Jul 022013
Jul 022013
Photo by Tain Gregory
Sophfronia Scott offers here a thoughtful, provocative and pragmatic account of the ways a nonfiction writer can use reflection to engage the reader. She talks specifically about the use of techniques such as metaphor, direct appeal, shared experience and the right voice to engage the reader’s heart and imagination. Especially helpful are Scott’s explorations of particular texts to illustrate her technical points: Elie Wiesel’s Night, Eula Biss’s Notes from No Man’s Land, and James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son.
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Introduction
In the past I rarely embarked on a personal essay unless specifically asked for one by an editor because it never immediately occurred to me anyone would have any interest in what I had to say about a particular topic, especially if the action involved happened only to me. I have also had a distaste for the trend towards memoir in the publishing world. When the writer Douglas Goetsch, a recent graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, said to me in conversation that he thought the United States was suffering “from an epidemic of memoir,” I, having read my share of melodramatic manuscripts flooding the marketplace in recent years, was inclined to agree. There are, it seems, millions of keyboards where writers are too enthusiastically tapping out their tales of child abuse, alcohol abuse, road trips, adoption secrets, illness, injury, divorce, you name it. I saw no reason to add my words to this particular multitude.
However in August 2012 I found myself deeply engaged in the writing of a personal essay inspired by a series of tweets I had posted to a friend on Twitter describing a talk I’d had with the singer Lena Horne about learning to iron my father’s shirts. The previous day I had been ironing my husband’s shirts and I posted on Twitter:
I’m going to combine my housework with my literary love and pretend I’m a Tillie Olsen character: I stand here ironing…
The next morning I saw my friend had re-tweeted the post and as I tweeted my thanks for some reason the memory of my Lena Horne talk came to mind. I wanted to tell my friend about it; he enjoys a good story and I thought he would appreciate it, especially since it included a celebrity. I sent the following in quick succession:
1.) Thanks for the RT! I once had a conversation with Lena Horne about ironing—we both learned as girls…
2.) …She said she could never get it right. “I used to weep over my daddy’s shirts.” I said, “And they were all white shirts,
3.) …right?” My father’s shirts were all white too. She said yes. I was in my 30s. She was in her 80s. But we walked through…
4.) …Central Park together as girls ironing our father’s shirts.
5.) I’m in tears now remembering that day.
And I really was in tears. I embarked on the writing of an essay with no ambition other than to explore the source of those tears. This walk with Lena Horne was still in my heart and at the forefront of my mind over ten years later for a reason and, as I discovered as I wrote, those reasons had little to do with her. As the paragraphs of the essay came together I realized that walk had crystallized an important personal moment for me in which I recognized how much love and forgiveness had replaced the anger I once held for my difficult, demanding father.
“Such forgiveness is possible, I believe, not because he is long dead, but because of these unexpected moments of grace reaching across generations reminding me of this: the reason I hurt so much then was because I cared so much then—and still do. As I look back on that autumn afternoon and how Lena took my arm again as we continued our stroll through Central Park, I can see how in that moment I was in my 30s, Lena was in her 80s, but we were both girls ironing the shirts of the first men we ever cared for, and hoping they could feel our love pressed hard into every crease.”
The completed essay, “White Shirts,” when published in the September 2012 issue of Numéro Cinq Magazine, received favorable written responses. What surprised me about the posted comments was how many of the readers saw themselves and their own memories in my essay:
I recall my Aunt Virginia showing me how to iron a shirt when she was doing them for her husband and family of 5 boys after a morning of working in the fields. Yours are exactly the same instructions I recall her demonstrating. Thanks for sharing this evocative memory.
You’ve taken me back to my childhood, ironing the handkerchiefs and pillowcases while I watched my mother and grandmother iron starched white shirts. Thank you.
This is precious, pulls you into the story, and encouraging to me as a young housewife finding I have grossly undercooked the potatoes in a casserole, and realizing just how quickly a cleaned bathroom collects new hair and dirt- I can get better!
This brings back my own ironing memories. My grandmother, who would be 120 if she were still alive, taught me how to iron. I don’t remember what she had me iron, but I do remember burning my fingers. If I look hard enough, I can still see the tiny scars.
This excited me as a writer—it was as though the essay had become bigger, more vital, because it had struck a chord for so many people. We were all, at once, at the ironing board with our mothers, aunts and grandmothers. I found myself thinking, if this is what creative nonfiction can do, this is the creative nonfiction I want to continue writing.
But how? I felt I had created this shared experience, a kind of universal appeal, by accident. I know the best essayists must be able to make such connections consistently. I decided to begin an exploration of the techniques these writers use to help them communicate their very personal experiences to the broadest possible audience. I believe this is a necessary exploration because, as Richard Todd says in Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction, “In the family of writers, essayists play poor cousins to writers of fiction or narrative nonfiction.” Indeed their medium, the personal essay, is an unusual form because its existence defies the fact that the reader, at first blush, has no reason to read it. What is the essay’s purpose? Fiction offers entertainment as an essay can, but on a different level: fiction can also present escape, perhaps even a fantasy in which the reader can place him or herself as the main character. Journalistic nonfiction serves the purpose of educating the reader or providing desired information. Poetry can charm with its rhythms and imagery. These forms answer upfront the reader’s ongoing question of “What’s in it for me?” In a society where words and phrases such as “So what?” and “navel-gazing” and “whatever” demonstrate a less than supportive environment in which to offer one’s story, the essay is immediately at a disadvantage. In everyday conversation we don’t always listen to the stories of strangers, or if we do it’s done with half an ear because the listener is more interested in hearing a moment where they can interject what they have to say, which they believe will be more interesting or more important. Douglas Glover, in his book Attack of the Copula Spiders, warns against “bathtub” narratives which he defines as “a story which takes place almost completely as backfill in the mind of a single character (who often spends the whole narrative sitting in a bathtub—I am only being slightly facetious).” He notes the form for its lack of drama and movement. But what is a personal essay if not a long form “bathtub” narrative completely crafted from the writer’s thoughts being turned over and over in her mind?
Since I’ve been able to focus on creative nonfiction in my studies, I’m learning this type of focused reflection is not the problem with the personal essay. I realize the essays and memoirs that bother me the most are ones where deep thought and reflection are nonexistent. On top of this the author has not taken the pains to write in a way that would allow the reader access to her personal experience. The writer, either through neglect or inexperience, has produced a work in which she is so caught up in telling her story, usually a traumatic event, that she has not made the thoughtful reflection required to instill the event with meaning. It’s not enough that a person has experienced something horrible such as the death of a loved one, physical abuse, divorce or illness. The person must be able to step back and look at the whole tapestry and contemplate the placement of the event and its effects on her whole being. Once that piece is understood, this gives the writer the foundation to craft and revise a piece with the intention of highlighting this insight.
In many cases the writer has not stepped back at all. Such writers are, in my opinion, still caught up in the event, even if many years have passed. For them writing down the story is the big accomplishment, and that’s because the pain of finding the words has them reliving the event and “surviving” it again. They are too much in it to be above it, so there is no reflection. Thus the event is still too personal for the writer and hence out of reach for the reader. If anything this type of writing does a certain violence to the reader because it subjects them to raw, naked details very similar to a news report from a crime scene. We, as readers, endure the pain, the harsh visuals, and the terror of the event. Then the author thinks it is enough just to explain they got through it, and they’re okay. But how can we believe that when we’re still ourselves in that place of fear and trembling, exactly where they left us?
And yet there are essays and books of essays describing terrible events that, despite their personal nature, manage to capture the reader’s heart and imagination, engaging both the ear and the heart. In order to gain such credibility with the reader a writer’s work should demonstrate that the author has done some focused thinking, first about herself, and then for the reader. For herself the writer wants to do the mental work and reflection that shows she is ready to discover and understand the deeper meaning of the events of her life—to take the step that truly turns life into art. Next, the writer makes choices with the reader in mind—choices of imagery, language and voice with the intent of making a connection with the person reading the words. I will detail here how this process can work using as examples authors who have written engaging, yet deeply personally essays that succeed because the writers have brought to bear the powers of both inner work and conscious attention to craft.
Reflection as Foundation
First of all, reflection is necessary. Dinty W. Moore in The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction, points out that while everyone loves a well-told story, “the…reason people care relates to what the writer has made of the experience and how the author’s discovery often rings true for a wide readership.” This reflection can happen before, during, and after the writing of the essay’s initial draft, but it must happen because the writer must be open to new ideas at each level. Otherwise writers may find themselves unwilling to begin because they fear what will come of the writing, stuck partway through because they get mired in the trauma of re-telling their story, or unwilling to revise because they’re still not ready to think about the event at a higher level. I admit this involves mental and emotional issues and maturity as well. As Phillip Lopate notes in the introduction of The Art of the Personal Essay, “It is difficult to write analytically from the middle of confusion, and youth is a confusion in which the self and its desires have not yet sorted themselves out.”
The “how-to” aspect of reflection is difficult because any technique would be contingent on the author’s awareness of the necessity of thinking deeply about the circumstances of her life being examined in the essay, and her willingness to make the conscious decision to do it. These aspects are not always present in a personality. However I would like to venture forward with a few questions a writer may ask if she does want to begin the process of reflection even if she doesn’t know what the answers are or what to make of them. These questions are:
- Why do I want to write about this particular topic/event/circumstance in my life?
- Who was I before this event happened to me?
- Who am I as a result of it? In other words, how do I see the world through the lens of what happened to me?
- How do I feel about the people I’m writing about? Have these feelings changed over time? Have they not? Why?
- What are my physical/emotional reactions around my topic? How fresh is the “wound?”
I would also suggest a writer begin a mental practice of consistently asking these questions during the writing process and whenever a memory or past reference presents itself for consideration. On a positive note, this kind of thinking is open to all, young and old, so younger authors need not despair even if the writing results in musings for which they have no clear answer just yet. The fact that they are questioning and making that apparent may be enough to engage the reader. Many readers appreciate the vulnerability of a writer who is willing to admit she doesn’t know the answers. The fact that she is daring to ask the questions that could reflect the reader’s own silent struggle builds credibility for the writer and will eventually help to create stronger work.
The Four Techniques
This paper will focus on four techniques that can be used by writers who can reflect, have reflected, and want to make their writing connect with as many readers as possible. These craft points can help the writer to open the door for readers, to allow them to more easily share in the emotions, thoughts and events the writer is laying before them.
The first technique involves the use of metaphor. As defined in the Google search dictionary, a metaphor is:
1.) A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.
2.) A thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else, especially something abstract.
In Elie Wiesel’s memoir of the Holocaust, Night, he tells the horrifying story of his year as a teenager in concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Buchenwald, in which he suffers the deaths of his family members, his friends and, eventually, his own faith. The title Night evokes the metaphor that is the foundation of the whole book. The traumatic material within the covers requires a powerful metaphor. How else can he help the reader grasp the incredible terror and darkness felt by himself and by his people except by connecting it to the darkness we experience regularly and, as children, even fear? It seems every time night falls in the book there is no rest, only fear and concern for what the next day will bring. Night becomes the representation of the darkness cast over Wiesel and his people. He refers to the “nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.” In this section Wiesel combines the metaphor of night with fire to represent the furnaces of the concentration camps:Since in personal essays we deal in the abstract continually, especially when it comes to the writer’s emotions, metaphor becomes essential. Sue William Silverman, in her Vermont College of Fine Arts lecture “Metaphor Boot Camp,” notes the use of metaphor in personal essays allows the writer to make abstract terms or emotions such as the words “love,” “hate,” or “misery,” accessible and tangible for the reader through the use of imagery. This is the answer to the question of how else can the reader relate to a story that only happened to you. It also aids in this question of reflection: “Metaphor helps us to understand what this experience in the past actually meant.”
“No one was praying for the night pass quickly. The stars were but sparks of the immense conflagration that was consuming us. Were this conflagration to be extinguished one day, nothing would be left in the sky but extinct stars and unseeing eyes.”
There is a haunting elegance and beauty in Wiesel’s writing that comes through even in translation. His imagery doesn’t sugarcoat events. If anything it makes them more alive and, though horrifying, accessible. This works because, as Sue Silverman points out in her lecture, “Once you have developed metaphor, you’ve transformed your life into art and all art is universal.”
The second technique involves the direct appeal, in other words, the writer brings the reader directly into the essay with the use of “we” or “society.” The idea is that what the writer is talking about leads us to question or examine the bigger picture and how it affects all of us. The direct appeal assumes a certain kind of reader—a concerned citizen, a reader engaged with the world and who wants to know about actions and their consequences on society at large. It also assumes the writer has set herself up in a certain way: she establishes her authority to validate why she can speak to the bigger picture. Richard Todd would argue this isn’t necessary. “What gives you license to write essays?” he asks in The Art of Nonfiction. “Only the presence of an idea and the ability to make it your own.” But he does acknowledge the importance of training a discerning writer’s eye on the issues of our time and the essay being the right vehicle in which to do so: “An essay both allows and requires you to say something more than you are entitled to say by virtue of your resume alone.”
Eula Biss in her collection of essays, Notes from No Man’s Land, travels back and forth between personal experience and issues such as racism, immigration and education. She lays the foundation of her authority by presenting research she has done. In her essay “Time and Distance Overcome” she connects the innovation of the telephone to another more disturbing American innovation: lynchings. In stating statistics, and quoting newspapers and reports of documented lynchings, Biss creates the framework through which to discuss racism. The facts she presents are aimed to evoke our outrage and disbelief:
“More than two hundred antilynching bills were introduced to the U.S. Congress during the twentieth century, but none were passed. Seven presidents lobbied for antilynching legislation, and the House of Representatives passed three separate measures, each of which was blocked by the Senate.”
This mode of universality is more often used in essays of a journalistic type, but a a personal essay may actually be the better forum. There is less distance between the reader and the concepts discussed because the writer provides the human connection through their personal experiences and observations. The writer can say “I know this is true because it affected my home/my health/my town/my family/my job.” Her observations are not conjecture, but a living example of the concepts she is pondering in the written word. The concepts alone in such essays are big and difficult: racism, immigration, politics, ecology, religion. When the writer offers as a starting point her own experience, it is an easier way for the reader to wade into the waters of discussion. Several times in her book Biss mentions her own reaction to her discoveries—in one instance watching a documentary has her in tears:
“The point at which I began to cry during the documentary about Buxton was the interview with Marjorie Brown, who moved from Buxton to the mostly white town of Cedar Rapids when she was twelve. ‘And then all at once, with no warning, I no longer existed…The shock of my life was to go to Cedar Rapids and find out that I didn’t exist…I had to unlearn that Marjorie was an important part of a community.”
Biss lays the foundation of her argument with such emotion, then walks us backwards to show how she came to this reaction so that we might understand and possibly even feel the same way.
When a writer appeals to the reader to connect to his or her own experience in relation to the author’s, the writer is utilizing the third technique to communicate to a broad audience. The writer can do this by referencing events or actions that most people have experienced such as having children or eating a satisfying meal. Dinty W. Moore writes in The Truth of the Matter, “We all know grief, fear, longing, fairness, and unfairness. We all worry about losing someone dear to us. We crave attention, from everyone, or from certain people. We love our families, yet sometimes those families greatly disappoint us…These basic human worries and emotions will always resonate when brought clearly to life on the page.” In my essay “White Shirts,” I invoke the pain of touching a hot iron: “A burn rises quickly, a living red capsule on the surface of your skin. You think it will never heal because that’s how much it hurts when it happens.” I also conjure the feel of a shirt as it is being ironed: “the shirt large and voluminous in Lena’s small hands, the white cotton hopelessly scorched…” and “Sleeves are tricky because of their roundness. They don’t lie flat well so I will usually iron a sleeve and turn it over to find a funky crease I didn’t mean to create running like a new slash down the arm.” I chose these details because my memories of ironing trigger my senses of touch, sight and smell. This is how I made the words I wrote alive for the reader and myself.
The use of detail with this technique is key. The right details can spark the reader’s memory and cause them to, in the moment, relive their own experience even as they are reading about the author’s. Henry Louis Gates does this successfully in his piece “Sunday,” in which he describes the traditional dinner served weekly in his family home. Dinty Moore points out:
“Much of the intimacy here is in the family secrets Gates chooses to share, and the generous description of the table laden with food: ‘fried chicken, mashed potatoes, baked corn (corn pudding), green beans and potatoes (with lots of onions and bacon drippings and a hunk of ham), gravy, rolls, and a salad of iceberg lettuce, fresh tomatoes (grown in Uncle Jim’s garden), a sliced boiled egg, scallions, and Wishbone’s Italian dressing.’ Instead of a weak line like ‘you can’t imagine how much food there was,’ Gates puts us right at the table.”
I should note this technique is different from the use of metaphor because the detail doesn’t have to represent something else. It can stand on its own representing nothing more than the experience itself—it is the experience that connects the reader. In Night such details are found in the descriptions of thirst and heat as the neighborhood is gathered and made to march without water under the heat of a summer sun: “People must have thought there could be no greater torment in God’s hell than that of being stranded here, on the sidewalk, among the bundles, in the middle of the street under a blazing sun.”
The fourth technique involves the writer hitting upon the right voice in the telling of the story. A reader will react to a writer’s voice with the same discernment anyone would use at a cocktail party—if you don’t like the tone or attitude of the voice talking to you, you’re more likely to move away and speak to someone else. In experiencing a personal essay, a reader will not stay at the “party” if they encounter a voice they feel is arrogant, bossy, pedantic, whiny, annoying or anything else that makes them uncomfortable. The writer’s goal is to establish authority and a likeable voice at the same time. For myself, I deem a voice likeable if it is confident, knowledgeable and, if appropriate, has a good sense of humor. This doesn’t mean the writer has to bend over backwards to make her voice likeable. Some writers do this to the detriment of the work, relying too much on colloquialisms or self-deprecation. Even in the real world, trying to be everyone’s best friend simply doesn’t work and usually results in the person transmitting a bland, false persona. In writing this would translate as beige, uninteresting prose. In developing and considering voice the writer would do well to remember that in doing so, she is also establishing her narrative presence, the person in the room she wants to be. Mimi Schwartz, in her essay, “Memoir? Fiction? Where’s the Line?” says if the writer’s voice is “savvy and appealing enough to make the reader say, ‘Yes, I’ve been there. I know what you mean!—you have something good. But if the voice you adopt annoys, embarrasses or bores because of lack of insight, then beware. The reader will say, ‘So what? I don’t care about you!’ often in anger.”
Having the right voice also gives the writer more leeway in sidestepping the common essay obstacles of egotism and navel-gazing. The nineteenth-century writer Alexander Smith discusses how much can be forgiven a writer if the work is engaging: “The speaking about oneself is not necessarily offensive. A modest, truthful man speaks better about himself than about anything else, and on that subject his speech is likely to be more profitable to his hearers…If he be without taint of boastfulness, of self-sufficiency, of hungry vanity, the world will not press the charge home.”
A writer develops voice through the discerning use of vocabulary, colloquialism, and a general overall sense of camaraderie and shared confidence. When the writer has achieved this, she relates to the reader regardless of age, race, or culture background. James Baldwin, in his reflections on race and his young adult life in Harlem in Notes of a Native Son, develops a voice that is both mature and youthful as he looks back at how certain discoveries and experiences have shaped him and caused him to lose the innocence he once held about his place in society. At his essence, Baldwin’s voice is his connection, authority and narrative rolled into one: I am a human being. And he is most shocked when he finds himself in situations where that simple fact is not acknowledged or respected. “…there must never in one’s own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one’s strength. This fight begins, however, in the heart and it now had been laid to my charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair.”
Such vulnerability and bareness allows the reader to relate to the writer to the point of oneness. “The essayist can also appear as a figure who boasts of little in the way of heightened emotion or peculiarity of feeling,” says Richard Todd in Good Prose. “This sort of writer’s whole claim on the reader is the claim of the norm: I am but a distillation of you.” Indeed, this has been one of the most admired aspects of Baldwin’s book—his ability to reach out beyond his very specific experience to touch, intimately, readers who are nothing like him. In 2012, in an essay published in recognition of the 25th anniversary of Baldwin’s death, the writer Robert Vivian recalls how as a young white man first reading Notes of a Native Son, he felt Baldwin’s voice spoke directly to him:
“…there was something about his voice and how he wrote that felt intimate and familiar and deeply personal, almost as if he were writing in my voice, my skin, my way of looking at the world, which must be why some writing is so capable of addressing the universality of human experience regardless of the very real and limiting facts of people’s lives through the mysterious, sympathetic alchemy of prose that can, in its greatest practitioners, so deeply strum the common chords that make us all one.”
Communicating from No Man’s Land
Eula Biss’s award-winning nonfiction collection, Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays, is a challenging read because the author takes on some of the most difficult subject matter of our time: race, the loss of self, sociopolitics, immigration and education. But her use of the four techniques described here makes the material easier for the reader to digest. It’s as though Biss is taking readers by the hand and gently leading them on her expedition through No Man’s Land.
The book is organized around Biss’s experiences of different parts of the United States beginning with her time spent in New York, then moving on to California and later the Midwest. It opens with “Time and Distance Overcome,” an essay on racism that sets the tone for the ensuing pieces. It ends with “All Apologies,” a reflection on whether apologies can truly be made and whether real forgiveness is possible when the perpetrators of a wrong are long deceased or apt to commit the wrong again and again.
In her essay “Letter to Mexico” Biss uses the metaphor of the ocean and its tides to communicate the sense of the city of Ensenada being overwhelmed by ever surging numbers of ugly Americans who have, courtesy of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), relieved Mexicans of a good chunk of their wages and manufacturing businesses. The Mexicans are powerless against the influx of Americans just as any person would be powerless against the enormity of the ocean.
“I was confined to the shore there, even when I was not in the tourist district, where the cruise ships unloaded and middle-aged Americans periodically swarmed the bars and souvenir stands then receded like a tide.”
Biss also uses metaphor in her essay “Three Songs of Salvage” to communicate how the ever present rhythm of drums from her childhood when her mother practiced the Yoruba faith still mark time for her today. “I fell asleep to the distant sound of drums, which I was not always entirely sure was the distant sound of drums. Rain, blood in the body, explosions in the quarry, and frogs are all drums…I know now that I left home and I left the drums but I didn’t leave home and I didn’t leave the drums. Sewer plates, jackhammers, subway trains, cars on the bridge, and basketballs are all drums.”
Biss frequently uses the direct appeal in “Is This Kansas” to challenge the reader to question how we view the behavior of college students and the connection of that thinking to what our society looks like. There is a chiding nature to her comments as she presents her observations. The reader might feel she’s being called out by Biss because the reader may very well have one of views the writer highlights. If the reader does have such a view then a crack has been opened and Biss has the opportunity to make the reader see things in a different light.
“I would often wonder, during my time in that town, why, of all the subcultures in the United States that are feared and hated, of all the subcultures that are singled out as morally reprehensible or un-American or criminal, student culture is so pardoned. Illinois home owners propose ordinances against shared housing among immigrants, while their sons are at college sharing one-bedroom apartments with five other boys. Courts send black teenagers to jail for possession of marijuana, while white college kids are sentenced with community service for driving while intoxicated, a considerably more deadly offense. And Evangelicals editorialize about the sexual abominations of consenting adults, while very little is said about the plague of date rapes in college towns.”
In using details to connect the reader to their own experiences, Biss helps the reader experience with new eyes a place such as New York City that the reader may only know through movies or television show myths. She appeals to their sense of loneliness, alienation, and even fear because that was so much her own experience of the city. Biss anchors all of this with details that engage the reader’s senses.
“I could see barges silhouetted against the hazy pink horizon at dusk. I tried to walk down to the water and promptly dead-ended at a huge, windowless building labeled Terminal Warehouse.”
“The station at Coney Island was half-charred form a fire decades ago and packed with giant inflatable pink seals for sale…Caramel apples were seventy-five cents and the din of the fair games was intolerable. One freak-show announcer screamed, ‘If you love your family, you will take them to see the two-headed baby!’ It was gross and crazy and base…The beach was packed with naked flesh and smelled like beer and mango. And the Wonder Wheel inspired real wonder as I rose up over Brooklyn in a swinging metal cage.”
The voice Biss develops in her book has an intriguing mix of vulnerability and authority. From a writer’s standpoint such a voice puts you exactly where you want to be with the reader: the vulnerability helps to establish trust and rapport; the authority seals your credibility. The reader will listen to what you have to say. We feel for Biss in her youthful questioning of her guilt, her feelings about her race, her fear. But she is fearless when it comes to delving into research to support her marked disturbance and indignation over attitudes, traditions and social norms. In “Land Mines” she discusses the failures of the education system, first establishing herself as a participant in that system, and then examining policies she has directly read or experienced. Her indignation sometimes seems close to bubbling over when she describes the University of Iowa’s considerations for how to make their school more diverse in ways that do not consider the well-being for their diverse students.
“One didn’t need to spend very long at that institution before realizing that the interests of everyone else—the funders, the administrators, the professors, the graduate students—came before the interests of the undergraduate students. And as in any feudal system, the people on whom the entire system depended were robbed, as completely as possible, of their power.”
Her essay “No Man’s Land” has a voice presenting Biss’s views with wide-eyed clarity. She puts herself, as well as society, under the microscope as she compares her experiences in the slowly gentrifying Chicago neighborhood of Rogers Park with the observations of Laura Ingalls Wilder of how the white man usurped the lands of the native Americans. Biss establishes her voice with direct rhetoric, using her research and her strong point of view to ground her statements about “pioneering” in America and what that really means—in one example it means unjustified fears:
“This is our inheritance, for those of us who imagine ourselves pioneers. We don’t seem to have retained the frugality of the original pioneers, or their resourcefulness, but we have inherited a ring of wolves around a door covered only by a quilt. And we have inherited padlocks on our pantries. That we carry with us a residue of the pioneer experience is my best explanation for the fact that my white neighbors seem to feel besieged in this neighborhood. Because that feeling cannot be explained by anything else that I know to be true about our lives here.”
Biss’s voice also makes it easier for readers who may be longtime fans of Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books to look at the series in a different way. If Biss had been too harsh the reader could have been led to misinterpret the essay as a criticism of the books. Instead Biss shows respect for the author and, in turn, her own readers as she follows through with her observations.
Mining the Night
As mentioned earlier, Elie Wiesel in his memoir Night uses the night as a long-form metaphor to invoke the darkness and horror of his experience as a teenager in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald during the Holocaust. But he also uses other metaphors and the rhetorical techniques discussed here to draw as many people as possible into the intimate nature of his pain and despair.
The book opens in 1941 with Wiesel as an eager 13-year-old student of the Talmud. When the “foreign Jews” including his own Kabbalah teacher, Moishe the Beadle, are removed from their town of Sighet, Transylvania, few members of Wiesel’s community read the action as the precursor of the horrors to come, even after Moishe escapes and returns with his eyewitness account of the killings of the deported Jews. Wiesel details the downward spiral of his people’s condition and their continued hope that things will get better until, sealed in rail cars, they can no longer ascribe to the delusion.
The powerful emotions related in Night require metaphor to help the reader access the book’s hard moments of despair and desolation. “Not far from us, prisoners were at work,” he writes, “Some were digging holes, others were carrying sand. None as much as glanced at us. We were withered trees in the heart of the desert.” Pain on such a scale can only be abstract to the outside observer. But metaphor, as noted from Sue Silverman’s lecture, allows Wiesel, in beautiful language, to turn his experience, though terrible, into art that the reader can take in and be in.
Wiesel uses the direct appeal technique in a different way. Instead of speaking directly to or challenging his readers, he is making the appeal by telling his story. It is an implied appeal: Wiesel is telling his story so he can bear witness to these atrocities to the world. In turn the readers learn from his testimony and the appeal is that we don’t allow such atrocities to happen again. He says this directly in the book’s introduction. It is the whole reason for the book’s existence and the reason Wiesel does his best to help the reader look, not look away.
“For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory.”
There’s also, I believe, an appeal present in the undercurrent when Wiesel and the people around him more than once wonder at how and why the rest of the world didn’t know the extermination of the Jewish people was in progress. And if they did know, why wasn’t anyone saying or doing something about it? “How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent? No. All this could not be real.” This, to me, feels like Wiesel’s call to all readers to be awake to the occurrences of the world, no matter what country.
In terms of details, Wiesel frequently activates the reader’s senses through his descriptions of pain, heat, cold, smells, colors, and more. In early parts of the book, his descriptions of spring recall the normal aspects of the season: brilliant skies, beautiful blossoms, delicate smells and bright green grass. This is the part the reader can relate to. Then he overlays the fear of the Germans and the transfer into the ghettos. He also uses the details of home, the trappings of home, to communicate to the reader what is being left behind. When he and his family enter the home of family members who have been transported away, they find “the chaos was even greater here than in the large ghetto. Its inhabitants evidently had been caught by surprise…On the table, a half-finished bowl of soup. A platter of dough waiting to be baked. Everywhere on the floor there were books. Had my uncle meant to take them along?”
When describing the camp’s horrors Wiesel’s descriptions become more physical:
“We whispered. Perhaps because of the thick smoke that poisoned the air and stung the throat.”
“An SS officer had come in and, with him, the smell of the Angel of Death. We stared at his fleshy lips.”
“ ‘It doesn’t hurt.’ His cheek still bore the red mark of the hand.”
The voice Wiesel uses often sounds like that of a witness giving testimony, which is exactly what he is doing. In fact, one reviewer refers to the book not as a memoir or essay, but as a “human document.” But Wiesel also has a poetic rhythm in much of the work that mesmerizes the reader with the beautiful depth of his dark musings. There is a natural vulnerability that comes through because of the youth of Wiesel’s narrative character during the events. He is at once sympathetic and authoritative with being strident, accusatory or vengeful. This makes Wiesel all the more believable, because he has created a voice that doesn’t seem prone to exaggeration or puffed up with hyperbole. Even when an observation could seem outsized, the words are presented with such gentle calmness that the reader can’t help but take them seriously. This happens, for example, when he conjures the image of he and his campmates as lost souls condemned to a kind of purgatory from which they can never escape.
“In one terrifying moment of lucidity, I thought of us as damned souls wandering through the void, souls condemned to wander through space until the end of time, seeking redemption, seeking oblivion, without any hope of finding either.”
At times Wiesel’s rhetoric is straightforward such as in instances when he uses repetition to evoke emotion. The repetition of the word “never” in the following passage, for example, has the heaviness of a hammer driving home the losses Wiesel knows he must live with for the rest of his life.
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.
Never.”
The Voice of Inclusion
James Baldwin’s 1955 essay collection Notes of a Native Son is described on the cover of the 1979 paperback edition as “the moving chronicle of Baldwin’s search for identity as a writer, as an American, and as a Negro.” At the time of its writing, a time in America where segregated bathrooms, restaurants, hotels and transportation still existed, such subject matter could easily be considered singularly personal and exclusive. However, Baldwin’s work succeeded in accessing an audience so broad that the work is still considered relevant both to society as a whole and to each individual reader who experiences it.
The first part of the book features Baldwin’s unflinching assessment of creative works including the abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the film Carmen Jones, and Richard Wright’s novel Native Son, and his examination of what they have to tell us about current views on the mythical perceptions of Negros especially concerning issues of skin tone, sexuality, and cleanliness. Baldwin then moves into personal reflection regarding his life in Harlem, memories of his father, and his frustration with the realization that racism will affect him regardless of how clean, educated or well spoken he is. These reflections go deeper as Baldwin’s insecurities are laid bare in Paris where he is arrested for a menial crime and incarcerated in a system that cares little for his rights or personal comfort.
Baldwin uses his most powerful metaphor in the opening paragraphs of the book’s title essay. He describes the race riots in Harlem that took place after his father’s funeral and the smashed glass in the streets become, for Baldwin, a representation of the apocalypse—a destruction of a world he has known and a harbinger of the unknown world he is entering.
“A few hours after my father’s funeral, while he lay in state in the undertaker’s chapel, a race riot broke out in Harlem. On the morning of the 3rd of August, we drove my father to the graveyard through a wilderness of smashed plate glass…And it seemed to me, too, that the violence which rose all about us as my father left the world had been devised as a corrective for the pride of his eldest son. I had declined to believe in that apocalypse which had been central to my father’s vision; very well, life seemed to be saying, here is something that will certainly pass for an apocalypse until the real thing comes along.”
At the end of the section, this metaphor returns when Baldwin hurls a water glass at a restaurant waitress who refuses to serve him. The glass hits a mirror behind the bar and shatters. This gives rise to another metaphor, this time evoking the cycle of freezing and thawing, and how in this moment, Baldwin “thaws” and is freed from a frozen state of anger and boldness which then moves him to a state of fear.
“She ducked and it missed her and shattered against the mirror behind the bar. And, with that sound, my frozen blood abruptly thawed, I returned from wherever I had been, I saw, for the first time, the restaurant, the people with their mouths, open, already, as it seemed to me, rising as one man, and I realized what I had done, and where I was, and I was frightened.”
Baldwin does not make direct appeals so much as direct observations of America as a whole or large, significant groups within it such as the “Progressive Party” or the “optimistic American liberal.” These observations challenge the status quo, with Baldwin unafraid of declaring when he feels a situation is unacceptable. At the time of his writing this fearless tone would have made Baldwin’s readers uncomfortable about their own commitment. They also might feel concern over the risk of a Black writer speaking so plainly when he could still suffer the consequences of his words.
