeting of sorts. Nothing illegal—a couple of writers, a couple of beers— but I’ve still got the buzz of some low-level paranoia. Earlier in the day, our joint request for this interview had been denied by a stern, rather enigmatic functionary of the People’s Committee. Impossible, we were told. Not on the schedule. The official offered little sympathy for our interpreter’s reminder that schedules are man-made, that blocks of time appeared wide open. Logic went nowhere. Bureaucratic scowls, stare-into-space silence. A few minutes later, just outside the provincial offices, we quietly huddled to make our own unsanctioned arrangements. Now, as Mr. Duong sits down and accepts a beer, I’m feeling the vigilant, slightly illicit anxiety of a midday drug buy. Kate locks the door; I close the drapes. Ridiculous, or almost ridiculous, but for the first 10 minutes I sit picturing prison food, listening for footsteps in the hallway. Our interpreter explains to Mr. Duong that I will happily guard his identity in any written account of this conversation. Mr. Duong snorts at the suggestion. “Only a problem in Quang Ngai,” he says. “Officials in Hanoi would be glad for our talking. They wish good relations with America—good, new things to happen. Maybe I get a medal. Sell the medal, buy Marlboros.” We click beer bottles. For the next two hours we chat about books, careers, memories of war. I ask about My Lai. Mr. Duong looks at the wall. There is a short hesitation—the hesitation of tact, I suppose. He was 8 years old when news of the massacre reached his village nearby. He recalls great anger among his relatives and friends, disgust and sadness, but no feelings of shock or surprise. “This kind of news came often,” he says. “We did not then know the scale of the massacre, just that Americans had been killing people. But killing was everywhere.” Two years later, Mr. Duong’s brother joined the 48th Vietcong Battalion. He was killed in 1972. “My mother fainted when she heard this. She was told that his body had been buried in a mass grave with seven comrades who died in the same attack. This made it much worse for my mother—no good burial. After liberation in 1975, she began to look for my brother’s remains. She found the mass grave 20 kilometers south of Quang Ngai City. She wished to dig, to rebury my brother, but people told her no, don’t dig, and in the beginning she seemed to accept this. Then the Americans returned to search for their own missing, and my mother became very angry. Why them? Not me? So she insisted we dig. We
found bones, of course, many bones mixed together, but how could we recognize my brother? How could anyone know? But we took away some bones in a box. Reburied them near our house. Every day now, my mother passes by this grave. She feels better, I think. Better at least to tell herself maybe.” Kate looks up at me. She’s silent, but she knows what I’m thinking. At this instant, a few blocks away, an American M.I.A. search team is headquartered at the Quang Ngai Government guesthouse. With Vietnamese assistance, this team and others like it are engaged in precisely the work of Mr. Duong’s mother, digging holes, picking through bones, seeking the couple thousand Americans still listed as missing. Which is splendid. And which is also utterly one-sided. A perverse and outrageous double standard. What if things were reversed? What if the Vietnamese were to ask us, or to require us, to locate and identify each of their own M.I.A.’s? Numbers alone make it impossible: 100,000 is a conservative estimate. Maybe double that. Maybe triple. From my own sliver of experience—one year at war, one set of eyes— I can testify to the lasting anonymity of a great many Vietnamese dead. I watched napalm turn villages into ovens. I watched burials by bulldozer. I watched bodies being flung into trucks, dumped into wells, used for target practice, stacked up and burned like cordwood. Even in the abstract, I get angry at the stunning, almost cartoonish narcissism of American policy on this issue. I get angrier yet at the narcissism of an American public that embraces and breathes life into the policy—so arrogant, so ignorant, so self-righteous, so wanting in the most fundamental qualities of sympathy and fairness and mutuality. Some of this I express aloud to Mr. Duong, who nods without comment. We finish off our beers. Neither of us can find much to say. Maybe we’re both back in history, snagged in brothers and bones. I feel hollow. So little has changed, it seems, and so much will always be missing. CAMBRIDGE, JUNE 1994—June 11, I think—I’m too tired to find a calendar. Almost 5 A.M. In another hour it’ll be 5:01. I’m on war time, which is the time we’re all on at one point or another: when fathers die, when husbands ask for divorce, when women you love are fast asleep beside men you wish were you. The tape of songs did nothing. Everything will always do nothing. Kate hurts, too, I’m sure, and did not want it this way. I didn’t want it either. Even so, both of us have to live in these slow-motion droplets of now, doing what we do, choosing what we choose, and in different ways both of us are now responsible for the casualty rotting in the space between us. If there’s a lesson in this, which there is not, it’s very simple. You don’t have to be in Nam to be in Nam. THE BATANGAN PENINSULA, QUANG NGAI PROVINCE, FEBRUARY 1994—The Graveyard, we called it. Littered with land mines, almost completely defoliated, this spit of land jutting eastward into the South China Sea was a place Alpha Company feared the way others might fear snakes, or the dark, or the bogyman. We lost at least three men here; I couldn’t begin to count the arms and legs. Today our little caravan is accompanied by Mr. Ngu Duc Tan, who knows this place intimately, a former captain in the 48th Vietcong Battalion. It was the 48th that Alpha Company chased from village to village, paddy to paddy, during my entire tour in Vietnam. Chased but never found. They found us: ambushes, sniper fire, nighttime mortar attacks. Through our interpreter, who passes along commodious paragraphs in crisp little packets, Mr. Tan speaks genially of military tactics while we make the bumpy ride out toward the Batangan. “U.S. troops not hard to see, not hard to fight,” he says. “Much noise, much equipment. Big columns. Nice green uniforms.” Sitting ducks, in
other words, though Mr. Tan is too polite to express it this way. He explains that the United States Army was never a primary target. “We went after Saigon puppet troops, what you called ARVN. If we beat them, everything collapse, the U.S. would have nothing more to fight for. You brought many soldiers, helicopters, bombs, but we chose not to fight you, except sometimes. America was not the main objective.” God help us, I’m thinking, if we had been. All those casualties. All that blood and terror. Even at this moment, more than half a lifetime later, I remember the feel of a bull’s-eye pinned to my shirt, a prickly, when-will-it-happen sensation, as if I alone had been the main objective. Meanwhile, Kate is taking her own notes, now and then asking questions through the interpreter. She’s better than I am at human dynamics, more fluid and spontaneous, and after a time she gets Mr. Tan to display a few war scars—arms, legs, hands, cheek, chest, skull. Sixteen wounds altogether. The American war, he says, was just one phase in his career as a soldier, which began in 1961 and encompassed combat against the South Vietnamese, Khmer Rouge and Chinese. Talk about bad dreams. One year gave me more than enough to fill up the nights. My goal on the Batangan peninsula is to show Kate one of the prettiest spots on earth. I’m looking for a lagoon, a little fishing village, an impossibly white beach along the South China Sea. First, though, Mr. Tan attends to his own agenda. We park the van in one of the inland hamlets, walk without invitation into a small house, sit down for lunch with a man named Vo Van Ba. Instantly, I’m thinking herring. Kate and Eddie have the sense to decline, to tap their stomachs and say things like “Full, full, thanks, thanks.” Cans are opened. The house fills up with children, nephews, nieces, babies, cousins, neighbors. There are flies, too. Many, many flies. Many thousand. Mr. Tan and Mr. Ba eat lunch with their fingers, fast and hungry, chatting amiably while our interpreter does her best to put the gist of it into English. I’m listening hard, chewing hard. I gather that these two men had been comrades of a sort during the war. Mr. Ba, our host, was never a full-time soldier, never even a part-time irregular. As I understand it, he belonged to what we used to call the VC infrastructure, offering support and intelligence to Mr. Tan and his fighting troops. I lean forward, nod my head. The focus, however, is on the substance I’m swallowing, its remarkable texture, the flies trying to get at it. For five years, Mr. Ba explains, he lived entirely underground with a family of eight. Five years, he repeats. Cooking, bathing, working, sleeping. He waits for the translation, waits a bit longer, then looks at me with a pair of silvery, burned-out, cauterized, half-blind, underground eyes. “You had the daylight, but I had the earth.” Mr. Ba turns to Mr. Tan. After a second he chuckles. “Many times I might reach up and take this man’s leg. Many times. Very easy. I might just pull him down to where the war was.” We’re on foot now. Even at 59, Mr. Tan moves swiftly, with the grace and authority of a man who once led soldiers in combat. He does not say much. He leads us toward the ocean, toward the quaint fishing village I’m hoping to show Kate, but along the way there is one last item Mr. Tan wishes to show me. We move down a trail through two or three adjacent hamlets, seem to circle back for a time, end up in front of another tiny house. Mr. Tan’s voice goes into command tone—two or three sharp, snapping words. A pair of boys dart into the house. No wasted time, they come out fast, carrying what’s left of a man named Nguyen Van Ngu. They balance this wreckage on a low chair. Both legs are gone at the upper-upper thigh. We shake hands. Neither of us knows what to say—there is nothing worth saying—so for a few minutes we exchange stupidities in our
different languages, no translator available to wash away the helplessness. We pose for photographs. We try for smiles. Mr. Tan does not smile. He nods to himself—maybe to me. But I get the point anyway. Here is your paradise. Here is your pretty little fishing village by the sea. Two minutes later, we’re on the beach. It is beautiful, even stunning. Kate wades out into the water. She’s surrounded by kids. They giggle and splash her, she splashes back, and I stand there like an idiot, grinning, admiring the view, while Mr. Tan waits patiently in the shade. CAMBRIDGE, JULY 1994—Outside, it’s the Fourth of July. Lovely day, empty streets. Kate is where Kate is, which is elsewhere, and I am where I am, which is also elsewhere. Someday, no doubt, I’ll wish happiness for myself, but for now it’s still war time, minute to minute. Not quite 11 A.M. Already I’ve been out for two walks, done the laundry, written a few words, bought groceries, lifted weights, watched the Fourth of July sunlight slide across my street-side balcony. And Kate? The beach, maybe? A backyard cookout? The hardest part, by far, is to make the bad pictures go away. On war time, the world is one long horror movie, image after image, and if it’s anything like Vietnam, I’m in for a lifetime of wee-hour creeps. Meanwhile, I try to plug up the leaks and carry through on some personal resolutions. For too many years I’ve lived in paralysis—guilt, depression, terror, shame—and now it’s either move or die. Over the past weeks, at profound cost, I’ve taken actions with my life that are far too painful for any public record. But at least the limbo has ended. Starting can start. There’s a point here: Vietnam, Cambridge, Paris, Neptune —these are states of mind. Minds change. MY KHE, QUANG NGAI PROVINCE, FEBRUARY 1994—There is one piece of ground I wish to revisit above all others in this country. I’ve come prepared with a compass, a military map, grid coordinates, a stack of after-action reports recovered from a dusty box in the National Archives. We’re back near Pinkville, a mile or so east of My Lai. We are utterly lost: the interpreter, the van driver, the People’s Committee representative, Eddie, Kate, me. I unfold the map and place a finger on the spot I’m hoping to find. A group of villagers puzzle over it. They chatter among themselves—arguing, it seems—then one of them points west, another north, most at the heavens. Lost, that was the Vietnam of 25 years ago. The war came at us as a blur, raw confusion, and my fear now is that I would not recognize the right spot even while standing on it. For well over an hour we drive from place to place. We end up precisely where we started. Once more, everyone spills out of the van. The thought occurs to me that this opportunity may never come again. I find my compass, place it on the map and look up for a geographical landmark. A low green hill rises to the west—not much, just a hump on the horizon. I’m no trailblazer, but this works. One eye on the compass, one eye on some inner rosary, I lead our exhausted column 200 yards eastward, past a graveyard and out along a narrow paddy dike, where suddenly the world shapes itself exactly as it was shaped a quarter-century ago—the curvatures, the tree lines, the precise angles and proportions. I stop there and wait for Kate. This I dreamed of giving her. This I dreamed of sharing. Our fingers lock, which happens without volition, and we stand looking out on a wide and very lovely field of rice. The sunlight gives it some gold and yellow. There is no wind at all. Before us is how peace would be defined in a dictionary for the speechless. I don’t cry. I don’t know what to do. At one point I hear myself talking about what happened here so long ago, motioning out at the rice, describing chaos and horror beyond anything I would experience until a few months later. I tell her
how Paige lost his lower leg, how we had to probe for McElhaney in the flooded paddy, how the gunfire went on and on, how in the course of two hell-on-earth hours we took 13 casualties. I doubt Kate remembers a word. Maybe she shouldn’t. But I do hope she remembers the sunlight striking that field of rice. I hope she remembers the feel of our fingers. I hope she remembers how I fell silent after a time, just looking out at the golds and yellows, joining the peace, and how in those fine sunlit moments, which were ours, Vietnam took a little Vietnam out of me. HO CHI MINH CITY, FEBRUARY 1994—We hate this place. Even the names—Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City. A massive identity crisis. Too loud, too quiet. Too alive, too dead. For all the discomforts of Quang Ngai Province, which were considerable, Kate and I had taken pleasure in those qualities of beauty and equanimity that must have vanished from Saigon when the first oil barge steamed into port. But we give it our best. An hour in the Chinese market district, which is like an hour in combat. Two hours at the old presidential palace—as tawdry and corrupt as its former inhabitants. We risk periodic excursions into streets where the American dollar remains more valuable than oxygen, of which there is precious little. Maybe we’ve hit some interior wall. Maybe it’s the diesel-heat. We visit a war-crimes museum, the old American Embassy and order lunch by way of room service. Western pop music blares at full volume from Government loudspeakers just outside our hotel. For hours, even with earplugs, we listen to “As Tears Go By” and “My Way.” What happened to Ho Chi Minh? What happened to revolution? All we’ve heard comes from the Beatles. In midafternoon, the music ceases. We go out for a short walk, do some shopping, then retreat to the rooftop swimming pool of the Rex Hotel. It could as well be Las Vegas. We don’t say so, not directly, but both Kate and I are ready to evacuate, we’re humming “We gotta get out of this place.” Pretty soon we’ll be singing it over loudspeakers. For now, Kate lounges at the pool. She writes postcards. She catches me watching. She snaps pictures to show her children someday. [October 2, 1994]
7
ALICE WALKER
NINETEEN FIFTY-FIVE 1955 The car is a brandnew red Thunderbird convertible, and it's passed the house more than once. It slows down real slow now, and stops at the curb. An older gentleman dressed like a Baptist deacon gets out on the side near the house, and a young fellow who looks about sixteen gets out on the driver's side. They are white, and I wonder what in the world they doing in this neighborhood. Well, I say to J. T., put your shirt on, anyway, and let me clean these glasses offa the table. We had been watching the ballgame on TV. I wasn't actually watching, I was sort of daydreaming, with my foots up in J. T.'s lap. I seen 'em coming on up the walk, brisk, like they coming to sell something, and then they rung the bell, and J. T. declined to put on a shirt but instead disappeared into the bedroom where the other television is. I turned down the one in the living room; I figured I'd be rid of these two double quick and J. T. could come back out again. Are you Gracie Mae Still? asked the old guy, when I opened the door and put my hand on the lock inside the screen. And I don't need to buy a thing, said I. What makes you think we're sellin'? he asks, in that hearty Southern way that makes my eyeballs ache. Well, one way or another and they're inside the house and the first thing the young fellow does is raise the TV a couple of decibels. He's about five feet nine, sort of womanish looking, with real dark white skin and a red pouting mouth. His hair is black and curly and he looks like a Loosianna creole. About one of your songs, says the deacon. He is maybe sixty, with white hair and beard, white silk shirt, black linen suit, black tie and black shoes. His cold gray eyes look like they're sweating. One of my songs?
Traynor here just loves your songs. Don't you, Traynor? He nudges Traynor with his elbow. Traynor blinks, says something I can't catch in a pitch I don't register. The boy learned to sing and dance livin' round you people out in the country. Practically cut his teeth on you. Traynor looks up at me and bites his thumbnail. I laugh. Well, one way or another they leave with my agreement that they can record one of my songs. The deacon writes me a check for five hundred dollars, the boy grunts his awareness of the transaction, and I am laughing all over myself by the time I rejoin J. T. Just as I am snuggling down beside him though I hear the front door bell going off again. Forgit his hat? asks J. T. I hope not, I say. The deacon stands there leaning on the door frame and once again I'm thinking of those sweaty-looking eyeballs of his. I wonder if sweat makes your eyeballs pink because his are sure pink. Pink and gray and it strikes me that nobody I'd care to know is behind them. I forgot one little thing, he says pleasantly. I forgot to tell you Traynor and I would like to buy up all of those records you made of the song. I tell you we sure do love it. Well, love it or not, I'm not so stupid as to let them do that without making 'em pay. So I says, Well, that's gonna cost you. Because, really, that song never did sell all that good, so I was glad they was going to buy it up. But on the other hand, them two listening to my song by themselves, and nobody else getting to hear me sing it, give me a pause. Well, one way or another the deacon showed me where I would come out ahead on any deal he had proposed so far. Didn't I give you five hundred dollars? he asked. What white man&emdash;and don't even need to mention colored--would give you more? We buy up all your records of that particular song: first, you git royalties. Let me ask you, how much you sell that song for in the first place? Fifty dollars? A hundred, I say. And no royalties from it yet, right? Right. Well, when we buy up all of them records you gonna git royalties. And that's gonna make all them race record shops sit up and take notice of Gracie Mae Still. And they gonna push all them other records of yourn they got. And you no doubt will become one of the big name colored recording artists. And then we can offer you another five hundred dollars for letting us do all this for you. And by God you'll be sittin' pretty! You can go out and buy you the kind of outfit a star should have. Plenty sequins and yards of red satin. I had done unlocked the screen when I saw I could get some more money out of him. Now I held it wide open while he squeezed through the opening between me and the door. He whipped out another piece of paper and I signed it. He sort of trotted out to the car and slid in beside Traynor, whose head was back against the seat. They swung around in a u-turn in front of the house and then they was gone. J. T. was putting his shirt on when I got back to the bedroom. Yankees beat the Orioles 10-6, he said. I believe I'll drive out to Paschal's pond and go fishing. Wanta go? While I was putting on my pants J. T. was holding the two checks. I'm real proud of a woman that can make cash money without leavin' home, he said. And I said Umph. Because we met on the road with me singing in first one little low-life jook after another, making ten dollars a night for myself if I was lucky, and sometimes bringin' home nothing but my life. And J. T. just loved them times. The way I was fast and flashy and always on the go from one town to another. He loved the way my singin' made the dirt farmers cry like babies and the womens shout Honey, hush! But that's mens. They loves any style to which you can get 'em accustomed.
1956 My little grandbaby called me one night on the phone: Little Mama, Little Mama, there's a white man on the television singing one of your songs! Turn on channel 5. Lord, if it wasn't Traynor. Still looking half asleep from the neck up, but kind of awake in a nasty way from the waist down. He wasn't doing too bad with my song either, but it wasn't just the song the people in the audience was screeching and screaming over, it was that nasty little jerk he was doing from the waist down. Well, Lord have mercy, I said, listening to him. If I'da closed my eyes, it could have been me. He had followed every turning of my voice, side streets, avenues, red lights, train crossings and all. It give me a chill. Everywhere I went I heard Traynor singing my song, and all the little white girls just eating it up. I never had so many ponytails switched across my line of vision in my life. They was so proud. He was a genius. Well, all that year I was trying to lose weight anyway and that and high blood pressure and sugar kept me pretty well occupied. Traynor had made a smash from a song of mine, I still had seven hundred dollars of the original one thousand dollars in the bank, and I felt if I could just bring my weight down, life would be sweet. 1957 I lost ten pounds in 1956. That's what I give myself for Christmas. And J. T. and me and the children and their friends and grandkids of all description had just finished dinner--over which I had put on nine and a half of my lost ten--when who should appear at the front door but Traynor. Little Mama, Little Mama! It's that white man who sings_______________. The children didn't call it my song anymore. Nobody did. It was funny how that happened. Traynor and the deacon had bought up all my records, true, but on his record he had put "written by Gracie Mae Still." But that was just another name on the label, like "produced by Apex Records." On the TV he was inclined to dress like the deacon told him. But now he looked presentable. Merry Christmas, said he. And same to you, Son. I don't know why I called him Son. Well, one way or another they're all our sons. The only requirement is that they be younger than us. But then again, Traynor seemed to be aging by the minute. You looks tired, I said. Come on in and have a glass of Christmas cheer. J. T. ain't never in his life been able to act decent to a white man he wasn't working for, but he poured Traynor a glass of bourbon and water, then he took all the children and grandkids and friends and whatnot out to the den. After while I heard Traynor's voice singing the song, coming from the stereo console. It was just the kind of Christmas present my kids would consider cute. I looked at Traynor, complicit. But he looked like it was the last thing in the world he wanted to hear. His head was pitched forward over his lap, his hands holding his glass and his elbows on his knees. I done sung that song seem like a million times this year, he said. I sung it on the Grand Ole Opry, I sung it on the Ed Sullivan show. I sung it on Mike Douglas, I sung it at the Cotton Bowl, the Orange Bowl. I sung it at Festivals. I sung it at Fairs. I sung it overseas in Rome, Italy, and once in a submarine underseas. I've sung it and sung it, and I'm making forty thousand dollars a day offa it, and you know what, I don't have the faintest notion what that song means. Whatchumean, what do it mean? It mean what it says. All I could think was: These suckers is making forty thousand a day
offa my song and now they gonna come back and try to swindle me out of the original thousand. It's just a song, I said. Cagey. When you fool around with a lot of no count mens you sing a bunch of 'em. I shrugged. Oh, he said. Well. He started brightening up. I just come by to tell you I think you are a great singer. He didn't blush, saying that. Just said it straight out. And I brought you a little Christmas present too. Now you take this little box and you hold it until I drive off. Then you take it outside under that first streetlight back up the street aways in front of that green house. Then you open the box and see . . . Well, just see. What had come over this boy, I wondered, holding the box. I looked out the window in time to see another white man come up and get in the car with him and then two more cars full of white mens start out behind him. They was all in long black cars that looked like a funeral procession. Little Mama, Little Mama, what it is? One of my grandkids come running up and started pulling at the box. It was wrapped in gay Christmas paper&emdash;the thick, rich kind that it's hard to picture folks making just to throw away. J. T. and the rest of the crowd followed me out the house, up the street to the streetlight and in front of the green house. Nothing was there but somebody's goldgrilled white Cadillac. Brandnew and most distracting. We got to looking at it so till I almost forgot the little box in my hand. While the others were busy making 'miration I carefully took off the paper and ribbon and folded them up and put them in my pants pocket. What should I see but a pair of genuine solid gold caddy keys. Dangling the keys in front of everybody's nose, I unlocked the caddy, motioned for J.T. to git in on the other side, and us didn't come back home for two days. 1960 Well, the boy was sure nuff famous by now. He was still a mite shy of twenty but already they was calling him the Emperor of Rock and Roll. Then what should happen but the draft. Well, says J. T. There goes all this Emperor of Rock and Roll business. But even in the army the womens was on him like white on rice. We watched it on the News. Dear Gracie Mae [he wrote from Germany], How you? Fine I hope as this leaues me doing real well. Before I come in the army I was gaining a lot of weight and gitting jittery from making all them dumb movies. But now l exercise and eat right and get plenty of rest. I'm more awake than I been in ten years. I wonder if you are writing any more songs? Sincerely, Traynor I wrote him back: Dear Son, We is all fine in the Lord's good grace and hope this finds you the same. J. T. and me be out all times of the day and night in that car you give me--which you know you didn't have to do. Oh, and I do appreciate the mink and the new self-cleaning oven. But if you send anymore stuff to eat from Germany I'm going to have to open up a store in the neighborhood just to get rid of it. Really, we have more than enough of everything. The Lord is good to us and we don't know Want. Glad to here you is well and gitting your right rest. There ain't nothing like exercising to help that along. J. T. and me work some part of every day that we don't go fishing in the garden. Well, so long Soldier. Sincerely, Gracie Mae He wrote: Dear Gracie Mae,
I hope you and J. T. Iike that automatic power tiller I had one of the stores back home send you. I went through a mountain of catalogs looking for it&emdash;I wanted something that even a woman could use. I've been thinking about writing some songs of my own but every time I finish one it don't seem to be about nothing I've actually lived myself. My agent keeps sending me other people's songs but they just sound mooney. I can hardly git through 'em without gagging. Everybody still loves that song of yours. They ask me all the time what do I think it means, really. I mean, they want to know just what I want to know. Where out of your life did it come from? Sincerely, Traynor 1968 I didn't see the boy for seven years. No. Eight. Because just about everybody was dead when I saw him again. Malcolm X, King, the president and his brother, and even J. T. J. T. died of a head cold. It just settled in his head like a block of ice, he said, and nothing we did moved it until one day he just leaned out the bed and died. His good friend Horace helped me put him away, and then about a year later Horace and me started going together. We was sitting out on the front porch swing one summer night, duskdark, and I saw this great procession of lights winding to a stop. Holy Toledo! said Horace. (He's got a real sexy voice like Ray Charles.) Look at it. He meant the long line of flashy cars and the white men in white summer suits jumping out on the drivers' sides and standing at attention. With wings they could pass for angels, with hoods they could be the Klan. Traynor comes waddling up the walk. And suddenly I know what it is he could pass for. An Arab like the ones you see in storybooks. Plump and soft and with never a care about weight. Because with so much money, who cares? Traynor is almost dressed like someone from a storybook too. He has on, I swear, about ten necklaces. Two sets of bracelets on his arms, at least one ring on every finger, and some kind of shining buckles on his shoes, so that when he walks you get quite a few twinkling lights. Gracie Mae, he says, coming up to give me a hug. J. T. I explain that J. T. passed. That this is Horace. Horace, he says, puzzled but polite, sort of rocking back on his heels, Horace. That's it for Horace. He goes in the house and don't come back. Looks like you and me is gained a few, I say. He laughs. The first time I ever heard him laugh. It don't sound much like a laugh and I can't swear that it's better than no laugh a'tall. He's gitting fat for sure, but he's still slim compared to me. I'll never see three hundred pounds again and I've just about said (excuse me) fuck it. I got to thinking about it one day an' I thought: aside from the fact that they say it's unhealthy, my fat ain't never been no trouble. Mens always have loved me. My kids ain't never complained. Plus they's fat. And fat like I is I looks distinguished. You see me coming and know somebody's there. Gracie Mae, he says, I've come with a personal invitation to you to my house tomorrow for dinner. He laughed. What did it sound like? I couldn't place it. See them men out there? he asked me. I'm sick and tired of eating with them. They don't never have nothing to talk about. That's why I eat so much. But if you come to dinner tomorrow we can talk about the old days. You can tell me about that farm I bought you. I sold it, I said. You did?
Yeah, I said, I did. Just cause I said I liked to exercise by working in a garden didn't mean I wanted five hundred acres! Anyhow, I'm a city girl now. Raised in the country it's true. Dirt poor--the whole bit--but that's all behind me now. Oh well, he said, I didn't mean to offend you. We sat a few minutes listening to the crickets. Then he said: You wrote that song while you was still on the farm, didn't you, or was it right after you left? You had somebody spying on me? I asked. You and Bessie Smith got into a fight over it once, he said. You is been spying on me! But I don't know what the fight was about, he said. Just like I don't know what happened to your second husband. Your first one died in the Texas electric chair. Did you know that? Your third one beat you up, stole your touring costumes and your car and retired with a chorine to Tuskegee. He laughed. He's still there. I had been mad, but suddenly I calmed down. Traynor was talking very dreamily. It was dark but seems like I could tell his eyes weren't right. It was like something was sitting there talking to me but not necessarily with a person behind it. You gave up on marrying and seem happier for it. He laughed again. I married but it never went like it was supposed to. I never could squeeze any of my own life either into it or out of it. It was like singing somebody else's record. I copied the way it was sposed to be exactly but I never had a clue what marriage meant. I bought her a diamond ring big as your fist. I bought her clothes. I built her a mansion. But right away she didn't want the boys to stay there. Said they smoked up the bottom floor. Hell, there were poe floors. No need to grieve, I said. No need to. Plenty more where she come from. He perked up. That's part of what that song means, ain't it? No need to grieve. Whatever it is, there's plenty more down the line. I never really believed that way back when I wrote that song, I said. It was all bluffing then. The trick is to live long enough to put your young bluffs to use. Now if I was to sing that song today I'd tear it up. 'Cause I done lived long enough to know it's true. Them words could hold me up. I ain't lived that long, he said. Look like you on your way, I said. I don't know why, but the boy seemed to need some encouraging. And I don't know, seem like one way or another you talk to rich white folks and you end up reassuring them. But what the hell, by now I feel something for the boy. I wouldn't be in his bed all alone in the middle of the night for nothing. Couldn't be nothing worse than being famous the world over for something you don't even understand. That's what I tried to tell Bessie. She wanted that same song. Overheard me practicing it one day, said, with her hands on her hips: Gracie Mae, I'ma sing your song tonight. I likes it. Your lips be too swole to sing, I said. She was mean and she was strong, but I trounced her. Ain't you famous enough with your own stuff? I said. Leave mine alone. Later on, she thanked me. By then she was Miss Bessie Smith to the World, and I was still Miss Gracie Mae Nobody from Notasulga. The next day all these limousines arrived to pick me up. Five cars and twelve bodyguards. Horace picked that morning to start painting the kitchen. Don't paint the kitchen, fool, I said. The only reason that dumb boy of ours is going to show me his mansion is because he intends to present us with a new house. What you gonna do with it? he asked me, standing there in his shirtsleeves stirring the paint. Sell it. Give it to the children. Live in it on weekends. It don't matter what I do. He sure don't care.
