Beauty in the Midst of Chaos: Kevin Prufer’s Sleepaway

With the first sentence in Sleepaway, Kevin Prufer engages the reader with a catastrophic event that is described briefly and is both familiar and strange: “The invisible mists were falling, fine as pollen, and soon everyone will sleep.”  The source of the mist is conjectured to be from a lab, from Russia, space fallout, chemicals, so it reminds us of Covid but actually occurs earlier and later than Covid and into the future. There is no cure, and though medicine may weaken the mists’ effects, that medicine is rare, and itself dangerous. Society has fallen apart in common ways, not enough food, not enough medical facilities, loss of family units, institutions, jobs, stress on the assumed basic values.  The situation is dire. It is also like the world we’ve lived in and still do. And yet, Sleepaway is positive, full of hope and even play. It delves into and elevates the nature and presence and promise of the creative spirit.

The setting is a small university town in the heartland of the United States. Though the mysterious mist creates the initial draw, the characters are the heart of the story, especially Glass,  whose sensitive nature is a driving force, and his two friends, who establish the normalcy of youth and life in the midst of chaos. Their survival is to root for, in the novel and elsewhere. The other main protagonist, Cora, becomes intricately involved in Glass’s plight. The community is family. Death and grief occur but do not dominate. In one scene we are reminded that “the world ending for you ain’t the same thing as the world ending.”

The real strength of Sleepaway is the uplift, the values laced throughout.  Most characters want to help others and do so within their ability. Time gradually seems to be one moment, everything accessible from or happening in that same moment. The structure lends to this concept, with chapter time shifts moving from the present to the past, characters whose minds fly forward and back; references that bring in so many other eras and conjectures.  Literature and experience, past and present, inform the human mind and body— the more the better.

I read Sleepaway in one sitting, captivated by its complexity and promise. There is, of course, also the beauty of language. This is Prufer’s first novel, but he is a prominent poet, a master of language.  He’s a broad thinking and compassionate observer in all his work, and blends forms, invents them. I look forward to what other worlds he creates.

Whitney Book Bistro Discussion Journal Entry on James McBride’s novel, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store (posted by Kristine Martin)

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store Discussion Journal

Grand Passion

When I was about ten, we lived in a small rented house with no bathroom inside—a nice outhouse at the corner of the back yard. The yard itself was generous, flat, sunny, bordered by trees that shaded only sections as the day progressed. I love trees, creatures, flowers. It was a miracle to me how Mrs. Buchanan, who lived on the corner, had blooms almost all year, in orderly beds bordered by bricks. She was a huge woman, corseted, wore dresses, and yet she managed to plant and grow flowers with none of us ever seeing her doing the labor. I surmise she was out before the sun was up.

                I wanted to grow flowers. My mother gave me total freedom to do that, gave me money for seeds, and advice about reading the packet information for when and how to plant. She probably offered more specific advice but then, as now, I wanted to do it by myself from scratch, and owe no credit to anyone for even influence. Besides, she worked in a pants factory and I didn’t want her working for me, too. I don’t recall which seed packets I purchased or if I managed to borrow trowels. Possibly I used spoons, forks, and a knife. I remember a wood-handled butcher knife, but memory plays tricks on us. The flower bed was probably six by six, measuring now from where the edges lay when I was squatting or on my knees. The rows were straight, the soil upturned and black enough–my mother had told me black soil was the best. We lived on the high-land area known as Crowley’s Ridge, surrounded by rich delta land but more like Appalachia. Likely our soil, whatever color, was filled with tangled roots of weeds and grass.

                When delicate green leaves appeared, I was ecstatic. I had saved the empty packets as a key to identifying what grew, but a green leaf or a spiral was the first sign. I weeded according to my own sensibilities of what looked most lovely, most assuredly a flower. I was wrong. No flower ever breached soil. I grew weeds. Not one blossom came through during the following weeks, when I neglected to care for the square bed except by looking to see if success would surprise me. Some weeds have lovely flowers but none of mine did. They were, however, my weeds. I felt ownership. Now I know that because I had acted from hope and love (maybe even passion) and had labored for a goal, I had to own what resulted. I didn’t begrudge the effort. At least that’s what I remember.

                This spring I bought five packets of seeds and planted them in five places, two in containers and the others in secret spots. I planted them too late to be successful, but I’m excited at the possibility they will bloom anyhow. This morning I found green leaves in the containers. When the sun has been out a while, I’ll check the small beds. I plan to root out nothing but give everything in the ground a chance.