“Finally, we are confronted with the psychology and tradition of the country; if the Negro voter is so easily bought and sold, it is because it has been treated with so little respect; since no Negro dares seriously assume that any politician is concerned with the fate of Negroes, or would do much about it if he had the power, the vote must be bartered for what it will get…The American commonwealth chooses to overlook what Negroes are never able to forget: they are not really considered a part of it.”
In his essay “Equal in Paris” Baldwin uses detail to convey the fear and alienation of his days-long incarceration in a French prison. It’s interesting how a few of these details are not all that different from the ones Wiesel chose to describe the cells at the concentration camps. Baldwin allows the cold, the hole that served as a common toilet, the narrow cubicles, and the very fact that he begins to cry, to communicate to the reader the dire nature of his situation and his emotional condition. At one point, during his transport to another facility, “I remember there was a small vent just above my head which let in a little light. The door of my cubicle was locked from the outside. I had no idea where this wagon was taking me and, as it began to move, I began to cry. I suppose I cried all the way to prison…”
As mentioned earlier, Baldwin’s voice has served to connect to readers who find his voice so familiar that they identify with him, even across the wide canyon of time. It’s interesting that readers react to him this way because I didn’t find the voice particularly friendly or appealing. Baldwin has a formality about his phrasing and choice of words that, to me, make me feel he wasn’t an easy person to get to know in real life.
“But it is part of the business of the writer—as I see it—to examine attitudes, to go beneath the surface, to tap the source.”
Perhaps he felt this formality was necessary for the time and his subject matter. I can respect this choice. He was, after all, still a young man when Notes of a Native Son was published. He wanted to write about his thoughts on serious matters and in order to be taken seriously he had to establish his sound of gravitas. This is his business as a writer. However, I believe he also understood the importance of letting the reader know he is a real person and he does that effectively as well. In his “Autobiographical Notes” at the beginning of the book there is some hint of warmth as Baldwin notes how he loves to laugh and talks about his commitment to his writing.
“…I love to eat and drink—it’s my melancholy conviction that I’ve scarcely ever had enough to eat…and I love to argue with people who do not disagree with me too profoundly, and I do love to laugh. I do not like bohemia, or bohemians, I do not like people whose principal aim is pleasure, and I do not like people who are earnest about anything…I consider I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done.
I want to be an honest man and a good writer.”
Maybe that’s the Baldwin readers connected with first, and that is the voice they carried with them as they read the ensuing essays. He has introduced himself as a respectably amiable person. There’s no reason for the reader not to want to accompany Baldwin on his musings.
Conclusion
Though the focus of this exploration has been how to reach the broadest possible audience, I believe every piece of writing, at its heart, is an author’s attempt at conversation with just one reader. In many cases the writer knows at the outset the communication will be a difficult one, akin to two people speaking different languages. The writer, in order for her endeavor (which is to tell a story or relate an experience) to be successful, must try as many ways as possible to bridge the gap of understanding. If she can manage to do that, the happy result may be a bridge that more than one reader can utilize. In fact it can be used again and again, with readers crossing from all angles. In this way the writer achieves the broader audience.
The techniques described here can hopefully be the building materials a writer uses to build this bridge, keeping in mind that even the use of just one can bring a reader closer to relating to the writing than if she attempted none of them.
—Sophfronia Scott
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Works Cited
Baldwin, James. Notes of a Native Son. Toronto [u.a.]: Bantam, 1979. Print.
Biss, Eula. Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays. Saint Paul, MN: Graywolf, 2009. Print.
Glover, Douglas “How to Write a Short Story: Notes on Structure and an Exercise.” Attack of the Copula Spiders: And Other Essays on Writing. Emeryville, Ont.: Biblioasis, 2012. 23-42. Print.
Kidder, Tracy, and Richard Todd. Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction. New York: Random House, 2013. Print.
Lopate, Phillip. “Introduction.” Introduction. The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. New York: Anchor, 1994. Xxiii-Liv. Print.
Moore, Dinty W. The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2007. Print.
Scott, Sophfronia. “White Shirts: Essay — Sophfronia Scott.” Numero Cinq. N.p., Sept. 2012. Web. 03 Apr. 2013.
Scott, Sophfronia. “Writing Your Heart Open.” Hunger Mountain: The VCFA Journal of the Arts. Hunger Mountain, 20 Sept. 2012. Web. 21 Apr. 2013.
Vivian, Robert. “Baldwin in Omaha.” Hunger Mountain: The VCFA Journal of the Arts. Hunger Mountain, 6 Dec. 2012. Web. 03 Apr. 2013.
Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. Print.
William Silverman, Sue. “Metaphor Boot Camp.” Vermont College of Fine Arts, MFA in Writing Residency. College Hall Chapel, Montpelier, VT. 4 Jan. 2013. Lecture.
End Notes
INTRODUCTION
Glover, Douglas H. “How to Write a Short Story: Notes on Structure and an Exercise.” Attack of the Copula Spiders: And Other Essays on Writing. Emeryville, Ont.: Biblioasis, 2012. 23-42. Print
Kidder, Tracy, and Richard Todd. Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction. New York: Random House, 2013. Print.
Lopate, Phillip. “Introduction.” Introduction. The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. New York: Anchor, 1994. Xxiii-Liv. Print.
Moore, Dinty W. The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2007. Print.
Scott, Sophfronia. “White Shirts: Essay — Sophfronia Scott.” Numero Cinq. N.p., Sept. 2012. Web. 03 Apr. 2013.
Scott, Sophfronia. “Writing Your Heart Open.” Hunger Mountain: The VCFA Journal of the Arts. Hunger Mountain, 20 Sept. 2012. Web. 21 Apr. 2013.
THE FOUR TECHNIQUES
Gates, Henry Louis. “Sunday.” As published in The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2007. Print.
Moore, Dinty W. The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2007. Print.
Lopate, Phillip. “Introduction.” Introduction. The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. New York: Anchor, 1994. Xxiii-Liv. Print.
Schwartz, Mimi. “Memoir? Fiction? Where’s the Line?” As published in The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2007. Print.
Vivian, Robert. “Baldwin in Omaha.” Hunger Mountain: The VCFA Journal of the Arts. Hunger Mountain, 6 Dec. 2012. Web. 03 Apr. 2013.
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Sophfronia Scott recently completed her second novel, Lady of the Lavender Mist, and has essays in two new Chicken Soup for the Soul books: Inspiration for Writers (May 2013) and Reader’s Choice 20th Anniversary Edition (June 2013). She published her first novel, All I Need To Get By, with St. Martin’s Press in 2004. Her work has appeared in Time, People, More, NewYorkTimes.com, Sleet Magazine, Gently Read Literature, The Mid-American Review, The Newtowner, and O, The Oprah Magazine. Sophfronia is currently a masters candidate in fiction and creative nonfiction at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her short story, “Murder Will Not Be Tolerated,” will be in the Fall 2013 issue of The Saranac Review. She blogs at www.Sophfronia.com.
Jul 012013
Herewith a smart, practical essay on the fraught topic of authorial voice in memoir-writing. In the naive view, a memoir is just you telling your story — nothing simpler. In actual fact the narrator of a memoir is almost always binary, a double-thing, the you you once were and the you who is writing the book now, and one of the great arts is orchestrating the two so that they weave knowingly through the text, adding resonance, wisdom and a pleasing dance of time. Susan Hall is on the cusp of graduating with an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and knows whereof she speaks. As her quarry text for analysis she uses Mary Karr‘s wonderful 2005 memoir Cherry, a gorgeous, witty, frank, and immensely skillful story of Karr’s teenage years.
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Introduction
Some painting are said to jump right off the wall. Whether a painting is abstract or realistic, the artist uses color, line, and light, to trick the eye into believing that depth and dimension exists where there is only a flat canvas. A well-written memoir is similar. The reader must be able to enter an image of the author’s past that mimics time and life itself. Real time is chronological of course, yet our brains are so full of both memory and anticipation that the moment in which we find ourselves glides along between that which we recall and that which we expect. How does the memoirist simulate this? By telling a story of her past while including elements of the present, which was of course the future… then.
My own memoir-in-progress was lacking this quality. Frankly, it was flat. I was writing about my past with all of the descriptive fervor I could muster, and I worked hard to portray the persona of my young self, but my own authorial voice was missing. My attitude and wisdom in regard to my past would pop into the narrative unintentionally, in a way that only served to make it unclear. Then one day in workshop, a teacher asked, “Who is thinking this, the Sue of then or the Sue of now?” I had not made the distinction clear. I focused solely on the narrative of the past and disregarded the depth of character that I should have created by overlaying my current self onto the story.
Sue Silverman distinguishes the difference between these two voices in her book on writing, Fearless Confessions: A Writers Guide to Memoir as the voice of innocence and the voice of experience. She writes:
You can think of the Voice of Innocence much like the horizontal plot line: it’s the voice that tells the story of what happened, the events. On the other hand, think of the Voice of Experience like the vertical plot line: it’s the voice that interprets or reflects upon the events. (51)
It is the voice of experience that was missing from my work, the voice that “examines what the author, sitting at her desk writing, understands about events now” (Silverman 53).
In my reading, I began to look specifically for the two distinctly separate voices that an author must include, that of the subject in the scenes versus the current day author. What I discovered was that sometimes these voices mingle so closely that it is easy to miss. Yet some memoirists will juxtapose them so boldly that the author sitting at her desk, the author now, becomes as apparent a presence as the younger innocent character.
Sven Birkerts says that:
The narrator, who is also the narrative subject, can’t just be assumed. If the memoir is to be something more than a thin reportorial digest of events, if it is to matter, than the writer must create her identity on the page, making it as persuasive and compelling as that of any realized fictional protagonist. In other words, the memoirist’s “I” must be an inhabited character, a voice that takes possession of its account . . . Is the writer bemused by the actions of the younger self, or moved to contemplate a former innocence? The reader responds to a whole gamut of clues” (26, 27).
I set out to find the specific craft techniques with which a memoirist might create her identity on the page; I began to search for the clues. I chose to look specifically at Mary Karr’s work, because she presents her authorial voice with a wide variety of techniques. Karr presents herself, the subject then and the author now , with effective precision.
[SPACE]
Mary Karr’s memoir Cherry is about her life in Leechfield, Texas, during her adolescent years in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is a classic coming-of-age story in which the young, and often lonely, Karr searches for a connection to family, friends, and community. As her mother and father both occasionally leave home for short stretches of time (generally to get drunk) she turns to her sister, friends, and boyfriends to help her feel the comfort of belonging. But each of these people threaten to pull away from her as well. In the end she comes to realize, through the words of a friend, that as she separates from her community and moves out of Texas, she will bring with her the comfort of a consistent and strong sense of herself.
Surrounded by a varied group of characters, Karr sees herself as one who is smarter and more driven than most of the people in her town. This creates a lonely situation for her, as she rarely transforms herself in order to fit in with others. Instead she moves through friendships and relationships as the quasi-intellectual philosopher who aspires to eventually leave town and become a writer. While she is drawn to certain people, and she has some satisfying connections with many, her central struggle is rooted in her conflicting desires to feel both securely connected to those whom she loves while also recognizing and acting upon her individual aspirations.
Cherry begins with a prologue and is then structured into four parts. The prologue, entitled “California 1972,” portrays Karr as a young adult embarking on a car trip and move to California with a group of friends. Part ONE, entitled “Elementary’s End,” places Karr at the beginning of junior high school. The author’s teen years are then presented chronologically through the book, ending in the time just prior to the California trip. The beginning of the book, therefore, marks the end of the story.
This strategic use of temporal shifting allows the author to focus the memoir on the vertical story: the dynamics of the protagonist’s relationships and her unfurling sense-of-self. Because it has already been revealed that the young Karr will eventually move away, the story can concentrate on the events that lead to the author’s decision to move. It is not a story about what happened, but rather how and why it happened. The author seems to search for a deeper understanding of herself, as she reflects back over the events and her response to them.
The structure of Cherry is unique also in Karr’s use of point of view and tense because they change with each section of the book. The prologue is written in the second person, present tense. This particular second person point of view does not have the narrator speaking to another person addressed as “you” but rather is the author speaking to herself, or of herself. In this regard it is essentially the first person point of view with the narrator writing her own story, but with the word “you” in place of “I.” The pronouns are essentially interchangeable.
Part ONE begins the story with a more traditional first person past tense format. In part TWO the narrative remains in the first person but the tense is changed to present. The very short part THREE (only 12 pages long) moves back to the second person present tense. And part FOUR, which comprises more than half of the book, is done entirely in second person but with the tense changing from past, to present, and in the end to an overlap of future and present tense. These variations segue smoothly from section to section but serve to differentiate the stages of the young character’s story as she changes and grows. Karr’s elementary and junior high years are presented in the first person, while her high school years are presented in the second person. Each of the two halves of the book, the first half in first person and the second half in second person, progress from a start in the reminiscent quality of past tense, to the immediacy and intensity of present tense.
Chronologically, the story of young Karr begins in part ONE, titled “Elementary’s End.” But again the book begins with a prologue that marks the end of the story chronologically, in which the young adult narrator is departing for a surfing trip to California with a group of friends. In the prologue, Karr introduces the reader to her family and friends. She portrays her father as loving but removed. Her mother is interested in Karr’s adventures, but she is self-absorbed and relives her own sense of adventure vicariously through the young Karr. Her older sister Lecia is simply ashamed to be part of the family. Lecia tells people that she is an orphan “raised among distant-cousin lunatics” (9) in order to disassociate herself from the family. The impending trip to California is poorly planned and heavy drug use on the trip and a troubled time is foretold.
The first chapter opens with Karr at the end of her elementary school years, trying to literally elbow her way into a clique of friends, unsuccessfully. She introduces to the reader, the boy she had a crush on, John Cleary, and the girl who became her best friend, Clarice Fontenot. The narrator refers to herself and the other kids in her neighborhood as “still unformed” (43), thus establishing the theme of the book, which is Karr’s adolescent search for romantic relationships, friendships, and a sense of self as she disconnects from her family.
Part TWO is about young Karr’s developing sense of sexuality and the loss of her friendship to Clarice. She has her first kiss with John Cleary and spends time with him doing homework but also giving him a leg massage. Then, before the eighth grade, Clarice puts an end to their friendship. The author sees herself juxtaposed against Clarice, who wants to be a secretary while young Karr wants to be a poet or “Newspaper woman” (97). Clarice leaves the friendship because young Karr makes her feel bad about her aspirations and because Karr thinks she is smarter than Clarice. Which young Karr realizes, is true.
The very short Part THREE, entitled “Limbo” is about the author’s suicide attempt in the eighth grade. She writes of her mood at the time, “Oh you are manufacturing an arena of darkness in your sullen self” (113). She begins to “romance suicide” (113) and attempts it by taking an overdose of Anacin. Her parents come to her aid, although they do not know that it was an overdose that caused her to be sick. Her father drives a far distance to get her some plums, at her request. And young Karr wakes the next morning to “snap out of it” (117). She recognizes that she is loved and resolves to survive for that reason.
Part FOUR, entitled “High,” comprises more than half of the book. Young Karr is in high school and she becomes an active drug user. She makes a new best friend, Meredith Bright, based on the fact, according to young Karr, that they are both smarter than the other kids. They bond over a shared aptitude for literature and poetry and a recognition of their mutual suffering. Young Karr then begins dating a boy named Phil who is three years her senior. She becomes a rebel at school and faces the principal often, which causes her to wonder if the high school experience is going to give her the ticket out of Leechfield and into college as she hopes. She loses her virginity with Phil, but finds that as a result, she feels distant from him, and they break up.
Young Karr befriends a boy named Doonie, who is reintroduced from the prologue. He is one of the friends with whom she will travel to California. He is a surfer and a heavy drug user and scenes depict a variety of drug related events. So the story begins to point toward the books beginning and the story’s end, edging closer to the scene in the prologue when young Karr will embark on the trip.
Toward the end of the book young Karr is with two new friends at a bar. She is tripping and her experience becomes surreal and unnerving. She witnesses a woman shooting-up drugs into her neck as she lay on a bathroom floor carpeted in shards of broken syringes. Karr awakens the next day and thinks back over the night, then goes to Meredith’s house to tell her about it. Meredith tells Karr that she has accomplished something good by surviving the experience; she says that Karr has changed and yet remains the “same self” (276). The narrator reflects then on her young self as having been “only half-done inside” (276) but “something solid was starting to assemble inside” (276) her. On the final page Karr writes “That oddball catchphrase [the same self] will serve as a touchstone in years to come, an instant you’ll return to after traveling the far roads” (276). This line brings an ending solution to the prologue scene, which has not yet happened chronologically but which the reader anticipates. The entire book leads to this, to the strength the author had begun to find as a teen that would carry her through the time in California and always.
The voice of the narrator moves from being brazen to brave, from inquisitive to in-depth. The writing becomes denser in the second half of the book, with long complex sentences that often hold multiple images, concepts, or actions. The imagery and scenes become intense, gripping, with suspense and tension as the young Karr pushes forward through her high school years. The complexity of her life then, is reflected in the complexity of her syntax and imagery.
There is a tone of resolution in the end. The current-day author is gentle with herself, as if she is telling her young self that her struggle makes full sense. Her current attitude is illuminated in that final interjection of her future self when she writes, “That oddball catchphrase will serve as a touchstone in years to come” (276). The word “oddball” is light and humorous as it also acknowledges her opinion of her young self. It is slightly judgmental, but light and forgiving. In this final passage, we see that the author has come to fully understand her young self as well as how the young Karr determined the eventual path of the older Karr. The author emerged then, as well as again now, with new wisdom. She is changed yet the “same self.”
Karr’s techniques
Birkerts says that a memoir becomes:
. . . a work comprising at least two time lines – present and past. The now and the then (the many thens), for it is the juxtaposition of the two – in whatever configuration – that creates the quasi-spatial illusion most approximating the sensations of lived experience, of recollection merging into the ongoing business of living . . . The sin qua non of memoir, with the past deepening and giving authority to the present, and the present (just by virtue of being invoked) creating the necessary depth of field for the persuasive idea of the past” (6).
It is not enough then, to simply record the past. The present-day experience of the memoirist, superimposed over her memories of the past, creates the closest approximation of the phenomenon of life itself, lived always in a moment preceded by a culmination of both lost and recalled moments.
In Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative, Thomas Larson writes that “This layered simultaneity, time over time, is the prime relational dynamic between the memoir and memoirist: the remembering and the remembered self” (36). If the author includes only a recollection of the past, the result is less about “memoir” and more about the reporting of events. Silverman suggests, “Without this Voice of Experience, the memoir might address significant events, but it would read more like journalism – timely – whereas it should feel timeless” (55).
Karr reveals her current self in the narrative of Cherry when she inserts her presence on the page using the following techniques:
1) She makes direct reference to her current self within the narrative.
2) She interjects the future with prolepsis or a flash-forward.
3) She indicates a shift in perspective from that of the young subject of the scene to that of the current day author by using a change in the tense.
4) She blends her wisdom into the narrative with interpretations of herself within both time lines.
Direct References
Karr begins Chapter One, following the prologue, with a direct and clear indication of the two time lines comprising the book. The first sentence opens the chapter in the author’s past, with imagery of a girl’s pets. But Karr skillfully puts her current self immediately into the second sentence. She writes, “Violet Durkey has a hamster and a miniature turtle who lives in a shallow plastic bowl under a palm tree with snap-on fronds, and an albino rabbit named snuffles with pink ears from Easter. It’s the hamster I’m thinking about here” (17). These two sentences comprise the total first paragraph and set up the binary structure for the entire book. The author is presented in the now as clearly as she presents herself then by beginning the story with vivid and distinct imagery from her past and then including the word “here” with a direct reference to herself. The second sentence essentially says, “I’m here.”
In many instances, Karr refers directly to her current moment of writing. In one example she gives a bit of back-story about her mother’s past, but then returns to the time of the writing of the story. She writes, “Mother also had a secret history of hasty marriages and equally hasty dissolutions . . . But I’m writing about the 1960s, when Lecia and I didn’t yet know about all her pre-Daddy adventures” (23). This technique enables her to fill her sentences with action as she brings the reader further back in time, then up to her present moment of writing, before segueing back into the 1960s where her story is unfolding. The reader is carried in a fast moving time machine that wraps the author’s chronological life into the “timeless” and fully dimensional quality that Silverman and Birkerts both suggest.
We see the direct indication of the author’s moment of writing similarly when she shows the reader a particular choice she has made in the writing process. For example Karr introduces a new character, a boyfriend in high school, by writing, “Let’s call him Phil” (164). She could have simply used the fictitious name and kept the focus on the story timeline from the past. But the author’s current moment of writing is indicated with her decision-making process itself. Her presence is also directly implied with the inclusion of the first person contraction: “let’s.”
In addition to revealing the author’s presence with the illumination of her decisions as she writes, Karr also insinuates her present self by including her process of recalling her past. For example, she writes about a comment she made to her mother, “You want the butter passed, you don’t talk about arrows shooting. I said something to that effect” (36). Here, she admits that the memory is not entirely clear. She asserts that she said something to her mother in that particular dialogue all those years ago, but she doesn’t recall exactly what it was. This brings the reader out of the story of the past and into the current experience of the author as she is engaged in the act of remembering. While it has the effect of overlaying the two time lines, her honesty about the limitations of her memory makes her a trustworthy author and deepens her character.
The interjections of the current day author add dimension and depth to the other characters as well. Karr uses her current memories and attitude to reveal more about a character than her young self would have known or been able to articulate. She writes in a passage about her older sister Lecia, “I looked down at Lecia. Surely her hair hadn’t been in curlers all day, but that’s how I recall it—in giant wire rollers under a lacy net” (39). This reference to her memory—how she recalls her sister now, tells the reader much more about the characters than the image alone could. Karr, as an adult, has put her memories into categories, as we all do. So her sister takes on a persona, almost a caricature of a stereotype. The reader is told, in effect, that Lecia spent so much time with her hair in rollers that the current day Karr automatically recalls her this way. One might surmise that Lecia was preoccupied with looking good. There is a humorous sarcasm in the current day author’s tone that is playful. Although the passage alone does not explain exactly what the author thought about the rollers then, or what she thinks about them now, the passage shines a light on the two characters, the author Karr and her sister, enough to create some unanswered questions about their relationship. Thus creating some tension and allowing the simple image of the hair rollers to provide more information about the character than it otherwise would have without the author’s current day perspective.
Parenthetical asides abound in Cherry. Within them, Karr also interjects her presence directly. The parentheses themselves simply point to the presence of the author now. They are the commentary of the narrator, and not the thoughts or words of the young subject of the story. They offer a perspective that the young Karr, the subject of the scene, could not have.
As if sharing a secret even more personal than the childhood events in the story, Karr confesses in one parenthetical aside that she often didn’t wash her hands when she was young. In a scene that takes place in the restroom at a roller-skating rink she writes, “This song was warped by coming through the pink plywood door to where we stood at a makeshift sink with little blue packets of Wash—‘N’—dry for after you got done peeing. (Actually, because I never overtly peed on my hands, I never bothered with hand washing anyway)” (18). In this humorous parenthetical wink, Karr’s confident sense of self invites the reader’s respect. The technique allows the author to create the dual timeline as well as to add information, interpretation, irony, and the attitude of the author.
Prolepsis
A prolepsis takes the narrative to a future point ahead of the time in which the story or scene occurs. It is a flash-forward, and although it can portray a scene that is expected to happen, or imagined might happen, in Karr’s memoir she uses prolepsis often to reveal events or interpretations of events that actually did happen later in her life. Karr does this first and foremost by beginning the book with the chronological ending. The reader knows what the author knows, that young Karr will eventually take a trip to California.
Karr layers the time lines with the use of prolepsis throughout the book as well. She is able to create a persona for both of her characters, the young subject of the scenes and the wise author who is formulating the story. For example, early on in the book she interjects the author now with a prolepsis in a parenthetical aside that portrays the changes in her attitude from then to now. In the scene, young Karr begins to feel estranged from her boy friend when he engages in silly pastimes and she discovers that her attraction to him is beginning to diminish. But the author now has a gentle and compassionate view of the boy in retrospect. She writes a prolepsis parenthetically:
The worst of these is a record of two guys having a fart contest, which ends when one actually batches his pants. (Twenty years later, this notion and its attendant memory will strike you as wicked funny. Also you could then recall the boy’s tender, odd ministrations with the fondness they warranted.) (188)
The prolepsis technique transforms the flat chronological timeline of the young character into a three-dimensional form, like turning a line drawing of a square into one of a cube. The reader is placed within the timeless space of the author’s past and present. For example in a passage in which young Karr takes a drawing tablet from her mother’s studio and begins a journal, she writes,
Any fable I’ve told about who I was then dissolves when I read that loose-jointed script I wrote. We tend to overlay grown-up wisdom across the blanker selves that the young actually proffer. (When my son was born, I remember staring into his blue, wondering eyes, then asking the obstetrical nurse what he might be thinking. ‘You know the static channel on your TV?’ she answered.) (24).
This flash-forward reveals that Karr experienced profound life-changing events such as childbirth and parenting. The juxtaposition of the innocent and naive young Mary in the scene against the persona of the mature author who has endured child rearing, indicates that the perspective of the memoirist is from a vantage point that is a culmination of the entirety of her life. It portrays the older and wiser character who survived the challenges of her childhood and leaves the reader in that space in between, wondering what the next page will reveal about her path from naive to wise.
Karr uses prolepsis also to create dimension around events, exposing them from the naive vantage point of the young Karr as well as from the wise author who knows what the young girl did not. For example, in the prologue we see the young character anticipate the trip to California; the narrator reveals what her young self expects and hopes for. She uses prolepsis at this early stage of the book to show that the awaited trip will in fact impact the young character’s life in a profoundly different way than what she envisioned at the time. She writes of the friends who will join her on the trip, “ . . . though before those six bodies in your company have hardened into adulthood, several will be cut down by drug-related obliterations. Two will take their own lives. Two will pull time in jail” (13). Then she continues to write of herself, “Who saw it coming? Not you, certainly. Not the friends who follow soon in their own frail vehicles. Casualties to jack up the tally” (14). She follows this passage with a reference to her later self at a specific age, and with particular details that reveal to the reader how Karr will eventually contextualize her experience in California. She writes,
In Los Angeles, drugs work these transformative magics till the place stands as a geographical epicenter of grief, a city as sacked and ruined for you as Troy. Well into your forties, any time business forces you to fly there and you watch the airport tarmac unfurl from your cabin’s glinting oval, it will feel like the wrong side of some psychic track (14).
Juxtaposed against the young character’s hopes and dreams for the trip before it happens, this flash-forward provides very moving dramatic irony.
Tense Changes
Karr renders the binary aspect of time in Cherry with her use of tense, by changing it within the narrative to indicate which of the two timelines she is writing from. Each of the two halves of the book is written first with past tense then changes to present tense. But within each, the author occasionally switches from one to the other as a way to transport the reader from a focus on the young Karr’s perspective to that of the current author. An example of this occurs in Part ONE when she shifts from past to present tense within a single paragraph. In a scene in which young Karr is at a park watching a tackle football game with a group of her friends, she writes, “In fact, even once the game had ended, when the big boys had run off to make phone calls or do chores, we stayed waiting to be called for supper. I can almost hear the melamine plates being slid from the various cupboards and stacked on tile counters” (32). Her shift to present tense indicates her current moment of writing, when she can hear plates sliding in her memory/imagination.
She continues this reflective voice with the use of another tense switch later in the same passage, but in this one she also adds a direct reference to her current moment of memory/writing. She writes,
At some moment, Clarice figured out as none of us had before how to shinny up the goalpost. That sight of her squiggling up the yellow pole magically yanks the memory from something far-off into a kind of 3-D present. I am alive in it. There’s early frost on the grass, and my ant bites itch (32, 33).
This particular passage continues for another six paragraphs in the present tense. The imagery is vivid and the reader is immersed in the immediacy of it, adding to the level of tension and suspense as Clarice “yanks both her pants and her underscancies down around her bare feet” until an adult neighbor arrives on the scene “holding [a] spatula in her hand with which she intends to blister [the children’s’] asses, Clarice most specifically” (33). Karr segues the transition back to past tense with the use of a prolepsis. She writes, “Decades later, I asked Clarice point blank why she did it. We were in our forties then, living two thousand miles apart, and talking – oddly enough – on our car phones” (34). The prolepsis that she adds at the end brings the reader through another time traveling adventure, up to the future while also nestled back into past tense. This technique pulls the reader out of the past moment, and fully into the visceral quality of the author’s memory; the reader is simultaneously in now and then.
Karr reverses the technique in Part TWO. She writes in present tense throughout, with the immediacy of the memories as she did in the short passage above from Part ONE. To indicate the presence of the current author’s reflective process, therefore, she switches back to past tense. For example, she writes about a night when she is thinking about John Cleary and she masturbates and has an orgasm. She writes in present tense, “Then the horse leaps between my legs, and that soaring fall enters me, and everything dissolves” (88). The paragraph that follows this passage is then written in the past tense after the author makes a direct reference to her current moment of remembering. She reflects on the scene when she writes: “I remember the next morning, or think I do, lolling in bed like my own bride . . . Touching myself didn’t seem so bad. Mother said everybody did that . . . What shamed me was the plastic bag [filled with John Cleary’s hair, stolen by Karr for use in a love spell], that an ardor so pure as mine for John Cleary could involve such deceit” (88, 89).
The presence of the adult author in this particular example allows the reader to feel comfortable with the subject. Without the wise and mature reflection of the grown woman, the scene might simply be treading too close to a private moment in a child’s life. By reflecting so blatantly from a place of wisdom, the author invites the reader to reflect along with her on this private moment, thus retaining and even enhancing a high level of trust for the author. This also acts to elicit empathy for the author, both as a young girl and as a mature and confident adult.
In Part THREE, which is only 12 pages long, Karr indicates her presence by remaining in the present tense while condensing large spans of time into one passage, as though an entire time period was emerging as a present memory. For example, she writes, “Thus junior high seems a series of mishaps that vault you involuntarily from one mudhole to another—each time landing deeper, more remote” (104). Rather than interjecting her presence with asides, she allows the reader to watch her memory and reflecting process as it happens. The narration zooms in to the specifics of a moment and a scene, and then zooms out to a more reflective perspective. This cinematic technique with the use of time portrays the memory process of the current day author and puts her presence on the page. But it also allows the short section of the book to span an entire year in her youth, to condense the time into a single transformative experience.
In Part FOUR, which comprises the entire second half of the book, Karr uses all of these tense-change techniques. It is written in second person point of view, and she repeats the shift from past tense to present tense midway through, as she did in the first half of the book in the 1st person point of view. She insinuates the adult author again, by shifting temporarily from one tense to another. In the final chapter, though, she inserts the future tense. It is a use of the prolepsis technique but indicates the wisdom that the author has gained and it propels the end of the story into the unwritten future. As quoted earlier in this paper, she writes in present tense, “For years you’ve felt only half-done inside, cobbled together by paper clips . . . but something solid is starting to assemble inside you” (276). Then she reflects with her current wisdom and writes in future tense, “That oddball catchphrase will serve as a touchstone in years to come, an instant you’ll return to after traveling the far roads” (276).
Interpretation
Karr’s interpretations of the events in her story put the author’s presence on the page in the most enriching way. The wisdom portrayed in this technique gives her character depth and substance while again enhancing the three dimensional aspect to time and memory.
Of a scene in which she loses her virginity, Karr writes,
You’re not scared of the physical act, for Phil has been kind. But you have one raging horror of looking like you don’t know what to do (you don’t), and another horror of looking like a slut, and so don’t tell him that you’re on the pill, hoping the rubber he winds up using will numb his smart dick from knowing that some brute stole your cherry. (How odd, you’ll later think, that you embarked on your first love affair—meant as an intimacy—with such a large sexual secret in tow” (182).
This example of her interpretation expressed in a prolepsis portrays the wisdom of the current author to such an extent that it reflects the very theme of the book. Without it, the event in the story would simply be journalistically reported. With an emotionally laden subject such as sex and intimacy, to omit the wisdom gained through introspection would make the information nothing but titillating at best, bordering on pornographic. But by inserting the depth of wisdom in this scene, the theme of the book, which is Karr’s dualistic search for both intimacy and independence, is enhanced.
The author’s interpretation of events and characters is often inserted in small doses, such as a parenthetical aside. But Karr enriches the work as a whole when she occasionally includes a full passage of reflective wisdom. In the following example she illuminates important information about her friend Meredith’s character as well as her own, while she also adds commentary and provides valuable insight. She writes:
Kids in distressed families are great repositories of silence and carry in their bodies whole arctic wastelands of words not to be uttered, stories not to be told. Or to be told in sketchiest form—merely brushed by. It’s an irony that airing these dramas is often a family’s chief taboo. Yet the bristling agony secrecy causes can only be relieved by talk—hours and hours of unmuzzled talk, the recounting of stories. Who listens is almost beside the point, so long as the watching eyes remain lit and the head tilts at the angle indicating attention and care.
Without such talk by the kids of these families, there’s usually a grave sense of personal fault, of failing to rescue those beloveds lost or doomed. That silence ticks out inside its bearer the constant small sting of indictment—what it, what if, what if; why didn’t I, why didn’t I, why didn’t I . . .
It’s the gravity of such silence that you detect in Meredith. At some point, she levels her sea green eyes on you and says: I can tell that you’ve suffered. Which observation takes your breath away in its simple nobility (156).
Karr builds the reflective narrative and then segues into the scene with Meredith so that, side-by-side, the interpretation of the author stands juxtaposed to the frank observation made by Meredith. The two time lines complement each other. Each becomes more potent due to the presence of the other. As it stands, the shared empathetic understanding between the two girls is clearly portrayed. Had the author presented only the scene from the past, Meredith’s statement alone would have an entirely different effect on the passage. She might sound insincere. But more importantly, the interpretation of the author simply illuminates very important information about her life and her story.