Horace just stood there shaking his head. Mama you sure looks good, he says. Wake me up when you git back. Fool, I say, and pat my wig in front of the mirror. The boy's house is something else. First you come to this mountain, and then you commence to drive and drive up this road that's lined with magnolias. Do magnolias grow on mountains? I was wondering. And you come to lakes and you come to ponds and you come to deer and you come up on some sheep. And I figure these two is sposed to represent England and Wales. Or something out of Europe. And you just keep on coming to stuff. And it's all pretty. Only the man driving my car don't look at nothing but the road. Fool. And then finally, after all this time, you begin to go up the driveway. And there's more magnolias--only they're not in such good shape. It's sort of cool up this high and I don't think they're gonna make it. And then I see this building that looks like if it had a name it would be The Tara Hotel. Columns and steps and outdoor chandeliers and rocking chairs. Rocking chairs? Well, and there's the boy on the steps dressed in a dark green satin jacket like you see folks ~vearing on TV late at night, and he looks sort of like a fat dracula with all that house rising behind him, and standing beside him there's this little white vision of loveliness that he introduces as his wife. He's nervous when he introduces us and he says to her: This is Gracie Mae Still, I want you to know me. I mean . . . and she gives him a look that would fry meat. Won't you come in, Gracie Mae, she says, and that's the last I see of her. He fishes around for something to say or do and decides to escort me to the kitchen. We go through the entry and the parlor and the breakfast room and the dining room and the servants' passage and finally get there. The first thing I notice is that, altogether, there are five stoves. He looks about to introduce rne to one. Wait a minute, I say. Kitchens don't do nothing for me. Let's go sit on the front porch. Well, we hike back and we sit in the rocking chairs rocking until dinner. Gracie Mae, he says down the table, taking a piece of fried chicken from the woman standing over him, I got a little surprise for you. It's a house, ain't it? I ask, spearing a chitlin. You're getting spoiled, he says. And the way he says spoiled sounds funny. He slurs it. It sounds like his tongue is too thick for his mouth. Just that quick he's finished the chicken and is now eating chitlins and a pork chop. Me spoiled, I'm thinking. I already got a house. Horace is right this minute painting the kitchen. I bought that house. My kids feel comfortable in that house. But this one I bought you is just like mine. Only a little smaller. I still don't need no house. And anyway who would clean it? He looks surprised. Really, I think, some peoples advance so slowly. I hadn't thought of that. But what the hell, I'll get you somebody to live in. I don't want other folks living 'round me. Makes me nervous. You don't? It do? What I want to wake up and see folks I don't even know for? He just sits there downtable staring at me. Some of that feeling is in the song, ain't it? Not the words, the feeling. What I want to wake up and see folks I don't even know for? But I see twenty folks a day I don't even know, including my wife. This food wouldn't be bad to wake up to though, I said. The boy had found the genius of corn bread. He looked at me real hard. He laughed. Short. They want what you got but they don't want you. They want what I got only it ain't mine. That's what makes 'em so hungry for me when I
sing. They getting the flavor of something but they ain't getting the thing itself. They like a pack of hound dogs trying to gobble up a scent. You talking'bout your fans? Right. Right. He says. Don't worry 'bout your fans, I say. They don't know their asses from a hole in the ground. I doubt there's a honest one in the bunch. That's the point. Dammit, that's the point! He hits the table with his fist. It's so solid it don't even quiver. You need a honest audience! You can't have folks that's just gonna lie right back to you. Yeah, I say, it was small compared to yours, but I had one. It would have been worth my life to try to sing 'em somebody else's stuflf that I didn't know nothing about. He must have pressed a buzzer under the table. One of his flunkies zombies up. Git Johnny Carson, he says. On the phone? asks the zombie. On the phone, says Traynor, what you think I mean, git him offa the front porch? Move your ass. So two weeks later we's on the Johnny Carson show. Traynor is all corseted down nice and looks a little bit fat but mostly good. And all the women that grew up on him and my song squeal and squeal. Traynor says: The lady who wrote my first hit record is here with us tonight, and she's agreed to sing it for all of us, just like she sung it forty-five years ago. Ladies and Gentlemen, the great Gracie Mae Stilll Well, I had tried to lose a couple of pounds my own self, but failing that I had me a very big dress made. So I sort of rolls over next to Traynor, who is dwarfted by me, so that when he puts his arm around back of me to try to hug me it looks funny to the audience and they laugh. I can see this pisses him off. But I smile out there at 'em. Imagine squealing for twenty years and not knowing why you're squealing? No more sense of endings and beginnings than hogs. It don't matter, Son, I say. Don't fret none over me. I commence to sing. And I sound wonderful. Being able to sing good ain't all about having a good singing voice a'tall. A good singing voice helps. But when you come up in the Hard Shell Baptist church like I did you understand early that the fellow that sings is the singer. Them that waits for programs and arrangements and letters from home is just good voices occupying body space. So there I am singing my own song, my own way. And I give it all I got and enjoy every minute of it. When I finish Traynor is standing up clapping and clapping and beaming at first me and then the audience like I'm his mama for true. The audience claps politely for about two seconds. Traynor looks disgusted. He comes over and tries to hug me again. The audience laughs. Johnny Carson looks at us like we both weird. Traynor is mad as hell. He's supposed to sing something called a love ballad. But instead he takes the mike, turns to me and says: Now see if my imitation still holds up. He goes into the same song, our song, I think, looking out at his flaky audience. And he sings it just the way he always did. My voice, my tone, my inflection, everything. But he forgets a couple of lines. Even before he's finished the matronly squeals begin. He sits down next to me looking whipped. It don't matter, Son, I say, patting his hand. You don't even know those people. Try to make the people you know happy. Is that in the song? he asks. Maybe. I say. 1977 For a few years I hear from him, then nothing. But trying to lose weight takes all the attention I got to spare. I finally faced up to
the fact that my fat is the hurt I don't admit, not even to myself, and that I been trying to bury it from the day I was born. But also when you git real old, to tell the truth, it ain't as pleasant. It gits lumpy and slack. Yuck. So one day I said to Horace, I'ma git this shit offa me. And he fell in with the program like he always try to do and Lord such a procession of salads and cottage cheese and fruit juice! One night I dreamed Traynor had split up with his fifteenth wife. He said: You meet 'em for no reason. You date 'em for no reason. You marry 'em for no reason. I do it all but I swear it's just like somebody else doing it. I feel like I can't rememberLife. The boy's in trouble, I said to Horace. You've always said that, he said. I have? Yeah. You always said he looked asleep. You can't sleep through life if you wants to live it. You not such a fool after all, I said, pushing myself up with my cane and hobbling over to where he was. Let me sit down on your lap, I said, while this salad I ate takes effect. In the morning we heard Traynor was dead. Some said fat, some said heart, some said alcohol, some said drugs. One of the children called from Detroit. Them dumb fans of his is on a crying rampage, she said. You just ought to turn on the TV. But I didn't want to see 'em. They was crying and crying and didn't even know what they was crying for. One day this is going to be a pitiful country, I thought.
Alice Walker's "Nineteen Fifty-Five": fiction and fact. "Nineteen Fifty-five" is the opening story in Alice Walker's 1981 collection You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down. Early reviewers identified its two principal characters, Traynor and Gracie Mae "Little Mama" Still, with Elvis Presley and Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton.(1) Elvis is an important figure in popular music and culture; Willie Mae Thornton represents personal, artistic, and ethical values admired by Walker. The author bases her characters on these real people but abandons biographical accuracy to amplify the symbolic meaning of each character. In this process, Ebas becomes an interloper destroyed by stealing what he does not understand. The Thornton character is poor but authentic, and she succeeds as a person even though her career flops. Thus each character stands for an idea that helps develop the theme of being true to one's self. Examining how Walker turns Elvis and Thornton into fictional characters provides insight into her creative method. The most casual reader will note similarities between Traynor and Elvis. Like Elvis, Traynor gives away Cadillacs and houses. The character serves in the army in Germany. He is a singer who performs to screaming teenagers and punctuates his songs with a "nasty little jerk ... from the waist down."(2) "His hair is black and curly and he looks like a Loosianna creole."(3) Traynor even has a manager who resembles Elvis's Colonel Parker, and the character lives in a grand mansion like Graceland. Walker's Gracie Mae Still is based on the blues and rock singer, Willie Mae Thornton. In the story, Gracie sells Traynor a song for $500; his version of it, closely patterned on hers, becomes a hit and triggers his rise to fame. In 1956, Elvis recorded "Hound Dog" on the RCA Victor label.
He wasn't my king
For black people, Elvis, more than any other performer, epitomises the theft of their music and dance Helen Kolawole Thursday August 15, 2002 The Guardian As another celebration of a dead white hero winds up, in this hallowed Week of Elvis, shouldn't the entertainment industry hold its own truth and reconciliation commission? It needn't be a vehicle for retribution, just somewhere where tales of white appropriation of black culture, not to mention outright theft, can finally be laid to rest. Following Michael Jackson's recent outburst accusing Sony chief, Tony Mottola, of racism, perhaps he could officiate and champion all black musicians who have been ripped off by nasty white music business CEOs. This won't happen of course. Media arrogance and dishonesty means we are eternally bound to live in a skewed world where Elvis is king of rock'n'roll, Clapton is the guitar god, Sinatra is the voice and Astaire is the greatest dancer. Accustomed as we are to this parade of white heroes, the case of Elvis is particularly infuriating because for many black people he represents the most successful white appropriation of a black genre to date. Elvis also signifies the foul way so many black writers and performers, such as Little Richard, were treated by the music industry. The enduring image of Elvis is a constant reflection of society's then refusal to accept anything other than the nonthreatening and subservient negro: Sammy Davies Jnr and Nat King Cole. The Elvis myth to this day clouds the true picture of rock'n'roll and leaves its many originators without due recognition. So what is left for black people to celebrate? How he admirably borrowed our songs, attitude and dance moves? Public Enemy's prolific commentator, Chuck D, was clear on why he felt compelled to attack the pretender's iconic status. In their 1989 song Fight the Power, he rapped: "Elvis was a hero to most/ But he never meant shit to me you see/ Straight up racist that sucker was simple and plain/ Motherfuck him and John Wayne." To contend that Elvis was a racist is hardly shocking. ("The only thing black people can do for me is shine my shoes and buy my music", he once opined.) And, as a dirt poor Southerner raised in close but separate proximity to black people, his racism would hardly have distinguished him from millions of others. Chuck D's attack was not aimed at Elvis the person, but Elvis the institution. But in the face of much black criticism of Elvis, some writers have offered their own theories as to why the singer should be awarded more, not less accolades. Michael T Bertrand's Race, Rock and Elvis contends that the arrival of Elvis and rock'n'roll helped white Southerners to rethink their attitude to race and gave as yet unacknowledged impetus to the burgeoning civil rights movement. And this week the Daily Mirror's Tony Parsons imagined a world without Elvis as a cultural armageddon. "Elvis changed the soul of modern music," he argues. "Without him, Madonna would be a teacher in Detroit." He also quotes John Lennon's remark that "before Elvis there was nothing". An Elvisfree world would have seen black music remaining "underground" and "segregated", Parsons suggests.
But the reality is, black music never stays underground. White people always seek it out, dilute it and eventually claim it as their own. From Pat Boone's Tutti Frutti to current boyband sensations N Sync and Blue. This is fine, but be honest about it. Putting Parsons's vision into practice, let's imagine that instead of Elvis mania, Big Momma Thornton - author of Hound Dog reigns supreme with her ode to no-good men. Big Momma's cultural conquest gives birth to a radical white teen culture and a complete and lasting overhaul of America's putrid racial politics. White teens frighten their parents silly with their extreme bids not to become Elvis's pale imitation of the black performers he witnessed, but the very image of Big Momma. Sounds outlandish? Any more audacious than stubbornly maintaining that this talented - but more importantly white - man deserves to be king of a genre created by black people? Whether we remember him as an obese, drug-addled misogynist or a hip-swinging rebel, let's call him what he is - the allconquering great white hope - and demand the entertainment industry never again makes such a deceitful claim. A short story from Alice Walker's You Can't Keep A Good Woman Down holds particular poignancy. "Nineteen Fifty-Five" begins when an emerging rock'n'roll star, Traynor, accompanied by his musical svengali, visits the home of black songstress Gracie May Still. The svengali tells Gracie: "The boy learned to sing and dance livin' round you people out in the country. Practically cut his teeth on you." The pair buy up all of Gracie's songs and Traynor quickly triumphs as the "emperor of rock and roll". Walker tells how little white girls ate him up. "They was so proud. He was a genius," she writes. But many years later, spoilt by wealth, sycophants and too many chitlins, Traynor revisits Gracie May. The deflated emperor admits that he hasn't understood the meaning behind his greatest hit. It is recommended reading this Elvis week. Helen Kolawole is a former music editor of Pride magazine
“You Just Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down”: Alice Walker sings the blues African American Review, Summer, 1996, by Maria V. Johnson Oh - Just can’t keep a real good woman down Oh - Just can’t keep a real good woman down If you throw me down here Papa, I rise up in some other town (Miller) Alice Walker has been profoundly influenced and inspired both by African American music and musicians and by writers whose work is grounded in music and in the expressive folk traditions of African Americans. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and the blues music of blues women like Bessie Smith rank among Walker’s most significant musical/literary influences.(1) In her words, Music is the art I most envy... musicians [are] at one with their cultures and their historical subconscious. I am trying to arrive at that place where Black music already is; to arrive at that unselfconscious sense of collective oneness; that naturalness, that (even when anguished) grace. (In Search 259, 264) Zora Neale Hurston, Billie Holiday, and Bessie Smith form a sort of unholy trinity. Zora belongs in the tradition of black women singers, rather than among “the literati” .... Like Billie and Bessie
she followed her own road, believed in her own gods, pursued her own dreams, and refused to separate herself from the “common” people. (In Search 91) These influences are most clearly seen in works like the short story “Nineteen Fifty-five,” from her 1981 collection You Can’t Keep A Good Woman Down, and in her novel The Color Purple. In “Nineteen Fifty-five” and The Color Purple, Walker “talks back” to blues musicians and writers, signifying extensively on Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God as well as on specific musical pieces of several singer/composers. In signifying, following Henry Louis Gates’s usage, Walker “repeats with a difference” (xxii-xxiii, xxvii) traditional material, revising and personalizing it, giving, in the words of Sherley Anne Williams, “a traditional statement about a traditional situation a new response” (37). In “Nineteen Fifty-five” Walker begins to explore the significance of the female blues singer and the blues she sings - for creative artists like herself, for others in the community, and for the society as a whole. This exploration is continued in The Color Purple, where Walker probes in more detail the role of the blues woman as a model and catalyst for change in her community. In “Nineteen Fifty-five” and The Color Purple, Walker employs the character, language, structure, and perspective of the blues to celebrate the lives and works of blues women, to articulate the complexity of their struggles, and to expose and confront the oppressive forces facing Black women in America. In her portraits of blues women, Walker shows us the vitality, resiliency, creativity, and spirituality of African American women, illuminating the core aesthetic concepts which have been crucial to their survival in a society that has largely used and abused them for its own purposes. Indeed, in Walker’s works, African American women performers and their performances symbolize vitality and aliveness, and the will and spirit not only to endure but potentially to flourish. The blues woman, whose song is true to her own experience and rooted in the values and beliefs of the community, empowers those who love her and effects change in those around her. Her outer struggles and inner conflicts reflect issues of oppression in society as they have been internalized within the community. In addition to blues characters, Walker employs blues forms, themes, images, and linguistic techniques. Her forms - letters and diary entries - are like blues stanzas in their rich compactness and self-containedness; like blues pieces, her works take shape from the repetition and variation of these core units. Walker’s focus on the complexities and many-sidedness of love and relationship repeats the subject of many blues. As in Their Eyes and the blues, paradox and contradiction are explored in the context of relationships, projected via responses to the “traditional situations” of these relationships and articulated using contrast and oppositional structures. The blues women’s motto “You can’t keep a good woman down,” which is at the heart of “Nineteen Fifty-five,” also resonates the struggles and triumphs of many women in The Color Purple. In both “Nineteen Fifty-five” and The Color Purple, Walker repeats and varies many of the core oppositions, blues images, and linguistic techniques Hurston employs in Their Eyes. Finally, Walker uses singing and laughter as metaphors for voice, and uses core songs both to encapsulate primary themes and to mark significant points in the structure and thematic development of these pieces. In this essay, I explore Alice Walker’s use of the blues in the short story “Nineteen Fifty-five,” leaving a detailed examination of the blues in The Color Purple for a forthcoming article. In her title, dedication, and epigraph to You Can’t Keep A Good Woman Down (1981), Walker both encapsulates the essence of the theme which unites the stories in the volume and alludes to the signifyin(g) relationship of her work, particularly the story “Nineteen Fifty-five,” to the lives and work of several others from the past. Walker’s reference to “Mamie Smith and Perry
(You Can’t Keep A Good Man Down) Bradford” in her dedication is particularly important for several reasons. First, it alludes to an historical event that was especially significant in both African American and American music history. Mamie Smith’s recording of “You Can’t Keep A Good Man Down,” coupled with “This Thing Called Love,” made on February 14, 1920, is the first documented recording of a Black woman singer (Southern 365). Perry Bradford was the composer and Smith’s manager as well. The immediate and overwhelming commercial success of this recording led directly to more recordings by Mamie Smith, along with the recording of numerous other African American women singers, thereby ushering in the era of the so-called “classic” blues. Second, Walker’s allusion evokes the ironic story behind this recording, celebrating the remarkable feat of Bradford himself. It was due to the determination and unflagging persistence of African American song writer and entrepreneur Perry Bradford (whose nickname was “Mule”) that this historic recording happened. The white managers at Okeh Records, after finally agreeing to record his songs, opposed Bradford’s choice of a Black singer; they urged him to have the popular white singer and imitator of African American styles, Sophie Tucker, sing his songs. Fortunately, at the last minute Sophie Tucker could not be there; Mamie Smith was called in and history was made (Lieb 20, Albertson 34; see also Bradford). On one level, then, the title of Walker’s short story collection You Can’t Keep A Good Woman Down signifies on the title of Bradford’s historic composition “You Can’t Keep A Good Man Down.” In signifying, Walker changes the focus to women. Whereas “You Can’t Keep A Good Man Down” acknowledges the power and determination of “good men,” Walker’s collection celebrates the strength and resilience of “good women” who resist and persist in the face of abuse. On another level, Walker’s stories of women persisting in You Can’t Keep A Good Woman Down also signify on Bradford’s “story” of persistence, a story which he himself tells in Born With the Blues: His Own Story. On a third level, Gracie Mae and Traynor’s unnamed song and their story told in “Nineteen Fifty-five” signify on Bradford’s song and story. His/story is behind and a part of Walker’s story; both concern the racist and exploitative phenomenon of white singers imitating or “covering” the songs of African Americans. In this regard, Walker’s story “Nineteen Fifty-five” and unnamed song signify even more clearly on the story of Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton and Elvis Presley and “their” song, “Hound Dog” - perhaps the most famous “cover” story. (I shall return to this later.) Through multiple levels of signifying, then, Walker links prominent instances of this “cover” phenomenon, exposing the fact of its repetition throughout American history and reminding us that it is, indeed, “a tradition by now” (I Love 1). Walker’s title also makes close reference to another song, “You Just Can’t Keep A Good Woman Down” (1928), a 12-bar blues sung and composed by blues woman Lillian Miller, which also signifies on Bradford’s “You Can’t Keep A Good Man Down” (Miller, Smith). The title, theme, and content of Miller’s song reflect the essence of the empowering assertion and affirmation found in many women’s blues, and the theme is a common blues theme found in several songs by Bessie Smith and others. Miller’s song testifies to the blues roots of Walker’s title, theme, and use of signifyin(g)(2): If you catch me stealin’, Papa please don’t tell on me [2x] My new man has quit me and I’m stealin’ back to my used to be You may see me smilin’, and you may think I’m glad (ah, but you don’t know) You may see me smilin’, you may think I’m glad But you can never tell, the trouble sweet Mama have had I don’t want no man that’s gonna play me and stall (don’t mean maybe) I don’t want no man that’s gonna play me and stall I just want a Daddy, really let me have it all
All of you men are, [ever] so hard to please [2x] You got old and young women, wearin’ dresses up above their Oh - Just can’t keep a real good woman down [2x] If you throw me down here Papa, I rise up in some other town Sweet sixteen and I’ve never been refused I’m sweet sixteen, never been refused I’ve got a brand new car Daddy, and it’s never been used (Miller) Like Walker’s title, dedication, and epigraph, the lyrics of Lillian Miller’s song reflect the essence of the theme which unites the stories in Walker’s volume. The collection shows African American women whose spirits will not be crushed, “good women” who will not be kept down and who when thrown down rise up again in some other town. They are women who struggle and suffer a great deal, who are oppressed but not defeated; women who command respect and reject the mistreatment of men. Like the blues people alluded to in Walker’s dedication, they insist “on the value and beauty of the authentic”; they insist on the value and beauty of themselves; they insist on being themselves, and they demand that their needs be accommodated. In “Nineteen Fifty-five,” Walker, too, insists on the value and beauty of blues women and “authentic”(3) blues music, celebrating the vitality of African American expressive culture and the resilient creative spirit of the Black woman blues artist. Told from the blues woman’s perspective in first-person narration, “Nineteen Fifty-five” “grounds” the stories in the volume, encapsulating and projecting the essence of the theme which unites them in the colorful and eloquent language and voice of the blues woman narrator. As in Hurston’s Their Eyes, Walker, in “Nineteen Fifty-five,” sings the blues and tells the story of the blues through a blues woman who sings and tells her own story. In signifying on the songs and stories of Bradford, Miller, Hurston, and Thornton, Walker celebrates and gives voice to the tradition both by recording it and passing it on, and by creating her own personal expression within it. The story “Nineteen Fifty-five” documents the relationship between Gracie Mae Still, a veteran blues composer and singer, and Traynor, a young, white, soon-to-be-rich rock ‘n’ roll star. Traynor’s fame and fortune rest on the success of his “cover” recording in 1955-56 of a Gracie Mae Still composition dating back to 1923. Gracie Mae’s narrative follows their relationship, through visits, correspondence, and television performances, from the day Traynor comes to ask for Gracie Mae’s permission to record the song in 1955 to the day of Traynor’s death in 1977. Traynor, “blessed” with fame and fortune but plagued by an emptiness and confusion in both his professional and personal lives, is drawn to the Black female creator of his first hit record, as he is to her song, in his search for “authenticity” and meaning. The relationship between Gracie Mae and Traynor develops as Traynor struggles to understand the song which has made him famous. The song and the composer become the vehicles through which he seeks meaning in his life. Although he is a tragic figure, unable ever to find himself or to find meaning in his life, Traynor comes to understand a great deal about his own unhappiness from his association with Gracie Mae. Walker’s story demonstrates the truth of Herman Hesse’s statement, given in her epigraph, that “it is harder to kill something that is spiritually alive” (Gracie Mae) “than it is to bring the dead back to life” (Traynor). Walker uses blues techniques of contrast and ironic juxtaposition to articulate discrepancies between appearances and reality, between what appears to be and what is, exposing the contradictions and hypocrisy of the white material world, while demonstrating the vital and “authentic” character, value, and beauty of Gracie Mae and her music. Using oppositional language and ironic juxtaposition, Walker contrasts: (1) Traynor’s appearance of material well-being with his reality of spiritual bankruptcy, (2) Traynor’s appearance of extreme and lasting world-wide fame, success, and popularity (“The Emperor
of Rock and Roll”) with Gracie Mae’s appearance of moderate local fame, short-lived and long forgotten (“Gracie Mae Nobody from Notasulga”), and (3) Traynor’s spiritual reality, which is empty, confused, and devoid of meaning, with Gracie Mae’s spiritual reality, which is very much alive, filled with creativity, and blossoming with the wisdom of age. Walker “repeats” this core opposition between appearances and reality with variations, articulating it in many guises as the story develops. Black/white, rich/poor, famous/unknown, young/old, alive/dead, asleep/awake, meaningful/empty, somebody/nobody, something/nothing are some of the manifestations this core opposition takes. Variations of this opposition are embodied in Walker’s descriptions of Gracie Mae and Traynor: in their appearances and the images they project, in their songs and musical performances, and in their social interactions. As in the blues, Walker’s use of opposition and contrast occurs within a framework of core materials which are repeated and varied. A standard blues piece consists of a series of stanzas each of which follows a basic harmonic structure (I IV I V I) and text form (AAB) which is repeated and varied as a piece progresses to give it a large-scale shape. Within this structure there are core elements - pitches, contours, images, phrases, lines of text, chords - which are varied using core means - embellishment, vibrato, syncopation, timbrai nuance - to create unlimited possibilities for rendering the same stanza, song, or structure. Similarly, Walker’s “Nineteen Fifty-five” is a series of interactions; as the interaction unit is repeated, the form of the interaction varies (visits, television performances, letters). The story is also a sequence of diary entries distinguished by date. Diary entries provide structural frames in which the various forms of interaction are set (see figure on p. 226). Moreover, behind the interaction unit there is a core relationship - that between Gracie Mae and Traynor - as well as a core song - which connects the two even before they have met. In subsequent visits, correspondence, and performances, this core “tune” is repeated and embellished as Traynor discovers pieces of the song’s meaning, as core images (projected by Traynor and Gracie Mae) are elaborated, and as new “takes” on the core oppositions are made. As in the blues, it is by exposing core materials - themes, characters, relationships, oppositions - again and again in varied forms, in interaction after interaction, that Walker brings her readers to a deeper understanding of their significance. As in the blues, Walker’s story takes shape in a way which both indulges in and transcends the repetitions at the core of its formal structure. The story culminates with Gracie Mae and Traynor’s joint appearance on The Johnny Carson Show. Structurally ingenious, this “final” performance provides a forum for elements of music, image, and social dynamics to come together. This social/musical interaction provides an ideal stage for Alice Walker to dramatize the core oppositions of the story and the contrasting aesthetic values, perspectives, and personalities of two vastly different individuals and cultures. It is important to the structural development of Walker’s story that both Gracie Mae and Traynor sing “their” song on the same stage, and especially significant that they do not sing it together, but rather each in turn. This juxtaposition of performances is both essential to Walker’s dramatic illumination of contrast, and also symbolic of the walls that separate and divide the two individuals and cultures. As in the blues, Walker uses “personification” as a structural vehicle to explore a wide range of issues and experiences of struggle and conflict. As I would argue that the blues personifies struggle by projecting issues of struggle vis-a-vis relationship dynamics and articulating responses to relationships, Walker uses the relationship between two characters - their interactions and responses - as a vehicle to [TABULAR DATA OMITTED] explore the differences and conflicts between two cultures.
Moreover, by juxtaposing the aesthetic approaches of Gracie Mae and Traynor - the process of signifying or “repetition with a difference” with that of imitation or direct repetition - Walker examines implications of these cultural differences and the barriers to developing relationships across differences in the context of a racist and patriarchal society. At the beginning of the story, Traynor and his music agent come to Gracie Mae’s house to get permission to record her song and to buy up all of the copies of her record of the song. In this first interaction Walker performs several variations on the opposition between appearances and reality, using contrast in her descriptions of these two characters to evoke Gracie Mae’s wariness of the duo, her difference from them, and the boundaries she creates between herself and these white people she does not know who want something of hers. Gracie Mae calls Traynor’s music agent “the deacon” because he is dressed like a Baptist deacon. In naming him “the deacon,” Walker suggests the discrepancy between his outer affect - one who goes about serving and saving souls - and his true motive - to make money off of African American musicians. Her description also contrasts the deacon’s looks (creepy) with his manner (pleasant). Significantly, it is the deacon’s eyes which most expressively embody this discrepancy between appearance and reality: His cold gray eyes look like they’re sweating.... I wonder if sweat makes your eyeballs pink because his are sure pink. Pink and gray and it strikes me that nobody I’d care to know is behind them. (4-5) The deacon “appears” to be a contradiction. His “cold gray/sweaty pink” eyes make him appear untrustworthy. Through her description of the deacon’s eyes, Gracie Mae conveys her uneasiness with him and the hypocrisy he carries. Providing access to the reality behind the appearance, his eyes warn her to be on her guard. On the other hand, Gracie Mae’s description of this first encounter contrasts Traynor with the deacon. While the deacon is an older gentleman with a smooth and talkative manner, Traynor is young, awkward, and non-verbal. The older man does all of the talking and negotiating;” ... the boy [merely] grunts his awareness of the transaction....” Traynor’s only attempt to speak produces what Gracie Mae describes as “something I can’t catch in a pitch I don’t register” (4). In juxtaposing Traynor with the deacon, Walker sets into relief Traynor’s powerless dependency and lack of voice, using the metaphor of voice to suggest his loss of agency and lack of grounding. At the same time, Walker’s description highlights the cultural differences and communication gap between Gracie Mae and Traynor. Traynor’s appearance also embodies contradiction. We glimpse this when Gracie Mae first sees Traynor doing her song on television. She describes him in terms of an opposition asleep/awake. He looks “half asleep from the neck up, but kind of awake in a nasty way from the waist down” (6). Internally, spiritually dead, Traynor’s sexuality appears to be split off, externalized, something that he is “wearing” - apart from him, not a part of him. Ironically, it is this aspect of his appearance his objectification of sexuality - rather than the song itself to which the audience responds: “He wasn’t doing too bad with my song either, but it wasn’t just the song the people in the audience was screeching and screaming over, it was that nasty little jerk he was doing from the waist down” (6-7). In Traynor’s second visit to Gracie Mae, Traynor and the Deacon are opposed again, exposing another discrepancy in Traynor’s appearance. Using ironic juxtaposition, Walker contrasts Traynor’s other-defined “deacon-imposed” television image (his on-camera appearance) with the more “presentable” self which he brings to Gracie Mae’s (his off-camera appearance): “On the TV he was inclined to dress like the deacon told him. But now he looked presentable” (7).