                I realize my gardening attitude is much my general attitude. My nature is to become passionate and act quickly, fear influence and intrusion, but harness energies. My stories are more than seeds. They blossom, though perhaps not with the best nutrients, not enough research and thought, but certainly through labor and love. Passion. I write early, in isolation, in a different world and time. Then I send the work out already blooming, looking for a great place to display. It’s a lot like tossing wildflowers into the wind—it feels wonderful but isn’t the most effective method. It has, still, given me a good life.

Phong Nguyen’s Bronze Drum

 Phong Nguyen’s newest book, Bronze Drum, is a grand and lovely work, high-minded and beautifully realized.  He fleshes out, in fiction, a myth of the Việt people that he first heard from his father, and, always intrigued by it, later researched. He introduces the story in the most inviting way. He explains the historical basis for the myth, and the evolving reverence for it, with the major characters raised to sainthood.  Then, in a Prologue, Kha, himself a character in the battle, seems to step backward in time and call the audience to the unfolding of the great event, a “sublime moment,” as though it’s going to occur right now.  It’s a stirring beginning and the story meets the the expectations raised.  I love the book.

Here’s the situation: In 35 CE, The Lạc Việt people live under the increasingly restrictive and unjust rule of the Han conquerors who impose Confucian philosophy and order on their subjects, and who tax them unfairly.  Under the Han, regional lord Trung and his wife have managed to raise their two young daughters in gracious comfort, and under their own traditions. They are from a matriarchal culture, the daughters are broadly educated, including martial arts. While required to be dutiful in meeting family expectations, the young women are free to express their own natures, and to take as lovers whom they will. When marriage is imposed and a burdensome tax levied, the sisters rebel. Though they differ greatly in personal nature, both desire freedom for themselves and for everyone.  They gather and lead an army of women to overthrow the Han oppressors, with a brilliant strategy.

This is masterful storytelling, engaging on most levels.  The characters aren’t endearing at first, though they become so as mythical characters do, through extreme traits that are strengths and also flaws, memorable excesses.  They’re the kind of character one remembers—the impetuous Trung Nhi, the contemplative Trung Trǎc. The sisters first rebel against family and in their own quest encounter challenges and punishments that are vivid, poetic, and touching.  Trung Nhi, for example, who has to be outdoors and active, is imprisoned and denied the sound of human voice; Trung Trǎc, who finds a “life of learning” a great gift, must scale a mountain and acquire survival prowess in search of the “heartbreak flower.” This is wonderful stuff. Many colorful characters people this work and exemplify a quality. Almost all, maybe all, embody a contradiction or conflict. Kha, for example, is guardsman. Whom should he guard? And Phùng Thi Chính the cook, mother to four sons, giving birth in battle, grabbing her shield and leaping into the fray. What a powerful symbol of motherhood and warrior, breaking taboo gloriously.

The plot is quick and straightforward.  It moves from the palace, courtyard, town, to the mountain land, and then to battlefield. One reward in that movement is the unfolding of the physical reality of the country, the architecture, parks, gardens, food, animals (Tau the turtle has a minor role).  This is Việtnam a thousand years ago, before our experience with it, our preconceptions and biases.  We learn its beauty.  The descriptions overall suggest order, airyness, harmony between the natural and civilized world—except for battle. The unfolding of the plot introduces the layers of the society, highlights differences in the lifestyles of those ruling and those being served. The difficulty of being fair and just, of freedom, expands.  The story is a deep look at a society oppressed.  And there’s nothing really new there.  We see it all over the world, and in our own country.  This is one effect of great literature. To set out what we should all say No to.

Every scene encourages scrutiny. An early passage involving the punishment of the beggar Duy, for something he didn’t do, offers different perspectives about what occurs. Ensuing scenes do the same probing. We’re urged to question. What kind of rule must one disobey? When is honor not a good reason to fight? How much can and will a person sacrifice to have order rather than chaos? That last is a question for all classes, the governed and the governing. It’s not that Bronze Drum provides definitive answers, but that it presents two sides at least, and suggests these problems are relative, eternal. They have to be decided over and over. As now, when borders are being breached, identities ridiculed, people impoverished. When oppression diminishes and smothers human lives, people must rebel.

A great point, made often, is that people, especially leaders, must learn the “other” way of thinking and being, at least to acknowledge it. The sisters earn this through suffering, and when they join powers are a formidable force.  This point is made at length through Trung Trǎc’s two meetings with the Degar, the people of the mountain. They see no reason to join the rebellion since they aren’t affected by the Han oppression. Their ways are their own—primitive, harsh, physical. If they are to join the battle, there must be a reason to do so.  They are Việt people but in their attitude are from a separate country.  Painfully familiar.