At times, Karr interjects her interpretations in an unfinished form, so that the reader sees her current-day action of introspection. For example, in the prologue she writes, “Maybe it’s only after your daddy’s been dead fifteen years that you create this longing of yours for him and his denial of it, because it’s easier to bear the notion that he rejected you than vise versa” (8). The word “maybe” in this use of prolepsis/interpretation, propels the narrative into a new direction, taking the reader out of the scene and into the action of the current author’s thought process. Simultaneously, though, it brings the reader deeper into the substance of the scene itself. Rather than a simple depiction of an event, which is the moment when young Karr is ready to leave for California and her father ignores her, it illuminates her young character’s turmoil.
Once again, the layering of her time lines puts the reader deeply and equally in now and then, mimicking the way we experience consciousness. But in the author’s act of interpreting her story, the archetypal search for meaning is revealed. The reader is able to see her own introspective action mirrored in the author’s quest for self-knowledge.
Birkerts contends:
. . . new modes of access are wanted, new perspectives through which our late-modern lives can be understood. And this is one of the signal uses of the memoir. For whatever story the memoirist may tell, he or she is also at the same time modeling a way to reflectively make sense of experience – using hindsight to follow the thread back into the labyrinth. Reading their work, we borrow their investigative energy and contemplate similar ways of accessing our own lives (22).
In this regard, Karr’s use of her own current day interpretation of herself, both then and now, is a universal action that every reader can relate to. The content of the introspection is moving, but the bravery of the act itself inspires the reader and invites a deeper commitment to the read.
Conclusion
The illusion of passage and panorama of time is just one of the many effects gained by the techniques discussed in this essay. With the use of direct references to the current-day author, prolepsis, tense changes, and interpretation, Karr shines a spotlight on herself in the moment of writing, thus creating dimensional form. The young character becomes a person with an impending future, which creates a sense of importance to the events unfolding in the scenes. Also, a conversation begins to emerge, a dialogue between the author and reader, which draws the reader in. And with the author’s wisdom and growth superimposed over the struggles of the young character, the persona of the narrator becomes realistic and authoritative. Karr’s techniques help to create a fully realized character with a thoroughly dimensional life.
The author’s multifaceted persona is not simply enhanced but truly created when she tells her story from binary vantage points. The characters of the past and present juxtapose each other and each one stands out more boldly against the backdrop of the other. Ultimately there is a relationship between these two separate voices, as the author looks back on herself with both a subjective and objective point of view. Two time lines wrapped like DNA around each other create a timelessness and timeliness and it becomes the story of she who has lived to tell the tale.
The author of a memoir, who is necessarily also a character, becomes lifelike and believable when she is presented with the complexities of life experience over time that include growth, struggle, and eventual wisdom. Such a character, intimately whispering her story in the ear of the reader, transcends the pages and comes to life.
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Books cited
Birkerts, Sven. The Art of Time in Memoir. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2008.
Gornick, Vivian. The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.
Karr, Mary. Cherry: A Memoir. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 2000.
Larson, Thomas. Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative. Athens: Swallow Press, 2007.
Silverman, Sue William. Fearless Confessions: A Writers Guide to Memoir. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2009.
—Susan Hall
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Susan Hall is about to graduate with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is an Expressive Arts Therapist with an MA degree from Lesley University and she lives on the coast of Maine with one dog, one cat, and countless sea birds.
Jun 292013
Jun 282013
…the U.S. is experiencing a dangerous moment in which political and financial forces are pushing people to think of themselves as abnormal, and “the counterbalancing forces pushing normal don’t remotely counterbalance and aren’t nearly forceful enough.” In other words, there are many people who profit from the idea that a staggering proportion of Americans are mentally ill, and these groups are powerful, well organized, and politically effective.
via America’s Epidemic of Psychiatric Over-Diagnosis – The Daily Beast.
Jun 272013
A couple of weeks ago on the Omens blog, I published a link to a piece on the NSA Internet surveillance revelations and Foucault’s prescient warnings about the Panopticon (a theoretical prison designed by Jeremy Bentham). That generated considerable comment, especially on Facebook. I thought it would be a good idea to introduce readers to the larger philosophy of Michel Foucault, who wrote especially about madness, punishment and sex, his interest focused on power relations. Herewith two fascinating introductory lectures from Rick Roderick (a Duke University professor, now, alas, deceased) and the other by Michael Roth who is now the president of Wesleyan University.
dg
Jun 262013
Neither do we think what we really think, he might have added.
Jun 252013
And the original.
Jun 252013
A bit of logrolling, I think. Not so much here we don’t know but packaged to inspire cocktail chitchat of a depressing sort. We’re all going to the dogs (an unthought turn of phrase that gives dogs a bad name). Run for the exits. Well, no, don’t run: saunter. Have a little style, for goodness sake. Watch out for drones.
Much has been written about the effects of globalisation during the past generation. Much less has been said about the change in social norms that accompanied it. American elites took the vast transformation of the economy as a signal to rewrite the rules that used to govern their behaviour: a senator only resorting to the filibuster on rare occasions; a CEO limiting his salary to only 40 times what his average employees made instead of 800 times; a giant corporation paying its share of taxes instead of inventing creative ways to pay next to zero. There will always be isolated lawbreakers in high places; what destroys morale below is the systematic corner-cutting, the rule-bending, the self-dealing.
Earlier this year, Al Gore made $100m (£64m) in a single month by selling Current TV to al-Jazeera for $70m and cashing in his shares of Apple stock for $30m. Never mind that al-Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar, whose oil exports and views of women and minorities make a mockery of the ideas that Gore propounds in a book or film every other year. Never mind that his Apple stock came with his position on the company’s board, a gift to a former presidential contender. Gore used to be a patrician politician whose career seemed inspired by the ideal of public service. Today – not unlike Tony Blair – he has traded on a life in politics to join the rarefied class of the global super-rich.
via Decline and fall: how American society unravelled | World news | The Guardian.
Jun 252013
The Writers’ Trust of Canada recently asked me (along with several other estimable authors) to send a list of what I hoped to read this summer and what I think other people might be interested in reading. The result was just published online. Here is my bit. Now you’re set for beach reading.
dg
I am going to shortly read George Fetherling’s The Writing Life, Journals, 1975-2005. Also re-reading Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, André Breton’s novel Nadja. New books: Ror Wolf’s Two or Three Years Later: Forty Nine Digressions, also Tranquility by Attila Bartis.
A work I just read that I recommend highly is Alexander Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter, a short novel, fascinating for its construction (multiple orphans and adoptions) and its ironic and elegant use of genre (the family memoir). There’s a wonderful essay you can read along with it “Pushkin’s Novel The Captain’s Daughter as Fictional Family Memoir” by Leslie O’Bell published online by the North American Pushkin Society.
Douglas Glover’s latest collection of stories Savage Love will be published in September 2013.
via The Writers’ Trust of Canada – Recommended Reading.
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Jun 222013
Here’s the opening to my new back page piece at Global Brief. For the whole series, look here.
dg
There are individuals and there are the anonymous. Most of us are individuals to ourselves, family and friends, but anonymous to the rest of the human race. We are anonymous in crowded cities, in the vast bureaucracies of government and multinational corporations. We are anonymous in statistics, and when we are dead. We are anonymous except in the hearts of loved ones. But that memory eventually burns out as well. Before history, we are all anonymous – a tide of humanity swept up in events, lucky to die in a bed of our own with loved ones around (feeling like an individual).
The idea of an individual is paradoxical, like Wittgenstein’s famous duck-rabbit parable: look at a diagram one way and it’s a duck, tilt the paper and it’s a rabbit. Or it trembles, to use Jacques Derrida’s felicitous verb. Individual/anonymous. We strut our individuality, but we are haunted by images of the beehive and the anthill, where the individual is subsumed under the sign of the collective. Are we simply carriers of genes – worker bees in a hive? Is civilization merely an accumulation of minute anonymous gestures by replaceable minions? Or are we individuals with a particular claim on the infinite – infinitely precious (to a superior being, perhaps), with a will and the power to create and alter forever the course of history?
Jun 212013
Um, at least they’re not killing anybody, right?
Jun 212013
I think I have mentioned his before: I’m buying a beach house on Baffin Island. Greenland is looking good, too (once they get all the ice cleared off).
If we go on like this, we will certainly produce a “4 degrees C. world” — a worst case scenario, in which our climate becomes unstable and there are floods, droughts and heat waves on a scale that make a typical Hollywood summer disaster movie look like a Smurf cartoon.
The report says that the warming will produce massive flooding in parts of Asia, a 50% reduction in the fish catch in southeast Asia, and severe and prolonged drought in Africa.
via Informed Comment: Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion.
Jun 172013
Watching movies is a sentimental education. They work through images and change the way we feel, especially if they come at an impressionable moment. Strange how, for reasons of history and empire, a boy in southwestern Ontario grew up humming an Australian bush song and learned his politics watching the Australian actor Chips Rafferty in Eureka Stockade (1949), fighting for justice in the Ballarat Goldfields on the family’s first black and white TV in the late 1950s. I don’t suppose anyone else remembers Chips Rafferty, and looking at him now he is hardly leading man material. But there you are. Much later the great Australian films Gallipoli and Breaker Morant served to upend my view of self and history, my historical self, with their mutinous revision of Australia’s glorious Imperial past (which, it seemed, applied equally to Canada’s Imperial past). I give you here first Eureka Stockade, the entire movie [actually, the entire movie has disappeared from Youtube; I can only give you a clip for now, and not the final battle scene at that], made at the famous Ealing Studios in England. I was a boy when I saw this, as I say, completely enthralled with Chips Rafferty, my hero-idol for years (though I only saw the movie once). Then the famous Australian singer-songwriter Eric Bogle performing his song “The Band Played Waltzing Mathilda” which turns the famous bush ballad upside down, into a lament for the gallant spirit of a country that bought the British imperial blarney about loyalty to the Mother country and saw its boys wasted in an unforgivable debacle. Then I give you the last scene from Gallipoli where the Australians have been ordered to attack across open ground against Turkish machine guns (this is at Suvla Bay, the operational area referred to in Eric Bogle’s song). It’s a gorgeous sequence. Mel Gibson is racing with a message to call off the attack; his race against Death mirrors the boyhood race at the beginning of the movie — he loses both races. (Watches and time-keeping imagery throughout as well.) Then I give you last scene of Breaker Morant, the two Australians being executed as an example during the Boer War to save Imperial face after a so-called atrocity. Beautiful irony in the dialogue about “pagan.” The pagan trooper cites the precise Bible verse to cover his case; the chaplain has to look it up. As I say, these films educated me, not intellectually at first so much as sentimentally, changed the templates, transformed my view of Canadian history, the official version never to be trusted again, authority(ies) never to be trusted again. Just as I am sure these imaginary geographies will always be more real to me than the ones you find on maps (which are truly Imaginary). For Canadians, I suggest getting a copy of Tony Wilden’s The Imaginary Canadian, a Lacanian analysis of Canadian history now out of print.
dg
Jun 162013
I can’t understand why everyone isn’t attracted to modernism. How can we disagree with the idea that there is subjective as well as chronological time? One of the things that really fascinates me about the novels of Anita Brookner is that I regard her male and female characters as 18th century characters living in the 20th century. This is not a dig at a skilled writer — it genuinely interests me. How can anyone who is engaged with literature be arrogant and dumb enough to dismiss the writing of (in no particular order) Whitman, Baudelaire, Proust, Joyce, Kafka, Pound, Stein, Eliot, Genet, Beckett, Woolf, and Mansfield as an irrelevant experiment? I was born into a world that was utterly changed by modernism. Modernism is the soft typewriter of the womb that made me. How can point of view not be multi-angled? Don’t they have to blinker horses with a leather blind to stop them from having a multi-angled point of view?
Read the rest at In the Soft Typewriter of the Womb » 3:AM Magazine.
Jun 162013
Jun 152013
Iris and Lydia are watching a divinely tasteless tourist wedding on a beach in Mexic0, the ceremony punctuated by the recorded voice of the groom singing “We’ve Only Just Begun.” Ominously, the word “narcotraficantes” floats into the conversation, not given another thought, except that the reader knows, the READER KNOWS! Something will come of this. Iris is 78 and charges through life with a certain comic grandeur, tossing off Spanish phrases. Lydia, her daughter, is cautious, middleclass — her husband has “escaped” her. The air is one of golden sand and indolence. Attentive, amenable Mexican waiters humor the gringos with money; the wedding counterpoints Lydia’s anxious memories of a lost husband; a delightful irony suffuses the entire scene, coupled with threat. And, yes, we’ve only just begun.
This a section plucked from the opening of Contributing Editor Ann Ireland‘s novel-in-progress Where’s Bob. Her fourth novel The Blue Guitar was just published this spring.
dg
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‘That’s for us,’ Iris said, pointing to the final item on the activity menu. ‘Archery is excellent for balance and concentration. I always thought I might be good at it. But you must join me, in case I start to tip over.’
Squeals of laughter rose from the swimming pool where a member of the Star Team was conducting an aerobics class, though not very vigorously, judging by the unmanaged hopping up and down as salsa music blared from the speaker.
Lydia, Iris’s middle aged daughter, frowned, and not at the noise. ‘Not such a good idea, Mama, considering your fragile bits.’
‘I have no fragile bits,’ Iris insisted and gave her thigh a hearty slap. ‘You might say that I’m better than ever.’ The left hip had been replaced two years ago, an arduous couple of months, but well worth it. ‘I am perfectly intact in limb and joint, probably tougher than you, given the fact that there’s titanium in there.’ She paused and added in a softer tone: ‘We may as well have it out now on day one of our vacation: You are not to fuss about me.’
‘I don’t fuss,’ Lydia objected. But she sounded cross.
‘Tipping over refers to a slight tendency to vertigo. As your father might have said – ‘Expect the unexpected’ – and should a rescue be required, I’ll let you know, loud and clear.’ Iris smiled at the anticipated drama of such a moment, where her daughter, no spring chicken herself, might race across the beach to catch her teetering mother.
‘Got that?’
‘Do I have a choice?’ Lydia said.
‘You do not.’
The two women, one tall and majestic (Iris), the other shorter and thin with sparse hair (Lydia) sloughed past the beach volleyball court where girls in bikinis lunged for the ball aided by bare-chested men, not all them young. Long-limbed, the girls neighed like thoroughbreds, tossing blonde hair over shoulders. Iris and Lydia treaded in their sandaled feet through the fine-grained sand of the Yucatan coast. To one side, the shore sloped to the turquoise sea which was scattered with bathers, who, for the most part, stood in place and let gentle surf wash over them. To the other side was La Piramide, a five star sprawling resort whose main building was shaped in the form of a Mayan pyramid. Their room was in the Toucan wing where public areas were painted cheerful tropical colors, as opposed to the Colonial wing with its tasteful dark wood and murals of the conquistadores. Everyone wore plastic wristbands indicating where they could dine and drink without having to worry about carrying money – Iris’s idea of heaven. Money, anywhere, in any manifestation, was a pain in the neck.
She stopped beside the end of the meandering swimming pool with its tiered series of waterfalls.
‘Have you ever imagined such a place?’ Iris said, taking in a long breath of sea air, tinged with coconut oil.
‘Not in my wildest dreams,’ Lydia said.
In her tone Iris detected a certain contempt, an easy disregard for the sort of people who demanded artificial waterfalls and non-stop entertainment when they left home, not to mention five restaurants, six bars, two buffets and a snack bar that was open 24/7. The sort of places Lydia and Charlie took the kids, when Lydia and Charlie were still a team, were proudly shabby, tiles missing in the bathroom, a toilet that didn’t quite flush, iffy water flow and air conditioning, a simple hostel in some off the beaten path, perhaps in Cuba. They would bring toothpaste and underwear to the chambermaids, if there were chambermaids, and a parcel of magic markers and exercise books for local school children.
The two women threaded between loungers laden with oiled-up vacationers, their eyes now fixed on the rustic hut where a trio of blenders scoured fruit into luridly colored cocktails.
Discreetly, Lydia tucked an arm under her mother’s elbow as the sand shifted and Iris had begun to sway. She was 78 and had suffered her share of surgeries in recent years.
‘Shoot me if I get like that,’ she spoke into in her daughter’s ear.
She indicated with a nod a hefty woman of advanced years (though not as advanced as Iris) lying on a cot – a woman who had peeled down the top of her bathing suit to reveal the upper portion of two massive freckled breasts. A fanned out copy of a Harry Potter novel rose and fell on her impressive belly.
‘No one has the right to let herself go to that degree,’ Iris continued, sotto voce. ‘It’s a disgrace.’
‘To womankind?’ Lydia supplied.
‘Exactly!’ Iris nodded, pleased that they were in agreement.
Iris held herself well and had retained a defined waistline that she was proud of; her silver bathing suit featured a braided belt around the midriff and her feet were encased by strappy sandals– a pointed contrast to her daughter’s sensible espadrilles.
‘Ah, there’s my lad,’ Iris declared, arriving at the palapa, slightly breathless from the effort of crossing the beach. ‘Miguel!’ she hailed the young man in a crisp checked shirt who was operating a blender with one hand and pouring beer with the other. She fully expected him to remember her from last night when she and Lydia had arrived, hot, dirty, and fed up from the airline journey and the hour-long bus ride to the resort. Miguel had fortified them with jolts of tequila.
Today he greeted her with a wide smile, for of course he remembered the gringa who spoke Spanish.
‘Por favor, toss us a couple of margaritas, con limon fresco,’ Iris said.
The small crowd around the bar parted to make way for Iris, who didn’t seem to notice that she’d slipped to the head of the line: a prerogative of age. Iris looked so delighted that no one wanted to spoil her moment.
Her daughter offered an apologetic smile while Miguel set two foaming margaritas in plastic glasses on the sticky counter.
‘You got pesos for a tip?’ Iris whispered back to her daughter. Like the queen, she rarely carried money.
Lydia dug a coin from her beach bag and flipped it into the jar.
‘Now where shall we position ourselves?’ Iris said, spinning around, holding both drinks.
Lydia pointed to a shady area near the infinity pool. ‘I’ll take the booze over then come back for you.’
Iris frowned, as if she hadn’t heard. Soon she was beetling across the hot sand, making her way to a pair of loungers at the end of a row on the beach.
‘Mum!’ Lydia called sharply. ‘There are towels on them. They are occupied.’
Her mother called over her shoulder. ‘I see no occupants.’
As Iris pressed forward she thought it would have been wise to give the drinks to Lydia. But now she was stuck with them and crossing ridged sand that had been meticulously raked by staff in the morning, cigarette butts and other detritus collected into bags, not to mention the horse manure that cascaded from the rear ends of the sorry beasts that paraded up and down the beach at dusk. Iris set a grin firmly in place: this would not be the time to pitch forward and bust a limb, sticking Lydia with the task of carting her off to some dubious hospital. She tossed back her blonde-and silver tinted hair, noting that people were watching her progress. Well hell’s bells, she was used to a certain amount of attention, and not just from geezers. She did not cater to the commonly held belief that women of a certain age couldn’t hope to attract notice. A person creates her own visibility, insists on it.
She stood alone, wavering, barely keeping the margaritas upside. The sun was fierce. She felt her lips under crimson lipstick pucker in the salty air and she squinted, light bouncing off the water.
Lydia scampered to her side, grabbed the drinks, and said in an exasperated tone: ‘I’m doing my best.’
‘You are dear, I can see that.’
‘Just don’t go running off like that.’
Iris took advantage of the moment to gather her equilibrium. Time to slather on lotion, throw back a drink and get on with the business of relaxation. You could tell where one one hotel property stopped and the next began by the color of the pillows on the loungers. Blue striped (theirs) became salmon pink at Mission de La Rosa.
‘I’m sorry, dear. Hard for me to slow down,’ Iris said, conciliatory. She’d raised such an earnest, well meaning sort of girl.
Lydia lifted her arm like a wing so that her mother could cling to it, and she wasn’t too proud to do so. Glancing down, Iris noted that Lydia had neglected to shave her legs; it was some sort of feminist thing, and Iris almost remarked on it – then decided not to. It was sometimes wise to keep one’s counsel. Lydia had been a sparky child, prone to singing and dancing about the house and inventing imaginary friends; in other words, promising. I want an interesting child, not an obedient one, Iris used to say while other mothers cast disapproving glances. Perhaps most mothers felt this about their grown up children, a sad realization that they had become ordinary. Iris herself had never felt ordinary and no one had ever mistaken her as such.
They reached the cots, webbed plastic with gaily striped vinyl cushions, and a pair of damp towels – so Lydia was right about that: clear evidence of being claimed. Could be that young couple bobbing in the water close to shore.
‘Need help?’ Lydia said. She’d noted her mother staring, like an engineer, at the low slung pieces of furniture.
Whoever designed these loungers didn’t take into account that a segment of the population needed something to grab onto while dropping themselves to shin level.
Lydia wedged the drinks in the sand, giving each a half-turn so it screwed in, then offered her hand for Iris to clasp.
After a few scary seconds of hovering in no man’s land, followed by an alarming thud and a wheeze of vinyl –Iris was settled. In every way except flexibility the new hip was grand. Beside her, Lydia glided effortlessly onto the other lounger, draping the wet towel over its end. People must not claim turf that they didn’t need; if the world paid attention to this basic principle they’d all be in less trouble. Iris shut her eyes against the sun. She could hear the rustling of her daughter as she fetched a crossword puzzle book from her beach bag and set to work. Behind them a Mexican family, mother and father and two small children, chattered in Spanish, something about their aunt who would, or would not, be joining them this weekend. A slap of a card game to one side. A thrilled shriek as an unexpectedly big wave rolled in.
‘Mum? Your drink. I’ll set it on the table next to you.’
Noises retreated; the body stretched into languor, muscles cramped from air travel released and it was like drowning in new air, giving up, limb by limb. Iris fell asleep for perhaps twenty minutes. When her eyes fluttered open, the Mexican family had disappeared, leaving cameras, books, towels and beach toys behind. Her drink, what was left of it, was baking in the sun, ice cubes long since dissolved. Lydia was sitting cross-legged on her cot, reading intently with a pen in hand, ready to underline pertinent passages.
Iris said in a lazy tone: ‘Are we allowed to mention Charlie?’
‘Of course,’ her daughter replied.
‘Because, no matter how this unfolds, he remains the father of your children.’
Lydia cast those huge brown eyes towards the glistening sea, as if the obvious had been spoken, as indeed it had. Cliches popped out of Iris’s mouth around Lydia. It was because she was trying to act ‘motherly’, a role she’d never taken to in a natural way. It was Lydia’s father, Richard, Iris’s first husband, who used to point this out, saying – ‘Not everyone is cut out to be Old Mother Hubbard.’
‘When you share kids, you share for good,’ Iris added.
This unoriginal comment warranted no reply.
Lydia continued to stare out to sea, a widow searching the horizon for her husband’s vessel. Charlie did disappear on water, though hardly in a whaling boat; he heaved off from the dock in his carefully restored Chestnut canoe, storm clouds bundling overhead, while Lydia stood barefoot on shore in her hippie dress, fretting about lifejackets and lightening strikes, worry escalating into pleas, then anger. Iris could imagine this scene all too easily.
Charlie was escaping.
That’s how Iris saw it, because she was a champion escaper herself – and who could blame the poor man? Lydia made it out to be a spontaneous gesture, but Charles Kingsley had never been a man to act recklessly: his disappearance was most certainly plotted. By profession, he was vice principal at Danforth Technical and Vocational Collegiate in east end Toronto – hardly a pirate. He’d sent his mother in law a crisp email after the fact, a cryptic message that Iris had never shared with her daughter. It read simply: ‘Sorry.’
‘Have you heard from him lately?’ Iris asked.
‘We’re on speaking terms. Things to do with the kids.’
Well, that was something.
Iris would tread carefully. ‘How are Doug and Annie doing?’
‘Very well, thank you.’
‘I suppose they are angry.’
‘Of course they’re angry, Mum. A parent disappears one summer afternoon; it’s pretty traumatic.’
The arrow hit its mark, for Iris had done a similar bunk when her children were young, though you could hardly compare the two episodes: she had never claimed to be stable. She was as restless as a cat and it taught Lydia and her brother to expect the unexpected.
This sky was intensely blue, a color reflected in the sea, and these poor winter eyes creased into slits, to accommodate. Iris had left behind the enveloping fog of the Bay area, Lydia, her modest house in east end Toronto in the depths of winter, Doug not much use in the snow shoveling department or other manly tasks. According to his mother, he spent hours in his room with the door closed, eyes glued to the monitor of his computer. One could venture a guess as to what he was up to. She wondered if Lydia had a clue.
Lydia sipped blithely at her margarita. This was her first; Iris reached for her second: Gracias Miguel. Or was it Pedro?
‘Another couple of suckers enter marital hellfire,’ Lydia said, tucking her feet under her, letting the book slide off her lap. The crossword puzzle magazine had fallen to the sand.
A pair of young men in sharply pressed safari suits were hauling two Roman columns, each easily eight feet tall, off a dolly. With odd ease, for these props were made of styrofoam, they planted the columns upright in the sand. When this task was done, they unrolled a strip of red carpet leading up to a dais then set up rows of folding chairs, clicking them open with one foot. Destination weddings were all the rage.
‘Shall I warn the happy couple what they’re getting into?’ Lydia said.
The caustic tone didn’t suit her.
The sun was beginning to swell directly overhead, casting a shadowless heat over the proceedings. Then the wedding party began to arrive, women in breezy cocktail dresses and high heels picked their way over the stone walkway and onto the carpet, laughing and clinging to the elbows of male escorts who wore neat shorts and tropical shirts. Some of these shirts were monogramed with the name of the resort and sported a graphic of a pyramid.
Iris propped herself up up to see better. Lydia, despite her sneering, couldn’t keep her eyes off the ceremony and she shifted her lounger so that she had an unobstructed view. She wasn’t the only one to do this. All around them, scores of sunbathers tilted their visors for an unfettered gaze.
‘Senora, you are finished?’ The young waiter hovered, one hand ready to grab the empty plastic cups.
Yes, estoy terminada. Iris used the opportunity to practice her Spanish: What is your name?
Patricio.
And where is your hometown?
‘Patzucaro, Michoacan.’
Unlike waiters at home in the United States, he didn’t feel the need to speed off to the next task.
‘Patzcuaro!’ She’d spent time there, many years ago– ‘hace mucho anos’, had rented a house with – her memory failed her for a moment – with Jake the sculptor. It had been her second extended trip to this country. Such a beautiful mountain town with views over a reedy lake, though there had been word in recent years of goings-on due to the drug trade.
‘Muy bonito!’ she declared and she and Patricio exchanged nods of agreement. Back home in Berkeley, she always spoke to her Salvadorian cleaning lady in her native tongue.
Patricio’s smooth brow suddenly furrowed and he rattled off a sentence just as the wedding party began to blast that ballad from Titanic.
Iris cupped one hand by her ear, the universal symbol.
There were ‘problemitas’ in Michoacan, Patricio confided as he dropped the empty cups into his trash bag. Bad people. ‘Narcotraficantes.’
Mexico was plagued with violence from the drug cartels; she didn’t live in a cave. She’d read about the beheadings, assassinations, and dismembered bodies dropped into pails of acid. These ghastly events were mostly clotted along the border – but wasn’t the state of Michoacan noted for growing marijuana in the hills? Now there were meth labs. Tourists flocked to this beach in the Yucatan, under the illusion that resorts were immune from trouble – Iris knew better. The country had always been lawless. She and Jake were drinking mezcal in a cantina in Chiapas one evening when a borracho barreled through the louvered doors and pulled out an antique gun and started firing at the bartender – everyone hit the floor, the terrified gringos included. No one was hurt, and the police eventually came along, piled in the back of a pick up truck, holding rifles and looking excited. The drunk had long since vanished.
Many gringos would have high-tailed back to the States at that point, but Iris’s opinion was –why travel if you want things to be the same as back home?
She fixed her gaze on Patricio, shielding her eyes with one hand. ‘What a difficult time for your country,’ she said.
The lad revived his tourist-friendly smile, even while nodding ‘yes’. Behind that smile, Iris decided, lurked a possible family catastrophe, perhaps a murder or kidnapping, or an uncle lost to meta-amphetamines. One did not know what hid behind the happy expressions that staff were obliged to wear, along with their crisply laundered uniforms. She glanced around at the other tourists – they didn’t have a clue. The knowledge swelled inside her: she had a bond with this country. She’d knocked around its mountains and deserts and beaches for many months, so long ago. She was about to say this to the young waiter, but he was suddenly gone and the little table was bare.
As Celine Dion’s voice crested towards the chorus, the wedding party continued to assemble, observed by the audience of oil-slicked, leathery tourists humped on loungers, dazed by sun and too many pina coladas. The bride and groom hadn’t anticipated onlookers when they’d pored over the brochures back home, photographs showing Romanesque columns and acres of empty sand and the glistening Caribbean sea. Brochures wouldn’t show that fat man with hairy shoulders emerging from the water, snorkel mask in hand, shorts dragging off his rear end, nor would they illustrate the squalling children tossing sand at each other at water’s edge. A member of staff carrying a clipboard positioned herself to the side of the proceedings and politely fended off the curious in their drooping bathing suits, asking them to please not interfere with the photographers’ sight lines. These tourists in flip flops seemed to want to stride into the middle of the event, one reality colliding with another. It reminded Iris of those Shakespeare productions back in the 1970’s, where the audience was obliged to take part in the action, shouting encouragement to Hamlet, or handing Lady Macbeth her dagger.
‘Maybe we’ll end up at the margins of their photos,’ Lydia said. As if preparing for this eventuality, she slipped into her crinkly blouse and fluffed up her hair. A photographer was busily snapping pictures as the party made their way to the folding chairs which balanced precariously on carpet laid over sand. A trickle of applause, and at last the bride appeared, click-clacking down the stone pathway, wearing a fairy dress of white chiffon, a camilla in her hair. That must be her father, a surprisingly young looking fellow in tropical shirt and khakis, sporting a formidable handlebar mustache. He was beaming even more than his daughter who was intent on not stumbling.
‘What a remarkable garment,’ Lydia said, referring to the dress. ‘Do you think it’s made of surgical gauze?’
‘Shhh,’ Iris cautioned.
Everyone crooned an appreciative ‘Ahh’ as father and daughter stepped cautiously onto the red carpet. The bride was pale-skinned and dark haired, possibly Irish, and very slender, showing off toned arms, a nervous smile careening off her face. Not wanting to wear sunglasses, she squinted, an expression caught for posterity by the young man who might be her brother, snapping wildly with his point and shoot.
Iris was starting to tear up, as was her more cynical daughter. They didn’t dare exchange glances, in case the floodgates were unleashed. For once, Lydia made no snotty remarks and merely watched as a light breeze coasted across the beach, fluttering the pages of novels and magazines then catching the hem of the bride’s dress in a provocative way. The father, surely no more than forty-five, helped his daughter negotiate the transition from cobblestone to carpet, clutching her elbow firmly. His face gleamed with health and happiness, though he seemed self-conscious: who wouldn’t be with all these strangers watching –and with his free hand he patted down his lanky hair that didn’t quite manage to cover his bald spot. The younger men all had shaved heads and looked like marines on furlough. The bride’s dark hair didn’t come from her Dad’s side of the family. That would be her mother sitting in the front row, also slender, wearing a pink top and silk trousers, twisting on her seat to watch the pair walk up the makeshift aisle. The bride gave a little squeak of alarm as her heel caught in the threads of carpet but Father expertly kept her aloft. The groom would be that stocky man standing at the front watching his bride’s approach. He wore a tropical shirt decorated with a pattern of shells. His face was pink, his head shiny. Iris leaned forward to see better: he was already puffy around the cheeks and neck– a man who liked his liquor. Should the girl be warned?
Iris knew enough about drinkers to last a lifetime.
Someone had turned down the music and now they could hear the relentless salsa beats coming from the activity pool and the Star girl urging all swimmers to clap their hands and ‘Dance! Dance!’ The bride reached the groom and was handed off by her father who retreated, one suspected with relief, to the empty chair by his wife. This wife didn’t squeeze his hand or pat his knee, and Iris decided that they were estranged, brought together for this event.
‘I know him!’ Lydia whispered loudly. She looked excited and was pointing to a small neat man standing next to the groom. ‘We met in the Internet room. He’s a Unitarian minister who goes up and down the coast marrying people.’
The dark-skinned Mexican in a white shirt with pleats had flipped open a folder and began to read from a set piece as bride and groom held hands and listened. Iris could hear just enough to note that there was no hint of religiosity in the text and no Khalil Gibran drivel.
The breeze ratcheted up a notch and now the bride was having to fight her dress as the photographer snapped away. The minister hesitated while the groom murmured something that made people laugh, then he plucked a ring from his pocket and slipped it onto his bride’s finger. At this photogenic moment, a child carrying an inflatable whale darted behind the couple, forever captured in the event.
Lydia let out a giggle. The alcohol was finally getting to her and that tense face had begun to relax, the hatch of lines smoothing between her eyebrows. In baby pictures, Lydia always looked anxious; she was born with a furrowed brow and the weight of the ages. They used to think it was cute, because, of course, what did a baby know of the trials of the world?