In subsequent visits, as Traynor’s wealth and fame grow, Walker intensifies her descriptions of the discrepancy between Traynor’s appearance of material well-being and the reality of his spiritual bankruptcy. In addition, she begins directly to contrast the characters of Gracie Mae and Traynor, using “their” song as a metaphor to probe questions of meaning and spiritual well-being. As Traynor lacks voice, he also lacks his own song - a song which resonates his own life experience. In 1960, in a letter to Gracie Mae, Traynor articulates the connection between singing and living: “I’ve been thinking about writing some songs of my own but every time I finish one it don’t seem to be about nothing I’ve actually lived myself” (11). To write and sing his own song is to give voice to himself and meaning to his life. Since he lacks his own song, his life lacks meaning. In contrast, the song that Gracie Mae sings is meaningful and “true,” more so at the time of the story than when she wrote and first sang the song, because it resonates her experience. She says, “... if I was to sing that song today I’d tear it up.... Them words could hold me up” (14). Her language evokes the strength and empowerment that come from “telling it like it is,” singing her truth and giving voice to her experiences through song. Gracie Mae teaches that, like the song itself, a song’s meaning is not inherent or fixed. It grows and changes with time, with shifting contexts and new experiences. Meaning varies from one performer and audience member to the next, and emerges anew in each performance, deepening with the wisdom of lived experience and age. As Bernice Johnson Reagon says of singing in the African American tradition, “The songs are free and they have the meaning placed in them by the singers” (2). When Traynor comes to visit Gracie Mae in 1968, Walker’s exploration of the discrepancy between his appearance of material wealth and spiritual vacuity takes on new dimensions. In her language, Walker embodies several layers of opposition and ironic inversion. First, the connections between wealth and appearances and the appearance of wealth with deceit are ironically embodied in Walker’s description of the arrival of Traynor and his entourage: “With wings they could pass for angels, with hoods they could be the Klan” (11). Evoking the same sense of wariness evidenced in Gracie Mae’s initial description of the Deacon, the reality encapsulated in this compact blues line is that Klan members do pass for angels in this society, as racist religion passes for spirituality, and record agents pass for deacons, greedy men for saviors. Walker suggests the close connection between wealth and deceit in American society, as exemplified in the music business. Second, Walker contrasts Traynor’s lack of vital substance with Gracie Mae’s strong personal presence, articulating an ironic inversion. Traynor, the one who appears materially weighted down and solid, is in reality lacking in substance, amorphous, a body without soul; conversely, Gracie Mae, who does not depend on material things, is solid, defined, boundaried, a body with a soul. In contrast to Traynor, whose “eyes weren’t right” and who Gracie Mae describes as “something ... sitting there talking to me but not necessarily with a person behind it” (13), Gracie Mae “looks distinguished. You see me coming and know somebody’s there” (12). By italicizing thing, Gracie Mae underscores Traynor’s lack of vitality; by italicizing there, she highlights his lack of presence. As with the Deacon, Traynor’s eyes provide an entre into the spiritual reality behind the appearance. Like his eyes, Traynor’s laugh also lacks life: He laughs. The first time I ever heard him laugh. It don’t sound much like a laugh and I can’t swear that it’s better than no laugh a’tall. Then he laughs again: “What did it sound like? I couldn’t place it” (12). Like his voice during the first visit, Traynor’s laugh does not register. Like his eyes, his laugh is empty. Like Mr. Turner’s laugh in Hurston’s Their Eyes (214-15), Traynor’s laugh is powerless and vanishing; it lacks soul. For both Hurston and
Walker, laughter symbolizes vitality. To laugh - really laugh - is to be responsive, to be alive and really living. Loss of laughter and an inability to laugh indicate a loss of life, a loss of self. A solid, grounded, full-powered laugh, like the voice that sings its own song, reflects the personality, the “somebody,” behind it. Third, using Gracie Mae’s relationship with Bessie Smith as a metaphor, Walker explores the question of fame in relation to spiritual health, exposing a threefold opposition and a second ironic inversion. Walker identifies Gracie Mae with obscure African American creative artists like Lillian Miller. She does not become famous in the way either Bessie Smith or Traynor did. As Walker contrasts Traynor with Gracie Mae, she also contrasts Bessie Smith with Gracie Mae. Gracie Mae and Bessie Smith fight, because Bessie, like Traynor, wants to sing Gracie Mae’s song, but Gracie Mae thinks that, like herself, Bessie should stick with her own songs, her own experience, and become famous for her own songs, her own self. “Couldn’t be nothing worse than being famous the world over for something you don’t even understand” (14). By “insisting on the value and beauty of the authentic,” Walker opposes any sacrifice of self to make money or acquire fame. In “Nineteen Fifty-five” Walker probes the question “What does it mean to be ‘someone’?” Her story suggests that a person living for fame, fortune, and being known often sacrifices her or his humanity for a thing, whereas to be yourself, sing your own song, live your own life is to be somebody. The inversion Walker dramatizes, also an important manifestation of the appearance/reality opposition, is that a “nobody” (one who is not famous) is often more somebody (her- or himself) than a “somebody” (one who is famous), because that person is more likely to be spiritually grounded rather than materially obsessed. We hear Walker playing on this three-pronged opposition when Gracie Mae says, “By then she was Miss Bessie Smith to the World, and I was still Gracie Mae Nobody from Notasulga” (14). Here Walker also puns on Gracie Mae’s last name - “Still” and “still.” Both Bessie Smith and Traynor were famous, while Gracie Mae was not. Both Bessie Smith and Traynor are dead and died young; Traynor lost his somebodyness among “things.” In contrast, Gracie Mae Nobody is Gracie Mae s/Still; she is alive in spirit as well as in body - and somebody, as she has always been and always will be. Walker’s exploration of materialism culminates in Gracie Mae’s visit to Traynor’s house in 1968, where we see for the first time his home environment. Walker captures the vastness of Traynor’s material wealth in her humorous and exaggerated description of Gracie Mae’s experience of the journey to visit him, which makes use of personification as well as hyperbole: When they finally get to the kitchen, the first thing Gracie Mae notices “is that, altogether, there are five stoves. He looks about to introduce me to one” (16). By projecting Gracie Mae’s response to Traynor’s mountain castle, Walker intensifies her examination of the contrasts between their lifestyles, as well as her probing of the spiritual reality behind Traynor’s appearance of material well-being. By exaggerating and personifying Traynor’s material wealth, and juxtaposing these images with images in which Traynor appears objectified, Walker caricatures an inversion between person and object which dramatizes the contrast between Traynor’s material wealth and spiritual destitution, and the discrepancies between appearance and reality. We see how “too much” and “too big” can be oppressive and alienating, obstructing and obscuring one’s relationship to oneself and to others. Ironically, Traynor’s too much room (five floors, a whole mountain) results in too little space for himself. Walker’s articulation of the opposition between appearances and reality and dramatization of the contrasts between Gracie Mae and Traynor reach a peak in the final interaction when the two appear together on The Johnny Carson Show (1968). Contrasts occur on several levels at once: (1) how Gracie Mae and Traynor
look and their attitudes toward how they look, (2) their performances of “their” song and their approaches to singing, and (3) the audience’s responses to their performances and their reactions to the audience response. Traynor is all corseted down, trying to appear thin, while Gracie Mae, having failed to lose weight, has “had ... a very big dress made” (18). Traynor’s approach is to try to hide this aspect of his physical reality, while Gracie Mae acknowledges it and works with it, bringing style to it. It is as if Traynor is trying to appear as he did in 1956. Second, in her juxtaposition of their performances, Walker captures the vast differences between their approaches to singing and attitudes toward it. Describing her own performance, Gracie Mae says: ... I sound - wonderful. Being able to sing good ain’t all about having a good singing voice a’tall. A good singing voice helps. But when you come up in the Hard Shell Baptist church like I did you understand early that the fellow that sings is the singer. Them that waits for programs and arrangements and letters from home is just good voices occupying body space.... I am singing my own song, my own way. And I give it all I’ve got and enjoy every minute of it. (18) Describing Traynor’s performance, she says: ... he sings it just the way he always did. My voice, my tone, my inflection, everything. But he forgets a couple of lines. (18-19) By juxtaposing the two contrasting performances, Walker sets into relief important elements of Gracie Mae’s background and the aesthetic principles and values which are reflected in her singing. Walker’s passage vividly illustrates ethnomusicologist Mellonee Burnim’s contention (159) that performance symbolizes and generates a sense of vitality in African American culture. In detailing what makes for a “wonderful sound” in the African American tradition, Gracie Mae suggests that it is not the quality of the voice itself so much as the spirit of the person behind it that makes for the good singer. She speaks of the importance of the church and the integral role it plays in the everyday life of the Black community. The name “Hard Shell Baptist church” signifies the groundedness and durability of the Black church as a stabilizing force in the African American community. The name also alludes to the sanctuary which the church has provided African Americans historically. On a third level, “Hard Shell” suggests the role of the Black church in providing lessons in survival and teaching music as a strategy of struggle. Gracie Mae also speaks of the importance of being present in the moment and being moved by the spirit, and alludes to the traditional process of “learning [music] by doing.” Again illustrating core African American aesthetics identified by Burnim (159, 162), she speaks of the importance of individuality and personal expression - of making a song her own and creating it anew in each performance - and of the necessity for total personal involvement, for putting all of herself into each performance and singing for her self and for her own enjoyment. Gracie Mae contrasts her own spiritual approach with “good voices occupying body space,” which, in its use of objectification, alludes to Traynor’s somethingness and material approach. As is clear from Gracie Mae’s description of his performance, Traynor is still copying Gracie Mae, as he was in 1956: “side streets, avenues, red lights, train crossings and all” (7). In 1968 he copies himself in 1956 copying Gracie Mae in 1923. He does nothing musically to make it his own song. He is not enjoying himself, nor is he present with the music in the moment. In his contempt for his audience and for himself and in his disgust with the audience’s response, he forgets a couple of lines of the song. By juxtaposing the two performances, Walker also illuminates several levels of contrast in the audience/performer dynamics. On the one hand, the audience responds to Traynor with the same “matronly squeals” as in 1956, but shows little interest in Gracie
Mae. On the other hand, while the audience claps politely for about two seconds for Gracie Mae, Traynor stands and claps and claps and beams at Gracie Mae and at the audience “like [she] his mama for true” (18). The reactions of Gracie Mae and Traynor to their audience’s responses are also vastly different. When Traynor gives Gracie Mae a hug, the audience laughs, responding to the contrast in appearance between the two. Gracie Mae smiles, acknowledging the comical aspect of the moment, while Traynor gets mad. Traynor again becomes angry and disgusted at the audience’s responses to the two performances and feels defeated, whereas Gracie Mae, undaunted by the audience, consoles Traynor as a mother would a child. In sum, Traynor concerns himself with the responses of an audience of people he feels contempt for but does not know; he surrounds himself regularly with people he cares little for and does not know. He eats and sleeps with people he does not know - including his wife. In contrast, Gracie Mae surrounds herself with the people she loves and knows, trying only to make the people she knows and cares about happy. She concerns herself with pleasing her audience insofar as they are people she “knows.” Pleasing them means singing out of her own experience, insisting on the value and beauty of her own experience and her own voice, and pleasing herself first. Gracie Mae’s audience was small, it was honest, it was intimate. Like Ma Rainey, she “really knew these people” (Lieb 17). And they responded to the truth she put out, which resonated their own experience. Her singing “made the dirt farmers cry like babies and the womens shout Honey, hush!” (6). In contrast, Traynor’s audience is huge, dishonest, and undiscriminating, “on him like white on rice” (9). As I suggested at the beginning of this essay, Alice Walker’s fictional character Traynor bears a clear relationship to the reallife figure Elvis Presley. In her characterization of Traynor, Walker “repeats” many aspects of Presley’s appearance and career, including the following.(4) Presley began recording in 1954, just out of high school. By 1956, his records were reaching number one on the pop charts, and he was fast becoming a wealthy man. While still a young man he was hailed as “The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”(5) He also made numerous movies and television appearances. He was drafted into the army in March 1958, served much of his time in Germany, and was discharged in March 1960. He was known to give generous gifts - cars, televisions, diamond rings - to family members, friends, fans, and acquaintances. He was also known to travel with his entourage in a fleet of Cadillacs which were always on hand. It was the “wiggle” movement “Elvis the Pelvis” made with his hips in those first performances of fast R & B numbers that led the young white women and girls to scream and shout for more. He was married, divorced, and had numerous short-lived relationships with women. He gained a great deal of weight in his later years, tipping the scales at 250 pounds in August 1977 when he died of heart failure related to drug use at the age of 42. Throughout Presley’s career, his success was largely due to his numerous “covers” of R & B records by African American composers and performers. While Presley made an enormous amount of money singing and recording the songs of African Americans, the African American originators saw very little. This longstanding “tradition” of racism and exploitation in the American music industry, which appeared in a slightly different guise in the classic blues era, dates back to minstrelsy, when white men in blackface imitated African Americans (Toll). In the case of rock ‘n’ roll, as Walker suggests in her descriptions of Traynor’s copying Gracie Mae’s song (7, 18), white performers like Elvis often copied the records they covered down to the details of the arrangements and the dance movements that went with them. When Elvis sang Black music, white audiences ate it up. Sam Phillips of Sun records, who had recorded Black R & B performers for years, knew that if he could find a white man who
could sing Black music like an African American, he could make a star and a killing. He did both with Elvis (Goldman 110). Presley learned the blues from listening to Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, Roy Brown, and other African American musicians in Tupelo, Mississippi, where he grew up. His first two records made in 1954 were covers of Crudup’s blues piece “That’s All Right,” originally recorded in 1946, and Roy Brown’s R & B hit “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” originally recorded in 1947. But it was Presley’s cover of “Hound Dog” in 1956, a song originally recorded in 1952 by R & B singer Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, which became a million-seller and sent him to the top of the national charts (Cotten 91).(6) While Walker’s character Gracie Mae differs somewhat from the real-life blues figure and originator of Elvis’s million-seller record “Hound Dog,” some notable similarities exist between the two. The late great Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton is a contemporary R & B legend whose career reflects the continuance of the blues tradition from the 1940s through the 1980s. Her exceptional voice and powerful presence, and the image she projected, exerted considerable influence on many Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin among them. “Big Mama” Thornton combined the qualities of several generations of the best country and “classic” blues women. Chris Strachowitz, who recorded and publicized her in the 1960s, called her “the greatest female blues singer of any decade.” Strachowitz’s description of her aesthetic approach to singing matches the essential qualities of Walker’s character to a tee. He says: At all times Big Mama is herself - she doesn’t try to be anybody else.... Big Mama sings music she feels - songs which have meaning for her - blues which deals with everyday life as she experienced it.... Big Mama makes [a song] into her own personal expression. (Liner notes) Thulani Davis’s description of Big Mama’s performance in the 1980 concert Blues Is A Woman, which occurred alongside classic blues legend Sippie Wallace and others, also captures something of the individual quality of her voice, presence, and image: The concert’s finest moment was Big Mama Thornton, who sported a man’s 3-piece suit (completely offsetting all the sequins and chiffon) topped with a straw hat and showing a man’s gold watch. She sat at stage center and talked and played a few pieces she wanted to play (not on the program).... she wore out the harmonica & wailed & rocked the house. She set the standard for what it’s all about. She was the woman who left home, left home early, and she reminded me of a song they say was sung way back before 1910 that women blues singers took over as their own: “Ain’t nobody’s bizness if I do.” (Davis 56; emphasis added) Like Gracie Mae, Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton was a big woman for most of her life, weighing some 300 pounds in 1965 (Strachowitz).(7) Moreover, the name Gracie Mae itself suggests some connection to Willie Mae Thornton. One difference between character and real-life singer is that Big Mama Thornton did not compose “Hound Dog”; the popular songwriting team Lieber and Stoller did that. Nevertheless, as Strachowitz’s comments suggest, she made the song her own in performance, embellishing the text and adding a humorous ad lib monologue. A second difference is that Walker’s character, Gracie Mae Still, made her original recording of the unnamed song in 1923, while Thornton recorded “Hound Dog” in 1952. Walker’s character is a “classic” blues singer and composer, a contemporary friend and rival of Bessie Smith, whereas Thornton was an R & B performer and composer. Yet, like Big Mama Thornton, Gracie Mae Still embodies several generations of blues women. In the character of Gracie Mae, Walker celebrates the long “herstorical” tradition of the blues and the lives and work of its Black female creators, from Bessie Smith to Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, Aretha Franklin, and beyond.
As Gracie Mae embodies many singers, her song embodies many songs. Although Walker uses three blanks (----- ----- -----), loosely suggesting a three-word title, she chooses not to specify the song’s title because it could be many songs, and its meaning extends beyond the particulars of any one song. (8) At the same time, Walker’s story would appear to signify on the song “Hound Dog,” and, in any case, an examination of the song provides an interesting reading of aspects of the story’s meaning. You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, been snoopin’ ‘round my door [2x] You can wag your tail, but I ain’t gonna feed you no more. You told me you was high class, but I could see through that Yes, you told me you was high class, but I could see through that And Daddy I know, you ain’t no real cool cat. You made me feel so blue, you made me weep and moan You made me feel so blue, yeah you made me weep and moan ‘Cause you ain’t lookin’ for a woman, all you’re lookin’ is for a home. (Thornton) The song’s image of the hound dog wagging and snooping suggests the deceitful, low-down ways of a “no-good” man, whose outward appearance and initial words and gestures are contradicted by the reality of his intentions and his ultimate behavior. He acts friendly (“wags his tail”) as though he cares for the singer personally, but that’s only because he wants something (food, sex, a home). While he tells her he is respectable, committed, and able and willing to pull his weight (“high class”), experience tells her that she should be wary. The blues image of the hound dog from Big Mama Thornton’s song becomes a core image in Walker’s story. At a moment of clarity and despair, inspired by his exchanges with Gracie Mae, Traynor says to her: They want what you got but they don’t want you. They want what I got only it ain’t mine. That’s what makes ‘em so hungry for me when I sing. They getting the flavor of something but they ain’t getting the thing itself. They like a pack of hound dogs trying to gobble up a scent. (17) At this moment Traynor comes closest to singing his own blues song. His words contain the contrast, the paradox, the ironic juxtaposition and inversion, and even the sensual imagery and feeling of the blues. The language is reminiscent of Hurston’s description of Daisy Blunt in Their Eyes, in which she contrasts the white and black in Daisy’s clothes, eyes, and hair, using sensual and sexually suggestive blues imagery to celebrate Daisy’s Black femaleness and to articulate an African American image of beauty (105-06). In the same way in which Hurston discusses Daisy’s black hair having a white flavor, Walker describes white music having a Black flavor. Traynor’s white audience gobbles up the Black flavor that the white singer (Traynor) copying the Black singer (Gracie Mae) is putting out. While Traynor refers in the hound dog passage to his young white audience, he also speaks of his own position and relation to Gracie Mae’s song. Traynor, too, has got the flavor of the song and has “gobbled up [its] scent.” He’s onto some part of the song’s meaning, and beginning to comprehend his own life - but the full meaning of the song, the life, and the experience behind the song still eludes him. The image of the hound dog describes Traynor’s pursuit of Gracie Mae, his pursuit of the song’s meaning, and his pursuit of self; it also describes his pursuit of fame and fortune and his attempts at relationships and marriage: It was like singing somebody else’s record. I copied the way it was supposed to be exactly but I never had a clue what marriage meant.... I never could squeeze any of my own life either into it or out of it. (13) In both Big Mama Thornton’s song and Alice Walker’s story, the hound dogs (Traynor, white people, men) want what the Black woman’s got, but they don’t want her. They “ain’t lookin’ for a woman, [they] lookin’ for a home.” They’re hungry for food;
they’re gobbling up a scent. They’re pursuing something, not someone; the flavor of something, not the thing itself; the appearance of things, not the people behind them; material comfort rather than spiritual well-being. Traynor in all his wealth and fame (in the words of Thornton’s song) appears to be “high class,” and he attempts to share this status with Gracie Mae, buying her cars and houses and appliances and more, but as the song says, she “see[s] through that” and “know[s he] ain’t no real cool cat.” She says no thank you to his lifestyle. She appreciates a brand new Cadillac and wouldn’t mind waking up to homemade cornbread every morning, but as for a house with a kitchen with five stoves and a long hike to the porch and people she doesn’t even know all around her, she says thanks but no thanks (16-17). In signifying on the song and story of Big Mama Thornton, Elvis Presley, and “Hound Dog,” Walker’s crucial “difference” comes in the fact that Traynor seeks to understand the meaning of the song he sings by pursuing his relationship with its creator. A clue to Walker’s interest in Elvis and to the significance of her fictional development of the relationship between Traynor and Gracie Mae in “Nineteen Fifty-five” appears in her fourth novel, The Temple of My Familiar (1989). Here Ola (an Olinkan man) and Fanny Nzingha (his African American daughter) discuss Ola’s ideas for a play about Elvis Presley. Ola clearly perceives Elvis to be Native American in aspects of his dress (buckskin, fringe, silver) and in aspects of his appearance (thick black hair, full lips), and culturally just “as black as the other white people in Mississippi.” Ola and Fannie imagine Elvis’s little bump and grind as originally a movement of the circle dance, and his hiccupy singing style as once a war whoop or an Indian love call. Ola listens to Elvis “to hear where commercial and mainstream cultural success takes people, a part of whose lineage is hidden even from themselves, in a country that insists on racial, cultural and historical amnesia, if you wake up one century and find yourself ‘white.’” Ola says: “in [Elvis] white Americans found a reason to express their longing and appreciation for the repressed Native American and Black parts of themselves” (188). Ola suggests that the weeping of white maidens over Elvis’s death is white America’s weeping over the loss of “the other” both within themselves and without (189). Indeed, in the character of Traynor, Walker herself explores questions of success and identity, using the image and story of Elvis Presley as a vehicle. Ola’s comments in Temple suggest that part of Traynor’s attraction to Gracie Mae and his search for the meaning of her song is his longing for the lost African American parts of himself which are embodied in his “Loosianna creole” features (4), while part of his audience’s hungry adulation is white America’s longing for the cut-off and repressed African American part of themselves. In “Nineteen Fifty-five,” as in Temple, Walker explores the idea that “human beings want, above all else, to love each other freely regardless of tribe” (189) and recognizes musicians’ efforts to bridge the gap. In Temple, for example, through the character of Miss Lissie, Walker acknowledges the efforts of Janis Joplin, whose immediate musical “momma” was also Big Mama Thornton. (“Their” song was “Ball ‘n’ Chain.”) Miss Lissie says: “She knew Bessie Smith was her momma, and she sang her guts out trying to tear open that closed door between them” (369). In “Nineteen Fifty-five,” Walker similarly uses this mother/child image to describe the relationship which develops between Gracie Mae and Traynor (7-8, 18). In pursuing the meaning of Gracie Mae’s song through developing a relationship with its creator, Traynor begins to know himself as he begins to know Gracie Mae. It seems to me that Walker, In “Nineteen Fifty-five,” uses a blues mode to sow the seeds for her explicit critique of essentialist notions of identity in The Temple of My Familiar. After several centuries of cohabitation in the Southern U.S. (not to mention the
centuries of contact in Europe, Africa, Asia, and elsewhere before that), Walker argues, white and Black (and Native) cultures can no longer be realistically considered independent or “pure”; and, in this context, the maintenance of strict definitions of individuals as Black or white becomes absurd. Walker teaches that these prescriptive definitions not only keep people from one another but, as exemplified in the case of Traynor, often tragically keep people from themselves. Notes 1. This article is a revision of a chapter from my dissertation, “Voices of Struggle: An Exploration of the Relationship Between African American Women’s Music and Literature,” U of California-Berkeley, 1992. 2. I am not suggesting that Walker knew of the existence of Miller’s song or had actually heard the recording, nor am I suggesting that Walker was consciously signifying on Miller’s song/title. It is highly likely, however, that Miller, recording in 1928 (like Walker writing today), was aware of Bradford’s song, if not from Mamie Smith’s recording in 1920 then from the circulation of the song which that popular recording would have generated, and that she wes in some sense consciously signifyin(g) on it. The theme itself is a common blues theme reflected in many songs by Bessie Smith and others, and Walker undoubtedly knew that. Miller’s recording testifies to the cultural groundedness of Walker’s blues, as well as to the fact that the signifyin(g) process itself operates within the blues tradition. 3. It seems to me that Walker’s use of the term authentic here is not so much indicative of an essentialist view of African American culture as it is about individuals’ being true to themselves and the primary agents of their own lives. For Walker, it is not so much the presence or absence of “Blackness” and “Black” style that makes for “authentic” blues music as it is the presence or absence of vitality, of purpose, of oneself in one’s life/performance. The “Black sound” in and of itself can signify neither “Blackness” nor meaning. 4. The details of Elvis Presley’s life and career that follow are compiled from Cotten and Goldman. 5. The name Traynor suggests an apprentice - one who is in training - which in Walker’s story is Traynor’s relationship to Gracie Mae. As Elvis was known by many by his first name only, Traynor is not given a last name in Walker’s story. His lack of a last name is perhaps also indicative of his lack of cultural and personal grounding and identity. 6. A more detailed look at Elvis Presley’s life would reveal many more similarities as well as many differences between Elvis and Walker’s character, and suggest additional interpretations of the details of Walker’s story. However, this is beyond the scope of this article. 7. While Thornton was a big woman during her prime, she lost a great deal of weight in the last years of her life when she was hospitalized for sickness related to alcohol abuse; her early deterioration and untimely death in 1984 at the age of 58 were largely due to alcohol abuse. This paints a reality grimmer than Walker’s story. In The Color Purple, Walker begins to explore the physical and psychological toll which involvement in the music business, racism, sexism, life on the road, and lack of familial support could and did take on African American female performers. 8. Similarly, in The Color Purple, Walker does not specify Mr. -----’s last name because he could be many men; there are many like him.
8 David Wong Louie was born and raised in New York. He received a Bachelor’s Degree in English from Vassar College and an MFA from the University of Iowa. His first book, the story collection Pangs of Love, won The Los Angeles Times Book Review First Fiction Award, the Ploughshares First Fiction Book Award, was a New York Times Book Review Notable of 1991 and a Voice Literary Supplement Favorite of 1991. Louie is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of English and the Asian-American Studies Center at UCLA. He lives in Venice, California with his wife and son. Studies: M.F.A. Creative Writing, The University of Iowa, 1981; B.A. Vassar College, 1977 Interests: Asian American Studies, Creative Writing Selected Publications: The Barbarians Are Coming, 2000; Pangs of Love, 1991.
The Barbarians Are Coming by David Wong Louie Feast or famine. My plate is suddenly full. One day my Bliss is in Iowa, studying dentistry, gazing at the gums and decay of hog farmers and their kin. She claims she can eyeball a patient’s teeth and see through to what’s rotten. And now she’s coming home for a quick visit, a thousand miles, without even the excuse of a national holiday or school calendar break. “Don’t you have teeth to clean?” I asked hopefully when she called with the news. At my insistence we use long-distance sparingly, only when something truly important comes up. Since I’m still up in the air about our future as a couple, why throw away good money until I’m sure about what I’m doing: it’s the difference between carnations for her birthday and a cashmere sweater. I have us writing postcards back and forth. Short and sweet, public enough so things can never get too involved or serious. A picture’s worth a thousand words. Here’s the rest of the picture: I am twenty-six years old, and was recently anointed the new resident chef at the Richfield Ladies’ Club in Richfield, Connecticut. I make lunch and tea, and in the evenings I’m on my own. A few weeks back, an old classmate at the CIA (that’s the Culinary Institute of America), Jim King, now pastry chef for one of the Kennedy widows, and hating it, told an acquaintance of his who had just started her course work at the Yale Graduate School of Design to call me if she ever wanted a great home-cooked meal. Her name is Lisa Lee, and as she put it when she phoned and invited herself to dinner, “Sterling Lung, King says you’re fabulous. He said I’d like you even if you couldn’t cook.” I was flattered, of course, but as soon as we hung up, I felt crowded by her presumptions, as I do whenever some know-it-all enters my kitchen and counsels me on ways to improve whatever I have on the stove: more salt, more pepper, or once even more cardamom. To my credit, I did try to discourage her with the warning that New Haven is clear across the state, a solid two-and-a-half-hour drive away. “How can that be?” she said. “We’re in the same area code.” I couldn’t imagine what Jim King might have told her; Lisa Lee was undaunted. “I’m sure you’ll make the drive worthwhile.”
In bed that night I puzzled over the phone call. Why had Lisa Lee been put up to this? I tried to contact Jim King, but was unsuccessful; the alumni office at the CIA wouldn’t divulge his exact whereabouts, a condition of his employment. I mulled over the facts, scarce as they were. Finally I decided: Jim King must have a stake in this, he must be in pursuit of this Lisa Lee and is simply using me as bait. My role is that of a culinary Cupid. Fair enough. One day I’ll call in the favor, have King set me up with a Kennedy. I was so pleased with my revelation that I bounced out of bed and wrote to Bliss. On the back of a John and Yoko postcard (it’s their wedding day), I should’ve known better, but I spilled the beans. I put it all down, except the bit about King and the debt he’ll repay with a Kennedy. I’m innocent; totally up-front, right? But honesty isn’t enough for Bliss. She’ll never admit it, but some corn-yellow tooth is going to go unpulled because she’s jealous, in love, and coming east to protect what she believes is hers. So it goes, the laden table, the overflowing cup. I’m talking to Fuchs, the butcher I buy from. “How about a nice capon?” Fuchs says. He has muttonchop sideburns and a nose with hairs like alfalfa sprouts. I grimace; with his talk of capons, Fuchs suddenly assumes a sinister, perverted cast. I’ve never cooked capon before. Serving castrated rooster isn’t my bag. All I want is a four-, four-and-a-half-pounder, a biggish bird so Lisa Lee won’t think I’m going cheap on her. Fuchs tears off a square of orange butcher paper, which he lays on the scale, then plops the bird on top. “Fresh,” he says. “Be my guest, take a whiff. Fuchs won’t steer you wrong. Pound for pound, you can’t buy better than this.” Cool refrigerated air rises off the dank yellow skin. “I’m surprised at you, Fuchs. I would think you’d be more sympathetic to his plight,” I say, fingering the ex-rooster. “Why? Because I’m a member of the tribe? Because I was circumcised?” “No. Because you have one to circumcise.” I poke the bird. “Us guys have got to stick together, Fuchs. Think about it: Snip! And as if that’s not bad enough, they throw him back in with the others to plump, big and fat, and he struts around like cocks do, big man in barnyard, only the hens are snickering behind his back. Think how he must’ve felt.” “Sterling, what gives? Since when did you become psychologist to the poultry world?” He wraps the capon, ties the bundle with brown twine. “Hey, speaking of snip, how about what’s-her-name, the one they let play against the ladies at the U.S. Open last year. Whatever happened to her—or should I say ‘him’?” Renee Richards, tennis pro, who in a recent former life was Richard Raskind, medical doctor. I remember the first time I saw her in the newspaper, she was in her tennis whites, in one of those ridiculously skimpy skirts female players wear in order to show off their panties. I was immediately drawn to her looks, found her rather sexy even, that is, until I read the accompanying article detailing her surgical transformation. “Can’t tell a she from a he?” I scolded myself. “What kind of man are you?” A woman enters the store. A young housewife dressed in an outfit; her shoes, belt, and lipstick match. Fuchs snaps back to his business mode: “So how many of these capons would you like, sir? I guarantee you, the ladies at the club will adore this flesh.” The new customer is browsing the beef-pork-lamb end of the refrigerated case. I look at her, then at Fuchs, who rolls his eyes and whispers, “That one was never a doctor.” I nod; he’s got that right! “That’s it for today,” I say. “Hey, these birds are meaty,” Fuchs says, “but just one won’t feed that crowd at the club.” “It’s not for the ladies.” I laugh nervously. “I have this art student from Yale, a total stranger, coming for dinner. A friend of a friend, that sort of thing.”