The most beautiful passages in Bronze Drum are about love.  Love. The right to love whom and as one wishes is central to the rebellion.  Both sisters fall in love with a person below their social status, but it’s the kind of love between Trung Trǎc and Thi Sách, her tutor,  that is developed deeply, at length.   The attraction of minds precedes physical attraction and the blend completes a different world for the couple. It’s an idealized love, gracefully developed, and believable—romantic in the best sense. One thinks, let this last.  Such intense love between individuals, which may happen rarely but should never be denied, is like a chalice to all humans.  

Beguiling language is a great pleasure in this book.  Nguyen risks overstatement, but that suits the legendary nature of Bronze Drum. One has to attend the language.  The tone and the slightly elevated and formal narrative create a distance from our vernacular. That distance remains through shifts of point of view, in different domains. There’s individuality, but nothing really common. Many, many lines tug the heart or mind, or both. “Guilt ruptured and rent him.” “ Their memories arrayed themselves like an audience to this moment.” “Closing her eyes from a transport of joy.” “’The mind assigns personality to everything . . . even the void.” “[He] may be a ghost and a memory, but I am now his tooth and claw in this world.” The language is simply rich, always saying more than the words, creating this other world, but real. It’s a comfortable and consistent storytelling that one can give into, that guides, simultaneously authoritative and pleasing.

Nguyen is the author of two collections of short fiction, and two other novels.  He has proven his great talent in capturing dialect and multiple sensibilities, in innovation, and especially in dealing with ideals, our best.  His works are bold and ethical.  Bronze Drum is the most powerful to date.

Bronze Drum
Grand Central Publishing
August 2020
ISBN: 1538753707
404 pages

John Mort’s Oklahoma Odyssey: Our Journey

When I read Down Along the Piney, John Mort’’s collection of fiction, published in 2019, I was taken by his fondness for the region and the people he wrote about. I felt I was visiting a familiar place with a good friend. In Oklahoma Odyssey Mort creates the same closeness, though the world is the 1890s Midwest. The book is historical fiction, deeply based on fact, and highlights life centering around the third land rush into Oklahoma territory, specifically the Cherokee Strip in 1893. It’s a delightful book, a pleasure to settle into. Mort creates vividly much of everyday life that fills our histories and memories:  oral and written literature, song, dance, food, customs, language.  It has a western feel and energy, too. But the real power is the cross-sectioned presentation of challenges faced by individual groups in that society. We can champion the heroes here, and cheer their success, while having a sharp look at our heritage.

                The basic situation: Euly Kreider’s father has been gunned down by Eddie Mole, already a wanted man, and Euly, a Mennonite, doesn’t want to seek revenge.  He does want to save his father’s property. His friend, Johnny Baxter, an Osage farm hand, believes Euly should avenge his father’s death. Also, the reward for Mole would help both men. Johnny, who needs to acquire horses as a bride price for Kate, Euly’s half sister, will trail Eddie, learn of the coming land rush, and spot a prime site for himself and Kate, though, as Indians, they’re not allowed to claim. Betrayal and loss follow, but so does success. The plots converge during the land rush, and destinies are met.

                Mort’s minor characters, always colorful, often take stage, even if briefly, and elicit sympathy—mostly women, though that might be my bias, and from different cultures.  There’s a prostitute whose pride is winning, an Osage mother so keenly aware of bias she is maddened. The three main characters are almost larger than life and their makeup matters:  Euly, white and young, but in a specific religious minority; Johnny older, full Osage, seasoned in prejudice, a worker; Kate, part white, part something else, and rare in form for those days, at least in the white culture—six feet, blond, dark skinned, and, bless her heart, with long feet.  They’re people in process and in a good direction.  They are such a mixture of heritage—genetically and environmentally—that what they represent most is the melting pot of America and the mixture of American people.  They also share traits we most value, regardless of the era: intelligence, boldness, loyalty, pride, honesty, fairness, and kindness.