By the end of the week, if Iris had her way, Lydia would lose half a dozen years and they’d be a couple of dizzy females making their way to the bar in the evening. Lydia was apt to give up on future romance; just because Charlie had blown off didn’t mean nobody else would come sniffing around. Where on earth did she ever get such a defeatist attitude? Certainly not from her mother.
The minister had the high sloping forehead of the Mayans, indigenous to these parts. He gazed over the wedding party, eyes indicating a level of boredom, as for a moment, he forgot where he was and who these people were gathered before him.
Cheers erupted from the volleyball court and a ball coasted skyward, narrowly missing the bride’s head. It landed on the makeshift dais, where it stayed, no one nervy enough to fetch it.
Then, quite unexpectedly, the minister craned his neck and stared straight at Lydia and Iris, and he waved discreetly. Iris felt herself pinken at being singled out, then realized that it was her daughter’s presence that had caught his attention. Let Lydia claim her due. She was still an attractive woman, ‘still’ being one of those qualifying words that signaled anyone pushing fifty who was managing to hold onto her looks.
If Lydia would just relax that perpetual frown that made her look so fierce and hard to get along with. Her posture could use a little work too; an erect spine and tilted chin took years off a woman’s age.
The recorded music switched to jazz piano, one of those innocuous modern pieces, as the bride and groom remained standing in front of the small party, clasping hands. Finished his recitation, the minister dropped back. Everyone seemed to be waiting, then suddenly a booming recorded voice filled the speakers, startling the onlookers: ‘We’ve only Just Begun’ rang out in a pleasant although amateur baritone voice, rough around the edges but in tune.
The bride tipped her head against the groom’s broad shoulder, her eyes glassy.
So the groom was a singer, and this recorded performance was his surprise.
The voice sketched out the song with moderate accuracy, running out of breath here and there, yet this was what made the song so moving. When a note caught in his throat, Iris felt it catch in her own and she unabashedly let tears run down her cheeks. Lydia rummaged around in her beach bag, pulled out a bunched up tissue and began to blow her nose. Weren’t they a sentimental pair? Lydia caught her eye and began to laugh and soon they were both laughing as they wept.
Iris reached out and touched her daughter’s forearm, and for a moment Lydia was a little girl, wounded from some playground accident, racing home for consolation and finding fresh tears the moment she spotted her mother. Perhaps Iris hadn’t been as patient as she might have been with these episodes: the girl was melodramatic, craving attention long after the crisis was over and the wound bandaged – not an appealing quality in a child.
Iris stroked her daughter’s forearm again and gave it a squeeze, but not without a sensation of being artificial.
Lydia drew her arm away.
All of this happened in a moment and Iris felt disturbed, as if she’d been found wanting. One tried to do right, but mothers were doomed to fail. Surely Lydia knew that by now, having two nearly grown children of her own.
As if recalling this fact, her daughter swung her legs over the side of the lounger.
‘It’s 2 o’clock Toronto time,’ she announced before slipping her feet into her espadrilles and taking off towards the pathway that led to the Internet room. Lydia bustled in there every few hours.
She was going to Skype Annie, who’d enrolled at a second rate University in northern Ontario, majoring in something called Environmental Studies, a profession that didn’t exist when Iris went to school. Annie and her mother communicated every day. Lydia would comment more often than necessary that she and Annie were ‘great good friends’; this always sounded like a judgement, for didn’t she and Iris go for weeks, even months, on end without communicating?
Suddenly alone, Iris set herself as upright as possible on the lounger. The marriage ceremony was winding down, the compact group making its way towards one of the private event rooms.
—Ann Ireland
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Ann Ireland is the author of four novels, most recently THE BLUE GUITAR, which has been getting excellent reviews all across Canada. She coordinates the Writing Workshops department at the Chang School of Continuing Education, Ryerson University, in Toronto. She teaches on line writing courses and edits novels for other writers from time to time. She also writes profiles of artists for Canadian Art Magazine and Numéro Cinq Magazine (where she is Contributing Editor). Dundurn Press will be re-publishing Ann’s second novel: THE INSTRUCTOR over the summer of 2013.
Jun 142013
One of the world’s great memoirs, The Confessions is a constant delight (earlier we find out how the young Rousseau peed in the housekeeper’s kettle). I set these passages of intimate self-exposure next to the glorious bits that deal with Rousseau and his father, how they would read romances (novels) together, sometimes getting so involved they would stay up till dawn reading to each other. [I am on the road again; listening to this in the car.]
In this passage, Rousseau has been sent away to a private tutoring situation and is living in the home of the Lamberciers, brother and sister. Miss Lambercier is about thirty. And to be serious about it, he is trying, in his confessions, to get at the secret, most intimate underpinnings of consciousness and desire. How does the sexual wiring get fixed? Why do the most trivial events have such permanent, risible and even tragic consequences in our relations with other?
Also we can see here the genre crossover from private confession to a priest to the modern version, public confession in detail to the whole world via the book.
dg
As Miss Lambercier felt a mother’s affection, she sometimes exerted a mother’s authority, even to inflicting on us when we deserved it, the punishment of infants. She had often threatened it, and this threat of a treatment entirely new, appeared to me extremely dreadful; but I found the reality much less terrible than the idea, and what is still more unaccountable, this punishment increased my affection for the person who had inflicted it. All this affection, aided by my natural mildness, was scarcely sufficient to prevent my seeking, by fresh offences, a return of the same chastisement; for a degree of sensuality had mingled with the smart and shame, which left more desire than fear of a repetition. I was well convinced the same discipline from her brother would have produced a quite contrary effect; but from a man of his disposition this was not probable, and if I abstained from meriting correction it was merely from a fear of offending Miss Lambercier, for benevolence, aided by the passions, has ever maintained an empire over me which has given law to my heart.
This event, which, though desirable, I had not endeavored to accelerate, arrived without my fault; I should say, without my seeking; and I profited by it with a safe conscience; but this second, was also the last time, for Miss Lambercier, who doubtless had some reason to imagine this chastisement did not produce the desired effect, declared it was too fatiguing, and that she renounced it for the future. Till now we had slept in her chamber, and during the winter, even in her bed; but two days after another room was prepared for us, and from that moment I had the honor (which I could very well have dispensed with) of being treated by her as a great boy.
Who would believe this childish discipline, received at eight years old, from the hands of a woman of thirty, should influence my propensities, my desires, my passions, for the rest of my life, and that in quite a contrary sense from what might naturally have been expected? The very incident that inflamed my senses, gave my desires such an extraordinary turn, that, confined to what I had already experienced, I sought no further, and, with blood boiling with sensuality, almost from my birth, preserved my purity beyond the age when the coldest constitutions lose their insensibility; long tormented, without knowing by what, I gazed on every handsome woman with delight; imagination incessantly brought their charms to my remembrance, only to transform them into so many Miss Lamberciers.
Jun 142013
“Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances.”
Anne Francey considers her artwork the visual equivalent of a diary, where spontaneous jottings of all kinds of events sketch the fabric of life. She often uses nature as a point of departure, freely oscillating between representation and abstraction in order to reveal a deeper meaning. Born in Switzerland, Anne is bilingual, speaking French as fluently as English. Adept at the artistic language of metaphor as well, Anne welcomes the unpredictable and revels in moments when she has control of what’s being shown and what’s being hidden. I met Anne in the years I worked in an art gallery at Skidmore College, where she teaches part time; or before that – at a regional arts center in downtown Saratoga Springs, through which Anne exhibited and received grants to conduct marvelous, progressive art workshops for children. Many have long admired her love of nature, commitment to her craft, thirst for knowledge, and involvement with the community and next generation. These forces recently fused with profound strength, when her daughter, Suleika Jaouad, developed leukemia. Her response, in part, when at times she could do nothing else at all, was a daily painting project titled Cariatide de Papier.
— Mary Kathryn Jablonski
§
A propos de “Cariatide de Papier”
C’est d’un journal de bord personnel, voire intime, qu’il s’agit. Chaque semaine, une nouvelle image aquarelle sur papier format carré. Assemblés, ces jours en carré forment colonne, cariatide légère porteuse d’une période lourde de 36 semaines de temps difficiles.
Chez les anciens Grecs, la cariatide était une statue de pierre porteuse d’une masse architecturale. Sur l’espace du mur qui sépare et rapproche ciel et terre, cette Cariatide de Papier composée de 36 carrés sur lesquels s’inscrivent en couleurs l’oiseau dans tous ses états et l’éléphant forcé hors de sa force, réfléchit à l’équilibre précaire entre l’endurance et la fragilité de l’être humain face à sa propre mortalité.
D’où vient la force quand la gravité nous lâche, quand ce qui nous soutient nous est enlevé ? Quand l’oiseau tombe et l’éléphant perd pied ? Quand l’éléphant ne pèse que plume et l’oiseau en oublie sa légèreté?
—Anne Francey
Cariatide de papier
It began as a diary. Each week, I would paint my days on a square piece of watercolor paper, reflecting on events in my life that were both too personal and too large to evoke with words.
Now assembled, these squares form a column, a light caryatid bearer of a period laden with thirty-six difficult weeks.
In Ancient Greece, a Caryatid was a sculpted female figure that supported an architectural mass, the entablature of a temple.
Placed on a wall, a space that separates and connects sky and earth, this “Cariatide de Papier” reflects on the precarious equilibrium between human endurance and fragility when facing mortality. It is composed of thirty-six colorful squares portraying all kinds of birds in different states of mind, and various elephants whose force is being challenged.
Where does strength come from when gravity lets go of us, when what supports us is taken away from us?
When birds fall and elephants loose their footing?
When an elephant is no heavier than a feather and a bird forgets its lightness?
—Anne Francey
§
Complete Work, Floor to Ceiling
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Detail Images
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—Anne Francey
See also:
From NY Times Blog – Life Interrupted, A Family Gets Cancer – Video of Anne & her family.
Daughter Suleika Jaouad’s NY Times Blog – Life Interrupted.
——————————–
Anne Francey was born in Switzerland where she studied painting at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Lausanne, before moving to New York where she received an MFA from Hunter College. She now lives in Saratoga Springs, NY, where she has her art studio, teaches, and has been involved in creating community ceramic murals throughout the capital region. In addition to drawing and painting, she developed an interest in ceramics during her travels in Tunisia, and has incorporated the ceramic mediums into her practice.
——————-
Jun 132013
In John B. Lee’s study, there are piles of stones, cobbles to pebbles. He’s a collector, no doubt mystifying endless airport security agents monitoring his luggage. One wonders about this, except that stones are mnemonic devices (this one means a day on the beach in Korea with my son and his son). And words are like stones, bearing the same trace mineral flecks, striations, layers, conglomerates and evidence of former life. You put them together and a mysterious meaning radiates (call it a poem). John is a frequent contributor to these pages. He’s the poet laureate of Norfolk County where I was born. He lives in Port Dover on Lake Erie, home of what was once the world’s largest freshwater fishing fleet (oddly shaped boats made of steel, called turtlebacks). He hosted the the April Extravaganza on the Lake, when NC Contributing Editor Sydney Lea and myself journeyed thither and read and grown men were heard to use the word “beauty” as if it were a real thing like a Porsche or an Audemars Piguet wristwatch. After which we drove down the lake to Highgate for a second reading, gossiping about the loves and suicides of famous southwestern Ontario writers, stopping to look a graves or the farm where John grew up. Reading John’s poems like a similar marvelous adventure.
dg
——-
Suseuk — Viewing Stones
my son, my grandson and I
were walking
the gravelly shores
of the Yellow Sea
on Daebun Island
looking west through amber sky
west to the entirely imaginary far-away
coast of mainland China
the sun
shining like a dulled brass gong
hung in soundless heaven
over the low-tide mudflats of Korea
and we were
looking to gather up
the most interesting stones
and only recently empty shells
the small cochlear conches
that hold the ocean winds of the world
as poems might hold
a meaningful breath
at the moment of deep-breath knowing
and I have gathered
my own little tea bowl
of chalk and silvery anthracite
carrying home the light of hope
brought here from these broken mountains
and that scaling off of iron oxide
from the water-loud coves
with their coming in and going away
of moon-drawn amplitudes
that swallow the road and drown the ankles
where the beach turns to vanish under
the afternoon drop-shadows
of the great engines of the sea
and as I hold council here
with silent beauty of granite
and pink rock
cobbled with dead creatures
who cling, barnacled
to the underbelly of a time-crushed
stratum and substratum
of cold vermillion
I think back
to the finding
when our three shades crossed
like the slow dampness of dragged black cloth
and there is this consolation to loss
the way memory
brightens
the shades and hues of meaning
like wave wash on dry rock
and tomorrow’s freeze
that set the coast
in hard-white unwalkable shards of dropped ice
what we’d seen
beneath the heavy burden of winter
unpacking its load
on the threshold of a second morning
made everything
unavailable to the hands
but there
the heart reached through
Timmy’s Down the Well
as I am conscious
of the perils
of living in a world
that is bellum
and full with the falsity
of the fierce and terrible yawp of war
I send out
the kinder dog
of my most beautiful thought
and I am
wagging memory at important windows
I am barking
at the scriptoriums
of mad leaders
where oak drawers slide shut
on the keepsakes of life
I am howling
at the Lupercalia of a romantic moon
where light
and the mirror of light
are drawing in the muddy skirts
of my hometown waters
while the deeper ambitions of love
arrive and leave in waves
like the bridal bed
evenings and mornings
of warmed dreamers
who wake and sleep
in the swan tuck of angels
my son
who works and thrives
in the government regions of Seoul
tells me
his school is at the epicenter
of the animosity of big guns
training their dark zeroes
at the soul of the city
and I know—
any sunrise
has its own Gallipoli
all moonsets in yellow air
might break the shining glass
with a seismic whump of a great shattering noise
where we are all bad hammers
we are all
the pelt and pummel
of red stone and sharp sticks
on soft flesh
Mr. President
you with the burning tongue
take your crimson axe away
from my broken brain
I am here
singing from the common tree
among the magpies
among the crows
I come
palm line open to the blue ceiling
give the greater graves
the balm of a short shadow
I cast my longer darkness
onto the green recline
of an out-of-reach light
where we both breathe
we all breathe
and into this lasting language
of even the most ancient poets
I say, let Caesar weep
on the senate stair
let him weep at the river
I refuse
the map lines of his desire
I bark
at the buoyant well holes
of my body
and am dangerous with a different
and far more powerfully resonant echolalia
of the resounding voice of a father’s love
—John B. Lee
———————————
John B. Lee is the author of over sixty published books. In February he won the Winston Collins / Descant Prize for Best Canadian Poem for the second time. Inducted as Poet Laureate of the city of Brantford in perpetuity, he was also recently appointed Poet Laureate of Norfolk County where he now lives in Port Dover, a fishing town located on the south coast of Lake Erie.
Jun 122013
Structure is almost everything, says Peter Handke, in an epigraph to this wildly whimsical, often hilarious (“aversion” one character puns on “a virgin”), mid-life, existential love drama between a husband and a wife. Don Druick is a master of musicality. Watch the repetitions: words like scars, quagmire, diminished, love. Jack comically gathers scars as he keeps reasserting that he will not be diminished. The text shimmers. Moments of horror: Jack dropping his hands into a cooking pot full of boiling water. Moments of intense comedy: Audrey misplaces a medallion in a patient’s rectum (the patient is her neighbour, perhaps a lover; the patient gave her the medallion; the medallion bears the words “The fear of everything is love”). To communicate Jack calls his wife’s cell from bed; his wife answers; she is in bed with him. Regularly, the characters revert to speaking in the voices of animals, caws and moos; and just as regularly there are moments of trembling beauty, line after line, poignant and true.
AUDREY Did you say: kyomu?
HUMPHREY Nothingness. The Japanese have four hundred words for it.
AUDREY Really? That many?
HUMPHREY It seems necessary
dg
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.
– W H Auden
A human being is a genius while dreaming, fearless and brave….
– Akira Kurosawa
For a work of art, material is almost nothing, structure almost everything.
– Peter Handke
•
A play in eighteen scenes and two acts for six actors.
•
to Jane Phillips, whose own dreams fill a lifetime of shelves.
CHARACTERS
Jack, 60’s
Audrey, 50’s
Jack and Audrey are married; these actors do not double.
Four actors play the following ten characters:
ACTOR 01
Delores – Audrey’s personal assistant
Natalie – a next door neighbor; Humphrey’s wife
Curly – a bad bad dude
ACTOR 02
The Prince Mithroth – Audrey’s dearest friend
Horst – a frightening man
Old Bill – Jack and Sandy’s dead father
ACTOR 03
Humphrey – a next door neighbor; Natalie’s husband
Shlomo – a Hassidic jew
ACTOR 04
Sandy – Jack’s sister
Baby Jack – Shlomo’s precocious son
As well:
Offstage Characters
Pooky, Natalie’s dog
Talking Newspaper
Another Soldier
Chorus, as required
Note: NATALIE has a French accent; HUMPHREY has an English accent.
A visual development: JACK is progressively more scarred as the play proceeds (except: scene 18 where he is scar-free).
•
ACT ONE
SCENE SET 01 – A PROLOGUE
scene one
Jack, at home, paces the kitchen. The air is ripe with the heady odour of baking bread.
JACK I will not be diminished
JACK at his chopping block, the knife fast and furious. He cuts himself.
JACK Jesus, boys, that’ll be another scar. Drat.
The sink is chock-a-block full of simpering wet socks. JACK wrestles with the sodden mass, water spilling everywhere.
JACK Shit.
Suddenly, the lentils on the stove boil over.
JACK turns; the wet socks sloosh to the floor.
JACK Shit.
Smoke cascades from the oven.
JACK Amazing shit, a whole bloody package of it. Drat. It’ll never be as good again. What? Yes. A package of shite. That’s it, boys, that’s it exactly.
PAUSE, as JACK ponders.
JACK But what exactly? Man O man, I don’t understand myself….
JACK goes to the phone. Dials.
JACK (on phone) Delores? Let me talk to Herself.
BEAT.
JACK (on phone) My wife, Audrey….
BEAT.
JACK (on phone) Delores, it’s me, Jack. Jesus….
BEAT.
JACK (on phone) I’m not trying to be funny. Or arrogant. I’m not feeling funny. Or arrogant. Nothing’s funny anymore.
BEAT.
JACK (on phone) I don’t know. A glimmer of something but I don’t get it.
BEAT.
JACK (on phone) I don’t care if you don’t. Understand. Nevermind – too late, too late. There’s no more time, boy O boy, you can’t go backwards.
BEAT.
JACK (on phone) Because time does not move backwards. Everybody knows that. Hey, maybe it doesn’t even move forward. Have you ever considered that?
BEAT.
JACK Tell Herself I’m coming right down.
BEAT.
JACK (on phone) I don’t care.
JACK hangs up the phone.
JACK Drat, another scar.
JACK exits, slamming the door.
SFX: The sound of a car engine starting up. The screeching of tires.
A sudden vicious crash, horrendous.
SFX: Car crash, long and frightening. Shattering glass falling; a blizzard of tiny tinkles.
Silence.
END OF SCENE.
TO BLACK.
•
SCENE SET 02 – OLD BILL GONE
scene two
AUDREY’s medical office. Day.
The blinds are drawn; phone conversations are quietly everywhere.
Prominent: a large collection of colourful Eiffel Tower models.
SFX: The continuous sound of animals.
These two speeches together:
AUDREY (on phone) A leopard, a leopard seen? No…. No no, impossible. Not in my operating room. I mean it makes no sense….. Maybe from a zoo? Maybe a pet?…. Impossible…. Well, don’t go in there – especially if you hear loud growling.
DELORES (on phone) The book of crows? Book of crows? Book of crows? Book of crows?…. No…. No…. No no no. What can it mean? Radical surgery? It worries me. Is it about crows or just a really really good title?
AUDREY and DELORES laugh.
AUDREY (on phone) Anyway, I’m not a vet.
DELORES (on phone) Do you need an appointment?
JACK enters.
JACK Audrey. Audrey. I need to talk.
AUDREY sees JACK; she winks and waves – it’s very friendly.
DELORES I told you, Jack, Jack, on the phone I told you, Jack – she’s busy.
JACK You can be as jealous as you want, Delores – she’s still my wife.
Another phone rings.
DELORES (on phone) Just a mo – the other line.
JACK I was out underwear shopping – I made a call – you’ll never guess what happened. Never. Horrible…. horrible….
DELORES (to AUDREY) It’s for you.
AUDREY (to JACK) Just a minute, darling – I’ll be right with you.
JACK Promise?
AUDREY Promise promise.
DELORES scoffs.
JACK sneers at DELORES.
DELORES She’s working….
These two speeches together:
AUDREY (on phone) Ya…. Ya ya…. She’s pissed off? So? What? Hurt?…. Why? She’s weird. I was home – she could have called…. Hey, I’m not a mind reader, just a doctor…. I’m not even sure I know who she is…. I already did that. I searched a large pile of newspapers looking for someone who might actually have her number….
DELORES (on phone) No…. No…. really?…. Simply, I push the wrong button and the x-ray thing hassles itself apart. Whirring whirring all the time. Wow…. The patients get really nervous…. Ya but now I have no idea how to put it all back together again…. Well what do I care?…. No, really…. Really….
JACK Can I speak now?
DELORES She’s busy.
JACK Drat.
These two speeches together:
DELORES (on phone) Do you think so? Do you? I’m really happy here. Really really happy really really really happy….
AUDREY (on phone) I’m going to read it right now…. Right right now…. Promise promise. Promise promise promise….
AUDREY hangs up the phone.
AUDREY Delores….
DELORES (on phone) I’ve got to go.
DELORES hangs up the phone.
AUDREY (to DELORES) Listen to this.
JACK Am I invisible?
JACK is shushed.
JACK Jesus, what a quagmire.
AUDREY You too, Jack. Listen….
JACK So unkind.
AUDREY Please please please – it’ll be fun.
JACK Nobody cares about me.
AUDREY, making an impatient sound, opens a magazine.
AUDREY Jack…. Jack. Look at me. Stop it. Please wait. I’m working.
JACK Drat.
AUDREY (to DELORES) Here. Here it is. You read this. I’ll start. (reading) OK OK OK, you the patient, right here downstage.
DELORES (reading) Here?
AUDREY (reading) No, right on the lip.
DELORES (reading) Up your moo.
AUDREY (reading, shouting) Up your moo.
DELORES (reading) Moo up you.
AUDREY (reading) You too moo.
DELORES (reading) Too moo you.
AUDREY (reading) Fuck you moo moo.
DELORES (reading) You fuck moo moo.
AUDREY and DELORES laugh – especially AUDREY.
AUDREY It’s hysterical.
DELORES I just love it, I love it.
AUDREY I knew you would. The wise doctor in the world. Ta-taaaaa.
JACK (crow-like, loudly) Caw.
AUDREY (calf-like) Mmuuh.
JACK (crow-like) Kraa caw caw.
AUDREY (calf-like) Mmuuh mmuuh möö.
JACK (crow-like) Kraa caw caw caw kraa….
Suddenly the sun, large very large, large very large as it sets.
AUDREY & DELORES turn to admire it.
AUDREY & DELORES Beautiful.
JACK (quietly) My dad died. Poor old Bill. Poor old Bill is dead. Stroke. Such a quiet word, stroke. Another scar.
END OF SCENE.
•
scene three
Night. JACK and AUDREY in bed; asleep.
JACK is snoring, and somewhat reasonable and gentle it is. He wakes up with a start. In a panic, he opens the light. He flaps around the night table until he finds his cellphone; he dials a number.
The cell phone on AUDREY’s night table rings.
AUDREY (very sleepy, on phone) Hello
JACK (on phone) It’s me.
AUDREY (on phone) Jack? Where are you?
JACK (on phone) What a laugh, eh? I’m right here.
AUDREY turns to see him.
AUDREY What?
JACK (on phone) I woke up and there were a million little red flies swarming all over me and you too. Fucking Mithroth was there too.
AUDREY The Prince Mithroth?
JACK (on phone) My heart’s pounding – I wish you could touch it. I feel very lonely.
AUDREY puts down her phone, and reaches out to JACK.
AUDREY O, you poor thing.
JACK is restless.
JACK (on phone) I feel…. I don’t know…. edgy like….
AUDREY O relax relax relax.
JACK (on phone) Like a wild child.
AUDREY And get off the phone – it’s crazy. I’m right here.
JACK (on phone) O I have a good plan – it doesn’t cost anything.
JACK starts to fondle her.
AUDREY What are you doing?
JACK (on phone) I feel lightheaded and very…. very horny.
AUDREY O for god’s sake – stop it. Stop it.
AUDREY pushes him away.
JACK gets up; wanders about the room.
JACK (on phone) No no no. No no not now. I have a headache. My poor little head aches. What about me what about little lonely me? – I’m horny. So bloody horny. Nothing’s working anymore. Nevermind. What if I can’t write any more novels?
AUDREY sighs.
AUDREY You don’t write novels.
JACK (on phone) I can’t hear you – the connection’s bad.
AUDREY That’s cause I’m not on the bloody phone.
JACK (on phone) What did you say?
AUDREY (shouting) I said: you don’t write novels.
JACK (on phone) But I could if I wanted to. If I had any decent stories. Which I don’t. Drat. What a quagmire. What if I’ve just squandered – wasted – my talent? What if I’m just a fucking old fucking old fuck fuck fucking old sad old has been?
JACK has a penknife.
AUDREY Where did you get that?
JACK (on phone) It’s mine.
AUDREY It looks like mine.
JACK (on phone) It’s mine.
AUDREY What are you doing?
JACK (on phone) Keeping it warm. Useful little scar machine.
AUDREY O, for god’s sake, we don’t need any more scars.
AUDREY takes the penknife from JACK.
JACK Fuck that. I will not be diminished.
AUDREY Relax, for god’s sake. Relax. Please relax. Come back to bed.
JACK (on phone) Why? Are you offering any…. comfort.
AUDREY Yes, I am.
JACK (on phone) Sex would be nice. Ya, sex. Ya. Full throttled, passionate, wild and wet and horribly illegal.
AUDREY Well, I’m not offering that.
JACK (on phone) You’re so hard. Drat drat drat, I’m just a slave to my hormones and desires. And here I thought I was a Buddhist. Maybe I am a Buddhist? Anyway – and I’ve just figured this one out …. or not – something about a package. A package? You’re not listening you’re not listening to a single word I say.
AUDREY picks up her phone.
AUDREY (on phone) I’m here I’m here. I hear you. Yes yes yes, I hear you.
AUDREY gets out of bed.
AUDREY (on phone) Come back to bed.
JACK (on phone) I don’t know. I don’t know.
AUDREY There there, that’s enough telephoning for tonight.
AUDREY takes his cellphone. She tenderly takes him back to bed. She fixes the bed clothes and tucks him in.
AUDREY There there.
JACK I had a dream you had died. Horrible.
AUDREY I had a dream we had never met.
JACK & AUDREY Nightmares.
AUDREY laughs, warm and full.
They kiss. They kiss again.
JACK (crow-like) Caw…
AUDREY (calf-like) Mmuuh mmuuh….
JACK (crow-like) Caw caw….
AUDREY (calf-like) Möö mmuuh möö….
AUDREY laughs with pleasure and anticipation.
JACK & AUDREY Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang.
SFX: Moans and building sexual groans.
JACK & AUDREY CLANG CLANG CLANG.
Fireworks.
JACK & AUDREY (quietly) Went the trolley.
BEAT.
END OF SCENE
•
scene four
Temple Beth Shalom, a synagogue. A Friday evening in summer. Services are in progress – we hear Jewish liturgical chanting off.
JACK enters the foyer of the temple. There is a bazaar in progress. Its very active. People are dancing.
JACK looks around.
JACK People people everywhere – everywhere I look there’s new people – and I don’t know any of them.
A Hassidic Jew is sitting on a strange bench – stone and rough wood; decorated with colourful eiffel towers.
SHLOMO Are you looking for something you can’t find?
JACK I am.
SHLOMO The truth?
JACK Ha. Good. Possibly.
SHLOMO Thus you are a philosopher?
JACK But am I really actually looking?
SHLOMO Some do.
JACK Or just mumbling within myself?
SHLOMO That might be the same thing. Jewish? You’re jewish?
JACK Half.
SHLOMO Half jewish? How can this be?
JACK My father was jewish. He went here for services. Prayers.
JACK is a bit unsteady on his feet.
SHLOMO Sit sit – I made this bench myself.
JACK sits.
SHLOMO So, what do you think? Isn’t it beautiful?
JACK I love the Eiffel Towers.
SHLOMO Thank you. It was my son’s idea.
JACK You know, you remind me of my late father.
SHLOMO Is that a good thing?
JACK Eventually it was.
The BABY gurgles.
JACK Your baby?
SHLOMO My son.
SHLOMO beams.
BABY JACK I am the perfect reason to always to be happy.
JACK He talks.
SHLOMO Yes.
JACK But he’s a baby.
BABY JACK Thus, I have the perfect reason for superannuated contentment.
JACK And smart.
SHLOMO Thank you. We are a good team, he and I.
JACK (to BABY) Hello, you dear little thing.
BABY JACK Hello yourself, strange troubled sad man.
SHLOMO We call him: Jack.
JACK Well, isn’t that just something else – that’s my name too. (to BABY) We have the same name, little thing. I must tell my dear darling nephew about that. His name is Bob – he’s a baby too.
BABY JACK Is that relevant here? One must not be too cloying or pathetic with respect to one’s overly rated sentimentality.
JACK O?
SHLOMO No no no, child, don’t abuse the man.
BABY JACK To speak the truth to a penitent, dearest father – as our great talmudic teachers say – is not without the bounds of decorum. (to JACK) You seem out of sorts, if I may be so bold as to pronounce an opinion on your obvious demeanor.
JACK I do feel disoriented – the town seems somehow different. And nothing in my life seems to make sense.
BABY JACK I know what you feel.
SHLOMO But can you know this, my darling son? These same great talmudic teachers – who are our guides in all things – preclude the knowledge of another’s suffering.
BABY JACK But do they, my father? As is said: a person is only a person when and only when she or he is known to all. (to JACK) I do know what you feel, and not just in the indisputably mystical though culturally exhausted kabbalistic connotation.
BABY JACK shrugs.
BABY JACK Change is deep within us. Yet, there are troubles.
JACK There are more mountains than there used to be.
BABY JACK That is indeed terrible.
SHLOMO And challenging.
JACK And more snow on the mountains.
SHLOMO Mountains are the same as love.
BABY JACK Yes, they are, dear father. As is death.
JACK O?
BABY JACK I think, I believe, please please listen to me, that you will require…. a timeshare in these mountains. It will ease your anxiety and erase your sadness.
JACK What?
BABY JACK When I grow up and I am big and wonderful, I will want to work for the Northern Winter Real Estate Association. Perhaps even as their chairman of the board.
SHLOMO Now now, child, don’t overstate your ambition.
BABY JACK But I must, my dearest father – its my destiny. Under my leadership, our product line will be extensive: chalets, time-shares, winter getaways of all sorts….
JACK Ha. Well, I’m sorry – I know that’s not what I need.
BABY JACK Ah well, yes, no, no no, you are right. I have a flash, I’m getting a clear signal. Yes yes, that’s it that’s it – you’d be much better off as a chef.
JACK O? I was – how did you know that?
BABY JACK Once a chef, always a chef.
BABY JACK smiles.
SHLOMO And why – please tell us if its not too problematic for you – so why did you stop?
BABY JACK Too too much indescribable gluttony, I would imagine.
SHLOMO Now now, let the man speak.
JACK Crazy. You wouldn’t believe the yelling, noise, chaos. Just a kitchen, you say. But…. the endless crux of my life. I had a large and succulent tendrons de veau à la provençale in the oven and twenty tarts and farts in the dining room starving for it. Its time its time, yelled my souschef, its time. Alright, fuck you, alright. I shoved my hands into that seething cauldron of an oven – and forgot the mitts.
BABY JACK Your description is startling.
SHLOMO And vivid too.
BABY JACK I actually smell your searing burning flesh.
BABY JACK gags.
JACK I froze, just stood there, debating quite clearly in my mind while my hands burned. White pain intense and banal. What a quagmire. I just gave it all up after I left the hospital. Haven’t worked since. Drat drat drat drat.
BABY JACK Your hands are all scared.
JACK So many scars in a life.
BABY JACK So ugly.
SHLOMO Now now, child.
JACK I’m so confused. Can you help, help me?
SHLOMO But yes, of course. We will sing an opera.
JACK Opera?
SHLOMO We like to sing. We have found, over the centuries – we jews – that it is a good cure for sadness.
BABY JACK But, dearest and beloved father, we need a woman’s voice.
SHLOMO Yes, we do.
SHLOMO looks about.
JACK My dad – old Bill – used to sing a mean countertenor. But he’s dead.
SHLOMO Hmmmmm….
JACK And there’s Audrey – my wife – she used to sing quite well back when we were young.
AUDREY appears.
AUDREY I have no time for this, Jack. I have three surgeries scheduled. And anyway, you know I hate opera.
JACK I don’t think I did.
BABY JACK Frustration and incontinent busyness – surely that will be seen – in the centuries to come – as the principle reasons for the tragic demise of our civilization, so-called.
AUDREY laughs, robust and sexy.
AUDREY You’re a funny little thing. A pity I cannot abide babies.
BABY JACK Do it, dear beauteous hostile lady, sing our opera – how much time can it take?
AUDREY laughs.
BABY JACK The story will be about you.
AUDREY O?
BABY JACK And him.
AUDREY O?
SHLOMO Do it. It will make him feel alive.
AUDREY laughs.
AUDREY O well, for old Jack, the purported love of my life.