“Why so glum? Yale, you say. At least she’s smart.” “How do you know she’s a she?” “Because a guy gets hamburger. She,” he indicates the housewife, with a tip of his head, “gets the bird.” “You’re right, she’s a she. Lisa Lee.” “Chinese too, Sterling! Better than good.” I stare at Fuchs as though he were a freak, natural or manmade, himself a capon. “Why’re you looking at me like Madame Chiang Kai-shek just burst from my forehead?” I shake the shock from my eyes. “I never imagined she might be Chinese.” “Madame Chiang?” “No, Lisa Lee.” The other customer sets her purse on top of the meat case. To her Fuchs says, “I’m almost through here, miss.” To me he says, “Lee’s a Chinese name. Am I right?” “Sure, but I’ve been thinking Robert E. Lee. Vivien Leigh. Sara Lee.” “And don’t forget Richard Day-lee and F. Lee Bay-lee.” “Be serious.” “And there’s that jujitsu guy—Bruce Lee.” Fuchs scratches his bald spot. “Geez, when you think of it, hardly anyone’s Chinese.” I hand over some money. Fuchs offers to charge the purchase to the Ladies’ Club account. “Personal use.” “Boy, you Chinese are honest,” Fuchs says. “Well, I wish I was in your shoes, having a blind date like that.” He winks, and at that moment, as half his face collapses, I see him as a man from an earlier time in human history, someone who could effortlessly tilt back the chin of a lamb and slash its throat. Leaving the store, I hear Fuchs say to his customer, “So, I see you like looking at meat—” I walk to the Ladies’ Club with the capon bundle under my arm. I know Fuchs must be right. Hanging around death as he does all day, he sees things. Lisa Lee is Chinese, which explains why Jim King has put her up to our meeting; he thinks we’ll make a cute couple together, a pair of matching bookends. I try to imagine Lisa Lee and immediately conjure up my sisters. I see them, one after the other, their faces like post office mug shots, and under their chins, instead of a serial number, is a plaque that reads “Lisa Lee.” I know it’s wrongheaded, even a bit spooky, and entirely indicative of bad wiring inside me, but in my heart every Chinese woman registers as an aunt, my mother, my sisters, or the Hong Kong girl whose picture my mother keeps taped to the kitchen mirror. They hold no romantic interest for me. I pass Kim the greengrocer. People in town think he is Chinese. I backtrack, enter the store. Lisa Lee: bean sprouts, snow peas. I rarely do business with Kim, who charges four times wholesale and won’t cut me a break, ripping me off, his Asian brother, along with everyone else. Six bucks a pound for snow peas! Kim’s making a mint and getting fat, even his wirerims look fat. And he speaks only enough English to kiss up to the housewives with his “America is good place,” “You look nice,” “Cheap, cheap” stuff. With me, he doesn’t bother—what is another Oriental going to get him? I pay, and feel pickpocketed. My own money, and what’s it going to get me? “Not so cheap,” I say to Kim, with a smile, angling for a discount. But he just eyes me, a stray that’s wandered in off the street. “You not have to buy,” he says, and shrugs. Normally I have no use for bean sprouts and snow peas, even at half the price. They are not part of who I am as a chef. But just as tennis requires a can of balls, a milkshake a drinking straw, a dinner guest named Lisa Lee requires the appropriate vegetable
matter. “Blind date,” I say, holding my purchases up by my ear. I can see from Kim’s blank expression that he has failed to grasp my meaning: he can’t see that my hands are tied, that I must go against the grain, that under routine circumstances I wouldn’t tolerate this economic exploitation. Kim says, “America is land of plenty. Why you want a blind girl for?” When I get home—that is, the small apartment that comes with the job, four hundred square feet, the top floor of the carriage house in the rear of the Ladies’ Club property—I find a postcard from Bliss in the mail. A giant ear of corn that takes up the entire length of a flatbed truck. She alternates between sending the mutant-corn postcard and sending the one of the colossal hog with antelope horns. She writes: “A guy comes in complaining about a toothache but he doesn’t know which tooth aches. The X rays don’t know any better, and neither do my professors. But then I had a hunch, this feeling; I borrowed a light and checked his eyes and his ears. And bingo! There was a moth in there and a foot of yarn! When it was all over, Moth Ears asked me out for a beer. He said, ‘Are you spoken for?’ I had never heard it put that way. Sterling, have you spoken for me? I love you. See you Friday, the 16th.” I check the calendar. Today is Friday, the fifteenth. Is she coming today, or tomorrow, the sixteenth? Friday, as she says, or Saturday? Something’s wrong. As much as I hate having to do so, I have to phone her, paying premium daytime rates, no less. When she doesn’t answer, I’m relieved, spared the toll charges— though I know that’s an inappropriate response. She’s probably already in the air. I need to straighten the matter out. I try Lisa Lee’s number; she isn’t at home either. Perhaps both are speeding, in opposite directions—Lisa Lee from the east, Bliss from the west—to the same trembling destination. I rinse the bird, salt its body cavity, and curse Fuchs. Before Fuchs, Lisa Lee was just a hungry student coming for a homecooked meal; a stranger shows up uninvited at your door, you feed him. Or her. There’s a right and a wrong, and I was prepared to do the right thing. In the end even Bliss wouldn’t have objected to that. But talking to Fuchs has put me in a fix. Now my innocent little dinner, my mission of mercy, has transformed into a date. With a Chinese girl, of all things! Bliss and I had been seeing each other on a regular basis for only a few months when she asked me to move with her to Iowa and set up house. I told her no, I had my job with the ladies. She then offered to defer the start of her second year of dental school and stay with me. Fearing the escalation in the level of our commitment to each other such a sacrifice would signify, I had to tell her no again. I was flattered, but was even more bewildered by her eagerness to alter her plans. In my eyes we were, at best, a fringe couple. Yes, we were going out. Sleeping together. I was happy to have her in my life. I was new in town, knocking myself out trying to impress my employers, and if I’d been living close to friends, in familiar surroundings, I might not have indulged the relationship as I did. We were pals, we hung out, we ate lots of food, we drank good wine, we had sex occasionally. But moving in together, in the Midwest? Was she kidding? That was far beyond where I was. The trouble then, as now, was that I never meant for things to get too serious. At the risk of sounding like a junior high schooler: I liked her but I didn’t love her. I towel off the capon, massage mustard onto its skin. It feels no different from any of the hundreds of chickens I’ve cooked, but I can’t get used to touching this thing. Bliss would have no qualms; after all, she wants to drill teeth for a living. Nothing seems to bother her. When she wedged her way into my life, arriving unannounced like an angel with a pot of soup, I was sick, a vibrating mass of germs, but she laid on her hands and helped me undress and made my bed and massaged my back and
sat nearby, singing French folk songs and Joni Mitchell. I couldn’t sleep because of the singing but was too polite, indeed, too beholden, indeed, too afraid to ask her to cut short her concert—that was what it was, for she seemed to pause between songs for imaginary applause. The moment came when I dislodged my arm, which was pillowing my head, and swung it down to my hip, cutting wide arcs that I hoped would alert her to the fact I was still awake and miserable, bored, and ready for surrender. On one of these sweeps she grabbed my hand—later she would argue I had offered it to her—and when my arm pendulumed up toward my head, she leapt out of her chair like a fish from the sea. Without the slightest break in her song she was lured into my bed—so goes her version of how we ended up making love that first time. As we lay naked between the sheets, chills from the fever stiffening my body, she held me to her enormous heat and asked if she might come again, another day, with more soup, and unsteadily, I said, “Yes.” I admit I was the one who had made first contact. Soon after I arrived in Richfield, I saw her name in our college alumni magazine and called her. We had been marginal friends at Swarthmore, both art history majors, but she was a couple of classes ahead of me, and we traveled in different social circles (her group was acid and orgies; mine was wine and one-night stands). After running hard with the “in crowd” her first four semesters, she turned serious as a junior, finding peace in the study of Gothic cathedrals. At the art history majors’ costume party during her Senior Week, we spoke for the first time. She went as Notre Dame, a dishwasher box, with splendidly painted details of the original and posterboard flying buttresses hanging off at her sides like spider legs; her face was that of a gargoyle. Guys joked about coming to worship, going on a pilgrimage. I went as Warhol’s Brillo box. Our costumes were huge hits but left us on the sidelines, victims of our own genius—what a drag trying to boogie with your body in a cardboard box. When I tracked her down at her parents’ place in New Canaan, she was completely surprised. We met for lunch on one of my first off-days from the Ladies’ Club. She was no longer the hippie she’d been in school. While her long, frizzy brown hair was still her most distinguishing attribute, in the four years since I had last seen her she had lost the roundness in her face and had traded in her T-shirts and Indian print skirts for tailored clothing. Between graduation and dental school, she had worked for her father, who owned and managed properties and acquired things. Even though she slept under his roof and received a salary from him, she seemed to harbor boundless hostility toward her father. In her lingo, he was “capitalist pig scum,” who apparently felt morally justified in his own brand of bigotry because his parents were Holocaust survivors. After the initial weekend lunches at local restaurants, I invited her to my apartment for dinner. Then came the day she showed up at my door with the soup. I rub the mustard onto the capon’s skin, with its largish pores and nipple-like bumps; the mustard’s whole seeds, tiny orbs rolling between my palm and the lubricated skin, produce a highly erotic sensation. The telephone rings and I jump, embarrassed by the pleasure I’m taking. My mind leaps from the capon to Lisa Lee. She must be calling to cancel our date; perhaps she has a project due and can’t come to dinner. But the instant I lift the receiver I realize I don’t want to hear that message at all. “I’m here! I’m here, I’m here, I’m here!” It’s Bliss. Originally, she explains, she planned to fly in tomorrow, but a classmate, Ray, has a wedding to attend in Greenwich, and she caught a ride, saving money, his drivebuddy. At this moment they are outside Syracuse, still hours shy of Connecticut.
“I’m skipping my parents,” she says. She sounds all juiced up, still speedy from the road. “It’s a hit-and-run visit. I’m not even stopping in, they’ll want to feed me, take me shopping, you know, monopolize my time. I’m going to stay with you.” Love is a lot like cooking. When either is successful, there’s a delicate chemistry in operation, a fine balance between the constituent parts. If you have the perfect recipe for vichyssoise, you don’t monkey with it. We’ve had a workable arrangement. The U.S. Postal Service has kept us connected; we have a standing agreement to take holidays together. That’s plenty. Why spoil a good thing? “We’re going to stop by Randazzo’s,” Bliss says. “Come join us. I’m letting Ray buy me drinks.” She informs me that Ray is a third-year dental student; he has been “a good help” to her, and twice has taken her hunting for ring-necked pheasant in the harvested cornfields. “I’m stuck here,” I tell her. “I’m experimenting with a new recipe.” Which is the truth. “Always other women,” she says. I hear the sarcasm in her voice, understand she means the club ladies I have to feed, but suspect she also means Lisa Lee. For a moment I consider putting an end to the intrigue, inviting her and that guy Ray to join us for dinner. A foursome around the table. Me and Bliss. Ray and Lisa Lee. At the mere thought of such a pairing I experience a biting pang of jealousy. “Silvy, what’s the matter?” she says, into the silent line. “It’s me, Bliss. Are you upset with me? Come on, tell me. Do you feel threatened by Ray?” I keep seeing the four of us around the table; Nay, some generic Midwesterner in a hunting cap and ammo vest, and Lisa Lee, who at that moment I imagine as my sister Lucy. “It’s true we spent the night together in the car. But he’s just a friend.” I stay silent. “I’m sorry. Nothing happened. Don’t be that way. You know me. I’m already spoken for.” After we hang up I try to reach Lisa Lee again. No answer, of course, she’s also on her way. But I don’t panic. Bliss has hundreds of miles to go, a couple of hours’ drinking at Randazzo’s. If I’m really lucky she’ll catch dinner there. She fills the doorway, her head and its swirl of dark hair eclipse the early-evening sun. Her face is in shadow. She stabs jugs of wine into the room: “I got Inglenook red and white,” she says. “I didn’t know how you swing, so I blanketed the field.” I backpedal from the door, and as soon as I vacate a space, Lisa Lee fills it. She is six feet tall. My first thought is, Where is Lisa Lee, the Chinese Lisa Lee that Fuchs had promised, where is she in this high-rise protoplasm? Still, I can’t help noticing her beauty, the cool sort, good American bones and narrow green eyes. I’ve seen her before, especially the gangliness, the I-beam angularity in her cheeks, through her shoulders. Then it hits me, like the icicle that fell six stories and opened my head when I was a boy: She can pass for Renee Richards’s double. “Are you all right?” she asks. “Didn’t King tell you?” Tell me what, that she, Lisa Lee, was once a he? “It’s okay. You can stare,” she says. “I’m used to it, people are always gawking at my size.” She eats and drinks lustily; she has so much space to fill. I think of horses I’ve seen, their magnificent dimensions, the monumental daily task of keeping their bodies stoked. For all the energy and attention she gives to her food, she maintains a nonstop conversation, remarkable for its seamless splice of words, breaths, bites, and swallows. “What do you call these?” she says, helping herself to the snow peas.
“Snow peas.” “No,” she says. “I mean in Chinese.” I ask about her studies. I don’t comprehend much of her response. It’s all very abstract, highly theoretical. But in the end she confesses that what she’s truly into is interior design. Every designer with a name in Milan and New York, she begins, is a man. She says this has to change. Women are cooped up in their homes all day, surrounded by things designed by men. “Knives and forks,” she says, “is macho eating. Stab and cut, out on the hunt.” She critiques my flatware, my stemware, my dishes. It’s junk, cheap stuff, but she’s a grad student and finds things to say, just as Bliss is awed by exotic gum diseases. She loads up on capon. I’ve barely touched any of the bird, too much excitement, and I’m still too squeamish. Call it crossspecies male solidarity. But I love watching someone enjoy my cooking, especially a woman, one who eats (there’s no other way of putting it) like a man, with pig-at-the-trough mindlessness, so different from Bliss, with her on-again, off-again diets, her sensitivity to ingredients, her likes and dislikes, allergies, calorie counts, moral guidelines. Lisa Lee takes on a leg, itself almost a pound of flesh. As she sinks her teeth into the perfectly browned skin, my mind explodes with the inevitable question: Why Bliss? How can she say she loves me if she doesn’t love all of me, including my food? What am I but a cook? You love me, love what I cook! How should I regard a so-called lover who would extract essential ingredients from my dishes, capers, for instance, her fingers pinching the offending orbs like fleas off a dog, then flicking them onto the table, as if she had seen Warning: Radioactive Materials printed on each itty-bitty bud. I imagine Bliss encountering the roasted capon, which to a normal diner like Lisa Lee is just a plump bird. But Bliss has an uncanny knack for putting two and two together, even when there isn’t a two and two to put together. “What are you trying to do to me?” she would say, her suspicions touching me like the worst accusation, and I would hang my head in shame, accepting responsibility for the rooster’s sad fate, feeling the tug of its peppercorn-sized testicles that guilt has strung around my neck. Souvenirs of war. Men! Disgusted with me and the bird, she would go on diets: For days, no meat. For weeks, no sex. Lisa Lee relinquishes her knife and fork. “That was so good! You’re everything King said you’d be.” She smiles, greasy lips, a fleck of capon skin on her chin like a beauty mark. Her satisfied look pleases me to no end. I start to clear the table. The jug of white she brought is gone. Amazing we choked down so much cheap wine. “If you’re a man,” she says, “you’ll uncap the other bottle.” In the kitchen I set down the dishes, and as I open the red, the telephone rings. “We’re on Eighty-four, near Poughkeepsie,” Bliss reports. They’re at a rest area, making use of the facilities. “I’m going to skip the drinks with Ray. I’ve already worried you enough about him. I’m so, so sorry.” I watch as Lisa Lee stacks the dirty dishes. What remarkable size! An infinite capacity to consume and thereby to love. Her mastications were gestures of love. She catches me staring, holds a finger perpendicular to her lips, admonishing herself to keep quiet. She seems to know who it is I’m talking to, seems familiar and comfortable with situations of this sort. She steps free of her noisy shoes, and as I watch her move toward me, I wish I could just as easily step from my entanglement with Bliss. Pluck her from my life as cold-bloodedly as she would a bay leaf from a stew I’ve made, a tooth from someone’s head. “Don’t change your plans because of me,” I say. “You like Randazzo’s. Have some drinks. I’ll see you afterwards. I’m not going anywhere.” Lisa Lee takes the opened jug of red from my hands, fishes a glass from the sink, pours, and drinks. I watch her swallow, the little hitch in her throat; if only the hitch were the clasp of a
zipper that ran down to her navel, which unzipped revealed Lisa Lee’s Chinese self. I want this to happen for Bliss’s sake: should she arrive while Lisa Lee is still here, I could simply pass her off as my cousin. Bliss would love her. I check my watch. With or without drinks they can’t possibly get here before I’ve served coffee and dessert and sent Lisa Lee on her way. I get off the phone with Bliss. We leave things hanging. I’ll take care of business on my end; I can’t worry about what I can’t control. “Where does this go?” Lisa Lee holds the platter containing the remains of the capon. “Let me take that. I’ll pack you some leftovers to take home.” “What kind of man are you?” she says, welding hands to hips. “You’re going to make me drive all that way, in my condition?” Do I have a choice? True, the picture of her backing down the driveway is frightening enough, forget the two and a half hours on the interstate. The decent thing to do would be to tuck her safely into my bed for the night. But Bliss stands in the way of such a right and moral act. What Lisa Lee needs is sleep, to pass the hours of her overindulgence out of harm’s way. A night’s undisturbed digestion, then, upon waking, to eat and love again. Bliss will deny her her well-deserved rest. So much more the pity, sleep the simple thing it is. It’s a staggering thought, yet I know that before the night is through I will do Bliss’s bidding. She will insist that Lisa Lee must go. And should Lisa Lee, heaven forbid, doze while she’s behind the wheel and jump the center divider, a grand jury surely will charge Bliss, not me. Still, what comfort is that? I brew a pot of coffee. From the living room Lisa Lee calls, “What kind of wine smells like that?” Minutes later I carry in a tray with coffee and a rich chocolate torte. She is seated on the pea-green couch. My rickshaw driver lamp gives her skin a yellowish hue. Her eyes narrow in concentration, as she fastidiously rolls a joint. “What are you doing?” First her expression is, Don’t mess with me; then she says, “You’re not chicken, are you? A girl only lives once.” She slips the joint into her smiling mouth and slowly reams it through her lips. We drink the coffee, we eat the chocolate torte. Afterward she seems more together, the alchemy of bread dough in a 375degree oven. Now I can send her home—Bliss can send her home—with regrets but diminished fear for her safety. Then she lights up. The marijuana will counteract the effects of the caffeine in the coffee and the chocolate. When I run this past her she says, “Maybe pot stimulates me. You don’t know my body.” But I do know. Her body, her outsized frame, its long rib cage that imprisons the real Lisa Lee, my counterfeit cousin inside her. There’s the reason for her vast appetite; she must eat for two, and like her master, the one trapped inside also loves my food, also loves all of me. She offers me a hit. I scissor the joint, just to get it away from her. She watches me, with a smile that she knows my secrets. “I like your hands,” she coos in a hushed tone. “I like what they do to ordinary things. What a miracle that chicken was.” Should I tell her the truth? Straighten her out as to which fowl is which? She doesn’t need my help, her powers of perception are unparalleled; after all, she saw the “miracle” in the dish, and the transformation of the capon into something delicious, respectable, beautiful is nothing short of miraculous. Chicken! I’m the chicken around here. Too chicken to insist that Lisa Lee stay; too chicken to tell Bliss not to come, tell her she’s not “spoken for.” I’m brave only with my parents; I stared down their anger when (at their nosy insistence) I confessed I was dating someone (Bliss), and they acted hurt and surprised
she wasn’t Chinese, even though none of my previous girlfriends was of the Asian persuasion either. What do these girls see in you? You’re so stupid, you think they think you’re pretty, don’t you? I defended myself with a raging silence. But what do they see? I’m a decent enough guy, but there are plenty of decent guys; I’m competent in bed, but competence is rampant. The standard is Robert Redford, and on more than one occasion I’ve stood before the bathroom mirror with a picture of the actor held up to my face and gauged the extent of my deficiencies. What Bliss sees in me, I can’t answer. The mechanics of her fierce affection is a mystery. And it’s this mystery that freezes me, makes love cruel. In all my relationships love has felt like charity, needed and hungrily received; I am Pip from Great Expectations, fat on another’s generosity but crippled by the uncertainty over what motivates my benefactor’s heart. With Lisa Lee at least I know she loves my food. The telephone rings again. Lisa Lee smirks, arches her eyebrows. “Popular guy, aren’t you?” she says. “You don’t have to answer, you know.” A temptation, a perfect opportunity to bump Bliss from the picture. But I don’t have the nerve. Bliss is at Randazzo’s, ahead of schedule. They’re going to have drinks and a bite to eat. For a split second I take offense, am actually jealous: eating at a spaghetti joint, when she knows I’m concocting something new and fabulous in my kitchen. I’m shocked by the speed with which they’ve made Connecticut, but grateful for the regained hours her dining out provides. “That’s fine. I’ll be here, waiting for you,” I say. For reasons unknown, I add, “But tell me, what made you change your mind? You said you were coming here directly.” She says, “At first I thought I had upset you because I was traveling in close quarters with a man. But then I realized I can’t upset you. You don’t care what I do. So it must be that you’d rather I hadn’t come. I’ll just go to my parents’ house.” “That’s silly. It’s just that my hands are full.” Then I say, “You’re spending an awful lot of time with that Ray.” And why shouldn’t I say this? It costs me nothing, and it’s what she wants to hear. There’s a prolonged silence on the other end, after which, with the usual cheerful lilt back in her voice, Bliss says, “You really mean that?” After I hang up I stay in the kitchen and pack a doggie bag for Lisa Lee. Fuchs was right about the capon’s size. A lot of meat. Big. And there’s never been a blinder date. Wait till I tell him. I can hear him now: “Okay, so she’s not Chinese, you can’t have everything. Already you got smart. Now you say she’s beautiful and handsome too! And big! You can’t buy any better—” When I return to the living room she’s no longer there. At first I’m relieved, one problem solved. But immediately I realize her absence depresses me. I find her in my bed, apparently asleep, her jeans on, her blouse off. The top sheet slashes diagonally across her, toga style, leaving her shoulder exposed. When I check, she’s taking sleep’s slow, steady breaths. “Hey, hey,” I say, tapping her on the shoulder. She opens and closes her eyes. “Mmmmm ...” she says, but there is no telling why. Asleep again, she shifts her position and does something with her hands, and the sheet flies off, magically, and she’s naked for the briefest instant, and I’m not sure if it’s happened by accident or design. The fleeting sight of her long, lanky torso burns into my memory, her breasts as tidy as teacups upended on a clear pine board. I sit on the edge of the mattress. “Lisa,” I say softly, “wake up.” Lisa Lee yawns, rolls onto her side, curls her body around my spine. It must be the surprise of our bodies touching and the thoroughness of the contact that make me feel enveloped by her. I lean into the heat of her skin, as plants turn toward light, palm
her shoulder, and shake her. But my heart isn’t behind the business of rousing her, it’s something I do, a phantom order I have no choice but to obey. How does this look to someone outside, peeking in through the window? You see a woman in bed—asleep or resting—at peace with her choices in life, safe and secure, and a man on the edge of the mattress, which, to judge from his posture, must seem like the very edge of the world to him; he is alone on the brink, though the woman is there; and you see how worries have fused his vertebrae into a single length of bone, how rest won’t come easily to this man, who wants to leap but can’t. Lisa Lee stretches, tightening her muscles, pushing roughly away from me. At once I miss her ardently, it is out of all proportion, but true. Then it comes to me in a rush. And I feel tricked and doublecrossed when I realize that the person I’m missing most right now is Bliss. I miss how she tells me what to think, what to do. Once, back in the early days, when she ate and loved unquestioningly, I prepared a simple dinner, from recipes I can’t even recall, and at its conclusion she exclaimed, “That meal is beyond seduction. That, darling, was a proposal of marriage.” Weeks later she started dropping hints about living together, about one day marrying, and when I grew exasperated with such talk, she fired back that I, with that meal, had planted the idea of marriage in her head. I want Bliss to come to my rescue, as she did with soup in the beginning, my personal Red Cross. No one chooses the Red Cross, but when disaster strikes, the Red Cross is there. Lisa Lee sweetly, softly belches. Her loving appetite! I study the fleck of roasted skin still on her chin, the dark brown of a nipple. I remember some graffiti in the men’s room at cooking school:
There once was a girl named Red, Whose passions were stirred when fed. A little French wining, Fine Epicurean dining, And soon you’ll be eating in bed. But Lisa Lee is not like that girl Red. Lisa Lee isn’t about love or pleasure. What’s made her so right, all night, is the fact she isn’t Bliss. It’s time to act. Time to put my life in order. I swing my legs onto the bed and slowly slide down next to her. She drapes a heavy arm across my waist and breathes metabolized smoke and wine against my face. When she shifts her weight, her knee scrapes the top of my knee, her pelvis bumps my thigh. She’s making all the moves. My record with Bliss is still clean, my hands as good as tied to my sides. But why hold back? Bliss isn’t the Red Cross, her soul isn’t dressed in nurse’s whites. Her habitual kindness, like American foreign aid, comes with strings attached. Around the room I see her touches: the curtains she sewed; the plants she bought and reminds me to water; the Matisse goldfish poster that she framed; the bookcase she knocked together, painted black, and stocked with thin volumes of poetry. This is nothing but interior design. This night’s struggle is about my interior design, how I am configured inside, how I want the four chambers of my heart arranged, my likes and loves, my duty and desire, not how she wants those parts to be. If I accept Lisa Lee’s sleepy advances, I can do so with the knowledge that no one is better equipped than Bliss to weather the pain of this bum’s indiscretion. She has the recipe for the healing soup, and strong hands to catch herself when she falls. And a heart that all along has loved for two. Lisa Lee pulls me closer, grinds her nose into my neck, rubs her zipper against my hip, and I sense that it is time. But when I
turn to kiss her, her body suddenly goes limp, rubbery-limbed, her joints in aspic, and she softly, undeniably, snores. I slip out of bed. In the kitchen I stand staring at the night’s ruins, the capon carcass, the dishes. Lisa Lee’s scent lifts from my clothing. That’s all I’m doing—standing and staring—my mind blank. Then I realize it isn’t quite just standing and staring, I’m actually waiting. For the Red Cross, for 911, for sympathetic Band-Aid-hearted Bliss to tell me what to do with the person in my bed, before she arrives and discovers her herself. I run a bath. Hide the evidence. Get rid of Lisa Lee’s scent, her vague perfume. I can accomplish that much myself. I look in on Lisa Lee. I call her. She doesn’t stir. I shut the bedroom door. Let her sleep. Sleep will protect her. I undress and climb into the bath. The water is hot, my skin reddens, darkening the way paper stains with oil. I am poached. In a soup. As a boy I cultivated a reputation for my tolerance of discomforts. On car trips I would stand so others could sit; I would eat slightly moldy fruit; I would wait for hours while my parents shopped in Chinatown, would wear my sisters’ hand-medowns and endure scalding bath water, and never complain. It was a boy’s notion of heroic duty then, it’s a grasp at self-styled absolution now. Slowly I recline, until I have submerged my shoulders. Soon I pop my legs out—it’s too hot—and prop my heels on the edge of the tub, steam swirling off my skin, and I imagine it isn’t just steam but some essence of myself that I’m better left without, lifting. Bliss likes my legs, and she has told me so, and with their hair weighted down by water, they are more apparent, better defined. Once she said that I had the body of a Renaissance Christ, his lean, tight torso, evident ribs, and well-muscled legs that reflected a society on the go, exploring seas and deserts, in a time enamored with substantiality, a heavenly earth; it’s a Christ fed on game, jungle fowl from new worlds, spiced meats, sesame seeds, saffron, silk, and gold. “There’s more there than meets the eye,” she said. The muscularity of the Christs in the oils of the Florentine Leonardo and the Venetian Titian and their disciples isn’t just an expression of piety, it’s also a reflection of their patrons’ good fortunes. These paintings achieve paradoxical feats of illusion—substance and spirit; they want you to see what is there, and believe it, and what is not there, and believe it. When Bliss and I first got together, she told me she could read a person’s life simply by looking in his mouth. I loved this idea, my imagination locked on palmists and the articulate lines in hands, or psychics who can predict a life by the shape of a skull. “Tell me about myself,” I said. “At one time,” she said, “you brushed with a hard toothbrush. The size of your cavities suggests you’ve had good dental care.” And so on. But not a word about my luck, about my destiny, about whether I’m a trustworthy or a dangerous man, about what will happen next. I close my eyes and sink deeper into the water. Someone knocks at the apartment door. I sit up, splash water on my face, then lean back, and wait. The door opens and closes. I could have set the deadbolt, but thought better of doing so. That would not be playing fair. It’s a long time before she comes to the bathroom, and by then, as is her wont, and now her burden, she must’ve put two and two together: Lisa Lee’s car in the drive, the wineglasses, the empty bottle, the dishes, the bird’s naked bones. Lisa Lee, of course, in my bed. She has to have figured things out by the time she opens the bathroom door and steps inside, preceded by a rush of the outer room’s cooler air. She stands just this side of the doorway, her brown hair swept high on her head, wearing a long white skirt, a white tank top, a man’s unbuttoned workshirt. And a light lipstick because she knows my weakness for girlie things. Now her sane medium build and middling good looks are breathtaking. She hides from
me her clenched, polished teeth. Who is that monster in my bed? You prefer that Amazon to me? How dare you? Get your ass out of that tub and rid our home of that bitch! But she says none of these things. She says, “I don’t see why it is that you don’t love me,” and steps forward, deeper into the bathroom, crossing the small distance between door and tub in four steps, instead of the usual two. With those extra steps she gives me a chance to formulate a response, one that will save the moment, dispute her statement, wash away her hurt. Say, What do you mean not love you, of course I do, I do, I do. Or say, Someone in our bed? Your eyes are playing tricks on you. Or say, What did you expect? I am what I am, a twenty-six-year-old man who naturally dreads the C word, commitment, as others do cancer. But I do the worst thing, though I won’t know it for years. I close my eyes and allow her to approach. I feel her steps, feel her kneel by the tub. I smell her citrusy perfume, a fresh, recent application, barely diluted by her own sweat and oils, the fragrance borne by the vapor rising from the bath. She scoops water with her hand hooked like a flamingo’s beak, and she might have shared the wildly strange coloring of that fabulous bird just then, so incomprehensible is she. “This is the last,” she says. “It’s done. There’s nothing in me that forgives you.” When she brings the water up to my head I cower, as if what rains down were sharp pieces of glass. The water trickles through her fingers and falls on my hair and into my eyes. She washes my back, shampoos my hair. I lift my head, defying the force of her hands, and look at her amazed through the bubbles. She is two people: she’s biting her bottom lip, trembling, though fighting back tears, but on top her big brown eyes have shrunken to tiny pellets of anger and hate. She pushes my head forward, chin to chest, and digging her fingers once again into my soapy hair works such a thick lather that when she massages my scalp it feels as if the top of my head were falling off. As if she has hold of my mind, pulling me this way then that. She says, “If I had my pliers here, you know what I’d do? I’d yank every tooth from her fucking head.” Strangely enough, her voice is stripped of hurt or passion. And that is what breaks my heart: I am her earthquake, her hurricane, her personal flood. Doesn’t she see that? I want to save her. I should know the way, simply follow her example. Tell her to stay angry, let it grow and abscess, until her only alternative is to yank me from her life. But the moment passes when she starts rinsing my hair, both hands scooping water. She helps me from the bath. My legs are wobbly, and I have to touch her here and there for support. Everywhere I touch her blue workshirt I leave a dark handprint that spreads. She grabs a large purple towel. She holds it open, stretched wide between her hands, and after the slightest hesitation I go to her, let her wrap the towel over my head, across my shoulders, let her pull my body against hers. “It’s over,” she says, working the towel roughly, “it’s like you’re dead now.” I am dazed, spinning wildly inside, losing myself in this dark, sheltering place, under the wing of some strange bird.