Settings vary greatly and are interesting in themselves, in structure as much as in meaning. Towns dot the text. Kate moves to Kansas City, the “big city,” and allows us to see the topography of the place and the bustling civilization, theater, trolleys, unions, but also the closed doors. Her extended experience in “Mississippi Town,” the black town, is vivid and poignant.  She learns her passion as a painter and the role she chooses. In contrast are Johnny Baxter’s open-nature Cherokee Strip and the Osage reservation.  He sees the best and worst of the Strip, identifies the prime site and why, and adds the turmoil embedded in it by recalling its history. He shares the value of rituals and of claiming a family. From the home base in Jericho Springs, Kansas, Euly travels a different kind of landscape—a business world. He reveals the ins and outs of financing, merchants, shipments. With some rare skill, Mort makes stocks of items beautiful, and Euly’s choice of “hardware” as destiny believable.  

There are many other enjoyable features of this work, without having to think of their import. The characters address meaty matters, such as the nature of evil, when killing is justified, the nature of God, his powers and paradoxes. Warm instances, like friendship and kindness, outweigh the hard times, though pathos is ever near.  And animals.  Mort reveals fondness for all creatures, but horses and mules are prominent in this work. Horses are “sensitive creatures,” as even villain Eddie Mole says. They protest. They rage. They make stands. They show loyalty and love and pride—maybe heroism.  I was a little chagrined that the Kreider work horses were female, with common names, Maude and Gerty. But how fitting and how true.  Maude is a very endearing creature.  (I’ve never met John Mort, but I would like to talk with him about her.)

One complicated and marvelous presence in Oklahoma Odyssey is allusion. From the title to the end of the work, names, titles, parts of other works—written, spoken, painted, or sung— are so integrated into this novel that they seem structural, a device that creates a final unity. They’re like flood and rain simultaneously. Homer to Poe, Rosseau, Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Eliza Wood.  Barbry Allen.  Johnny Baxter. There’s no hierarchy. Possibly, analysis could link origins to some particular source, such as oral, folk, formal education, but they just flow through the manuscript.  They are at least, and maybe at best, the stories of cultures blending, rising from everyone, belonging to everyone, equally. The naming of characters by themselves or their loved ones, like Ulysses, Noble Savage, Johnny Heart of Oak, Venus, and Little Hero might mean that this work and everyone’s work is part of an epic, legendary and grand.

Oklahoma Odyssey is entertaining, with humor, action, and much beauty. Insight and compassion are the binding agents that make it a great book. It’s a valuable portrait of us, part fact, part fiction, and deeply real.     

Books:

Mort, John. Down Along the Piney: Ozarks Stories (Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction) University of Notre Dame Press, 2018. 210 pages print.

—–. Oklahoma Odyssey. Bison Books April 1, 2022.  394 pages print.

More Than a Good Horror: Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic

            Silvia Moreno-Garcia is an award-winning Mexican-Canadian author with at least seven books published. Until recently, I hadn’t read any of her works. A friend recommended Mexican Gothic to me, saying it was the kind of fiction I enjoyed, filled with esoteric details, so there’s something new and fascinating at almost every turn of the page. She was right. It’s an astonishing, colorful, lively book, filled with details about the Mexican culture, about art, history, and science that are interesting in themselves and worth following up, and that fit in the work some major thematic way. Though it’s a rather light horror, it also opens worlds of serious thought and conjecture. Everything weaving it together—the underpinning—is realistic, and, if the reader wants to pursue those prods, more than touches on contemporary issues such as gender roles, racism, and eugenics. It’s a strong egalitarian and cautionary (in a modern sense) work.

            The plot is very traditional horror. Through a disturbing cryptic letter from a cousin, twenty-two years old Noemi Taboada is summoned for help. Catalina is being held prisoner at the home of her husband’s family, High Place, in the Sierra Nevada mountains. She mentions ghosts in the walls, voices. Noemi must answer the call. In the misty heights, she finds a hill-top mansion governed by a repulsive Howard Doyle, his daughter, son, grandson, and three servants. Silence reins, as does control. Noemi’s attempts to get medical help for Catalina are blocked. She is herself beset by nightmares—or sleepwalking dreams or visions—in which events clue her as the nature of the place, its origin, of herself, and what she risks. She discovers a symbiotic relationship that has been nurtured and advanced in the High Place locale, that has destroyed the family and more. She must draw on her better self and her instincts to avoid falling victim and to save others.