SHLOMO Attention, everyone. Attention.
BABY JACK Please listen to my dear and much beloved father.
SHLOMO Now, we do an opera by the wondrous Giacomo Antonio Domenico Puccini….
BABY JACK Amore Abbandonato. And what can ever be wrong with the twin and harmonious notions of love and destiny?
SHLOMO It is the day after Yom Kippur. Maria, the goat girl from the village meets Feivel, the chief rabbi of Riga….
BABY JACK Who is traveling to the great rabbinical court of Torino.
SHLOMO They fall in love….
BABY JACK She with him despite his many unsightly and disfiguring scars.
SHLOMO And he with her despite the fact that she is not jewish.
BABY JACK They spend an extremely meaningful- though chaste – night together under the dining room table.
SHLOMO Locked in each other’s arms
BABY JACK But chaste.
JACK I love this opera.
AUDREY I don’t care for the story.
JACK But its marvelous.
AUDREY Is it?
JACK And somehow familiar. It seems…. perfect.
AUDREY No.
JACK I’m sorry you don’t like it. The opera makes me feel hopeful – I don’t know why.
AUDREY shrugs.
SHLOMO Come come, we start. This is the chorus at the beginning.
CHORUS (singing)
Now the crow may be singing
Singing singing singing
Singing
Singing singing
Instead of the calf
Calf calf calf calf
BEAT.
CHORUS (singing) Instead of the calf.
JACK (singing) Instead of the calf.
JACK stops singing.
BABY JACK But the chorus isn’t finished.
JACK I’m getting a bad feeling. I can’t go on.
SHLOMO But you must.
JACK I was wrong to be so hopeful. The crow and the calf, that’s what I really have. Brutality and conflict. Its the package I’m left with. Drat. Almost nothing – but I guess that’s better then absolutely nothing.
END OF SCENE.
•
scene five
Outdoors. JACK’s building a fire.
SFX The sounds of a Georgian Bay summer night. Loons.
JACK looks up.
JACK Who’s that? (calling) Hello. Hello. I can see you. You’d better come out – I have a gun. (to himself) What a quirky quagmire. O god, is it Mithroth? Drat. Fuck. Fucking Mithroth.
MITHROTH emerges from the shadows.
JACK What the fuck are you doing here?
MITHROTH Don’t let’s quarrel, Jack.
JACK Not a week goes by when I’m not forced to remember you exist. Drat, scars everywhere I look.
MITHROTH O Jack – you’re always mumbling.
JACK – impatient gesture.
MITHROTH Well, then…. Jack, I wonder if you could enhance my thinking on you and Audrey? Is there a problem here?
JACK Fucking Mithroth – what the fuck do you care?
MITHROTH Very funny, Jack. Always witty is our Jack. Ha ha.
JACK Fortunately – there’s an easy answer….
MITHROTH And that would be?
JACK None of your business.
MITHROTH Ah. Yes, of course. Still, I continue. You and Audrey seem – so it always appeared to me and I have known you both a long long time….
JACK Too long.
MITHROTH What was that, Jack? Yes…. but…. you and Audrey seem more than ever burdened by the breath of experience.
JACK Yes. Good. Not bad. Exactly right.
MITHROTH There is a flavour – a hint – of melancholy. The past as an unbearable burden….
JACK Scars.
MITHROTH Dear O dear. As from the wing no scar the sky retains. So what happens?
JACK She denies it. She denies it but she lies.
MITHROTH puts his hand to his ear.
MITHROTH What was that?
JACK Jesus… what a quagmire.
JACK and MITHROTH are on a street.
JACK My bike is gone. Drat. I’ve had that bike since I was a kid.
MITHROTH throws garbage on the street.
JACK Stop that.
MITHROTH It’s my right. My right and privilege.
JACK It’s always about you, Mithroth….
MITHROTH It’s always me, Jack. Nevermind…. look at this….
MITHROTH points to a boat on a trailer.
MITHROTH Give us a hand. This bloody quixotic thing keeps slipping off. I’ve been at it for a week.
JACK Well the…. hmmmmm?…. we could…. hmmmmmm…. we’ll just wrap this rope around here.
JACK and MITHROTH tie and fuss.
JACK Nice little outboard.
MITHROTH Listen to it sing….
SFX: The outboard engine springs to life.
The boat starts to move.
MITHROTH O look – there’s Audrey. Grab her, will you?
AUDREY I can’t reach.
JACK Lean…. foreword…. more…. more….
AUDREY is hoisted onboard.
AUDREY Have I gained that much weight?
MITHROTH You look trim and lovely.
AUDREY Thanks, dearest.
As if an old habit, AUDREY nuzzles MITHROTH.
AUDREY O look at Jack – Jack loves boats.
JACK Those summers, ya, on Schroon Lake, had a lovely little boat. Five horsepower.
AUDREY (to JACK) You can be so sweet. Look, I’ve got some time – we could be in Paris. We always had a good time in Paris.
JACK Seems a long way.
AUDREY Jack, come on. Jack Jack Jack Jack.
MITHROTH The Bistro Papillon….
AUDREY Or Chez François – I used to go there all the time when I was at the Sorbonne.
MITHROTH Those were salad days. Lovely days.
JACK I love François. He taught me how to cook, you know.
AUDREY I think we all knew that.
They laugh.
JACK O look who’s there. It’s Sandy. (calling) Sandy…. Sandy….
The boat stops.
SANDY Jack. And also Audrey. This is a quality moment.
AUDREY Hello, Sandy. This is The Prince Mithroth.
SANDY O?
MITHROTH Hello.
SANDY Audrey, and prince person, this is Bob.
MITHROTH & AUDREY Bob?
SANDY My baby. Bob the beloved baby Bob. Bob Bob Bobber Bobby Bob Bob Boo. He’s just so new, the dear little thing.
AUDREY We’re going to Paris.
SANDY O they all do at your age. And for the same reasons….
JACK is nuzzling BOB.
JACK O, he’s so sweet. My nephew. My darling little nephew. He looks just like you.
SANDY Really? I though he looked just like Terry.
JACK Actually he looks like Dad.
SANDY I know. I miss Dad.
JACK Me too.
AUDREY is reading a newspaper.
AUDREY Your baby thing is in the newspaper.
SANDY O let me see.
NEWSPAPER (loudly) Desperation! Poverty! Blood! Greed! Death!
AUDREY You know you’re in deep trouble when the newspaper you’re reading starts talking to you.
AUDREY and MITHROTH laugh.
JACK Audrey…. Audrey, come nuzzle Bob, Audrey.
END OF SCENE
•
scene six
Summer evening. A lovely light. Birds chirping. JACK and AUDREY are sitting on their porch.
AUDREY Hot.
JACK Very hot.
AUDREY Much hot.
JACK Hot hot hot.
AUDREY What?
JACK What?
AUDREY What’s that?
JACK What’s what?
AUDREY That.
JACK Where?
AUDREY There.
SFX: Aircraft engines.
AUDREY It’s a plane. A very low plane.
JACK Right, I see it. Much too low. Wait a minute wait a minute – that’s a, that’s a Lancaster bomber. What year is this? They haven’t flown those since that war.
AUDREY They’re circling around, coming back….
JACK O my god….
AUDREY O my god….
JACK O my god….
AUDREY O my god….
SFX: A big crash.
OFF: POOKY starts barking.
AUDREY Who’s got a dog? I hate dogs.
SANDY (off) What’s the emergency number?
AUDREY O my god…. It cartwheeled, O my god….
JACK (calling off) What?
SANDY (off) The emergency number.
JACK (calling off) Nine one one.
SANDY enters, clutching BOB and joins them on the porch.
SANDY Are you sure?
AUDREY It cartwheeled. O my god….
SFX: Sirens in the distance.
JACK Somebody called it already.
SANDY Do you think they’re hurt?
SFX: another explosion
AUDREY O my god.
JACK protects BOB. BOB cries.
JACK O wait. Wait. Wait, there’s somebody.
AUDREY Jack, don’t….
SANDY We should call Terry.
JACK Wait here with Audrey. I’ve got to help….
JACK rushes off.
AUDREY & SANDY (calling off) Be careful, Jack.
AUDREY Bad, very bad.
SANDY Do you think they’re dead?
AUDREY Very very bad.
JACK enters with HUMPHREY and BILL. HUMPHREY wears a bombardier jacket; he has a beard, but only on one side of his face. BILL, very old and frail, is quite natty in a corduroy suit.
JACK They’re alive. There’ll be scars, there’ll be scars for sure.
HUMPHREY What happened?
JACK I’d better see if there’s anyone else.
AUDREY Jack….
JACK exits.
SANDY You crashed on our street.
HUMPHREY I crashed? Who are you?
SANDY I’m Sandy, Jack’s sister.
AUDREY And cartwheeled.
HUMPHREY I cartwheeled? What a mess. I’m so sorry.
SANDY Just as long as you’re OK. And him….
SANDY gestures to the silent BILL.
HUMPHREY Who?
SANDY Him. He looks familiar somehow.
HUMPHREY Never saw the chap before.
SANDY (to BILL) Are you alright?
BILL is silent.
SANDY (to AUDREY) He looks a lot like Jack, do you think?
AUDREY What?
SANDY The same charming bits.
AUDREY Would you, mmmm?, would you – what? – would you like a drink?
HUMPHREY That would be tasty right now. I’d better not – no no, I’d better not – they’ll think I’d been drinking. And I would have been, you see? The manifold pressure just went. Just like that….
HUMPHREY snaps his fingers.
HUMPHREY And what does it mean? What can it all mean? Does it mean anything? Other than death, certain death raining down upon you. I could’ve crashed right on your house, right on you, right down on you. Right straight down right here on you. And you know, I’m not sure I would’ve cared. I’m not sure I would’ve cared at all.
BILL falters.
SANDY (to BILL) Here you’d better sit down. Why does he seem so familiar?
HUMPHREY I’m so happy to be alive.
AUDREY I’m glad. O my…. I’m still so shocked. Are you alight? I’m a doctor.
AUDREY fans herself with her hand.
HUMPHREY You’re so beautiful. You know, I can see your dialogue written right there – right in your eyes.
AUDREY O, everybody can do that.
HUMPHREY I knew you were going to say that.
AUDREY You sure know how to sweet talk a gal.
HUMPHREY There, there, I knew you were going to say that too.
AUDREY What a party. Yikes, I need a drink.
HUMPHREY And I knew that too….
AUDREY exits. BILL starts to follow her.
AUDREY (to BILL) You stay here.
SANDY I’ll take him. He seems just like Jack. Here…. sit sit….
BILL Gazu gazu wabaza. Gazu. Za zu zee. Wugada. Wugada. Toto was wugada. Yabugu dugubu dugada. Gaga zee zu zee za zu.
SANDY What?
JACK enters.
JACK There’s nobody else.
JACK sees BILL.
JACK Wait. O wait wait wait. O my god, Sandy – its Bill, its Bill. Sandy, its Dad.
SANDY Dad?
JACK Dad. Bill…. its me, Jack. And Sandy.
BILL Towns I’ve never heard of but feel as if I do. Or have.
SANDY I thought he seemed familiar. But didn’t he, you know, die?
BILL (singing) I dream of Jeannie with the light brown hair.
SANDY Hi, Dad. This is Bob. Your grandson.
AUDREY enters with a tray.
AUDREY Who wants drinks?
SFX: Loud car crash.
JACK turns, terrified, towards the sound.
END OF SCENE.
TO BLACK.
•
SCENE SET 03 – LOVE LEAVING
scene seven
Early evening. JACK is puttering in his kitchen.
We hear barking offstage.
AUDREY (off) Shut that bloody hound up.
JACK (calling off) We don’t have a bloody hound.
AUDREY (off) Then what the fuck is that?
JACK She’s in a foul quagmire.
JACK pokes about looking for the dog.
JACK (calling off) Its definitely inside.
AUDREY (off) Kill it.
JACK shakes his head. He opens the door to the basement and goes down.
BEAT.
Knocking at the kitchen door.
BEAT.
More knocking. JACK enters from the basement and answers the door. Its the new neighbors – HUMPHREY and NATALIE.
HUMPHREY Hello. Hello. We’re the new neighbors.
JACK Neighbors?
HUMPHREY Right over there.
JACK peers – it’s the house next door.
JACK O yes, right ya, there. The old Crowe place. Hi, I’m Jack.
HUMPHREY I’m Humphrey and this is my wife, Natalie.
JACK Natalie Natalie…. and Humphrey – please come in.
NATALIE We’re not disturbing you?
JACK No. No no no no. I was just thinking about making a supper.
NATALIE Then we are disturbing you.
JACK No no. Mostly all prepped – a little fun cassoulet.
JACK smiles.
Dog barks off.
NATALIE That’s Pooky.
JACK You know that hound?
HUMPHREY It’s our dog. I thought I recognized his happy bark. (calling off) Bark. Bark bark.
POOKY (off) Bark bark.
HUMPHREY (calling off) Bark.
NATALIE (calling) Pooky. Pooky Pooky Pooky….
HUMPHREY (calling off) Bark.
BEAT.
JACK Come, we’ll go look see.
JACK and HUMPHREY exit to the basement.
NATALIE looks about the kitchen.
AUDREY (off) Did you kill the bloody thing?
BEAT.
AUDREY (off) Jack?
NATALIE (calling off) He’ll, he’ll be back in just a minute.
We hear JACK and HUMPHREY fussing in the basement.
HUMPHREY (off) Pooky…. Pooky Pooky….
AUDREY (off) What the hell’s going on?
NATALIE (calling off) I don’t know.
JACK and HUMPHREY enter from the basement.
JACK There’s a tunnel.
NATALIE What?
HUMPHREY Yes, from our place to theirs.
AUDREY enters from upstairs.
AUDREY What the bloody hell is going on?
JACK It’s the bloody new neighbors dropped by for a look see. And guess what?
AUDREY What?
JACK Their dog’s found a tunnel between our houses.
AUDREY A tunnel? A tunnel?
JACK In the furnace room. The hound popped right through it.
NATALIE Clever little Pooky. Such a hero. Is he downstairs? Let’s bring him up.
JACK He’s run back.
HUMPHREY He must been looking for rats.
AUDREY Rats.
AUDREY shudders.
NATALIE Pooky loves rats.
HUMPHREY Rat meat is a delicacy in China, you know.
JACK I heard that. I wonder if if there’s a recipe?
JACK goes to his cookbook library.
AUDREY Jack, I will not live in a house with rats.
JACK Well, Pooky will kill them, dear little beast, and then we can eat them. Hey look at this. (reading) rat with chestnut and duck – this is good. Black pepper rat shoulders hot pot.
JACK looks up, beaming.
JACK This is a whole new thing. (reading) And the ultimate signature tour de force: mushu steamed rat.
AUDREY Fuck the world of culinary delights. I need a drink.
JACK O I think we can manage something for you, darling….
JACK opens a large wooden cabinet – its filled with bottles.
AUDREY All grappa, all the time.
JACK Each a special sweet and succulent kiss – bocchino francoli marolo brunello candolini….
AUDREY It’s Jack’s hobby.
JACK Hard to know what to choose….
AUDREY Serve the drinks for god’s sake, Jack
AUDREY scoffs.
JACK examines a glass; he scowls.
JACK This glass has a scar.
JACK bangs about in the kitchen.
HUMPHREY So, ah…. what is it you do?
AUDREY What the fuck do you care?
HUMPHREY O?….
NATALIE and HUMPHREY whisper and play with their noses.
AUDREY What are you doing?
HUMPHREY Nose calisthenics – we always do them when we feel stressed.
NATALIE You push the tip up and down, back and forth.
AUDREY O god.
NATALIE It’s quite refreshing – let me show you.
NATALIE reaches towards AUDREY’s nose.
AUDREY Don’t touch my nose.
A painful silence.
NATALIE Perhaps it is time we go.
AUDREY Well, if you must.
AUDREY looks into HUMPHREY’s eyes.
AUDREY Wait a minute. I know you.
HUMPHREY You do?
AUDREY Wait a minute wait a minute I know you, I do I do. You’re the pilot. (calling to JACK) He’s the pilot.
JACK Which pilot?
AUDREY The one who crashed on the street.
HUMPHREY Point in fact, I rather liked the neighborhood.
AUDREY laughs delightedly.
HUMPHREY (to JACK) How’s your father?
JACK He’s still dead.
HUMPHREY We all live by such selected fictions.
AUDREY What?
HUMPHREY Shall I explain? I feel I’d like to.
AUDREY And I’d like you to.
SANDY enters.
AUDREY O my god, not now.
JACK Hey, sissy.
SANDY Just popping by.
JACK Is Terry here?
SANDY He’s working on the car. Bob’s helping him.
JACK That’s sweet. Come meet our new neighbors. Humphrey and…. ah…. and…. ah….
NATALIE Natalie.
JACK Natalie. My sister, Sandy. (to SANDY) He’s the pilot.
SANDY is sniffing.
SANDY What’s that? Smoke. I smell smoke.
They all sniff.
HUMPHREY It’s true – smoke.
SANDY looks out the window.
SANDY The house next door is on fire.
HUMPHREY What?
They all rush to the windows.
SANDY Whose house is it? O goodness…. a raging inferno.
HUMPHREY It’s our house.
SANDY What?
HUMPHREY Just moved in, point of fact.
NATALIE Our house is burning.
HUMPHREY and NATALIE exit in a panic.
SANDY Bob? I‘d better go find Terry and Bob.
SANDY exits in a rush.
SFX: Noise, shouting, melee, sirens. The roof collapses.
The room is illuminated as the flames grow larger, flare. Sparks.
AUDREY is overcome.
AUDREY O my god.
JACK puts his arms around her. AUDREY sobs.
JACK So fast.
Disheveled, covered in soot, HUMPHREY and NATALIE return.
NATALIE Horrible horrible…. we’ve lost everything.
HUMPHREY Everything.
JACK Might be a good time for grappa. Ya….
END OF SCENE
•
scene eight
HUMPHREY and AUDREY walk in an art museum. Bright and white. Large canvases of sublime and simple gestures.
A CHORUS sings softly in the background.
HUMPHREY I’ve fallen in love with you.
AUDREY laughs – a ripe Anna Magnani laugh.
HUMPHREY O? I didn’t want to….
AUDREY Thanks for that.
HUMPHREY Yes, but there it is. I love you, Audrey.
AUDREY Maudlin.
HUMPHREY I hope not.
AUDREY Ummmmmmm….
They stand in front of a large canvas. (JACK is the canvas.)
HUMPHREY This one means: kyomu.
AUDREY Did you say: kyomu?
HUMPHREY Nothingness. The Japanese have four hundred words for it.
AUDREY Really? That many?
HUMPHREY It seems necessary
AUDREY Well, we have ten thousand words for: dysfunctional human endeavor including body parts so I guess I understand.
HUMPHREY Give me an example.
AUDREY O? Almost anything. Oufffff. Ah…. good intentions, loyalty, betrayal, killed with a kissing knife, love….
HUMPHREY That’s very complex. You are very complex.
AUDREY I find it comforting.
HUMPHREY You’re smashing. That means: attractive.
They move to another canvas.
AUDREY This one has a faded quality…. more attractive than the last, anyway….
HUMPHREY Yes, I suppose.
AUDREY (imitating HUMPHREY) Yes, I suppose. (normal) You always seem reticent to commit yourself.
HUMPHREY Do I? I said I loved you.
AUDREY Do you say it to Natalie?
HUMPHREY Do you say it to Jack?
AUDREY Shush.
HUMPHREY Now you seem reticent.
AUDREY So? And?
HUMPHREY Yes yes yes. That’s it. Right. Exactly. You are so attractive. More than that. Beautiful. Its why I love you.
AUDREY You don’t love me. You don’t know me.
HUMPHREY I want to. Would you like to sit? You seem to be limping.
They sit.
HUMPHREY What’s, what’s this bandage?
AUDREY This old thing? I cut myself.
HUMPHREY How?
AUDREY Stupid.
HUMPHREY Me?
AUDREY No, me.
AUDREY takes out her penknife.
AUDREY With this.
HUMPHREY Whittling again, were you? O, there’s a scar. Is it serious?
AUDREY O, for god’s sake, I am a doctor. I should be working now – I cancelled a surgery for this, you know.
HUMPHREY gets down on his knees; he kisses the bandage.
AUDREY Stop that.
HUMPHREY I want to make it better.
AUDREY Thank you. Now, get up.
HUMPHREY Tell me something….
AUDREY Well, I love you too.
HUMPHREY makes a face.
AUDREY What?
HUMPHREY “I love you too” is passive. “I love you” is active.
AUDREY So?
HUMPHREY More attractive.
AUDREY I…. I don’t want to be attractive.
HUMPHREY Alive and in the moment? A strong core? Compassionate above all? It seems good.
AUDREY Hmmmmm? What I want to be – alright I’ll tell you: fragile as paper, bold as the north wind. The Queen of all the demons.
HUMPHREY Well, I think you’ve succeeded admirably. And then some.
AUDREY Can I tell you what I really want? – intimacy and…. vulnerability. Can you offer me that?
HUMPHREY What about Jack?
AUDREY I never found Jack attractive. No intimacy with Jack, no vulnerability.
HUMPHREY But love?
AUDREY Of a sort. Some sort. I don’t know. I don’t want to be with Jack. He brings out the worst in me.
HUMPHREY Why did you marry?
AUDREY Stupid.
HUMPHREY Me?
AUDREY This time – yes. At the start, who knows anything?
HUMPHREY I loved Natalie from the start.
AUDREY You keep bringing her up. Don’t. And don’t underestimate Jack, just because he seems like nothing.
HUMPHREY He does, doesn’t he. Very kyomu.
AUDREY Ha. Jack was a great chef. His restaurant was always packed. Always. Three stars, all of that. He gave it up.
HUMPHREY Why?
AUDREY A long story. An old story. Our story, more interesting to me now. Nevermind Jack. What’s the one single thing you would change in your life if you could?
HUMPHREY I’d have you as my wife.
AUDREY That’s sweet. Me, I wish I could have more – a bigger dollop – of the kindness gene.
JACK, the painting, sighs.
HUMPHREY The kindness gene?….
HUMPHREY laughs.
AUDREY Well, I don’t have it.
HUMPHREY Are you kind to your patients?
AUDREY Am I kind to them? I take care of their problems as best I can. Some of them survive. Is that kindness? I don’t think so.
HUMPHREY Do you mean “nice”?
AUDREY snorts.
AUDREY Do you think I’m nice?
AUDREY throws apples at HUMPHREY. She laughs – full throated and sexy.
HUMPHREY Hey, stop that.
AUDREY See?
HUMPHREY Jesus, what a bloody thing.
AUDREY laughs and poses.
HUMPHREY You are impressive.
HUMPHREY gives AUDREY a brass chain with a medallion attached.
AUDREY What’s this?
AUDREY reads the medallion.
AUDREY (reading) The fear of everything is love.
HUMPHREY Put it on.
AUDREY I don’t think so.
HUMPHREY Please.
AUDREY No.
JACK, the canvas, falls off the wall.
END OF SCENE
•
scene nine
Evening. JACK and AUDREY in Chez Zuzu, a restaurant. They’ve finished dining, and wend their way to the coatcheck.
JACK Goulash? What’s suddenly so wrong with goulash? Chez Zuzu makes the best goulash in the accessible world. Fluffy, it is.
AUDREY What?
JACK Jesus, boys, I wish my goulash was that fluffy.
AUDREY O stop it.
AUDREY burps; JACK chuckles.
At the cloakroom. DELORES is helping SHLOMO on with his coat.
SHLOMO Thank you, thank you very much. You are very kind. Very kind.
SHLOMO smiles at JACK as he exits.
SHLOMO Good yom tov, good yom tov….
JACK I know him. I’m sure I know him. God, I can’t remember where. Or when. I feel so disoriented. I’m leaving my coat.
AUDREY What?
JACK I’m leaving my coat.
AUDREY snorts.
AUDREY I’m taking mine.
AUDREY hands the ticket to DELORES (She doesn’t notice DELORES).
JACK It’s not that cold out.
AUDREY It’s bloody winter.
JACK I don’t want to be dragging it around all night.
DELORES So what are you saying, Jack – you don’t want your coat?
AUDREY Delores?
DELORES Audrey?
AUDREY What are you doing here?
DELORES Making ends meet. So…. Jack, you want your coat?
JACK No, I’m leaving it for the evening.
DELORES That’s real dumb.
JACK Shut up.
DELORES You shut up.
JACK Or what? You’ll take me down?
DELORES I don’t want any trouble, Jack.
AUDREY So what are you saying?: I don’t pay you enough?
DELORES No one is ever paid enough.
AUDREY I could pay you more.
DELORES But would you?
JACK Hey, handle that coat carefully – do you hear me? – its cashmere.
DELORES sighs.
DELORES I don’t want any trouble, Jack – my hands are tied. If the coat stays, you pay.
JACK More money?
DELORES It’s all about money, Jack.
JACK God, that’s depressing.
DELORES It’s the way it works.
AUDREY You are crazy.
DELORES (to AUDREY) Who?
JACK Alright alright alright.
DELORES A hundred and twenty-seven dollars.
JACK A hundred and twenty-seven? Jesus, I could buy another coat for that.
DELORES The price would be optimistic, if you wished (imitating JACK) genuine cashmere.
AUDREY laughs.
JACK Please don’t laugh.
AUDREY Don’t tell me what to do.
JACK (to DELORES) What time do you close?
SANDY enters.
SANDY Jack.
JACK Hey, sissy. Did you have the goulash? Good, eh?
SANDY I’m a vegetarian now.
AUDREY laughs.
JACK (to AUDREY) Please don’t laugh.
SANDY Have you seen Terry?
AUDREY Not in a rat’s age.
SANDY Is that a no?
JACK Ha.
SANDY Anyway, I think he’s in the can puking his guts out. Hey I had a nice chat with Dad today.
JACK Dad?
SANDY He sounded great. Well, you know Dad.
AUDREY But he’s dead.
SANDY shrugs.
JACK Where’s Bob?
SANDY He’s on the table.
JACK peers.
SANDY See you….
SANDY exits.
AUDREY Your sister gets on my nerves.
AUDREY rolls her eyes.
JACK Do not roll your eyes at me. I will not be diminished. Look at that, look at that.
AUDREY What?
JACK She’s dragging my coat on the floor. (calling) Stop that. Delores, stop that.
DELORES Don’t do anything, Jack…. please don’t do anything.
AUDREY Jack, take your bloody fucking coat and let’s go.
JACK I don’t want to take my coat.
AUDREY You’re driving me crazy.
DELORES Is it my turn yet?
JACK laughs.
AUDREY (to DELORES) Its embarrassing to me that you’re here. I only do what I can. We have fun.
DELORES snorts.
AUDREY We do. We laugh
DELORES You laugh – I laugh with you
JACK Is nobody listening to me? Drat.
DELORES (to AUDREY) You used to give more.
JACK (crow-like) Caw kraa caw. Caw. Caw.
AUDREY (calf-like) Mmuuh möö. Möö.
JACK (crow-like) Caw. Caw.
AUDREY (calf-like) Möö. Mmuuh.
JACK (crow-like) Kraa.
These two speeches together:
AUDREY (calf-like) Möö. Möö. Möö. Möö. Mmuuuuuuuuuuuh.
JACK (crow-like) Caw. Caw. Caw. Caw. Caw. Caw. Kraaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
BEAT.
JACK I can’t do this anymore.
AUDREY What?
JACK Möö möö caw caw möööööö caaaaaaaw. That.
AUDREY You’re crazy.
JACK Be that as it may.
HORST comes over.
HORST Is there a problem here?
JACK You’re fucking right there is. Nobody’s listening to me: I resent being diminished. That coupled with a general pervasive debilitating sense of disorientation. I’d say that was a problem – wouldn’t you?
HORST I’m generally not interested – generally – in your problems.
DELORES laughs.
JACK Who are you? Wait. Wait. I know you. See? This is exactly what I’m saying.
AUDREY You’re raving.
JACK Again? What a quagmire.
DELORES I know these people, boss – they’re trouble. Scary trouble.
JACK All scarred up and nowhere to go.
DELORES whispers in HORST’s ear.
HORST O? (to AUDREY & JACK) I presume you’ve come to dine….
AUDREY We’ve already eaten. It was very fluffy.
AUDREY laughs.
JACK It was.
HORST Good. So now you wish to retrieve your coat?
JACK No, I wish to leave it here.
HORST O I see, a joke. Very funny.
HORST does something very very frightening.
JACK Jesus, stop that. You’re scaring me.
HORST Yes, exactly.
DELORES laughs.
JACK I want merely to continue leaving my coat here – and later – at some other moment – to retrieve it.
AUDREY Take the bloody coat. Let’s just go.
JACK (to HORST) You render me speechless – as you’ll all agree: a rare occurrence. Would that generally register as a concern with you?
HORST Perhaps. Perhaps not.
JACK And your sudden and imminent death?
HORST Perhaps. Perhaps not.
AUDREY Jack! You’re mad.
JACK O, I’m sorry, was I speaking out loud?
HORST Delores, give this gentleman his coat and the freedom of the street.
JACK (to AUDREY) Do you love me now?
END OF SCENE.
•
scene ten
AUDREY’s office. AUDREY is examining HUMPHREY. He is wearing a split hospital gown.
Bending over the examination table, AUDREY is looking up HUMPHREY’s rectum with a flashlight. She is wearing the medallion he gave her in the previous scene.
Meanwhile, outside the frame, a watching JACK….
AUDREY Bend a little lower please. Lower….
HUMPHREY Is this good. Ow.
AUDREY’S robust laugh.
AUDREY Just relax. Lower please…. O?
HUMPHREY Is it bad?
AUDREY Very complex.
HUMPHREY Is that bad?
As AUDREY pokes and prods, the medallion catches in his rectum.
AUDREY Oops.
HUMPHREY Ow.
AUDREY Watch a minute….
HUMPHREY Ow ow ow….
AUDREY Don’t move – the bloody medallion’s gotten stuck….
HUMPHREY I gave you that medallion.
AUDREY Well, I’m taking it back….
She pulls the medallion out.
CHORUS SFX (Pop).
AUDREY There.
The watching JACK suddenly exits only to immediately reappear. A ruckus, as JACK breaks in, with DELORES on his back.
JACK Stop hitting me.
DELORES You can’t come in here.
JACK You’re always blocking the door.
DELORES That’s my job, honey.
JACK Don’t you dare “honey” me.
AUDREY Jack?
HUMPHREY tries to hide his semi-nakedness.
JACK I have to talk to you.
DELORES I could take you down. I could take you down right now.
JACK I really really doubt it.
AUDREY Jack….
JACK We have to talk.
AUDREY At home? Later?
JACK Ha ha. That’s cute. You’re never home. Never. And I know you’re having an affair – a dreary word and a dreary world, the two – with him.
HUMPHREY What?
JACK (to HUMPHREY) Don’t dare deny it, you sleazy shitey scumbag. All protests are futile.
DELORES That’s crazy talk.
JACK Sad sad sad. I’m having a bad year and even singing doesn’t work anymore. And meanwhile you’re doing what with this – tacky tacky tacky – this….
JACK sneers.
JACK This…. person.
HUMPHREY I am a person.
JACK Shit up your ass. Ha. (to AUDREY) Admit it. Admit it admit it admit it.
AUDREY and HUMPHREY, a long look. Is it true?
JACK (to DELORES) What are you looking at?
DELORES Shut up.
JACK You shut up.
DELORES You shut up.
JACK Ha.
DELORES I’m taking you down. Right now.
JACK and DELORES fight.
SFX: More crashes and bangs.
DELORES renders JACK immobile.
JACK (to DELORES) Brute.
JACK picks himself up.
JACK Jesus, my head hurts. Please, please O don’t concern yourself – I’m alright, Jack. Whatever happened to kindness?
MITHROTH enters.
AUDREY & DELORES & HUMPHREY The Prince Mithroth.
JACK Drat. Fucking Mithroth.
MITHROTH O, Jack…. I am only myself.
A vulnerable AUDREY goes to MITHROTH.
AUDREY Daddy, I’m having such a hard time
MITHROTH There, there, I’m here now.
JACK (to MITHROTH) Why is it you’re everywhere I look?….
JACK pirouettes.
JACK He’s always here? Its Paris all over again. Its never stopped, never stopped. You two living together….
MITHROTH In Paris, Jack? Do you mean in Paris? Merely friends sharing a kitchen.
JACK And a bedroom.
MITHROTH Two bedrooms.
JACK Scars.
MITHROTH I am a Prince, Jack – and a virgin as well. If that’s any consolation….
JACK Aversion?
JACK’s pun is ignored by all.
JACK Nevermind this. You want to know something? It turns out I had had a dream. So what Audrey just said to me was just exactly what I had dreamt. Amazing? It goes on. Finally, naturally, we’re in a fussy mood, she and I and self-inflict damage on ourselves.
DELORES Audrey is fabulous. Fabulous.
AUDREY smiles winningly at DELORES.
DELORES Jack is nothing. Washed up has-been. Not just my opinion – her’s too.
JACK (to AUDREY) Is that true?
AUDREY nods.
JACK Blood. Misery. Pain. Degradation. Humiliation. Misery – O I said that already.
MITHROTH I am so so sorry it has all come to this impasse. A pity. It was better at the beginning. I need more delectable and delicious detail.
JACK No.
MITHROTH Please, Jack, please please please. Please please please please….