* * * “An ambitious and appealing first novel, brilliant in its scathing insights… Louie’s coruscating novel is ull of astonishing writing, but the real delight is his wit and humor as he keeps plucking away the rickly petals of his characters’ desires until he finds their hearts.” —Publishers Weekly
“Louie is elegant, funny, a touch spooky, and he has as fine a hair-trigger control of alienation and absurdity as any of the best of his generation.” —Richard Eder, New York Newsday “Louie’s work transcends the restrictions of ethnic labels and markets: He’s not just a talented young sian-American writer; he’s a talented young write, period.” —Charles Solomon, Los Angeles Times Book Review
Chinese-American seeks identity in ironic tale by Robin Vidimos The chasm between generations is both deep and wide in The Barbarians Are Coming. In his first novel, David Wong Louie narrates the trials of a first-generation Chinese-American struggling through cultural divides to reconcile his roles as son, husband father and adult. It’s a darkly comic story filled with irony, but this entertaining tale of one man’s growth into his heritage, and into understanding maturity, is ultimately quite moving. Sterling Lung, a 26-year-old bachelor, is out on his own and struggling mightily to settle into his skin. A recent graduate of the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, he’s taken his first job as the resident chef for the Bridgefield Ladies’ Club. The only clouds on his optimistic horizon are the pervasive expectations of the Connecticut ladies at the club, of his parents, even of his best friend the local butcher, that he act as Chinese as he looks. Sought distance It’s a familiar and long-running battle. Sterling, the youngest of four children and his parents’ only son, has gone to great lengths to distance himself from the pervasive culture of his immigrant parents. His parents’ long-standing plan involves an arranged marriage to a Chinese girl of their choosing. Sterling responds by defiantly avoiding any relationships with Oriental women, saying he finds them as attractive as another sister. He sidesteps his parents’ career plans for him, subversively pursuing cooking over a medical career. He’s not even a good Chinese chef, preferring to concentrate his efforts on mastering French cuisine. His unspoken but well-demonstrated life goal is to be as American as possible. His ongoing battle with parents Genius and Zsa Zsa has receded to background noise when he gets a call from his current girlfriend. Bliss, a nice Jewish girl from Connecticut, takes a weekend break from her dental school stint to tell Sterling he’s going to be a father. Takes the plunge Faced with the imminent reality of giving his parents a much-wanted grandson, though not quite in the way they’d hoped, Sterling agrees to marry Bliss. It’s a step that plunges him into a new culture, different from the one he’s worked to escape, but one whose rules and traditions are equally strong. This plot lays good groundwork for a fine comedy of manners. Louie, however, delves deep under this surface with rich results. As Sterling, through his sons, is drawn into a Jewish culture, he’s also pulled into the Chinese one. It’s a journey he pursues under duress, but it is the only path open to him that will lead to an understanding of who he is. The Barbarians Are Coming is told largely as a first-person narrative, from Sterling’s point of view. It is an effective device
that draws the reader into the mind and heart of this solipsistic, often sarcastic, young man. His determination to escape his parents’ controlling grasp is understandable, but a story told from only Sterling’s point of view would be shallow and unbalanced. Full understanding dawns when Louie inserts flashbacks from Genius’ life as a struggling immigrant. It then becomes clear that Genius’ love, an emotion that Sterling thought nonexistent, was truly there, though it was demonstrated through meeting responsibilities, not through gestures of affection or even approval. The picture that emerges is a culture of duty, certainly felt by the son for the father, but just as clearly from the father to the son. It’s a revelation that doesn’t make the picture warmer or happier, but does make it understandable. The heart of the book lies in Sterling’s acceptance of himself, and his father, in the context of both cultures, and ultimately accepting that the Chinese and American pieces are both essential parts of his being. —The Denver Post Robin Vidimos is a freelance writer and book reviewer who regularly contributes to Buzz in the ’Burbs. Book Review, Fall 2000, Ploughshares
rev. of The Barbarians Are Coming by David Wong Louie by Don Lee Sterling Lung has problems. The narrator of David Wong Louie’s first novel, The Barbarians Are Coming, is a recent graduate of the CIA—the Culinary Institute of America—and he has landed what he regards as a plum job, cooking haute cuisine lunches at a Wasp ladies’ club in Connecticut. But soon enough, Sterling’s parents conspire to import a picture bride, Yuk, from Hong Kong for him to marry and carry on the Lung line; his sometime girlfriend, Bliss, a Jewish dental student, announces that she’s pregnant; his father falls ill with renal cancer; and the snotty ladies at the club, who “talk without moving their lips,” want him to cook, of all things, Chinese dishes, that “barefoot food, eat-with-sticks food. Under harvest moons, rinse off the maggots, slice, and steam . . . squatting-in-still-water food. Poleacross-your-shoulders, hooves-in-the-house food.” His entire life, he has been rebelling against his culture and his parents, immigrants who have the droll nicknames of Genius and Zsa Zsa. Sterling grew up in the back of their laundry in Lynbrook, Long Island, and instead of becoming a doctor as they’d wished, he went to Swarthmore and majored in art history, then trained to become a French chef. “In their eyes I was a scoundrel, a dumb-as-dirt ingrate. This was the reward for their sacrifice, leaving home for America, for lean lives among the barbarians.” He has proved to be a particular disappointment to his father, with whom his relationship has always been remote and cold. During one hilarious and poignant scene, Genius seems to cherish a used refrigerator more than his son, lovingly wiping it down after it has been installed: “Cut off from the rest of the family, my father basked in the refrigerator’s chilled air, its silvery vapors, its measly light’s glow. What I saw in my father’s
gentle cleaning of each egg holder’s deep dimple was kindness, and the pang I felt, like fingers fanning in my throat, was envy.” As in his story collection, Pangs of Love, Louie draws great humor from clashes of assimilation. Some of the best moments in The Barbarians Are Coming involve Morton Sass, Bliss’s father, a mendacious investor who convinces Sterling, after he marries Bliss and bears two sons, to host a cooking show on cable TV. Later, Sass sells the rights to the show, and it’s retooled into a humiliating Chinese parody called The Peeking Duck, with Sterling assuming the voice of Hop Sing, the houseboy on Bonanza, as he gives viewers what they want: “Today I make velly famous dish . . . Shlimp and robster sauce! This one velly good and velly chlicky dish. Aw time peoples say, ‘Wah! Where is robster?’ ” Yet the heart and power of Louie’s novel lies more in the tragedy, not the comedy, of the Lung men—the father, doomed by a love affair with a white woman when he first arrives in the U.S.; the son, while begrudging his father’s aloofness, unable to see the selfish distance he himself creates, failing his parents, wife, and children, all in the “desperate attempt to overcome the unremarkableness of being a Lung.” Don Lee is the author of a new novel, Wrack and Ruin. He is also the author of the novel Country of Origin, which won an American Book Award, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and a Mixed Media Watch Image Award for Outstanding Fiction, and the story collection Yellow, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He received the 2007 Fred R. Brown Literary Award from the University of Pittsburgh. He has received an O. Henry Award and a Pushcart Prize, and his stories have been published The Kenyon Review, GQ, New England Review, The North American Review, The Gettysburg Review, Bamboo Ridge, Manoa, American Short Fiction, and Glimmer Train. From 1989 to 2007, he was the editor of the literary journal Ploughshares. From 2007 to 2008, he taught creative writing at Macalester College in St. Paul. He will begin teaching in the graduate creative writing program at Western Michigan University, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the fall of 2008.
9
The Management of Grief by Mukherjee Bharati
A woman I don’t know is boiling tea the Indian way in my kitchen. “There are a lot of women I don’t know in my kitchen, whispering, and moving tactfully. They open doors, rummage through the pantry, and try not to ask me where things are kept. They remind me of when my sons were small, on Mother’s Day or when Vikram and I were tired, and they would make big, sloppy omelets. I would lie in bed pretending I didn’t hear them. Dr. Sharma, the treasurer of the Indo-Canada Society, pulls me into the hallway. He wants to know if I am worried about money. His wife, who has just come up from the basement with a tray of empty cups anti glasses, scolds him. “Don’t bother Mrs. Bhave with mundane details.” She looks so monstrously pregnant her baby must be days overdue. I tell her she shouldn’t be carrying heavy things. “Shaila,” she says, smiling, “this is the fifth.” Then she grabs a teenager by his shirttails. He slips his Walkman off his head. He has to be one of her four children, they have the same domed and dented foreheads. “What’s the official word now?” she demands. The boy slips the headphones back on. “They’re acting evasive, Ma. They’re saying it could be an accident or a terrorist bomb.” All morning, the boys have been muttering, Sikh Bomb, Sikh Bomb. The men, not using the word, bow their heads in agreement. Mrs. Sharma touches her forehead at such a word. At least they’ve stopped talking about space debris and Russian lasers. Two radios are going in the dining room. They are tuned to different stations. Someone must have brought the radios down from my boys’ bedrooms. I haven’t gone into their rooms since Kusum came running across the front lawn in her bathrobe. She looked so funny, I was laughing when I opened the door. The big TV in the den is being whizzed through American networks and cable channels. “Damn!” some man swears bitterly. “How can these preachers carry on like nothing’s happened?” I want to tell him we’re not that important. You look at the audience, and at the preacher in his blue robe with his beautiful white hair, the potted palm trees under a blue sky, and you know they care about nothing.
The phone rings and rings. Dr. Sharma’s taken charge. “We’re with her,” he keeps saying. “Yes, yes, the doctor has given calming pills. Yes, yes, pills are having necessary effect.” I wonder if pills alone explain this calm. Not peace, just a deadening quiet. I was always controlled, but never repressed. Sound can reach me, but my body is tensed, ready to scream. I hear their voices all around me. I hear my boys and Vikram cry, “Mommy, Shaila!” and their screams insulate me, like headphones. The woman boiling water tells her story again and again. “I got the news first. My cousin called from Halifax before six A.M., can you imagine? He’d gotten up for prayers and his son was studying for medical exams and he heard on a rock channel that something had happened to a plane. They said first it had disappeared from the radar, like a giant eraser just reached out. His father called me, so I said to him, what do you mean, `something bad`? You mean a hijacking? And he said, behn, there is no confirmation of anything yet, but check with your neighbors because a lot of them must be on that plane. So I called poor Kusum straightaway. I knew Kusum’s husband and daughter were booked to go yesterday.” Kusum lives across the street from me. She and Satish had moved in less than a month ago. They said they needed a bigger place. All these people, the Sharmas and friends from the IndoCanada Society had been there for the housewarming. Satish and Kusum made homemade tandoori on their big gas grill and even the white neighbors piled their plates high with that luridly red, charred, juicy chicken. Their younger daughter had danced, and even our boys had broken away from the Stanley Cup telecast to put in a reluctant appearance. Everyone took pictures for their albums and for the community newspapers – another of our families had made it big in Toronto – and now I wonder how many of those happy faces are gone, Why does God give us so much if all along He intends to take it away?” Kusum asks me. I nod. We sit on carpeted stairs, holding hands like children. “I never once told him that I loved him,” I say. I was too much the well brought up woman. I was so well brought up I never felt comfortable calling my husband by his first name. “It’s all right,” Kusum says. “He knew. My husband knew. They felt it. Modern young girls have to say it because what they feel is fake.” Kusum’s daughter, Pam, runs in with an overnight case. Pam’s in her McDonad’s uniform. “Mummy! You have to get dressed!” Panic makes her cranky. `A reporter’s on his way here.” “Why?” “You want to talk to him in your bathrobe?” She starts to brush her mother’s long hair. She’s the daughter who’s always in trouble. She dates Canadian boys and hangs out in the mall, shopping for tight sweaters. The younger one, the goody-goody one according to Pam, the one with a voice so sweet that when she sang bhajans for Ethiopian relief even a frugal man like my husband wrote out a hundred dollar check, she was on that plane. She was going to spend July and August with grand- parents because Pam wouldn’t go. Pam said she’d rather waitress at McDonald’s. “If it’s a choice between Bombay and Wonderland, I’m picking Wonderland,” she’d said. “Leave me alone,” Kusum yells. “You know what I want to do? If I didn’t have to look after you now, I’d hang myself.” Pam’s young face goes blotchy with pain. “Thanks,” she says, “don’t let me stop you.” “Hush,” pregnant Mrs. Sharma scolds Pam. “Leave your mother alone. Mr. Sharma will tackle the reporters and fill out the forms. He’ll say what has to be said.” Pam stands her ground. “You think I don’t know what Mummy’s thinking? Why her? that’s what. That’s sick! Mummy wishes my little sister were alive and I were dead.” Kusum’s hand in mine is trembly hot. We continue to sit on the stairs.
She calls before she arrives, wondering if there’s anything I need. Her name is Judith Templeton and she’s an appointee of the provincial government. “Multiculturalism?” I ask, and she says, “partially,” but that her mandate is bigger. “I’ve been told you knew many of the people on the flight,” she says. “Perhaps if you’d agree to help us reach the others...?” She gives me time at least to put on tea water and pick up the mess in the front room. I have a few samosas from Kusum’s housewarming that I could fry up, but then I think, why prolong this visit? Judith Templeton is much younger than she sounded. She wears a blue suit with a white blouse and a polka dot tie. Her blond hair is cut short, her only jewelry is pearl drop earrings. Her briefcase is new and expensive looking, :L gleaming cordovan leather. She sits with it across her lap. When she looks out the front windows onto the street, her contact lenses seem to float in front of her light blue eyes. “What sort of help do you want from me?” I ask. She has refused the tea, out of politeness, but I insist, along with some slightly stale biscuits. “I have no experience,” she admits. “That is, I have an MSW and I’ve worked in liaison with accident victims, but I mean I have no experience with a tragedy of this scale–” “Who could?” I ask. “– and with the complications of culture, language, and customs. Someone mentioned that Mrs. Bhave is a pillar – because you’ve taken it more calmly.” At this, perhaps, I frown, for she reaches forward, almost to take my hand. “I hope you understand my meaning, Mrs. Bhave. There are hundreds of people in Metro directly affected, like you, and some of them speak no English. There are some widows who’ve never handled money or gone on a bus, and there are old parents who still haven’t eaten or gone outside their bedrooms. Some houses and apartments have been looted. Some wives are still hysterical. Some husbands are in shock and profound depression. We want to help, but our hands are tied in so many ways. We have to distribute money to some people, and there are legal documents – these things can be done. We have interpreters, but we don’t always have the human touch, or maybe the right human touch. We don’t want to make mistakes, Mrs. Bhave, and that’s why we’d like to ask you to help us.” “More mistakes, you mean,” I say. “Police matters are not in my hands,” she answers. “Nothing I can do will make any difference,” I say. “We must all grieve in our own way. “ “But you are coping very well. All the people said, Mrs. Bhave is the strongest person of all. Perhaps if the others could see you, talk with you, it wou1d help them.” “By the standards of the people you call hysterical, I am behaving very oddly and very badly, Miss Templeton.” I want to say to her, I wish I could scream, starve, walk into Lake Ontario, jump from a bridge. “ They would not see me as a model. I do not see myself as a mode1.” I am a freak. No one who has ever known me would think of me reacting this way. This terrible calm will not go away. She asks me if she may call again, after I get back from a long trip that we all must make. “Of course,” I say. “Feel free to call, anytime.” Four days later, I find Kusum squatting on a rock overlooking a bay in Ireland. It isn’t a big rock, but it juts sharply out over water. This is as close as we’ll ever get to them. June breezes balloon out her sari and unpin her knee-length hair. She has the bewildered look of a sea creature whom the tides have stranded. It’s been one hundred hours since Kusum came stumbling and screaming across my lawn. Waiting around the hospital, we’ve heard many stories. The police, the diplomats, they tell us things thinking that we’re strong, that knowledge is helpful to the
grieving, and maybe it is. Some, I know, prefer ignorance, or their own versions. The plane broke into two, they say. Unconsciousness was instantaneous. No one suffered. My boys must have just finished their breakfasts. They loved eating on planes, they loved the smallness of plates, knives, and forks. Last year they saved the airline salt and pepper shakers. Half an hour more and they would have made it to Heathrow. Kusum says that we can’t escape our fate. She says that all those people – our husbands, my boys, her girl with the nightingale voice, all those Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Muslims, Parsis, and atheists on that plane – were fated to die together off this beautiful bay. She learned this from a swami in Toronto. I have my Valium. Six of us “relatives” – two widows and four widowers – choose to spend the day today by the waters instead of sitting in a hospital room and scanning photographs of the dead. That’s what they call us now: relatives. I’ve looked through twenty- seven photos in two days. They’re very kind to us, the Irish are very understanding. Sometimes understanding means freeing a tourist bus for this trip to the bay, so we can pretend to spy our loved ones through the glassiness of waves or in sun- speckled cloud shapes. I could die here, too, and be content. “What is that, out there?” She’s standing and flapping her hands and for a moment I see a head shape bobbing in the waves. She’s standing in the water, I, on the boulder. The tide is low, and a round, black, head-sized rock has just risen from the waves. She returns, her sari end dripping and ruined and her face is a twisted remnant of hope, the way mine was a hundred hours ago, still laughing but inwardly knowing that nothing but the ultimate tragedy could bring two women together at six o’clock on a Sunday morning. I watch her face sag into blankness. “That water felt warm, Shaila,” she says at length. “You can’t,” I say. “We have to wait for our turn to come.” I haven’t eaten in four days, haven’t brushed my teeth. “I know,” she says. “I tell myself I have no right to grieve. They are in a better place than we are. My swami says I should be thrilled for them. My swami says depression is a sign of our selfishness.” Maybe I’m selfish. Selfishly I break away from Kusum and run, sandals slapping against stones, to the water’s edge. What if my boys aren’t lying pinned under the debris? What if they aren’t stuck a mile below that innocent blue chop? What if, given the strong currents.... Now I’ve ruined my sari, one of my best. Kusum has joined me, knee-deep in water that feels to me like a swimming pool. I could settle in the water, and my husband would take my hand and the boys would slap water in my face just to see me scream. “Do you remember what good swimmers my boys were, Kusum?” “I saw the medals,” she says. One of the widowers, Dr. Ranganathan from Montreal, walks out to us, carrying his shoes in one hand. He’s an electrical engineer. Someone at the hotel mentioned his work is famous around the world, something about the place where physics and electricity come together. He has lost a huge family, something indescrif>alAe. “With some luck,” Dr. Ranganathan suggests to me, “a good swimmer could make it safely to some island. It is quite possible that there may be many, many microscopic islets scattered around.” “You’re not just saying that?” I tell Dr. Ranganathan about Vinod, my elder son. Last year he took diving as well. “It’s a parent’s duty to hope,” he says. “It is foolish to rule out possibilities that have not been tested. I myself have not surrendered hope. “ Kusum is sobbing once again. “Dear lady,” he Says, laying his free hand on her arm, and she calms down.
“Vinod is how old ?” he asks me. He’s very careful, as we all are. Is, not was. “Fourteen. Yesterday he was fourteen. His father and uncle were going to take him down to the Taj and give him a big birthday party. I couldn’t go with them lecause I couldn’t get two weeks off from my stupid job in June.” I process bills for a travel agent. June is a big travel month. Dr. Ranganathan whips the pockets of his suit jacket inside out. Squashed roses, in darkening shades of pink, float on the water. He tore the roses off creepers in somebody’s garden. He didn’t ask anyone if he could pluck the roses, but now there’s been an article abut it in the local papers. When you see an Indian person, it says, please give him or her flowers. “A strong youth of fourteen,” he says, “can very likely pull to safety a younger one.” My sons, though four years apart, were very close. Vinod wouldn’t let Mithun drown. Electrical engineering, I think, foolishly perhaps: this man knows important secrets of the universe, things closed to me. Relief spins me lightheaded. No wonder my boys’ photographs haven’t turned up in the gallery of photos of the recovered dead. “Such pretty roses,” I say. “My wife loved pink roses. Every Friday I had to bring a bunch home. I used to say, why? After twenty odd years of marriage you’re still needing proof positive of my love?” He has identified his wife and three of his children. Then others from Montreal, the lucky ones, intact families with no survivors. He chuckles as he wades back to shore. Then he swings around to ask me a question. “Mrs. Bhave, you are wanting to throw in some roses for your loved ones? I have two big ones left.” But I have other things to float: Vinod’s pocket calculator; a half-painted model B-52 for my Mithun. They’d want them on their island. And for my husband? For him I let fall into the calm, glassy waters a poem I wrote in the hospital yesterday. Finally he’ll know my feelings for him. “Don’t tumble, the rocks are slippery,” Dr. Ranganathan tautions. He holds out a hand for me to grab. Then it’s time to get back on the bus, time to rush back to our waiting posts on hospital benches. Kusurn is one of the lucky ones. The lucky ones flew here, identified in multiplicate their loved ones, then will fly to India with the bodies for proper ceremonies. Satish is one of the few males who surfaced. The photos of faces we saw on the walls in an office at Heathrow and here in the hospital are mostly of women. Women have more body fat, a nun said to me matter-offactly. They float better. “May I was stopped by a young sailor on the street. He had loaded bodies, he’d gone into the water when – he checks my face for signs of strength – when the sharks were first spotted. I don’t blush, and he breaks down. “It’s all right,” I say. “Thank you.” I had heard about the sharks from Dr. Ranganathan. In his orderly mind, science brings understanding, it holds no terror. It is the shark’s duty. For every deer there is a hunter, for every fish a fisherman. The Irish are not shy; they rush to me and give me hugs and some are crying. I cannot imagine reactions like that on the streets of Toronto. Just strangers, and I am touched. Some carry flowers with them and give them to any Indian they see. After lunch, a policeman I have gotten to know quite well catches hold of me. He says he thinks he has a match for Vinod. I explain what a good swimmer Vinod is. “You want me with you when you look at photos?” Dr. Ranganathan walks ahead of me into the picture gallery. In these matters, he is a scientist, and I am grateful. It is a new perspective. “They have performed miracles,” he says. “We are indebted to them.”
The first day or two the policemen showed us relatives only one picture at a time; now they’re in a hurry, they’re eager to lay out the possibles, and even the probables. The face on the photo is of a boy much like Vinod; the same intelligent eyes, the same thick brows dipping into a V. But this boy’s features, even his cheeks, are puffier, wider, mushier. “No.” My gaze is pulled by other pictures. There are five other boys who look like Vinod. The nun assigned to console me rubs the first picture with a fingertip. “When they’ve been in the water for a white, love, they look a little heavier. “ The bones under the skin are broken, they said on the first day – try to adjust your memories. It’s important. “It’s not him. I’m his mother. I’d know.” “I know this one!” Dr. I~i~nga1lattla1l cries out suddenly from the back of the gallery. “And this one!” I think he senses that I don’t want to find my boys. “They are the Kutty brothers. They were also from Montreal. “ I don’t mean to be crying. On the contrary, I am ecstatic. My suitcase in the hotel is packed heavy with dry clothes for my boys. The policeman starts to cry. “I am so sorry, I am so sorry, ma’am. 1 really thought we had a match.” With the nun ahead of us and the policeman behind, we, the unlucky ones without our children’s bodies, file out of the makeshift gallery. From Ireland most of us go on to India. Kusum and I take the same direct fIight to Bombay, so I can help her clear customs quickly. But we have to argue with a man in uniform. He has large boils on his face. The boils swell and glow with sweat as we argue with him. He wants Kusum to wait in line and he refuses to take authority because his boss is on a tea break. But Kusum won’t let her coffins out of sight, and I shan’t desert her though I know that my parents, elderly and diabetic, must be waiting in a stuffy car in a scorching lot. “You bastard!” I scream at the man with the popping boils. Other passengers press closer. “You think we’re smuggling contraband in those coffins!” Once upon time we were well brought up women; we were dutiful wives who kept our heads veiled, our voices shy and sweet. In India, 1 become, once again, an only child of rich, ailing parents. Old friends of the family come to pay their respects. Some are Sikh, and inwardly, involuntarily, I cringe. My parents are progressive people; they do not blame communities for a few individuals. In Canada it is a different story now. “Stay longer,” my mother pleads. “Canada is a cold place. Why would you want to be all by yourself?” I stay. Three months pass. Then another. “Vikram wouldn’t have wanted you to give up things!” they protest. They call my husband by the name he was born with. In Toronto he’d changed to Vik so the men he worked with at his office would find his name as easy as Rod or Chris. “You know; the dead aren’t cut off from us! My grandmother, the spoiled daughter of a rich zamindar, shaved her head with rusty razor blades when she was widowed at sixteen. My grandfather died of childhood diabetes when he was nineteen, and she saw herself as the harbinger of bad luck. My mother grew up without parents, raised indifferently by an uncle, white her true mother slept in a hut behind the main estate house and took her food with the servants. She grew up a rationalist. My parents abhor mindless mortification. The zamindar’s daughter kept stubborn faith in Vedic rituals; my parents rebelled. I am trapped between two modes of knowledge. At thirty-six, I am too old to start over and too young to give up. Like my husband’s spirit, I flutter between worlds. Courting aphasia, we travel. We travel with our phalanx of servants and poor relatives. To hill stations and to beach resorts.
We play contract bridge in dusty gymkhana clubs. We ride stubby ponies up crumbly mountain trails. At tea dances, we let ourselves be twirled twice round the ballroom. We hit the holy spots we hadn’t made time for before. In Varanasi, Kalighat, Rishikesh, Hardwar, astrologers and palmists seek me out and for a fee offer me cosmic consolations. Already the widowers among us are being shown new bride candidates. They cannot resist the call of custom, the authority of their parents and older brothers. They must marry; it is the duty of a man to look after a wife. The new wives will be young widows with children, destitute but of good family. They will make loving wives, but the men will shun them. I’ve had calls from the men over crackling Indian telephone lines. “Save me,” they say, these substantial, educated, successful men of forty. “h4y parents are arranging a marriage for me.” In a month they will have buried one family and returned to Canada with a new bride and partial family. I am comparatively lucky. No one here thinks of arranging a husband for an unlucky widow. Then, on the third day of the sixth month into this odyssey, in an abandoned temple in :1 tiny Himalayan village, as I make nip offering of flowers and sweetmeats to the god of a tribe of animists, my husband descends to me. He is squatting next to a scrawny sadhu in moth-eaten robes. Vikram wears the vanilla suit he wore the last time I hugged him. The sadhu tosses petals on a butter-fed flame, reciting Sanskrit mantras and sweeps his face of flies. My husband takes my hands in his. You’re beautiful, he starts. Then, What are you doing here? Shall I stay? I ask. He only smiles, but already the image is fading. You must finish alone what we started together. No seaweed wreathes his mouth. He speaks too fast just as he used to when we were an envied family in our pink split-level. He is gone. In the windowless altar room, smoky with joss sticks and clarified butter lamps, a sweaty hand gropes for my blouse. I do not shriek. The sadhu arranges his robe. The lamps hiss and sputter out. When we come out of the temple, my mother says, “Did you feel something weird in there?” My mother has no patience with ghosts, prophetic dreams, holy men, and cults. “No,” I lie. “Nothing.” But she knows that she’s lost me. She knows that in days I shall be leaving. Kusum’s put her house up for de. She wants to live in an ashram in Hardwar. Moving to Hardwar was her swami’s idea. Her swami runs two ashrams, the one in Hardwar and another here in Toronto. “Don’t run away,” I tell her. “I’m not running away,`” she says. “I’m pursuing inner peace. You think you or that Ranganathan fellow are better off?” Pam’s left for California. She wants to do some modeling, she says. She says when she comes into her share of the insurance money she’ll open a yoga-cum-aerobics studio in Hollywood. She sends me postcards so naughty I daren’t leave them on the coffee table. Her mother has withdrawn from her and the world. The rest of us don’t lose touch, that’s the point. Talk is all we have, says Dr. Ranganathan, who has also resisted his relatives and returned to Montreal and to his job, alone. He says, whom better to talk with than other relatives? We’ve been melted down and recast as a new tribe. He calls me twice a week from Montreal. Every Wednesday night and every Saturday afternoon. He is changing jobs, going to Ottawa. But Ottawa is over a hundred miles away, and he is forced to drive two hundred and twenty miles a day. He can’t bring himself to sell his house. The house is a temple, he says;
the king-sized bed in the master bedroom is a shrine. He sleeps on a folding cot. A devotee. *** There are still some hysterical relatives. Judith Templeton’s list of those needing help and those who’ve “accepted” is in nearly perfect balance. Acceptance means you speak of your family in the past tense and you make active plans for moving ahead with your life. There are courses at Seneca and Ryerson we could be taking. Her gleaming leather briefcase is full of college catalogues and lists of cultural societies that need our help. She has done impressive work, I tell her. “In the textbooks on grief management,” she replies – I am her confidante, I realize, one of the few whose grief has not sprung bizarre obsessions – “there are stages to pass through: rejection, depression, acceptance, reconstruction.” She has compiled a chart and finds that six months after the tragedy, none of us still reject reality, but only a handful are reconstructing. “Depressed Acceptance” is the plateau we’ve reached. Remarriage is a major step in reconstruction (though she’s a little surprised, even shocked, over how quickly some of the men have taken on new families). Selling one’s house and changing jobs and cities is healthy. How do I tell Judith Templeton that my family surrounds me, and that like creatures in epics, they’ve changed shapes? She sees me as calm and accepting but worries that I have no job, no career. My closest friends are worse off than I. I cannot tell her my days, even my nights, are thrilling. She asks me to help with families she can’t reach at all. An elderly couple in Agincourt whose sons were killed just weeks after they had brought their parents over from a village in Punjab. From their names, I know they are Sikh. Judith Templeton and a translator have visited them twice with offers of money for air fare to Ireland, with bank forms, power-ofattorney forms, but they have refused to sign, or to leave their tiny apartment. Their sons’ money is frozen in the bank. Their sons’ investment apartments have been trashed by tenants, the furnishings sold off. The parents fear that anything they sign or any money they receive will end the company’s or the country’s obligations to them. They fear they are selling their sons for two airline tickets to a place they’ve never seen. The high-rise apartment is a tower of Indians and West Indians, with a sprinkling of Orientals. The nearest bus stop kiosk is lined with women in saris. Boys practice cricket in the parking lot. Inside the building, even I wince a bit from the ferocity of onion fumes, the distinctive and immediate lndianness of frying ghee, but Judith Templeton maintains a steady flow of information. These poor old people are in imminent danger of losing their place and all their services. I say to her, “They are Sikh. They will not open up to a Hindu woman.” And what I want to add is, as much as I try not to, I stiffen now at the sight of beards and turbans. I remember a time when we all trusted each other in this new country, it was only the new country we worried about. The two rooms are dark and stuffy. The lights are off, and an oil lamp sputters on the coffee table. The bent old lady has let us in, and her husband is wrapping a white turban over his oiled, hiplength hair. She immediately goes to the kitchen, and I hear the most familiar sound of an Indian home, tap water hitting and filling a teapot. They have not paid their utility bills, out of fear and the inability to write a check. The telephone is gone; electricity and gas and water are soon to follow. They have told Judith their sons will provide. They are good boys, and they have always earned and looked after their parents. We converse a bit in Hindi. They do not ask about the crash and I wonder if I should bring it up. If they think I am here merely as a translator, then they may feel insulted. There are thousands of
Punjabi-speakers, Sikhs, in Toronto to do a better job. And so I say to the old lady, “I too have lost my sons, and my husband, in the crash.” Her eyes immediately fill with tears. The man mutters a few words which sound like a blessing. “God provides and God takes away,” he says. I want to say, but only men destroy and give back nothing. “My boys and my husband are not coming back,” I say. “We have to understand that. “ Now the old woman responds. “But who is to say? Man alone does not decide these things. “ To this her husband adds his agreement. Judith asks about the bank papers, the release forms. With a stroke of the pen, they will have a provincial trustee to pay their bills, invest their money, send them a monthly pension. “Do you know this wotnan?” I ask them. The man raises his hand from the table, turns it over and seems to regard each finger separately before he answers. “This young lady is always coming here, we make tea for her and she leaves papers for us to sign. “ His eyes scan a pile of papers in the corner of the room. “Soon we will be out of tea, then will she go away?” The old lady adds, “I have asked my neighbors and no one else gets angrezi visitors. What have we done?” “It’s her job,” I try to explain. “The government is worried. Soon you will have no place to stay, no lights, no gas, no water.” “Government will get its money. Tell her not to worry, we are honorable people.” I try to explain the government wishes to give money, not take. He raises his hand. “Let them take,” he says. “We are accustomed to that. That is no problem.” “We are strong people,” says the wife. “Tell her that.” “Who needs all this machinery?” demands the husband. “It is unhealthy, the bright tights, the cold air on a hot day, the cold food, the four gas rings. God will provide, not government.” “When our boys return,” the mother says. Her husband sucks his teeth. “Enough talk,” he says. Judith breaks in. “Have you convinced them?” The snaps on her cordovan briefcase go off like firecrackers in that quiet apartment. She lays the sheaf of legal papers on the coffee table. “If they can’t write their names, an X will do – I’ve told them that.” Now the old lady has shuffled to the kitchen and soon emerges with a pot of tea and two cups. “I think my Madder will go first on a jot) like this,” Judith says to me, smiling. “If only there was some way of reaching them. Please thank her for the tea. Tell her she’s very kind.” I nod in Judith’s direction and tell them in Hindi, “She thanks you for the tea. She thinks you are being very hospitable but she doesn’t have the slightest idea what it meas.” I want to say, humor her. I want to say, my boys and my husband are with me too, more than ever. I look in the old man’s eyes and I can read his stubborn, peasant’s message: I have protected this woman as best I can. She is the only person I have left Give to me or take from me what you will, but l will not sign for it. I will not pretend that I accept. In the car Judith says, “You see what I’m up against? I’m sure they’re lovely people, but their stubbornness and ignorance are driving me crazy. They think signing a paper is signing their sons’ death warrants, don’t they?” I am looking out the window. I want to say, in our culture, it is a parent’s duty to hope. “Now, Shaila, this next woman is a real mess. She cries day and night, and she refuses all medical help. We may have to –” “– Let me out at the subway,” I say. “I beg your pardon?” I can feet those t)luc eyes staring at me.