            The beginning is inviting: 1950s Mexico City, parties, music, costumes, and customs. The horror begins slowly but increases, as the genre demands, and toward the end the book almost throbs and seeps. The horror is not so much frightening as repulsive.  Moreno-Garcia is an expert about fungi, and her authority keeps the horror on the edge of reality. Howard Doyle has forced a symbiotic relationship with fungi. All the repulsive details—boils, blackened rot, blistered, peeling flesh, erupting flesh, foul, poisonous air, and so on, are natural—and not hideous—in the fungal world. That same decay in a human, especially close-up and over a short span of time is revolting. The adherence to what’s plausible in our natural world gains acceptance for the conjecture—this could happen to you/us. Francis Doyle, for example, describes the “cicada fungus Massospora cicadina” which takes over the cicada. Such zombie makers are pretty common in the natural world. (National Geographic author Mary Bates named five.) It’s fitting that misuse turns the user hideous. So the decay of Howard Doyle, given the network he’s joined, is realistic as is the milieu: mildew, mold, yellow and golden air—a gloom—fog, undergrowth, fevers and poison. The true horror comes from baser human nature: the lasciviousness of Howard Doyle, his greed, his violence. Murder, sacrifice, and live burial are human acts, quite distinct.

            The monstrous Doyle family represents a very realistic and familiar threat—the belief that one race is superior. The Doyles’ isolation and desire to maintain their genetic traits above others led to incest, and to the use and destruction of the outsiders. The indigenous people of El Triunfo were seen as undesirable and gradually stripped of their land, its resources, their livelihood, their health, and their lives. Doyle is pure (incestuous) English; Noemi, mestizo, Spanish and Mezatec—European and indigenous. Their nature and ancestry present the eugenics argument and the broader battle is woven in by allusion to theories, major names, and studies in eugenics, e.g. the work of Galton, Davenport and Steggeda, Juan Vasconcelos, and others. Doyle notes that Noemi is swarthy, and he asks pointedly if she believes that it’s the destiny of Mexican people “to forge a new race that encompasses all races,” which he, of course, opposes with all his nature and power. His is an attitude that has sickened our nation and world.

           While Noemi is a charming young heroine—beautiful, rebellious, savvy, and consistently witty (not the fainting sweetness of her cousin Catalina)—everything we learn about her reveals a human evolving, away from the standard and traditional, into the bold and individual. That means, here, away from romance and illusions, fairytales, into science and fact, away from the female role. She’s a new-money socialite, has attended Feminine University and now wants to attend National University. She knows about chemicals through her family’s businesses. Her goal of being an actress has given way to the goal of being an anthropologist like Margaret Mead. She is extremely well read and alludes to Kubla Khan, classical literature, British kings, Shakespeare, art, music, religion, herbal medicine, folklore, and parapsychology. Her references are not empty namedropping. She interprets her surroundings and herself with that extra knowledge. Noemi applies the story of Kubla Khan’s stone—which serves as a seal of protection for his messengers—to her own position serving as a messenger for Catalina, and having the stone in her pocket. This doesn’t seem like hubris at all, just drawing from the world for one’s identification, goals, and place—self-worth. She’s a woman absorbing knowledge and blending it in herself. Everything about her suggests progress. A woman underway. Though she doesn’t actually defy gender limitations, she blurs them. She’s drawn toward the grandson Francis, who has the traits that are traditionally female. He’s shy, an artist, poet, “fragile,” but also a naturalist—a combination of art and science—and she’s moved by his “fervor” more than his masculinity. This isn’t a reversal of roles but a blend of roles, without qualifying either as superior or inferior.

           Moreno-Garcia suggests that it’s vital to consider the different as part of the whole, to work together for inclusive knowledge, and to explore and learn all aspects of a subject. She offers dualities and contrasts, such as the dye that can color wallpaper but also poison the air, the mushrooms that can bring visions and those that cause death, and the three medical practitioners on El Triunfo: the local physician who took over the practice of his predecessor; the English doctor who treats only the ruling family; and the herb woman, Marta Duval. The local guy doesn’t disdain or misread the herbalist. Sometimes there’s humor in a contrast, such as with Zote, which is great laundry soap and good catfish bait.

            It was a pleasure and education to read and to reread Mexican Gothic, following the clues and prods in the story. I enjoyed Noemi’s fiery, lusty self, and strong will. Even more, I appreciated being guided to underlying issues. In light of current research into genetic engineering, creating clones for organ harvesting, and hybrid humans, Mexican Gothic is a warning, as fiction and science fiction in particular often are. I read just the other day, in Live Science, that “synthetic mouse embryos complete with beating hearts and brains” have been “created with no sperm, eggs, or womb.” MIT Technology Review reported a “startup that wants to copy you into an embryo for organ harvesting.” Moreno-Garcia’s new book, The Daughter of Dr. Moreau was released last month, July 2022, and is already a best seller. I noted it’s historical fiction and feminist. No doubt.  No doubt it will also be an entertaining, smart read.