JACK (to AUDREY) This has to be told. (to MITHROTH) Audrey slashes her ankle. I stick my blade into my arm – lucky me, I hit an artery. The paramedic is forthcoming and less than sympathetic. You stupid stupid people, she said. I had to agree. Scar poxed.
DELORES This is all wrong. He’s telling the story wrong.
JACK You weren’t there.
DELORES If I had been, I’d have taken you down.
JACK But you weren’t there, were you? And you didn’t, did you? You know what? It’ll never be as good again. I remember you when you were less…. unkind. We used to be friends, you and I. (to MITHROTH) Anyway, enough detail?
MITHROTH Not bad. You know, Jack, I’ve come to think despite all your ravings – this has to be said – I suspect you know nothing of truth.
JACK Ya? When I look into your eyes I can see what you’re going to say next.
MITHROTH What?
JACK I can see your dialogue written right there. (as MITHROTH) You mean – what do you mean?
MITHROTH You mean – what do you mean?
AUDREY I am having an affair with Humphrey.
JACK Aha.
AUDREY I love him.
HUMPHREY You do?
AUDREY Madly.
HUMPHREY I’m so so…. moved. You dear sweet person.
AUDREY You dear sweet person.
HUMPHREY O, I say.
JACK What confused consternated crap. What is it?
AUDREY Humphrey is sensitive.
JACK I’m sensitive.
AUDREY He’s considerate.
JACK I’m considerate.
AUDREY He’s caring.
JACK I’m caring.
AUDREY He’s passionate.
JACK This is stupid. Don’t, for god sake, don’t. Don’t do this. Why? Tell me that at least. Stay. I’ll cook only Italian all the time. Just Italian. Classic mezzogiorno. No more experiments.
AUDREY I hate your cooking.
MITHROTH Never explain, Audrey.
JACK is beside himself.
JACK I’ll get lawyers. You’ll wish you’d never been born.
AUDREY I already do.
JACK sighs.
AUDREY We wanted too much of each other
JACK But that’s what love is. That’s exactly what love is. Its a whole package…. That’s it, a whole package. A whole bloody package. What a quagmire.
JACK silently leaves.
END OF SCENE.
•
scene eleven
AUDREY’s office. A discrete collection of model Eiffel Towers. AUDREY stands, contemplating a large medical drawing, a cutaway of a rectum.
JACK enters.
AUDREY Jack.
JACK Audrey.
AUDREY How surprising to see you.
JACK Why not?
AUDREY Why not indeed.
JACK looks at the medical drawing.
JACK Interesting….
AUDREY A trifling post-conceptual rendering.
JACK But large.
AUDREY Yes. So goes the scale, so goes the mind.
JACK looks out the window.
JACK I feel so disoriented – I’ve lost my way – the town seems different somehow.
AUDREY Demonstrate, please.
JACK More mountains. And more scars on said mountains. Drat. And why is this? I am distressed, again anxious. A veritable quagmire.
AUDREY Poor dear thing.
JACK picks up an Eiffel model.
JACK This one?
AUDREY Yes?
JACK I believe it was the first.
AUDREY Was it?
JACK Yes. Bought on the Boulevard Saint-Jacques.
AUDREY The day François promoted you to souschef.
JACK Yes. We had such a lovely time.
AUDREY In Paris?
JACK Yes.
AUDREY Yes. My work at the Sorbonne. Life was powerful then.
JACK Yes. Now sad.
AUDREY Why?
JACK I will not be diminished by anything less that the truth. I wish to be loved.
AUDREY You dear mad thing.
JACK I will hardly accept such rendering of my fragile social persona.
AUDREY is wearing the HUMPHREY medallion; JACK notices it.
JACK What is that, pray tell?
AUDREY What, dearest?
JACK That medallion – I do not recall it.
AUDREY This? It’s nothing.
JACK O?
JACK sighs.
JACK I know you don’t love me anymore – what am I to do?
SFX: Loud car crash.
JACK turns, terrified, towards the sound.
Suddenly, AUDREY is in great pain. She clutches her midriff.
JACK What’s this? What’s this?
AUDREY Pain.
JACK Digestion?
AUDREY Not. A possibility has been suggested by The Prince Mithroth…. I wish you liked The Prince Mithroth.
JACK His diagnosis, please.
AUDREY Inflamed gall bladder.
JACK Where is this gall bladder? Demonstrate please.
AUDREY Attached to the liver.
JACK How dark and confusing.
AUDREY There. There…. its passed.
JACK Good. Still….
AUDREY What?
JACK Dust, nothing but dust.
AUDREY How nice – you remember Mr Eliot. I must, I must go. A surgery to perform.
AUDREY exits.
JACK weeps.
JACK Bitter tears
SANDY appears, carrying a swaddled BOB.
SANDY You did good, Jack. You stood up to her.
JACK I will not be diminished, Sandy.
SANDY I know. Here, hold Bob.
JACK nuzzles Bob.
JACK I love this.
SANDY It’s Terry’s favourite thing too.
JACK You think I did good?
SANDY nods.
JACK Then why do I feel so bad? Poor me, poor me, ever the jealous brooder. A sink full of wet socks. What to do but wring them out and hang them to dry? Spilling the lentils. The sound of it. O fuck, I say. Well, wouldn’t you?
SANDY Jack. Dear Jack. Jack Jack Jack – I know I would.
JACK smiles.
JACK Would you?
SANDY Of course.
JACK, a sigh, a moan.
JACK I’m fading fast, sissy. Dear Jack says you, poor Jack says I, but, hey, a life definitely on the wane. O man. O man. I go to her office, I confront her, I express my pain. All the time I’ve wasted. Always Audrey. (as AUDREY) After all these years, Jack, you poor slob, what can be left between us? (as HIMSELF) Always Audrey. Only Audrey.
JACK, a small sob. BOB joins in. SANDY tries to take BOB – JACK gently but firmly holds onto the child.
JACK (to BOB) You dear little thing.
JACK looks at BOB; hugs him.
JACK (to SANDY) And I am, yes I am a poor slob – and that’s what’s left and that’s the very point. It’ll never be as good again, Sandy. Never. A package of shite. That’s it, that’s it exactly…. a package of shite.
BEAT.
JACK Drat.
END OF ACT
TO BLACK
•
ACT TWO
SCENE SET 04 – DARKNESS AND BLACKNESS
scene twelve
A prison camp. JACK, AUDREY and HUMPHREY in the yard. Is it raining? Or just a mean and bitter drizzle?
HORST, the commandant, and CURLY, a soldier, enter.
CURLY Attention, attention prisoners. Line up for inspection. Now now now – you can do better than that mealy slugged-faced fucking moronic shit for brains beasts of the rectum fucking shites.
JACK groans.
AUDREY Shush.
HORST (to HUMPHREY) You.
HUMPHREY Yes, Doctor.
HORST (to HUMPHREY) Your personal hygiene is disgusting.
HUMPHREY Yes, Doctor.
HORST No food for this man for two days.
CURLY Sir.
HORST (to JACK) You. I don’t like the glint in your eyes.
JACK Ha.
CURLY What?
HORST Beat this man.
AUDREY No, Doctor, don’t.
HORST What?
JACK What she means is – ah….
HORST What?
JACK I know what – there’s been a small error.
HORST An error?
AUDREY We shouldn’t actually be here.
CURLY laughs.
HORST (to CURLY) Shut up.
CURLY Sir.
HORST indicates AUDREY’s medallion.
HORST What is that?
HORST tears the medallion from her neck.
AUDREY Ow….
HORST (reading) The fear of everything is love.
HORST scoffs.
HORST I don’t think so. Pathetic.
HORST slaps AUDREY.
HORST No, less than pathetic – pathetic would be an achievement for you.
HORST spits in AUDREY’s face.
HORST Where did you get this?
AUDREY He gave it to me.
HORST indicates JACK.
HORST This one?
AUDREY indicates HUMPHREY.
AUDREY No…. him.
HORST No food – three days.
CURLY Sir.
AUDREY We are not the people you think we are.
HORST No? Aha….
AUDREY We’re Audrey and Jack.
JACK Harmless.
AUDREY Perfectly harmless.
JACK A smidge complicated.
AUDREY But who isn’t.
HUMPHREY That’s so very interesting. I was thinking that very same thing earlier today. Your hospitality, Doctor, allows me much and plenty time to think. I’ve discovered my life isn’t always what I thought it was. Can you believe it?
HORST Beat this man.
CURLY beats HUMPHREY.
JACK I hate this.
AUDREY Shush.
JACK And there’s always new people – everywhere I look I see new people – and I don’t know them and I don’t want to know them. Does that make me a bad person?
AUDREY If only we could get a message to The Prince Mithroth.
JACK I can’t bear this anymore. I feel so disoriented. I can’t wait, I don’t want to wait, I’d rather die. Drat. This, this is a quagmire.
The sun is large as it suddenly sets. Very large. Very stunning.
HORST and CURLY turn to admire the setting sun; they are captivated by the sight.
HORST Beautiful, simply beautiful.
CURLY So so beautiful.
JACK Here’s our chance to escape.
HUMPHREY Take me with you.
BABY JACK appears.
BABY JACK And me. Please take me – please – if you would be so gracious and forever kind.
JACK It’s Baby Jack.
BABY JACK How are you, my dear benevolent generous sir.
JACK (to HUMPHREY) Scoop up the kid and let’s boot it.
HUMPHREY scoops up little BABY JACK; they run fast and far. Eventually they are on a city street.
AUDREY Which way should we go?
JACK I don’t know. I don’t know this place. I feel so disoriented.
HUMPHREY I’m going to wait at that bus stop.
BABY JACK A most excellent plan; I agree completely.
AUDREY Bus stop?
HUMPHREY The two of us, we’ll just blend right in. What could be more natural than a man and a baby?
AUDREY A bad idea.
JACK Very bad.
BABY JACK We simply don’t concur – surely a most reasonable product of discourse? – and that is that. A pity but regrets, ah yes, regrets, I’ve had some few. Still, one must go on….
HUMPHREY The bus stop is a perfectly sensible idea.
AUDREY Jack, do something.
JACK shrugs.
Suddenly a truck screeching to a halt. SFX: truck breaks, noisy.
JACK and AUDREY hide behind a potted plant.
CURLY and HORST jump out. HUMPHREY panics, drops BABY JACK, and runs.
CURLY Hey, stop. Stop.
HORST Nevermind – kill him.
SFX: Machine gun fire.
CURLY shoots the fleeing HUMPHREY who falls horribly dead.
AUDREY & JACK O my god.
BABY JACK And me? What of me? What of poor dear little innocent me? Am I to die in the street as if a impoverished persecuted plague ridden god-forsaken rodent?
HORST (to CURLY) This one, this one I want to keep.
AUDREY & JACK O my god.
JACK and AUDREY turn and run.
JACK Which way?
AUDREY What about those woods?
JACK Where?
AUDREY There.
JACK O you are clever.
AUDREY Act natural.
JACK O ya, like I’m feeling really natural.
AUDREY Let’s not run.
JACK But I want to run.
AUDREY Put your arm around me.
JACK I’ve forgotten how.
AUDREY Shush….
JACK and AUDREY reach the woods and hide.
JACK O my god – look.
HORST is lurking about at the fringes of the woods.
JACK This was a stupid place to hide.
AUDREY O ya, right – and we had a whole lot of choice.
JACK Paris would’ve been a better choice.
AUDREY smiles.
AUDREY Shush….
HORST is just in front of JACK and AUDREY – he doesn’t see them.
JACK jumps out and tackles HORST. They struggle.
HORST You…. will regret…. this….
JACK Audrey…. Audrey…. kick him in the balls.
AUDREY Jack, what a horrible thought.
JACK O I’m sorry, was I speaking out loud?
AUDREY laughs as she attacks HORST. HORST falls back, gasping in pain. JACK kills him with a large rock.
JACK Wow….
JACK falls over.
AUDREY Jack, what’s wrong?
JACK He cut me. Here….
JACK points to his thigh.
JACK Is it bad?
AUDREY Pretty bad.
JACK Drat, disorientation suddenly seems a nothing problem compared to this.
AUDREY Rest.
JACK You are kind to me
AUDREY No I’m not. Now be quiet.
JACK Tell me a story.
AUDREY Do you remember when we met?
JACK No. Yes. No.
JACK winces in pain.
AUDREY At that party. After finals. You came up to me and said: you’re the only one here I don’t know.
JACK I did, didn’t I?
AUDREY And then we spent the night under the dining room table.
JACK Ya.
AUDREY So many years ago.
JACK A lifetime ago.
AUDREY I’ve never loved anyone else.
AUDREY & JACK (singing softly) Clang, clang, clang went the trolley
Ding, ding, ding went the bell
Zing, zing, zing went my heartstrings
From the moment I saw you I fell….
CURLY enters.
CURLY (calling off) Where’s the Commandant?
ANOTHER SOLDIER (off) I saw him go into the woods.
CURLY (calling) Hello…. Hello…. (calling off) Cover me….
CURLY enters the woods.
CURLY Hey, I see them….
JACK covers his face as explosions firestorms shrapnel as well as general impaling and uncontrollable spasms engulf the stage.
END OF SCENE.
•
scene thirteen
JACK’s kitchen. Early morning – the sun is just about coming up.
JACK enters, carrying a goldfish bowl.
The lights go out.
JACK Drat – what happened to the lights?
JACK, flashlight in hand, looks about the kitchen.
The kitchen is filled with various and many goldfish bowls; some of the fish are quite large though this may be a distortion due to the extreme curvature of the glass.
JACK (shouting) We have to protect the fish from the cat. If we had a cat….
Suddenly JACK rushes to gently pick up a fish.
JACK How did this get here?
A tear from JACK. Is it still alive?
AUDREY enters, dressed in a power suit.
AUDREY What happens?
JACK I don’t know.
JACK puts the fish in the water – it floats on the top.
AUDREY Dead?
JACK I don’t think so. O wait – its mouth is moving.
AUDREY Ha.
JACK looks at AUDREY – a pained look.
AUDREY Good. Well, I’m off.
AUDREY exits.
JACK (quietly) Will you be home for dinner?
SFX: A slashing whirling noise off.
AUDREY laughs, off.
JACK What?
AUDREY (off) You’re going to want to deal with this.
In a flap and a flurry, JACK exits to the garden. One of the salient features: layers of giant hedges. HORST and CURLY are cutting and slashing the hedges.
JACK Excuse me.
BEAT.
JACK (shouting) Excuse me.
BEAT.
JACK (shouting) Hey….
CURLY and HORST stop.
JACK What the fuck?
HORST Please refrain from foul language, sir.
JACK I’ll say exactly what I fucking well want to.
HORST I would advise you not.
HORST advances on JACK.
JACK This is my property. I advise you to shove your tongue up you rectum.
CURLY What did he say?
HORST I won’t repeat it.
CURLY Hey, was that the wife? What a peach.
JACK is aghast; he is about to speak when SANDY enters (pulling BOB behind her in a little red wagon).
SANDY What are they doing, Jack?
JACK Just a minute – wait – I don’t know.
HORST These types of hedges, they’ll be trouble latter on.
CURLY Lovely specimens….
HORST But frankly planted too close.
CURLY Much too close together.
HORST Later this will be a problem.
CURLY A big problem.
HORST You’ll thank us for this.
CURLY They always do.
HORST You’ll thank us.
CURLY And you’ll pay us.
SANDY What should we do?
JACK shakes his head.
SANDY A hedge as old as the hills. Ugly, now. Pity….
CURLY It needed to be done.
SANDY We should do something. Should we call Audrey?
JACK No god no.
HORST and CURLY laugh and laugh.
SANDY We should do something.
JACK Stop stop stop stop what you’re doing.
CURLY Or what?
JACK pulls out his penknife.
JACK Or this.
HORST and CURLY laugh, the tears steaming down their faces.
SANDY Wait a minute. Terry has something better.
SANDY exits, with BOB.
HORST Is that the knife she stabbed you with?
JACK Who?
HORST and CURLY laugh.
CURLY That Audrey person.
JACK No.
HORST Its not what we heard.
JACK I stabbed myself. Jesus….
CURLY While we’re talking we’re still on the clock.
HORST Paid by the hour.
JACK Not by me.
HORST Every second of your life that passes is gone – lost – forever.
CURLY The bill keeps getting bigger and bigger.
HORST An understanding will be required.
JACK Go. Go away. I don’t like you.
CURLY Boo hoo.
HORST Someone named The Prince Mithroth asked us to do this.
CURLY Or maybe it was the wife, eh?
JACK groans.
HORST You know this said The Prince Mithroth, do you, sir?
CURLY He told us to do this job.
HORST Then he run away.
CURLY He run far away.
HORST He run away into the night.
CURLY The deepest darkest night.
HORST Run run run run run away.
JACK I’m…. I’m I’m….
HORST sneers.
SANDY enters with a massive automatic weapon. A bazooka?
CURLY and HORST laugh.
SANDY I’ll take care of this, Jack. Stand back….
HORST More trouble, eh, Curly.
CURLY Always trouble, Horst.
HORST It follows us wherever we go.
SANDY cocks the weapon.
JACK O for god’s sake, Sandy, be careful.
HORST Yes, be careful, little woman.
SANDY Get out. Now.
SFX: SANDY fires off a burst.
CURLY The woman’s crazy.
HORST But I like her style.
CURLY We’re not finished.
HORST Not even close.
CURLY First, we’re going to do the work here.
HORST Then we’re going to do this little woman’s house.
CURLY Take it right down to the ground?
HORST That’s it – take it right down to the ground.
CURLY I’d like that. I’d really like that. I’d really really really really really like that.
HORST And then let’s crush that little baby Bob while we’re at it.
CURLY Ya, Let’s get rid of that Bob.
CURLY & HORST Oink oink oink.
CURLY and HORST laugh.
SANDY Take that…. and that….
SANDY shoots CURLY and HORST. SFX: Many gunshots. CURLY and HORST scream and fall dead. A messy affair.
SANDY You did good, Jack. You stood up to them.
JACK I don’t know.
SANDY You’re a brave man, Jack.
JACK I suppose….
SANDY I love you for it.
Police sirens in the distance.
SANDY Ugly, now. Poor hedge.
The lights come on.
JACK O, the power’s back.
The lights go out.
JACK Drat. What happened to the lights?
SFX: Loud car crash.
JACK turns, terrified, towards the sound.
END OF SCENE.
TO BLACK.
•
SCENE SET 05 – THE DEATH OF AUDREY
scene fourteen
JACK (off) Forget it, just forget it, Sandy.
Daytime. JACK’s large sunny kitchen. A large collection of colourful Eiffel Tower models squirreled here and there.
Bowls of goldfish – there are many such now in the kitchen.
JACK enters with a goldfish bowl. He puts down the bowl, opens a window and yells outside.
JACK (calling off) OK, I’m listening.
SANDY (off) Terry took the message.
JACK (calling off) What did she want? Her freedom?
SANDY (off) The message was: no message.
BOB cries.
SANDY (off) There there, you dear little piggy poo.
JACK & SANDY Oink oink.
JACK (calling off) Is she coming back, you dear old thing?
SANDY (off) O I’m sure I don’t know, you dear old thing. That’s too complicated for me. (singing) I will not languish.
JACK joins her.
JACK & SANDY (singing) I will not laaaaaaang-guish.
BOB joins in.
JACK (calling off) Just a minute, just a minute…. when did Terry take the message?
SANDY (off) Was there a message?….
JACK (calling off) Just a minute….
JACK exits outside.
BEAT.
AUDREY enters with a few suitcases and a large package.
BEAT.
JACK enters with goldfish.
JACK Ah. You. Well. Well well – this is a surprise.
AUDREY Look what I brought you.
JACK For me?
JACK opens the package – it’s a very large skillet.
JACK O? And will it fit on the cooktop?
AUDREY I wonder….
JACK gets into the skillet. He washes the salad greens. AUDREY laughs her big laugh.
AUDREY What are you doing?
JACK I’m making a salad for dinys.
AUDREY Like that?
JACK I always make my salads like this.
JACK sighs.
JACK When I do anything. Mostly nothing I do nothing.
AUDREY O what are you talking about?
JACK And where have you been? You used to live here. Its all running down. To nothing much. Drat. What if its all like…. like a bloody uncooked haggis. I will not be diminished. (doing a Scottish voice) You lie to me, you lie to me all the time.
AUDREY O my god, you sound just like my father.
JACK (Scottish voice) You’ve been gone for months. Or is it days? I might have wanted to go with you.
AUDREY There’s my freedom to consider.
JACK Freedom…. freedom. There’s a punchline to that…. I forget it. Drat. O I remember – you used to be honest. I loved you for it. Now the crow may be singing instead of the calf.
AUDREY O shut up. If you’re looking for a reason, honey, this is it.
JACK Don’t call me “honey” if you don’t mean it.
AUDREY snorts.
JACK You used to….
AUDREY What now?
JACK Mean it. I felt that anyway.
AUDREY You used to be someone who wasn’t knock kneed crazy.
JACK O stop it. Look – my opinion….
AUDREY scoffs.
JACK Wait wait, I’m having an idea….
JACK picks up an Eiffel Tower.
JACK My opinion: Paris was a package.
AUDREY What?
JACK We were all together, of a thing, you and I and the rue Rivoli. And the metro and Chez François and everything. Every breath was a laugh.
AUDREY I don’t remember it like that.
JACK At least a chuckle? Work with me. Even fucking Mithroth had it right. Salad days. Lovely days. Paris was a package – that’s why we loved it. Its all about Paris. And the package, the whole package. That’s it – the whole package, you got to take the whole package. That’s it that’s it. There’s no substitution. The whole package. No. No no. No no no no. Don’t say anything – hear me out. I’ll lose my thread. Its like at a country auction. You bid a box, you bid on a box – its a lot. You bid on a lot – three bucks – and you take the whole box – lock stock and box. That’s it, mama. You have to take the whole package.
AUDREY I hated Paris.
JACK How could you? Paris was kindness.
AUDREY wavers, uncertain on her feet.
AUDREY What do you mean? Kindness? What do you mean?
JACK Kindness? Its the opposite of – what? – fear. What, what are you afraid of? It all started in Paris. Don’t you remember?
AUDREY I was never in Paris.
JACK The scar capital of France?….
AUDREY laughs. Suddenly, she collapses, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth.
JACK What? What?
JACK takes AUDREY in his arms.
AUDREY mumbles.
AUDREY Kindness….
JACK What?
AUDREY All those times I said I loved you…. all those times…. was I lying?
BEAT.
AUDREY You should’ve be kinder.
JACK Me? You, you’ve never been kind enough. No no, I can’t do this anymore.
AUDREY Dear O dear, its too late.
JACK It’s never too late.
AUDREY I think I meant it.
JACK About love?
AUDREY Or did I?
AUDREY dies.
SFX: Car crash, far in the distance.
JACK is in shock; he feeds the fish.
END OF SCENE
TO BLACK
•
SCENE SET 06 – LIVING ALONE
scene fifteen
JACK is standing in the foyer of a large art museum. We see a sign: THE LIFE OF AUDREY.
HUMPHREY and NATALIE enter. JACK rubs his hands gleefully.
JACK Humphrey and Natalie, thanks so much for coming by. I wanted you to be the first to see the exhibition.
NATALIE It’s not open yet?
JACK Not yet. Soon, though, and a jovial time it’ll be – I’m already having a good time.
HUMPHREY Well then I’m honoured. We both are….
JACK I thought it was important you see it. Give me your opinion….
NATALIE I’m sure we’ll love it – just as we loved Audrey.
JACK Thank you. (to HUMPHREY) You’ve been here before, haven’t you?
HUMPHREY Here? Yes, of course. An important art museum, this.
JACK Yes, I thought you’d say that. Come….
They enter the first room. Large photographs of a young AUDREY.
NATALIE O, she’s so young.
HUMPHREY Is it all arranged chronologically?
JACK It might be.
NATALIE So sweet…. especially this one is so sweet.
They stand in front of a photo of AUDREY; her first communion. She is dressed in white.
JACK Her first communion.
SFX: Liturgical music.
HUMPHREY Yet there is something – what is it? – something in the eyes.
JACK Excellent of you to notice. The glint. Hard light, the bride of Christ.
HUMPHREY Yes, quite….
JACK Yes, quite.
NATALIE Is that a scar under her eye?
JACK That? Just some dirt
JACK wipes the photo.
NATALIE It’s still there. It looks like a cut.
JACK Naw, it’s just a blemish on the photo. Nevermind. And this one….
They stand in front of an another photo – A teenaged AUDREY on a railroad bridge.
JACK She was obsessed with bridges.
NATALIE Was she?
JACK Yes. Afraid to be on them – afraid to ignore them. Something about juxtaposition.
HUMPHREY O? Interesting.
NATALIE Is that why she’s hanging – O my god can you believe it? – by one hand.
HUMPHREY Did she fall?
JACK Fall?
HUMPHREY After the picture was snapped.
JACK O? No. She let herself down slowly with just one arm.
HUMPHREY Impressive.
JACK A human being is a genius while truly engaged, fearless strong and brave.
NATALIE Her legs are all scared.
JACK Yes, so many scars in this life.
NATALIE Did she fall…. some other time?
JACK She never said. Well, enough of that. Come to the next room – there’s still much more.
They enter the next room. They stand in front of a picture of AUDREY and MITHROTH.
NATALIE Who’s that?
JACK Ah yes – Audrey’s long mysterious connection with Mithroth.
NATALIE The Prince Mithroth?
JACK Fucking Mithroth. She was always on about him. The Prince Mithroth wouldn’t like that. The Prince Mithroth couldn’t justify this. The Prince Mithroth always buttered his bread on the left side. The Prince Mithroth never jumped if he could hop. The Prince Mithroth was a friend of the poor and lonely. Especially the lonely.
HUMPHREY Was he an old lover of her’s? The first perhaps?
JACK I never knew for sure. I never asked. When she was working at the Sorbonne, she lived with him. Shared a flat. All I remember is tea, of course. Tea, bloody tea. Tea all the time tea. Here he’s looking for paper to write her phone number. But everything there was already used – not even a scrap available. They were so upset. Eventually he wrote it on his hand. You can just see it if you look closely.
HUMPHREY and NATALIE peer at the photo.
NATALIE Right…. you can just make it out. Regent seven, three something something two. The scar seems bigger here. From her communion, the same scar only bigger. See that penknife.
JACK Where?
NATALIE On the table. Is that what caused the scar?
JACK I don’t know. Yes. Yes, they’re over here – her’s and mine.
They move to the penknife case.
HUMPHREY And beautiful objects they are too.
JACK Not bad. They’re Croatian army issue.
NATALIE You mean: Swiss.
JACK No, we couldn’t afford those. I’m sick of this room – let’s move on. Coming, Humphrey?….
HUMPHREY O yes.
They enter the next room. They stand in front of a picture of naked AUDREY and naked HUMPHREY routinely rutting.
NATALIE is shocked.
NATALIE O….
JACK I thought you’d find it interesting. Not really porno. More like cheesecake.
JACK laughs.
JACK In and out in and out. Groaning and moaning. I love you I love you I love you. Humpty Dumpty humping Humphrey.
JACK laughs.
HUMPHREY How how did you get this picture?
NATALIE glares at HUMPHREY.
JACK Being invisible can be very very advantageous.
NATALIE Invisible?
JACK I’ll teach you sometime. Old Tibetan technique. Ha.
JACK laughs.
NATALIE This is horrible.
JACK Quite right. (to HUMPHREY) Every bloody ejaculation you had scarred me. Me.
NATALIE sobs.
JACK And you too. Sure, why not? Why should you be exempt? All we do is give each other scars. The realization, horrible that it is, that she is lying, lies, was lying to me all all the time.
AUDREY IN MEMORY I said I was at the office, but I was at a conference.
JACK IN MEMORY And you didn’t tell me. I might have wanted to go.
AUDREY IN MEMORY I don’t have to be everywhere with you.
JACK IN MEMORY There’s a punchline somewhere here, but I forget it.
JACK turns to HUMPHREY and NATALIE
JACK What good is it?
HUMPHREY Is that the punchline?
JACK Not yet. I wanted her to accept my scars but I never would accept her’s. Drat. Unkind of me.
HUMPHREY Is that the punchline?
JACK You have to take the whole package, take your fictions – match your fantasies. That’s the punchline. God, you know, I just thought of something. I always wanted her to take the whole package – but I never did myself. What was I thinking? The whole package, taking the whole package, that thing, that thing works both ways. Its a two way street, brother. And it never occurred to me – imagine. Drat. Too late now, eh? Let’s move on, shall we?
NATALIE Is there?…. more?….
JACK Cheesecake? No, that’s done.
HUMPHREY But maybe we’ve had enough…. of this.
JACK Apparently you never do.
HUMPHREY What?
JACK Have enough. Ha.
NATALIE I don’t feel well.
JACK No no, finish the tour – please please please. I promise you’ll love the last room.
They enter the last room. A large photo of dead AUDREY.
JACK Just moments after.
NATALIE It’s horrible. The blood….
NATALIE falters.
JACK Death – the final scar.
AUDREY IN PHOTO Is that about kindness? About being kind? Is that what you mean?
JACK IN PHOTO Kindness? What? What are you afraid of?
Suddenly, AUDREY IN PHOTO collapses, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth.
AUDREY IN PHOTO Dear O dear. It’s too late.
AUDREY IN PHOTO dies.
JACK So…. the final question: is it worth the tour?
HUMPHREY Is any life ever worth it?
NATALIE cries.
JACK O dear. I’m so sorry, Natalie. Inadvertent scars are the worst. The very worst. I’m so sorry. Here, take my hand….
END OF SCENE.
•
scene sixteen
In a large supermarket; everywhere lovely piles of colourful foods – parsnips, oranges, tomatoes, kale.
JACK, holding a sleeping BOB, is raving at SANDY.
JACK Who was it who always said: she’s looking for you?
SANDY That was me, Jack, me – your sister.
JACK Yes, that’s right. She was pissed off. Hurt. Why? I was at home, always at home. She knew where to reach me. She could have called. I’m not even sure I now know who she was. After all those years. And for what? Dear O dear. Regret, nothing but regret now. I feel so disoriented.
SANDY Poor Jack.
SANDY takes his hand.
JACK What I thought I would do. Books I would read. The War and Peace syndrome. Books I would write.
SANDY Cookbooks?
JACK Gushy fiction.
SANDY How clever you are. Terry thinks so too.
JACK My life is like being on the beach. Waves pounding in on me. The singing crow instead of the calf. If you could change one thing from your past, one single thing? What would you choose? Me, I’d be smarter about who I marry.
SANDY Everybody says that.
JACK shrugs.
Suddenly, across the supermarket JACK sees MITHROTH arm in arm with HUMPHREY.
JACK O my god – it’s him. And that other guy….
SANDY Who, Jack, who?
JACK Fucking Mithroth…. and bloody Humpty-Dumpty. What a quagmire.
SANDY You mean over there in front of the zucchinis?
JACK is speechless – he nods.
SANDY Didn’t I meet them somewhere?
SANDY starts to peer – JACK pulls her down behind the oranges.
JACK Don’t look, don’t look – I don’t want them to see me.
SANDY That’s so sad.
BOB wakes up; starts to cry. JACK is startled; he knocks over the oranges which roll everywhere.
JACK O god, we have to keep him quiet – I don’t want them to come over. (to BOB) There there, you dear little piggy – Uncle Jack is here.
BOB stops crying.
JACK Fucking Mithroth. I wish he would get Heartgohighhigh and be really sick and puke all over himself and bleed from his eyes. And Humphrey too, why not?
SANDY O, Jack….
JACK I am horrible.
BEAT.
JACK But I will not be diminished. I used to be a chef.
SANDY And a great chef.
JACK And a great chef – I’ll give you that – and then – suddenly – nothing.
BEAT.
JACK Audrey.
SANDY She was always difficult.
JACK Well it works both ways – I wanted her to take me as I was but did I accept everything she was? No. O my god. Wait a minute wait a minute I get it I get it. What was I thinking? I am diminished. Totally bloody fucking diminished. Drat drat drat drat drat. Diminished and scarred as bloody hell – and scary to boot. And nobody to blame but me.
END OF SCENE
•
scene seventeen
On a busy city street. Afternoon. A hint of snow in the air.
JACK, dressed like a conquistador, waits at a bus stop.
JACK (singing) I will not languish. I will not laaaaaaang-guish.
HUMPHREY – driving by in his car – stops when he sees JACK.
HUMPHREY Hey, great…. It’s you, right?
JACK What?
HUMPHREY That’s it – well put – what’s up? Like it, like it a lot. What’s up, Jack, what’s up? What’s up? What’s up what’s up?
JACK Do I know you?
JACK knows darn well who he is.
HUMPHREY It’s me…. Humphrey.
JACK Humphrey?
HUMPHREY The pilot. The one who crashed on your street.
JACK Right. The pilot. Right. Humping Humphrey. Humpty Dumpty Hamster Wamster Humphrey. Why should I talk to you?
HUMPHREY Saw a fellow by the side of the road – thought I’d stop.
HUMPHREY cries.
HUMPHREY I’m sorry I’m sorry…. I am bad. I am. Bad bad bad. Nobody likes me. My life has fallen apart. Everything I touch, dies.
JACK Ya, right, well, ya, we all have problems.
HUMPHREY (between the tears) Going somewhere?
JACK What?
HUMPHREY (between the tears) You’re at a bus stop. So I figured….
JACK Got to catch a plane. If ever there was a bus, which there isn’t and anyway, got to catch a plane.
HUMPHREY Where to?
JACK Paris.
HUMPHREY Paris?
JACK Someone I was. Want to be again. Or something.