It would not be like her to disobey. She merely disapproves, and stows at a corner to let me out. Her voice is plaintive. “Is there anything I said? Anything I did?” I could answer her suddenly in a dozen ways, but I choose not to. “Shaila? Let’s talk about it,” I hear, then slam the door. A wife and mother begins her new life in a new country, and that life is cut short. Yet her husband tells her: Complete what we have started. We, who stayed out of politics and came halfway around the world to avoid religious and political feuding have been the first in the New World to die from it. I no longer know what we started, nor how to complete it. I write letters to the editors of local papers and to members of Parliament. Now at least they admit it was a bomb. One MP answers back, with sympathy, but with a challenge. You want to make a difference? Work on a campaign. Work on mine. Politicize the Indian voter. My husband’s old lawyer helps me set up a trust. Vikram was a saver and a careful investor. He had saved the boys’ boarding school and college fees. I sell the pink house at four times what we paid for it and take a small apartment downtown. I am looking for a charity to support. We are deep in the Toronto winter, gray skies, icy pavements. I stay indoors, watching television. I have tried to assess my situation, how best to live my life, to complete what we began so many years ago. Kusum has written me from Hardwar that her life is now serene. She has seen Satish and has heard her daughter sing again. Kusum was on a pilgrimage, passing through a village when she heard a young girl’s voice, singing one of her daughter’s favorite bhajans. She followed the music through the squalor of a Himalayan village, to a hut where a young girl, an exact replica of her daughter, was fanning coals under the kitchen fire. When she appeared, the girl cried out, “Ma!” and ran away. What did I think of that? I think I can only envy her. Pam didn’t make it to California, but writes me from Vancouver. She works in a department store, giving make-up hints to Indian and Oriental girls. Dr. Ranganathan has given up his commute, given up his house and job, and accepted an academic position in Texas where no one knows his story and he has vowed not to tell it. He calls me now once a week. I wait, I listen, and I pray, but Vikram has not returned to me. The voices and the shapes and the nights filled with visions ended abruptly several weeks ago. I take it as a sign. One rare, beautiful, sunny day last week, returning from a small errand on Yonge Street, I was walking through the park from the subway to my apartment. I live equidistant from the Ontario Houses of Parliament and the university of Toronto. The day was not cold, but something in the bare trees caught my attention. I looked up from the gravel, into the branches and the clear blue sky beyond. I thought I heard the rustling of larger forms, and I waited a moment for voices. Nothing. “What?” I asked. Then as I stood in the path looking north to Queen’s Park and west to the university, I heard the voices of my family one last time. Your time has come, they said. Go, be brave. I do not know where this voyage I have begun will end. I do not know which direction I will take. I dropped the package on a park bench and started walking.
Two ways to belong in America
IOWA CITY – This is a tale of two sisters from Calcutta, Mira and Bharati, who have lived in the United States for some 35 years, but who find themselves on different sides in the current debate over the status of immigrants. I am an American citizen and she is not. I am moved that thousands of long-term residents are finally taking the oath of citizenship. She is not. Mira arrived in Detroit in 1960 to study child psychology and pre-school education. I followed her a year later to study creative writing at the University of Iowa. When we left India, we were almost identical in appearance and attitude. We dressed alike, in saris; we expressed identical views on politics, social issues, love and marriage in the same Calcutta convent-school accent. We would endure our two years in America, secure our degrees, then return to India to marry the grooms of our father’s choosing. Instead, Mira married an Indian student in 1962 who was getting his business administration degree at Wayne State University. They soon acquired the labor certifications necessary for the green card of hassle-free residence and employment. Mira still lives in Detroit, works in the Southfield, Mich., school system, and has become nationally recognized for her contributions in the fields of pre-school education and parentteacher relationships. After 36 years as a legal immigrant in this country, she clings passionately to her Indian citizenship and hopes to go home to India when she retires. In Iowa City in 1963, I married a fellow student, an American of Canadian parentage. Because of the accident of his North Dakota birth, I bypassed labor-certification requirements and the racerelated “quota” system that favored the applicant’s country of origin over his or her merit. I was prepared for (and even welcomed) the emotional strain that came with marrying outside my ethnic community. In 33 years of marriage, we have lived in every part of North America. By choosing a husband who was not my father’s selection, I was opting for fluidity, self-invention, blue jeans and T-shirts, and renouncing 3,000 years (at least) of caste-observant, “pure culture” marriage in the Mukherjee family. My books have often been read as unapologetic (and in some quarters overenthusiastic) texts for cultural and psychological “mongrelization.” It’s a word I celebrate. Mira and I have stayed sisterly close by phone. In our regular Sunday morning conversations, we are unguardedly affectionate. I am her only blood relative on this continent. We expect to see each other through the looming crises of aging and ill health without being asked. Long before Vice President Gore’s “Citizenship U.S.A.” drive, we’d had our polite arguments over the ethics of retaining an overseas citizenship while expecting the permanent protection and economic benefits that come with living and working in America. Like well-raised sisters, we never said what was really on our minds, but we probably pitied one another. She, for the lack of
structure in my life, the erasure of Indianness, the absence of an unvarying daily core. I, for the narrowness of her perspective, her uninvolvement with the mythic depths or the superficial pop culture of this society. But, now, with the scapegoating of “aliens” (documented or illegal) on the increase, and the targeting of long-term legal immigrants like Mira for new scrutiny and new self-consciousness, she and I find ourselves unable to maintain the same polite discretion. We were always unacknowledged adversaries, and we are now, more than ever, sisters. “I feel used,” Mira raged on the phone the other night. “I feel manipulated and discarded. This is such an unfair way to treat a person who was invited to stay and work here because of her talent. My employer went to the I.N.S. and petitioned for the labor certification. For over 30 years, I’ve invested my creativity and professional skills into the improvement of this country’s pre-school system. I’ve obeyed all the rules, I’ve paid my taxes, I love my work, I love my students, I love the friends I’ve made. How dare America now change its rules in midstream? If America wants to make new rules curtailing benefits of legal immigrants, they should apply only to immigrants who arrive after those rules are already in place.” To my ears, it sounded like the description of a long-enduring, comfortable yet loveless marriage, without risk or recklessness. Have we the right to demand, and to expect, that we be loved? (That, to me, is the subtext of the arguments by immigration advocates.) My sister is an expatriate, professionally generous and creative, socially courteous and gracious, and that’s as far as her Americanization can go. She is here to maintain an identity, not to transform it. I asked her if she would follow the example of others who have decided to become citizens because of the anti-immigration bills in Congress. And here, she surprised me. “If America wants to play the manipulative game, I’ll play it too,” she snapped. “I’ll become a U.S. citizen for now, then change back to Indian when I’m ready to go home. I feel some kind of irrational attachment to India that I don’t to America. Until all this hysteria against legal immigrants, I was totally happy. Having my green card meant I could visit any place in the world I wanted to and then come back to a job that’s satisfying and that I do very well.” In one family, from two sisters alike as peas in a pod, there could not be a wider divergence of immigrant experience. America spoke to me — I married it — I embraced the demotion from expatriate aristocrat to immigrant nobody, surrendering those thousands of years of “pure culture,” the saris, the delightfully accented English. She retained them all. Which of us is the freak? Mira’s voice, I realize, is the voice not just of the immigrant South Asian community but of an immigrant community of the millions who have stayed rooted in one job, one city, one house, one ancestral culture, one cuisine, for the entirety of their productive years. She speaks for greater numbers than I possibly can. Only the fluency of her English and the anger, rather than fear, born of confidence from her education, differentiate her from the seamstresses, the domestics, the technicians, the shop owners, the millions of hard-working but effectively silenced documented immigrants as well as their less fortunate “illegal” brothers and sisters. Nearly 20 years ago, when I was living in my husband’s ancestral homeland of Canada, I was always well-employed but never allowed to feel part of the local Quebec or larger Canadian society. Then, through a Green Paper that invited a national referendum on the unwanted side effects of “nontraditional”
immigration, the Government officially turned against its immigrant communities, particularly those from South Asia. I felt then the same sense of betrayal that Mira feels now. I will never forget the pain of that sudden turning, and the casual racist outbursts the Green Paper elicited. That sense of betrayal had its desired effect and drove me, and thousands like me, from the country. Mira and I differ, however, in the ways in which we hope to interact with the country that we have chosen to live in. She is happier to live in America as expatriate Indian than as an immigrant American. I need to feel like a part of the community I have adopted (as I tried to feel in Canada as well). I need to put roots down, to vote and make the difference that I can. The price that the immigrant willingly pays, and that the exile avoids, is the trauma of self-transformation. (September 22, 1996: New York Times)
American Dreamer C O M M E N T A R Y : I am an American, not an Asian-American. My rejection of hyphenation has been called race treachery, but it is really a demand that America deliver the promises of its dream to all its
In traditional Hindu families like ours, men provided and women were provided for. My father was a patriarch and I a pliant daughter. The neighborhood I’d grown up in was homogeneously Hindu, Bengali-speaking, and middle-class. I didn’t expect myself to ever disobey or disappoint my father by setting my own goals and taking charge of my future. When I landed in Iowa 35 years ago, I found myself in a society in which almost everyone was Christian, white, and moderately well-off. In the women’s dormitory I lived in my first year, apart from six international graduate students (all of us were from Asia and considered “exotic”), the only non-Christian was Jewish, and the only nonwhite an African-American from Georgia. I didn’t anticipate then, that over the next 35 years, the Iowa population would become so diverse that it would have 6,931 children from non-English-speaking homes registered as students in its schools, nor that Iowans would be in the grip of a cultural crisis in which resentment against immigrants, particularly refugees from Vietnam, Sudan, and Bosnia, as well as unskilled Spanishspeaking workers, would become politicized enough to cause the Immigration and Naturalization Service to open an “enforcement” office in Cedar Rapids in October for the tracking and deporting of undocumented aliens.
In Calcutta in the ‘50s, I heard no talk of “identity crisis” — communal or individual. The concept itself — of a person not knowing who he or she is — was unimaginable in our hierarchical, classification-obsessed society. One’s identity was fixed, derived from religion, caste, patrimony, and mother tongue. A Hindu Indian’s last name announced his or her forefathers’ caste and place of origin. A Mukherjee could only be a Brahmin from Bengal. Hindu tradition forbade intercaste, interlanguage, interethnic marriages. Bengali tradition even discouraged emigration: To remove oneself from Bengal was to dilute true culture.
citizens equally. By Bharati Mukherjee In Mother Jones magazine, Jan./Feb. 1997
The United States exists as a sovereign nation. “America,” in contrast, exists as a myth of democracy and equal opportunity to live by, or as an ideal goal to reach. I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, which means that, unlike nativeborn citizens, I had to prove to the U.S. government that I merited citizenship. What I didn’t have to disclose was that I desired “America,” which to me is the stage for the drama of self-transformation. I was born in Calcutta and first came to the United States — to Iowa City, to be precise — on a summer evening in 1961. I flew into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready to carry out the two commands my father had written out for me the night before I left Calcutta: Spend two years studying creative writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, then come back home and marry the bridegroom he selected for me from our caste and class.
Until the age of 8, I lived in a house crowded with 40 or 50 relatives. My identity was viscerally connected with ancestral soil and genealogy. I was who I was because I was Dr. Sudhir Lal Mukherjee’s daughter, because I was a Hindu Brahmin, because I was Bengali-speaking, and because my desh — the Bengali word for homeland — was an East Bengal village called Faridpur. The University of Iowa classroom was my first experience of coeducation. And after not too long, I fell in love with a fellow student named Clark Blaise, an American of Canadian origin, and impulsively married him during a lunch break in a lawyer’s office above a coffee shop. That act cut me off forever from the rules and ways of uppermiddle-class life in Bengal, and hurled me into a New World life of scary improvisations and heady explorations. Until my lunchbreak wedding, I had seen myself as an Indian foreign student who intended to return to India to live. The five-minute ceremony in the lawyer’s office suddenly changed me into a transient with conflicting loyalties to two very different cultures. The first 10 years into marriage, years spent mostly in my husband’s native Canada, I thought of myself as an expatriate Bengali permanently stranded in North America because of destiny or desire. My first novel, The Tiger’s Daughter, embodies the loneliness I felt but could not acknowledge, even to myself, as I negotiated the no man’s land between the country of
my past and the continent of my present. Shaped by memory, textured with nostalgia for a class and culture I had abandoned, this novel quite naturally became an expression of the expatriate consciousness. It took me a decade of painful introspection to put nostalgia in perspective and to make the transition from expatriate to immigrant. After a 14-year stay in Canada, I forced my husband and our two sons to relocate to the United States. But the transition from foreign student to U.S. citizen, from detached onlooker to committed immigrant, has not been easy. The years in Canada were particularly harsh. Canada is a country that officially, and proudly, resists cultural fusion. For all its rhetoric about a cultural “mosaic,” Canada refuses to renovate its national self-image to include its changing complexion. It is a New World country with Old World concepts of a fixed, exclusivist national identity. Canadian official rhetoric designated me as one of the “visible minority” who, even though I spoke the Canadian languages of English and French, was straining “the absorptive capacity” of Canada. Canadians of color were routinely treated as “not real” Canadians. One example: In 1985 a terrorist bomb, planted in an Air-India jet on Canadian soil, blew up after leaving Montreal, killing 329 passengers, most of whom were Canadians of Indian origin. The prime minister of Canada at the time, Brian Mulroney, phoned the prime minister of India to offer Canada’s condolences for India’s loss. Those years of race-related harassments in Canada politicized me and deepened my love of the ideals embedded in the American Bill of Rights. I don’t forget that the architects of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were white males and slaveholders. But through their declaration, they provided us with the enthusiasm for human rights, and the initial framework from which other empowerments could be conceived and enfranchised communities expanded. I am a naturalized U.S. citizen and I take my American citizenship very seriously. I am not an economic refugee, nor am I a seeker of political asylum. I am a voluntary immigrant. I became a citizen by choice, not by simple accident of birth. Yet these days, questions such as who is an American and what is American culture are being posed with belligerence, and being answered with violence. Scapegoating of immigrants has once again become the politicians’ easy remedy for all that ails the nation. Hate speeches fill auditoriums for demagogues willing to profit from stirring up racial animosity. An April Gallup poll indicated that half of Americans would like to bar almost all legal immigration for the next five years. The United States, like every sovereign nation, has a right to formulate its immigration policies. But in this decade of continual, large-scale diasporas, it is imperative that we come to some agreement about who “we” are, and what our goals are for the nation, now that our community includes people of many races, ethnicities, languages, and religions. The debate about American culture and American identity has to date been monopolized largely by Eurocentrists and ethnocentrists whose rhetoric has been flamboyantly divisive, pitting a phantom “us” against a demonized “them.” All countries view themselves by their ideals. Indians idealize the cultural continuum, the inherent value system of India, and
are properly incensed when foreigners see nothing but poverty, intolerance, strife, and injustice. Americans see themselves as the embodiments of liberty, openness, and individualism, even as the world judges them for drugs, crime, violence, bigotry, militarism, and homelessness. I was in Singapore in 1994 when the American teenager Michael Fay was sentenced to caning for having spraypainted some cars. While I saw Fay’s actions as those of an individual, and his sentence as too harsh, the overwhelming local sentiment was that vandalism was an “American” crime, and that flogging Fay would deter Singapore youths from becoming “Americanized.” Conversely, in 1994, in Tavares, Florida, the Lake County School Board announced its policy (since overturned) requiring middle school teachers to instruct their students that American culture, by which the board meant European-American culture, is inherently “superior to other foreign or historic cultures.” The policy’s misguided implication was that culture in the United States has not been affected by the American Indian, AfricanAmerican, Latin-American, and Asian-American segments of the population. The sinister implication was that our national identity is so fragile that it can absorb diverse and immigrant cultures only by recontextualizing them as deficient. Our nation is unique in human history in that the founding idea of “America” was in opposition to the tenet that a nation is a collection of like-looking, like-speaking, like-worshiping people. The primary criterion for nationhood in Europe is homogeneity of culture, race, and religion — which has contributed to bloodsoaked balkanization in the former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union. America’s pioneering European ancestors gave up the easy homogeneity of their native countries for a new version of utopia. Now, in the 1990s, we have the exciting chance to follow that tradition and assist in the making of a new American culture that differs from both the enforced assimilation of a “melting pot” and the Canadian model of a multicultural “mosaic.” The multicultural mosaic implies a contiguity of fixed, selfsufficient, utterly distinct cultures. Multiculturalism, as it has been practiced in the United States in the past 10 years, implies the existence of a central culture, ringed by peripheral cultures. The fallout of official multiculturalism is the establishment of one culture as the norm and the rest as aberrations. At the same time, the multiculturalist emphasis on race- and ethnicity-based group identity leads to a lack of respect for individual differences within each group, and to vilification of those individuals who place the good of the nation above the interests of their particular racial or ethnic communities. We must be alert to the dangers of an “us” vs. “them” mentality. In California, this mentality is manifesting itself as increased violence between minority, ethnic communities. The attack on Korean-American merchants in South Central Los Angeles in the wake of the Rodney King beating trial is only one recent example of the tragic side effects of this mentality. On the national level, the politicization of ethnic identities has encouraged the scapegoating of legal immigrants, who are blamed for economic and social problems brought about by flawed domestic and foreign policies. We need to discourage the retention of cultural memory if the aim of that retention is cultural balkanization. We must think of American culture and nationhood as a constantly re-forming, transmogrifying “we.”
In this age of diasporas, one’s biological identity may not be one’s only identity. Erosions and accretions come with the act of emigration. The experience of cutting myself off from a biological homeland and settling in an adopted homeland that is not always welcoming to its dark-complexioned citizens has tested me as a person, and made me the writer I am today.
Bart Schneider (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1997). Mukherjee and her husband, Clark Blaise, wrote about Salman Rushdie’s travails for Mother Jones shortly after he was forced into hiding in 1989.
I choose to describe myself on my own terms, as an American, rather than as an Asian-American. Why is it that hyphenation is imposed only on nonwhite Americans? Rejecting hyphenation is my refusal to categorize the cultural landscape into a center and its peripheries; it is to demand that the American nation deliver the promises of its dream and its Constitution to all its citizens equally. My rejection of hyphenation has been misrepresented as race treachery by some India-born academics on U.S. campuses who have appointed themselves guardians of the “purity” of ethnic cultures. Many of them, though they reside permanently in the United States and participate in its economy, consistently denounce American ideals and institutions. They direct their rage at me because, by becoming a U.S. citizen and exercising my voting rights, I have invested in the present and not the past; because I have committed myself to help shape the future of my adopted homeland; and because I celebrate racial and cultural mongrelization. What excites me is that as a nation we have not only the chance to retain those values we treasure from our original cultures but also the chance to acknowledge that the outer forms of those values are likely to change. Among Indian immigrants, I see a great deal of guilt about the inability to hang on to what they commonly term “pure culture.” Parents express rage or despair at their U.S.-born children’s forgetting of, or indifference to, some aspects of Indian culture. Of those parents I would ask: What is it we have lost if our children are acculturating into the culture in which we are living? Is it so terrible that our children are discovering or are inventing homelands for themselves? Some first-generation Indo-Americans, embittered by racism and by unofficial “glass ceilings,” construct a phantom identity, more-Indian-than-Indians-in-India, as a defense against marginalization. I ask: Why don’t you get actively involved in fighting discrimination? Make your voice heard. Choose the forum most appropriate for you. If you are a citizen, let your vote count. Reinvest your energy and resources into revitalizing your city’s disadvantaged residents and neighborhoods. Know your constitutional rights, and when they are violated, use the agencies of redress the Constitution makes available to you. Expect change, and when it comes, deal with it! As a writer, my literary agenda begins by acknowledging that America has transformed me. It does not end until I show that I (along with the hundreds of thousands of immigrants like me) am minute by minute transforming America. The transformation is a two-way process: It affects both the individual and the nationalcultural identity. Others who write stories of migration often talk of arrival at a new place as a loss, the loss of communal memory and the erosion of an original culture. I want to talk of arrival as gain. Bharati Mukherjee’s books include The Middleman and Other Stories (which won the National Book Critics’ Circle Award in 1988), Jasmine, and The Holder of the World. This essay is adapted from Race: An Anthology in the First Person, edited by
Biography Born in Calcutta, India, on July 27, 1940, into an upper middleclass Hindu Brahmin family surrounded by servants and bodyguards: Indian-American novelist Bharati Mukherjee. The second of three daughters of Sudhir Lal, a chemist, and Bina (Banerjee) Mukherjee, she lived with nearly 50 relatives until the age of eight, when she discovered the beauty and power of Russian novelists such as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. From an extraordinarily close-knit and intelligent family, Mukherjee and her sisters were always given ample academic opportunities and have all pursued academic endeavors in their careers. In 1947, Mukherjee’s father accepted a job in England, and he brought his family to live there until 1951, providing Mukherjee an opportunity to develop her English language skills. One night, as her father entertained a group of American scholars over dinner, he asked, “I want [my] daughter to be a writer, where do I send her?” They told him to send her to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa. So, after being graduated with a B.A from the University of Calcutta and an M.A. in English and Ancient Indian Culture from the University of Baroda in 1961, she came to the United States of America, where she took advantage of a scholarship from the University of Iowa. She planned to study there to earn her Master’s of Fine Arts before returning to India to marry a bridegroom of her father’s choosing in her class and caste. She earned her M.F.A. in Creative Writing in 1963 and her Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature in 1969.
While attending the university, she met a Canadian student from Harvard. She impulsively married Clark Blaise, a Canadian writer, in a lawyer’s office above a coffee shop after only two weeks of courtship. She received her M.F.A. that same year, and then she went on to earn her Ph.D. in English and comparative literature from the University of Iowa in 1969.
Most recently, Mukherjee is the author of The Holder of the World (1993) and Desirable Daughters (2002).
Mukherjee emigrated to Canada with her husband and became a naturalized citizen in 1972. Her 14 years there were some of the most trying of her life, as she found herself discriminated against and treated, as she says, as a member of the “visible minority.” She has spoken in many interviews of her difficult life in Canada, a country that she sees as hostile to its immigrants and one that opposes the concept of cultural assimilation. Although those years were challenging, Mukherjee was able to write her first two novels, The Tiger’s Daughter (1971) and Wife (1975) while working up to professorial status at McGill University in Montreal. During those years, she also collected many of the sentiments found in her first collection of short stories, Darkness (1985), a collection that in many stories reflects her mood of cultural separation while living in Canada.
Major Themes
Tired of her struggle to fit into Canadian life, Mukherjee and her family moved to the United States in 1980, where she was sworn in as a permanent U.S. resident. In 1986, she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant. After holding several posts at various colleges and universities, she eventually settled in 1989 at the University of California-Berkeley. Because of the distinctly different experiences she has had throughout life, she has been described as a writer who has lived through several phases of life. First, as a colonial, then as a National subject in India. She then led a life of exile as a post-colonial Indian in Canada. Finally, she shifted into a celebratory mode as an immigrant, then citizen, in the United States. She now fuses her several lives and backgrounds together with the intention of creating “new immigrant” literature.
“The Tiger’s Daughter” is a story about a young girl named Tara who ventures back to India after many years of being away only to return to poverty and turmoil. This story parallels Mukherjee’s own venture back to India with Clark Blaise in 1973 when she was deeply affected by the chaos and poverty of Indian and mistreatment of women in the name of tradition, “What is unforgivable is the lives that have been sacrificed to notions of propriety and obedience” (Days and Nights... 217). Her husband, however, became very intrigued by the magic of the myth and culture that surrounded every part of Bengal.; These differences of opinion, her shock and his awe, are seen in one of their joint publications, Days and Nights in Calcutta.
Known for her playful and well developed language, Mukherjee rejects the concept of minimalism, which, she says, “is designed to keep anyone out with too much story to tell.” Instead, she considers her work a celebration of her emotions and herself a writer of the Indian diaspora who cherishes the “melting pot” of America. Her main theme throughout her writing discusses the condition of Asian immigrants in North America, with particular attention to the changes taking place in South Asian women in a new world.
While the characters in all her works are aware of the brutalities and violence that surround them and are often victimized by various forms of social oppression, she generally draws them as survivors. Mukherjee has been praised for her understated prose style and her ironic plot developments and witty observations. As a writer, she has a sly eye with which to view the world, and her characters share that quality. Although she is often racially categorized by her thematic focus and cultural origin, she has often said that she strongly opposes the use of hyphenation when discussing her origin, in order to “avoid otherization” and the “self-imposed marginalization that comes with hyphenation.” Rather, she prefers to refer to herself as an American of BengaliIndian origin.
Mukherjee’s works focus on the “phenomenon of migration, the status of new immigrants, and the feeling of alienation often experienced by expatriates” as well as on Indian women and their struggle (Alam 7). Her own struggle with identity first as an exile from India, then an Indian expatriate in Canada, and finally as a immigrant in the United States has lead to her current contentment of being an immigrant in a country of immigrants (Alam 10). Mukherjee’s works correspond with biographer Fakrul Alam’s catagorization of Mukherjee’s life into three phases. Her earlier works, such as the The Tiger’s Daughter and parts of Days and Nights in Calcutta, are her attempts to find her identity in her Indian heritage.
The second phase of her writing, according to Alam, encompasses works such as Wife, the short stories in Darkness, an essay entitled “An Invisible Woman,” and The Sorrow and the Terror, a joint effort with her husband. These works originate in Mukherjee’s own experience of racism in Canada, where despite being a tenured professor, she felt humiliated and on the edge of being a “housebound, fearful, affrieved, obsessive, and unforgiving queen of bitterness” (Mukherjee, qtd. in Alam 10). After moving back to the United States, she wrote about her personal experiences. One of her short stories entitled “Isolated Incidents” explores the biased Canadian view towards immigrants that she encountered, as well as how government agencies handled assults on particular races. Another short story titled “The Tenant” continues to reflect on her focus on immigrant Indian women and their mistreatment. The story is about a divorced Indian woman studying in the States and her experiences with interracial relationships. One quotation from the story hints at Mukherjee’s views of Indian men as being too preoccupied to truly care for their wives and children: “‘All Indian men are wife beaters,’ Maya [the narrator] says. She means it and doesn’t mean it.” In Wife, Mukherjee writes about a woman named Dimple who has been surpressed by such men and attempts to be the ideal Bengali wife, but out of fear and personal instability, she murders her husband and eventually commits suicide. The stories in Darkness further endeavor to tell similar stories of immigrants and women.
In her third phase, Mukherjee is described as having accepted being “an immigrant, living in a continent of immigrants” (M. qtd in Alam 9). She describes herself as American and not the hyphenated Indian-American title: I maintain that I am an American writer of Indian origin, not because I’m ashamed of my past, not because I’m betraying or distorting my past, but because my whole adult life has been lived here, and I write about the people who are immigrants going through the process of making a home here... I write in the tradition of immigrant experience rather than nostalgia and expatriation. That is very important. I am saying that the luxury of being a U.S. citizen for me is that can define myself in terms of things like my politics, my sexual orientation or my education. My affiliation with readers should be on the basis of what they want to read, not in terms of my ethnicity or my race. (Mukherjee qtd. in Basbanes) Mukherjee continues writing about the immigrant experience in most of the stories in The Middle Man and Other Stories, a collection of short stories which won her the National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Fiction, Jasmine, and essays. These stories explore the meeting of East and West through immigrant experiences in the U.S. and Canada along with further describing the idea of the great melting pot of culture in the United States. Jasmine develops this idea of the mixing of the East and West with a story telling of a young Hindu woman who leaves India for the U.S. after her husband’s murder, only to be raped and eventually returned to the position of a caregiver through a series of jobs (Alam 100). The unity between the First and Third worlds is shown to be in the treatment of women as subordinate in both countries. Her latest works include The Holder of the World, published in 1993, and Leave It to Me, published in 1997. The Holder of the World is a beautifully written story about Hannah Easton, a woman born in Massachusetts who travels to India. She becomes involved with a few Indian lovers and eventually a king who gives her a diamond know as the Emperor’s Tear. (Alam 120). The story is told through the detective searching for the diamond and Hannah’s viewpoint. Mukherjee’s focus continues to be on immigrant women and their freedom from relationships to become individuals. She also uses the female characters to explore the spatiotemporal (Massachusetts to India) connection between different cultures. In Leave It to Me, Mukherjee tells the story of a young woman sociopath named Debby DiMartino, who seeks revenge on parents who abandoned her. The story reveals her ungrateful interaction with kind adoptive parents and a vengeful search for her real parents (described as a murderer and a flowerchild). The novel also looks at the conflict between Eastern and Western worlds and at mother-daughter relationships through the political and emotional topics by the main characer in her quest for revenge. Candia McWilliam of The London Review of Books describes Mukherjee appropriately as “A writer both tough and voluptuous” in her works.
Works
The Tiger’s Daughter, Houghton, 1972. Wife, Houghton, 1975. Kautilya’s Concept of Diplomacy: A New Interpretation, Minerva, 1976. (With Blaise) Days and Nights in Calcutta (nonfiction), Doubleday: Garden City, New York, 1977. An Invisible Woman, McClelland & Stewart, 1981. Darkness, Penguin, 1985. (With Blaise) The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy, Viking, 1987. The Middleman and Other Stories, Grove, 1988. Jasmine, Grove, 1989. Political Culture and Leadership in India (nonfiction), South Asia, 1991. Regionalism in Indian Perspective (nonfiction), South Asia, 1992. The Holder of the World, Knopf: New York City, 1993. Leave It to Me, A.A. Knopf: New York City, 1997.
Holders of the Word: An Interview with Bharati Mukherjee
By Tina Chen and S.X. Goudie University of California, Berkeley Copyright (c) 1997 by Tina Chen and S.X. Goudie, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that the editors are notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the author and the notification of the editors. 1.