Sources:
Books
Mexican Gothic
Del Rey, 2020
ebook
(321 pages print length)

Bates, Mary. “Meet 5 ‘zombie’ parasites that mind-control their hosts.” National Geographic, October 24 2018. https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/animals/2018/10/meet-5-zombie-parasites-that-mind-control-their-hosts. August 1, 2022.

Lanese, Nicoletta. Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/synthetic-mouse-embryos, August 4, 2022.

Regalado, Antonio. “This startup wants to copy you into an embryo for organ harvesting.”

MIT Technology Review, August 4, 2022. https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/08/04/1056633/startup-wants-copy-you-embryo-organ-harvesting/

To Borrow a Phrase: Is it stealing a word?

In an interview about writing  Bel Canto, Ann Patchett mentions “stealing”a sentence.  The interviewer says, “that’s what writing is all about,” and Patchett responds, “yes” and laughs.  She had used a statement overheard after an opera, Rusalka, that was subtly witty in context. Since the statement was in casual conversation, not recorded, Patchett had no duty to acknowledge any source.   So It was especially honest and gracious of Patchett to credit the “owner” of the phrase.  She didn’t know him personally but without providing his name, she still gave him his due.  She could simply have been noting a particularly interesting source.  The choice of “stealing,” though, opens a delicate matter.  It implies an ownership.  Since the interviewer defined the word and the response was laughter, there’s no certainty in how either the interviewer or Patchett actually interpreted the word.  It was softened in the acceptable acquiring of subjects and skills and tools from one’s environment.  This wasn’t really stealing. I agree. So what was it? A form of using another’s creation that’s acceptable.  How do we know when it’s acceptable? How careful should we be to leave another’s words alone? When, if ever, should we ask permission? Doubtless, writers aren’t going it agree about this, but thinking about word ownership can’t do any harm and might lead to some easier decisions by some of us, based on personal ethics at least.   

A nice, borderline distinction about word ownership occurs in the movie  Nim’s Island.   Jodie Foster’s character Alexander (Alex) is a successful (but agoraphobic) writer.  She appreciates a remark a pilot states, and says “That’s a very good line. You know, I might steal that. I’m a writer.” He refuses, saying he’s a writer, too, and he’s going to use the line.  Her response credits the fellow’s right:   “Well. Okay. That’s fine.  It’s all yours.”  She acknowledges a common understanding about ownership of language with that “It’s all yours.”  Here, though the phrase is oral, the speaker plans to use it.  He claims it.  But it’s still not recorded. Will he write it? Isn’t it a little precious to hang onto one line?  Yes, maybe.  How different would the scene be if he answers “Sure.  I’m a writer, too, but there’s more where that came from.”  The whole situation changes. The dynamics between them change.  If he’s a writer, too, the words are part of his work, his image, his tool kit.  If he hoards them, he’s rather comic; if he grants them, he’s generous, confident.  The deciding factor here is Alex asked.  If she had remained silent, the pilot couldn’t have refused, and Alex might have written it first.  Granted, the movie is not a heavy one, the scene has a comic element, but the point is clear nonetheless.  Lightness often accompanies touchy subjects.

While writers are constantly drawing from all their senses for material and techniques, including what they hear—dialect, inflection, jargon, tone, etc.–even oral language can sometimes be the creation of someone and that person may want recognition.   How important can a few words be in a person’s career? That depends on the person.  To Alex or any seasoned writer, probably very little, but to a new writer, still unsure of talent and potential, possibly very much.

The advice to “steal what you can” is pretty common among writers—I’ve heard it a number of times in workshops and casual settings, and even in a presentation by a visiting writer.  Though they’re suggesting that writers should read good prose—learn up, which is definitely true—commonsense dictates the advisors don’t intend that anyone should lift written words and phrases without credit.  They mean we can become better writers by immersing ourselves in good writing, by absorbing language and techniques as far as our own abilities will allow.  Even deliberate copying to internalize structure and sound is a good and ancient practice.  Claiming the copy as your own, though, is a practice of a different sort—stealing.  Most of us know the common word for that kind of stealing: plagiarism.  That’s not the subject here.                