HUMPHREY I’ve been feeling like that too.
JACK Everyone does – it’s the curse.
HUMPHREY (tears) Except I don’t know where to go.
JACK I learnt how to cook in Paris. God, that was good. Those were great times.
HUMPHREY Always got to help a man get to Paris. Article of faith. Pop on in – I’ll give you a lift.
JACK Beyond salvage.
HUMPHREY Why, when’s the flight?
JACK looks at his watch.
JACK Three minutes ago. Drat. What a quagmire.
HUMPHREY O?
JACK You know, you can never start out too early. Man O man O man – my enthusiasm is running way down.
HUMPHREY Ha. Well then – why not? – let’s go for a coffee. Have a chat.
JACK sighs.
JACK May as well – life is shorter by the minute.
JACK gets in the car.
They drive around.
HUMPHREY You seem quiet.
JACK You don’t really know me.
HUMPHREY But I’d like to.
JACK Truth, old Humphrey, I’m feeling distracted.
HUMPHREY As if your life has become a very particular sort of unrecognizable fiction?
JACK Pretty darn accurate – how did you know that?
HUMPHREY Just lucky. Here’s a good place.
They park in front of a big complex housing a number of restaurants.
HUMPHREY That place up there.
JACK It’s a bar.
HUMPHREY Too early for you?
JACK Sure. Why not? Wait, I know this place. Its Chez Zuzu. I thought it was somewhere else.
DELORES bars the entrance.
DELORES Private party.
JACK Delores – hey it’s me, Jack.
DELORES I know it’s you, Jack. Chez Zuzu is now forever closed to you. No trouble, Jack. Please, no trouble.
HUMPHREY Bloody hell.
DELORES I’ll thank you not to be abusive.
HUMPHREY You don’t know who I am, do you?
DELORES And I’m darn sure not interested.
HUMPHREY God, you sound just like me. We could be friends.
DELORES I have more than enough friends already.
JACK laughs.
JACK Please, Delores – for old time sake? I could use a little pick-me-up this morning. Its cold – I could use my coat.
DELORES laughs.
DELORES Sorry, Jack. I wish I could.
HUMPHREY Do you? Do you? I don’t think so. You’re a bitch queen, that’s what you are – a bloody bitch queen.
DELORES cries.
JACK Jesus, Humpy – take it easy.
HUMPHREY Women and their tears – can’t take it. Never could. Reminds me too much of old Mum.
SANDY enters.
SANDY (to DELORES) O you poor thing.
SANDY puts her arm around DELORES.
JACK What’s happening, Jack?
JACK Where’s Bob?
SANDY Terry’s got him.
HUMPHREY I’ll tell you what’s happening – she won’t let us in – that’s what. Quite nasty about it.
SANDY Who are you?
JACK Humphrey, this is my sister, Sandy.
HUMPHREY But we’ve met.
SANDY I doubt it.
HUMPHREY Just like Old Mum. Buggers….
SANDY (to HUMPHREY) Be quiet. (to JACK) Is this about that damned penknife?
JACK Drat. How do you know about that?
HUMPHREY O we all know about that.
SANDY How could you, Jack?
JACK I didn’t do anything to Audrey.
HUMPHREY That’s not what I heard. I saw the scars.
SANDY You did it to yourself – its the same as doing it to her.
JACK She did it too.
HUMPHREY But did she?
SANDY Audrey can be very difficult but you all loved her. Anyway, loving isn’t owning. Look, I’ve got to go – got a date with Dad.
SANDY exits.
We see OLD BILL in the distance; BILL waves and is gone.
DELORES She’s nice, your sister.
HUMPHREY I can’t say I care much for her.
JACK Shut up.
DELORES Ya, shut up.
JACK takes DELORES’ hand
JACK It’s good to see you.
DELORES You too.
JACK We used to be good friends.
DELORES Ya.
JACK What happened?
DELORES Life got in the way.
HUMPHREY It always does.
JACK and DELORES ignore HUMPHREY.
HUMPHREY I said: it always does.
They continue to ignore HUMPHREY.
DELORES I miss her. That laugh…. I loved that laugh.
JACK Ya.
JACK nods.
JACK Ya.
DELORES Sometimes I hear it on the wind.
JACK That’s sweet.
HUMPHREY Isn’t it interesting you say that. I was thinking….
DELORES: a hard look at HUMPHREY.
DELORES (to JACK) Be careful.
JACK Why?
DELORES indicates HUMPHREY.
DELORES I don’t trust him.
HUMPHREY Me? How can you say that about me?
DELORES I got a bad feeling.
JACK Thanks, Delores. Thanks.
DELORES and JACK hug.
HUMPHREY and JACK exit to the car.
JACK Well, that was sort of good.
HUMPHREY Merely mundane. You see a lot of that these days.
JACK Look Humphrey, I’ve had just about enough of you. I’m going….
HUMPHREY O no don’t – we’re getting on so well.
JACK looks at HUMPHREY.
JACK I don’t think so.
HUMPHREY I’m famished. We could go to L’Express. The poulet au citron is utterly fabulous these days.
JACK It’s Jean-Jacques’ secret saffron source.
HUMPHREY So I’ve been told. Uses grappa to marinate the bird….
JACK Alright, let’s go. But I have to drive.
HUMPHREY O? Can’t do that, I’m afraid. Can’t do that. This is a prototype, this is a special – a very special – automobile. I’ve promised my mechanic chap I would be the only one who drove it. Sort of a family heirloom in waiting if you get my drift. Sorry….
JACK I have to drive.
HUMPHREY But its left hand drive. You know, the opposite of the right hand drive. Which – if your stop to consider it – is dashed confusing. Cause left hand drive is on the…. right hand side of the car. Which is rum and confusing also. Dashed confusing. And then there’s the question of pedals. Because they don’t seem to be reversed. They’re the same whether they’re on the right or on the left. Or are they?
JACK I have to drive.
HUMPHREY sighs; he tosses the keys to JACK.
JACK Which one is the break pedal again?
HUMPHREY grimaces. They drive.
JACK This is fun. I can see why everybody does it. I’ll tell you something for nothing, old Humph. Revenge is never never sweet. Never never sweet. Somehow, now, there’s no point to it. All I can feel is everything I’ve lost. Drat. Could I ever get it back again?, that’s the question. That’s why I was going to Paris. And the answer is….
HUMPHREY Hey wait – can’t concentrate – this is the wrong direction to L’Express.
JACK O? No problem. Easy to fix. Today, everything’s easy to fix.
JACK does an illegal U-turn.
HUMPHREY Are you crazy?
JACK Relax…. (singing) I will not languish. I will not laaaaaaang-guish.
SFX: Screeching of breaks; a speeding car hits in the middle of the turn; an ugly nasty noisy crash.
JACK is killed; he is covered in scars and blood.
HUMPHREY O my god – he’s dead. And they’re all going to blame me. You’re all going to blame me. I didn’t cause these scars. And the blood. Blood. It wasn’t me. I wasn’t even driving. I wasn’t even driving. Dear O dear O god O god.
END OF SCENE
TO BLACK
•
SCENE SET 07 – A REDEMPTION OF SORTS
scene eighteen
Evening. Chez Zuzu.
Bustle and noise. The occasional snatch of singing. Its all very familiar.
JACK and AUDREY enter.
JACK I don’t like this place any more.
AUDREY laughs, full and rich.
AUDREY We always come here.
JACK But now I only see its flaws: vast disconglomerated nothingness, lacking in true variety.
AUDREY Disconglomerated?
AUDREY chuckles.
JACK And brutal management and bloody hot.
AUDREY Take off your bloody coat.
JACK Ya? No. Once they almost destroyed it – I won’t give them the satisfaction.
AUDREY It’s summer, Jack.
JACK I love this coat.
AUDREY sighs.
JACK O well, it’s just a coat.
JACK takes off his coat, throws it on the floor.
AUDREY is surprised, then impressed.
They sit at a table.
A folksinger, off, croons through an early Bob Dylan song.
FOLKSINGER (HUMPHREY) (off) How many roads must a man go down
Before you call him a man?
How many roads?
How many roads?
How many roads?
AUDREY O my god – that folksinger….
JACK I hate folk music.
AUDREY It’s Humphrey.
JACK No….
AUDREY Look.
JACK laughs.
JACK The evening is definitely picking up.
AUDREY Be nice. It’s my birthday.
JACK Don’t worry – I don’t mind if he’s out of tune.
AUDREY You’re acting strangely tonight.
JACK O, I don’t think so. Just same old bloody Jack.
JACK laughs.
AUDREY Ummmm?….
SANDY enters. She struggles to the table carrying a tray of tiny succulents and baby BOB in a carrier.
SANDY (calling) Hi there….
SANDY gives AUDREY the succulents.
SANDY Happy birthday, you dear old thing.
JACK And you brought Bob.
SANDY I brought Bob.
JACK Where’s Terry?
SANDY The poor thing – he feels crazy. (to AUDREY) He sends his love.
AUDREY That’s sweet.
JACK nuzzles BOB.
JACK Baby baby Bob, you’re such a baby baby darling.
SANDY Audrey? Would you like to nuzzle Bob?
AUDREY Ah…. ummmm….
MITHROTH enters.
AUDREY It’s The Prince Mithroth….
JACK Fu….fu…..fu….fu….
AUDREY Jack….
JACK Fu…. fu…. Fabulous Mithroth.
JACK laughs.
JACK Ha.
AUDREY Ha indeed. (calling) Prince Mithroth, Prince Mithroth. We’re over here.
MITHROTH waves and comes to the table.
MITHROTH Hello, hello all…. I’ve brought no gift. See? No gift. Why?, you ask. I’ll tell….
JACK Looking forward to it.
AUDREY glares at JACK.
JACK (to AUDREY) No I mean it.
MITHROTH Thank you, dear boy. First, I thought: only emeralds would do. But alas, the emerald market is deplorably depressed. Only pathetic, though admittedly greenish pebbles remain. So – instead – I brought you myself to do with as you will….
MITHROTH and AUDREY laugh.
AUDREY How charming you are.
SANDY rolls her eyes and JACK laughs.
AUDREY Sit over here by me.
JACK Do you know my sister, Mithroth?
AUDREY (sotto voce to JACK) The Prince Mithroth.
JACK How could I have ever forgotten? Its The Prince Mithroth, Sandy.
MITHROTH I have not had the pleasure. O wait. O wait. I have had the pleasure. Both you and your Bob. I trust you’re both well.
SANDY I seem to remember, prince person, that you were in a boat?
MITHROTH O? Perhaps. Yes. Now, what’s the cuisine here?, might one ask.
MITHROTH raises his eyebrows.
MITHROTH Vitally continental?
SANDY I would call the menu here at Zuzu exactly standard plebeian bistro fare, prince person. Tasty…. if you’re hungry.
SANDY smiles at JACK.
MITHROTH O? Well said….
MITHROTH looks into SANDY’s eyes.
MITHROTH You know, I can see what you’re going to say next.
SANDY You mean – what do you mean?
MITHROTH I can see your dialogue written right there in your eyes.
SANDY O?
MITHROTH I knew you were going to say that.
SANDY Did you now?
MITHROTH And that too.
SANDY Well then, in that case, apparently now the calf may be singing instead of the crow.
MITHROTH O? Wait. No. I didn’t see that.
MITHROTH peers into SANDY’s eyes.
MITHROTH No, it’s not there. Strange. What does it mean?- the crow thing what what what the singing calf.
SANDY I think Bob said it first, prince person. (to BOB) Didn’t you, little piggy.
MITHROTH Oink oink.
MITHROTH and AUDREY laugh.
JACK glares at audrey.
JACK Let’s not have too many Bob jokes tonight, shall we?
MITHROTH Quite right. Now this crow thing, is it – perhaps? – the victory of violence? Better yet: the violence of hegemony?
JACK That’s very interesting, Mithroth – the crows over the calfs.
MITHROTH Exactly, dear Jack.
JACK Otherwise – dear O dear – and this becomes a revolution, it would mean it could mean: no more veal scaloppini.
MITHROTH Is that a tragedy?
SANDY Not if you’re a calf, prince person.
AUDREY laughs till tears come.
AUDREY That’s very funny, Sandy.
HUMPHREY enters, dressed in bell bottoms and carrying a guitar.
AUDREY Whatever are you wearing?
HUMPHREY Do you like it? Do you? You do, don’t you. I can tell.
JACK Humphrey, this is my sister, Sandy.
HUMPHREY We’ve already met – at your place. It was the day our house burnt down. (musing) Might have been the actual beginning of the end….
SANDY O yes…. did you rebuild?
HUMPHREY No, we just continued living in the rubble.
LAUGHTER.
AUDREY And this is The Prince Mithroth.
JACK They’ve already met.
HUMPHREY The Prince Mithroth? O my goodness. This is…. so special.
JACK You’ve already met him.
MITHROTH And why not do it again, dear Jack, why not do it again? (to HUMPHREY) Now tell me – be honest now – did anything every come of that rectal business?
AUDREY Shush.
HUMPHREY (stammering) O, I say….
JACK O, leave him alone, you two. Let’s not have too many Humphrey jokes either.
HUMPHREY Ah, yes, thanks. Birthday time, birthday. (to AUDREY) A little birthday something.
HUMPHREY hands AUDREY a book.
HUMPHREY An autographed copy of the erotic stories of Anais Nin. Very lovely…. very – well, it must be said – erotic.
AUDREY Ah….
MITHROTH I knew her, of course.
HUMPHREY Did you?
SANDY What was she like?
MITHROTH Very stylish. Very vain. Very secretive. I believe one of those stories is about me.
LAUGHTER.
JACK Very impressive.
MITHROTH – a little bow by way of reply.
HUMPHREY Do you like it? Is it just what you always wanted?
AUDREY’s fulsome laugh.
HUMPHREY Ah yes, funny, yes. But do you like it? Say you do.
BEAT.
MITHROTH So what exactly are you up to, Humphrey?
HUMPHREY I know this will sound strange, but I’ve had this vision – quite frightening really – and so I’ve decided to run away and embrace the bardic lifestyle.
SANDY What a fun idea.
AUDREY The bardic lifestyle? O, I see.
JACK Perfect. Just perfect.
MITHROTH I myself am not interested in such things. Anyway, I no longer have the voice for it.
SANDY Voice?
MITHROTH It’s all about singing, isn’t it, this bardic lifestyle? It always was when I was a lad.
MITHROTH sings Puccini, and quite good it is.
MITHROTH Best of luck, my dear fellow.
MITHROTH snaps his fingers. NATALIE comes over with champagne.
AUDREY Natalie?
NATALIE Hi everyone.
HUMPHREY Hello, Natalie.
NATALIE ignores him.
HUMPHREY Hello, Natalie.
NATALIE cries.
JACK O you poor thing. Here, sit down….
NATALIE Not only content to destroy my life and its innocent pleasures, this…. horny salacious lecherous…. hippy has given away all our money.
NATALIE glares at HUMPHREY.
HUMPHREY It seemed wrong, suddenly – do you know what I mean? – to own things.
MITHROTH Dear girl, I can see we need our champagne now more than ever. I have ordered the Pol Roger – 1990. A dark vintage.
NATALIE pours the champagne.
MITHROTH Does everyone have a glass? You too, dear Natalie.
NATALIE Merci.
MITHROTH A toast to the Goddess – Audrey – you are more beautiful with each passing year. And also – I feel genuinely inspired to do this – also to little baby Bob – may he grow up to be worthy of his name.
SANDY (to BOB) Did you hear that, piggy-poo? Piggy-poo piggy-poo.
JACK That’s kind, Mithroth.
MITHROTH, a slight bow to JACK. They all clink and drink.
JACK & AUDREY Yummy.
JACK and AUDREY laugh.
NATALIE And perhaps a book while you wait?….
NATALIE has a wagon filled with books. SANDY touches a few books.
SANDY I’m getting very hungry.
AUDREY Me too.
JACK Soon…. soon….
AUDREY But I’m hungry now.
JACK Wait a minute, can’t you?
AUDREY You never could plate up on time.
JACK If it’s worth waiting for….
MITHROTH Quite right, Jack.
JACK (to AUDREY) See?
MITHROTH Let’s have more of this fabulous champagne. Make it two more bottles, please, dear Natalie.
NATALIE Of course, Prince Mithroth….
Brushing HUMPHREY aside, NATALIE sets off.
JACK examines the books.
JACK Ah. Ha. This is a library full of scars.
AUDREY O shut up.
JACK Wait wait. I’ll show you a scar. All these books are by Anais Nin.
AUDREY Really?
MITHROTH Let me see that book.
MITHROTH examines the gift book.
MITHROTH Wait wait wait. This is decidedly not the Nin signature. I know her signature. This simply isn’t it. Wait wait wait. I know what our sly Humphrey’s done – he’s autographed the book himself, haven’t you, Humphrey?
HUMPHREY stammers.
JACK Well, when you’ve given away all your money what else can you do? (to AUDREY) That’s what I’m talking about – that’s a scar. (to HUMPHREY) You silly fool.
An embarrassed HUMPHREY looks out of the window.
HUMPHREY That big black cloud does seems rather large, doesn’t it? Or is it just me? Wait. Its…. crashed into that house. What? People running screaming. I feel very vulnerable at this moment. Very vulnerable. Its not a cloud at all. How could I have been so mistaken? Its…. its a giant fir tree and its fallen over. Now there’s fire. Flames. I shall never now never never survive.
NATALIE arrives with more champagne.
HUMPHREY That can’t be good.
NATALIE You’re a stupid stupid man.
NATALIE spits on HUMPHREY, who sobs quietly; BOB joins in.
JACK And that’s another scar….
SANDY There there, little piggy poo.
JACK Poor old Humpty-Dumpty.
JACK helps HUMPHREY to a chair.
JACK Humphrey, stop sniveling and sit down and join the party. I promise you – it’ll all be better.
HUMPHREY (between the tears) Will it?
JACK nods.
JACK Scars heal.
AUDREY rolls her eyes. In response: JACK rolls his eyes.
AUDREY Don’t you dare roll your eyes at me. I too – I too have genuine wounds and scars to show for it all.
AUDREY pulls up her pant leg.
JACK O ya, that one. Ya ya, that one – I’ve seen that one before.
AUDREY It bled.
JACK Ya, but not as much as mine.
JACK rips off his sleeve.
JACK I hit an artery – this one bled like a slaughtered bunny. The paramedic was less than sympathetic.
AUDREY I think she called us stupid.
JACK I had to agree.
AUDREY Maybe, I did too. Now this one….
AUDREY swivels to show her back.
AUDREY I did this one for you. Hard to reach….
JACK So, does that make it more important?
JACK takes off his shoe; shows the bottom of his foot.
JACK I did this one for you. Didn’t even use a mirror.
AUDREY hikes up her shirt.
AUDREY Now this – this – this one is a really ugly one.
SANDY Oooooo….
JACK What’s that?
AUDREY I fell out of a tree when I was seven.
JACK Yikes.
JACK lowers his pants.
JACK Me, this is the creme de la creme.
AUDREY That’s ugly. That’s really ugly.
JACK Is it the ugliest?
AUDREY Could be. So what is it?
JACK Can’t remember.
JACK and AUDREY laugh.
SANDY That was a Christmas scar, Jack. The tree fell on you.
JACK O goodness, I do remember. OK now, now its my turn.
JACK looks around the table, pleased. This is his place, his life.
MITHROTH More scars, Jack? Dear me, I don’t know if we’re up for it.
LAUGHTER.
JACK No more scars. I propose a toast to my darling wife and her whole package – the good the bad and the ugly – you have to darn well take it all. Which is probably on a good day the kindest thing we can do. To Audrey and all that you are.
ALL To Audrey.
They clink and drink.
NATALIE Tried my best, I tried my best to be kind to the people I love…. or thought I loved.
SANDY puts her arm around NATALIE.
SANDY I’m always kind to the people I love. (to BOB) Aren’t I, little piggy poo?
BOB coos. JACK kisses SANDY on the forehead.
JACK Yes, you are.
MITHROTH Kindness is often overlooked in the fracas of our lives but it is worth something.
AUDREY I always wanted to be kinder. I did.
MITHROTH Never too late, my dear.
AUDREY No?
JACK No. Never too late.
AUDREY (to JACK) All those times I said I loved you…. all those times…. I thought I meant it – was I lying?
JACK About love?
AUDREY Or was I?
JACK Do it for me? Do it for me.
AUDREY Be kinder?
JACK Yes. It is a birthday after all – a new beginning.
AUDREY A birthday.
JACK Happy birthday.
AUDREY Thank you.
AUDREY’s full passionate laugh.
AUDREY Alright, now where’s that Bob. Give me that Bob. I’m going to nuzzle Bob.
JACK My my….
SANDY Did you hear that, little piggy? Aunt Audrey now loves you.
MITHROTH I’m – dare I say it? – I’m pleased. Can those be tears in my eyes?
JACK Prince Mithroth, you are a true hombre and a half. How could I have not seen it? Have a glass, you old thing, and let me tell you all about the life of the mind.
MITHROTH Delighted, dear boy.
AUDREY Can we eat now?….
JACK catches NATALIE’s eye; he nods.
NATALIE The menu for tonight: Oysters à la florentine, épigramme of mutton, and for dolce – our specialty – coquilles Saint-Jacques de François.
AUDREY claps her hands in delight.
AUDREY My absolute three favourite dishes. Jack. Memories of Paris…. and dear young sweet love.
JACK Happy Birthday.
AUDREY O Jack. I take it.
JACK The whole package, eh?
AUDREY Still sweet.
JACK and AUDREY kiss.
Applause.
AUDREY takes JACK’s hand. Chez Zuzu to black; JACK and AUDREY to light.
JACK Look at you….
AUDREY Look at you….
SFX: Dance music. JACK and AUDREY dance.
Their waltz ends with hostilities – they pull viciously at each other’s noses.
AUDREY & JACK Ow.
AUDREY Stop that.
JACK You stop that.
AUDREY O shut up, and dance.
Again and again they dance.
AUDREY Zing zing.
JACK Zing zing zing zing zing….
AUDREY Went my heartstrings.
JACK & AUDREY I love you.
JACK Yes. Yes.
Falling in a heap, they laugh and laugh.
Till tears.
LONG FADE TO BLACK.
•
END OF PLAY
— Don Druick
————————
DON DRUICK is an award winning playwright, translator & librettist, a baroque musician, and a gardener and chef. In a career spanning more than 40 years, Don Druick’s plays have been produced on stage, radio and television in Canada, Europe, Japan, and the USA. His publications include playtexts, translations and critical writings. Publications of his plays, WHERE IS KABUKI? and THROUGH THE EYES, have both been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Awards. His current plays are: GEORGEVILLE (passion and poetry in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, 1816; the darkest night of Lord Byron), WILDEST DREAMS (a deconstructed narrative; something close to love amongst the elders), and a translation of Emmanuelle Roy’s play, LAZETTE. Druick lives in Elmira, a small Mennonite farming town near Waterloo Ontario, with artist Jane Buyers.
Jun 112013
bill hayward just sent me this dance piece, put together by Korhan Basaran over the last few days. If you’ve been following the news from Turkey, you’ll be able to read the “text.” Sad, sad, sad.
Korhan Basaran is Turkish dancer/choreographer, with whom bill has done a good deal of filming and dance choreography.
Jun 112013
Gordon Lish: Photo by bill hayward
Gordon Lish, despite his pesky notoriety vis a vis Raymond Carver, bestrides the American literary scene like a colossus but not, you know, in an obvious way because he stands outside the non-tradition of the marketplace, that other colossus. He is a restlessly prolific author, editor and teacher; his influence seeps into the interstices of the culture. He has established a taste and a method (see Jason Lucarelli’s “The Consecution of Gordon Lish: An Essay on Form and Influence“). His ghostly signature lies on what a lot of readers and writers today think of as good writing. There are websites devoted to listing the writers he has touched. The last American prose writer who had this kind of impact on the minds of the best writers of her era was Gertrude Stein. Like Stein, Lish is in the ranks of the avant garde, the Modernists. Once he was known as Captain Fiction and edited fiction for Esquire and later books for Knopf. I always found that amazing, a disjunct. Because the first piece of Gordon Lish fiction I read was his 1989 novel Extravaganza, which was unlike any American fiction I had read before (and, I thought, completely NOT mainstream — how could this guy be working for Esquire?). Extravaganza is 200 pages of borscht-belt standup comedy, one Jewish joke after another. There is no story at all, but gradually the language of the jokes becomes infected with references to the Holocaust, the hoary old jokes are disrupted with references to whips and cattle cars. It is a beautiful, scary, maddeningly recursive adventure. The recursiveness, the throw of grammar, lulls the reader, defines expectation. Then Lish defies expectation; violence, depradation, sadism, mayhem explode into the sentences.
So, yes, when I think of Gordon Lish, I think of Gertrude Stein, I think of Flaubert (Extravaganza seems like an heir to Bouvard and Pécuchet). I think of the avant garde. I think of a writer super-conscious of the role of language in the shaping of reality. I think of a writer steeped in Continental philosophy (Deleuze, Kristeva — and I think how extremely small-minded and beside the point are the debates about his role in Raymond Carver’s career). I think of a writer who has an almost mystical appreciation for the relationship of words (type, text) and the white space, the frame. I interviewed Lish once (I have published the sound file on NC: Causing Damage — Captain Fiction Redivivus: DG Interview With Gordon Lish), and we spent some time talking about this, his idea of cutting words to expose the “mystery,” the word “mystery” having, yes, a technical armature, almost tangible for Lish. We are talking here not of a mere writer of stories, but of a man who self-dramatizes as being on the world’s rim, the space between language and not-language. He gets your blood up, does Gordon Lish. His sentences make you itch to write.
All this by way of introducing the following brief, shocking excerpt from Lish’s 1986 novel Peru, just republished by Dalkey Archive Press with an introduction by the author. Peru is a compulsively “spoken,” recursive, stylized monologue that circles around and around the moment in 1940, when, at the age of six, the narrator murdered another six-year-old boy with a toy hoe in a sandbox. I give you here one of the great death/murder scenes, bizarrely dispassionate, full of a kind of schizophrenic detail and a consciousness on the narrator’s part of wanting to tell you the story correctly. So, at the outset, the first detail he tells you about the murder is that he could hear water running for the garden spigot, a detail that seems irrelevant and then compelling. We see the pitted marks the hoe leaves on the victim’s face. We see the victim getting up from his dying and stumbling around, watching his own dying. Everything is strange, focused, and unexpected. Lish escapes the novelese of conventional expectation and launches us into a realm of language and horror.
In addition to the excerpt, I point you here to David Winters’ excellent essay on the novel in 3AM Magazine: “Truth, Force, Composition.” Also, as linked above, Jason Lucarelli’s essay on Lish’s compositional method, called consecution, and my interview with Lish. Finally, the photographer bill hayward, long an associate and friend of Gordon Lish, recently allowed NC to publish a series of Lish portraits: Gordon Lish: Photographs — bill hayward.
dg
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I’ll tell you one of the worst things in my life. This is one of the worst things in my life—a day when the nanny said that I couldn’t come over and play but one when she went ahead and changed her mind later on and said that I could actually do it—and then it started raining just a little bit after she’d said it, like just instants, just instants after she had given me her blessing—and then for the whole rest of the day, all the rest of that day after Andy Lieblich went in and the nanny went in with him, I sat down inside of our garage and kept feeling funny and out of the ordinary, like as if I was in some kind of trouble and that certain things which I did not exactly know about yet were probably dangerously unfinished, lying lopsided somewhere and being dangerous, and it made me feel a terrible wildness, this strange feeling, which I think, to my way of thinking as a child, was the worse one, the feeling before the feeling of wildness, the feeling of incompletion and of chaos, a feeling of things getting started and of never getting them over with, of parts of them being impossible for you to ever get them totally taken care of yourself.
In a halfway sense, I think I can say that the day I killed Steven Adinoff, that is, that that particular day—but only in this halfway sense of things which I have mentioned—was a day like that. On the other hand, now that I have said that, I think it is only fair for me to say that I have the feeling that I am making too much out of the thing, that I am probably not really remembering anything.
I should be skipping the feelings and be sticking to other things, anyway. To what I remember because I actually heard it or saw it or so forth and so on—I should be sticking to things like this before things start getting too mixed up.
I heard the water going.
The whole time I was killing him I heard the water getting out of where the colored man had it hooked up to the Lieblich’s spigot—the water he was using for the Buick, the whole time the other thing was happening, the water for the fit between the hose, on the one hand, and the spigot, on the other, was a little bit loose, even though it was the colored man who had it hooked up and who—next to me, next to me—was the world’s most watchful human being in the whole wide world.
Even afterwards, even when I was going home, it was still going then, the tiny hissing was, like a sizzle, like the way a frying pan with some drops of water in it will sizzle, or make a sizzle, or sound like it’s sizzling.
The nanny saw it. Andy Lieblich saw it. So did Steven Adinoff himself. We all saw it. We all watched. Steven Adinoff watched just as much as anybody else.
That’s the thing about it—you watch.
That’s the unbelievable thing about it—that you watch it even if it’s you yourself that’s getting killed.
He watched himself get chopped up.
To me it looked like he was interested in just lying there and watching it. Because isn’t it interesting to watch it even if it’s happening to you? That you’re the one who’s getting it doesn’t make any difference. Actually, if my own personal experience can be counted for anything, that part of it—my opinion is that that part of it is the part of it which just makes you al the more interested in it.
But maybe he did not understand what was going on anymore, what connection there was between him getting killed and the hoe anymore, between what was happening to him and what I myself was doing to him with the hoe anymore. Maybe the thing was that Steven Adinoff was probably thinking of something else.
I don’t know. Maybe that’s what you do—you think of something else. Maybe you can’t even help it. Maybe you can’t even stop yourself from just going ahead and thinking of something which doesn’t have anything to do with the thing that is happening to you, except I myself don’t think that’s it, that that explains it, no.
But I don’t know what does, what would. I can’t even begin to guess, except for the fact that I think it’s got something to do with a nice feeling, with having a nice dreamy sleepy very special, very sleepy now feeling.
Or else I am overdoing it or am anyway just wrong. Maybe he just wanted to see how getting killed looked. Maybe it didn’t matter to him who was getting killed. Because for a lot of the time he just lay there watching instead of trying to get up and fight back and try to kill me back—and then he finally did, finally did get up—except that by then he was almost dead, except by then I think he was almost dead, even though he wasn’t actually acting dead, even though he just got up and started acting baffled and shocked instead of being sorrowful or mad at me. But I don’t think it was so much on account of someone having almost killed him as it was on account of his realizing how he’d missed the boat on this thing by getting distracted, by letting himself get distracted, and by not paying enough attention to it, or at least not to the part of it which really counted, until it was just too late and you felt silly for more or less being the center of attention of what’s going on but the last one to be informed as to what it is all about and means. I mean, I’ll bet it’s like finding out that you are the last one to get in on a secret which turns out to have been much more about you than you ever dreamed it was, ever could have, in your wildest dreams, dreamed of or thought of anything.
To my mind, Steven Adinoff was just woolgathering and then caught himself at it and went ahead and woke himself up and then noticed he was almost dead.
Except that it was just probably only a gesture by then.
There were pieces of his face—there were all of these cuts which were deep in his head.
Not that he couldn’t actually get up when he tried. He got right back up on his feet again and went and got the rake again and then he walked around for a while, then he walked in and out of the sandbox for a while, stepping up to get in it and then stepping down to get out of it, and meanwhile saying these different things and looking in his pockets almost all of this time, but some of it, some of the time, looking at me again and trying to get me with the rake again before I myself got ready to really buckle down to business again and kill him again and then he fell over again almost as soon as I got busy on him again and really dug in.
Anybody could tell that this time it was for good. It didn’t matter if you were just a six-year-old boy.
Any six-year-old could have killed Steven Adinoff.
Jun 112013
What he [Snowden] stressed is how they all work under a false premise; “If a surveillance program produces information of value, it legitimizes it … In one step, we’ve managed to justify the operation of the Panopticon”.
Oh yes, make no mistake; Snowden has carefully read his Michel Foucault (he also stressed his revulsion facing “the capabilities of this architecture of oppression”).
Foucault’s deconstruction of the Panopticon’s architecture is now a classic (see it here in an excerpt of his 1975 masterpiece Discipline and Punish). The Panopticon was the ultimate surveillance system, designed by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The Panopticon – a tower surrounded by cells, a pre-Orwellian example of “architecture of oppression” – was not originally conceived for the surveillance of a prison, but of a factory crammed with landless peasants on forced labor.
Jun 112013
“Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers. To achieve this, it is at once too much and too little that the prisoner should be constantly observed by an inspector: too little, for what matters is that he knows himself to be observed; too much, because he has no need in fact of being so. In view of this, Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and unverifiable. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so. In order to make the presence or absence of the inspector unverifiable, so that the prisoners, in their cells, cannot even see a shadow, Bentham envisaged not only venetian blinds on the windows of the central observation hall, but, on the inside, partitions that intersected the hall at right angles and, in order to pass from one quarter to the other, not doors but zig-zag openings; for the slightest noise, a gleam of light, a brightness in a half-opened door would betray the presence of the guardian. The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen.”