In her epilogue to Days and Nights in Calcutta , Bharati Mukherjee proclaims the spirit that motivates her writing: “Even more than other writers, I must learn to astonish, to shock” (299). Bharati Mukherjee has indeed produced a body of work that both sustains wonder and evokes surprise. The author of four novels: The Tiger’s Daughter , Wife , Jasmine , and The Holder of the World ; two short-story collections, Darkness and The Middleman and Other Stories ; as well as The Sorrow and the Terror and Days and Nights in Calcutta , two works of non-fiction co-authored with her husband Clark Blaise, Mukherjee has deliberately, sometimes flamboyantly, fused her many impulses, backgrounds, and selves to create a “new immigrant” literature that embodies her sense of what it means to be a woman writer of Bengali-Indian origin who has lived in, and been indelibly marked by, both Canada and the United States. In the process, she has broken boundaries and refused to limit herself to easy categories. She sees herself as a pioneer—of new territories, experiences, and literatures—and coextensive with her mission to
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explore new worlds is her intention to disturb what came before. Though adamant about her desire not to be classified as a “postcolonial” writer/critic, Mukherjee nonetheless addresses a network of issues of great importance to scholars and writers less violently opposed to being identified as “postcolonial.” In addition, her writing has been the subject of significant scholarly engagement in recent years: many of the most recognized figures in postcolonial studies have addressed, often vociferously, the goals of Professor Mukherjee’s critical and creative project. Because of their concerns, seasoned and aspiring scholars alike turn to her work to engage a wide variety of critical perspectives and theoretical approaches. Such scholarly interest suggests that, whatever a critic’s point of view, both Professor Mukherjee and the postcolonial studies community are vested in proliferating discussion on matters involving race, class, gender, and nation in national and transnational contexts. In fact, despite the heretofore adversarial relationship between some postcolonial scholars and Professor Mukherjee, one of the virtues of this interview, we believe, is that it points out significant areas of shared concern between Professor Mukherjee and her detractors, despite attempts by both parties to disavow such mutual interest. In interviewing Professor Mukherjee for Jouvert: a journal of postcolonial studies , we utilized an interviewing strategy that negotiated the intersections of her artistic vision and the questions and concerns raised by critics in response to it. Professor Mukherjee, a writer who also prides herself on being a scholar and a critic, responded graciously to the challenges of such a conversation. Conducted during the summer of 1996, the interview addresses a constellation of questions and issues on the process of writing, reading, and interpreting fiction. Even as critical sites of possible alliance between Professor Mukherjee and the postcolonial studies community dot the surface of the interview, many of the disagreements that exist between them are cast into relief. Together, these locations map the beginnings of a productive and exciting literary cartography. The interview opens with a statement volunteered by Professor Mukherjee, followed by five discrete sections. The first, “Vision and Voice,” originates from Mukherjee’s admission that “the problem of voice is the most exciting” (Days and Nights 298) and explores her artistic agenda before addressing what critics and scholars have had to say about her deployment of this aesthetic. The next section, “The Anxiety of Influence?,” fleshes out Mukherjee’s relationships to other writers and asks her to consider the multiple levels of engagement between readers, writers, and critics. In the third section of the interview, “The Politics of New Immigrant Writing,” Mukherjee discusses the ideological contours of the type of writing she has engaged in. She comments on several leading postcolonial scholars and what she perceives to be their relationships to her work. At times she draws explicit boundaries between the goals and orientation of postcolonial studies and her own mission as a “new immigrant” writer. In “States of Violence,” section IV, we talk about the crucial “space” of violence in her fiction, both on textual and metatextual levels. Finally, in section V, “Writing and Technology,” we examine the critical debate surrounding Mukherjee’s most recent novel, The Holder of the World. Appreciative of Jouvert
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‘s investment in the intersections between information technology and scholarly practice, we ask a series of questions about Mukherjee’s use of virtual reality as a trope for dislocating and transforming literary, cultural, and historical topographies of Mughal India and colonial, 19th, and 20th-century United States. Collectively, then, the five sections of the interview respond to the multiple demands of literary production and interpretation. By providing additional insight into Professor Mukherjee’s critical and creative project while simultaneously affording her a forum in which to critique postcolonial scholars and critics who have expressed interest in her work, we offer a survey of territorial disputes that are all the more provocative for being still unsettled. M: Postcolonial studies seems an inappropriate category in which to place my works. I don’t think of myself as a postcolonial person stranded on the outer shores of the collapsed British Empire. I haven’t thought of myself as a postcolonial since I finished co-authoring, with my husband Clark Blaise, Days and Nights in Calcutta. Writing my half of that book was my way of thinking through who I was, where I was, where I’d rather be. If I had chosen to return to India after writing that book in 1977, or if, like Salman Rushdie, I’d spent my entire adult life in Britain instead of in North America, I might have evolved as a postcolonial whose creative imagination is fueled primarily by the desire to create a new mythology of Indian nationhood after the Raj’s brutalization of Indian culture. But I didn’t. I came to the U.S., initially as a student, because in 1961 the University of Iowa was the only place in the world offering a degree in the area I wanted to study, and because American universities had scholarships to offer me. When I first arrived on campus, I thought of myself as a Bengali rather than as an Indian. You were who you were because of the language and dialect you spoke, the location of the village of your male ancestors, the family and religion you were born into. I was a Bengali and proud of it, which meant that I claimed as heritage a culture distinct from that of a Bihari or a Punjabi or a Gujarati or a Tamil. That’s the way we were brought up in Calcutta in the Fifties. We were encouraged to set ourselves apart from people of other Indian states. In Iowa, where I didn’t run into too many Bengalis, I began to see and feel affinities with rather than hostilities towards non-Bengali Indian students on campus. If you insist, on this beautiful May afternoon in 1996, that I describe myself in terms of ethno-nationality, I’d say I’m an American writer of Bengali-Indian origin. In other words, the writer/political activist in me is more obsessed with addressing the issues of minority discourse in the U.S. and Canada, the two countries I have lived and worked in over the last thirty odd years. The national mythology that my imagination is driven to create, through fiction, is that of the post-Vietnam United States. I experience, simultaneously, the pioneer’s capacity to be shocked and surprised by the new culture, and the immigrant’s willingness to de-form and re-form that culture. At this moment, my Calcutta childhood and adolescence offer me intriguing, incompletely-comprehended revelations about my hometown, my family, my place in that community: the kind of revelations that fuel the desire to write an autobiography rather than to mythologize an Indian national identity.
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I. Vision and Voice 7. J: In “A Four-Hundred Year Old Woman,” you state that your “image of artistic structure and excellence is the Mughal miniature painting with its crazy foreshortening of vanishing point, its insistence that everything happens simultaneously, bound only by shape and color” (38). Would you give an example of how the Mughal miniature translates into your writing? 8. M: The best example probably is “Courtly Vision,” the last story in the collection Darkness. I have an obsessive love of Mughal miniature painting. The miniatures that speak to me most eloquently were painted during the reign of Emperor Akbar. I suppose that’s because mine is a writerly love. Each of the Akbari paintings that I’m mesmerized by is so crowded with narrative, sub-narratives, sometimes metanarratives, so taut with passion and at the same time so crisp with irony. Every separate “story” in the miniature matters, every “minor character” has a dramatic function. But all the strands and details manage to cohere, that’s what’s amazing! And each is “framed” by an elaborately painted border. The border shouldn’t be dismissed as the artists’ excessive love of adumbration. The border forces you to view the work not primarily as a source of “raw” sociological data, but as sociology metaphorized ; that is, as a master-artist’s observation on life/history/national psyche cast in the aesthetic traditions of the community and transmuted into art. The story, “Courtly Vision,” was inspired by a number of Akbari paintings, particularly one that shows the Emperor in battle dress, leading his massive, battleready army out of his fortressed capital. The painting anticipates victory, and evokes a celebratory mood. The mood is historically tenable: Akbar, wise, tolerant, brave, won his wars. But what drew the writer in me to the painting was the contextual irony of such victory on the battlefield. Akbar built an exquisite capital city in Fatehpur Sikri, but he had to abandon it because he’d sited it in a drought zone. He was affably curious about “the other,” which meant he allowed in European peddlers, freebooters, Christian missionaries, and so unintentionally facilitated the power grab by the many European East India Companies, and the eventual debilitation of the Mughals. When I started “Courtly Vision,” I was aiming to close with that epiphanic contextual irony. But before I finished the first draft, the “frame”—converting verisimilitude into meta-narrative —had worked itself in. The “frame” made the reader witness to a painter’s (via author’s) re-presentation of history as evidenced in a slick Sotheby’s catalogue, and, through the inclusion of the cheap estimated price, upped the final irony into Europe’s devaluation of Mughal art. Until recent decades, Eurocentric art criticism dismissed Mughal miniatures as unsophisticated, as lacking mastery of perspective. The point is that Mughal artists had developed a Mughal aesthetic. They preferred to work with many points of focus. I had some idea, while I was writing the stories for Darkness and The Middleman , how much about form and principle I had absorbed from the 16th- and 17th-century paintings I so loved. But it was as I drafted the essay, “A FourHundred Year Old Woman,” that I thought through, and articulated, my Mughal-inspired narrative aesthetic. I like to move narrative by indirection, to create apparent
“lumps” and “spills” along the through-line. This applies to novels like Jasmine and The Holder of the World as well as to the short stories. “The zigzag route,” one of my characters confesses, “is the shortest.” The indirect narratives are, of course, designed to parallel or to undermine the main character’s story. The parts, when added up and “framed,” should reveal authorial vision. The “frame” and “voice”—the term that we writers communally use to indicate aesthetic strategy— are what make the sum of the parts, 2+2+3, not 7 but 10. 3.
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J: So you work like a bricoleur , parts are used and reused and shaped and reshaped, much like the character Jasmine’s identity. As with time and space in the novel, things do seem to recur though with a difference, even as Jasmine suggests she’s given up one identity and moved on to another. There are a series of transformations... M: Yeah, Jasmine goes through several transformations, and I like to think that she is still open to many more self-inventions. She lives on, very fully, inside my head. But when I was talking about indirection , I was trying to insist that the novel, Jasmine , be read as more than the story of Jasmine’s change. That’s why the novel provided so many different points of focus: the experience of dislocation and relocation is handled by each of the immigrant characters. As in Akbari miniatures, my novel compresses the immigration histories of many minor characters. Professorji, his wife, his elderly parents, the Caribbean housekeepers in Manhattan, the Guatemalans in Florida, Du and his Asian-American friend in Iowa: even within an ethnic group, each minor character has a distinct response. And white Americans, including the volunteer for the Sanctuary Movement, treat these various minor characters variously. The “opposed parallel” that moved me most as I was writing was the one between Jasmine and Du. Jasmine’s very open to new experience and optimistic about outcome. Her attitude is: Hey, you can’t rape me and get away with it! You can’t push me around! I’m here, I’m gonna stay if I want to, and I’m gonna conquer the territory! Du, who has to attend school in the U.S., probably outwardly dresses more like U.S.-born Americans than does Jasmine, and certainly is more familiar with American colloquialisms and pop culture, but he’s cynical of post-Vietnam America, he’s aware of the limits of the American Dream and makes his guerrilla attacks on that Dream. The total picture: that’s the heady part of writing, the creating of all these... J: little miniature universes within the frame. M: Right. In a way, I suppose that’s being a Hindu, I mean, this being constantly aware of the existence of many universes, this undermining of biography and individual ego. The cosmology that my characters and I inhabit derives very much from the Puranic tales. The Puranas are cycles of tales (think of them as morality tales, religious fables, there are thousands of them) that every Hindu child is told the way that kids in the U.S. are exposed to fairytales and bedtime stories. As “story,” they really work, too! Conflict, heroes, villains, obstacles, action, surprise revelation! But the stories metaphorize the Hindu concepts of cosmology, time and space. Current discoveries in astronomy are certainly pointing up the existence of universes other than ours. I believe in re-incarnation, which, too, may be a
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metaphor for some geo-biological phenomenon, why not? J: Has your background as a Hindu enabled you to create an intimacy with the reader, from a New World perspective, that is distinct from other stylistic and narrative techniques you’ve encountered in American writing? M: I don’t know if all Hindu-American writers see the world in the way that I do and the way that I mix Islam with Hindu art, because I’ve been exposed to both of these, really results in a very syncretic narrative strategy. As such, my incorporation of Hinduism might be quite opposed to how some other Hindu writer living in New York may think of Hinduism or exercise it. I don’t want to lump all Hindus together. J: You’ve identified “voice” as the “prime aesthetic” of your writing. In this context, it seems particularly interesting that Jasmine has been critiqued for the inauthenticity of the protagonist’s voice; as Liew-Geok Leong writes, “[t]he voice of Jasmine, surprisingly articulate and assured, is not always believable, given her background and circumstances; it is her creator’s voice that takes over and speaks for her, the result perhaps of too close an identification with the subject” (494). Upon reflection, do you see any validity in this evaluation? M: Leong would appear to be ignorant of the craftrelated lexicon of contemporary American writers. Just as terms such as “essentialism,” “subaltern,” “agency,” and “signifier” are accepted by academics as shorthand for certain conceptual constructs, so “voice” is our shorthand for the process of decision-making regarding tone, diction, pacing, texture, withholding, etc. in a given work. J: In other words, you’re suggesting that your notion of voice is more expansive, that you’re not striving after some sort of realistic, mimetic voice. M: I am saying that being a scholar as well as a writer, I expect myself to do my homework very, very thoroughly, before I make public pronouncements. “Voice” should not have been confused with tone, diction, etc. Of course I am not striving after some sort of realistic, mimetic voice. I leave that to taperecorders. Art is about selection, stylization, and metaphoric revelation. J: Other writers have been subject to the same sort of criticism in terms of voice, right? For example, the African American writer Charles Johnson has been criticized severely by some because the protagonist of his award-winning novel Middle Passage , a freed slave, speaks in highly philosophical language, and his narrative voice tends to be anachronistic. M: James Alan McPherson gets the same flak for not using “inner city” American-English exclusively or predominantly. It’s absurd. It’s as absurd as saying that because Gayatri Spivak was born into a Bengali family and grew up in Calcutta, she has no right to public expression in non-Bengali languages, especially not in the languages of former colonialist nations such as England or France, nor to derive any theoretical model from Marx or other European white males. I believe that if you are literate, all literature that you expose yourself to is your heritage to claim or reject. J: Again, it seems that your major concern with such critics is that, in the interests of “authenticity,” they restrict you from using the assembly of creative tools in your bag, that there’s a prescribed way in which “voice” is supposed to be rendered.
16. M: It’s patronizing, elitist, and classist of such critics to presume that the poor and the de- privileged do not have sophisticated thoughts and poetic articulation. They need to acquaint themselves with scholarship regarding oral literature. In addition, I am very bothered by their reduction of art to sociological statement. Fiction transmits its message (by which I mean its author’s vision) very differently from essays. 17. J: Given your criticism of V.S. Naipaul 1 along those lines during an interview some years ago (“A Conversation”), it must be particularly painful to be criticized for a certain failure in voice. In that interview, you attacked Naipaul’s notion that the dispossessed are incapable of articulating, in sophisticated ways, their pain, desires, etc. He suggested to you that he feels they’re incapable of speaking in any complex or redemptive way due to their psychological, social, and cultural fragmentation as a result of colonialism. You are now subject to an attack that is the flip side of the same coin. The suggestion is that you’re still not allowing them to think and speak for themselves. Critics argue that you’re just... 18. M: They have taken a Naipaulian position about me and my writing, from a high moral ground, and I resent that, and I’m saying that... 19. J:... they’re the ones who want to speak. That they want to speak for these people and have you renounce your right to speak in the ways you wish? 20. M: Right. That’s where my ire is located. The writer claims only to speak for her unique, eccentric characters. These critics, on the other hand, though they locate themselves in North America and participate in the North American competitive, materialist economy, invent or appropriate the positions of populous, Asiabased communities, and worse, they reduce the diversity of those communities’ positions into one that fits most neatly into their favored theory. The Indian graduate students and junior faculty members I have talked to on western Indian campuses in the last two years have expressed growing resentment of such usurpation. The theorist they most often named was Spivak, perhaps because she is the best-known of the Indo-American group. Some recent publications by serious Indian literary critics based in India, for instance by Professors Aijaz Ahmad and Harish Trivedi of the University of Delhi, indicate an emerging resentment of the appropriation of Indianality and postcoloniality by scholars of Indian origin (or of non-European origin) who have opted for U.S. citizenship and/or permanent residence in North America. The Jouvert community is no doubt well aware of Ahmad’s direct attack on Edward Said—and by extension, it would seem, his indirect attack on 1
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, Kt. (Knight Bachelor), TC (The Trinity Cross is the highest national award in Trinidad and Tobago), born August 17, 1932 in Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago, better known as V. S. Naipaul, is a Trinidadian-born British writer of Indo-Trinidadian descent, currently resident in Wiltshire. Naipaul was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990 and awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. He is the son, older brother, uncle, and cousin of published authors Seepersad Naipaul, Shiva Naipaul, Neil Bissoondath, and Vahni Capildeo, respectively. His current wife is Nadira Naipaul, a former Pakistani journalist.
Spivak—for “internationalizing the periphery.” (That’s Ahmad’s phrase, not mine. I myself prefer to reject the center/periphery template, and so, resist Eurocentric vocabulary.) Professor Trivedi, who lectured here at Berkeley a few months ago on the Eurocentric implications of the term “postcolonial,” was more direct in his attack on the right of Spivak, a U.S. citizen and long-term U.S. resident, to speak for the “periphery.” 21. J: Spivak has cautioned against reading her as someone who claims to “give voice” to those she represents; she has said in The Postcolonial Critic —and I’m paraphrasing—that to read her as speaking for “the periphery” is to read her, wrongly, as a “Third World informant.” 22. M: But then she goes on to, at the same time, trounce others for providing versions, portraits that don’t coincide with hers so that she, I’m not going to say that she’s lying, but there’s this problematic position... 23. J: You don’t get the same reception? 24. M: Oh, I get severely attacked by many Indian critics, but for a very different reason! Whereas I have heard Spivak being attacked for appropriation of the so-called “periphery,” I have been virulently attacked for defining myself as an American writer of Indian origin writing of the diasporic and immigrant experience. It started with a response to a journalist’s question during a press conference in Delhi in 1990. I was asked, “Wouldn’t you, if you had your rathers, come back to live in India?” and, thinking of my husband and children settled in the States, answered, “Frankly, no.” That “no” was misinterpreted as a betrayal of my Indian heritage. But, now that so many Indian families have relatives settled in the U.S., my “immigrant” material is being read or re-read in fresh ways. 25. J: In this discussion about who gets to speak and who doesn’t, there seems to be an implicit criticism that your characters are not authentic. 26. M: Right, and I’m saying that this Leong should be listening to rap, doing some more “hanging out” in inner cities to see how much poetry there is in ordinary lives. How can any critic have the audacity to assume that all members of a group think, feel, react, and verbalize identically? How do you explain one brother from a dysfunctional family becoming a writer—I’m thinking obviously of John Edgar Wideman, author of Philadelphia Fire —and his brother becoming a murderer? So, to assume that you are identical with everyone else in your class is to not understand human beings. 27. J: And when she accuses you of perhaps identifying too closely with your subject and writing an “inauthentic” character as a result of that identification, would your charge be “no, you’re also identifying with the subject but your identification forecloses the possibility of the life which I choose to explore”? 28. M: Well, not only that. I hear Leong saying that someone from Jasmine’s background and circumstances cannot speak the way that she does. You see, that’s very different from the way you’re verbalizing it. I am saying that to think all people who are born poor are therefore incapable of thought, imagination, and speech, is a very elitist and classist kind of assumption; I need to see them as individuals rather than types. 29. J: It seems that you are responding to this question on at least two different levels. 30. M: My response to this question is structured on three different levels. One is that the critic doesn’t understand
voice; she simply is ignorant about how writers use this term. My second point is that no fine fiction, no good literature, is anchored in verisimilitude. Fiction must be metaphor. It is not transcription of real life but it’s a distillation and pitching at higher intensification of life. It’s always a distortion. And then the third point is that just because Jasmine happens to be poor doesn’t mean she is incapable of imagination, intelligence, and articulate speech. II. Anxiety of Influence?
31. J: Are there Indian writers writing in English whose work you admire? 32. M: Do you mean Anglophone writers who are Indian citizens and are residing in India? R.K. Narayan. I keep nominating him for the Nobel Prize. I’m also very interested in younger fiction writers and poets like R. Raj Rao and Ranjit Hoskhote. 33. J: In addition to Naipaul, we’re wondering what other Caribbean writers have influenced you in any way: Wilson Harris and his AmerIndian aesthetics, Michele Cliff, Edouard Glissant, or Maryse Condé and their notions of cross-cultural poetics, etc. 34. M: None of them have influenced me, though, of course, I have enjoyed reading each of them. About Naipaul, I can’t say that he influenced me, but I can say that A House for Mr. Biswas inspired me when I read it as a student in the early Sixties. I hadn’t read any fiction about Trinidad Indians before that. That novel gave me the self-confidence to claim my own fictional world. 35. J: If, as with Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness , “canonical” texts exercise an influence, however disturbing, on the formerly colonized—and in some instances, newly immigrated— what colonialist texts have left their mark on you? 36. M: None, really. By the way, I didn’t read Heart of Darkness until I came to the States. Of all English literature I was exposed to, Shakespeare’s tragedies moved most. I could recite soliloquies by Macbeth, Hamlet, Portia, Shylock, King Lear, Cordelia with great feeling. I think it was the music of the lines, the sound of the words, that excited me. Elocution was my most favorite subject in school. I loved to read poetry out loud. Tagore and Keats, oh, they were so heady when I was a schoolgirl in Calcutta. I responded to the euphony first; then to the ideas. I didn’t know any Buddhists and came from a staunch Hindu family, but Tagore made me weep over the persecution of Buddhist converts in ancient India. Same with Keats; I’d never been to Greece, not even seen pictures of the country, but I sure could visualize the friezescapes in the “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” There was something fresh about Keats because he was rebelling against the narrowness of British conventions. Though India was a sovereign nation when I first encountered Keats, my conventschool campus remained a very “English” spot. You know, we had to sing Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas, that sort of thing, and we were expected to admire the logic and orderliness of the British mind. Keats was resisting those values in his poems. I suppose loving Keats’ poems for me was a quiet form of guerrilla warfare against my teachers. 37. J: Before deciding to use it for The Holder of the World , did Keats or “Ode on a Grecian Urn” ever take
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on a different aura for you? You have said elsewhere that your life and work should be divided into three distinct phases—as a colonial, then national, subject in India, as a postcolonial Indian in Canada, and as an immigrant, later a citizen, of the United States. Did Keats and his ode accompany you through those transformations? M: I’m not sure I even thought about Keats for twenty years after leaving India. When I sat down to write The Holder , I was a very different person from the girl who had recited the odes out loud for pleasure, and the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” was very much on my mind because, like Keats, I was playing with history and imagination. That’s the marvelous thing about the writing process: you don’t know when and how a memory, a scrap of conversation overheard, an allusion or image, is suddenly going to surface and work itself into your story. That ode came to me; I didn’t seek it out. That’s the way the creative process works for me. I knew right away that I would use the Keats references to control and ironize what my characters had to say about time, and to make authorial meta-statements about writing. J: Is there a distinction between the way that Keats sees the Grecian urn and the way you see a Mughal painting? M: That’s not the contrast that I would make. I would make it between virtual reality and the urn. The urn is still, the action is frozen, and one can only observe. I’m not so much concerned with what Keats is saying about these people as I am with how action has been stuck in time and can’t be redone. The people are always going to have their hands and feet in one particular posture, whereas with interactive technology, you’re changing the narrative by inputting new information according to your new mood. The ways virtual technology will be used for therapy, to help autistic children or to enable people to overcome their fears, is very close to what I’m talking about. The individual experiencing the image, not simply the image itself—both are going to be transformed by interaction. J: We’ve asked you to discuss your literary influences but we also wonder what “critics” [literary and otherwise] you consider important to the development of your own critical project in delineating the future of American writing? M: None. J: Do you find the “writer-critic” a more effective, perhaps even more productive, type of critic than the scholar? M: For writers and readers, yes. Writers writing about fiction see the text as process whereas scholars reduce it to product. Writer-critics explore the work from inside out; they divine the aesthetic decisions that the text’s writer has made to best get across the authorial vision, and then they assess the effect of those decisions. They let the work set up the criteria by which it should be judged instead of imposing their arbitrary grid on the work; they aim to “open up” the work instead of reducing it to a dutifully-followed or sloppily-followed set of narrative rules thought up by a scholar. I think the best essays on the “art of fiction,” on beginnings, endings, etc., to date have been written by writers. A book of essays on writing I’d recommend is How Stories Mean , edited by John Metcalf and J.R. Struthers. Contemporary scholars seem to have deliberately removed themselves from primary texts, so that not only do they sometimes get their data wrong (and I mean titles of works, names of characters), but they often discard those complexities in the text that
don’t fit their theories, and they devalue those aesthetic innovations that challenge their particular sociopolitical agendas. Scholars seem to just talk to scholars, using a language of the initiated. The “subaltern” critics might wish to speak for the de-privileged, but they certainly don’t speak to them. III. The Politics of New Immigrant Writing
45. J: You have remarked that no longer do you find exilic writers as provocative as they once were. Yet they’re still quite popular. Why do you think expatriate writers like Naipaul continue to enjoy such popularity, specifically with Western audiences? 46. M: I don’t know how popular they are or what you mean by popularity. I think an awful lot of minority writers and expatriate writers complain that their books don’t get into bookstores, that they may get reviews, or the same few will get reviews, but that there really isn’t any kind of cross-fertilization of readers. I think there are two kinds of writers and I’m not saying that it’s only about exilic writers or immigrant writers but all writers: those who reinforce what the public thinks, the conventional values, and those who constantly interrogate the conventional values. An awful lot of the exilic writers, the expatriate writers, are providing the kinds of portraits, moods, positions, and problems with which the readership, the publishing industry, and the scholars—or critics anyway—are familiar and comfortable. The few who are obliterating that particular kind of discourse between Third World and First World, margin and center, or minority and mainstream, have a much harder time being understood or being recognized. I’ve been writing and publishing since 1971 but it’s taken me an awfully long time to get any attention, largely because I was, for a while, an Indian citizen living in Canada as a landed immigrant and writing about people outside of India. Then I became a Canadian citizen but writing, let us say, about immigrants in New York. They didn’t know how to classify me, whether by my passport or by my material, which was about immigrants at a time when there was no such category as “immigrant fiction” that wasn’t about Europeans coming to North America during the 19th century. So I don’t know about “popularity.” Very recently there was an article I read in the Times on Spanish-speaking writers in New York objecting vociferously to the ways in which they are shut out when they write middle-class fiction about middle-class characters who speak in perfectly educated, sensitive English, even though they’re second or third generation. The stereotype is that if you’re going to write about Hispanics, you’d better make them lettuce-pickers and have a spiritualist. The kind of criticism from literary critics and theorists who have encountered my own work stems from their belief that if you’re India-born, you must write about India and you must write about an Indian woman or peasants being victimized. 47. J: They want it primitivized in some way. 48. M: Yes, stereotyped. It’s absurd, when you think that I’m writing about the post-1965 immigrationtransformed America, and that the majority of South Asians granted visas are urban, educated professionals and their families. The aim of fiction is to break down stereotypes. Unfortunately, the publishing and
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academic industries seem to profit more from reinforcing stereotypes. This is what AfricanAmerican intellectuals have to deal with too. That’s why I feel I’m on the same wavelength with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Cornel West, James Alan McPherson. Why should a minority person be made to feel guilty because she believes education leads to both self-improvement and national enlightenment? To me, class is as divisive as race. J: Just as there is a risk of becoming locked into one’s own exilic condition to the point of pathetic selfabsorption, isn’t there a danger of being too celebratory about the enabling aspects of an immigrant’s “multicultural” point of view? M: I’m going to object to the word “multicultural” here because I’ve spoken so vociferously against this whole official multiculturalism in Canada. I’m going to limit it to an immigrant’s point of view, all right? Yes, my work has sometimes been cited for celebrating too enthusiastically the swagger of immigration, the energies released in the process of transformation. It is as though certain readers cannot see beyond the color of my characters’ skin, or their gender, or their predetermined view of America, without linking them, automatically, to the long sad history of New World exploitation. Yes, they are victims but they are resilient victims, unviolated in their core of need and imagination. Rocky, being white, can pick himself off the canvas, land a few blows, and be a hero; Rakesh, however, a laid-off engineer with three kids and no American certification, opens a dingy spice store and Hindi video outlet and somehow is perceived as pathetic. This is the stereotyping that has to end. My Professorji, who used to be a doctor in his home country and is now having to sell human hair for making wigs or electronic equipment in some basement video store in Queens, is somehow seen, necessarily, as a pathetic character rather than as a resilient hero, who says “all right, this didn’t work, but something else will work.” J: By identifying yourself as an immigrant writer, you resist being classified by postcolonial scholars as an exilic or expatriate writer. You also don’t seem to stake out an intellectual position as a writer/scholar akin to what Abdul R. JanMohamed has termed the “specular border intellectual,” a category for writers from formerly colonized or enslaved places who engage in a critique of multiple locations from a position of “homelessness-as-home.” M: Just the fact you bring up JanMohamed is troubling to me. We’re very, very different kinds of Indians. Simply because of skin color and South Asian ancestry, the non-South Asian is likely to lump us together just as they have long lumped the Samuel Selvons and the V.S. Naipauls together as part of the Indian diaspora. JanMohamed, having been brought up in Africa according to a different religion, a different language, a different cultural and revolutionary experience, has surely more to say about minority discourse in Africa and about how to apply his particular African training and African experience to being a minority in a whitedominated world in the U.S. and less about mainstream India and Indian writing. The mission of postcolonial studies as a discipline is to level all of us to our skin color and ethnic origin whereas as a writer, my job is to open up, to discover and say “we are all individuals.” In fiction we are writing about individuals; none of them is meant to be a crude spokesperson for whole groups, whether those groups are based on gender or race or
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class. If the story of one individual reveals something about the way in which human nature works, great, if it doesn’t, then it has failed as art. J: How would you characterize, then, the relationship that exists between postcolonialism and your creative project? M: The mission of postcolonial studies seems to be to deliberately equate Art and journalism, to reduce novels to specimens for the confirming of their theories. If an imaginative work doesn’t fit the cultural theories they approve of, it’s dismissed as defective. The relationship between the artist and the postcolonial scholar has become adversarial. It doesn’t have to be, that’s what’s so sad. I’m not denigrating all scholarship, but only that particular school of postcolonial criticism that is hostile to art and aesthetics. All that, as a writer, I value—power of word-choice and placement of punctuation, imagery, texture, pacing—all the strategies that I employ to articulate my vision as precisely as I can to the reader, these scholars treat as debris to be cleared for the exposing of camouflaged “hegemonic” agendas in the narrative. J: You make some very clear distinctions between writers and scholars. In the field of Caribbean postcolonial studies, such distinctions are not so clear. People like Edouard Glissant, Wilson Harris, and Maryse Condé would all be considered both important postcolonial scholars and writers. Isn’t there an opportunity for solidarity between scholar/writers or haven’t you reached out to those voices? M: Oh, I’m friends with Maryse Condé, and am familiar with the work of Harris and Glissant. I’m glad to hear that scholars of Caribbean studies are not as anti-imaginative literature as are the Spivak-influenced Indo-American postcolonial graduate students who write papers or dissertation chapters on my work. I find so many glaring errors in their so-called scholarship; I mean getting really basic data wrong, like titles or genre of a text, names of significant characters. I don’t know how such shoddy work gets past a dissertation supervisor in any respectable university! I recently came across a paper by an Indo-American woman scholar that accused me, not my character(s), of being anti-America, and recommended that I should try to feel more comfortable living in the United States, all on the basis of having read one single story, the title of which she got wrong. It sometimes appears that all I value as a writer are being deliberately denigrated or disregarded by the scholars. What is important to me is Isaac Babel saying, “A comma placed just right will stab the heart,” whereas for a lot of these scholars, judging from the papers that I’ve read, to worry about artistic or metereffective placement of punctuation is to be sort of rightwing. J: In his book In Theory , Aijaz Ahmad critiques the notion of “adversarial internationalization” by arguing that while “Said speaks, inexplicably, of ‘intellectual and scholarly work from the peripheries, done either by immigrants or by visitors, both of whom are generally anti-imperialist’....[t]he vast majority of immigrants and visitors who go from ‘the peripheries’ to the ‘Western center’ in the United States either take no part in politics and scholarly endeavor or turn out to be right-wing people’” (207-8). He characterizes you as the ultimate representative of this second type of person. Have you had a chance to respond to this assertion in any formal way?