When someone else’s words impress me enough that I remember them, I shy away from writing anything remotely similar.  During my graduate work at the University of Arizona, I was very moved by a description in a classmate’s story. It went something like this: “The shape of her head was engrained in the palms of my hands.”  The sentence captured the gentle nature and tender love of the protagonist.  It has come to mind many times through the years. Recently I phoned the person I believed wrote the story, Marvin Diogenes.  He recalled that I had praised that particular line, and corrected my memory—the wording had changed slightly.  Another phrase that often tempts me is “sculpted from lard” to describe a very pale person.  Where did it come from?   I feel it must have been in Carson McCuller’s work, or Faulkner’s. Suffice it to know that it isn’t mine.  The description was perfect wherever it was.   I carry a figurative sack in which to keep others’ words that I love, can’t forget, but also can’t use. So many!

Humans love words and like to acknowledge talent, wit, sarcasm, succinct observations.  Communities tend to have their own metaphors, similies, a whole jargon, and to give credit within their own circles. (Edd Smith, a Tucson fiddler, was a walking non-urban dictionary.  Recently, Adam Lambert was credited in the Urban Dictionary with coining “flubbing.”) When a phrase passes into the larger community, sometimes the source is forgotten (maybe claimed much later).  People are careful not to use famous words without crediting, unless the source is considered common knowledge to the particular audience, such as “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” “Ask not what your country can do for you,”  “my guitar gently weeps,” “Frankly I don’t give a damn.”* “Houston, we have had a problem.”* “It’s a far, far better thing that I do. . . .”  I’ve read a few “screw my courage” without the completing words “to the sticking place.” They never seem to fit well in the new spot.

 Among writers, painful memories are often shared about seeing their spoken or written words under someone else’s name—a colleague, a teacher, a friend. Not an entire piece, not plagiarism, just the use of words and short phrases.  It’s a common, unfortunate side of writing, but not a hard blow. Easily overcome by persevering.  Many writers have been asked and will be asked again “May I borrow” or told “That’s great, I’m going to use that.” It’s an opportunity to be generous, to be confident.  You have a store of words, a wealth.  No one can use them as you will. Your thoughts and heart dictate the context and tone. Bless the user and the language. Be fair-minded when you’re the finder. How free is the word or phrase really? Should you ask?

*”Frankly” was added by scriptwriters.

*As actually spoken

Merry Christmas!

Here’s a short Christmas story for you. The setting is The Retreasure Shoppe, a secondhand store, late afternoon on Christmas Eve. A woman named Dora seeks to find quickly some decent gifts for little money. She finds a special one.

We’re All in the Race: Ann Patchett’s Run

Any book that leads me to recognize my biases and expectations is valuable to me, and Ann Patchett’ s Run  is one of those. A rare book, too, given the topics she deals with. She constructs a small mixed family whose members’ status and interactions raise questions on complex issues, particularly race, heritage, legacy, duty, honor, and love.  She does so while engaging the reader in a family’s plight over an injured person and her child.  It’s a book of many small mysteries and connections that create a very contemporary, important story, and could lead to a personal revelation as well. It’s a bold, beautifully crafted book.

Patchett prepares the reader for the work’s complexity by underlaying the present circumstances with a family legend.  A statue of Bernadette, an early ancestor, has for four generations been passed to the female descendant who bears the closest resemblance—fair, redheaded, rather ethereal, in pose and expression like the virgin Mary.  The legend contains the truth—a lie about who the statue represented and its origin. The dominant legacy, though, is that the similarity of surface features entitles one descendant to the statue and all it represents.  The family now in possession of the statue includes no mother—she died years ago—no daughter, but three sons, one white and two black, both adopted.  Who most closely represents the statue and thus will inherit it? The story that follows eradicates wonderfully the surface identity of characters and brings the reader into each character’s nature, never predictable by skin color. Actually, not predictable at all.  And there lies the beauty and the power of this book.  Some readers may be surprised at the difference between what they expect and what they find.  

Though the beginning of present time is a bit slow, an unexpected event occurs that snaps the story into action and focuses sharply on family and divisions within it.  While walking to a party to meet with Jesse Jackson, one of the brothers is saved from a wayward vehicle by a black woman who thrusts him out of danger and is herself injured.  She is accompanied by a young girl.  Why would she save him? Are they related? The ensuing hours will reveal who she is, why she and her daughter were nearby. And, increasingly important, how injured she is. Will she live? Priorities change as they must and should. The more long-term conflicts and estrangements become clear, too. 