Jun 102013
Steven Schwartz writes to his obsessions. Currently, he’s obsessed by success, failure, and redemption, fixations which contextualize the main conflicts of his short stories and novels. In the title story of his first collection, To Leningrad in Winter, Schwartz tells the story of manwho attempts to distance himself from his Jewish heritage even when faced with acts of anti-Semitism that compel him to join a cause. Lives of the Fathers, his second collection, follows relationships between family members as they attempt to grow up and distance themselves from their parentage. Schwartz’s title story of this collection is told from the perspective of a son who simply wants to help his father move after his mother’s death. But when his father ropes him into helping him pursue Victoria, his father’s ailing, long-lost love, the narrator realizes he may be unable to avoid repeating his father’s mistakes. Schwartz’s first novel Therapy is told from the perspectives of three interconnected characters, each working through family dilemmas, personal trauma, and therapy to find meaning and love in their lives. In his second novel, A Good Doctor’s Son, Schwartz tells the story of a teenager who grows up in a racially intolerant small town in Pennsylvania. After accidentally killing the child of a black family while drag racing, the main character refocuses his life by attempting to deal with the moral repercussions of his actions. Schwartz’s most recent collection, Little Raw Souls, features stories of characters faced with difficult situations that force them to question their complacency with their lives, such as a man who can’t seem to let go of the adolescent crush he’d had when his transgender cousin was a girl; a rancher easily fooled by a couple vagrants who camp on his property; a woman at an airport who contemplates spending the night with a stranger rather than telling her husband her wallet was stolen.
Following the release of Little Raw Souls and his recent reading at an independent bookstore in Denver, CO, I spoke with Schwartz on how he maintains flexibility in his writer’s voice, pursues his obsessions, and wrestles his material into character-driven narratives.
—Jacqueline Kharouf
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Jacqueline Kharouf: You wrote a very interesting essay about voice called “Finding a Voice in America,” which was published in the AWP Chronicle (Oct.-Nov. 1991) and later published in the craft anthology Bringing the Devil to His Knees. In the essay, you briefly discuss the discovery (or acceptance) of your “material” and that once you finally stopped avoiding it, you came into your voice: “[…] the writer’s voice emerges at the place where her unique experience meets the larger culture.” I think of the writer’s voice as an ever-evolving aspect of being a writer (or that as we have new experiences, we meet that “larger culture” in ever-different and unexpected ways) and I wonder how you’ve noted (or embraced) that evolution in your own career.
Steven Schwartz: I think it’s important to say that writers, especially younger writers, although this can happen at any stage, spend a lot of time running away from their material. And why do they do this? Well, for any number of reasons. They’re afraid of being boring, that is, what happened to them couldn’t possibly be of any interest to anyone else simply because it did happen to them. They’re worried about dredging up material that might hurt those close to them—even when it’s disguised as fiction or only inspired by real events. But you can’t run away from your material because you don’t choose it, it chooses you. Even writers who claim not to be autobiographical at all—as if this is something to be ashamed about, suggesting they have no imagination—you’re still unconsciously going to run into your own obsessions if you write long enough.
For me, I had this idea that plot alone would make me an interesting writer, until I came to understand that I was only using plot to avoid revealing anything about myself that might stray into dangerous emotional territory and risk being sentimental. But it quickly became obvious—and I remember the story in particular, “Monkey Business” in my first collection To Leningrad in Winter—that when I finally wrote about the pain of a lover having an affair, (and allowed the real life event to take imaginative flight) and saw the impact it had on readers, I understood voice came out of the depths of character.
That intersection you mention about voice emerging at the place where your unique experience meets the larger culture is always variable. Which is another way to say that your voice does change over time depending on everything from your new experiences to what you’re reading to what you choose to write about. The idea of “finding your voice”—that chestnut of writerly advice—makes you think once you have it, that’s it. Good. I’ve got mine, hope you get yours. But actually you have to lose your voice periodically to keep it alive. Otherwise it becomes stale because you’re clinging to what worked before.
One caveat here: I remember speaking with the writer Charles D’Ambrosio after he gave a reading of his wonderful story “Screenwriter” and asking him about its genesis. He told me something very interesting. He said, in fact, the story was all voice at one point, and he had to proceed in the opposite direction, find what undergirded the voice, a structure for that voice that had some sort of narrative arc. So you have to be aware that your work can actually depend too much on voice and neglect all the other fundamentals of craft.
JK: One of the most intriguing and moving components of your prose is your dialogue, which is always a showcase of the differences that put your characters at odds with each other and an opportunity for those differences—and degrees of separation—to reveal what the characters most want. I wonder if you could discuss how you work on dialogue and if you could explain a bit of your process for fusing motivation with desire in terms of the particular context you want to create for the story. Do you begin a story with a particular context already in mind? Or does the character (and his/her particular situation/conflict) shape the story context?
SS: As a child I was always listening, always the witness to a lot of other more flamboyant family members. I think many writers, who tend to be watchers or witnesses in their families, silently take on the voices around them for lack of having any voice themselves. They become mimics. They study their subjects. They teach themselves to imitate others in order to get attention. But with the polyglot of voices you’ve collected, you begin to populate an inner world, and you do that by a sort of talking to yourself. You then come to appreciate how sound can be associated with image and before long you’re creating stories that are more interesting than what’s going on around you. Soon you discover that lived life isn’t enough for you, that it needs to be heightened, in particular by language. That’s how you learn to speak.
Dialogue as everyone knows can’t just be about delivering information. It has to be about creating character. So while other people may be listening for information, all that watching and listening that you’ve done has primed you to hear resonance. You hear all the shadings of meaning, the tones and intentionality, the emotional landscape behind the words. Without realizing it, in the silence of your listening, you’ve been teaching yourself about subtext.
When I’m working on a story, I usually have some idea of when a scene has to occur and how vital it is to bring in the actual voices of the characters. In one of the more dialogue-heavy stories in Little Raw Souls, “Stranger,” I needed to allow these two strangers who meet in an airport and contemplate having an affair to speak for themselves, as if only direct testimony from them could explain their actions. So you might say that dialogue comes into play when it’s most urgent for characters to speak and no other words than theirs will do. Dialogue has to feel special in a story. What I mean by that is that when you come across it, you have to be a little thrilled to hear directly from a character, and if you’re not, then it’s either bad dialogue or it’s being overused. Dialogue has to have force behind it—a pressure to speak.
JK: I really enjoyed your reading and I especially admired how you handled the variety of questions that you received from the audience. The first question, in particular, was pretty interesting because someone asked about the risky subject matter of the story you read (the story includes a transgender character). The audience member didn’t say whether he liked the story or not, but if you had hesitations about sharing it. Do you think—in this current state of the culture, which tends toward shock value and grabbing the consumer’s attention with as little effort from the consumer as possible—an author should worry about what readers will think of their work?
SS: Well, the short answer is no, of course not. But let’s be honest. What writer doesn’t—especially in this age of populace commentary—peek at those sometimes nasty comments on Amazon or Goodreads. In the past, writers were more insulated from that opining. You published a book. Someone maybe sent a letter to you. Or to your publisher. But it was all relatively private. Not anymore. And those comments stay.
All that said, it still shouldn’t matter one bit. If you want to take risks as a writer, and you’d better, if they’re honest risks, then you have to find a way to block those outside voices that are more prevalent today than ever before and would like to tell you everything from how you should write (or not) to tips about your personal hygiene.
JK: What are your obsessions that you write towards in your work? Do you actively cultivate these obsessions in other aspects of your life (aside from writing) or, in writing about your obsessions, do you work through those obsessions as a way of learning and letting them go?
SS: You have to make friends with your obsessions. But the catch is you don’t know your obsessions until you write enough to discover them. What you think you’re obsessed with may in fact not turn out to be the matter at all. I know for a fact that I’m obsessed with success, failure, and redemption, but how those forces will play out I never know, and in fact, don’t want to know.
You can’t rid yourself of your obsessions but you don’t have to assume you’ll always be trapped into writing about them either. If you say, I’m not going to repeat myself in this book by writing about X or Y, you’ll undoubtedly do just that. On the other hand, if you don’t fear that you’ll repeat your obsessions, you’ll find that they evolve into fascinating elaborations on a theme. Thomas Wolf couldn’t seem to stop writing about going home, Fitzgerald about wealth, Flannery O’Connor about mother figures, Dostoyevsky about suffering, judgment, goodness, violence and a whole bunch of other obsessions bursting at the seams of his books. In short, you have to embrace your obsessions with a faith that they’re both inexhaustible and capable of transmutation.
JK:I’m curious about the hierarchy of characters in your first novel, Therapy. Each character has such depth and dimension that, as I was reading, I often thought that they could each carry on in their own separate narratives. The novel’s close third-person point of view mostly centers on Cap, but also dips into the perspectives of Wallis (Cap’s wife), Julian (one of Cap’s therapy clients), Celia (Julian’s classmate), and Anna (Julian’s reclusive mother). I wonder if you could talk about what you hoped these other points of view would reveal about the story. I think there’s a certain danger in having too many points of view—a need to collect more information than the reader needs to feel invested in the story—and a risk in creating red-herrings (events or people who turn up, seem important, and then don’t necessarily influence lasting change on the main characters or their situations). However, each of your characters, with their various issues and desires, propel the plot forward and you return to and revisit other characters (and simultaneously drop others) in a kind of juggling act that raises the stakes of the story the longer you keep this number of characters in play. Ultimately, the novel (and the point of view) culminates at the point in which Cap recognizes what I think is at the heart of all desires: “It was what he’d always wanted to know too. The riddle of The Thing: Am I loved?” (331).
SS: Among the different points of view in Therapy, I have, Julian, a young man in college who is epileptic, Cap, a psychologist, and Wallis, Cap’s wife. At one time I was trying to write three individual books about each of these characters, toiling away over a period of a decade. Then I realized they could all be united in one story by the device of therapy and benefit from working off of each other.
It’s always interesting trying to decide exactly who will be a primary character and who a secondary one. I just wrote a paper for a panel about this topic for the AWP conference, and one of the conclusions I came to is that secondary characters have to be distinct in their own right. They can resemble types but at the same time they have to freshen that type. Secondary doesn’t mean second rate. But they are basically there to illuminate the struggles of the major characters, as Celia does for Julian when she meets and falls in love with him. So secondary characters can often fulfill their role, contradict it, or exceed it, and you have to be alert to the possibility of discovering your secondary characters are outgrowing their intended potential.
This is far often more true for a novel than a short story, a short story being an exclusive operation that weeds out material and a novel being an enterprise that wants to suck in everything around it including the idle conversation you just had with your neighbor about cantaloupe at the market (“I know I can work that in!”). So one of the characters in Therapy, Maureen, with her highly charged sexual behavior, started out more as a minor character but blossomed into a major one as she got more involved with Julian and I had to understand her motivation. And once you start mucking around with a character’s actions, and those actions are perhaps damaging to others as in the case of Maureen, you almost have an obligation to investigate the complexity of why a character behaves as she does, and that in itself indicates you’re on to creating a primary character. You have to explore motivation in a way that even if an act appears random the possibilities of what caused that act are myriad and compelling, otherwise you’re light on character. In Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” Bartleby literally winds up doing nothing, fading away as a human being, but it’s the why of his nothingness that makes this story a fascinating study of motivation with its possible social, economic, psychological, spiritual, philosophical explanations for behavior that can’t be reduced to one cause.
And this is where point of view often comes in, regardless of whether we’re talking about a primary or secondary character. I knew for most of the principal characters I could go into their heads, but with Maureen, I had to stay out of it, despite her being a major character. I simply could not do justice to—and in fact would be subtracting from—the nature of her behavior if I tried to explain her from the inside out. It was an intuitive decision to stay out of her head, as many decisions about point of view are, knowing that she would have more raw power as a character seen from the outside than from the inside. My friend, Robert Boswell, talks about the half-known world of characters, that “you can measure how successfully you’ve revealed a character by the extent to which his acts, words, history, and thoughts fail to explain him,” and I think that’s true of all characters: you don’t want to over-solve. If you do, their mystery disappears. You have to take the measure of how fully you’re going to expose each character, or to use your phrase, complete or make incomplete their lives.
To be clear, this has nothing to do with not developing a character to the fullest—all characters need to have their trajectories followed through on—but with psychological constructs of a character, if you still believe in that sort of thing as a writer of mostly realistic stories, as I am. And since I’ve brought up the subject of realism versus other modes, I should say that I think it’s often an artificial or perhaps useless distinction. A Jonathan Franzen versus an Aimee Bender. Borges versus Roth (who’s taken a few fantasy turns in his fiction himself). In Therapy, I have an absolutely bizarre sequence of events that takes place in the basement of a psychiatrist’s office. People always ask me about that scene, and I really can’t give any more justification for it other than it fits and that’s where the story took me. Likewise in Little Raw Souls, in “Absolute Zero,” there’s no explaining the Seer. But nothing could persuade me to take these moments out just to make the stories “consistent.” Insisting on categorization can only inhibit the work and the possibility of a truly original moment happening. I published an essay in The Writer’s Chronicle called “In Defense of Contrivance,” and one of my arguments I make is that it’s not what happens but what happens afterward that makes an event believable or not. Create the right context and follow up and there are no limits on how a so-called magical moment might pop up and become integral and credible to an otherwise erstwhile realistic work.
JK: In your new story collection Little Raw Souls, you create situations for your characters and then introduce conflict that threatens to disrupt or end these situations. For example, in “Bless Everybody,” the narrator Charlie is retired, divorced, and living off the land he’d always wanted to own, but then two hippies arrive and want to stay for a time. In “Absolute Zero,” Connor’s dying mother won’t sign the papers allowing him to enlist for the Marines, but then he spends time with a classmate who is also dying. In “Seeing Miles,” David reconnects with his second cousin who—over the years—has changed her gender. Did you begin your stories with these situations in mind first? Or did you think of the conflict first before crafting a situation that contextualizes the resolution of that conflict?
SS: I really don’t think one knows the conflict in advance of writing stories. In “Bless Everybody,” Charlie has a run in with some young hippies who take a liking to his land but turn out to be different people than they appear at first. That story came out of an experience of a couple who did call us out of the blue and ask to stay on some land we owned. They turned out to be deceitful and though it’s not necessary to go into exactly how, I can say, what intrigued me about the situation for years before I could write about it was how easily I was hoodwinked. In other words, I couldn’t get over my own susceptibility. In writing the story I had to find a way to investigate that initial miscalculation of mine, given I consider myself a good reader of people, which broadened into a conflict about a man confronting the idea of what it means to be a good person and whether he’s failed at that over the years or been too rigid in his pursuit of that goal.
So the original conflict that might initially intrigue me and be based on my own experience has to evolve into something more universal in the course of writing a story, otherwise it just stays limited—a situation, not a story. Likewise for “Seeing Miles.” I was always fascinated by how I had my first crush on my lovely cousin at thirteen, who turned out in her thirties to have a sex change, and what that meant about me. The real conflict, however, involved wrestling with a story about the nature of desire. Did I at any point sit there and say to myself, I’m writing a story about the nature of desire? Absolutely not. I probably would have hit myself over the head with hammer first and said get back to work, Steven! Wake up and write a story, not an idea.
—Steven Schwartz & Jacqueline Kharouf
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Steven Schwartz grew up outside Chester, Pennsylvania, and has lived in Colorado for the past twenty-eight years. He is the author of two story collections, To Leningrad in Winter (University of Missouri) and Lives of the Fathers (University of Illinois), and two novels, Therapy (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and A Good Doctor’s Son (William Morrow). His fiction has received the Nelson Algren Award, the Sherwood Anderson Prize, the Cohen Award, the Colorado Book Award for the Novel, two O. Henry Prize Story Awards, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, and Bread Loaf. His essays have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Crazyhorse, Image, and have been awarded the Cleanth Brooks Prize in Nonfiction from The Southern Review. He teaches in the low-residency MFA Program at Warren Wilson College and the MFA program at Colorado State University, where he also serves as fiction editor for the Colorado Review. Married to the writer Emily Hammond, they have two grown children. His new collection of stories, Little Raw Souls, was published by Autumn House Press in January 2013.
Jacqueline Kharouf is a graduate of the MFA in Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. A native of Rapid City, SD, Jacqueline currently lives in Denver. Her work has appeared in Numéro Cinq, Otis Nebula and H.O.W. Journal, where she won third place in a fiction contest judged by Mary Gaitskill. She had work forthcoming in NANO Fiction. Jacqueline blogs at: jacquelinekharouf.wordpress.com and tweets @writejacqueline.
Jun 092013
The other day I put up a link to a piece about the posthumous publication of Witold Gombrowicz’s diary quarry or pre-diary (what are now published as his diaries were actually magazine or newspaper columns, sort of blog posts before there was an Internet). In the published diaries, there is practically no mention of sexual activity, though one can read between the lines here and there. But in Kronos there is full disclosure of sorts. My interest here is not prurient (moi?) but somewhat provoked by my reading of the diaries, which are wonderful in themselves (I copied out long passages in my notebooks: texts about the construction of the self by language, by social interaction, and the self being thrown back on the negative position, defining itself as NOT-THAT; I find that I go through life refining myself against roles and definitions into which I find I cannot fit myself). But in the diaries the veiled references seem almost to taunt the reader, inspire curiosity. And then, of course, late in life, soon before he died actually, Gombrowicz did marry (a French-Canadian woman). All very curious.
In any case, after I posted the note and link, Ewa Bender at a wonderfully informative (about all things literary, cultural and Polish) site called Culture.pl sent me the link to the following overview of Kronos. The author is Mikołaj Gliński. Fascinating. Lists of lovers, male, female and those who could be either. Abbreviations. Circles to connote intercourse.
Just so you know: I am working on an essay on Gombrowicz, long time coming.
dg
The beginnings of this erotic chronology, as well as Gombrowicz’s bisexuality, can be traced to a note from 1934. It was next to this date that, years later, in an attempt at reconstructing the period, Gombrowicz jotted down “The first ‘pe’ attempts”. We can guess that “pe” is short for pederastic, but can learn nothing more. Subsequent pages of this reconstruction consist in prewar lists of his partners, often presented with an invective: the hysteric whore from Hala (during the stay in Zakopane), a servant from Zaborow, Gelbardowa’s servant, a waitress from Zodiac, Jadźka’s friend, two whores from Mokotowska Street, a whore with gonorrhea, a virgin, Franek, and the one with legs in rubber slippers.
Jun 092013
I love the strange triangulations that take place on NC regularly. This time we have a Halifax librarian, novelist, and short story writer, Ian Colford, writing a profile about Tess Wiley, a Texas-born singer and songwriter, who makes her home and career in Germany. Ian is a longtime contributor to NC: stories, novel excerpts, profiles, and everything he writes has the idiosyncratic aura of a thoughtful outsider poking about in the culture, turning up half-hidden treasures. See this! he says. Amazing! he says. Ian has his own particular angle of vision; that’s one of the prerequisites for appearing at NC. And the music? Tess Wiley? Just listen. She’s to die for.
And while you’re at it, please take a look at our growing and heterodox collection of music posts.
dg
An Accidental Meeting
I discovered Tess Wiley by accident. In late 2002 I was searching for music by a band called Rainy Day Assembly (I had downloaded a couple of their tunes from a free site). Thinking this band might have an album, I tried Amazon.com. They did not have an album (and, so far as I can tell, never have). But, oddly enough (given it’s an unusual phrase), my search returned an unrelated result, a CD called Rainy Day Assembly by an artist I had never heard of named Tess Wiley. Curious, I listened to a few of the song samples. I was impressed.
Rainy Day Assembly entered my regular rotation immediately upon delivery. I buy a lot of music and when I discover an artist I like, I buy everything they’ve recorded. Over the years this has led to numerous successes, but also some disappointments and a few miscalculations. A lot of songs, CDs, and artists have come and gone. But in 2013 Tess Wiley’s three studio albums, the most recent of which was released in 2007, continue to receive significant playing time. Unashamedly, I have become a fan.
Tess makes music that grabs the listener’s attention for all the right reasons. It is music that is memorable but never cloying, carefully crafted pop that does not follow a formula and is still revealing surprising details on the fiftieth listen. This is music for thoughtful, inquisitive people, not because it is revolutionary or especially challenging, but because it is immediately apparent that the driving force behind it is probing and untypical. The elements are familiar, but they are deployed in a manner that does not readily call to mind the work of anyone else. You can enjoy these songs for their tasteful arrangements and clear, ringing harmonies and go no further than that. But Tess’s music offers the curious listener the further choice to dig deeper, to find out where these songs come from, and to learn something about the person who created them.
Tess Wiley was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1974. Her father, Fletch Wiley, is a working musician who in the 1970s recorded with the gospel group Andraé Crouch and the Disciples. The family moved around, and Tess spent her childhood in Houston, Seattle, and San Francisco, before returning to Houston. With her mother a writer and her father a musician, there was little chance she would grow up without exhibiting a creative side, and she embarked early on her musical career, taking up piano at age five, violin at 12 and guitar at 14. She spent her school years writing songs and performing in a band, before capping her education with studies in classical piano at Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.
In 1995 Tess joined the Texas-based pop/rock band Sixpence None the Richer, touring and recording with them and contributing the song “Disconnect” to their second full-length CD, This Beautiful Mess. Her year with Sixpence was not an easy one. The band’s label went bankrupt and refused to release the group from their contract. Tess was one of the members who left the band during this period. For the next several years, working on her own and with producer and recording engineer Chris Colbert, she recorded and performed her songs under a variety of names (Splendora, Phantasmic and Tess Wiley and her Orchestra).
Adding an interesting twist to her biography, when Tess fell in love it was with a photo-journalist from Germany, Christian Roth. She met Roth while with Sixpence, when the band was performing at the Flevo Festival in the Netherlands. Roth attended the festival and interviewed the band for a magazine. After she left Sixpence the two kept in touch, meeting again when Roth visited the US to attend some musical events. Roth’s photos and artwork adorn the Rainy Day Assembly CD case. They married and in 2003 settled in Geissen, a university town in central Germany, which is perhaps best known for the Botanischer Garten Gießen, the oldest botanical gardens in the country. Tess has two sons and still resides in Geissen, though her personal life has become more complex lately.
Rainy Day Assembly (2002) was recorded in New York with the aid of American musicians. Her subsequent studio albums, Not Quite Me (2004) and Superfast Rock’n Roll Played Slow (2007), were both recorded in Germany with German musicians.
Tess Wiley’s music is rooted in a North American pop sensibility, the inventive and richly detailed arrangements heavily reliant on acoustic and electric guitars and keyboards, along with the occasional electronic beat. Her songs carry unmistakable echoes of classic folk, 1980s alt-rock, even late 1970s post-punk. Her lyrics can be message-laden or brutally confessional. She is not afraid to be loud, to mix tempos, to juxtapose pop rhythms and loosely structured mood pieces. Even her most upbeat songs have a melancholy edge to them, and enough depth, ingenuity and unpredictability to keep them off the pop charts. Her independent voice and musical daring—perhaps her greatest artistic assets and two reasons why her fans are so deeply devoted and pulling for her to succeed—also mean that a mass following has proven elusive. I feel lucky to have encountered Tess early in her solo career, and to have followed her development as an artist and songwriter through three full-length albums that exhibit an astounding breadth of musical ambition and achievement. The wait for a fourth studio album has been lengthy (a “live-in-the-studio” CD with one new song was released in 2010). But 2012 saw the release of the EP Tornados. Based on this most recent output, how can there be any doubt that commercial success is on the horizon?
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To Begin at the Beginning …
We become fans of musicians, actors, painters, filmmakers, authors, playwrights, for many reasons, but usually because we sense an affiliation of some kind, and/or a deep appreciation for what the artist is trying to say. The artist is expressing something that we, if only we possessed the tools, would express for ourselves. I came upon Tess’s album Rainy Day Assembly not long after it was released, and after listening to the CD more times than I can count, I am intimately familiar with the songs it contains. Because it can be both challenging and totally accessible—keeping the listener guessing while at the same time drawing us in—it continues to hold a fascination years after I first listened to it. My attempts to identify where the songs come from have failed: their antecedents remain obscure. Sixpence None the Richer is a pop/rock band with several hit singles to their credit and a reputation for making music that is both brainy and catchy. There is a relationship between them and the music Tess Wiley is making in the late 1990s and early 2000s, though hardly a direct one. Recorded from 1999-2001 and released in September 2002, Rainy Day Assembly seems in some respects to drop out of nowhere, a product of stark originality that feeds 1980s and 1990s pop influences through a subversive and mischievous aesthetic filter. With their mix of pure pop ambition and occasional structural eccentricities, songs like “Small Things Define,” the title track, and “Out of My Head” seem a distillation of everything she has accomplished since and serve as a perfect introduction to her music.
I realized, of course, that I had got my hands on something special. In 2002 Tess Wiley was making music for grown-ups at a time when much of the music dominating the airwaves was for kids. By the time the fourth track, “Breathe,” was over, I knew I would be listening to this album often.
Her second album, 2004’s Not Quite Me, places more of an emphasis on linear pop structures and downplays some of the delightful eccentricities that make Rainy Day Assembly a unique listening experience. Taking their place is a more straightforward approach to crafting harmonious sounds and radio-ready songs that have a broader appeal. Naked pop rhythms abound, such as in the title track and the sinewy and seductive “How Does Silence Feel?” But Not Quite Me is a Tess Wiley album, and there is something different going on. This becomes apparent on “Let it Come,” when toward the end of the song the instruments fade into the background, vanishing behind a rising swell of voices, a rich wordless chorus. Overall, despite the jaunty closing cut, “This Shadow,” and a track titled “Happy Now,” the album weighs in on the meditative, melancholy side, with an abundance of minor keys and lyrics that do more questioning than celebrating.
In 2007 she released Superfast Rock’n Roll Played Slow, which leaves behind the electric polish of Not Quite Me in favor of a simplicity and rawness in its predominantly acoustic arrangements and occasional whimsical flourishes that give the album the spontaneous feel of a demo. The primary instrument here is Tess’s voice, which is front and center throughout the recording, and exhibits an expressive range that is nothing short of remarkable. There is a quality to her voice and her approach to singing on this album that on a few songs seems to leave her utterly exposed, dangling somewhere between tough and vulnerable. As you listen you begin to suspect that maybe the toughness is nothing more than an attempt to mask the vulnerability. To this point in her career Tess’s lyrics have included confessional elements and at times can even be described as self-critical, but here the self-doubting becomes explicit. This is most noticeable in the sublime “Idle,” in which she admits:
No matter how much I protest,
No matter how much I am blessed,
I’ll always have to prove myself to me.
I can’t let it go. I don’t know what they might think of me,
And I know I shouldn’t care, but I can’t let it go.
I don’t know how I should feel.
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Question & Answer
IC: You come from a creative family. What music were you listening to growing up?
TW: I heard a ton of jazz and classical, of course: Steely Dan, Miles Davis, Beethoven, Mahler. But I was drawn to the radio like any other kid. My first “favorite song” was “The Tide is High” by Blondie. I can remember telling my mom that when I was four. I’m sure she was thrilled. Later I loved Billy Joel, Whitney Houston. My dad got me the Amy Grant cassette tape “Unguarded” to finally give me something else to listen to than Whitney’s debut! I wore both of those tapes out in the end. My very first purchase with my own money, oddly, was the first Skid Row LP. That was the beginning of my “metal” phase, although it was probably more glam. Dangerous Toys, Mr.Big, but of course: Guns n’ Roses.
IC: Tell me about your earliest attempts at making music.
TW: I recall having fooled around on the piano early on, and when I turned five my parents signed me up for piano lessons. My mom would tell you I started singing before I spoke in full sentences, though. “Tender Shepard” and “Create in me a Clean Heart” were in the early repetoire. Apparently, at my recitals even age 5 or 6 I would improvise when I made a mistake or forgot how the song went, until I could find my way back into the piece. Unfortunately, my improvisational skills may have been nipped in the bud by too much classical music, too much reading notes and not being free with it. I do have one of my first recordings still on cassette tape. My dad brought home a synthesizer to try out, and I recorded a piece that had an A-B-A form and found two different sounds that fit the different moods. A bit ahead of my time at 7.
IC: Who were you trying to emulate?
TW: That didn’t start until later on when I actually started making my “own” music, it was with a band of high school friends. They had a lot of idols: Bob Mould, REM, U2. To be honest, mostly stuff I wasn’t interested in. I can’t exactly recall what I was listening to in the 9th grade (other than the classic rock radio station), but soon after I discovered indie. Throwing Muses, Belly, Juliana Hatfield, Lemonheads. Then our bass player found out about The Frames. They were on the listening booth at the local music store, promoted by Glen Hansard’s part in The Commitments. That and very early Green Day consumed us for a while.
As far as singing, I can’t really say I ever tried to emulate anyone, honestly. I’ve always felt that the influences I had were more things I internalized, and what came out of me didn’t necessarily reflect those sounds. Maybe I’m just a true original?
IC: What prompted your decision, at the age of 22 and after only one album, to leave Sixpence None the Richer and embark on a solo career?
TW: Well, ahem, I was 20 at the time, so – ya – really immature. The problem with Sixpence in that phase was that they were going in circles, no one seemed to be pushing them out of the microcosm they toured, and no one in the band had a whole lot of gumption to take things further (it seemed). I was antsy, plus they wanted to move to Nashville, which at the time seemed like a hellish idea. I can’t explain why. Maybe because it represented country and christian music, two genres I didn’t want to have much to do with. I didn’t see the singer/songwriter aspect of it, and I didn’t see myself as a singer/songwriter then, anyway. I was punk! I was indie! I was alternative! I was way more Austin than Nashville, so that’s where I decided to stay. In addition, a certain someone in the band was in love with me and frustrated that I was dating the sound guy. We butted heads, both in our stubborn ways, and I basically got kicked out. There you go.
IC: What was it like, at 25, to be recording your first solo album in NYC?
TW: The entire NYC experience was pretty mind-boggling. I knew it then, but I keep having flashes of, “OMG, I can’t believe THAT person played on my record, too, and now he’s playing with David Bowie/Aimee Mann/Sam Phillips/Solomon Burke/Elvis Costello.” The list goes on and on. At the time, the most amazing thing was to have Jeff Buckley’s drummer play on it. It was definitely one of the fancier studios I’ve been in, and being able to say that Kevin Killen mixed the thing still provides me with credibility from those who know.
But on the other hand, I was an awfully shy thing for a long time in my life, and it absolutely intimidated me. I didn’t really find my true voice anyway until a few years later, but I feel like I sound a bit stifled. It’s a shame. I kind of wish I could re-record the vocals to it one day.
IC: Has your approach to songwriting changed over the course of a career that now spans almost 20 years?
TW: Holy moly – 20 years. Can’t believe I can say that. Yeah, I’d say I’m trying hard to be less precious about it. I try to think less, not use such “big” words or be so grammatically correct (although it is a desire of mine to promote good language!) I also start more often with lyrics. I try my best to write down everything that comes into my head, hoping to be able to use it later. Sometimes something doesn’t make sense until later. And in any case, if I don’t write it down immediately, it’s gone, gone, gone. So frustrating.
IC: You moved to Germany in your twenties and just as your career was getting underway. Musically speaking, how do you view that move today?
TW: Hmm, musically speaking, it wasn’t the best idea. I used to joke that the Beatles kick-started their career in Germany, but of course, they were in Hamburg, not Giessen, which I like to refer to as Germany’s armpit. That’s not really fair anymore – a lot of music has been coming out of this town for a while now, and the city planners are starting to finally get a bit of a grip on aesthetics. It’s changing. Slowly. And I get out more, I have a manager with a vision, and I’m MUCH less intimidated than I was before. I shot myself in the foot every day with my “humility”. Was a waste of time! But better to learn late than never, eh?
IC: Does your career have a defining moment?
TW: I think that’s on the immediate horizon.
IC: What are your hopes for the new CD?
TW: That it provide that defining moment.
I really hope to be able to find a good niche for myself. I don’t want to become a huge star, which is good, because I imagine I’m a bit too old for that now, but I simply don’t want to be on the road constantly. I have two wonderful boys who need their mommy close to them as much as possible. I hope to enter the songwriting world more, possibly write with and for other people. I love to sing, and I enjoy performing, but there’s something enticing about hearing what other people do with my creations. Plus I imagine it must be nice to stay at home and let the checks come in.
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Timeline
1995
This Beautiful Mess (Sixpence None the Richer)
2002
Rainy Day Assembly (full-length CD)
2004
Not Quite Me (full-length CD)
2007
Superfast Rock’n Roll Played Slow (full-length CD)
2010
Tess Wiley – Live (live in the studio recording)
2012
Tornados (EP)
—Ian Colford
—Tess Wiley Photographs by Apolonia Wieland at Bang Bang Photography; you can watch more Tess Wiley videos on her Youtube channel, TessWileyMusic. Her new CD, Little Secrets, is due out this fall.
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Ian Colford has been publishing stories and reviews for a long time. This profile of songstress Tess Wiley is his first venture into music journalism. His short story collection, Evidence (2008), was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed, Raddall Atlantic Fiction and ReLit awards, and his novel, The Crimes of Hector Tomas (2012) recently won Trade Book of the Year at the 2013 Alberta Book Awards. Most of his disposable income goes on books and the rest goes on music. Recently he has been mourning the death of Ray Manzarek by listening to too much of the Doors. He works as a reference librarian at the Sexton Design & Technology Library at Dalhousie University.
Jun 092013
“It isn’t just out here, it’s down here, it’s with us,” he said. “We join in.”
Jun 092013
It is indeed sobering when the Harvard Business Review comes off sounding like Julian Assange or someone in the Occupy movement. Time to RUN FOR THE EXIT!
There is no exit.
Watching peoples’ ideas form as they type, in order to protect against someone who might become a terrorist in the future. George Orwell, eat your heart out.
via Your Smartphone Works for the Surveillance State – James Allworth – Harvard Business Review.