58. M: Yes, yes I have. I did it for an Indian publication that is the equivalent, sort of, of the New York Times Sunday Magazine. They’d invited writers to write about the notion of “internationalizing the periphery,” if you like. First of all, I want to know where Aijaz Ahmad gets his statistics for making this kind of generalization? I didn’t find it in his footnotes and I certainly didn’t find it in the text. And then, has he ever done research on my voting records? Does he know that I was a very active member of the NDP in Canada? The choice I was faced with in the late 70s just prior to leaving for the United States in 1980 was to either give up writing and run for public office as an NDP candidate, or say to myself, “Politics, someone else will carry on. I live my most real life through writing.” 59. J: These are highly provocative rejoinders to level at Ahmad, especially considering how he criticizes Said for not checking his facts or statistics. Ahmad even goes so far to suggest that Said hasn’t really read your writing, or the writings of your immigrant peers, and that Said’s classification of you as “anti-imperialist” is gleaned from what other critics have said about immigrant texts rather than a first-hand reading of them. 60. M: Yeah, well, I don’t think that Ahmad has checked his facts about me or read any of my essays either, let alone my fiction. And then I want to know, what does “rightwing” mean in the context of his quotation? Does it mean simply that anyone who is not a Marxist is “rightwing”? If “right-wing,” for Ahmad, applies to anyone who agrees with the spirit behind the American Constitution and the idea of democracy, then I suppose I am. I do not wish to trivialize democratic ideals by equating America with blue jeans and Coca-Cola, which is a very cheap, easy shot that Europeans as well as many South Asian intellectuals take. As such, I’m placing my faith in fighting for civil rights and this is where I talk about my political aesthetics in this essay. The cause that I have now put a great deal of my energy into is fighting for gay rights; for gay rights to be treated as an extension of civil rights. When I lived in Canada, it was the gay groups who worked hardest for us South Asians, in fighting discrimination. South Asians were at the bottom of Canada’s race-based totem pole. The feminists let us [people of color] down as they obtained their goals regarding women’s rights. If the Constitution gives me a way of forcing Newt Gingrich’s feet to the fire, a way of forcing American politicians to live up to the letter of the law, then I’m going to do that. And if that means being “right-wing” by Ahmad’s standard then too bad. I find these categories totally, totally useless. In India, among the intellectuals that I see once or twice a year while traveling, there is no agreement about what constitutes right-wing and leftwing. In my hometown, Calcutta, there are four distinct communist political parties. For instance Calcutta’s Maoists call the city’s Moscow-Marxists “right-wing,” so I don’t know where Ahmad is coming from, and he ought to know better. 61. J: Yet in terms of the “American” scene, Ahmad seems to argue that immigrant writers such as yourself have readopted the notion of America as “melting pot.” He’s suggesting that ironically, by using the melting-pot mode of writing, you’re allowing yourself to be coopted yet again by the mainstream: to hybridicize in a syncretized fashion can be a very conservative position to adopt. While your writing can be seen as progressive and action-oriented, scholars such as Kristin CarterSanborn argue that many of your heroines are passive,
women who are changed by, rather than changing, the American landscape. Despite their seeming adaptability, the argument is that you are romanticizing their domestication. These critics would like to see, ostensibly, more resistance to the assimilation and cooptation of these non-traditional immigrants. 62. M: Jasmine or Hannah Easton aren’t passive women, by anyone’s measure. They quite literally cross oceans, transform their worlds, and in the process leave behind a heap of bruised hearts and bleeding bodies! I don’t think Ahmad has read my works. If he had read them, he would have known that I don’t use European or Euro-American models for my narratives. I’m having to invent a whole new structure for American fiction, a whole new kind of sentence to express non-traditional immigrant emotions and psychic texture. It’s very hard for critics in the U.S. and in India to understand who Jasmine is, or where she’s coming from, because she’s not a familiar American or Indian character. To resist and remain the way you were in India is to perpetuate, and more disturbingly, is to valorize, an awful lot of cultural vices such as sexism, patriarchy, castism, classism. Would Ahmad consider it cooptation when an American woman writer who has emigrated from a clitoridectomy-valorizing Muslim community, let’s say from Togo, chooses to adopt for herself and to support —through her fiction—the U.S. social/cultural/legal response to ritualized female mutilation? The immigrant writer decides what to let go and what to retain. It’s always a two-way transformation. To resist cultural and ideological mutation simply because one want to retain racial/cultural/religious/caste “purity”? is, in my opinion, evil. I’m against that kind of Hitlerian racial and ethnic pride; I’m against the retention of “pure culture” for the sake of purity. I think a very significant, thought probably unanticipated consequence of the controversy generated by In Theory has been the legitimation of “immigrant fiction” by writers of Indian origin as a genre quite distinct from “post-Independence fiction” by Indian writers residing in India, and from “exilic fiction” by India-born writers residing outside India. The works of Indian-Caribbean writers like Roop Lal Monar, IndianCaribbean-Canadian writers like Sam Selvon, Sonny Ladoo, Cyril Dabydeen, Neil Bissoondath, IndianAfrican-Canadian writers like Moyse Vassanji, GoanAfrican writers like Violet Diaz Lannoy, Indian-British writers like Hanif Kureishi, are more intelligently explored in the context of exile. For works like Midnight’s Children , The Trotter-Nama , The Great Indian Novel , however, the most appropriate context is exilic mythologization (of personal and national histories). On my more recent annual trips to India, especially when I’ve taken part in panels with Indian academics on the literature of the Indian diaspora or conducted Fiction Workshops on the University of Baroda campus, I’ve noted my Indian colleagues’ increased awareness of the discrete aims of these two genres. 63. J: In “Immigrant Writing,” you discuss how America has “lost the power to transform the world’s imagination.” You suggest that no one as yet has spoken for “New Americans from non-traditional immigrant countries.” Why is it the burden, or privilege— depending on how one looks at it—of new American
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immigrant writers to “reinvigorate” not only American writing, but also “the world’s imagination”? M: First of all, I don’t think that the writer starts to work on her novel by saying, “I’m going to invigorate all of American writing.” Any writer who does so will end up producing a sterile, agenda-ridden text and not literature. What I, as immigrant writer, hope for is to transform as well as be transformed by the world I’m re-imagining and re-creating through words. I’d like to think that ideas and feelings generated by my fiction will trickle into other cultures and literatures through translation, and provoke re-thinking of what citizenship entails. Jasmine has been translated into 18 languages. I’m very touched and humbled by the letters I get from immigrant readers who have read the book in their own language and have integrated Jasmine’s adventures into their own personal/cultural experience. J: That’s an intriguing dialectic, this idea of immigrant writers and their characters simultaneously transforming and being transformed. Maurice Merleau-Ponty defines “intersubjectivity” in a related way as the trespassing of one’s self on the other and of the other on one’s self... for him, contact with “the other” is not all about assimilation. M: Yeah, and I’ve written at great length on that idea, as early as 1990. J: To move beyond Ahmad and his concerns with your writing, what relationship do you see in the future between what we’ve called “immigrationism”—not a term you used but one that seems to capture the spirit of the project you outline in “Immigrant Writing”—and postcolonialism? What do you think keeps the South Asian postcolonialists with whom you’ve expressed dissatisfaction from listening to you in the way you feel you should be listened to? M: Arrogance. And a lack of sensitivity to literature. I think that they come to works of fiction with closed-off, ready-made, perfectly sealed theories and that they’re not willing to discover any new ground. Just as in travelogues, some travelers, like a V.S. Naipaul, quite often go with preconceived notions about the country and find only what they expect to find: reinforcement and confirmation of their preconceived notions. There are other travelers, and I hope I’m one of these, who come with a fluid, open mind, and let the locals speak for themselves; they experience the place on its own terms. There are those who confirm social, political stereotypes and other writers who interrogate the stereotypes. William Gass will have a respected small audience, but he’s never going to have a wide, popular audience because he isn’t entertaining and comforting the average reader by expressing the ideas and articulating the philosophies that make you feel good about yourself. In terms of seeing connections between the South Asian postcolonialists and immigrationism, I see “diasporality” as a kind of continuum with immigrants and immigrationists at one end of the scale and expatriate or exilic figures and postcolonialists at the other. Those who decide, “all right, I’m going to go on with my life, the past is going to color my present and the present is going to color my future, but here and now, I’m a different person,” these people reflect the spirit of immigrant writing by keeping themselves open to new experiences and responding second by second. They’re changing and being changed: you are a new person every second of your life
depending on how you act and whether you are open to bruisings and dentings. This energy is completely opposed to the postcolonial who, if he or she is not within the immediate postcolonial context, is simply talking about the past and ignoring or obliterating the present because it’s so much safer to talk about a dead debate. 69. J: Has the marketplace proven itself open to “new experiences” and how has that dynamic affected the reception of your work? 70. M: In 1985 no U.S. publisher was willing to publish the manuscript of Darkness because at that time there was no marketing category for “ethnic immigrant American fiction.” The issues facing the South Asian community of naturalized citizens were perceived as irrelevant to “real” Americans, meaning whites, African-Americans and dispossessed American Indians. Editors would say, “This collection is incredibly powerful, even though it’s so dark in its outlook, but we can’t imagine any American reader wanting to read about these people.” The book was eventually bought for $3500 Canadian dollars by Penguin Canada, and came out as a paperback original that was meant to get lost. In the introduction to the collection, I talked about seeing myself as “a series of fluid identities.” Since then, I’ve found corroboration in the fascinating published material of psychologists and academics—Alan Roland’s work on the contextual self and in Robert J. Lifton’s work on the protean self. I would have had an easier time getting published, and being paid more decent advances, if I had written in the exilic tradition of nostalgia and loss. 71. J: What about someone whose fluidity is forestalled, who is unable to move beyond the past despite a willingness to engage in the present? Dimple, in Wife , seems to be just such a character. 72. M: Several of my characters fail to move from expatriate to immigrant in the “diasporality” spectrum. Some of the characters don’t try, don’t want to. In my narratives, I want to represent a varied set of responses to the experience of un-housement. And these characters help to piece together an unsentimental portrait of the United States. I certainly know what I love about the spirit of America, but I’ve also written at great length about the underside of the American Dream. Hannah, in The Holder , is an embodiment of the guts, imagination and assertiveness of that American spirit, and its underside—the will to imperialize. 73. J: As you’ve outlined above, much of the “energy” which marks good writing stems from its willingness to engage in the “bruisings and dentings” of life. Are writing programs doing enough to impress upon young writers the benefits of engaging the “real world” political, ethnic, and racial struggles in American society? 74. M: The answer is “No.” All fiction is political and moral, but very few works of fiction in this country are about politics or morality. Novelists humanize “the other”, and reveal a just, generous, ideal world, but they don’t hector nor dictate as do demagogues and pamphleteers. I think that minority American writers are more likely to want to—and attempt to— create national mythologies through their fiction than are white Americans, because history and memory are of powerful consequence to them. The original white settlers’ dream of “rugged individualism” is anti-history.
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IV. States of Violence 81. J: You’ve commented before that a lot of your stories are about transfiguration or psychic transformation, not economic transformation, and that you consequently are interested in psychic violence and its effect on the individual, often female Asian Americans, rather than group violence and its effect on the masses. Why do you think you’ve concentrated more on psychic violence inflicted upon the individual and less on political unrest and labor agitation in your work, especially as you were subject to the threats of such violence during your childhood in Calcutta? 82. M: Good fiction concentrates on the emotional, intellectual and physical responses of a small cast of characters when they are thrust into a situation that is not routine for them. Politics and history, or rather political and historical events, provide the context for the characters’ varying reactions. And, by forcing the reader to live through the particular characters in their particularized situations, the author hopes that readers will make an epiphanic connection to the world of real politics and issues around them. Remember Cynthia Ozick’s story, “The Shawl”? In that extraordinarily moving story, Ozick doesn’t once mention the word, Holocaust; she focuses on the conflicts of a mother and her two daughters trying to survive the horrors of deathcamp internment. That’s what good fiction does, and should do. When I want to directly address the evil of racism, the denying of civil rights to gay men and women, etc., I prefer to do so in essays.
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As for providing the larger context of politics, class and race, I’ve done that from my first novel on. In The Tiger’s Daughter , individual actions are shaped by, and/or reactions to, the Naxalite revolution in Calcutta, and the imminence of the establishment of a Marxist government in West Bengal state. In Wife , Dimple experiences racist discrimination in a Queens shop, gendrist discrimination at home, and classist discrimination at meetings with white feminists. I just wish that scholars would go back to reading the primary texts before presuming to make [mis]pronouncements on them!
V. Writing and Technology
7. In terms of psychic violence and female sexuality, I grew up at a time and in a class in Calcutta when you couldn’t say the word “sex.” I’d never said the word “sex” and we certainly were not allowed to think of it; I didn’t even know how the male anatomy was constructed. So for me or for my characters who are coming not from villages but upper-class, urban Indian settings, sexuality becomes the mode of resistance or a way to rebel. After all, if you’re coming out of a society where sex is the unspeakable, the unutterable, then doing it or acknowledging your sexuality results not only in individual rebellion but actually constitutes an attack on a whole patriarchal, Victorian, hypocritical society. And why psychic violence? Ultimately, physical injuries are less affecting than the wounds inside. You lose a leg, you get a prosthetic. But what do you do about the scarred psyche? 3. 4.
J: You’ve written elsewhere about the need to “make the familiar exotic and the exotic familiar.” M: Yes, to bring out the luminosity in the most banal moment, and to elicit sympathy for the least familiar character.
J: By privileging psychic as opposed to physical violence, does your work implicitly cultivate an “aestheticization” of violence? For example, violence appears to be somewhat “benign” in its after-effects on Jasmine—she doesn’t seem to bear too many psychic or physical scars from her traumatic experiences with Suki and Half-Face. Similarly, in The Holder , violence seems to be surprisingly positive in its effects on Hannah, transforming her in its crucible from an “unfinished, unformed” woman into “a goddess-in-themaking.” To borrow the structural trope of The Holder , is the violence you write about somehow like the “virtual reality” Beigh experiences, transformative and enlightening to be sure, but somehow less than “real”? M: First of all, before I get to the idea of virtual reality and violence, I want you to come to the kitchen with me. This is Goddess Kali, the image of the Godhead as Destroyer. The Godhead as Kali is what I worship. Most Hindu Bengalis in Calcutta do. Most Hindu Bengali families have an altar to Her in their homes. I do; in my bedroom. You can see for yourself that Kali isn’t one bit passive. She has strung Herself a garland of severed heads, and She’s hefting Her blood-stained weapons to decapitate more evil men. Kali is what Jasmine was mythologizing herself into when she killed her rapist, Half-Face. In Christianity, humans are made in the image of God. But in Hinduism, all creatures are manifestations of the Godhead. Why doesn’t Jasmine agonize more over having killed the man who brutalized her? Why is her reaction “benign”? Her goal is the Hindu ideal of non-attachment. To allow oneself to be utterly destroyed by the violence done to her and done by her would be to fall victim to maya. You’ve read R.K. Narayan’s The Guide ; you’re familiar with the Hindu concept of non-attachment. The difficult feat for the Hindu American writer is to dramatize the benignity of non-attachment without making characters appear uncaring or grimly stoic.
J: Considering the potential violence of representation, do you see writing—or virtual technology, in the case of Beigh becoming Bhagmati in The Holder—as a violent medium? 8. M: I don’t know if I think of the medium as violence. It’s certainly a medium that forces the author and the reader to take enormous risks, to expose oneself to emotions one would rather avoid. 9. J: Well, you have talked about the physical and psychic violence that necessarily accompanies transformation for the immigrant. Given the transformative capability of technological developments in writing, has your own evolution as a writer been marked by epistemological violence? 10. M: I have no idea. I started with orality. I come from a culture where grandmothers and mothers tell endless stories. There wasn’t a single night that I didn’t fall asleep to my mother telling stories at dinner-time. We sat on raffia mats on the floor and ate off brass plates. She mashed rice and fish into little balls and fed me, quite literally, with her fingers while she told me stories from the historical novels or biographies that she’d read. Stories about Marie Antoinette, Napoleon, Mary Queen of Scots. Bigger than life characters and
adventures. I marvel at it now: my mother putting food into my mouth and, simultaneously, putting the wonder of narrative into my head. It was by listening that I visualized and was mesmerized by conflict, by character, by romance, whatever. I started to read and write very early—I was in regular school by the age of three—and at that time, we used pens that you dip into an inkwell. I don’t know if that was violence, but you did immediately start thinking in wholly different ways and the scratching—I can still see the blots of ink, the scratching on the paper—slows you down, but also gives you time to think. Then my relationship to story again became very different when we graduated by age nine to fountain pens. Also, the paper was so different over there; you could see bugs worked into the fabric, or big seams... the paper was rough and pocked with shiny bits. Seeing whether the pen nib would go over the shiny impurities or not resulted in a wholly different way of dealing with orthography and a different mental process which accompanies the writing of stories. There wasn’t ever a time that I can remember when I wasn’t writing stories and I remember what a big breakthrough it was when my father brought back ballpoint pens from Paris. They all melted in the heat but you could write so much faster! That was very empowering, and I went straight from that in the States to typewriter and when I started thinking on electric typewriter, again, suddenly my relationship with the word, and therefore with narrative, became very, very different, more conscious. If by “technological developments in writing” you mean the availability of computers, software, data storage and retrieval facilities, information-design programs, virtual reality, etc., then I have to confess that technology has been for me a means of exploring and expanding knowledge without losing the writerly sense of wonder. Clark and I were among the very first batch of American writers to get into computers. 11. J: Oh, really? 12. M: Yes. In fact, Clark was on a program on NPR to discuss the ways in which the form and the process of writing has changed as a result of his switch to the word-processor. Technology has broken down linear thought as well as linear plot-movement. I don’t think of technology as an enemy of Art. Technology serves the artist. 13. J: That sentiment is consistent with your writing in The Holder , where technology is employed throughout as a literary and thematic device. Nevertheless, the novel implies that such media are only actualized through data-gathering by sensitive and careful human beings like Beigh, people who have a personal investment in such projects. For example, Venn, who tries to experience the past using the interactive computer program, ends up with nothing more than a “postcard view of modern Madras”; he can’t access the experience Beigh can, in large part because he hasn’t cultivated the kind of sensitivity that she has from tracing Hannah’s life. The technology acts as a “gatekeeper” of sorts, which we find very interesting, especially when considering how technology structures First and Third World relationships of power and hierarchy. 14. M: To me, creative imagination is the “gatekeeper.” The technician downloads a statistics-rich experience; the
artist, using the same program, wrests a vision. And each time you use that program, you learn or dis-learn some element because “you” are made up of a series of fluid identities. Similarly, each time you read The Holder , I hope you come up with new insights. I’m not sure I agree with you that technology privileges “First” World over “Third.” Much of the information transfer and accounting for U.S. corporations and megamultinationals with European headquarters is done offshore, meaning in areas that you are designating as “Third.” I’ve done homework on this. It’s class , not geography, that’s providing the hierarchy grid. Urban, upper-middle classes and professionals in Bombay, Singapore, Hong Kong, Manila, etc. have all the latest electronics and communications instruments. But the poor and the homeless in all areas of the world, including North America, are increasingly disempowered by technological advances. Your question seems to arise from the need of postcolonial studies scholars to impose politics as the dominant grid for measuring art. But for the writer of serious fiction, politics or race or gender is only one element of many hundred elements that go into the making of a character. Novelists aim for fullness of catharsis, not a political pamphlet. 15. J: Yet, isn’t it difficult to separate the aesthetic from the political? For example, two reviews suggest that while the use of virtual reality is a clever device in The Holder , the representation of 17th-century India—with its “excessive” emphasis on violence and ornamentation —ironically reduplicates exoticized representations of India found in colonialist texts and period pieces (see Koshy and Parameswaran). These reviewers argue that any attempt to alter or deconstruct such representations through the use of virtual reality is undermined by your perhaps unconscious kinship with Orientalists of the past. How do you respond to such charges, and upon reflection, do you wish you’d used “virtual reality” any differently? 16. M: Absolutely not. One, this is not a book about India, but about the making of America and American national mythology. That’s why I used the two women characters, Hannah the pre-America American, and Beigh, the post-deEuropeanized American, to dramatize the need to redefine what it means to be an “American” in the 1990s. Two, I’m sure the two reviewers you are referring to haven’t done eleven years of research into mercantilism in 17th-century India as I have. Crucial new material on 17th-century trade, especially on intraAsian trade, has been published in the early 1990s by Indian and Sri Lankan scholars. So it’s simply ignorance of Indian mercantile and military histories on the part of these two reviewers. That’s what I find most frustrating about being a scholar/writer: that academics and journalists with insufficient knowledge of the contextual material have the audacity to make such public pronouncements! I don’t know where this animus comes from. Why is it so hard for them to deal with impassioned, well-researched, provocative fiction by a woman author? 17. J: Part of these critics’ suggestions, though, is that despite careful research, your revisions of colonialist or orientalist accounts of the seventeenth century are not substantive enough.
18. M: My suggestion to them is that they bring greater intelligence and sensitivity to bear on the act of reading literature, including The Holder. 19. J: This is a book about the process of history making, specifically about the “American” way of making and re-making history. Yet, one might argue that the representations of Native Americans in the early sections of the novel set in Puritan New England perhaps unwittingly repeat the imperialist tendencies of many colonial and nineteenth-century American texts. Specifically, the miscegenetic encounter between Rebecca and her Nipmuc lover recalls similar encounters depicted in novels by nineteenth-century New England women, including Lydia Child’s Hobomok and Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie. In those works, such encounters are subversive to the extent that they allow for a female voice to emerge and suggest possible “new” alliances between women and Native Americans. Yet the Native American never really “speaks” in these novels... a romanticized version does, and thus these amorous encounters serve, one could argue, merely to empower and exoticize colonial and nineteenth-century Anglo-American women at the expense of Native Americans. 20. M: Well, in my novel, I have Rebecca’s bi-racial children very much alive and present to recount their own tales when they are ready to. Rebecca’s Nipmuc lover has several prototypes in history, of course. I’ll leave it to other authors to write the lover’s story. Actually I’m very interested in writing King Philip’s story from his point of view some day. An author focuses on a few individual characters, and hopes that a larger frisson of emotion and revelation comes across to the reader. I would be guilty of bad writing if I insisted on making Rebecca’s lover stand for all Nipmucs let alone for all original Americans, or Bhagmati all Hindu women. Margaret Atwood has written: “You tell the story you have to tell; let others tell the story that they have to tell.” My message to these academics: Read the story that I have told in The Holder ; don’t fabricate a story that I didn’t tell, but that you need to pretend I did so that you can distort the text into a convenient target of hate. I’ve been quoted in an article in Harper’s as saying these postcolonial scholars are “assassins of the imagination.” 21. J: While we certainly do not intend to “assassinate the imagination,” we would argue that by relegating Rebecca’s bi-racial children to the margins of the text as unspeaking subjects, their narratives, as is the case in much colonial American writing, are endlessly deferred. Nonetheless, we feel that much of the richness and strength of the novel derives from the interventions you make in the captivity narrative tradition and the “canon” of 19th-century American literature. 22. M: Well, perhaps next time you read The Holder you’ll have new “takes” on the significance of my metafictional use of Sita’s, Bhagmati’s, and Hannah’s “captivity narratives.” 23. J: In conclusion, we’d like to go back to the idea of Mughal painting you articulated earlier as a governing aesthetic in your writing. You’ve said that “I will be writing, in the Mughal style, till I get it right” (“FourHundred Year Old Woman” 38). The Holder seems to be very much predicated upon “Mughal aesthetics.” It seems to be an excellent example of the “complication” and “elaboration” of Mughal miniature painting and reflects the “sense of the interpenetration of all things” which you have identified as a compelling aspect of
such an aesthetic. Having said all that, have you finally “gotten it right”? And if so, where are you going from here? 24. M: Who knows? The characters surprised me draft by draft; the structure of the novel evolved almost in spite of myself. I should add that my structures are also inspired by my obsession with chaos theory and fractals. In fact, a couple of European scholars have published essays on the operation of chaos theory in Jasmine. Where am I going? I don’t want to know too far ahead.
Bibliography Ahmad, Aijaz. In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. London and New York: Verso, 1992. Carter-Sanborn, Kristin. “‘We Murder Who We Were’: Jasmine and the Violence of Identity.” American Literature 66.3 (Sept. 1994): 57393. JanMohamed, Abdul R. “Worldliness-without-World, Homelessnessas-Home: Toward a Definition of the Specular Border Intellectual.” Edward Said: A Critical Reader. Ed. Michael Sprinker. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. 96-120. Koshy, Susan. “Rev. of The Holder of the World, by Bharati Mukherjee.” Amerasia Journal 20.1 (1994): 188-90. Leong, Liew-Geok. “Bharati Mukherjee.” International Literature in English. Ed. Robert Ross. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1991. 487-500. Metcalf, John and J.R. Struthers, eds. How Stories Mean. Erin, Ontario: Porcupine’s Quill, 1993. Mukherjee, Bharati. Darkness. Markham, Ontario: Penguin, 1985. —-. “A Four-Hundred Year Old Woman.” The Writer on Her Work. Ed. Janet Sternburg. Vol. 2. New York: W.W. Norton, 1991. 33-38. —-. The Holder of the World. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1993. —-. “Immigrant Writing: Give Us Your Maximalists!” New York Times Book Review. 28 Aug. 1988: 29. —-. Jasmine. New York: Grove Wiedenfield, 1989. —-. The Middleman and Other Stories. New York: Viking Penguin, 1988. —-. The Tiger’s Daughter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971. —-. Wife. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975. Mukherjee, Bharati, and Clark Blaise. Days and Nights in Calcutta. Saint Paul, MN: Hungry Mind Press, 1995. —-. The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy. Markham, Ontario: Viking Penguin, 1987. Mukherjee, Bharati, and Robert Boyers. “A Conversation with V.S. Naipaul.” Salmagundi 50—51 (Fall 1980-Winter 1981): 4-22. Parameswaran, Uma. Rev. of The Holder of the World, by Bharati Mukherjee. World Literature Today 68.3 (1994): 636-7. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “The Problem of Cultural SelfRepresentation.” The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. Ed. Sarah Harasym. New York and London: Routledge, 1990.
10 Sandra Cisneros The
without a fence. This was the house Papa talked about when he held a lottery dckefand this was the house Mama dreamed up in the stories sfie told us before we went to bed. But the house on Mango Street is not the way they told it at all. It's small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you'd think they were holding their breath. Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in. There is no front yard, only four litde elms the city planted by the curb. Out back is a small garage for the car we don't own yet and a small yard?that looks smaller between the two buildings on either side. There are stairs in our house, but they're ordinary hallway stairs, and the house has only one washroom. Everybody has to share a bedroom—Mama and Papa, Carlos and Kiki, me and Nenny. Once when we were living on Loomis, a nun from my school passed by and saw me playing out front. The laundromat downstairs had been boarded up because it had been robbed two days before and the owner had painted on the wood YES WE'RE OPEN so as not to lose business. Where do you live? she asked. There, I said pointing up to the third floor. You live there? There. I had to look to where she pointed—the third floor, the paint peeling, wooden bars Papa had nailed on the windows so we wouldn't fall out. You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there. I nodded. I knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to. But this isn't it. The house on Mango Street isn't it. For the time being, Mama says. Temporary, says Papa. But I know how those things go. And all I hear is the clapping when the music stops. My uncle and me bow and he walks me back in my thick shoes to my mother who is proud to be my mother. All night the boy who is a man watches me dance. He watched me dance.
House onMango Street Hips TheHouse onMango Street We didn't always live on Mango Street, teefore that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler it was Paulina, and before that I can't remember. But what I remember most is moving a lot. Each time it seemed there'd be one more of us. By the time we got to Mango Street we were six—Mama, Papa, Carlos, Kiki, my sister Nenny and me. The house on Mango Street is ours, and we don't have to pay rent to anybody, or share the yard with the people downstairs, or be careful not to make too much noise, and there isn't a landlord banging on the ceiling with a broom. But even so, it's not the house we'd thought we'd get. We had to leave the flat on Loomis quick. The water pipes broke and the landlord wouldn't fix them because the house was too old. We had to leave fast. We were using the washroom next door and carrying water over in empty milk gallons. That's why Mama and Papa looked for a house, and that's why we moved into the house on Mango Street, far away, on the other side of town. They always told us that one day we would move into a house, a real house that would be ours for always so we wouldn't have to move each year. And our house would have running water and pipes that worked. And inside it would have real stairs, not hallway stairs, but stairs inside like the houses on T.V. And we'd have a basement and at least three washrooms so when we took a bath we wouldn't have to tell everybody. Our house would be white with trees around it, a great big yard and grass growing
I like coffee, I like tea. I like the boys and the boys like me. Yes, no, maybe so. Yes, no, maybe so . . . One day you wake up and they are there. Ready and waiting like a new Buick with the keys in the ignition. Ready to take you where? They're good for holding a baby when you're cooking, Rachel says, turning the jump rope a little quicker. She has no imagination. You need them to dance, says Lucy. If you don't get them you may turn into a man. Nenny says this and she believes it. She is this way because of her age. That's right, I add before Lucy or Rachel can make fun of her. She is stupid alright, but she is my sister. But most important, hips are scientific, I say repeating what Alicia already told me. It's the bones that let you know which skeleton was a man's when it was a man and which a woman's. They bloom like roses, I continue because it's obvious I'm the only one who can speak with any authority; I have science on my side. The bones just one day open. Just like that. One day you might decide to have kids, and then where are you going to put them? Got to have room. Bones got to give. But don't have too many or your behind will spread. That's how it is, says Rachel whose mama is as wide as a boat. And we just laugh. What I'm saying is who here is ready? You gotta be able to know what to do with hips when you get them, I say making it
up as I go. You gotta know how to walk with hips, practice you know—like if half of you wanted to go one way and the other half the other. That's to lullaby it, Nenny says, that's to rock the baby asleep inside you. And then she begins singing seashells, copper bells, eevy, ivy, o-ver. I'm about to tell her that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, but the more I think about it. . . You gott;a get the rhythm, and Lucy begins to dance. She has the idea, though she's having trouble keeping her end of the double-dutch steady. It's gotta be just so, I say. Not too fast and not too slow. Not too fast and not too slow. We slow the double circles down to a certain speed so Rachel who has just jumped in can practice shaking it. I want to shake like hoochi-coochie, Lucy says. She is crazy. I want to move like heebie-jeebie, I say picking up on the cue. I want to be Tahiti. Or merengue. Or electricity. Or tembleque! Yes, tembleque. That's a good one. And then it's Rachel who starts it: Skip, skip, snake in your hips. Wiggle around and break yo