There’s so much inviting speculation that artifice seems heavier than story, but that’s only for a very brief while and possibly just my own take.  Prominent politicians are mentioned, squarly placing the family on the Democratic side. The sons seem to represent religion, politics, and science.  Names are clues.  The young girl is Kenya and her mother is Tennessee.  These and many more engaging hooks are not adequate to what the characters truly represent and how individual they become. They work wonderfully as little mysteries that, being followed, provide more important details. Who is the mother? Which child belongs to whom? Who was the father? Does it matter which child was adopted first?  What was the original name? Are the characters who love Shubert related? Patchett can turn a view around, which encourages looking at the other side, and then questioning that, too. Sullivan quotes to Teddy part of a Martin Luther King’s speech but then remarks that “the white brother part doesn’t work exactly.  It should be our black brothers. ‘We have sometimes given our black brothers the feeling that we like the way we were being treated.’”  But Teddy, who is the artist at remembering speeches, thinks that if the next paragraph had been remembered his own “entire enterprise would have been sunk.” The passage has personal and positive meaning between the two men, and our immediate understanding is not the final one.  Some of the signs are misleading, and our speculation about them is telling. This small community is our larger one, the view made palatable, not strongly emotional or even dramatic. Rather low and gentle. 

Central is that the people love each other. They try to work together for one common goal. Sullivan and his father, Doyle, try to find one thing they can agree upon, because they are divided in many ways.  They agree on Kenya, the young girl, on helping her.  Of course. They agree on a person, not a cause.  The cause is the unity and the unity is helping.  How wonderful.  The whole work suggests this. A similar suggestion is to be courteous and kind by pretending to feel if you can’t feel.  That brings to mind the old adage (I forget the source, which may be Shakespeare, Aristotle, or some other wise person) to pretend a virtue if you have it not.  In pretending, you may develop the virtue. Maybe you just need the opportunity.  The pretense can always be dropped.  One son does this, adopts a career as a duty, and relinquishes it when he feels the duty has been met.  There’s no rule about such responsibility in Patchett’s work.  It’s one of the possibilities for an individual. One of life’s vicissitudes.   

Patchett expands the concept of mothering and disallows harsh judgment against women who give up their children. A woman can relinquish a child because of great love for the child or for another person.  Most of the biological mothers here are missing, which of course matters to the child, as we learn through Tip’s later thoughts. But the absence in Patchett’s view is never abandonment, neither emotional nor physical. Love is the cause. And mothering is a genderless activity, a choice, an experience.  It is nurturing and caring.  As is fathering.  Many characters here are mothering, including the twelve-year old Kenya, who wishes only briefly not to have the role.  Perhaps the greatest is Sullivan.  He is named after a priest and family member. He furthers the cause of protecting, evident as a dominant admirable trait of any person, male or female. Sullivan has the physical traits of his mother and, though his father thinks Sullivan doesn’t have any of his mother Bernadette’s traits, he definitely does.  Sullivan loves children and knows how to love them, to comfort them.  That’s his calling.

No character is left knowable only through surface details.  In Patchett’s graceful, precise prose their thoughts and feeling reveal each more fully, different from outsider’s perception.  This occurs with every character, but more strikingly, and possibly the most difficult for Patchett to achieve, with the two characters named Tennessee.  The injured woman, Tennessee, hallucinates with (or truly talks with) her deceased friend. Thoughts and feelings are clearly separate, except when, briefly, they’re not.  It’s an extreme example of the fluidity among characters and issues that makes the book profound and beautiful. While the shifting point of view in this passage answers questions that might otherwise go unanswered, it doesn’t seem an artifice as much as it does the realistic mental and emotional journey of the injured mother in remembering her friend.  Only she could share this. The depth of individual emotion warms the passage and raises it above artifice.

Without giving away any details, let me say the ending is a positive and comforting view.

What rich and intricate messages this story contains. A mixture we are.  Yes. And all of us heirs to a human nature and human rights, despite surface details. The original question, about who gets the statue, is answered.  It’s a mild reward compared to all the answers Patchett has presented about the true nature of family, which includes all of us as individuals, flawed, but deeply concerned about life and desires and deeply loving someone, and paying some cost to serve others. All valuable.

Our Cat Who Loved a Tree

We lost one of our cats last year, Twitch, a slow, easy-loving, fellow.  We miss him, especially now, as Christmas approaches.  Twitch loved our old Christmas tree.  We tried a smaller one, but he didn’t accept it, just stared at it. I’m posting these pictures to show how he loved the one tree, even bit by bit as it came down. I know people over-sentimentalize pets (and maybe all animals).  Guilty.  But the creatures bring that about if you pay attention to them.  Not all, of course. Some of them prefer no attention.